Got
Just talk among yourselves, I’ve got nothing.
Archive for June, 2004
Fab
I feel sick.
And Rallisport Challenge 2 is fab.
Bed.
Tuesday, June 29th 2004 at 11:15 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Foggiest
My head was buzzing with all kinds of Bearthing ideas tonight as I try and decide what angle to approach it all from. When I was working on the Bearscript interpreter/compiler there was a clear focus each day. It was all about implementing another command, or fixing the grammar so that it recognised just one more nice useful bit of syntax. With that part done, finding the next set of focussed challenges has been more difficult. A lot of what needs done right now is fiddly stuff, or individual elements in different areas which will eventually come together to form the whole. I find this stuff difficult to get into, so I tend to end up doing nothing. Which of course, isn’t very productive.
So I spent a good part of tonight trying to decide what to focus on next. What area would somehow drag the disparate elements of components and script together.
And thanks to Apple, I found that area.
The VCE (visual code editor) was always going to be a major part of Bearthing. The idea being that people could control a bit of the flow of the code without ever actually having to edit the text files directly. This would allow non-programmers the ability to code, without ever knowing they were, they would just be snapping ready-made components together in a logical fashion. It’s the original idea that started this whole project off, and dates back to the Chatbear Extreme premise. I hadn’t really put much thought into it tonight, thinking that I was at the wrong stage to be looking at such a public component.
Then I saw a screenshot from Tiger, the next version of Mac OS X, of an application called Automator. Ladies and gentlemen, that’s the VCE! That’s almost exactly how I pictured it in my head, although since conditionals are a big part of my implementation, I imagined the right hand side to look more like a flow chart.
Seeing that sent my brain off in all kinds of crazy directions, resulting in the feeling that this is EXACTLY the area I should be concentrating on right now. It gives me a focus on one goal, and touches so many other components along the way that I should end up building a fair chunk of the rest of the system at the same time.
Now if I could just sort out the database schema in my head we’d be getting somewhere, as right now I haven’t the foggiest what I’m doing with that.
Monday, June 28th 2004 at 11:24 pm / Tech / Permalink / Post Comment »
Unhooking
There’s currently a car alarm going off outside, and it has been for the last 25 minutes. At least mine had the courtesy to go off itself after 5.
…
Imagine 20 minutes have now passed since I wrote the beginning of this post. And imagine that within that 20 minutes I found that the car alarm was in fact mine (even though it was a siren and not a horn like earlier in the week). Once again, I was unable to get it go off, and this time the key was entirely useless. I managed to get into the car and try to start it, but that was fruitless too, because the battery is completely flat.
Yet somehow the alarm was able to keep going off.
I opened the bonnet with the idea of unhooking the battery, and the alarm had the audacity to get even louder, as if trying to save it’s own life. I unhooked one of the connections to the battery (I couldn’t find the other since it was dark).
Yet somehow the alarm was able to keep going off.
And go off it did, although in little short 15 second bursts rather than continuously, for another 5 minutes. Now it has stopped completely and I really hope it doesn’t start again. If it does, I’ll really wonder where it’s power is coming from.
Of course now I have a flat battery. Which means tomororw morning should be fun, trying to get the thing going. Knowing my luck I’ll connect the battery and the alarm will start again.
Sunday, June 27th 2004 at 10:58 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Flooding
All my Tintin books arrived, oh how the memories come flooding back.
Saturday, June 26th 2004 at 5:07 pm / Books / Permalink / Post Comment »
Experiments
We’ve got a new server coming online at work on Friday, which I get to put some database experiments on. Got an 8 million row table that we need to do something with, as things are getting a bit slow. I could normalise it, but my past experience is telling me that’s going to be even slower, because the joins are going to result in exponentially more rows being read. Thinking of splitting it up into chunks, loading them all into memory (machine has 6GB of RAM), and then dong some UNION queries on them, all nice things available in mySQL v4.1. Probably start analyzing the queries we’re getting too, see if I can optimise for the more common ones.
Experimenting is fun, because it’s actually a challenge. I’m writing a cruise search system right now, and that’s not a challenge at all. It’ll look pretty though.
As always, deadlines are tight. Customers have this crazy idea that they can have anything they want right away. None of them seem to take into account the fact that we have other customers too, or that coding and web-design actually take time.
Wednesday, June 23rd 2004 at 10:55 pm / Work / Permalink / Post Comment »
Tweaking
I ticked the final items off the todo list for the telephone billing system tonight, which was nice. Had a couple of weird calculation bugs that plagued me for a short while, but everything does appear to be working in nice order. Ran through the whole system and tried to make things look nice, tweaking little bits of text, trying to make the user experience a bit better. Hopefully that’s enough for them to pay me.
