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I've been meaning to write this up for a while, but certain events impelled me to try to get it out while it still has a slight pretense of timeliness.
( That thing you said... )
Two things about Mark Shuttleworth's remarks before I go on to talk about the bigger picture.
First: what he said (that Linux is "hard to explain to girls") represented a lapse in judgement, or at least phrasing; it wasn't a deliberate and calculated exercise in dumbassery à la CouchDB. That particular choice of words didn't seem like something Shuttleworth would be particularly invested in, which is why I can't understand why it seems to be so hard to set things aright with a simple "I misspoke; it's not cool to cast all women as technical novices; I'll try to do better in the future."
Second: what floors me even more than Shuttleworth's remarks is the reaction that's come from the community. When you can't even say "Hey, you know, I think we should talk about the issue of sexism in F/OSS" without a crowd of people telling you "OMG, you're blowing things out of proportion, there's no problem, STFU" -- that's a pretty good sign that there's a problem.
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Hi, I'm Rick.
<chorus> Hi Rick. </chorus>
I've been wanting to contribute to Dreamwidth for a goodly while, but haven't had the time until now. At the moment, I don't have any contracts in the works for my consulting business, so I've got the opportunity to work on DW for something like full time. Before very long, of course, I'm going to have line something up, but (amongst other things) I'm hoping to start the ball rolling on a browser-based test suite (perhaps using Windmill) before things go back to business as usual.
Thanks to everyone who's given me a hand so far, and to everybody who's contributed to DW to date -- there's a high concentration of Awesome here. =)
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Lately I've started signing all my outgoing mail with my GPG key. This has had two salutary effects, the first intentional, the second not quite so:
- I've started to actually remember my damn passphrase, and
- every time I send a message, I'm reminded that I own those words, so I'd damn well better make sure they reflect positively upon me.
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One of the reasons some people give for the fact that there are fewer women than men involved in many areas of technology, engineering, and "hard" sciences is that, you know, women and girls aren't very interested in that "tech stuff"; they just don't like it as much as men and boys.
If you would have been with us on our trip to Science North this past weekend, you would have seen that argument for the great load of bullshit that it is. Not only did our girls have a great time, there was pretty close to an even gender split amongst the other kids in attendance, and I sure didn't see anyone off in the corner sulking about how "boring" or "uninteresting" the place was.
(This post courtesy of my discovering a store of unfinished, half-written blog posts hanging out on my hard drive.)
A fair while ago, I read The Mythical Man-month, a truly legendary tome in software engineering. While the maxims, rules, and expertise it contains are what make it a classic, I was astonished at the accuracy of the predictions that Brooks laid out in an out-of-the-way table near the back of the book: (p203, Fig 16.1)
Exciting Products:
Yes
- Unix
- APL
- Pascal
- Modula
- Smalltalk
- Fortran
No
- Cobol
- PL/1
- Algol
- MVS/370
- MS-DOS
So, way back in the day, when I was working at UVic, I was writing a program that let my fellow sysadmins track overtime hours. Of course, you get a different amount of credit if your overtime happens on a holiday, and as I started making up a list of stat holiday dates, I thought to myself (as one often does when programming, especially in Perl): "Surely somebody has solved this problem before. If I'm lucky, they've even put code up on CPAN to solve it for me."
The first might have been true, but the second wasn't. There was a whole hierarchy of Date::Holidays modules, with holidays for Germany, Australia, the UK...but not for Canada.
( More on the making of Date::Holidays::CA )
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I complained to the owner of a paintball field about the banner graphic on their website; it features a bikini-clad woman covered in ersatz paint splotches. This kind of thing is common in the paintball industry; I dislike it because I think it portrays women as "scenery" instead of serious players, and because it tells me that the business in question thinks I'm a dick with a wallet instead of a thinking customer.
I got back a reply from the female co-owner of the field saying
I am sorry that you took offence to the banner. It was suggested by my graphic designer who I respect and whom is female. The girl in the photo plays paintball at Double Tap on a regular basis.
