Dan Q
Right; I’m off to Gregynog and then on to Wolverhampton for Gareth and Liz‘s housewarming/Liz’s birthday party. I’ve uploaded a few episodes of Dan & Alex to keep you all amused for the weekend (but I apologise in advance for them being a little self-referencial).
And while, of course, I can’t say much on here, those who know will understand when I say that my meeting at the University on Wednesday afternoon didn’t turn out well after all. Which is a pity, but hey.
In the words of Bender, “…another pointless day where I accomplish nothing.” It’s feeling a little that way. Last night’s brownout knocked computers offline, and this morning BT severed a cable, depriving us of phones and internet access. It’s an hour and a half into the day already and I’ve got nothing done so far.
The worst bit is, having been told that the phones were down already: when I discovered that the outbound fibre optic link was down, I picked up the phone to call the facilities manager. Whoops! In an age when everything is connected and digitial, it’s easy to forget that things don’t always work as they should.
Add to this the fact that I’ll be leaving early today, and you’ve got a recipe for underproductivity. Which is a word, now, thank you very much. I’m off this evening to Gregynog, a University of Wales conference centre, as a guest interviewer, to give mock interviews to second-year Computer Science students. These interviews are supposed to be reflective of those given in the industry, in order to better prepare them for ‘real’ interviews and give them feedback… so I’ve been devising a list of some of the nastiest Comp. Sci.-centric interview questions ever devised. Here’s some of my favourites:
I can’t write too many of the really nice fun ones here, because (a) there’s at least one person I’ll be interviewing who I know reads my weblog and (b) I’ve got some questions which depend on demonstratable code samples, which I can’t be arsed to upload anywhere.
Anyway; things look like they’re all booted up now, so I’d better get on with some work.
Following up on Andy’s post, this weekend I have to:
Troma Night is on as usual.
Duality, my main desktop PC at home, has been misbehaving, and I’ve had to take it to pieces, both virtually (tracing driver DLL calls – yum!) and physically (computer components littering the floor, etc.). It’s been two years since it’s last reformat/reinstall, which is a pretty long time for a Windows XP box treated the way I’ve treated it, so it’s definately time for a rebuild.
Shame I couldn’t have done it sooner/later, as it’s put a dent both in my NaNoWriMo writing and in my ability to investigate some code for a client I’m dealing with “on the side”. It’s going to be a busy little weekend.
In other news, I’ve been playing with Gosu, a sprite animation/drawing layer module for Ruby. Ruby’s execution speed (within an object-oriented paradigm) lends itself well to 2D animation and games. Here’s a Flash animation showing a recording of what I came up with:
Yes, that really is the sprite for Dan in the Dan & Alex comic.
If you’re really sad (and using Windows – I haven’t tested it under other operating systems and can’t be arsed packaging up the C-layer stuff for them, yet), you can actually have a play. Just install Ruby 1.8.2-15 For Windows (15MB) and the game itself (740K).
If I get really bored or suddenly find a lot more free time, I might actually finish making a game out of the engine I’ve put together.
Edit: The download link for the game has now been fixed. If you downloaded it and just got error messages when you tried to run it, try again now.
The Bad
I’m working very hard for stupid hours and not getting paid for it. I’m not sure where my job is going, but it’s driving there pretty fast and the only room for me is if I squeeze into
the boot. Which is full of socks, for some reason.
I have no time to work on my NaNoWriMo entry because any free time I have is spent looking for or quoting for the bits of contract work I’m
hoping will help me to avoid starvation.
Not to mention the other projects I’d like to spend time on: Jukebox and Binky’s Big Adventure, among others.
Duality is misbehaving. This displeases me.
I accidentally bit my tongue quite badly (as in: spitting out heaps of blood) last night, and it hurts a lot and I can’t talk properly today, which is always a disadvantage when one had
to run a training session in content management. Drinking is painful. I haven’t dared try eating yet.
As a result of all of the above, I’m remarkably stressed and keep snapping at people. If you’re among the snapees (yes, it’s a word – because I said so, that’s why), I apologise.
We can’t afford to come up to Jon’s bonfire.
I still haven’t got around to arranging stuff I need to for the Abnib Real Ale Ramble, and we really need to send the forms and things off this weekend.
The Good
Contract work is looking promising: if I get everything I’m quoting for I’ll actually earn almost double this month than I would for my “day job”. That said, the odds of
getting everything is pretty damn low.
I’m feeling carelessly optimistic about a particular chunk of work that might become available to me next Wednesday.
Claire’s being supportive (both emotionally and financially) and useful. And, on a probably-unrelated note, sex is particularly fantastic of late.
So; a little bit of disbalance in the lists, but I’m hoping I can clear that up next week. Otherwise, it’ll be the corned-beef-on-toast-week all over again.
Here’s a geeky (well, geekier) retelling of The Matrix.
This is a repost promoting content originally bookmarked via del.icio.us. See more del.icio.us imports or more things Dan's reposted.
Bookmarked via del.icio.us: Dan and Alex – Just Another Webcomic.
Hot on the heels of the news that the café below us is for sale, a new café has opened just across the road, where Serendipity (a restaurant I never got the chance to go to) used to be.
Fresh Ground Café can now be found at number 14 Cambrian Place. Claire thinks it’s name is clever because they’re on new and on the ground floor, but that seems a little contrived to me: rather, I think that they’re trying to play upon the fact that they feel they’re bringing some “fresh ideas” to the Aberystwyth coffee shop ‘scene’.
