The Twilight Report

Your Home For Snappy Repartee

dogs and cats, living together, mass hysteria

Re-watched Fight Club. I honestly don’t understand what I saw in that movie. It’s clever, and somewhat anarchic, but like Che it has more traction as a T-shirt than it does for its ideas. Ironically appropriate given the proclivities of Tyler Durden. The film reminds me of just about every frat boy I met at uni.

Re-watching Ghostbusters. The effects are cheesy, but ahh... makes me all nostalgic for New York. Good times. This remains one of my favourite films.

New TV is a good excuse to revisit my DVD library.

Also watched my second demo (e) for the first time on my new TV, and also for the first time with my new amp. Looks and sounds really good :) I decided to skip watching my first demo Final Intensity on account of it being tainted by Kari’s contribution to the project.

Playing through Super Mario Galaxy. I am less than 15 stars short of the final showdown, assuming there isn’t an encore, which there probably is. Running both the Wii and the Mac Mini through the TV has got me to thinking that if the Wiimote worked as a pointing device for the Mac Mini it would be really cool. I still think about interface design issues, even though I am destined to work on server side stuff it seems. It’s a pity that nothing works with anything else. Yay for capitalism and free markets.

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like a heartbeat / on the downbeat

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:

  1. to review OpenGL
  2. 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.



  1. I'm a dork.
  2. Chinese language
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also:

When I turned on my G5 for the first time after being locked away at sea for six months[1], I found a bunch of nice high quality scans on the desktop that I took last summer of decay and ruins from the Hudson Valley. It was a pleasant surprise because I had forgotten I had taken them, much less scanned them in. Anyway, I will be posting some of them over the next few weeks.


[1] the G5, not me
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perlish

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.

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naturally

Work has been sucking it out of me lately[1], so I haven't even checked my LJ in the past week, much less posted.

I bought a bunch of things like clothes and a new phone yesterday (let me know if you want the #). It has the Internet on it (yes, the ENTIRE internet), so now I can carry it around with me (yes, the ENTIRE internet). Actually it still doesn't solve my problem of not being able ot IM at work[2]. It solves a host of other problems though, so I don't object. Cameras on phones seemed like such a dumb thing before I got one, but living without my first few months in Australia has reminded me that there are times when they are handy. Mostly to take visual notes. If I see an ad for something that I want to later research I can. Also: I know it seems like a little thing, but I am offended by the fact that I actually have to set the time on my phone. In America my phone set the tiem itself. This was handy when I flew.

Yesterday I also found a really nice apartment in Artarmon, for which I filed an application, but the realestate agent screwed me and it looks like I won't get the place. Lawyers have a bad rap, yet I have had nothing but positive experience dealing with lawyers[3], whereas my experience with realeastate agenst has been entirely negative.


[1] I'm ready to quit

[2] at least not directly, I still may be able to figure something out though

[3] in fact, the one time when I worked with lawyers and programmers at the same time, the programmers really dissapointed me in their narrow mindedness.
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Technology; Progress

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,
  1. Make a hot cup of tea.
  2. Try to figure out how the object in question works.
  3. 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.
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Rolling stone collects no MOS

Saturday, I went to the Museum of Sydney (MOS) to see the Joseph Lycett exhibit which is on there right now. Lycett was an artist, forger, and convict in New South Wales, and his work is some of the most important visual record that exists of the time. What I found remarkable about Lycett's work is that the Europeans (individuals, towns and ships) look tiny in comparison to the environment that they find themselves in. One example struck me especially shows a tree by the shore four times the height of a three mast sailing ship (which is actually closer to the viewer). Even where there are not the immense incongruities, the Europeans look small vulnerable. The few pieces that I saw featuring aboriginals were scaled more realistically. Perhaps this is because Lycett knew his presumably European audience, and what they would be interested in seeing?

