I had a minor scare in the last few days. I kept getting sharp pains in the middle of my chest and feeling a little out of breath for about the last three days. That and the occasional sharp tingles in my arms and jaw, plus the long history of heart disease in the family made me slowly and uneasily start thinking "Dear lord, am I about to have a heart attack?".
In typical (idiot) guy style I originally decided to rough it out until the pains went away. At the frantic urgings of my ex however, I relented to getting it checked out. A visit to the doctor quelled those fears as a blood pressure and pulse rate check, along with a few listens to the old ticker indicated everything was fine and it was more likely to be a muscular problem. I did notice the pain tends to be during certain movements and breathing thing happens mainly because I often stop breathing during panic attacks anyway. But of course when you start worrying about your own mortality, logic doesn't come into play until after you calm down. In any case, the doctor recommended coming back for a full blood work test after my holiday and I'm booking that right into GCal.
It comes down to the conclusion that we're getting older and can't afford to dick around with our health anymore as we could when we were invincible teenagers. The original reason I did any exercise was to lose the giant beer gut, but its becoming more evident that this exercise isn't just a vanity based endeavour, but imperative to continued survival. After all, I'm not ready to die yet! I have several years of good deeds to do in order to bribe St Peter at the gates.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Thursday, November 29, 2007
Arghh! Zombies!
Why won't some things stay down!?
Bringing projects and programs back from the dead is nothing new in the software industry. Which is one of the biggest annoyances compared to some other engineering disciplines. You don't see anyone decide to resurrect a bridge project and go, lets make this bridge longer!
From a business point of view, there is really nothing wrong with extending existing software. For minimal additional expensive, you can get either more revenue, or extend the longevity of it. Nearly all projects have continued development after their initial release. Currently I'm working on a project that had no work done on it. The problems occur when you have a project that was meant to be dead and buried and is now coming back to life. And not in the good Jesus-resurrects-Lazurus sort of way, I'm talking more about a necromancer bringing back a project that is currently brainless and lurching around until someone figures out what to do with it. And our resident necromancer manager has sent it lurching towards me!
This is why I'm complaining. I was 'volunteered' to lead an existing project that was meant to be off shored to the US after its birth and development in Sydney. Unfortunately the person who was meant to take it over resigned. Clearly he saw what was coming and decided to take the window instead of the fire.
As Jeff Atwood would say, in programming, one is the loneliest number. Being the only person in Sydney assigned on this project would suck more than I can describe. Having someone to talk with, and bounce ideas off in real-time is invaluable. There are others who've been on the project before, but pressing on them when they aren't officially assigned to the task would make me feel guilty.
Now where's my shotty?
Bringing projects and programs back from the dead is nothing new in the software industry. Which is one of the biggest annoyances compared to some other engineering disciplines. You don't see anyone decide to resurrect a bridge project and go, lets make this bridge longer!
From a business point of view, there is really nothing wrong with extending existing software. For minimal additional expensive, you can get either more revenue, or extend the longevity of it. Nearly all projects have continued development after their initial release. Currently I'm working on a project that had no work done on it. The problems occur when you have a project that was meant to be dead and buried and is now coming back to life. And not in the good Jesus-resurrects-Lazurus sort of way, I'm talking more about a necromancer bringing back a project that is currently brainless and lurching around until someone figures out what to do with it. And our resident necromancer manager has sent it lurching towards me!
This is why I'm complaining. I was 'volunteered' to lead an existing project that was meant to be off shored to the US after its birth and development in Sydney. Unfortunately the person who was meant to take it over resigned. Clearly he saw what was coming and decided to take the window instead of the fire.
As Jeff Atwood would say, in programming, one is the loneliest number. Being the only person in Sydney assigned on this project would suck more than I can describe. Having someone to talk with, and bounce ideas off in real-time is invaluable. There are others who've been on the project before, but pressing on them when they aren't officially assigned to the task would make me feel guilty.
Now where's my shotty?
Monday, November 12, 2007
Redun-dancies
It was a sad day today at work. We had a number of redundancies take place, in the typical sudden one day's notice sort of scenario. To make it worse, all the people who were made redundant were people I work with every day and one of them was my boss, mentor and friend for two of my four years at Avaya. As much as I tried to ignore it and get on with work, it was a hard and painful day and its probably going to difficult for a while.
Redundancy isn't always a bad thing, especially if you've been there for a while. The payout is typically quite substantial and if your timing is accurate, you can potentially move jobs and effectively get paid a bonus to quit. The people that were leaving are top performers who wanted to move on and they volunteered to leave so good on them! I'm sure they did the redun-dance when they found out they were approved to leave.
If you think about it from a economic stand point, having more voluntary redundancies made available to be negotiated is a great thing. All companies have staff who want to be somewhere else, but stick around for the money. Typically people become bored and want to move on because their skill set isn't effectively utilized by the firm. Its in their best interest to move on to another role/firm, and its in the company's best interest to give them a good reason to leave so that they can use that person's headcount to hire people who are more suitable for the strategy in play. And even if its not a skill set problem, just being at the same place for too long can kill your drive and this is bad for you and the firm.
From a personal standpoint, its a bit of a 50/50 affair. Whilst you do lose that person as a comrade-in-arms in the company, what you are actually gaining is potential contacts for new job placement. Peers within the firm are typically useless for ensuring promotion, but if they leave they can have (depending on their eventual role) a great potential impact in your ability to find jobs 'on the outside'. Whilst in the near future this isn't a relevant point for me, I'm sure it'll come in handy at some point.
Redundancy isn't always a bad thing, especially if you've been there for a while. The payout is typically quite substantial and if your timing is accurate, you can potentially move jobs and effectively get paid a bonus to quit. The people that were leaving are top performers who wanted to move on and they volunteered to leave so good on them! I'm sure they did the redun-dance when they found out they were approved to leave.
If you think about it from a economic stand point, having more voluntary redundancies made available to be negotiated is a great thing. All companies have staff who want to be somewhere else, but stick around for the money. Typically people become bored and want to move on because their skill set isn't effectively utilized by the firm. Its in their best interest to move on to another role/firm, and its in the company's best interest to give them a good reason to leave so that they can use that person's headcount to hire people who are more suitable for the strategy in play. And even if its not a skill set problem, just being at the same place for too long can kill your drive and this is bad for you and the firm.
From a personal standpoint, its a bit of a 50/50 affair. Whilst you do lose that person as a comrade-in-arms in the company, what you are actually gaining is potential contacts for new job placement. Peers within the firm are typically useless for ensuring promotion, but if they leave they can have (depending on their eventual role) a great potential impact in your ability to find jobs 'on the outside'. Whilst in the near future this isn't a relevant point for me, I'm sure it'll come in handy at some point.
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Vaccines. Preventative maintanence
If I told you that I paid someone 100$ to stab me in the arm with a needle and fill my body with fatal diseases, you'd think either I was having a deathwish or I was trying to impress a girl. But thats exactly what I did today.
I need to get my vaccines for my Thailand trip and I figured lets get them done early since I'm not innoculated against them yet. And vaccines are NOT cheap. The Vivaxim booster shot (the vaccine against Typhoid and Hepatitis A) came in at $105 and the cholera tablets are another 110$. Luckily the booster will last nearly 10 years, so come 2017, I'll have to get another shot. I still need to verify I have the Hep B vaccine active.
Of course this cost is a mere pittance compared to the costs of not taking them and catching any of those diseases.
So all of these drugs should leave me covered for the common illnesses from this region. I'm sure going to only the most touristy areas should also minimize exposure to the illnesses, along with avoiding certain...indiscretions... which is the other main way one gets a number of these illnesses.
I need to get my vaccines for my Thailand trip and I figured lets get them done early since I'm not innoculated against them yet. And vaccines are NOT cheap. The Vivaxim booster shot (the vaccine against Typhoid and Hepatitis A) came in at $105 and the cholera tablets are another 110$. Luckily the booster will last nearly 10 years, so come 2017, I'll have to get another shot. I still need to verify I have the Hep B vaccine active.
Of course this cost is a mere pittance compared to the costs of not taking them and catching any of those diseases.
So all of these drugs should leave me covered for the common illnesses from this region. I'm sure going to only the most touristy areas should also minimize exposure to the illnesses, along with avoiding certain...indiscretions... which is the other main way one gets a number of these illnesses.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The Lurrv Boat
I was about to begin singing the lyrics to The Love Boat, but alas my taste hasn't gone THAT downhill. The reason for my nostalgic singing is I went to a masquerade party on board a cruise boat which was being hosted by the Nepean University Medical Society (or something like that). So yes, a cruise filled with young doctors and yes gentlemen, they all look better than the cast of Grey's anatomy (except Katherine Heigl..sigh )
I can tell you now that it was fortunate that for a masquerade ball, masks weren't required all night. Whilst I'm quite capable of seeing people and large objects, its the subtle things like, I dunno, STAIRS or ledges of any kind which cause me grief. On the walk down to boat, I had to hold Cherryl's hand to prevent myself from making an ass of myself. Once onboard, I could just take it off.
Two things made the night fantastic. One was, I've come to the realization that I really don't give a toss anymore about trying to pick up, which meant I took a risk and actually talked to randoms. Secondly everyone on the boat had a one to two degree of separation from their friends so you could be 'pre-approved' to be onboard. This combination meant I met many new people, guys and girls and had an absolute ball. The girls I met were the type I would have been interested in. Smart, funny and pretty without being slutty. Normally I'm so lame that I fall for any new girl who is nice to me, but this effect was diluted because EVERY girl was really friendly. They'd talk with you, they'd dance with you and you never get the impression you're a retard.
At the end of the night, I was tempted to go onto the after party at Pontoon, but my friends had a separate party planned at a friends house. So several good-bye pecks on the cheek to my new acquaintances later (!!!), I went (via a circuitous route to Artarmon to pick up my car) to North Strathfield.
And so my friends and I stayed up together, discussing life, love, careers, personal insight, moral decisions and all sorts of other things into the weee hours of the morning. And this is what you come to realize. New people give you a rush of happiness, of excitement. However it is your old friends are the ones who'll really make you content and safe. When given the choice between finishing the night with hot randoms and finishing with old friends, you can't go wrong with friends.
I can tell you now that it was fortunate that for a masquerade ball, masks weren't required all night. Whilst I'm quite capable of seeing people and large objects, its the subtle things like, I dunno, STAIRS or ledges of any kind which cause me grief. On the walk down to boat, I had to hold Cherryl's hand to prevent myself from making an ass of myself. Once onboard, I could just take it off.
Two things made the night fantastic. One was, I've come to the realization that I really don't give a toss anymore about trying to pick up, which meant I took a risk and actually talked to randoms. Secondly everyone on the boat had a one to two degree of separation from their friends so you could be 'pre-approved' to be onboard. This combination meant I met many new people, guys and girls and had an absolute ball. The girls I met were the type I would have been interested in. Smart, funny and pretty without being slutty. Normally I'm so lame that I fall for any new girl who is nice to me, but this effect was diluted because EVERY girl was really friendly. They'd talk with you, they'd dance with you and you never get the impression you're a retard.
At the end of the night, I was tempted to go onto the after party at Pontoon, but my friends had a separate party planned at a friends house. So several good-bye pecks on the cheek to my new acquaintances later (!!!), I went (via a circuitous route to Artarmon to pick up my car) to North Strathfield.
And so my friends and I stayed up together, discussing life, love, careers, personal insight, moral decisions and all sorts of other things into the weee hours of the morning. And this is what you come to realize. New people give you a rush of happiness, of excitement. However it is your old friends are the ones who'll really make you content and safe. When given the choice between finishing the night with hot randoms and finishing with old friends, you can't go wrong with friends.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Rolling, Rolling, Rolling
At the beginning of today I was so tired of driving. I racked up over 500km over a period of 26 hours. Friday night was taking people in and out of the city for to celebrate Doug's birthday. (100km). Saturday racked up 340km as I had to drive my folks back and forth to some church halfway to Canberra, and during the night I had a house warming in Erskinville (another 100km).
You'd think thats enough driving for one weekend. Except it turned out that Sunday was when my AAMI Skilled Drivers test took place. And that restored my love of driving.
The course took place in Nirimba TAFE up near quakers Hill. Half the day was theory and half the day was practical. The theory was so-so, stuff you already know, but things which you kind of know. One exercise really resonated with me however, which was when we drew a scale of all the things that annoy us on the roads, like tail-gaters, Taxis, speed cameras and so on. And then we compare it with the consequences of messing up just a little and crashing. I know on friday night my mate was telling how she deliberately goes at top speed past a speed camera since it only works in one direction, just 'to stick it to the cops'. Yeah sure, but all it takes is on little mishap and suddenly all that bravado means jackshit.
Anyway moving onto the fun stuff, after work we did a series of practical exercises. There were four exercises, being the Slalom, the hairpin, emergency lane change and emergency lane change stop. The Slalom(ducking between flags/cones) was by far the most fun and hair-raising since you have to keep your vehicle speed constant AND keep weaving through the cones. We did it at only 45km/h and it was incredibly difficult. Then we dropped 5-10km/h off that speed and it was an easy task. All four tasks involved doing it at 45 and then dropping to 35 and seeing how much difference it makes.
The hairpin turn is just going around a tight corner again at a constant 45km/s. In real life its not so hard because you flutter the brake, but without the brake, its so easy to lose control of the car. The emergency lane change and lane change stop involves going straight down 3 lanes and at the last second the instructor yells stop, stop left or stop right and you have to follow what he says. Its only cones that you might run into, but its a heart pounding exercise.
What I found great was the Camry really did hold its own against some of the other cars. Sure there were some bombs, but there some MX-6s, Integras and other nice cars. Out of the 'hot' cars, only the Integra held nicely to the road. The camry's size and weight work against it, but its 'hard, non-ABS' brakes and reasonably solid handling allowed me to have a very minimal witches hat-kill-rate. Having a few years experience on top of the other drivers helped, but still its sobering to realize how easy it is to crash a car.
But still, whilst its just witches hats, its a heck of alot of fun! The AAMI course is completely free for AAMI comprehensive insurance owners and their kids, or its 165$ if you're not with AAMI. Its probably not that great if you had to pay for it, but for holders of an AAMI policy, you'd be mad not to give it a go.
