Spicy

Reading through my previous posts, as I can't help but do, it's apparent that I totally lack a fluid writing style. Other people blog so much better. But, maybe I'll get better... and because no one is reading this, it's just my problem anyway.
Now for an update: I've decided to join my local programming user groups and maybe start attending meetings, since I have nothing else to do. I'm not sure if hanging out at user groups is a proper substitute for work experience, but at least is should keep me up to do date with what's going on in the community. And certainly, we all know it's of utmost importance to keep up to date in the computer world (since things change so much).
In terms of personal projects, I've been working on a port of the Corpscon6 coordinate converter thingamabob from C to Java. Right now I just have a wrapper around their dll (which contains the algorithms), providing more features and a nicer GUI, plus all the Java goodness. On this project I learned about JNI, the MigLayout library for swing (very nice), and because I'm doing the GUI in Clojure, I've learned more about how to write effective macros.
Honestly, the ability to abstract away boilerplate repetitive code is extraordinarily helpful in writing a program; and that's especially obvious when you're trying to hack some GUI code, which is by nature (at least in Java/Swing) horrendously repetitive and gnarly. In lisp I can write a set of macros that lets me write my UI in a declaritive manner, and does all the repetitive gnarliness behind the scenes for me.