Yes, forget the sense of achievement, just give me the cash.
I hope to really start motoring on Bearthing now that’s out of the way, because I would like to meet my self-imposed Sep 23rd deadline for completion. At the moment I see that as realistic, but only if I get on with it a bit more than I have been over the past few weeks.
And finally, a quick word to say that I renewed my Apple Developer subscription. I’m going to treat it like putting money on a horse, and hope they release something that I consider worth spending a lot of money on before the hardware discount is invalid.
Pity it’s not retrospective, I could get a good discount off the Powerbook.
Tuesday, June 22nd 2004 at 11:15 pm / Work / Permalink / Post Comment »
Lebanese
Toothache at 3:30am, painkillers that don’t work, a bit of a headache, and an empty bed to come back to. You know, sometimes you think life enjoys giving you a kick in the face sometimes.
Then you unlock your car and the alarm goes off. And (here’s where English proves how bad it is), I can’t make it switch off again. I press the button, the car locks, I press it again, the car unlocks. But still, the alarm stays on. A loud, continuous, horn noise. Which I’m sure was a great pleasure to hear at half past eight in the morning for the surrounding populace. I get in the car and start it, but that still makes no difference. I try another key. I sit on the edge of the passenger seat, manual in hand, barefeet and hair just out of the shower, and look confused. Then, after five minutes, it suddenly stops, and I still look confused.
But relieved.
When I then get stuck in traffic and the dentist tells you he can’t see you until tomorrow, you really start to question exactly who it is you’ve offended, and why they’ve decided to put a curse on you.
On a completely unrelated note, and proving that I’m willing to change subject without thinking about the consequences, tonights dinner was Lebanese Style 5 Spice Lamb with Bukhari Rice.
Now I wasn’t aware that Lebanon was a culinary centre of the world, and that’s why it appealed to me so much, even though I usually avoid spicy food. Have I been blind all these years? Is there a Lebanese restaurant on every street corner in the UK?
I’m sure all my Lebanese readers are now firing up their email programs to distill the virtues of their local cuisine to me, especially since it didn’t taste half bad.
Maybe we’ve all been missing something.
Monday, June 21st 2004 at 9:35 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Quandry
I’m an Apple Developer Connection Select Member, which means I get a CD every month (and a DVD every quarter) of Apple developer tools, plus access to software tests, such as the latest versions of OS X, usually months before they are released.
I originally joined (at the cost of £300) because I figured I’d be doing some OS X development, but I’ve never had the time to devote to it that I’d liked. And also because I liked the idea of getting OS X betas, being right on the cutting edge.
My current subscription runs out in three days time and it costs about the same again to renew it. The problem is, I just can’t decide whether I want to. This years WWDC starts in just over a week (28th June), and I’m sure they’ll release the first test version of Tiger (the next OS X release) to everyone attending, with ADC Premier and Select members getting it shortly afterwards. I know I’ll miss not being able to play with it if I don’t renew.
The other reason to renew is the hardware discount you get, which is about 20% off. That could be almost £450 off the high-end G5, which easily makes a £300 renewal worth it, especially considering that a purchase of Tiger will be £100 when that comes out, and I’d get that included in my £300 too. All of a sudden it’s £550 in discounts, and looking good.
Unfortunately I don’t know if I’d use the hardware discount. I don’t have any compelling reason to shell out for a high-end G5, or any other expensive Apple hardware. Not without selling the iMac first anyway. And I don’t see any reason why I’d be replacing my Powerbook in the next year, since I’ve had it only 5 months. They’d have to release something brand new and unknown instead.
So I’m in a bit of a quandry. Do I spend £300 on the chance that sometime in the next 12 months I’ll be able to get a significant return on that investment? Or do I just forget about it and just spend £100 when Tiger is released.
Sunday, June 20th 2004 at 1:11 am / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Imaginary
It’s been a while since I did some work on Bearscript/Bearthing, so that’s what I played with tonight. Mostly creating database tables and then writing the parser code for .bhtml files so that you could drop .bs instance calls in there. A lot of the development at the moment is laying the groundwork, taking the time to work out the correct way to do things so I don’t end up regretting any hasty decisions in the future. It’s fiddly, and not very exciting, especially since it’s so early that on-screen results are pretty much non-existent. Hopefully it won’t be long before I can write some real code.