EDIT: Thanks to Julian for pointing out that the word is Slalom, not Shalom...
You'd think thats enough driving for one weekend. Except it turned out that Sunday was when my AAMI Skilled Drivers test took place. And that restored my love of driving.
The course took place in Nirimba TAFE up near quakers Hill. Half the day was theory and half the day was practical. The theory was so-so, stuff you already know, but things which you kind of know. One exercise really resonated with me however, which was when we drew a scale of all the things that annoy us on the roads, like tail-gaters, Taxis, speed cameras and so on. And then we compare it with the consequences of messing up just a little and crashing. I know on friday night my mate was telling how she deliberately goes at top speed past a speed camera since it only works in one direction, just 'to stick it to the cops'. Yeah sure, but all it takes is on little mishap and suddenly all that bravado means jackshit.
Anyway moving onto the fun stuff, after work we did a series of practical exercises. There were four exercises, being the Slalom, the hairpin, emergency lane change and emergency lane change stop. The Slalom(ducking between flags/cones) was by far the most fun and hair-raising since you have to keep your vehicle speed constant AND keep weaving through the cones. We did it at only 45km/h and it was incredibly difficult. Then we dropped 5-10km/h off that speed and it was an easy task. All four tasks involved doing it at 45 and then dropping to 35 and seeing how much difference it makes.
The hairpin turn is just going around a tight corner again at a constant 45km/s. In real life its not so hard because you flutter the brake, but without the brake, its so easy to lose control of the car. The emergency lane change and lane change stop involves going straight down 3 lanes and at the last second the instructor yells stop, stop left or stop right and you have to follow what he says. Its only cones that you might run into, but its a heart pounding exercise.
What I found great was the Camry really did hold its own against some of the other cars. Sure there were some bombs, but there some MX-6s, Integras and other nice cars. Out of the 'hot' cars, only the Integra held nicely to the road. The camry's size and weight work against it, but its 'hard, non-ABS' brakes and reasonably solid handling allowed me to have a very minimal witches hat-kill-rate. Having a few years experience on top of the other drivers helped, but still its sobering to realize how easy it is to crash a car.
But still, whilst its just witches hats, its a heck of alot of fun! The AAMI course is completely free for AAMI comprehensive insurance owners and their kids, or its 165$ if you're not with AAMI. Its probably not that great if you had to pay for it, but for holders of an AAMI policy, you'd be mad not to give it a go.
EDIT: Thanks to Julian for pointing out that the word is Slalom, not Shalom...
Tuesday, October 09, 2007
The most expensive music in the world.
This falls into two main categories; Things that don't make sense and Only in America.
In the first US trial to challenge the illegal downloading of music on the Internet, a single mother from Minnesota was ordered Thursday to pay 220,000 dollars for sharing 24 songs online.
This is absurd.
Don't get me wrong, she committed a crime by pirating this music and the reason she got busted whilst others won their cases is because she was clearly not naive since she swapped harddrives on the machine. The REAL issue here is the ridiculous $220,000 USD fine she was charged. She earns $40,000 is a single mother and has NO real chance of paying it. Let me put the size of this fine in perspective with other crimes and their penalties.
Drink driving - the third and subsequent time you're caught drink driving a 1 tonne killing machine, you will get charged upto 5050$.
Vehicular Manslaughter - A 15,000$ USD fine is the highest amount you can get charged for this typically.
3rd degree assault - $10,000
Kidnapping - Maximum penalty is $50,000.
Outright Piracy - Hell, a man who sold pirated physical cds and profited from it got 1 yrs jail and a 1000$ fine.
That said, those were criminal cases, while I believe this woman's case is a civil case which should really be relabelled 'capitalist bastard cases'. Considering this is about the same as stealing two CDs, this lady should have really got arrested for theft and she would have got some community service and a slap on the wrist fine. Everyone knows this was less about justice and more about making a point to the community at large that file-sharing is not going to be tolerated in a court of law. You'd think they'd fine someone who could afford it, but then again if she could afford it, she would have got better lawyers.
What a f&*$$d up society.
In the first US trial to challenge the illegal downloading of music on the Internet, a single mother from Minnesota was ordered Thursday to pay 220,000 dollars for sharing 24 songs online.
This is absurd.
Don't get me wrong, she committed a crime by pirating this music and the reason she got busted whilst others won their cases is because she was clearly not naive since she swapped harddrives on the machine. The REAL issue here is the ridiculous $220,000 USD fine she was charged. She earns $40,000 is a single mother and has NO real chance of paying it. Let me put the size of this fine in perspective with other crimes and their penalties.
Drink driving - the third and subsequent time you're caught drink driving a 1 tonne killing machine, you will get charged upto 5050$.
Vehicular Manslaughter - A 15,000$ USD fine is the highest amount you can get charged for this typically.
3rd degree assault - $10,000
Kidnapping - Maximum penalty is $50,000.
Outright Piracy - Hell, a man who sold pirated physical cds and profited from it got 1 yrs jail and a 1000$ fine.
That said, those were criminal cases, while I believe this woman's case is a civil case which should really be relabelled 'capitalist bastard cases'. Considering this is about the same as stealing two CDs, this lady should have really got arrested for theft and she would have got some community service and a slap on the wrist fine. Everyone knows this was less about justice and more about making a point to the community at large that file-sharing is not going to be tolerated in a court of law. You'd think they'd fine someone who could afford it, but then again if she could afford it, she would have got better lawyers.
What a f&*$$d up society.
Monday, October 08, 2007
To Melbourne with Love.
Ah Melbourne, the city of love and excitement. Of nature and concrete. Of art and goddamn pretty ladies.
I went down to Melbourne over a extended weekend with my friends from university for a typical boys weekend away.
The first day was all about the compulsory touristy things. We rode the trams, we went to Federation Square, saw the sights of which when it comes to it, aren't really that many. Whilst entertaining and a worthwhile experience, its nothing to write home about. Melbourne is like any other city in the world with a plaza full of buildings designed to attract tourists. It is a very tidy city however and the trams really are quite helpful in moving passengers. Lunch was at St Kilda beach and dinner was at the wonderful Man Mo restaurant at Docklands. As usual SOMEONE had to have their baggage lost by Qantas, so we spent a portion of the day playing console games at the apartment whilst they delivered the bag to us.
At night we decided it was time to go out and appreciate the Melbourne party scene. We were lucky that it was drizzling so that the crowds were down from a typical Friday night. Otherwise there is no chance 5 non-white guys without girls could get into as many clubs as we did. Our night started off at GPO, the Trader Bar, the Long Room and finished at the Gin Palace. Hersh's place was in the center of the city and bars are so close by that barhopping is an easy exercise. Out of all of them, the Long room was easily the most amazing. I'd compliment the easy to reach bar, the good music, the refined decor, but when it comes down to it, its because of the amazing number of stunning women. Even in Sydney bars, I've never seen that many gorgeous women (though the female of the night has to go to the foxy librarian stunner at the Trader Bar.). By the Gin Palace we were exhausted from the long day and the alcohol, so we politely declined a friends offer to visit the Spearmint Rhino and went back home at 4am. Considering the early morning flight, that was 24 hours straight of being awake.
Saturday was our 'random activity' day so we decided, lets make it a fishing day.
We went to a trout farm in the ridiculously flat Victorian countryside (so about only an hour out of central Melbourne). Admittedly fishing in a trout farm is like shooting a barn with a shotgun point blank. You can't really miss. They must be starving the poor fish, since they go to bite on the lure within minutes.
Catching the fish was only half of the fun. The second part is cooking them! The entire gang got together and cooked up a storm and had a meal fit for kings, or at the least Barons in a wealthy duchy. There was no way we could finish all of it, though Kieran gave it a good try to finish an entire trout by himself to score a bed for the night. Sadly the fish got the better of him.
Even though we finish dinner and cleaning up at around midnight, we were determined to visit Crown Casino at least once before we left. It was a easy 10min walk from the apartment. I'll tell you now, it is not much better than Starcity. There is a mild stench of corruption in the air as in all casinos and all my friends lost out in their betting, which is probably a good lesson. There were a few good lookers, but most were young and somewhat skanky. Realistically, a night back in the apartment playing Settlers of Catan would have been far more entertaining.
And to fill in the 'nature' component of a holiday, the gang decided to take a drive along the Great Ocean Road. Melbourne's sprawl is nothing compared to Sydney's. Just like the day before, it wasn't long before we were out in what was basically country. Even Geelong felt more like a large town than a city.
After you hit Tourquay, the drive is breathtaking and we only covered some 10% of the entire Great ocean road. Cliff faces tower over endless stretches of sandy beaches. Halfway to Lorne, there is a quaint lighthouse which has a panoramic view of the area around it. Unfortunately we had planes to catch so had to go home, but not before we cut across the picturesque rainforest/bush on the mountain side back up to the Prince's Highway.
So all in all, I had a ball. Melbourne isn't somewhere where I'd clamber for an opportunity to line in, but I certainly wouldn't complain about being dropping in now and then.
I went down to Melbourne over a extended weekend with my friends from university for a typical boys weekend away.
The first day was all about the compulsory touristy things. We rode the trams, we went to Federation Square, saw the sights of which when it comes to it, aren't really that many. Whilst entertaining and a worthwhile experience, its nothing to write home about. Melbourne is like any other city in the world with a plaza full of buildings designed to attract tourists. It is a very tidy city however and the trams really are quite helpful in moving passengers. Lunch was at St Kilda beach and dinner was at the wonderful Man Mo restaurant at Docklands. As usual SOMEONE had to have their baggage lost by Qantas, so we spent a portion of the day playing console games at the apartment whilst they delivered the bag to us.
At night we decided it was time to go out and appreciate the Melbourne party scene. We were lucky that it was drizzling so that the crowds were down from a typical Friday night. Otherwise there is no chance 5 non-white guys without girls could get into as many clubs as we did. Our night started off at GPO, the Trader Bar, the Long Room and finished at the Gin Palace. Hersh's place was in the center of the city and bars are so close by that barhopping is an easy exercise. Out of all of them, the Long room was easily the most amazing. I'd compliment the easy to reach bar, the good music, the refined decor, but when it comes down to it, its because of the amazing number of stunning women. Even in Sydney bars, I've never seen that many gorgeous women (though the female of the night has to go to the foxy librarian stunner at the Trader Bar.). By the Gin Palace we were exhausted from the long day and the alcohol, so we politely declined a friends offer to visit the Spearmint Rhino and went back home at 4am. Considering the early morning flight, that was 24 hours straight of being awake.
Saturday was our 'random activity' day so we decided, lets make it a fishing day.
We went to a trout farm in the ridiculously flat Victorian countryside (so about only an hour out of central Melbourne). Admittedly fishing in a trout farm is like shooting a barn with a shotgun point blank. You can't really miss. They must be starving the poor fish, since they go to bite on the lure within minutes.
Catching the fish was only half of the fun. The second part is cooking them! The entire gang got together and cooked up a storm and had a meal fit for kings, or at the least Barons in a wealthy duchy. There was no way we could finish all of it, though Kieran gave it a good try to finish an entire trout by himself to score a bed for the night. Sadly the fish got the better of him.Even though we finish dinner and cleaning up at around midnight, we were determined to visit Crown Casino at least once before we left. It was a easy 10min walk from the apartment. I'll tell you now, it is not much better than Starcity. There is a mild stench of corruption in the air as in all casinos and all my friends lost out in their betting, which is probably a good lesson. There were a few good lookers, but most were young and somewhat skanky. Realistically, a night back in the apartment playing Settlers of Catan would have been far more entertaining.
And to fill in the 'nature' component of a holiday, the gang decided to take a drive along the Great Ocean Road. Melbourne's sprawl is nothing compared to Sydney's. Just like the day before, it wasn't long before we were out in what was basically country. Even Geelong felt more like a large town than a city.
After you hit Tourquay, the drive is breathtaking and we only covered some 10% of the entire Great ocean road. Cliff faces tower over endless stretches of sandy beaches. Halfway to Lorne, there is a quaint lighthouse which has a panoramic view of the area around it. Unfortunately we had planes to catch so had to go home, but not before we cut across the picturesque rainforest/bush on the mountain side back up to the Prince's Highway.So all in all, I had a ball. Melbourne isn't somewhere where I'd clamber for an opportunity to line in, but I certainly wouldn't complain about being dropping in now and then.
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Why software is like Love...
Our director today made an great call when he was defending why we had redone the process of secure service delivery over six times.
"Software is a lot like love".
Snide comment from our Division lead. "Oh this should be good..."
"The best software isn't about knowing what it is, but you know its right when you feel it."
Someone else made the call, "And sometimes you think you've found the right one and then have to break up with it and try again and again and again."
I scoured the interweb to see if there were other references to why software is like love and found none. So here are a few more examples.
- Finding off the shelf software is like the dating scene. There isn't a Mr Right, or even a Mr sort of good enough. Its mostly a Mr-This-will-do-for-now.
- Software is a lot like love. Simple in concept, but far far more complex under the hood.
- Relationships with women are like debugging. Sometimes when you think you have it worked out, suddenly you loose it and you have no fucken idea what is going on. - Thanks Dan.
- Fooling around with naughty software can give you itchy bugs.
- Software is like relationships. You think the majority of the cost is at the beginning when you have to do the courting. You'll find that's hardly the case.
- Software is like love because at the beginning there is a lot of excitement, hope and pampering, but by the end, its mostly decided to break down and divorce itself from you after years of neglect.
- If you think software is expensive to maintain, try being married for years on end.
- Software is like sex: it's better when it's free. - Thanks Linus
And finally software is like love because despite all the suffering it causes us, when it comes down to it, you're willing to live with the problems for all the joy it gives you in the end.
Additions are welcome in the comments section.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
This ain't a scene, its a god damned Fall Out boy Concert.
Pete Wentz: Who do you love Sydney?
Sydney: F.O.B!
Pete Wentz: I didn't hear you, who do you love Sydney?
Sydney: F.Ohhh.Beee!!!!
I'm still pumped and as Mr R would point out, I'm blogging at midnight after another awesome night out. Fall out boy, the American punk rock band came to Sydney and rocked the Acer Arena tonight. This was the best concert I've ever been to. Its also the only concert I've been to, but if I had been to others, this would STILL be the best concert ever. I used to doubt that live music would be as good as music recorded in a controlled studio scenario. How terribly terribly wrong I was. Call me a convert to the church of Live music KICKS ASS!