And they’re certainly giving “fresh ideas” a go, at least as far as Aber’s concerned. They open from 10am ’til 11pm, so you can have a late-night coffee and cake before getting back to a long night’s code-hack/NaNoWriMo-writing/Civ IV game. They’re getting wireless internet access, so you’ll be able to surf the web while you much your croissant. They do hot and cold food (both light meals and snacks) throughout the day. They have board games to play. They have huge leather couches. And most of the produce seems to be organic and/or fair trade.
Bryn, Paul and I each ordered the soup of the day – tomato soup – which turned out to be a deliciously thick and delicately spiced soup that was more filling than we’d expected. Claire ordered a cream cheese bagel. Bryn and Claire tried out the coffees, Paul had a warm-milk-with-syrup drink, and I sampled the hot chocolate, which sent me giddy for most of the evening.
Later, we examined their selection of board games: just the typical “family games pack” affair: a chess set with plastic pieces, a copy of “snakes and ladders”, Chinese checkers, backgammon etc. I taught Bryn to play Arimaa while Claire and Paul played checkers. Not much to excite board game geeks like ourselves, but the large tables and availability of freshly ground coffee might make the cafe a suitable venue for games of Chez Geek, Chrononauts, Fluxx, and other (friendly, civilised – Munchkin is out!) games.
It looks like this new café is trying to tap into a so-far-undiscovered market in Aber: for an evening venue without alcohol or smoking in which one can enjoy a civilised drink with friends. The prices are a little more than we’re used to – we paid just under £20 for 2 coffees, 2 teas, a hot milk drink, 2 hot chocolates, a ribena, three bowls of soup, and a bagel – from the likes of MGs or The Mecca, but are still quite reasonable. The venue itself is pleasant, although it may be a little “out of the way” for some patrons and will certainly have to compete with MGs for some of the business lunchtime traffic (I note that the Fresh Ground Café has already launched a reward card scheme very similar to that of MGs).
Worth a look.
Can’t say too much on here, but I can’t help but feel like I might need re-think my career options from this point. That is all.
The gents toilets on the first floor of the building where I work is a complete mystery to me.
That’s not strictly true. I know where the stalls and the urinals are. I know how to make the taps – little push-button ones – work. I know that the hand dryer to the right typically warms up a lot faster than the one on the left. I know to check that there’s toilet paper first (because there frequently isn’t) and that I can liberate some from the overstocked disabled toilet down the corridor if I need them. I know all this.
What’s got me confused is the automatic lighting. Whenever I enter the room, the lights come on.
There are no sensors on the door, so far as I can see, and there is no optic sensor that could have spotted me (the only optic sensor I can see sits above the urinals and regulates the flush, so it doesn’t waste water when nobody’s in there – but the lights always seem to come on before I’m far enough into the room to be within the line of sight of this sensor). There is an optic sensor inset into the ceiling of the antechamber between the corridor and the toilets, but it can’t be this that’s responsible for the lights because I’ve tried to trigger that one (without entering the toilets themselves) and it doesn’t seem to do anything. There doesn’t seem to be a pressure sensor or anything. And the most mysterious bit of all: if you hide in the stall where a sensor might not be able to see you… or if you stand very still… the lights still stay on until you leave. I’m pretty sure it’s not activated by sound, as the car park can be pretty noisy sometimes and I’ve never gone to the toilet, that I can remember, and found the lights already on when I got there: I always see them flicker on.
Yes, it’s true: I’ve spent the afternoon so far playing hide and seek and musical statues with myself in the gents toilets. But I’m of an inquisitive mind and this is a mystery that needs solving. Perhaps there’s some kind of concealed optic sensor, or infrared tripwire grid across the entire floor (I’ll try standing on the seat of the toilet for awhile, later). Maybe there’s a body heat sensor of some variety. Maybe there’s a little imp hiding in the wall cavity with a remote control. Maybe it’s entirely random. Maybe I’ll never know.
I’m going to go to the toilet again…
Well, here goes nothing.
As many of you already know, I’m participating this November in NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month contest. The aim is to write, from a standing start, 50,000 words in 30 days. So… about 1,700 words a day. There were days that my dissertation got a lot more than that out of me, but then: I wasn’t working full time as well as helping with a million and one other projects when I wrote-up my dissertation. And in the end, that came to under 30,000 words.
In answer to the inevitable questions from those folks who can’t understand why I’m engaging in this ludicrous idea: no, I don’t expect to write something publishable; no, I don’t expect even to reach 50,000 words; yes, I’m going to give it a bloody good shot. I’m being joined in this challenge by several folks in Aber, including, I’m lead to believe (although some of these seem a little uncertain), by Sian, Paul, JTA, and Jimmy. A little bit of healthy competition as we try to keep our WordBars filling up will probably do me the world of good. Let’s see how far we can get.
When I say “All ready for NaNoWriMo,” of course, I am lying at least a little. I have only the vaugest idea of a story and no idea where it’s going, two characters: both underdeveloped, and no way of tying together all the ideas in my head. And I’ve written nothing down. This could turn out to be an inspirational benefit, or a self-destructive nightmare. But we’ll see, either way.
Anyway; better get ready to get to it. Damnit; why does Civilization IV have to be released in November, too…
There are some very strange tags on Flickr, the photo sharing service, such as this one which was revealed to me today: Soup On Your Head. It’s pictures of people… with soup on their heads. And that’s it. Damn weird.
Go on, JTA, tease yourself a little longer with a copy of the menu theme from Civilization IV.
This time from Corel:
