The Twilight Report

Japanese Food and iPods

2006-10-27T22:54:00

Went to a “Japanese” restaurant with some co-workers. If I were in the states and with my friends or family I would probably call it a “Sushi” place, but that didn’t seem to be the term used here^[1]. This place had a conveyor belt and you just picked up the stuff that you wanted as it went by. This concept has always seemed cool in theory, but also a little bit sketchy in terms of health, but the fish turned out to be quite fresh, and I would probably go back again.

The good news is that my co-workers are actually pretty cool. I keep telling people that there are no Jeffs where I work now (my adventures with jeff were chronicled here, here and here.

Jeff

There are many things that I miss about working at The Company, but Jeff is not one of them. I do miss my collaborations with Adil, Tiffany, Ed and Ed a lot.

I was excited yesterday because my iPod finally came back to me. I wasn’t sure they would actually do it, but they replaced it, so this is actually my third iPod (I checked and it has a different serial number), my second replacement by the same warranty, so that extended warranty was actually worth it for once. Would I get another iPod? I’m not sure, I mean I love having the thing and it is super simple to use, but as far as reliability it doesn’t score well. My friend e and her husband both have iPods and both are giving them trouble at the moment (one sounds like it has died, the other is having the same sort of problems that mine did before it finally died). Theresa’s died recently too. In my own experience their ability to fix things appear to operating at only about 66%, and you only get a good result if you call up and yell at them. I was actually super courteous both times because Theresa used to work in a call centre and people who work in places like that don’t deserve to have abuse hurled in their general direction, you do (however) have to be insistent when block your path with red tape. On the other hand when I actually have a working iPod it is hard to imagine life without it! I think I would actually get another iPod, but I’d get the AppleCare Extortion Plan up front this time, because although there was more hassles than there should have been, they did fix things in the end. That does count for a lot.

I think traditionally Sushi refers to the rice or something, but Americans at least usually use it to refer to the whole thing

“Protection”

2006-10-10T22:17:00

I think that they should rename it AppleCare Extortion Plan, because seriously, I don’t think it is a coincidence that the word “Protection” is a common euphemism for Extortion.

like a heartbeat / on the downbeat

2006-09-22T22:24:00

Feeling overly dramatic and totally energyless tonight. sendmail should die; remind me again why we can't just use postfix instead?

I have an urge to write another computer demo. Will need two things:

to review OpenGL
inspiration

I was in a bookstore this afternoon after work and I picked up an OpenGL book. The hard bit will be the inspiration. My last demo was inspired by the number e^[1].

Who wants to be in charge of sound effects and music?

The other thing I thought about buying in the bookstore was a Mandarin/English dictionary. I decided to wait for now. I've obviously become interested in 中文^[2], but I have a few 中文 resources that I should finish with before buying new stuff. It could be a passing interest after all.

I'm a dork.
Chinese language

Justice & Police

2006-07-02T23:01:00

A few weeks ago I went to the Justice and Police Museum in Sydney for a special exhibit titled City of Shadows, which consisted primarily of black and white crime scene, mug shot, and other miscellaneous police photography from the early 20th century. The pictures were really fascinating, although the presentation really didn't do them justice. I would have really liked to have seen the actual prints!

As a camera geek, it was cool to see some of the old cameras they had on display:

(dorky stuff...)

I posted some more photographs of the old cameras and the museum here:

Police?Justice
2006

Technology: love, hate

2006-06-28T02:53:00

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with technology, which I think is best summed up in this BOASAS:

perlish

2006-06-20T23:47:00

Today I wrote actual (perl) code as apposed to writing (in English) about existing buggy code or how one might fix said buggy code to make it work.

It was nice.

Technology; Progress

2006-06-04T03:03:00

Two observations worth remembering:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The second observation was made by Douglas Adams, and I'm having trouble relocating the exact quote, but in essence he said that whether an object can be defined as "technology" can be determined by the "tea" test. That is,

Make a hot cup of tea.
Try to figure out how the object in question works.
If, by the time you are done or by the time you give up the tea is cold, then you are almost certainly dealing with technology.

Here is a screencap of Micro$oft Word: I leave it as an exercise for the reader to get my point.

Also: why is it that language designers hate Multiple inheritance so much? We used it to good effect when I was working at IBM, and it seems to work pretty well for creating people.