The only thing that was poor about tonight was Acer Arena itself. The parking situation is dismal, in that it took me about 20 mins to get out of the car park. The way they prevented people from getting in and out of different sections of the floor was just annoying and the food was disgusting and overpriced. Those are about the only bad things. Seriously.
The rest of the night was great. We started off with a complete surprise in the form of the support band "Jack's Mannequin". I'd like to say it is a pop punk/rock with piano band. The lead singer plays the piano beautifully and it adds the soothing underlying sound to the riffs of the guitars. The song "I'm ready" is amazing and this made me really hooked into this band.
The second support act was Gyroscope. They were in my opinion slightly average and this might be due to my general distaste of Australian rock bands. There is something about them that makes me annoyed, at the very least stemming from some bands thinking its OK to use 'fuck' as a normal part of the lyrics. Dudes, its good for emphasis, but overusing it is lame.
And of course. There was Fall Out Boy. F.O.B. Patrick, Andy, Joe and the ever annoying Pete Wentz. These guys made the crowd sing the roof off Acer Arena. Their act was so full of energy that the 'mosh pit' extended from the front of the floor, pretty much to the back. I head banged and moshed with the energy of an 18 year old (which pretty much was the general demographic. Man I feel old.) They played nearly non-stop for nearly an hour and a half, with occasional breaks for Pete to talk crap. Patrick, the lead singer has got the most amazing singing voice, but hes so shy that he never speaks in anything unless he can help it. It doesn't matter, as long as he keeps the words flowing and the bass jamming, I'm willing to listen to emo kid Pete.
Hard to say which was the best song. The roar of approval that came with the classic "Sugar we're goin' down" was matched with the excited surprise of "A Little less sixteen candles". The song 'Thnks Fr Th Mmrs' went down well, and Pete even got the correct code of football that the song was used for in advertising. They even did covers of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and the "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News. A well rounded show where one could not stop singing. I kid you not, I nearly passed out from singing and dancing for so long without taking a breath. The encroaching blackness reminded me, oh wait, yes breathing for air consumption, that thing you do outside of just using it to sing.
I'm sore, I've got this ringing in my ear that won't go away and my voice is pretty much gone. And I'm incredibly happy.
Thnks Fr Th Mmrs Fall Out Boy.
Sydney: F.O.B!
Pete Wentz: I didn't hear you, who do you love Sydney?
Sydney: F.Ohhh.Beee!!!!
I'm still pumped and as Mr R would point out, I'm blogging at midnight after another awesome night out. Fall out boy, the American punk rock band came to Sydney and rocked the Acer Arena tonight. This was the best concert I've ever been to. Its also the only concert I've been to, but if I had been to others, this would STILL be the best concert ever. I used to doubt that live music would be as good as music recorded in a controlled studio scenario. How terribly terribly wrong I was. Call me a convert to the church of Live music KICKS ASS!
The only thing that was poor about tonight was Acer Arena itself. The parking situation is dismal, in that it took me about 20 mins to get out of the car park. The way they prevented people from getting in and out of different sections of the floor was just annoying and the food was disgusting and overpriced. Those are about the only bad things. Seriously.
The rest of the night was great. We started off with a complete surprise in the form of the support band "Jack's Mannequin". I'd like to say it is a pop punk/rock with piano band. The lead singer plays the piano beautifully and it adds the soothing underlying sound to the riffs of the guitars. The song "I'm ready" is amazing and this made me really hooked into this band.
The second support act was Gyroscope. They were in my opinion slightly average and this might be due to my general distaste of Australian rock bands. There is something about them that makes me annoyed, at the very least stemming from some bands thinking its OK to use 'fuck' as a normal part of the lyrics. Dudes, its good for emphasis, but overusing it is lame.
And of course. There was Fall Out Boy. F.O.B. Patrick, Andy, Joe and the ever annoying Pete Wentz. These guys made the crowd sing the roof off Acer Arena. Their act was so full of energy that the 'mosh pit' extended from the front of the floor, pretty much to the back. I head banged and moshed with the energy of an 18 year old (which pretty much was the general demographic. Man I feel old.) They played nearly non-stop for nearly an hour and a half, with occasional breaks for Pete to talk crap. Patrick, the lead singer has got the most amazing singing voice, but hes so shy that he never speaks in anything unless he can help it. It doesn't matter, as long as he keeps the words flowing and the bass jamming, I'm willing to listen to emo kid Pete.
Hard to say which was the best song. The roar of approval that came with the classic "Sugar we're goin' down" was matched with the excited surprise of "A Little less sixteen candles". The song 'Thnks Fr Th Mmrs' went down well, and Pete even got the correct code of football that the song was used for in advertising. They even did covers of Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and the "Power of Love" by Huey Lewis and the News. A well rounded show where one could not stop singing. I kid you not, I nearly passed out from singing and dancing for so long without taking a breath. The encroaching blackness reminded me, oh wait, yes breathing for air consumption, that thing you do outside of just using it to sing.
I'm sore, I've got this ringing in my ear that won't go away and my voice is pretty much gone. And I'm incredibly happy.
Thnks Fr Th Mmrs Fall Out Boy.
Sunday, September 09, 2007
The CIA and Google are in cahoots!
Its true, the CIA has a black operations program and they use Google products. I mean come on, I saw it on the Bourne Ultimatum, so it MUST be true. Jason Bourne used Google search to find out the location of a secret spy operation in Madrid. The CIA agents who are out to kill him used Google maps in their cars as GPS tracking systems. Maybe that is why they couldn't catch him in the movie. They were using map data from 2 years ago! Seriously I have no idea if Google paid to be in this movie, but I thought it was pretty appropriate to use their technology for spy operations. Just like the rest of the movie, it really didn't make that much sense.
The movie was predictable, but enjoyable enough. It did cap off a totally awesome, if completely unproductive weekend. Thanks to the world leaders and the APEC long weekend, I spent way more than I normally budget for fortnight in 3 days and got no study or work done. At least in order to repent for my excesses and indulgences over the last three days I can impart some knowledge to my loyal readers.
Thursday night for Jeff's farewell we went to Starcity. Dinner was consumed at the Garden Buffet restaurant, which appears to be an all-you-can-eat piggery for $30. I wisely had dinner at home, so I cannot comment about the quality of the cuisine. Our next stop, the Astral Bar, is on level 17 of starcity offers a fairly chic (read expensive) environment with picturesque views of the city. Despite my friend working there for 6 years and being well liked, only the usual small core team came along. The lesson here is to remember to differentiate between work friends and real friends and set your expectations accordingly.
Friday was a public holiday and public holidays equals ridiculous surcharges in restaurants. I had lunch with a pack of university friends at Toscani's Italian restaurant in Parramatta. Whilst the food and service was quite appetizing, the bill at 32$ a head for LUNCH was not. Pancakes on the Rocks (at Northmead puzzlingly enough), was a expensive place for dessert. That said, the Devil's delight (two delicious chocolate pancakes with chocolate topping, cream and chocolate icecream) was delectable. Toscani's was a 20% surcharge, whilst pancake's on the rocks was 10%.
On Saturday was a day out at Doug's and here more lessons were to be had. Never play risk and advance wars together. Actually, just never play either game. Perhaps it was a combination of bad rules, and bad maps, but both games were dissatisfying and protracted. In contrast, Mario Party for the Wii is excellent and well worth purchasing (based on the brief two hours we played it).
And finally, my lesson for Sunday is, if a close lady friend asks you out last minute to a movie and she is by herself, then shes probably into you and is just shy to ask you out proper. If she asks you to a movie and invites a bunch of other guys and girls with her whom SHE barely knows, she is probably not into you. And also, remember. The CIA uses Google. There is nowhere you can run - unless it hasn't been indexed.
The movie was predictable, but enjoyable enough. It did cap off a totally awesome, if completely unproductive weekend. Thanks to the world leaders and the APEC long weekend, I spent way more than I normally budget for fortnight in 3 days and got no study or work done. At least in order to repent for my excesses and indulgences over the last three days I can impart some knowledge to my loyal readers.
Thursday night for Jeff's farewell we went to Starcity. Dinner was consumed at the Garden Buffet restaurant, which appears to be an all-you-can-eat piggery for $30. I wisely had dinner at home, so I cannot comment about the quality of the cuisine. Our next stop, the Astral Bar, is on level 17 of starcity offers a fairly chic (read expensive) environment with picturesque views of the city. Despite my friend working there for 6 years and being well liked, only the usual small core team came along. The lesson here is to remember to differentiate between work friends and real friends and set your expectations accordingly.
Friday was a public holiday and public holidays equals ridiculous surcharges in restaurants. I had lunch with a pack of university friends at Toscani's Italian restaurant in Parramatta. Whilst the food and service was quite appetizing, the bill at 32$ a head for LUNCH was not. Pancakes on the Rocks (at Northmead puzzlingly enough), was a expensive place for dessert. That said, the Devil's delight (two delicious chocolate pancakes with chocolate topping, cream and chocolate icecream) was delectable. Toscani's was a 20% surcharge, whilst pancake's on the rocks was 10%.
On Saturday was a day out at Doug's and here more lessons were to be had. Never play risk and advance wars together. Actually, just never play either game. Perhaps it was a combination of bad rules, and bad maps, but both games were dissatisfying and protracted. In contrast, Mario Party for the Wii is excellent and well worth purchasing (based on the brief two hours we played it).
And finally, my lesson for Sunday is, if a close lady friend asks you out last minute to a movie and she is by herself, then shes probably into you and is just shy to ask you out proper. If she asks you to a movie and invites a bunch of other guys and girls with her whom SHE barely knows, she is probably not into you. And also, remember. The CIA uses Google. There is nowhere you can run - unless it hasn't been indexed.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
The Argyle Night out.
There is a tacit agreement that personal things that happen outside the office, stays outside the office. Unfortunately this makes for poor blogging since you cannot share the hilarious bits if any of your readership are co-workers. So as a compromise, I'll try to avoid naming names, but keep the events as they were.
Our destination on Friday night was the Argyle in the city. The Argyle in the Rocks is a fantastic venue and one I would clearly recommend for the more refined crowd. It is very much a bar, not a pub and caters for a different crowd. Note I said refined, not a yuppie bar like Bar333. People here are well dressed and out for a good time, not just showing off their corporate credentials. It is a very different vibe. There is adequate seating and large areas for standing around or dancing, there is food and the drinks are reasonably enough priced. The music is quite loud, but its still possible to hold a conversation and its the kind of club dance music I like anyway.
The surroundings are very 'old-Sydney' like. Rustic wood and cobblestones feature prominently. The toilets are the exception to this style and they are truly amazing. Completely impractical, but amazing. The women's and the men's toilets are kept together and the men's urinals are one man troughs behind these pillars. No one has any idea whether someone is behind the pillar. And since the women and men both share the toilet, the line is equally long for guys as girls, instead of the typical guy line being almost instant. It was a great relief to find the second *normal* toilet, which almost no one else was using. (I'll keep the location a secret so that its equally accessible next time I go).
The queues are a bit random. When we arrived at 7:50, there almost no queue. Then around 9, my guy mates couldn't get in because of the queue. Then around 10, my good friend Chez drops in to hang with me and gets in with no effort. This could be partly cos the line was smaller, but I suspect this is due to the 'hot chicks get in with no effort' policy that most bars/clubs have.
It was a great night. In the middle of it all, most of the crowd was non-compos-mentis, to the point where the security guards were threatening to throw us out. As as the night wore on, everyone sobered up quite agreeably. As expected those who spoke great things about their drinking abilities were the worst off, whilst the quiet ones were the ones who drank as much as the others and didn't skip a beat. Of course some people did some really daft things like mixing drink types so its to be expected that they were sick before long!
The highlight of my night has to be our resident 'hot chick' approaching a woman whose (rather large) breasts were falling out of incredibly revealing dress and basically mocking her in front of the sleazebags who were hanging with her. I dared her to do it and I cracked up laughing after she did it.
We left around 12:30 which may seem early, but we needed to catch the last train and more significantly, the important people in this group were just too drunk and tired and it seemed prudent to take them home. All in all, it was a great night and one which should be repeated.
Our destination on Friday night was the Argyle in the city. The Argyle in the Rocks is a fantastic venue and one I would clearly recommend for the more refined crowd. It is very much a bar, not a pub and caters for a different crowd. Note I said refined, not a yuppie bar like Bar333. People here are well dressed and out for a good time, not just showing off their corporate credentials. It is a very different vibe. There is adequate seating and large areas for standing around or dancing, there is food and the drinks are reasonably enough priced. The music is quite loud, but its still possible to hold a conversation and its the kind of club dance music I like anyway.
The surroundings are very 'old-Sydney' like. Rustic wood and cobblestones feature prominently. The toilets are the exception to this style and they are truly amazing. Completely impractical, but amazing. The women's and the men's toilets are kept together and the men's urinals are one man troughs behind these pillars. No one has any idea whether someone is behind the pillar. And since the women and men both share the toilet, the line is equally long for guys as girls, instead of the typical guy line being almost instant. It was a great relief to find the second *normal* toilet, which almost no one else was using. (I'll keep the location a secret so that its equally accessible next time I go).
The queues are a bit random. When we arrived at 7:50, there almost no queue. Then around 9, my guy mates couldn't get in because of the queue. Then around 10, my good friend Chez drops in to hang with me and gets in with no effort. This could be partly cos the line was smaller, but I suspect this is due to the 'hot chicks get in with no effort' policy that most bars/clubs have.
It was a great night. In the middle of it all, most of the crowd was non-compos-mentis, to the point where the security guards were threatening to throw us out. As as the night wore on, everyone sobered up quite agreeably. As expected those who spoke great things about their drinking abilities were the worst off, whilst the quiet ones were the ones who drank as much as the others and didn't skip a beat. Of course some people did some really daft things like mixing drink types so its to be expected that they were sick before long!
The highlight of my night has to be our resident 'hot chick' approaching a woman whose (rather large) breasts were falling out of incredibly revealing dress and basically mocking her in front of the sleazebags who were hanging with her. I dared her to do it and I cracked up laughing after she did it.