...which puts me in the rather, uh, unusual position of telling a cadre of women to knock it off with the women-unfriendly sexist stuff. O_o
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Someone on last.fm suggested posting what country your top 50 artists are from. I'm curious, so here are the results:
Japan (25)
1 B'z
2 THE BLUE HEARTS
4 BUMP OF CHICKEN
5 GReeeeN
7 Perfume
8 アンジェラ・アキ (Angela Aki)
9 嵐 (Arashi)
11 古代祐三(Yuzo Koshiro)
14 YUI
15 L'Arc~en~Ciel
16 ORANGE RANGE
20 HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR
21 SINGER SONGER
23 関ジャニ∞ (Kanjani 8)
27 FUNKY MONKEY BABYS
28 LUNA SEA
29 大塚愛(Ai Otsuka)
31 ロードオブメジャー (Road of Major)
35 MONKEY MAJIK
36 nobodyknows+
38 KinKi Kids
42 レミオロメン (Remioromen)
44 ケツメイシ (Ketsumeishi)
46 TOKIO
51 NEWS
USA (12)
3 Neil Voss
13 The Killers
17 God of Shamisen
18 Flogging Molly
22 Acid Tetris Music Team
24 Bowling for Soup
25 Leigh Nash
32 Papa Roach
34 The Hooters
38 Nelson
43 Jonathan Coulton
47 Guster
Canada (9)
6 The Weekend
10 Billy Talent
12 Two-Minute Miracles
19 Raffi
26 Sarah Harmer
40 Stan Rogers
41 The Lowest of the Low
45 Treble Charger
48 Blarney (they're from my hometown!)
UK (2)
49 Natasha Bedingfield
51 Sandi Thom
Brazil (1)
30 Serapis Bey
Bermuda (1)
36 Heather Nova
Columbia (1)
50 Carolina Marquez
Australia (1)
51 Merril Bainbridge
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As much as people get freaked out about what their kids are getting up to on the internet, who they're texting, what kind of pictures they're taking with their cell phone camera and who they're sending them to, and so forth, all this gadget technology has an upside: equipped with my mp3 player and a suitable selection of audio, I now have infinite perseverance when it comes to trying to outlast a fussy infant who won't settle down and let me nurse her to sleep.
Well...winter is here, and like usual, the first few snowfalls are resulting in dozens of crashes as people forget their winter driving skills and neglect to take the slippery conditions into account.
In the spirit of a gentle reminder, then, here's a little screed that an officer at the local provincial police detachment attached to the end of a press release after a first snowfall a few years ago. While I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir when it comes to my flist, perhaps some of you might want to print it out and tape it up over the water cooler at work or something. =)
(edited to improve spelling, grammar, and presentation.)
SLOW DOWN --- SLOW DOWN --- SLOW DOWN --- SLOW DOWN
Every winter the OPP investigates numerous collisions that result in death, injuries and property damage that never did have to happen.
Every year we ask and tell the driving public to slow down and adjust your driving to the weather conditions when you see ice, snow, rain, fog or any other inclement weather.
Every winter we investigate collisions where the driving public ignores this tidbit of advice and are unnecessarily injured or killed because they insisted on travelling at or above the posted speed limit during an ice or snow storm.
Every winter, since the inception of time, we always get bad winter storms that make for hazardous driving conditions.
Every winter we will continue to call the tow trucks, ambulance, or funeral homes for body removal because YOU JUST WON'T SLOW DOWN!!!
This winter let's do our collective best to prove us wrong!!!
SLOW DOWN IN BAD WEATHER AND LIVE TO SEE ANOTHER DAY!
( What I remember... )They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years contemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
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We're opening winter with a bang this year -- modest snowsqualls and lake effect snow started overnight yesterday and have continued since. 25 fender-benders in town yesterday. We probably have the 15cm/6" of snow they were calling for by now.
Is it so wrong that I'm excited about trying out the hardcore new snow tires that we put on the van this year? Incredibly enough, I don't think I've ever driven a vehicle with proper snow tires on it -- just all-seasons -- so I'm looking forward to it.
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There always has to be one, doesn't there?
As ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
frickinmuck correctly points out,
while American voters may have repudiated racism by putting a black
man in the nation's highest office, many also endorsed homophobia in
several ballot initiatives, including California Proposition 8.
I'm disgusted by the notion that human rights should be subject to a majority vote, let alone that any of these measures passed. Times like this remind me of how much I cherish the protections afforded me by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
15. (1) Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.
(As an aside, any time anybody mentions the phrase "Traditional Marriage", I can't help but think of this Rick Mercer clip. You know! Traditional marriage, like with arranged marriages, beatings and stuff!)
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This is awesome.
The vindictive, hateful, greedy and simpleminded rule of the last eight years has made a mockery of the great ideals upon which America was founded. Now I have hope -- hope that we'll see the USA coming back onto the world stage as a nation that's more interested in making and working with friends than in making and killing enemies. A nation that cares about people and not just profits. A nation that sticks to its principles instead of trying to find ways to work around them.
I've always respected the flag of the United States of America, but tonight I'd be proud to hoist her along with my own.
- Turnout hit an incredible low. A lot of people have mentioned the lack of charisma evinced by Harper and Dion, which may be part of the problem. I think the biggest part of the problem was that this was an election without any galvanizing issues. It wasn't called to decide on a crucial issue of the day. It was called because Harper felt that flaunting his own election date law and spending 300,000,000 taxpayer dollars was a worthwhile price to pay for a chance to shoot the dice for a majority.
- Feeling less than enchanted with the NDP. While I think Layton by and large is pushing for the right things, he always comes off like a sanctimonious broken record. His rolled up sleeves, no doubt symbolising his solidarity with the working man, amuse me almost as much as Harper's sweater. Most of all, when the debates came around, the NDP -- a party that, historically, has bitterly complained about being excluded from the democratic process -- wasted no time in trying to shove Elizabeth May and the Greens out the door. The NDP tries to cultivate an image of being principled and not subscribing to "politics as usual", so the irony here was just waaaay over the top.
- Speaking of whom -- I thought that Elizabeth May did a bang-up job at the English debate, pulling together eloquent and pointed passages on the fly instead of repeating talking point after talking point. Unbeknownst to some, heckles are a longstanding tradition in parliamentary debate, so while she may have come off to others as rude, I thought her verbal jabs were great (probably the best of the night was a terse "Where is it?" when Harper started going on about his platform). If only the Greens would run a decent candidate locally! It would be enough to make me at least consider them.
- Duceppe was on top of his game in the English debate as well, delivering the most memorable line of the night. Asked what the first thing is that you would do as prime minister, he replied with the instant classic "Well, I know I won't be prime minister, and three of you won't be prime minister neither."
- It sounds like the knives are coming out for Dion already, which isn't a surprise given that the big story of this election hasn't been the rise of any party but the weakness of the Liberals. It's too bad; he seems like a decent guy, and even someone who I'd be interested in sitting down and having a conversation with over a few drinks, but his personality just didn't electrify the electorate. Not everyone has charisma in spades. That doesn't make him a terrible human being, just someone who's on par with the rest of us schlubs.
- While increasing the Conservative seat count,
Harper could not make good on his shot at a majority,
even with an incredible set of circumstances in his favour:
- the Conservatives started off polling in majority territory,
- the Liberals had the weakest leader in recent memory,
- the right is united, no longer suffering the Reform/PC vote split,
- the resurgent NDP and up-and-coming Greens are splitting the vote on the left, and
- the economy is on everyone's mind, a topic that he and the Conservative party should be strong on.
- Finally, if you wanted to find a strong argument for Proportional Representation and an equally strong indictment of FPTP, you only need look as far as the third, fourth, and fifth place results in this election. The Bloc got 10% of the popular vote and was rewarded with 50 seats. The NDP took 18.2% of the popular vote and got 37 seats in return. The Greens received 6.8% of the popular vote, an atta-boy, and no seats.
Sometimes it seems like Thanksgiving just trades a frenetic workday for a day of frenetic dinner preparations. That being said, it only takes a moment to reflect upon some of the things that I'm thankful for:
- my family,
- having a world-class job despite living in a town that sometimes feels like a real backwater,
- coworkers who are intelligent, accomplished, indulgent, and opinionated,
- living in a place where I have a vote, even if I don't generally like the choices,
- having our rights protected by the Charter, because, as frightening as it may sound, I have more faith in the judges than I do in the politicians.
What are you thankful for?
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Oh, what's this? For months -- if not years -- we've heard about how our banks are on a sound footing, how there's no mortgage crisis in Canada, and how the Canadian banking system is the most stable in the world...
Canada does not have banking crisis: Harper
Monday, October 06, 2008
TORONTO (Reuters) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Monday that the Canadian banking sector is not in crisis and vowed to help other countries cope with their financial difficulties.
...In fact, we've heard this all this week...
Canada's banking system kept high and dry by strict regulation: Flaherty
TORONTO — High banking standards have kept Canada's financial institutions afloat and out of the kind of trouble that has sunk many of their international peers, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said Wednesday [8 Oct 2008].
...until this morning: with the Conservatives slipping in the polls because people feel they're not concerned enough about the economy:
Flaherty announces measures to stabilize lending industry
The federal government plans to buy $25 billion in Canadian mortgage-backed securities in a bid to ease a growing credit crunch faced by the country's banks and other financial institutions, Ottawa announced Friday.
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty said the government's plan is to buy the securities through the Canada Housing and Mortgage Corporation and provide much-needed cash to financial institutions that sell the so-called "National Housing Act mortgage-backed securities."
Flaherty announced the new measures in an attempt to assuage concerns over the burgeoning global financial crisis and defuse criticism that the Harper government was ignoring the spreading lending crisis.
That's 25 billion dollars in cash money handed over to the banks, ladies and gentlemen...$748 for every man, woman, and child in Canada. While the taxpayers get a bunch of (probably not worthless) mortgage-backed securities in exchange, it's still nice to know that the gov't is ready to step in and hand the banks a huge cash purchase when anything comes anywhere near to causing them problems with their bottom lines. Honest to God, these guys have no idea what they're doing with managing the economy. Certainly they have no more idea than anyone else.
The worst part about it is that since the banks dole out credit, they have us over a barrel when it comes to economic growth, and the alternative of letting them sit on the mortgages and starve for credit might very well amount to cutting off our nose to spite our face.
I own a company. I drive back and forth to work at 300 km/h (185 mph) every day because I like how much time it saves me and how much more work I get done at the office.
One day I wrap my car around a lamppost. The police give me a stern lecture on how wrong it was to be driving the way I was, then buy me a new car, since if I can't drive to work a whole bunch of people will be out of a job.
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Ok, so up to this point the CBC has been streaming live video feeds of the Olympics in Beijing. This is great. Every morning starting around 6am, they've been streaming the semi-finals and finals of each judo division, which is even better.
Now, what happens today, on the only day when we have two Canadians competing, both of whom are outside medal contenders? The judo finals get bumped off the schedule in favour of volleyball and basketball preliminaries -- ones that no Canadians are competing in, no less.
Thanks a lot, guys.
Apparently the universe really wants me to watch olypmic judo.
The CBC is streaming a live video feed of the finals and semifinals of the judo competitions. This is extremely awesome, because in previous years you were extremely fortunate to catch much judo on TV if indeed any at all. The admittely minor downside is that there only seems to be a live feed and with the time difference, that means that the action starts around 6am EDT.
I'd hoped to watch as much of the coverage as I could, but if I'm up late or don't sleep well, trying to get up at 6 in the morning will make me nonfunctional for the rest of the day. Since this is the case, I haven't actually set an alarm to wake up in time to watch judo. As it turns out, though, I haven't needed to -- two out of the past three nights, my daughter has helpfully woken up in the middle of the night and then fallen back asleep at the magical hour of...6 in the morning.
Surely this is divine providence at work. =)
On another note, this is really the first time that I've been actively participating in an olympic sport when the olympics rolled around, and it kind of changes my perspective. I am probably never going to go to a major international competition, let alone the olympics, but even myself and my little club out here in the sticks are connected to something much larger. It was astonishing to see how many judoka were bearing their national flags into the stadium during the opening ceremonies, and how many different countries judoka were coming from. Maybe I've always subconsciously thought of judo as something that originated in Japan and spread around a bit to North America, Brazil, and Western Europe. It was awesome to be disabused of that notion. African nations fielded judoka. Russia and the former Soviet republics are extremely strong competitors. Israel. Iran. Italy. Cuba is a judo powerhouse. (Who knew?) Even tiny little nations like Malta sent a number of very tough judoka to Beijing. It's very cool to be reminded that I have peers practicing the same sport as I in every corner of the world.
Can't say we didn't see this this coming.
IMNSHO, Hasbro's made a mistake here. Sure it's probably a copyright infringement, but there are lots of people who love their Scrabulous. In the court of popular opinion, they're not going to fare well.
大変だったけどできました！ 僕のDebian GNU/Linuxコンピュターに日本語が入れる！ どうしたは良く分からないけど… ＝）
Ok, I don't know exactly how I got everything pieced together, but I finally got Japanese input working on my Debian box! This was the absolute last i18n frustration I had with this thing, and now it's sorted. 'bout time! 素晴らしいです！
Ok, I'm officially up too late again and am now going to bed.
Awww, furrfu.
S'actually not a bad ad. Guess the folks at the agency overestimated how blasé Britons would be about a quick peck. It's pretty obvious to me that the whole point of the piece wasn't OMFG HOT BOYZ MAKIN OUT, but this sort of thing apparently gets lost on some folks.
Despite this last bit, I've been incredibly perky today. For some reason, I seemed to wake up feeling like the day was full of potential.
edit: Apparently the marketing folks who put the video on youtube pulled it down. Linked to a different copy instead.
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On our recent road trip, we stopped and bought a portable DVD player, because as much as I support limiting the amount of TV my daughter watches, I also support not being distracted from driving by certain cranky bored tantrum-throwing passengers. So I got to hear the following intro dialogue to the Special Delivery episode of Backyardigans several times over the course of the trip (paraphrased):
Tasha: We're bikers!
Uniqua & Pablo: Yeah!
Tasha: We're ROUGH!
All: Grrrr!
Uniqua: And TOUGH!
All: Grrrr!
Pablo: And BAD!
Tasha & Uniqua: What!?!
Tasha: We're not bad, Pablo. We're good!
Pablo: Uhhh...oh, yeah, I forgot. We're GOOD!
All: Grrrr!
No matter how many times I hear it, that exchange always cracks me up. What can I say -- sometimes, I'm easily amused. =)
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Netherlands 4-1 France
Hot damn, the Dutch are on fire! blue_lucy,
your team is going to come away with a very nice result if they keep
turning in matches like this!
Italy 1-1 Romania
On the other hand -- what the heck is going on with Italy? The world champions are looking like they are not even going to make it out of their group this go round.
Holy crap! The reigning world champions got trounced by the Oranje 3-0.
I can't remember the last time the Azzuri got wailed on like that. Half the population of the Sault is going to be walking around wearing sackcloth and ashes today.
Well...a day late, but:
Happy International Wear Your Kaffiyeh With Pride Day.
( More thoughts after the cut... )Tags:
...but it's even moreso when your smoking area is right next to a gas meter.
( Cut for large-ish pics... )Tags:
- Start vehicle.
- Lower all windows.
- Load Joji Hirota and the Taiko Drummers CD.
- Set volume to approximately 75%.
- Hit 'play'.
- Watch as pedestrians surrounding vehicle clear away.
- Set gear selector to 'R'. Reverse as normal.
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OMG - Misono Swedish Steel 180mm Santoku. Want want want.
Here's a close-up of the engraving (same design, just on a different knife).
It's carbon steel, so it'll rust as soon as I look at it sideways. It's a 180mm Santoku, so it's probably smaller than I would like (only 7"), lighter than I would like (172g, a shade over 6oz), and flatter-bladed than I'd like (not as good for mincing, which I end up doing a lot of.) But never mind all that; it's one gorgeous damn knife.
Mind you, the knife that's likely to actually address my needs -- the Wusthof Classic 23cm Cook's Knife -- is classically cool in its own right:
If you envision an oldschool sixty-something grey-haired grey-moustached chef in whites and a huge chef's toque, this knife (albeit larger) is probably what he's swinging. =)
...from the OMFG-please-give-me-a-fucking-break-dept.
Dunkin Donuts puts out an ad featuring Rachael Ray wearing a black paisley scarf. US neo-cons claim that said scarf is a keffiyeh and is Ray's clandestine way of expressing support for violent Palestinian extremists. Dunkin Donuts pulls the ad.
I told someone at work about this today and he thought that I was putting him on. Story from the CBC here; from Newsday with a side-by-side photo of Ray and Arafat here.
What a bunch of bullshit. I feel a sudden urge to go keffiyeh shopping.
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Want to tell the world exactly what you're doing right Right RIGHT NOW? Dean Wilson over at UnixDaemon will show you how to wire that up.
How the hell did these folks manage to put out seven CDs before I ever heard of them? Just goes to show how well-connected I am to the music scene, I guess. =)
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Hey, I neglected to mention one of the key side excursions that I made during Penguicon -- a trip to REI to pick up a pair of trail shoes that'll drain easily and dry quickly after a dunk in the water.
Up here in the Sault (and through a fair swath of Northern Ontario), we have an amazing wilderness hiking trail -- namely, the Voyageur Trail. I don't think the word 'low-impact' is used anywhere, but that's very much the spirit in which the trail's built. There are very few man-made improvements anywhere, and most importantly, no bridges. The trail builders either send you across on a fallen log (dodgy), a beaver dam (muddy), or just bring you to a ford and let you have a go. Thus, the obvious need for something like these:
![[Image: Merrel Waterpro Maipo water/trail running shoe]](https://i.imgur.com/okHSW.jpg)
Last Monday, I took them for a a very brief run along the banks of the creek near my house. It's been flooding lately, so things were fairly soft and muddy, but the teeth on these bit so convincingly that the idea of slipping didn't even occur to me. I didn't have my running socks on, so I elected not to see how quickly they'd drain or dry out.