Tonight I also listened to the Franz Ferdinand album for the second time, and my opinion of it hasn’t changed since the first listen, in that it’s very dull. The first single, Take Me Out, is good, with an especially nice intro and interesting slowdown of the beat right before it kicks off properly. The rest of the tracks just wash by without really making themselves known. They seem to be getting a lot of attention right now, but I’m not sure why, it’s even been called the best album of 2004. But we all know it’s really Scissor Sisters.
Also took another listen to the latest Divine Comedy release, Absent Friends. Maybe I’m missing something in this one, but so far, it’s just not doing it for me. Half the album is reasonable (the singles, Happy Goth, Charmed Life, My Imaginary Friend leap to the front) while the other half… well I just don’t know where the other half is. When I have it on, I just seem to forget it’s even there. Tracks come and go much in the same way as they do on the Franz Ferdinand album, you don’t really realise you’re listening to them, and all of a sudden you’re on track 8, or it’s over. I’m a big Divine Comedy fan, but this seems like a step back to the Promenade sound to me (the other album people who really like this one seem to like, and the DC album I like least), instead of a step forward. So far, Neil just hasn’t come close to recapturing that amazing sound he laid down on Cassanova, both in orchestral and vocal terms.
I also listened to Air’s Talkie Walkie, but I’ll not pass any judgement on that until I hear it again.
Friday, June 18th 2004 at 11:47 pm / Music / Permalink / Post Comment »
Kudos
Going to start off with a quick reference to this Apple promo video. It’s 14MB, and I don’t know how long that link will be valid for, but it’s worth watching. It’s a promo for iTunes and the iPod that they used at the launch of the euro music stores this week, and it’s an almost perfect synergy of visuals and music. Kudos to their ad agency.
Today was my brothers birthday, and since it was also my mums last Sunday, we had a combined birthday dinner at a local restaurant. Nothing fancy, but good food and my first alcoholic drink in about four months. It was nice, I liked it.
The heat in the flat continues to be beyond tolerable levels. I’m going to try and sleep with the fan on tonight, because I certainly can’t sleep with it off. I bought a lighter duvet, but it hasn’t made any difference, I still wake up sweating. Of course, there is the possibility I’m just having really bad nightmares and not realising.
Thursday, June 17th 2004 at 10:59 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Rose
I had a fit of childhood reminiscing today and ordered every Tintin book from Amazon. I was able to get a list of all them all from Wikipedia and had to go through each one, find it, and order it. Amazon US has a way to add all books in a series to your shopping cart (not that they have them all to order anyway) but Amazon UK doesn’t. I couldn’t get items 24 and 25 from the Wikipedia list, but I got the rest, and all for less than £100. The fastest shipping would have been £30, so I chose to wait a few days for them and take the free shipping option. Next I want The Complete Far Side, but I’ll wait a bit before spending £70 on that.
It’ll be great to read all of them again, I remember always making sure to get one of them out of the library every time I used to go as a kid. That and Asterix, of which I have equally fond memories.
My mood continues to be stabilised at the contented level, with this week being on par with last. I could be doing with some more solid sleep, but apart from that, things could be worse. I’m certainly not quite as stir-crazy as I was a fortnight ago, with a lot less uncertainty and confusion flying around my head 24 hours a day. Two good things happened tonight as well, one of which I found particularly sweet, meaning I’m now off to bed with a smile on my face.
Wednesday, June 16th 2004 at 10:59 pm / Books / Permalink / Post Comment »
Celebrity
I have just finished watching the third season of 24, which I enjoyed thoroughly, leaving me hungry for the fourth season to start and become available for my viewing pleasure. My favourite season is still the first one, but the quality has continued to be high throughout. Hopefully they can maintain that.
Nice to see the iTunes music store make it Europe and specifically, the UK. I don’t think it’s all quite there yet, a good chunk of the music the US store has isn’t available on the UK one, even though they said it was the same tracks. Some links don’t work either, celebrity playlists advertised on the homepage point at items only in the US store. Hopefully they’ll sort out the issues over the next few days. 79 pence is certainly less than I expected it would be, but I don’t think I’ll be using it much. I don’t like DRM. AllOfMP3.com is still the winner.
Tuesday, June 15th 2004 at 10:35 pm / Music / Permalink / Post Comment »
Dragging
Today went by pretty fast, it seemed like the clock was in overdrive throughout the whole day. I like it that way, time dragging is never a good thing.
Spent the night doing more work on the telephone billing system. I’m pleased to say it’s almost done, just a couple more nights work I would think.
And that’s about it. The day went by fast, but it was still dull.
Monday, June 14th 2004 at 11:58 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Vixen
I liked today. A lot. There was a lull, around dinner, but it picked up afterwards and quickly became the best Saturday in weeks.
That’s about all I have to say really, think I’ll head off to bed.
Saturday, June 12th 2004 at 11:14 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Limo
I’ve seen a lot of limousines in my recent driving excursions, more so than you would normally see within such a constrained timeframe. I put this down to the time of year, as we approach the end of June, and therefore the end of the school year, I assume that there are various end of year parties and proms going on. The kids like to turn up in style for their big night, especially if it happens to be their last year at school.
The other thing I put this down to is increased marketing by the limo companies. Weddings having been their staple business for years, they’re probably finding that’s not enough to pay the bills. Those things need a lot of wax for polishing. So they had to come up with a marketing plan, and that plan involves slogans like “Not as expensive as you might think” and “Not just for the rich and famous”. Going by the number of them I’ve seen over the past week, it’s clearly working.
In the long run however, this will be the undoing of their business. The whole concept of a limo is based around the fact that it IS expensive and it IS just for the elite. If you make it available to anyone at not much more than a normal taxi ride, then the whole mystique and mystery about it is lost. When you only see one or two limos per year, as was often the norm around here, you wonder who is in it, what big celebrity has come to town. But if you see 3 or 4 of them per day, as I’ve seen recently, then they start to just blend into the background.
I went to Boca Raton for a conference a few years ago, and after we landed at Miami airport we were met by a chauffeur at the arrivals gate, holding a sign with our names on it. He took our bags and led us outside to the parking garage and told us to wait while he brought the car around. There was a moment of dread as we wondered what heap of junk was about to appear in front of us, but when the massive black limo turned the corner and parked in front of us, I was certainly impressed.
The illusion was completely shattered however when we got onto the freeway that left the airport, as a look out the window showed that we were surrounded by limos. They were everywhere, both black and white and differing in length. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel quite so special during my first limo ride.
They say that a diamond surrounded by a hundred other diamonds is still just as precious a jewel as when it sits alone. But one limo among a hundred others is nothing more than an overpriced taxi with parking problems.
Friday, June 11th 2004 at 10:51 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Side
One of the side-effects of the Sandomigran is headaches.
Huh?
Friday, June 11th 2004 at 7:58 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Smile
Thanks to the wonders of AllOfMP3.com, I got to listen to the second Ben Kweller album tonight. More good stuff from the "other" Ben, but not as catchy on the first listen as Sha-Sha.
Speaking of music, I think it’s time to burn off some more compilation CD’s to put in the car. I think there’s only so many times you can listen to the same tracks over and over, for however much you like them, variety is good. Not sure what to put in there though, perhaps just burn random picks from my highest rated iTunes tracks, where I can let the software decide.
I think the flat is getting inspected by the letting agent tomorrow, I wonder if me not cleaning much of anything for three weeks will go against me. Maybe the doctor can help me straighten out my head at my appointment tomorrow and then I’ll come home and do something about the mess. The pile of dishes has just seemed so insignificant compared to everything else.
On a more positive note, I smiled tonight. And it was a real smile. Been so long, felt good.
Monday, June 7th 2004 at 10:58 pm / Music / Permalink / Post Comment »
Perception
Sunday nights are incredibly dull. After Top Gear is finished (still regularly one of the most entertaining shows on television), there just seems to be three hours of nothingness until it’s time to sleep.
I tried to fill the gap tonight by watching Coupling, which I hadn’t watched when it first aired earlier in the week, listening to Ben Kweller’s Sha-Sha, and then some Bill Cosby. They all provided a certain level of distraction, but nothing that really altered my perception of time.
Sunday, June 6th 2004 at 10:57 pm / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Who
I took some action to solve the hair problem I spoke about earlier in the week and had the majority of it cut off. Not as short as I sometimes get it, but a serious change from what it was.
I also removed the beard, just because I felt like a break from that as well.
Now when I look in the mirror, I don’t recognise myself. I’m not sure who it is that’s looking back at me. My weight appears to have dropped considerably over the past month, with my face especially looking much thinner than it was just 6-7 weeks ago when I last had no beard.
When I arrive at work on Monday, they’re not going to know who I am either.
Does anybody know who I am?
UPDATE: Weighed myself earlier, I’ve lost a stone in the past month.
Sunday, June 6th 2004 at 12:49 am / General / Permalink / Post Comment »
Recent Purchases