We left around 12:30 which may seem early, but we needed to catch the last train and more significantly, the important people in this group were just too drunk and tired and it seemed prudent to take them home. All in all, it was a great night and one which should be repeated.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Lady I wasn't born yesterday...
So I went to Bar333 at Wynyward for Marty's farewell party. It was great to catch up with friends and to see Marty before he left forever to HK, but I had this particularly off putting moment during the night.
I went to buy a drink at the bar, and I started looking at the cocktail menu. This very pretty chick asks me for it next. I was fairly certain what I wanted, so I give it to her and just strike up a conversation with her while we waited for service. All seemed to go ok until she turns around to chat to her friend. At this very instant, I get served and then she turns back and goes, damn could you add my drink onto your order...she didn't have cash in her hand, so its an obvious, buy me a drink scenario.
I'm thinking "Lady I wasn't born yesterday.." and I lied saying "Sorry I'm short, but I can get the bartender to serve you next and you can handle it." Just as I suspected she started to ignore me after that. I was not at all surprised, and frankly would have loved to have seen the look on her face when I didn't pay for it (cos we had a bar tab for Marty's group) . Realistically I would have bought her something if she kept talking, but she was clearly just a bar fly thinking I'm an easy guy to fake. Maybe theres a protocol for this, but realistically I'm not interested in cheapskates, regardless of how good looking they are.
It was definitely as annoying a moment as finding out the new girl downstairs Kirsty (or Kristy?) had a boyfriend and is also an young-un. Seriously where can a guy find a nice girl these days? No don't say RSVP...that's not happening..EVER!
I went to buy a drink at the bar, and I started looking at the cocktail menu. This very pretty chick asks me for it next. I was fairly certain what I wanted, so I give it to her and just strike up a conversation with her while we waited for service. All seemed to go ok until she turns around to chat to her friend. At this very instant, I get served and then she turns back and goes, damn could you add my drink onto your order...she didn't have cash in her hand, so its an obvious, buy me a drink scenario.
I'm thinking "Lady I wasn't born yesterday.." and I lied saying "Sorry I'm short, but I can get the bartender to serve you next and you can handle it." Just as I suspected she started to ignore me after that. I was not at all surprised, and frankly would have loved to have seen the look on her face when I didn't pay for it (cos we had a bar tab for Marty's group) . Realistically I would have bought her something if she kept talking, but she was clearly just a bar fly thinking I'm an easy guy to fake. Maybe theres a protocol for this, but realistically I'm not interested in cheapskates, regardless of how good looking they are.
It was definitely as annoying a moment as finding out the new girl downstairs Kirsty (or Kristy?) had a boyfriend and is also an young-un. Seriously where can a guy find a nice girl these days? No don't say RSVP...that's not happening..EVER!
Friday, July 20, 2007
That song ISN'T sung by the Dixie Chicks,
Its actually Alecia Moore, or far more famously known as Pink, who is singing the song 'Hey Mr President'. This song takes the angle of a person asking tough moral questions to the Bush. The song is so touching, yet so filled with disdain for George Bush that I automatically thought it would be the Dixie Chicks. And who said Pop music was just fluff material. One of my favourite sections of this song is:
"Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Hard work
You don't know nothing bout hard work"
Its such obvious things, but at the same time its inspirational. Speaking of inspirational things, I would highly recommend you take a little while out to watch "Shut up and Sing", the documentary of the Dixie Chicks in the wake of their criticism of Bush during the start of the second Iraq war. The review from SMH pretty much sums it up quite well, so I won't repeat it here. I find movies like this restore my flagging faith in society and humanity in general. They may be celebrities but they are people too.
Its all good and well for Pink to stick it Bush when the rest of the US finally has realized he done more damage to the world than good, but the Dixie Chicks showed that the majority doesn't make it right.
"Let me tell you bout hard work
Minimum wage with a baby on the way
Let me tell you bout hard work
Rebuilding your house after the bombs took them away
Let me tell you bout hard work
Building a bed out of a cardboard box
Hard work
You don't know nothing bout hard work"
Its such obvious things, but at the same time its inspirational. Speaking of inspirational things, I would highly recommend you take a little while out to watch "Shut up and Sing", the documentary of the Dixie Chicks in the wake of their criticism of Bush during the start of the second Iraq war. The review from SMH pretty much sums it up quite well, so I won't repeat it here. I find movies like this restore my flagging faith in society and humanity in general. They may be celebrities but they are people too.
Its all good and well for Pink to stick it Bush when the rest of the US finally has realized he done more damage to the world than good, but the Dixie Chicks showed that the majority doesn't make it right.
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Transformers the Movie
You know how bulletproof vests are associated with Kevlar, the nonstick material is associated with Teflon?
Best Movie of 2007 should really be associated with Transformers.
I saw it today with mates and I loved it, and I'm questioning why I did. Mates from work bagged it out and I could not understand why. Yes there was product placement, but it was hilarious in your face placement as opposed to less-than-subtle annoying placement. For example, they transform a Nokia phone into a evil Decepticon and the annoying soldier guy says "sophisticated technology, these Nokia phones, you have to love Japanese technology". The Australian chick goes "But Nokia is Finnish?". One thing that product placement does is make it seem more real, its not some future time or world, its here and now.
The transformers were amazing works of CGI and looked absolutely awesome whether standing still or beating each other to a pulp. There wasn't as much involvement of the Transformers as say the cartoon and it really was about the humans for a change and I think it was for the better.
I watched Transformers the original series, some of the later series, the movie and even Beast wars and some of the dialogue can be extricating bad but in this movie they kept it to a minimum. There were some hilarious bits in the movie such as when all the Autobots are trying to hide from the main character's parents. The Decepticons were awesome to watch as they are (as per the cartoon) loaded with weaponry and its fireworks spectacular. I would have liked to see more of Starscream but I suspect he'll come into his own in the sequel (and while it does wrap up nicely, it does leave enough avenues open for a sequel).
And finally, the lead actress Megan Fox is one of the hottest new talent I've seen. Ok not so much about the talent bit but definitely the hot bit. I don't think I've seen anyone as gorgeous in a sultry way on screen for a long time.
This movie is definitely worth your 15$ even if you never got into Transformers.
Best Movie of 2007 should really be associated with Transformers.
I saw it today with mates and I loved it, and I'm questioning why I did. Mates from work bagged it out and I could not understand why. Yes there was product placement, but it was hilarious in your face placement as opposed to less-than-subtle annoying placement. For example, they transform a Nokia phone into a evil Decepticon and the annoying soldier guy says "sophisticated technology, these Nokia phones, you have to love Japanese technology". The Australian chick goes "But Nokia is Finnish?". One thing that product placement does is make it seem more real, its not some future time or world, its here and now.
The transformers were amazing works of CGI and looked absolutely awesome whether standing still or beating each other to a pulp. There wasn't as much involvement of the Transformers as say the cartoon and it really was about the humans for a change and I think it was for the better.
I watched Transformers the original series, some of the later series, the movie and even Beast wars and some of the dialogue can be extricating bad but in this movie they kept it to a minimum. There were some hilarious bits in the movie such as when all the Autobots are trying to hide from the main character's parents. The Decepticons were awesome to watch as they are (as per the cartoon) loaded with weaponry and its fireworks spectacular. I would have liked to see more of Starscream but I suspect he'll come into his own in the sequel (and while it does wrap up nicely, it does leave enough avenues open for a sequel).
And finally, the lead actress Megan Fox is one of the hottest new talent I've seen. Ok not so much about the talent bit but definitely the hot bit. I don't think I've seen anyone as gorgeous in a sultry way on screen for a long time.
This movie is definitely worth your 15$ even if you never got into Transformers.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
This Week in WallStrip Tumbling along...
On TwiT (This Week in Tech) recently I heard of site called tumblr. Tumblr is basically a scrapbook blogging system where as you traverse the internet you write about what sites you visted. Its the lazy man's way of blogging, but I can see the attraction. After all writing a blog takes a lot of effort. Each entry can take around an hour to write depending on how much work you want to put into it. With tumblr its mostly a short entry about what you visited and then about it. Which got me thinking, hey laziness is good. Means time for MORE stuff. Which is the model I'm taking today.
TwiT referred me to an absolutely awesome site and consequently
I've found someone new to drool over. Shes about even with Jade Raymond. Shes a hot skinny brunette, shes funky, shes funny and shes financy...(ok that was a struggle to fit that last 'f'). Shes Lindsay Campbell, the presenter of WallStrip. As they like to say, wallstrip is stock culture meets pop culture. Its about the culture at wall street, about different businesses and why investors love them and when it comes down to it, its really about having fun. Lindsay and her mate seem to really get a kick out of doing the show and it is full of energy and humour. And come on, isnt that every guys dream? A chick who knows money, who does comedy for a job and whos very hot? (Not to mention she would have got the lions share of the $5,000,000 USD that CBS paid to buy wallstrip.com.).
TwiT referred me to an absolutely awesome site and consequently
I've found someone new to drool over. Shes about even with Jade Raymond. Shes a hot skinny brunette, shes funky, shes funny and shes financy...(ok that was a struggle to fit that last 'f'). Shes Lindsay Campbell, the presenter of WallStrip. As they like to say, wallstrip is stock culture meets pop culture. Its about the culture at wall street, about different businesses and why investors love them and when it comes down to it, its really about having fun. Lindsay and her mate seem to really get a kick out of doing the show and it is full of energy and humour. And come on, isnt that every guys dream? A chick who knows money, who does comedy for a job and whos very hot? (Not to mention she would have got the lions share of the $5,000,000 USD that CBS paid to buy wallstrip.com.).
Saturday, June 23, 2007
GPS Navigation aka In 100m U-Turn and smash into the next car.
As some of you know, my folks invested in a GPS navigational unit. Its a TomTom One XL for $540 and we've been playing with it for the last few weeks on 'trial' basis. This means we pay upfront but if we're not happy with it, we can give it back and get a full refund.
The TomTom One XL is like any other GPS, in that you program where you want to go, and it'll guide you there with voice prompts and map information. Around our local area the instructions are quite accurate and easy to understand. Programming where you want to go is intuitive and the user interface is excellent. You can tell that the TomTom product management got real mums and dads in to test this as opposed to programmers. They even offer multiple voices to customize who you get to yell at when the directions are crazy. I selected the British Jane voice because come on British women sound so sexy!
We went on a more 'rural' trip to Mulgoa and Warragamba Dam and the One XL found roads which were faster than what we knew, found petrol stations at the touch of a button (ok a few buttons, but easy enough) and got us home safely.
Of course rural areas are easy due to the long stretches of road, and lack of confusing streets. For a real test we took it to the city.
There are some sequences which are difficult for it to process. For example if I'm going to north sydney, I can't easily tell it to avoid the Lane cove tunnel, BUT to allow taking the M2 motorway. To do that I'd need to give it two waypoints which can be difficult if you don't know anything about the area.
It is going to the city with its crazy road implementation that I realized I cannot rely on the voice navigation. You do really need to look at the graphical display to get an idea of which road to turn into, when to turn in and so on. The clear, large car-centered GPS map with arrows really does make up for some questionable driving instructions. For example, when coming back on Longeuville road trying to get onto the M2, it decided to give this wildly mad suggestion of doing an suicidal U-Turn in a major traffic junction that on a hill. No thanks.
Luckily if you do override what it says and just drive on, it'll throw away the old course and recalculate it for you and usually it'll get it right this time.
There are a few things that its missing that I wish it had. It doesn't show traffic lights, speed cameras and doesn't really get the speed limits on all roads. That said, I'm fairly happy with the TomTom One XL, and won't be returning it. Its not perfect, but it seems to do the job well enough to justify its expense. That said, a GPS Navigator is not a substitute for past knowledge of the route and being aware of whats going on. It is an aid, and a fallback when you have nothing else.
The TomTom One XL is like any other GPS, in that you program where you want to go, and it'll guide you there with voice prompts and map information. Around our local area the instructions are quite accurate and easy to understand. Programming where you want to go is intuitive and the user interface is excellent. You can tell that the TomTom product management got real mums and dads in to test this as opposed to programmers. They even offer multiple voices to customize who you get to yell at when the directions are crazy. I selected the British Jane voice because come on British women sound so sexy!
We went on a more 'rural' trip to Mulgoa and Warragamba Dam and the One XL found roads which were faster than what we knew, found petrol stations at the touch of a button (ok a few buttons, but easy enough) and got us home safely.
Of course rural areas are easy due to the long stretches of road, and lack of confusing streets. For a real test we took it to the city.
There are some sequences which are difficult for it to process. For example if I'm going to north sydney, I can't easily tell it to avoid the Lane cove tunnel, BUT to allow taking the M2 motorway. To do that I'd need to give it two waypoints which can be difficult if you don't know anything about the area.
It is going to the city with its crazy road implementation that I realized I cannot rely on the voice navigation. You do really need to look at the graphical display to get an idea of which road to turn into, when to turn in and so on. The clear, large car-centered GPS map with arrows really does make up for some questionable driving instructions. For example, when coming back on Longeuville road trying to get onto the M2, it decided to give this wildly mad suggestion of doing an suicidal U-Turn in a major traffic junction that on a hill. No thanks.
Luckily if you do override what it says and just drive on, it'll throw away the old course and recalculate it for you and usually it'll get it right this time.
There are a few things that its missing that I wish it had. It doesn't show traffic lights, speed cameras and doesn't really get the speed limits on all roads. That said, I'm fairly happy with the TomTom One XL, and won't be returning it. Its not perfect, but it seems to do the job well enough to justify its expense. That said, a GPS Navigator is not a substitute for past knowledge of the route and being aware of whats going on. It is an aid, and a fallback when you have nothing else.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
The cable modem is dead, long live the Cable Modem!
Lets take a few microts (seconds in FarScape-speak) to mourn the loss of my Nortel Networks 100 series cable modem. It has served faithfully from early 2005 on the second day that Optus@Home was rolled out to greedy bandwidth junkies everywhere. It has survived storms, stupid misconfigurations at home, and terabytes worth of.. 'bittorrent linux isos' downloads.
But like all good things, it has to come to an end. When I first got cable, I was getting 1.2Mbyte/sec downloads. Two years ago I got 600-700kb/s and I figured it was just because there were more users on the network. More recently I realized I was actually maxing out at 250Kbytes/sec and THAT was unacceptable. First reaction was to move over to this new sexy ADSL2+ technology that everyone raves about. It was all good until I realized how expensive it was! Even internode, one of the cheaper vendors was 2.5$/Gig whilst optus is about 1.94$/Gig. With the number of TV shows I watch, this is terrible. Besides this, ADSL hasn't had a stellar record for reliability. I regularly hear of ADSL outages whilst with my 7 years of optus cable I've could probably count the optus@fault outages in mere hours.
So I rang up optusnet support, lied about my download speed (Optusnet do not help you unless you're below 200kb/s) and got them to finally look into my case. Their suggestion based on their tests indicated it was time to replace the modem. So the optus tech came over and replaced it on saturday with a new Motorola SB5 series modem. I think the results speak for themselves.
Old Modem
Line speed = 1.89Mbps
download speed is 257kb/s
New Modem
Line speed = 10.59Mbps
download speed = 1.27MB/s
Long live Cable!
But like all good things, it has to come to an end. When I first got cable, I was getting 1.2Mbyte/sec downloads. Two years ago I got 600-700kb/s and I figured it was just because there were more users on the network. More recently I realized I was actually maxing out at 250Kbytes/sec and THAT was unacceptable. First reaction was to move over to this new sexy ADSL2+ technology that everyone raves about. It was all good until I realized how expensive it was! Even internode, one of the cheaper vendors was 2.5$/Gig whilst optus is about 1.94$/Gig. With the number of TV shows I watch, this is terrible. Besides this, ADSL hasn't had a stellar record for reliability. I regularly hear of ADSL outages whilst with my 7 years of optus cable I've could probably count the optus@fault outages in mere hours.
So I rang up optusnet support, lied about my download speed (Optusnet do not help you unless you're below 200kb/s) and got them to finally look into my case. Their suggestion based on their tests indicated it was time to replace the modem. So the optus tech came over and replaced it on saturday with a new Motorola SB5 series modem. I think the results speak for themselves.
Old Modem
Line speed = 1.89Mbps
download speed is 257kb/s
New Modem
Line speed = 10.59Mbps
download speed = 1.27MB/s
Long live Cable!
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Samurai Pizza Kats (minus the Pizza)
A bunch of firsts on this weekend. I took a trip to Balmain to have a birthday dinner with my friends from work. Our place of culinary conquest was the Samurai Japanese Cafe, a tiny little restaurant right opposite the Cat'n'Fiddle hotel.
I was stoked by how great the place was. It was a proper restaurant experience but with a ridiculous amount of food. In fact it was slightly too much. I had the Dinner box deluxe, which was effectively 5 courses of food. It was so much that even an hour after we left, it was still sitting in my stomach! In addition the service was great and when Jen mentioned to the waiter that it was Sunny and mine's birthday, they even got us dessert and individual special gifts!! I love gifts so they instantly went into my best restaurants EVAR (sic) category.
I actually did something I rarely do the following day, which is to login to the webpage that recommended the restaurant (eatability.com) and posted a review. If you ever used someone on a site's recommendation to make a choice, it makes sense to repay the favour and add your own recommendation. After all you're helping someone else in making a decision.
Our next stop was the Cat'n'Fiddle hotel where Katherine's band Kinetic was playing. The Cat isn't a bad place, but I wish SOMEONE would enforce the no-smoking policy. As I may have ranted before, smokers need to have their cigarettes blow up in their faces. But anyhoo.
Kat's band was pretty decent, though it didn't exactly blow me away. They were definitely a lot better then the band before and after them at least. Kat looked and (mostly) sounded amazing, but she clearly got tired halfway through the performance as she sounded like she was on helium for one of the songs. The funny part was she was wearing these arm warmers which were clearly for the entire sex appeal/fashion thing, yet I was going, man thats such an awesome idea! Now I can wear short sleeves and not be cold, where can get me some of that! I suspect it would look a bit gay on guys however so alas.
All in all, a good night.
I was stoked by how great the place was. It was a proper restaurant experience but with a ridiculous amount of food. In fact it was slightly too much. I had the Dinner box deluxe, which was effectively 5 courses of food. It was so much that even an hour after we left, it was still sitting in my stomach! In addition the service was great and when Jen mentioned to the waiter that it was Sunny and mine's birthday, they even got us dessert and individual special gifts!! I love gifts so they instantly went into my best restaurants EVAR (sic) category.
I actually did something I rarely do the following day, which is to login to the webpage that recommended the restaurant (eatability.com) and posted a review. If you ever used someone on a site's recommendation to make a choice, it makes sense to repay the favour and add your own recommendation. After all you're helping someone else in making a decision.
Our next stop was the Cat'n'Fiddle hotel where Katherine's band Kinetic was playing. The Cat isn't a bad place, but I wish SOMEONE would enforce the no-smoking policy. As I may have ranted before, smokers need to have their cigarettes blow up in their faces. But anyhoo.
Kat's band was pretty decent, though it didn't exactly blow me away. They were definitely a lot better then the band before and after them at least. Kat looked and (mostly) sounded amazing, but she clearly got tired halfway through the performance as she sounded like she was on helium for one of the songs. The funny part was she was wearing these arm warmers which were clearly for the entire sex appeal/fashion thing, yet I was going, man thats such an awesome idea! Now I can wear short sleeves and not be cold, where can get me some of that! I suspect it would look a bit gay on guys however so alas.
All in all, a good night.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
LAN07 (Contd)
Finally I have uploaded the photos onto Flickr (which is an awesome site, but thats for another blog). The pictures are located in my filespace in the LAN 07 Set.
From those photos I remembered a number of other memorable events during the day.
* At the height of everyone arriving and plugging in, we started up a game of dawn of war, the GPUs/CPUs started going full bore and suddenly....Poof! Out goes the power. We tripped the fuse from the amount of power drain of 14 machines on one circuit. So I had cables running all over the place to make sure we connected machines to as many different circuits as we could.
* We went to bed around 5:00AM Sunday and I made everyone else's bed before I turned in. Of course Doug completely misses the pillows/quilt on the recliner and sleeps on the desk...only after he stays up till 6:30 making trackmania maps.
* Watching 5 guys surrounding a 22" inch screen playing NHL2007 was hilarious. The game itself looked average, but Ryan and the boys went mad playing it and their enthusiasm was infectious. Before long entering the backroom was impossible as there was an entire crowd of girls and guys watching these five mad hatters play Ice Hockey.
* People at LANs bring their own idea of what to play and often these can be a surprise hit. Case in point the ridiculously simple Toblo, which is a free fast-paced CTF style game. Or Bid for Power, the DragonBall Z quake 3 mod. It only takes one Evangelist to make everyone play an ancient game like Starcraft1 again (thanks Dilan).
There were a few other interesting things I learnt from a technical perspective:
Using Bittorrent as a way of sending the files around didn't quite work. The main problem was BT is great if I had all the necessary files first so I could convert them into torrents and could start seeding. But the time required to turn something into a torrent and then host it and get people to download it was greater than someone hitting a share and downloading it.
Fraps slows your machine down to buggery. The only time I found FRAPs would work and not be an hindrance was on my dual-core machine, where I'm assuming one core is Frapsing and the other is going to the game.
Running multiple games also will slow your machine and I think it always will regardless of hardware. I had SupremeCommander and Trackmania running. Now trackmania isn't a GPU heavy game, but once running beside SupCom, it was 5fps all the way. Truely quite poor.
Broadcasting people using VLC and a webcam is extremely easy to setup and can be completely useless to do at a LAN unless we're talking a large enough crowd to act as an audience. If we could have people playing and then you could go, I want to look at Jacks screen and it did a Picture in picture of his game interface, THEN we're talking something interesting. Also significantly more difficult to implement.
And finally, I relearned the skills of putting together a video using captured content and Adobe Premiere & Virtualdub. But thats for another blog on another day.
From those photos I remembered a number of other memorable events during the day.
* At the height of everyone arriving and plugging in, we started up a game of dawn of war, the GPUs/CPUs started going full bore and suddenly....Poof! Out goes the power. We tripped the fuse from the amount of power drain of 14 machines on one circuit. So I had cables running all over the place to make sure we connected machines to as many different circuits as we could.
* We went to bed around 5:00AM Sunday and I made everyone else's bed before I turned in. Of course Doug completely misses the pillows/quilt on the recliner and sleeps on the desk...only after he stays up till 6:30 making trackmania maps.
* Watching 5 guys surrounding a 22" inch screen playing NHL2007 was hilarious. The game itself looked average, but Ryan and the boys went mad playing it and their enthusiasm was infectious. Before long entering the backroom was impossible as there was an entire crowd of girls and guys watching these five mad hatters play Ice Hockey.
* People at LANs bring their own idea of what to play and often these can be a surprise hit. Case in point the ridiculously simple Toblo, which is a free fast-paced CTF style game. Or Bid for Power, the DragonBall Z quake 3 mod. It only takes one Evangelist to make everyone play an ancient game like Starcraft1 again (thanks Dilan).
There were a few other interesting things I learnt from a technical perspective:
Using Bittorrent as a way of sending the files around didn't quite work. The main problem was BT is great if I had all the necessary files first so I could convert them into torrents and could start seeding. But the time required to turn something into a torrent and then host it and get people to download it was greater than someone hitting a share and downloading it.
Fraps slows your machine down to buggery. The only time I found FRAPs would work and not be an hindrance was on my dual-core machine, where I'm assuming one core is Frapsing and the other is going to the game.
Running multiple games also will slow your machine and I think it always will regardless of hardware. I had SupremeCommander and Trackmania running. Now trackmania isn't a GPU heavy game, but once running beside SupCom, it was 5fps all the way. Truely quite poor.
Broadcasting people using VLC and a webcam is extremely easy to setup and can be completely useless to do at a LAN unless we're talking a large enough crowd to act as an audience. If we could have people playing and then you could go, I want to look at Jacks screen and it did a Picture in picture of his game interface, THEN we're talking something interesting. Also significantly more difficult to implement.
And finally, I relearned the skills of putting together a video using captured content and Adobe Premiere & Virtualdub. But thats for another blog on another day.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
Birthday LAN '07
So ends another successful world-famous James Birthday LAN. This one was probably the biggest yet, with a turnout of nearly 14 computers and 22-23 people, of which 4 were girls! (breaking previous guy/chick ratios for this LAN). As usual we had gamers and non-gamers and this year for a change we kept all the gamers upstairs and the non-gamers downstairs. This worked out really well as it meant people always had stuff to do. The non-gamers could talk or play the Wii, watch videos, whilst the gamers were kept together so there was steady flow of gaming done. I'm SOOO happy my coach let me have the projector, otherwise that would have caused problems in terms of entertainment for my non-gamer crowd.
The gaming was fantastic and by having a semi-well ordered list of games to play ensured we got a whole pile of different games in. I think in the end we all had big sessions of:
I went to bed around 5am on the Saturday night/Sunday morning so I'm absolutely KNACKERED at the moment. We woke up around 10 and then went straight back into it, and finished at 4pm. After dropping people at the station and then cleaning up the house I think it was about 6 or 7pm. So thats effectively me going hard from 8pm on Friday night till 7pm Sunday for this entire party!
I have many photos and videos and I plan on fixing them up with PSP/VirtualDub and then posting them on Flickr or something most likely tomorrow. I'm FAR too tired to do that now. So I'm going to bed tired, but very happy.
The gaming was fantastic and by having a semi-well ordered list of games to play ensured we got a whole pile of different games in. I think in the end we all had big sessions of:
- C&C Renegade
- Bid for Power (Q3A mod)
- Prey
- Warcraft 3
- Starcraft (LOL..such an oldie)
- NHL Hockey
- Toblo
- Dark Crusade
- Supreme Commander
- But the game of the LAN has to be awarded to Trackmania Nations, which had Doug up till 6:30am, making tracks to play on. The amount people played that game was absolutely insane, but it was quick and enjoyable and thats what really counts at LANs.
I went to bed around 5am on the Saturday night/Sunday morning so I'm absolutely KNACKERED at the moment. We woke up around 10 and then went straight back into it, and finished at 4pm. After dropping people at the station and then cleaning up the house I think it was about 6 or 7pm. So thats effectively me going hard from 8pm on Friday night till 7pm Sunday for this entire party!
I have many photos and videos and I plan on fixing them up with PSP/VirtualDub and then posting them on Flickr or something most likely tomorrow. I'm FAR too tired to do that now. So I'm going to bed tired, but very happy.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Driving under the Influence
Tonight wasn't the first time, and probably won't be the last time I've been driving under the influence of drugs. And before you recoil in shock, its only Dimetapp (popular cold medication). Of course I was down to my last few tablets which of course were the 'night time' tablets. Yes with the antihestimine to help you sleep. The dilemma of course was, which is worse, driving with really runny and itchy nose, or half asleep. So clearly I popped the blue pill.
Needless to say, doing 1.5 hrs of driving both ways whilst on drugs was not great by any means. My passengers were not helping. On the outward journey my navigator was sipping sake, and not entirely with it, for the you know..NAVIGATING. It did make for entertaining driving however. The classic moment for the night is after several missed turns, we're looking for Melbourne St. So I see a road coming up that says 'Melbourne St' and Damo goes, nah thats not it, go straight. So we drive past it and he goes, "you do know I was being sarcastic right?"...
One U-Turn later and we finally get at Stephs
Then we're driving back towards the cumberland highway... and I ask Steph, do you know how to get to the M5 and shes like, is that a freeway or motorway or something. And I go motorway and she goes, sure turn left. Since I clearly had to make a choice, I turned left despite me feeling, this isn't right. So I ask, this feels like we're going to the M4 and she says "That goes towards city right?".
One U-Turn later and we're finally on the M5.
Finally after we turn off the M5 onto princes highway, I need Damo to look up the side street to turn into. Of course Steph chooses this oppurtunity to ask Damo about gothic subcultures relentlessly. Here I'm trying to get Damo to do something important before we crash/overshoot and she doesn't shutup. Sarah (in the backseat) later said, she was just WAITING for me to snap. But being the gentleman (who was half drugged out) that I am, I left it be.
The way home was just as hilarious as we got quite lost. A few dozen side streets and no through roads later we finally find our way back. Its midnight, the drugs still have the drowsiness effect, and more annoyingly my nose is starting to go again. And of course Steph is in the front seat and she doesn't have a clue how to navigate and is incessently talking about Japanese porn and furries and all sorts of fantastic wacky stuff. Stephs a great girl, but after we finally dropped her home, there was a collective "Thank f**king god" as we appreciated the joys and splendor of silence.
One U-Turn later and (30mins of dropping Damo and Sarah off) and I'm finally home.
Needless to say, doing 1.5 hrs of driving both ways whilst on drugs was not great by any means. My passengers were not helping. On the outward journey my navigator was sipping sake, and not entirely with it, for the you know..NAVIGATING. It did make for entertaining driving however. The classic moment for the night is after several missed turns, we're looking for Melbourne St. So I see a road coming up that says 'Melbourne St' and Damo goes, nah thats not it, go straight. So we drive past it and he goes, "you do know I was being sarcastic right?"...
One U-Turn later and we finally get at Stephs
Then we're driving back towards the cumberland highway... and I ask Steph, do you know how to get to the M5 and shes like, is that a freeway or motorway or something. And I go motorway and she goes, sure turn left. Since I clearly had to make a choice, I turned left despite me feeling, this isn't right. So I ask, this feels like we're going to the M4 and she says "That goes towards city right?".
One U-Turn later and we're finally on the M5.
Finally after we turn off the M5 onto princes highway, I need Damo to look up the side street to turn into. Of course Steph chooses this oppurtunity to ask Damo about gothic subcultures relentlessly. Here I'm trying to get Damo to do something important before we crash/overshoot and she doesn't shutup. Sarah (in the backseat) later said, she was just WAITING for me to snap. But being the gentleman (who was half drugged out) that I am, I left it be.
The way home was just as hilarious as we got quite lost. A few dozen side streets and no through roads later we finally find our way back. Its midnight, the drugs still have the drowsiness effect, and more annoyingly my nose is starting to go again. And of course Steph is in the front seat and she doesn't have a clue how to navigate and is incessently talking about Japanese porn and furries and all sorts of fantastic wacky stuff. Stephs a great girl, but after we finally dropped her home, there was a collective "Thank f**king god" as we appreciated the joys and splendor of silence.
One U-Turn later and (30mins of dropping Damo and Sarah off) and I'm finally home.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Spiderman 3: The Soap Opera
*WARNING - spoilers likely *
Still not sure what surprised me more. How truly bad this movie was, or the fact that it got 8.2 last time I looked on IMDB. Granted its only released today and its the fanboys hit IMDB way before the rest of the world does.
Spiderman 3 isn't a terrible movie. Its not in the same class as say "Crossroads", but its not a fitting movie to finish off the Spiderman franchise. It doesn't try to suck and tries a lot of new things. The problem is it just doesn't work.
The spiderman series have definitely involved a human element to the action, which helps a lot. This movie takes this idea far, far too far. There is probably 15mins of action in this 2.5 hr extravaganza. The action is really quite good. The CGI work on sandman is practically good, but Goblin and Venom look also fantastic.
The problem is everything outside of this action is boring, corny/hammy/cheesy or just plain nonsensical. Theres the entire boring "I'm suck, I miss MJ" scenes, theres the truly stupid hordes of crowds staring and pointing at this giant sand monster thing, instead of screaming away in terror as they well should be, or the truly random laws of physics in regards to pretty much anything. Monster hole punched multiple times and large bits ripped of = perfectly alright. Shoot two small rockets at it and wow it goes down in a flash. Crane is out of control destroying buildings, and Spidy just saves ONE chick and proceeds to chat her up whilst all this carnage occurs nearby.
The romance scenes between Peter and Mary-Jane are sometimes touching. Its a shame that the other 99% of this relationship is so full of corny lines and hammy acting. Speaking of cheese, this movie was GROSSLY full of it. From the people cheering spiderman in random locations, to the well over the top shot of Spiderman arriving to save the scene, landing next to a waving American flag, posing and only THEN attacking.
Theres just so many other bad things about this movie, but its late and I want sleep. Please don't go see this movie, as it'll only justify a fourth crappier one. In the cliched words of the random person in the movie "Even one person can make a difference".
Still not sure what surprised me more. How truly bad this movie was, or the fact that it got 8.2 last time I looked on IMDB. Granted its only released today and its the fanboys hit IMDB way before the rest of the world does.
Spiderman 3 isn't a terrible movie. Its not in the same class as say "Crossroads", but its not a fitting movie to finish off the Spiderman franchise. It doesn't try to suck and tries a lot of new things. The problem is it just doesn't work.
The spiderman series have definitely involved a human element to the action, which helps a lot. This movie takes this idea far, far too far. There is probably 15mins of action in this 2.5 hr extravaganza. The action is really quite good. The CGI work on sandman is practically good, but Goblin and Venom look also fantastic.
The problem is everything outside of this action is boring, corny/hammy/cheesy or just plain nonsensical. Theres the entire boring "I'm suck, I miss MJ" scenes, theres the truly stupid hordes of crowds staring and pointing at this giant sand monster thing, instead of screaming away in terror as they well should be, or the truly random laws of physics in regards to pretty much anything. Monster hole punched multiple times and large bits ripped of = perfectly alright. Shoot two small rockets at it and wow it goes down in a flash. Crane is out of control destroying buildings, and Spidy just saves ONE chick and proceeds to chat her up whilst all this carnage occurs nearby.
The romance scenes between Peter and Mary-Jane are sometimes touching. Its a shame that the other 99% of this relationship is so full of corny lines and hammy acting. Speaking of cheese, this movie was GROSSLY full of it. From the people cheering spiderman in random locations, to the well over the top shot of Spiderman arriving to save the scene, landing next to a waving American flag, posing and only THEN attacking.
Theres just so many other bad things about this movie, but its late and I want sleep. Please don't go see this movie, as it'll only justify a fourth crappier one. In the cliched words of the random person in the movie "Even one person can make a difference".
Sunday, April 29, 2007
Why is my Documents hijacked?
Remember that scene in Red Alert 1 where Albert Einstein goes back in time to kill Hitler? Remember how satisfied he must have felt to prevent untold suffering in the future. Its the same feeling I'd have if I could go back in time to kill the guy who started the trend to put application specific files in My Documents. (Lets ignore the fact that in C&C:RA1 that Albert's actions led to the soviets invading..).
My 'My Documents' had 3 folders which I created and maintained, and 15 that were created by other applications. I have Work, Home, Archives. Other applications have made C&C3, My Shapes, Visual Studio 2005, Battlefield 2...the list goes on. My Documents are files which are meant for viewing and editing by user. Often these applications are putting things there which are neither. It is usually save games, configuration files and templates, all of which are edited VIA THE application, not directly by the user.
Unless the files are meant for regular edits by the user, I don't see why the application developers can't do any of the following over putting its junk in my space.
1) Put all user specific files in the "home" directory, i.e. C:/Documents & Settings/, rather than //My Documents.
2) Make it an option either at startup or reconfigurable as to where to put the specific files and hence the application will move these files around.
3) In combination with the above, maybe developers can agree to a standard way of storing. For instead of your typical egotistical Adobe/photoshop/saves directory, maybe they can do /graphics/adobe.photoshop/saves. They can even use shortcuts if they think that'll help, for example /image-viewing/adobe.photoshop symlinks back to the above graphics folder.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of having user specific data in the user space rather than the application space, but there are better ways to do it then blindly clutter "My Documents". Let me reclaim my space!
My 'My Documents' had 3 folders which I created and maintained, and 15 that were created by other applications. I have Work, Home, Archives. Other applications have made C&C3, My Shapes, Visual Studio 2005, Battlefield 2...the list goes on. My Documents are files which are meant for viewing and editing by user. Often these applications are putting things there which are neither. It is usually save games, configuration files and templates, all of which are edited VIA THE application, not directly by the user.
Unless the files are meant for regular edits by the user, I don't see why the application developers can't do any of the following over putting its junk in my space.
1) Put all user specific files in the "home" directory, i.e. C:/Documents & Settings/
2) Make it an option either at startup or reconfigurable as to where to put the specific files and hence the application will move these files around.
3) In combination with the above, maybe developers can agree to a standard way of storing. For instead of your typical egotistical Adobe/photoshop/saves directory, maybe they can do /graphics/adobe.photoshop/saves. They can even use shortcuts if they think that'll help, for example /image-viewing/adobe.photoshop symlinks back to the above graphics folder.
Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of having user specific data in the user space rather than the application space, but there are better ways to do it then blindly clutter "My Documents". Let me reclaim my space!
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Episode 1: The social networking Menace.
Its funny how much modern society has become more closed off in some ways, and yet so open in others. The average person probably barely knows their neighbour, has minimal contact with their relations outside of their immediate family, yet opens up all sorts of details about themselves elsewhere. And where is that elsewhere? You guessed it, the Internet.
Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In*, the list goes on. All of these sprung up from nowhere and just exploded in popularity. BUT WHY? I've signed up for a few of them and I still don't fully understand the attraction. I'll go through them in turn.
Myspace is a social networking site catered for the teen, early twenties level. It just shows a profile, a blog and a place for people to leave comments for that person's friends. A homepage with a guestbook from 1998 with a template is effectively what it is.
Facebook is similar, but it focuses even more on the relationships between people. It wants to know who you know, how you know them, when you knew them and so on. Again you fill out your profile and theres a place for people to leave comments. It is funny how quickly people find you on Facebook. Within 2 days, I had 8 friends add me without me telling anyone about it. I remember in the old days of ICQ that everyone wanted to be on each others lists so you could say you had the biggest set of friends. Facebook is similar in that it keeps a tally of how many friends you have and it feels like everyone is trying to increase that number.
LinkedIn is effectively the "business" version of Facebook. It tracks who you worked for, and who also worked for that company and its meant to help "career networking". I say all this in inverted commas, for as important to your career as Linked In propents to be, in reality, its the social equivalent of a chain letter. This article by Jeff Atwood from codinghorror.com sums up my feelings about how useful LinkedIn is. I encourage you to read it.
Twitter is...quite possibly one of the dumbest fads I've seen on the Interweb. Its bite sized snippets of what people are doing. I stared in naked fascination at the idea of people posting what they are getting up to... For about two minutes before I realised that people who 'twit' to a internet site are essentially boring.
prozach Cleaning the house, less than 10 seconds from web
hawaii5 Sleepy. less than 10 seconds ago
I cannot entirely understand the Twit phenomenon, but I'll endeavor to analyze. I believe we all like the idea that others are interested in us. Its that small narcissistic side that must be satisfied by the possibility that someone is interested in what we are doing.
We Bloggers aren't immune from this trend either. After all, we all blog to be read, to be heard and loved for our 'insight'. But I hope to think that most bloggers attempt to at least impart something back to the community who reads them, more than "oh man, I got so wasted last night but I scored with that spunk Ray. Anyways gtg sleep, xoxoxo".
What frightens me is how invasive these sites are. Wake up and smell the roses people. You're freely depriving yourself of your privacy! Wouldn't it scare you if a random person came upto you and they knew everything about you from your interests, to who your friends are, to where you work. This is an advertiser's paradise. Each time you sign up for one of these sites, who are you really benefiting?
I know there are meant to be benefits to social networking. Maintaining friendships, meeting new people and so on. But think, for each person who finds love on Facebook, there are hundreds of thousands of lonely hearts without any hits, and probably a few thousand nutbag stalkers reading your profile. I'm going for the vast majority of all the encounters you'll have on LinkedIn will go nowhere useful for you.
People are social beings and we thrive off feeling loved and important. Hell this might explain why I still have a Facebook account. But this isn't the way to do it. Real relationships are those in real life and they are hard, and require more effort than hitting "Confirm this person as my friend". For each moment you spend in updating your Facebook profile, maybe spend a few minutes ringing a old friend. It'll take you a lot longer, but you'll feel better about life guaranteed**.
*Its not accidental I didn't link ANY of these sites. They ain't getting any page rank from this site.
** disclaimer: guarantees not guaranteed on this website.
Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Linked In*, the list goes on. All of these sprung up from nowhere and just exploded in popularity. BUT WHY? I've signed up for a few of them and I still don't fully understand the attraction. I'll go through them in turn.
Myspace is a social networking site catered for the teen, early twenties level. It just shows a profile, a blog and a place for people to leave comments for that person's friends. A homepage with a guestbook from 1998 with a template is effectively what it is.
Facebook is similar, but it focuses even more on the relationships between people. It wants to know who you know, how you know them, when you knew them and so on. Again you fill out your profile and theres a place for people to leave comments. It is funny how quickly people find you on Facebook. Within 2 days, I had 8 friends add me without me telling anyone about it. I remember in the old days of ICQ that everyone wanted to be on each others lists so you could say you had the biggest set of friends. Facebook is similar in that it keeps a tally of how many friends you have and it feels like everyone is trying to increase that number.
LinkedIn is effectively the "business" version of Facebook. It tracks who you worked for, and who also worked for that company and its meant to help "career networking". I say all this in inverted commas, for as important to your career as Linked In propents to be, in reality, its the social equivalent of a chain letter. This article by Jeff Atwood from codinghorror.com sums up my feelings about how useful LinkedIn is. I encourage you to read it.
Twitter is...quite possibly one of the dumbest fads I've seen on the Interweb. Its bite sized snippets of what people are doing. I stared in naked fascination at the idea of people posting what they are getting up to... For about two minutes before I realised that people who 'twit' to a internet site are essentially boring.
prozach Cleaning the house, less than 10 seconds from web
hawaii5 Sleepy. less than 10 seconds ago
I cannot entirely understand the Twit phenomenon, but I'll endeavor to analyze. I believe we all like the idea that others are interested in us. Its that small narcissistic side that must be satisfied by the possibility that someone is interested in what we are doing.
We Bloggers aren't immune from this trend either. After all, we all blog to be read, to be heard and loved for our 'insight'. But I hope to think that most bloggers attempt to at least impart something back to the community who reads them, more than "oh man, I got so wasted last night but I scored with that spunk Ray. Anyways gtg sleep, xoxoxo".
What frightens me is how invasive these sites are. Wake up and smell the roses people. You're freely depriving yourself of your privacy! Wouldn't it scare you if a random person came upto you and they knew everything about you from your interests, to who your friends are, to where you work. This is an advertiser's paradise. Each time you sign up for one of these sites, who are you really benefiting?
