Sunday, October 31, 2010

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Well, my least favourite day of the year is here. It's dark and cold outside, and it's back to work tomorrow after a week off. Colour me unimpressed.

I finished off Unit 4 of M255 this afternoon with an interesting consolidation exercise and some bits about code re-use and encapsulation which proved to be food for thought. I'm about three weeks ahead of schedule now and when I've done the next unit I'll be able to do the rest of the TMA 01 in plenty of time. Apparently there's an open day coming up soon, so I think I'd like to go and talk to an adviser about whether I should sign up for the 60 point course I want to do starting in February next year.

In Pocket Frogs news, I've managed to breed a habitat full of Lanternas with a pumpkin backdrop for the Halloween themed challenge, and I was also pleased to find that a bit of random cross-breeding had produced a rare Chroma that changes colour. Shiny!

Halloween Links


Saturday, October 30, 2010

Autumn Colours

Summer's Almost Gone

Another crisp Autumn day, perfect for tramping through the big piles of leaves that are accumulating in our corner of the field. I could do without the imminent dark nights and exploding fireworks for the next two weeks or so.

I managed my statutory hour of work on java methods, focusing on the correct use of returns and arguments. I'm gradually finding my way round the development environment and editor now, and it's all starting to make sense at last. I'd quite like a plug in or something to use vi as an editor, but that's my old unix geek coming out again.

In games news, Rock Band 3 is excellent. It's quite easily the most comprehensive music game around now, and the new quick play mode makes finding what you want to play, by genre, year, difficulty or whatever, a snap. The interface takes a bit of getting used to, and the manual isn't really much help, but it now seems possible for people to swap in and out of the game at any point and adjust difficulty and other settings at any point. Which is nice.

The keyboard really does feel like a professional bit of kit, which it is - there's a proper midi output on the side, so it's eminently usable with Garageband if you have a midi to USB cable. The learning curve for it is fearsome, but this is something that is going to take the same dedication as proper music lessons with scales and chords to practice.

Music wise, there are plenty of good tunes on the tracklist to explore, with early highlights from last night's session being the Doors, Amy Winehouse and the uber-cheesy J Geils Band Centerfold to enjoy. It was also straightforward to import all of our existing tracks from Rock Band 1 and 2, giving us lots of stuff to go at.

If you have the time, money and inclination, then Rock Band 3 is an absolute must buy.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Break on Through

Listen!

PS - We have Rock Band 3. We have mojitos. Friday night is go, I repeat Friday night is go!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

For the Rev

No more extra lives
The end credits roll too soon
Rest in peace, Owen

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Zombie

Today has had a bit of an undead flavour to it (insert appropriate spooky noises here - thunderclaps, creaking floorboards, sinister laughter - that sort of thing).

To precis - lie in, walk in the woods, rake the leaves off the lawn, nice cup of coffee, a bit more work on Java methods and then lunch. It was around this time that somebody mentioned on Twitter that 'Plants vs Zombies' was on sale on the app store, so I went and downloaded it, having enjoyed the demo version on my Mac a while back.

Four hours later ...

Hoo boy, what a splendidly addictive game. If you haven't played it, it's a fairly straightforward tower defense sort of game, but the hook is that each level introduces a new plant to add to your armory, a different layout to the yard that you are defending, new types of zombies requiring a change in tactics or even night time levels with mushrooms to plant instead. There are different play formats as well, including speed rounds and 'whack a zombie' variants to spice things up a bit. The upshot of this is to make it nearly impossible to play a level without wanting to try the next one to see what that is like too.

The other zombie related item was the Undead Nightmare pack for Red Dead Redemption which adds a new single player campaign in which the Wild West is overrun by creatures rising from the grave. It is surprisingly spooky, as well as upping the difficulty with very limited ammo and headshots being a must to finish off the zombies. The most effective weapon turns out to be a flaming torch to set zombies on fire, although they still lurch after you for a while before finally succumbing.

Talking of westerns, last night's movie was Dead Man's Shoes from director Shane Meadows and co-written with star Paddy Considine. It concerns an ex soldier returning to take revenge on the gang of small time thugs and drug dealers who bullied, humiliated and abused his younger brother. It veers from black comedy, to stark tragedy as the tale unfolds, with an electrifying performance by Considine in the lead role. It put me in mind of High Plains Drifter in places, with a nightmarish edge to it. Well worth a watch, and it proves that you don't need big budgets or showy special effects to make a movie that will have you gripped from start to finish.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Haikusday

Rain falls in darkness
Cats eat, then escape indoors
Dog goes back to bed

JDK installed
Blue J set up with workspace
No need for Windows

Legendary frogs
Take an inordinate time
To hatch out from eggs

The gasman cometh
Pronounces all in order
For the winter cold

Clouds chased by the wind
Scud across the sky like ships
Seeking safe harbour

Monday, October 25, 2010

Screaming Yellow - Rachel Green

Screaming YellowScreaming Yellow by Rachel Green

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The sleepy village of Laverstone hides many secrets. Why did an elderly widow hang herself? Who killed the charismatic Robert Markew by stabbing him in the back with a ceremonial dagger? Why has his step-son Richard disappeared? Most importantly, what goes on behind the closed doors of the Larches?

The only person who can uncover all of the secrets is newcomer to the village Meinwen Jones, pagan bookshop proprietor and amateur sleuth. She doggedly investigates the complex relationships of the polyamorous community led by the late Robert Markew, spars with genial parish priest Father Brande and finds that his sister Jennifer has brought village gossip into the 21st century with the aid of the internet.

This is a classical murder mystery in the best traditions of Agatha Christie, complete with a drawing room denouement and a delicious twist at the end. However, there is a strong BDSM theme running through the plot which I imagine would have Miss Marple reaching for the smelling salts, so readers of a sensitive disposition be warned. Fans of Rachel Green's 'An Ungodly Child' will be pleased to see a cameo appearance from the mysterious Mr Jasfoup, although there are no deus-ex-machina resolutions to the mystery - just a good, old fashioned trail of clues to unravel before the murderer is unmasked.

Highly recommended!



View all my reviews

Fish 'n' Chip Paper

Today has been a good day.

The first official day of my week off, so I started as I meant to go on with a lie in and the chance to finish off 'Screaming Yellow' that I was reading on my Kindle as it was meant to be enjoyed - namely with a nice cup of tea. Smashing.

After a walk in the woods (crisp, clear and crunchy with a touch of frost on the grass) and a coffee, I settled down to a spot of course work. I can now tell why you can't use '==' to compare two strings in Java, whereas you can use it to compare two character literals. True.

Next on the agenda was a trip into town for a mooch around the shops and thence unto the renowned drinking establishment the Devonshire Cat where I was eager to partake of their finest Jaipur pale ale and a plate of their magnificent beer battered fish and chips. Even the student wittering on to her like, boyfriend, like, sitting on the, like, next table, like, y'know, like, all the, like, time, like, couldn't distract from the sumptuousness of the comestibles on offer, like. Nom.

Home for a nap, another walk and then I spotted that Sarah Jane Adventures is on CBBC two days before it gets broadcast on BBC1, so I recorded that and then watched it with a gingerbread latte. Top tip - if somebody recommends that you pre-froth the milk before heating it up in the microwave, then pay them no heed - it's a recipe for a dairy based volcanic eruption scenario. Frothy.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

Dirty Dog

Chilly and bright today - perfect for tramping through piles of leaves in the woods with the dog. Lovely.

Talking of the dog, he found something vile to roll in for the second time in three days this afternoon, necessitating a thorough bath to clean him up. I found the offending corpse which was so rotten with decay that it was actually stuck to the patio and I had to scrub it off with hot water and the yard broom to get rid of it. Yuck.

Apart from that, it has been yet another lazy Sunday afternoon (ah). There might be a song in there somewhere ...

Sunday Links

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Paws for Thought

The Beginning of Memory

Weather, as cheery as a drizzly October day can be expected to be. Ho hum.

It struck me just now that the one thing I haven't done with the new sound system is play some music off of a CD through it (yes, just like in the olden days Granddad). I've become so used to listening to music via my iPhone with the option of something around 3,500 tracks to choose from (not to mention podcasts and audiobooks) that the act of selecting an album and listening to it in sequential order seems quite an unusual thing to do.

So, to remedy this I've just put on the CD of Homeland by Laurie Anderson and it really is superb. The depth and detail in the sound is a revelation, particularly in the contrast between the high pitched strings and the deep, resonant bass. Yum.

In other news, today has not been entirely given over to Angry Birds, Pocket Frogs, Words with Friends, Carcassonne and afternoon naps. Oh no. I knuckled down to a couple of hours of OU work and finished the TMA question for units 1 - 3, so it's on to Unit 4 tomorrow, which is where it looks like the course starts to up the programming content to a more challenging level.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Praying to the aliens

Work finished for the day, and a week off in prospect, and boy do I need it. I'm feeling somewhat run down and not looking forward to the dark evenings when the clocks go back. Still, looking on the bright side (ho, ho, I am satirical) I have my lumie light on and a gingerbread latte with a shot of extra strength espresso lurking in it somewhere.

I'm currently watching Sarah Jane Adventures on iPlayer in a window and thoroughly enjoying it. Not quite as spooky as last week's 'Nightmare Man', which I imagine will have sent more than a few kiddly winks scurrying behind the sofa.

Anyhoo, it's Friday night, so you know the drill - drink of choice on standby and fire up Rock Band ... NOW!

Thursday, October 21, 2010

I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire

A red sky of apocalyptic proportions this morning, transitioning from a sullen, pale orange to a full on fiery crimson as I drove northwards to work. I was feeling rubbish too, with aching limbs and the beginning of a cough. I hope that it doesn't turn into anything worse in time for my week off.

Work was a buzz of low level irritation, with the usual slew of irritating ring tones topped up by an incessant beeping noise like a brain damaged R2 D2 whilst the tech support guy set up our new printer. This seemed to involve keying in vast strings of random characters to the keypad on the machine. Quite why a printer needs such loud keypad tones when there is a perfectly good visual display built in is beyond me. At least we no longer have to walk down to the far end of the office to pick up documents now.

In M255 news, I have finished Unit 3, and while it was reasonably straight forward, it introduced some fundamental concepts of object orientation in Java, as well as some quirks and oddities of the way that reference variables behave. I think that, as with any language, some of this is not going to fully click into place until I have done a bit more programming of actual code rather than looking at individual snippets out of a wider context. My current plan is to keep working at the rate of one unit a week, with a week for TMAs, which will put me comfortably ahead and give me the option of starting another course in parallel in February.

In games news, I have mostly been playing the usual triumvirate of Words, Carcassonne and Pocket Frogs on the iPhone combined with Rock Band on a Friday and Saturday night. I have a hankering to complete Fallout 3 properly before getting Fallout : New Vegas, possibly to play over Christmas, when they've fixed the reported bugs. There's Fable 3 due out as well, but I might wait for the reviews on that one. We shall see.

In telly news, we watched the first part of Mark Gatiss' 'History of Horror' on BBC 4, and it really was a superb look back at the classic early films of the thirties, in particular the iconic work of James Whale with stars Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi, through the RKO shockers of the 40s and into the early 50s when SF ruled the roost. Well worth a watch on iPlayer, and I'm looking forward to the rest of the short series.

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Waking the Witch

The first frost of the fall this morning - one degree centigrade and a thin sheen of ice on the car. Not quite enough to need scraping though and it soon melted away with a blast from the demist button. I like mornings like this, particularly when they are followed by a day of sunshine and achingly blue skies.

A busy day at work, but a positive one. We had a team meeting at lunch time for the first time in ages and found out that we have comfortably exceeded our division targets for this year. Which is nice. No word on the possibility of any pay rises, but at least the boss took us all out to the pub across the road for a drink. Which was also nice.

Jamie wanted to watch a scary movie last night, so we dug out The Blair Witch Project for a re-watch. It still stands up as an interesting movie in its own right, even without the viral meme hype of the original release. The interviews with the various town folk in the first section do a good job of establishing the myth and back story without needing to spell it out in big friendly letters for the hard of thinking. The shaky cam faux documentary style may seem a little clichéd now, but this film deserves some recognition for establishing it almost as a genre in its own right, with many of the same tropes appearing in films like Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcist.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Haikusday

For madame's breakfast
A choice of finest kibble
Or freshly caught mouse

The sun rises like a
Thermonuclear balloon
Floating in the sky

Battery red lines
As new obsession takes hold
Must play Angry Birds

Lunchtime wrap combo
Coleslaw, salad and red cheese
Nom nom nom nom nom

Chaos in numbers
Complex iterations hide
Infinite beauty

Monday, October 18, 2010

Chaos Engine

Dark and cold this morning, with the sun not rising until after I had left the house. Slow on the road too, but I think that's a given at this time of year, particularly on a Monday morning. Grmmph. Still, at least I have a week off booked next week for half term to look forward to.

October seems to have snuck up on me somewhat and I've only just realised that I hadn't changed the month on our 'Cute Cats' calendar that hangs under the noticeboard. The leaves haven't really started to fall in earnest yet and I suspect that we'll need a couple of decent storms to shake them loose.

The office was noisy today, with engineers working on the air conditioning system which meant drilling noises, ceiling panels down (revealing a surprisingly large roof space up above) and men clambering over desks to disable the smoke detectors by fitting them with little plastic covers lest the fire alarm be triggered by dust. Not an ideal working environment, I would say.

In games news, I finally joined the rest of the world and bought a copy of Angry Birds (as seen on The Rev's definitive 100 best games list) and waddayknow - it's actually pretty darn good. The controls can be a bit on the fiddly side, which can make lining up the shot that you want a bit hit and miss (ho, ho, I am satirical), but it is quick to restart a level until you get it right. The graphics and sound effects are spot on for a game like this, with the right level of detail and humour. Absolutely perfect for 'just one more go' play.

Finally, I note that the great mathematician Benoit Mandlebrot died the other day. I remember being impressed at seeing a graphical mapping of the Mandlebrot set at a computer graphics exhibition in Edinburgh some time in the early 80s and then being even more impressed when I read an article (which I suspect may have been in Scientific American) explaining how it was generated from the simple and elegant iteration of z_(n+1) = z_n^2 + c | z_0 = c - I wrote a program in a couple of lines of code and watched in wonder as the set unfurled before my eyes.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Revolution

Another disturbed night, with my stomach churning like a dodgy washing machine on a spin cycle. Not sure if it was the Subway sandwich I had for lunch or something else, but whatever it was was not exactly conducive to a restful night's kip.

Last night's movie was 'The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus' which turned out to be rather good. Gilliam is a somewhat uneven director, with his imagination and ambition notoriously outstripping both his budgets and the technology required to put the contents of his brain on screen. Fortunately in this film CGI has been used alongside some fantastic production design to good effect to tell a somewhat rambling tale of a travelling sideshow, an immortal storyteller and a wager with the devil.

The other thing that Gilliam is known for is the legendary bad luck that his productions seem to be cursed with and this one was no exception, with the death of leading man Heath Ledger part way through filming. However, Gilliam rescued the picture by drafting in Johnny Depp, Jude Law and Colin Farrell to play Ledger's character in different dream sequences, and this audacious bit of cinematic sleight of hand actually works rather well.

Worth a watch, but expect to spend a fair bit of the film scratching your head and wondering exactly what is going on.

Today has been a fairly laid back day, with a bit of catching up from my tutorial yesterday, submishing the first part of my first TMA and watching some of the live streaming from TAM : London. I was rather amused by PZ Myers response to the call to skeptics to 'Don't be a dick' with the alternative suggestion being 'Do be a Richard' (as in Wiseman and Dawkins).

Sunday Links

IKEA Herding Cats Redux

Saturday, October 16, 2010

Book of Saturday

Strange dreams again, no doubt fuelled by the bottle of Mount Gay Eclipse that I made a start on last night. No lie in either, as today was my first M255 tutorial day in Leeds so after taking the dog for a quick turn around the woods it was onto the motorway for exactly the same journey as I do every other day.

Well, not exactly the same, as without the usual week day traffic, the trip takes considerably less time, and was exactly the right duration to listen to the latest Shift Run Stop which was a real saunter down memory lane to the true story behind great Prestel hack carried out by Robert Schifreen back in the 80s. A salutary lesson in computer security, I think.

We parked in my office car park and I walked up to the university to find the assigned room for my tutorial which turned out to be, as the helpful porter explained, up the stairs, first left, along the corridor, past the first set of lifts, up to the seventh floor, left and then right, and in fact, in a completely different building. Hmmmm.

The tutorial was mainly an overview of the course, with some useful tips and things to watch out for in the assessments and the end of course exam. I think the other tutorials will cover more practical aspects as we cover more of the material.

Lunch in a handy Subway, and then back home for a much needed snooze.

Dat's me in da corner

Friday, October 15, 2010

MITCH BENN - I'M PROUD OF THE BBC

The White Room

It's the end of what seems to have been an exceptionally long week. The weather seemed to match my mood with the sky turning as black as a Bible just before I finished work and then bucketing down with rain as I made my way round the woods with the dog.

I've been in somewhat of a philosophical mood after the shock of The Rev dying two days ago. It's made me realise how important the relationships that I have with the people that make up my virtual communities and social networks actually are - it's somewhat of a cliche to say it, but you really don't know what you've got until it's gone.

Anyhoo, I intend to honour Owen's memory tonight by carrying on as normal with a large Mojito and a game of Rock Band and you are all welcome to join me.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

When the music's over

The internet is a funny place.

Funny ha-ha, funny peculiar and funny in unexpected ways.

Many years ago - before Twitter, before Facebook, before fancy web forums - those in the know hung out on Usenet. It's a simple and robust way of distributing messages amongst groups of like minded people, and it's still there if you know where to look and have a certain amount of tech savvy to set up a news reader (or the bloody minded determination to use Google Groups).

One of the groups that I was part of at that time was uk.games.video.misc - an eclectic group of gamers who (mostly) managed to transcend the usual format wars and console advocacy (usually by owning every possible console) and spent their time discussing anything and everything from obscure Japanese role playing games to the best place to get a scart switch to plans for the weekend. It was a true mini-community, with the common factor of a shared interest in games linking a diverse collection of people.

Any group has its share of regulars, and one of those was Owen - known as The Rev or ThatRevChap or some variant along those lines. He wrote with wit and style about his favourite games, was always willing to offer advice and help and frequently arranged multi-player meet ups for the sheer joy of playing games with people who enjoyed playing for its own sake.

In recent years he has been writing an excellent blog to keep a record of what he has been playing on his iPhone and other platforms, and it is worth browsing his series of posts on his voyage of discovery in Minecraft. He was a regular on Twitter too, and he always had games of Carcassonne and Words with Friends on the go.

He died yesterday, out of the blue.

He'd posted a grumpy message the other day about having a chest infection and breathing difficulties, and begrudging the time off work. The next thing we heard was that he'd had a heart attack and the paramedics hadn't been able to save him. He leaves behind a wife who he'd met online and who had travelled across an ocean so they could be together.

Farewell big fella. It was a joy and privilege to read all of your posts and to play games with you. You will be missed. The world is a less fun place today.

Game over man, game over.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Library Suite

Weather : grey and chilly to start, but soon brightening up. Better than a poke in the eye with an isobar.

Last night's movie was Agora, the story of Hypatia of Alexandria who observant readers will recall I nominated as my choice for women in science day a while back. It's a film that made me both angry and depressed as it showed the bloodthirsty rise to power of the early Christians as they suppressed and forcibly converted the pagans, massacred and exiled the Jews and snuffed out the last flickering flames of knowledge of the ancient world by sacking the great library of Alexandria and turning it into a cattle shed.

The film is spectacular, and quite gruesome in places (although one pivotal scene is notably toned down), and tells a compelling story only threatening to tip into melodrama occasionally. Rachel Weisz is the big name star and does an excellent job portraying Hypatia as a scholar, teacher and spirited free thinker. It is a European production, co-written and directed by Alejandro Amenabar and, not entirely surprisingly, struggled to get into cinemas in the US.

Little is known of the teachings of Hypatia (gee, thanks Christians) although she is reputed to have been a great mathematician for her work on curves as well as an astronomer, so it is not too fanciful for the film to suggest that she might have arrived at an understanding of relative motion and heliocentric elliptical orbits some 1200 years before Keppler. One can only speculate as to what sort of world we might live in now if the power hungry bishops hadn't chosen brutish ignorance and a thousand years of the dark ages over scientific truth just so they could ponce around in stupid fucking hats.

The truly depressing thing of course is that Christians (accompanied by their spiritual cousins the Taliban) seem intent on doing the same thing again now, from Texas school boards rewriting history to creationist museums to school girls having acid thrown in their faces for the crime of wanting to learn.

Welcome to 400 AD, folks ...

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Haikusday

Four fifteen AM
Dark dreams of violent deeds
Words with Friends calms nerves

Morning TV blares
It is too early for such
Cheerful bonhomie

The cats compete for
First dibs on the noms and then
A warm spot to snooze

Armed with yellow pen
I attack my OU notes
Critical highlights

Farewell to a true
Champion of common sense
And staunch humanist

Monday, October 11, 2010

One Weekend

A fine weekend weather-wise, with a somewhat sullen Saturday being more than offset by a supremely sunny Sunday, appropriately enough.

As mentioned previously, it was Alicia's birthday weekend (twenty this year - crikey, how did that happen?) and she had a fine time, marred only by the now traditional annual argument with her mother, but we shall draw a discrete veil over that I think. Other than that she had fun filling up her new iPod touch with music, apps and old black and white episodes of Doctor Who before we all headed off into town.

The annual Sheffield 'Off the Shelf' literary festival is on at the moment, so we took the opportunity to join in with a book reading flash mob that I had read about on Twitter first thing in the morning. At precisely one o'clock a performance poet with a megaphone started reading out a specially composed bit of verse and everyone who was in on the event stopped in place and started reading a favourite book for the next three minutes. My personal choice was 'Moominland Midwinter' and it was a rather lovely experience to get engrossed in my own little world amidst the hustle and bustle of Saturday shoppers for a brief moment. I'm not sure if any of the official photos have appeared on line yet but I'll link to them when they do.



After that, all Alicia wanted to do was have a mooch around the shops with a special excursion to Forbidden Planet to buy some Doctor Who tat, before ending up in Waterstones for an extended browse. We also watched a bit more poetry in the spoken word tent and snacked on some rather tasty free pakoras and Indian sweets that were being handed out. Nom.

Back home for an evening playing Rock Band and eating Jan's world renowned hot pepper wings and rice. Nom again. My mum and dad were up for the weekend as well, and my dad proved to be something of a wannabe rocker joining in on vocals on Deep Purple's 'Highway Star' (rapidly becoming mah favourite thing to play on guitar) and even having a go on the drums. Most excellent fun, enhanced even more by the big telly and the sound system with the Dobly digital cranked up to eleven. Thank goodness we live in a detached house!

Sunday, as mentioned, was gloriously sunny and the main business of the day was lunch at the Acorn Inn just up from our house. The food was plentiful and tasty (I opted for sausage, mash and onion gravy served in a perfectly hee-yuge Yorkshire pud - thrice nom). After that all I was fit for was to snooze off my calorie overload before packing up the car with all of the books and bits and bobs that we couldn't take with us when we took Alicia to her digs first time around, and driving back to Huddersfield as the sun slipped down behind the mist shrouded wind turbines.

All in all, an ACEBEST weekend, I would say!

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Sunday Links

Friday, October 08, 2010

Mist - Protocol Rain

After yesterday's glorious sunshine, we woke up to grey mists and drizzle this morning but not much mellow fruitfulness as far as I could see. Oh well, nothing that the light box can't banish.

Blogging may be a bit truncated over the next couple of days - Alicia is home for her birthday tomorrow, and we've got my Mum and Dad up for the weekend as well. We've managed to get the house sorted (with Jan doing the lion's share of the work) and it all feels a bit like Christmas.

We've all been out for a walk in the woods - I must remember to take my phone tomorrow because there are some new highland cows in the field with some impressive looking fringes and pointy horns. I think the farmer must be trying out some rare breeds.

Anyhoo, it's Friday night, so there will be cocktails (and Beatles Rock Band)!

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Tiger Feet

A slight nip in the air first thing, followed by glorious sunshine and blue skies. I could get used to this sort of weather, I think.

I had my first OU anxiety dream last night. I realised that I had signed up to a level two maths course, but I hadn't started on time and was struggling to catch up on several weeks of study. I don't know why I should be worrying, as I'm comfortably on top of the M255 work so far and I'm already finding the methodology of thinking about objects to be very useful in looking at problems at work which are mainly down to the way our systems have been hacked around in a very non-object orientated sort of way.

Into town at lunch time, to take advantage of the fine weather and to do a bit of shopping. Leeds city centre in the middle of the day is a bit of wretched hive of scum and villainy though, with some very shady looking characters standing outside some of the pubs. On the way back to the office a drunk, toothless Scotsman tried to say something to me, but I honestly could not understand a word he was saying. Most disturbing, not to say sad.

In eyelash news, a bit of random googling last night (not usually a good idea for health problems, I know) produced a bit of advice so glaringly obvious that I hadn't thought of it. Apparently the thing to do is gently pull out any loose lashes with thumb and forefinger as a preventative measure before they fall off and get stuck under the lid. My first go at this removed quite a few loose lashes but the ones that are still there seem to be a bit more firmly attached. Hopefully this will help, either that, or I will end up with bald eyelids.

In games news, Pocket Frogs seems to be a bit more stable after the latest update including Game Centre integration of leaderboards and friends lists. I'm still enjoying the process of catching 'em all and working through the challenges, even if the Froggydex percentage reports rather worryingly that I have only seen 3% of the 14,000 and some possible species in the game. Good fun, and well worth a go if you haven't downloaded it yet. Achievements today include getting eight Tangelo Albeo Calyx and eight Black Tingo Viduos for the Tiger Style and Black Widows awards respectively.

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Fire Eye'd Boy

A disturbed night's sleep, not helped by the dog barking at something at two in the morning followed by some very odd dreams about reading an advert in an old newspaper for a company who would cover your garden with broken glass, like a glittery, sharp Japanese Zen garden. Weird.

When I woke up my eyes were gummy and sore too. I seem to getting stray eyelashes stuck under my eyelids on most mornings now, and it is becoming a real pain (literally). I'm due an eyetest soon, so I'll have to ask if there's anything I can do about it. It's a good thing I no longer wear contact lenses as I remember that a lash and lens sharing an eyeball is a recipe for serious discomfort - as it is, it's an irritation but one that I could do without.

Raining first thing, with a shunt on the motorway just after my junction that held me up for a while. At least I've cleared my podcast backlog of selected old editions of 'Shift Run Stop' including a couple that will be a real treat for any old school gamers out there with interviews with game designer Rainer Knizier, and Livingstone & Jackson of Games Workshop fame. This is rapidly turning into one of mah favourite podcasts with its mix of interesting interviews, games chatter and snack food reviews.

Off out at lunchtime to the retail park, and the weather changed from a shower of rain with fat, lazy drops to brilliant sunshine in the time it took me to walk around the block. I was looking for a Dymo label maker in Staples but they just seemed to have fancy, schmancy electronic ones at an inflated price rather than a good old fashioned manual one with the proper clicky, rotating dial to select the letters. Hmmm, much as it pains me to say it, sometimes old tech that does the job is best.

A couple of good comedies on telly last night. We've been enjoying 'The Inbetweeners' after starting watching the new series recently, so we've gone back to watch the first two series. Very sharply observed school based humour and absolutely excruciating in places. The nerdy central character Will, with his briefcase and buttoned up blazer, who might as well have a big target painted on his back, rather reminds me of myself at that age. Cringe.

The new Alan Davies show 'Whites' is good too - I had been half expecting it to be in a similar vein to Lenny Henry's shouty kitchen based comedy 'Chef' but it manages to find an original spin on the celebrity chef genre, by making the main character laid back and somewhat conniving rather than an overbearing megalomaniac. Worth a watch.

We also watched a bit of 'Ask Rhod Gilbert' too, but I wasn't overly impressed. How can you have a panel show without David Mitchell in this day and age? I thought that he was contractually obliged to appear in 98% of all BBC panel shows and quizzes, and the other 2% of the time be on 'Eight out of Ten Cats' on Channel 4 as well.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Haikusday

Study of Java
Frog objects that exhibit
Polymorphism

Why do all the folk
On Dave Gorman's Genius
Have wonky gnashers?

Awake in the night
Stomach cramps again. Too much
West Indian sauce

Dog stays in his bed
No hurry to get up when
The mornings are dark

When editing code
You should never forget to
Click the save button

A Tuesday night treat
Mash, peas and gravy served with
An ultimate pie

Monday, October 04, 2010

The Beaten Side of Town

A crisp start to the day, with a touch of mist on the fields, followed by clear blue skies and glorious October sunshine. Marvellous.

Another frustrating day at work, trying to get the document viewer plug in working on a web installation. The web app is correctly returning the document (and will open it in another window) but it chokes on running the service to turn the document into a pdf that can be displayed in a box on the page. We're doing it in a somewhat clunky way and the guy who knows most about it wasn't in the office today, so I'm a bit stymied.

In movie news, we watched the classic 1962 film version of 'To Kill a Mockingbird' and powerful stuff it was too. It did seem to rely on knowing some of the back story from the book, but the central court room scene is still absolutely riveting, and Gregory Peck's closing speech really brings a lump to your throat knowing how things are going to turn out.

Sunday, October 03, 2010

The View From The Afternoon

A wet start to the day, with the rain coming down in stair-rods until later on in the mid afternoon. Not bad, on the whole.

The morning was taken up with working through unit one of M255, which was an introduction to the basics of object oriented programming. I'm comfortable with most of the terminology and concepts already, so this was reasonably straight forward. I've installed the course software on my windows PC which is a pain to use, but I've got time to get the development environment set up on Ubuntu instead.

After that, I settled down with a gingerbread latte, a double choc cookie, my lumie light to chase away the gloom and a copy of Rachel Green's new book Screaming Yellow on my Kindle. I happily polished off a quarter of the book in one sitting and I'm really enjoying it so far, even if some of the BDSM scenes are a bit hair raising. It's a bit like an especially saucy episode of Midsomer Murders with mysterious deaths and tangled relationships in a sleepy little village. Good fun, and an absolute bargain for the princely sum of £3.24 on the Kindle store.

Sunday Links

Saturday, October 02, 2010

On Me Shed

Can We Fix It?

Well, to cut to the chase, the answer is 'Yes we can!'.

The day dawned bright and clear, so we set to removing the old shower panel and frame and fitting the new one. We took it step by step and were able to reuse the existing runners screwed into the walls which saved one tricky job of drilling into the tiles. The new frame was the same size as the existing one, so we knew how much to cut off at the bottom to get it to fit into the shower tray, and everything slotted into place very neatly. We had more or less finished and tidied up by lunchtime, so now we have a clean, freshly decorated and non grotty bathroom, which seems a minor miracle after seeing it full of broken glass last weekend.

In other news, I had a remarkably vivid zombie apocalypse dream last night, in which I was part of a team investigating a secret military base that was the source of the infection. It was pretty gruesome but strangely satisfying to let rip with a pump action shotgun at the oncoming undead hordes. Perhaps I need to play some Left 4 Dead?

Friday, October 01, 2010

Lime in the coconut

The weather has turned from needing the windows open in the office yesterday to chucking it down with rain for most of the day today. I thought I had found a gap in the showers around teatime, but it came down again when me and the dog were half way round our circuit leaving us both soaked.

Bit of an odd day really - I logged onto work this morning and wondered why it was taking such a long time to establish a database connection, so I rebooted and tried again, still with no joy. I rang the office and found out that the servers were being moved, hence scuppering the plans I'd had for the day. I resorted to plowing through the software developers notes for the payroll legislative changes that we need to spec out for the next release.

In between bits of work I downloaded the pdf versions of my course notes to my Kindle, and I was very pleased with the results. It is very handy to have an entire bookshelf's worth of notes on something the size and thickness of an A5 envelope. I am still not quite used to the idea of not having to switch it off at any point, as the electronic ink display consumes no power unless you are turning a page. Very clever.

In games news, not much to report other than the usual round of Words, Carcassonne and rather a lot of frog cross breeding. I've not felt much like playing Halo:Reach this week - I had had it in mind to play last Sunday until the great shower door disaster of 2010. We've got the new panel and door to fir tomorrow, so maybe I'll be in the mood after that, although I should make a start on my OU work as well.

Anyhoo, enough of such thoughts, it's Friday night - hurrah!