(more..)
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Signed paper work

So I mentioned earlier this week that I had a job offer, and promised further details. They were a bit disorganized, so I didn't actually sign the paper work until today.

Anyway, I start work a week after Monday next. That's 29 May. The company archives legal documents, and newspaper articles, and charges lots of money for people to search it. I'm going to be programming in perl, adjusting their code to operate correctly in places like China, and I think there will be some XML involved. I don't know all that much about internationalization, or even XML for that matter, but I think I can pick that up and I am a pretty good perl programmer.

When a friend of mine got a job working in Manhattan I imagined that she worked in this colossal steel and glass sky scraper in the financial district. (one day I met up with her where she works and it turned out to be a little loft in SoHo; this is probably a lot nicer). I'm going to be working in exactly the same building that I imagined that she worked in, except that it is located in Chatswood, very close to the train station.

I can't decide how I should refer to this company. I considered making it The Company, now that I don't work for the company formally known as The Company any more or even The Company II to distinguish it, but it seems like it deserves a better name. Maybe I'll just be vague and make statements such as that place where I work.

If you are curious about details, IM me. My contact details may be found here:
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You bought 1350 lbs of this shirt but you can only carry 200 back to the wagon.

I came by this T-Shirt on the Internet today:

http://www.bustedtees.com/product.php?name=dysentery

which probably doesn't mean much to you if you didn't go through the American education system in the late 80s early 90s like Tyler and I did, but we both found it hilarious. I then proceeded to download the latest version of The Oregon Trail, which they are still apparently making, but of course the new version left something to be desired, namely the nostalgia, which only the original could provide. This is really the only thing that it has going for it.

I've been mucking about with nameservers... I was still using belmont as my DNS server, and I'm only now starting to do the switchover to nullray (DNS is/was the last service on belmont). Some of my websites may be temporarily mucked up. I will be doing nullray soon. For those of you who logon, you may want to remember that the IP address is 64.38.18.2 or add it to your hosts file. Shouldn't need it, but just in case.
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Newest member of the family

Meet Chaco the newest member of the family. It's the new Mac mini with an Intel Core Duo processor. I like the remote, it's a nice touch. There are only six buttons on it, as per typical Apple design principles, but to skip through songs in iTunes or to play a DVD you really don't need any more than that. I don't like the fact that most vendors aren't shipping native Intel or Mac OS X Universal binaries yet. The emulation for PowerPC is quite good, I've had not problem at all running older PowerPC binaries, but it is super slow. The Mozilla Foundation isn't shipping universal binaries of Firefox or Thunderbird yet, (wtf?) and I don't like Camino, so I spent a few hours last night compiling Firefox as an native Intel binary. I can forget about running Photoshop on it though. Until they start selling more powerful macs with Intel and Adobe releases a native Intel version I will be utilizing my G5 a great deal.
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Pointless

I was having trouble with several on-line retailers earlier in this week, but I finally had a break through with buy.com and the fixed the problem I was having with them. They wanted me to fax them my drivers license, which I thought was a bit much. Fortunately they relented. Just now I wrote a strongly worded letter to eBay. My complaint against half.com has apparently been escalated up to the parent company's support staff. I don't expect them to give me what I am asking for (which amounts to an apology at this point, since they failed to fix what I asked them to fix), and to be honest I don't really care that much, but I'm proceeding under the assumption that It's The Principle Of The Thing. The truth, however, is that it is pointless.

Things are quiet at work today, given that it is the Friday before Thanksgiving week. My former manager (the good one, who was promoted into upper management), came over the other day and said something about "Think Fridays" (I guess it must have been a Friday) and I was like ... "Um. What is that." I vaguely recall some discussion about this in a meeting at some point, but I had buried it or ignored it because it seemed pointless.

Thanksgiving week always seems like a good week to take days off, but since management always comes around on Wednesday to let us out early, I think that it is kind of pointless to take that day off, and hence the rest of the short week.

I watched an episode of the Apprentice with some friends last night. That also seemed rather pointless.

Before that we watched Crash, which wasn't pointless... It was actually pretty good, but I didn't like the way that actors would break character randomly and begin essay-like monologues from time to time. I don't really like that style of story telling, but I suppose to bring that up here is pointless.
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Rainy Days

Today was miserable as far as the weather is concerned. So I went to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie. Definitely good enough to pay matinee prices on an otherwise bleak Saturday. I haven't gone to see a movie by myself in a long time, and I felt vaguely odd watching a movie which seemed to be popular most with children, but I am a fan of the makers of the short films and I'm glad that I saw this one, though I have to say that I enjoyed Chicken Run much more.

(more on the dangers of reading...)
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368 days, 367 nights

ollisg@belmont.wdlabs.com's password:
Last login: Thu Sep 22 10:17:40 2005 from ***********************
Welcome To Belmont.
8 days before the Kalends of October
belmont% uptime
 10:16am  up 368 days,  1:27,  2 users,  load average: 0.08, 0.03, 0.02
belmont% _
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Cow Duck

One of the Adium X icons that you can download is a cow, which reminded me of a certain friend from Nebraska.

Update: I should say Cow Duck, since it is actually a duck with cow spots, horns and bell.
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Message in the form of 8-bit beeps

"Captain, this just in on the teletype!"

"WHAT A TERRIBLE NIGHT TO HAVE A CURSE"

"My god ensign, it's true.
This is a terrible night to have a curse.
Unlike... every other night this week..."
I've started taking Caffein again. It makes me hyper.

P.S. Theresa: I have discovered an interesting adaptation to the 3x! [1], which is to put it in italics, thus: !!! One day I may develop the technology to also present the 3x! [2] in boldface.


[1] I just abbreviated three characters using three characters.

[2] It's abbreviated, btw-, because I don't want to over use the power of the actual 3x!.
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Digital Encroachment

Technology firms are pushing a futuristic vision of home entertainment not because consumers are desperate for it, but because they [technology firms] themselves are

The Economist 1 September 2005

I was reading about the idiocy which is “high” “tech” and was writing an lj poll about technology and complexity, when guess what? My notebook died. (Yes, a notebook I purchased from the employee purchase plan from The Company).

I am constantly bothered by my interactions with customers, because the software that I work on is too complicated for anyone to understand, and generally speaking my customers are geeky engineer types. I’m not entirely sure if that makes it better or worse. I can’t imagine what the corporate bigwigs of companies who are selling to consumers think they are doing selling stuff that is too complicated. Take a look at your VCR. The time is blinking isn’t it? It is on mine. That’s because all I need a VCR for is to play videotapes. Timed recording is an added complexity that I don’t need to deal with.

In order to take the poll, you need to sign up for an account, but please do. It’s free and you can use it to read private entries and leave comments for me.

Register here: http://journal.whitedactyl.com/create.bml

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Null Ray

I was thinking about purchasing a new computer, an AMD64 which would have been named after Starscream's weapon, the null ray. The intention was to use it as a temporary replacement for the sick DoubleThink server I have at work, until I can figure out what is wrong with the HP AMD64 my patron gave me. Later I'd use it for my own purposes at home, as my newest PC is several years old and nearing obsolescence. I hesitated though; I really need to save given future plans for the year 2006.

I was reading about Katrina, and apparently I am pretty good at being oblivious to current events until they are at least a few days old, because I had no idea just how bad things were in the Big Easy. I decided to instead give the money that I would have spent on a new computer that I don't really need to the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders.
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The Plot Thickens

I was just now walking outside of my office and I overheard Doug and my archnemesis Frank [1] talking about computer geek things and something occurred to me. The only possible explanation for the complexity which is computer geekdom is to keep computer geeks employed. Think about it. What is worse s that I may be part of the conspiracy without even realizing it (until now).

That is all for now.


[1] Who is my archnemesiss solely for the reason that he went to ASU. Okay, I admit it, I don't really have an archnemesis, but I use Frank as my archnemesis since an ineffectual archnemesis is better than no archnemesis.
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Stop Your Yammerin'

One of the dumb things about The Company is that instead of using an open instant messaging protocol like Jabber they implemented their own. I actually talked to the guys who did the initial work on our cruddy little instant messenger while I was still in school, before I started with The Company. It wasn't a bad prototype, it just should never have been productized the way that it was.

One of the idiosyncrasies of the IM protocol that we use is that when you open a talk window to someone else, it contacts the recipient's client software to open a connection. I am not exactly sure why it does this, but I can think of a couple of good technical reasons one might choose to do that.

It is possible for your client therefore to tell when someone has opened a chat window with you. The default client doesn't do anything with this information, but I use a different client, one that supports multiple protocols [1] and one of the options is to have this client I use preemptively open a chat window before the other party can even complete typing their first message. This means I can say "Hi" before they even get to say anything, and they get creeped out by my psychic-ness.

It's a neat trick, but I don't always employ it, because like any trick, if over used it can bore easily. Here is the thing though. Sometimes people will open up a window to talk to me and then not even type anything into it [2]. Now I'm getting creeped out.


[1] I have friends on AIM, Yahoo IM and MSN Messenger, so having a unified IM client is a necessity.

[2] Our IM protocol also lets the other party know when you are typing.
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Walled-Gardens

The dilemma may be even larger than that. "The Yahoo! guys are trying to create a walled-garden experience; they're like AOL in '95," says Tony Perkins, the founder of AlwaysOn, an online social network for technology insiders. That is not a compliment, as AOL, which began as a proprietary online service, started its long decline at about that time, after missing the impact of the new, open environment of the world wide web. With "closed" services like 360, says Mr Perkins, it is now Yahoo! that is missing the trend toward an ever more "open web" that will be "full of one-trick ponies" all available at a single click. If Yahoo!'s users get the feeling that they are being ushered to sites purely because they belong to Yahoo!, reckons Mr Perkins, they will simply click out.

This may be Yahoo!'s fatal flaw. "MSN and AOL are going nowhere," says Mr Saffo, for they have "no soul, no passion." Yahoo! has passion, like Google and other newcomers. It may also have correctly spotted the shift from old media to new, user-generated media. But, says Mr Saffo, it seems to have missed one thing. The "world of the few and large" belongs to media in the 20th century, whereas this century will bring a "world of the many and small". Yahoo!, in short, has old-media plans for the new-media era.

The Economist
When I lived in New Haven, my father used to take me to Edgerton Park, which we used to refer to as "The Walled Park", owing to the fact that it was completely fenced inside a tall stonewall. I have very fond memories of that place. In my memory it was a vast spacious well kept park just a couple of blocks away from where we lived. I went back twenty years later and discovered that although it looked very much like I remembered it, it was in fact tiny. Although I have fond memories of exploring that park in the early 80s, I do have to say that now that I am older, I much prefer going out to the "real" outdoors, places like the Catskills, or even around here to the ruins.

Likewise, I think that as we grown up as a society, we will grow tired of being spoon feed by the AOL and Yahoo!s of the IT industry. I was a big fan of open source in the 90s before it became popular. Today it is possible to build robust enterprise ready systems entirely from Open Source software.

Projects with similar philosophies to Open Source are growing up in the area of content now. The most invoked example of new and small media is the proliferation of blogs of course, but I think the most fascinating examples are projects like Wikipedia which amount to self-regulating anarchy. I am constantly astounded about just how broad the information base is there. I think that it speaks volumes about corporate strategies that Microsoft has invested in a relationship with Encyclopedia Britanica, while Google has donated hardware and money to Wikipedia.

I think Google is right to leave the content to the amateurs. I guess the market will decide who is right.
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