I know there are meant to be benefits to social networking. Maintaining friendships, meeting new people and so on. But think, for each person who finds love on Facebook, there are hundreds of thousands of lonely hearts without any hits, and probably a few thousand nutbag stalkers reading your profile. I'm going for the vast majority of all the encounters you'll have on LinkedIn will go nowhere useful for you.
People are social beings and we thrive off feeling loved and important. Hell this might explain why I still have a Facebook account. But this isn't the way to do it. Real relationships are those in real life and they are hard, and require more effort than hitting "Confirm this person as my friend". For each moment you spend in updating your Facebook profile, maybe spend a few minutes ringing a old friend. It'll take you a lot longer, but you'll feel better about life guaranteed**.
*Its not accidental I didn't link ANY of these sites. They ain't getting any page rank from this site.
** disclaimer: guarantees not guaranteed on this website.
Sunday, April 15, 2007
Command and Conquer 3 - The good, the hot and the meh.
You know what they say about riding a bicycle? It completely applies to C&C3 in so many ways. Here is a game which clearly knows its limitations, and doesn't care.
Firstly the good. Its C&C. I know that sounds lame, but C&C is like quake. There is a certain charm to it that cannot be disputed. The campaign is probably the single best part about it. Its got the same over the top acting, but this time its got some well known actors such as Lando Calrissian, the guy from Starship Troopers, the guy from Lost who always has his shirt off and most importantly a host of hot girls from Battlestar Galactica and Farscape including the delectable Grace Park. Its campy, its predictable and its damn awesome.
The meh is the gameplay. For a game which has a raft of different units, it becomes a megaunit crunch in most larger games. The concept of combined arms doesn't apply in this game, especially for the GDI and their cheap and totally unbalanced Mammoth tanks. Tactics aren't as important as getting more resource gatherers out to fund your megaunit army. For me, C&C games always becomes rather old rather quickly. At least in Generals, combined arms was reasonably important, so that lasted somewhat longer.
So why do you ask do I bother playing this game? Simple, because my mates are playing it. Any game automatically doubles in its playability when you have friends to play with. Its not the type of game I'd ever play online with strangers simply because its far too boring.
Firstly the good. Its C&C. I know that sounds lame, but C&C is like quake. There is a certain charm to it that cannot be disputed. The campaign is probably the single best part about it. Its got the same over the top acting, but this time its got some well known actors such as Lando Calrissian, the guy from Starship Troopers, the guy from Lost who always has his shirt off and most importantly a host of hot girls from Battlestar Galactica and Farscape including the delectable Grace Park. Its campy, its predictable and its damn awesome.
The meh is the gameplay. For a game which has a raft of different units, it becomes a megaunit crunch in most larger games. The concept of combined arms doesn't apply in this game, especially for the GDI and their cheap and totally unbalanced Mammoth tanks. Tactics aren't as important as getting more resource gatherers out to fund your megaunit army. For me, C&C games always becomes rather old rather quickly. At least in Generals, combined arms was reasonably important, so that lasted somewhat longer.
So why do you ask do I bother playing this game? Simple, because my mates are playing it. Any game automatically doubles in its playability when you have friends to play with. Its not the type of game I'd ever play online with strangers simply because its far too boring.
Sunday, April 08, 2007
Fear the Emperor's boxes
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Synergy for Dual Monitors/Dual PCs
You know what is cool? Synergy!
No not the team/department/company relationship crap that has been flouted by marketers and execs for more years than it deserves. I'm talking about the application Synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net). For a while now I've been running a windows and Ubuntu setup at home where I have both machines and operating systems running side by side.
Unfortunately they were also in all practicality in isolation. There was no way to copy paste things between the screens, no way to even move the keyboard or cursor. I've been doing the two level keyboard and mouse combo.
I've heard of using an application called Multiplicity by Stardock for such problems, but alas its only for Windows and also costs $30*. So I was stuck with a pretty lame deal.
No longer! Synergy runs a TCP connection between the two systems and it seamlessly allows control between the two systems to proceed. Its so beautiful I could cry.
If you run a dual monitor/dual box setup, you GOT to use this. Its easy to setup, its fast and offers all the features you want and most importantly.....its free!
* That said, Stardock is a pretty cool company so I'd check out some of their other products. The only reason I endorse them is because they had the BALLS to release Galactic Civilizations, one of the finest space 4X games I've played, with no cd-keys and no copy protection or any of the other rubbish that companies make us do these days. Any company that puts the consumer first should be exalted!
No not the team/department/company relationship crap that has been flouted by marketers and execs for more years than it deserves. I'm talking about the application Synergy (http://synergy2.sourceforge.net). For a while now I've been running a windows and Ubuntu setup at home where I have both machines and operating systems running side by side.
Unfortunately they were also in all practicality in isolation. There was no way to copy paste things between the screens, no way to even move the keyboard or cursor. I've been doing the two level keyboard and mouse combo.
I've heard of using an application called Multiplicity by Stardock for such problems, but alas its only for Windows and also costs $30*. So I was stuck with a pretty lame deal.
No longer! Synergy runs a TCP connection between the two systems and it seamlessly allows control between the two systems to proceed. Its so beautiful I could cry.
If you run a dual monitor/dual box setup, you GOT to use this. Its easy to setup, its fast and offers all the features you want and most importantly.....its free!
* That said, Stardock is a pretty cool company so I'd check out some of their other products. The only reason I endorse them is because they had the BALLS to release Galactic Civilizations, one of the finest space 4X games I've played, with no cd-keys and no copy protection or any of the other rubbish that companies make us do these days. Any company that puts the consumer first should be exalted!
Sunday, April 01, 2007
Dawn Of War in Programming languages
DoW and Programming, together at last! The next logical step when all one does is program and play DoW. How DoW fits into the world of programming. Some of these comparisons are a long shot, but hey its all for fun.
The imperial guard is Java: Theres hordes of imperial guardsmen just like there are hordes of Java programmers. Its bulky, rarely elegant but effective enough to get the job done. I like to think of consulting companies like Accenture to be the Emperor. Who cares how many tired programmers we cut down to make these apps, theres plenty to fill the void. Like the Imperium's tanks, the many prebuilt libraries come in very handy and will work well with the guardsmen to put down any programming foe. Your baneblade equivalent is something like Weblogic or any other application container which does everything in one, like serving apps, providing security, logging, annihilating all the Ork hordes etc.
PERL/TCL/Bash Scripting is Chaos. Powerful in its own right, but so filled with insanities that you'll sell your soul to the dark gods to understand whats going on. The Warp in this case has to be the OS which provides Chaos all its applications for bash. And just as the Warp is fickle, so tends to be the OS. I find PERL's regex statements to be like possessed space marines. Fast, effective, but hideously ugly and something you hope you never have to really touch.
FORTRAN is the Necrons of programming world. Older than most languages, rather monolithic and very obscure. If you know what you're doing, you can solve basic problems like KILL EVERYTHING, but don't try and do anything more complex with it. It'll probably not be worth it.
C++ are easily the Eldar. If you know what you're doing, you're solving problems in a brutally efficient hail of coding fire. Its very flexible, to the point where you can by accident shoot yourself in the foot. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're basically Fleet of Foot running around in circles dying horribly, before everything comes crashing down on your head. Attacking something head on in C++ is unwise. Just like the Eldar, attack, destroy one part of the problem, then run away. Trying to take it all on at once will get you killed. And just like the Eldar are a dying race, C++ is becoming a shadow of the power it once was.
Just like Tau are the new kids on the block in the WH40k universe, Ruby comes new to the programmers stable of languages. Just like Vespids and the Tau commander makes Tau incredibly quick off at harassing, programming in Ruby results in quick code which gets the job done. Unfortunately just like their vehicle support is generally pretty woeful, Ruby's development support is also pretty hopeless. Just like much of their history is undocumented, much of Ruby outside of the core is also undocumented.
Orks is definitely C#. Just like Java and C# have a lot in common, the IG and Orks have a lot in common. Both rely on sheer size and both languages have plenty of boiler plate to go. I like to believe the Squiggoth is like Windows. Its huge, its kinda ugly, but no ones going to mess with it and its mostly stuck in its own base due to its size.
Space Marines...has no real equivalent. We're talking about a race that is dedicated, flexible yet has hard hitting prowess, and is strong all the way from the beginning to the end. I don't I know any programming language which is that good.
The imperial guard is Java: Theres hordes of imperial guardsmen just like there are hordes of Java programmers. Its bulky, rarely elegant but effective enough to get the job done. I like to think of consulting companies like Accenture to be the Emperor. Who cares how many tired programmers we cut down to make these apps, theres plenty to fill the void. Like the Imperium's tanks, the many prebuilt libraries come in very handy and will work well with the guardsmen to put down any programming foe. Your baneblade equivalent is something like Weblogic or any other application container which does everything in one, like serving apps, providing security, logging, annihilating all the Ork hordes etc.
PERL/TCL/Bash Scripting is Chaos. Powerful in its own right, but so filled with insanities that you'll sell your soul to the dark gods to understand whats going on. The Warp in this case has to be the OS which provides Chaos all its applications for bash. And just as the Warp is fickle, so tends to be the OS. I find PERL's regex statements to be like possessed space marines. Fast, effective, but hideously ugly and something you hope you never have to really touch.
FORTRAN is the Necrons of programming world. Older than most languages, rather monolithic and very obscure. If you know what you're doing, you can solve basic problems like KILL EVERYTHING, but don't try and do anything more complex with it. It'll probably not be worth it.
C++ are easily the Eldar. If you know what you're doing, you're solving problems in a brutally efficient hail of coding fire. Its very flexible, to the point where you can by accident shoot yourself in the foot. And if you don't know what you're doing, you're basically Fleet of Foot running around in circles dying horribly, before everything comes crashing down on your head. Attacking something head on in C++ is unwise. Just like the Eldar, attack, destroy one part of the problem, then run away. Trying to take it all on at once will get you killed. And just like the Eldar are a dying race, C++ is becoming a shadow of the power it once was.
Just like Tau are the new kids on the block in the WH40k universe, Ruby comes new to the programmers stable of languages. Just like Vespids and the Tau commander makes Tau incredibly quick off at harassing, programming in Ruby results in quick code which gets the job done. Unfortunately just like their vehicle support is generally pretty woeful, Ruby's development support is also pretty hopeless. Just like much of their history is undocumented, much of Ruby outside of the core is also undocumented.
Orks is definitely C#. Just like Java and C# have a lot in common, the IG and Orks have a lot in common. Both rely on sheer size and both languages have plenty of boiler plate to go. I like to believe the Squiggoth is like Windows. Its huge, its kinda ugly, but no ones going to mess with it and its mostly stuck in its own base due to its size.
Space Marines...has no real equivalent. We're talking about a race that is dedicated, flexible yet has hard hitting prowess, and is strong all the way from the beginning to the end. I don't I know any programming language which is that good.
Monday, March 26, 2007
2007 NSW Careers fair
Today was the careers fair at UNSW and was truly a most excellent day! It was that awesome, that it was one of those days that made me wonder about my choice of career! There was so much energy and vibrancies to the fair, which I don't get on a day to day basis. Being around new people makes me terribly nervous BEFORE the actual event, but on the spot, it’s like another person runs me and I'm on this great ride and I love it! It could have been partly the novelty of it, and it’s true, if I did it regularly I'd probably be bored, but at least this once, I truly loved being 'at work', even more than the Big Day Out (annual company team building day).
The day started off at 9am at Avaya. There I had to pick up a bunch of gear with the assistance of the lovely Miss Karen, all of which combined to be worth more than the car I drive! After which point I drove down to
We had a fairly large stall which was comfy and allowed us to put plenty of gear down, and also gave us some space for chatting to people. I ran on the laptop a whole bunch of Avaya ads I found on Youtube Sunday night! (Darn you Jess for ringing me at 8:30) (Kinda funny too btw, you should have a look). However, realistically you wanted to be in the MAIN building. That place was SOOOO packed with people and the atmosphere was fantastic. Well for extrovert like me it was anyway. I suspect others might have been overwhelmed at the crush, the noise and the horde of orks/university students. That said, we had many people visit the Avaya stall and we got a chance to give them on the speel. I met people from India, Brazil, British Columbia, SE Asia (a ridiculous number from there) and yes, would you believe it, even an white Australian or two. Honestly there were SOOO few white people that I felt like putting up a sign that said 'Equal Opportunity Employer. We hire whites too!'. I was surprised to find people who knew what we did, happy when they had the skills we needed, and overjoyed when they actually were interested in joining AND had the right skill set. After all, that’s what we're here for right?
I digress, so enough of that. The other major thing was... I got to chat up lots of pretty ladies. Thank God! Do you know how rare that is for me working in the IT industry? A lot of them were grads like myself so we had plenty in common and they were all friendly. Being both professionals working for their firms, we could chat normally instead of the usual CRAP that you go through when you meet someone new in a bar. I still don't know the trick is for asking someone their number, as there quite a few who I had great conversations with and who I effectively did the 'nice meeting you' and left. Karen B had this huge grin on her face each time I came back from these 'mini-excursions', but was polite enough to not say anything. Hey it’s not being unproductive, its about making new contacts and learning public relation skills and improving employee morale! *cough*.
All in all, I can't wait for next years!
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Workaholism.
My name is James and I'm a workaholic.
I've been sober (not doing work) for 2hrs whilst I've been doing DoW.
There used to be a point where I used to be proud to say I was a workaholic. A few extra hours won't hurt, hell I'm sure it'll result in possible benefits in the future. But you know when that what was originally a fling with the dark side has turned to something worse. This is when you start lying to people about how much extra work you're doing, and when something that just was an hour or two on the weekend becomes effectively an 80 hr work week.
You start cutting yourself off from things you used to enjoy on the excuse, 'you're no good at it anyway, why waste valuable effort on it'. Important things like trying to find love gets shelved because "you're too busy to have time for a girlfriend and besides you trying will just result in embarrassment". Stupid little excuses for the real truth which is you simply value work over everything else. After all, you work harder, you get rewarded. You try to find a date and its just rejection one after the other.
Then eventually this tower comes crashing down when you realise, that when it comes down to it. Work does NOT value you as much as you value it. And that's also when you realise that you've lost time on something that actually has no value, and you'll never EVER get it back.
//falls sobbing into the arms of the fat female moderator.
----
Wow I'm particularly proud of that. I could even believe that was me.
You don't have to look very deep to realise, there is grains of truth, hell entire cereal packets of truth in what I just said and what is my life.
Workaholism is an illness. Its just that simple. People make excuses about pushing your career, but really its a form of OCD. The sad thing is, that person at least in the short term IS more productive and supervisors, management will encourage and potentially reward such behaviour. Management is often myopic and won't realise this behaviour will backfire. And backfire it will. Maybe it'll be a year, maybe it'll be five years, but one day the employee will get the sickening realization that, "I've been wasting my life".
Worse yet, of all the addictions in the world, Workaholism is a socially 'respected' addiction. Hell there have been studies touting that there are 'positive forms' of workaholism. Behaviouralists say 'if people are working hard at what they enjoy, it can't be bad for them'. People think highly of someone who puts in the hard yards at their employment. But really, how is it any different to the other great 'holism', alcoholism. Both are really forms of escapism right? The employee is good at work, and maybe not so good as a father, or husband. So you do what you do best instead. Proven surveys show correlation between martial breakdown, dysfunctional parental relationships, and health deterioration. From a corporate view, it leads to this burst of productivity early on, which is more than completely negated by increased sick days, reduced motivation and turnover.
Yet WHY is it companies don't do anything about this? I know no one ever monitors how much EXCESS work I do or anyone else for that matter. Sure if I slack off for a little while I might get someone commenting, but other than my work friends, not a single manager has ever told that I should perhaps cut back. My mate at the ARL works till 3am to get things right. Do you think any of his bosses say to cut back? Nope, its at best 'thanks for your hard work', or more likely 'we've still got all these fires to put out'
Its a no-brainer to say work more, but it takes courage and insight into really understanding your employees to say 'Hey James, your task today is to go ask that nice receptionist out to a movie and dinner and give a report in the morning'.
If only the workplace was THAT straightforward.
I've been sober (not doing work) for 2hrs whilst I've been doing DoW.
There used to be a point where I used to be proud to say I was a workaholic. A few extra hours won't hurt, hell I'm sure it'll result in possible benefits in the future. But you know when that what was originally a fling with the dark side has turned to something worse. This is when you start lying to people about how much extra work you're doing, and when something that just was an hour or two on the weekend becomes effectively an 80 hr work week.
You start cutting yourself off from things you used to enjoy on the excuse, 'you're no good at it anyway, why waste valuable effort on it'. Important things like trying to find love gets shelved because "you're too busy to have time for a girlfriend and besides you trying will just result in embarrassment". Stupid little excuses for the real truth which is you simply value work over everything else. After all, you work harder, you get rewarded. You try to find a date and its just rejection one after the other.
Then eventually this tower comes crashing down when you realise, that when it comes down to it. Work does NOT value you as much as you value it. And that's also when you realise that you've lost time on something that actually has no value, and you'll never EVER get it back.
//falls sobbing into the arms of the fat female moderator.
----
Wow I'm particularly proud of that. I could even believe that was me.
You don't have to look very deep to realise, there is grains of truth, hell entire cereal packets of truth in what I just said and what is my life.
Workaholism is an illness. Its just that simple. People make excuses about pushing your career, but really its a form of OCD. The sad thing is, that person at least in the short term IS more productive and supervisors, management will encourage and potentially reward such behaviour. Management is often myopic and won't realise this behaviour will backfire. And backfire it will. Maybe it'll be a year, maybe it'll be five years, but one day the employee will get the sickening realization that, "I've been wasting my life".
Worse yet, of all the addictions in the world, Workaholism is a socially 'respected' addiction. Hell there have been studies touting that there are 'positive forms' of workaholism. Behaviouralists say 'if people are working hard at what they enjoy, it can't be bad for them'. People think highly of someone who puts in the hard yards at their employment. But really, how is it any different to the other great 'holism', alcoholism. Both are really forms of escapism right? The employee is good at work, and maybe not so good as a father, or husband. So you do what you do best instead. Proven surveys show correlation between martial breakdown, dysfunctional parental relationships, and health deterioration. From a corporate view, it leads to this burst of productivity early on, which is more than completely negated by increased sick days, reduced motivation and turnover.
Yet WHY is it companies don't do anything about this? I know no one ever monitors how much EXCESS work I do or anyone else for that matter. Sure if I slack off for a little while I might get someone commenting, but other than my work friends, not a single manager has ever told that I should perhaps cut back. My mate at the ARL works till 3am to get things right. Do you think any of his bosses say to cut back? Nope, its at best 'thanks for your hard work', or more likely 'we've still got all these fires to put out'
Its a no-brainer to say work more, but it takes courage and insight into really understanding your employees to say 'Hey James, your task today is to go ask that nice receptionist out to a movie and dinner and give a report in the morning'.
If only the workplace was THAT straightforward.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Die Elitist Dating Scum!
"Excuse me miss, but have you built a car?"
What is a bigger achievement, a chick who has a university education, or a chick who has built a car?
This comment has its roots buried in a conversation we had today. To set the scene, it a work lunch in busy cafe in an arcade at Eastwood. Cafe Centro. The serving girl in charge of our table was incredibly cute. And also incredibly underage (potentially). After she dropped out of earshot, I mentioned out loud, 'man, if she was a few years older and had a university degree...' ( I never finished it off, since realistically even if that was the case, I'd probably stay quiet. Rejection is always a bitch).
But of course, Sunny as usual completely disagreed with my philosophy with saying an girl who has done university is not at all necessarily better than one who hasn't and that I simply had elitist views.
My belief is a lady who is educated and dedicated enough to finish a university degree is a real catch. Does this make me an elitist? I certainly don't think so. I just like to think I'd prefer my women stable and brainy rather than flighty and boring. Generalization true, but I'm not sure how far that is from the truth.
Of course Sunny's more impressed by someone who has built a car rather than who has higher education. This is because of the complexity of building a vehicle outweighs someone who simply went to uni and cruised through it. Realistically that is a different form of elitism. Its the same principle of favouring your specialized desired attribute over the basic things like attractiveness, conversability and so on. Though that said, using "have you built a car" makes for a far better pickup line than "are you educated". I must try both out one day and judge the success rates.
Does that mean that if a hot girl with no education asked me out that I'd say no? Not at all, (desperation means anyones fair game). Does it mean when it comes time to commitment that I might back away? Probably not then either. But if I had a choice between a hottie without a education, and someone average who was educated, I think its evident who I'd pick, but hey thats just me.
Am I alone in this or are other people just as picky about this?
What is a bigger achievement, a chick who has a university education, or a chick who has built a car?
This comment has its roots buried in a conversation we had today. To set the scene, it a work lunch in busy cafe in an arcade at Eastwood. Cafe Centro. The serving girl in charge of our table was incredibly cute. And also incredibly underage (potentially). After she dropped out of earshot, I mentioned out loud, 'man, if she was a few years older and had a university degree...' ( I never finished it off, since realistically even if that was the case, I'd probably stay quiet. Rejection is always a bitch).
But of course, Sunny as usual completely disagreed with my philosophy with saying an girl who has done university is not at all necessarily better than one who hasn't and that I simply had elitist views.
My belief is a lady who is educated and dedicated enough to finish a university degree is a real catch. Does this make me an elitist? I certainly don't think so. I just like to think I'd prefer my women stable and brainy rather than flighty and boring. Generalization true, but I'm not sure how far that is from the truth.
Of course Sunny's more impressed by someone who has built a car rather than who has higher education. This is because of the complexity of building a vehicle outweighs someone who simply went to uni and cruised through it. Realistically that is a different form of elitism. Its the same principle of favouring your specialized desired attribute over the basic things like attractiveness, conversability and so on. Though that said, using "have you built a car" makes for a far better pickup line than "are you educated". I must try both out one day and judge the success rates.
Does that mean that if a hot girl with no education asked me out that I'd say no? Not at all, (desperation means anyones fair game). Does it mean when it comes time to commitment that I might back away? Probably not then either. But if I had a choice between a hottie without a education, and someone average who was educated, I think its evident who I'd pick, but hey thats just me.
Am I alone in this or are other people just as picky about this?
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Valentines day 2007
This summarises the accumulation of much despair and loathing over Valentines day. This is me and my mate at 12:30am Feb 14 2007. Note > means from me to someone, and < means from them to me.
(00:46:33) > i feel like sending flowers to myself
(00:46:40) < i reckon you should
(00:46:43) < thats so cool
(00:46:46) < and not sad at all
(00:47:01) > i nearly believed you thought it was a good idea
(00:47:46) < hehe sending flowers to yourself a good idea?
(00:47:49) < really james
(00:47:52) < think about it
(00:48:14) > well if you tell the florist to randomise the times and flowers
(00:48:33) > and send say anywhere between 1-3 to yourself
(00:48:48) > you could almost believe that some of those flowers are from someone else
(00:48:58) > I've really thought about this in too much detail to be healthy
(00:49:08) < Thats an understatement.
(00:46:33) > i feel like sending flowers to myself
(00:46:40) < i reckon you should
(00:46:43) < thats so cool
(00:46:46) < and not sad at all
(00:47:01) > i nearly believed you thought it was a good idea
(00:47:46) < hehe sending flowers to yourself a good idea?
(00:47:49) < really james
(00:47:52) < think about it
(00:48:14) > well if you tell the florist to randomise the times and flowers
(00:48:33) > and send say anywhere between 1-3 to yourself
(00:48:48) > you could almost believe that some of those flowers are from someone else
(00:48:58) > I've really thought about this in too much detail to be healthy
(00:49:08) < Thats an understatement.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
The Ups and Downs of Downsizing
My mate today asked me how they can overcome the fear of being downsized. It was pretty easy for me to counsel them because its downsizing that anyone who works in IT faces every budget time. Its a monster that we know is there, but which we hope we can roll a 5-6 and run away from each time.
So I asked them, what are what do they want, advice on overcoming the fear or ways to avoid downsizing and they of course wanted both. And since I always want blog topics, I figured this would be a great opportunity to share my thoughts on the matter.
To avoid getting downsized, its less about how good you are and more about how much people think you are vital to the firm. When it comes down it, most of us are average to good at our job, but some people always survive and flourish whilst others flounder and sink.
It's all about profile building and getting involved. Be known as the person to go to for help whenever ADVICE is needed. If you become known as the guy to go to when something needs fixing, you'll just be buried under more work then you can really deal with.
Also whilst many ISO/CMM processes rely on projects being survivable with the loss of a member, this isn't really in your interests. Hoarding information is bad and will bite you one way or another, but if you can prove yourself more accessible and valuable then a bunch of documents, do so.
Suggest new ideas for improving productivity, processes and what not, and take ownership of those. All people need to know is you're independently looking at a problem of your own accord, and they'll be impressed. Doesn't matter if you're actually doing anything!**
So they go, I should really start fixing my CV up again. Attitude wise, I reckon the attitude of I'm going to get fired so I should get ready for it is often self fulfilling. If you like, prepare, but drop the attitude.
Ideally you should be like, this year, I'm going to find ways of being more useful
And really as far as kicking the fear goes, think of it as a win win scenario...
If you survive the downsizing, you're competing with less people. Also typically in order to stop the massive morale hit that is downsizing, companies award more money for remaining employees. If I remember correctly, they year after we sacked several thousand people had the biggest pay rises and bonuses.
Downsizing also results in more work amongst fewer people, so you get more responsibility and more interesting work.
And if you get 'unlucky' and get downsized, its fairly awesome too. You get paid out (typically) redundancy pay, you get paid out any remaining vacation leave, you get a good reference (extra good reference cos its a 'Sorry for kicking you out' reference) and now you are free to move onto any firm you like.
The money really is quite good. Each time my dad got retrenched, he paid off an entire car from the redundancy payment. Each company and each person is different, but typically you get 3-4 months worth of money to live on till your next job.
So as you can see, its not really that scary***. Live on and be happy.
** In some organizations like mine however, running an idea and not doing anything will get you cruxified however, so beware.
*** unless you're looking after a family and have specialist obsolete skills which will make you impossible to rehire.
So I asked them, what are what do they want, advice on overcoming the fear or ways to avoid downsizing and they of course wanted both. And since I always want blog topics, I figured this would be a great opportunity to share my thoughts on the matter.
To avoid getting downsized, its less about how good you are and more about how much people think you are vital to the firm. When it comes down it, most of us are average to good at our job, but some people always survive and flourish whilst others flounder and sink.
It's all about profile building and getting involved. Be known as the person to go to for help whenever ADVICE is needed. If you become known as the guy to go to when something needs fixing, you'll just be buried under more work then you can really deal with.
Also whilst many ISO/CMM processes rely on projects being survivable with the loss of a member, this isn't really in your interests. Hoarding information is bad and will bite you one way or another, but if you can prove yourself more accessible and valuable then a bunch of documents, do so.
Suggest new ideas for improving productivity, processes and what not, and take ownership of those. All people need to know is you're independently looking at a problem of your own accord, and they'll be impressed. Doesn't matter if you're actually doing anything!**
So they go, I should really start fixing my CV up again. Attitude wise, I reckon the attitude of I'm going to get fired so I should get ready for it is often self fulfilling. If you like, prepare, but drop the attitude.
Ideally you should be like, this year, I'm going to find ways of being more useful
And really as far as kicking the fear goes, think of it as a win win scenario...
If you survive the downsizing, you're competing with less people. Also typically in order to stop the massive morale hit that is downsizing, companies award more money for remaining employees. If I remember correctly, they year after we sacked several thousand people had the biggest pay rises and bonuses.
Downsizing also results in more work amongst fewer people, so you get more responsibility and more interesting work.
And if you get 'unlucky' and get downsized, its fairly awesome too. You get paid out (typically) redundancy pay, you get paid out any remaining vacation leave, you get a good reference (extra good reference cos its a 'Sorry for kicking you out' reference) and now you are free to move onto any firm you like.
The money really is quite good. Each time my dad got retrenched, he paid off an entire car from the redundancy payment. Each company and each person is different, but typically you get 3-4 months worth of money to live on till your next job.
So as you can see, its not really that scary***. Live on and be happy.
** In some organizations like mine however, running an idea and not doing anything will get you cruxified however, so beware.
*** unless you're looking after a family and have specialist obsolete skills which will make you impossible to rehire.
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