I'm definitely going to have to see about working an early morning trail run into my routine a couple of times a week. I'm not a big fan of gratuitous capitalism or anything, but when I pair of shoes encourages me to go out for a run, who am I to argue?
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I passed my second grading test at judo class tonight. This moves me up to 四級 (yonkyuu; orange belt).
This one was a bit of a surprise. I wasn't actually supposed to test until Wednesday, but towards the end of class when all the juniors had gone home, Jonathan (my judo partner) and I were pretty much the only folks left. My teacher asked if I wanted to try my test tonight, and knowing that we have a lot of tests to fit into very few classes in the next little while, I figured I'd give it a go, despite feeling rather underprepared.
As it turned out, I was able to rattle through 17 right-handed throws, three left-handed throws, eight hold-downs, six strangles, one combination, and one counter in about eight minutes, so I suppose I couldn't have been in terrible shape. I wasn't very happy with my technique -- I thought I had to use a lot more force than should have been required at times -- but the folks who were watching apparently didn't share that opinion.
Poor Jonathan -- after tonight, I really have to buy him a beer. By the end of the test, he was in pretty bad shape, not just from being thrown about, but from me nailing him in the knee a few times with some throws that weren't supposed to have any knee-on-knee contact. He did get me pretty good later in the night with a koshi guruma that left me checking to see if my kidneys were still installed, but still, fair is fair. =)
It's 2C and raining here in the Sault. Not exactly the weather I'd envisioned setting out for Penguicon 6.0 in, but I can deal. (Besides, it's supposed to abate once I get clear of the UP.)
I'm setting out on the drive before the sun comes up in an attempt to get some running around done before con, because the last thing you want to do while things are in full swing is to take a break to go pick up some stuff you need to buy. In an ideal world, I'd be able to update this post to log my progress every little while, but I think the wifi-enabled stops are going to be few and far between, so we'll see what happens.
See you all there!
Update 1, 1052h: In West Branch at Java Junction. Things going well so far; good breakfast at the Sugar Bowl in Gaylord and lots of coffee enroute. I think I'm on-schedule for an afternoon arrival in Troy.
Update 2, 1338h: Clearing out of Birch Run now. That sums up everything I really have to do before checking in to the hotel.
Update 3, 1520h: I'm here! Things are in swing already. I have to move the car and get a segway or something, because I'm waaay the hell down at the far end of the hotel. See you all in a sec!
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Ok, so here's how this goes down.
I head on over to Sault Michigan to buy some gas from Hugo and to pick up a few things from Glen's. For some reason unbeknownst to me, I've had the worst craving for ketchup chips today, so I figured that I'd pick a bag up while doing my late-night grocery run. But lo and behold, there were none to be found...not at the gas station, nor at the grocery store, no matter how many times I paced up and down the junk food isle trying to suss out where they might be hidden.
I still can't quite wrap my head around this one. Part of the reason that a road trip through the States is fun is that you get to sample the ginormous selection of junk food that you guys have access to, which positively dwarfs what we have here. Yet somehow, in the vast ocean of snack food, one can't find the humble ketchup chip, which is ubiquitous north of the border.
Is this yet another bit of Canadian content that I need to bring to Penguicon?
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I just learned the coolest throw in the known universe -- yoko guruma (横車, "side wheel"). It works just like shown there -- step around, drop, roll to the left, and throw uke over your left shoulder, all in one fluid motion. Here's a video.
It's actually a lot easier than I thought it would be at first -- it seemed to come to me quite naturally, while some of the kids had a bit of trouble with it. My biggest concern was avoiding any inadvertent face plants either when throwing or being thrown, and that didn't turn out to be a problem either.
Funny thing, too...tonight I noticed on the way in to class that I'm starting to feel more like a judoka and less like a guy who happens to wear funny pajamas to the gym a few nights a week. I'm about as far away from judo godliness as you can get, but feeling like I'm able to put in an effort instead of just floundering is pretty cool.
Okay, maybe it's not the coolest throw in the universe, but currently it's the coolest throw in my universe. =)
...I passed my first grading test tonight, thus elevating me to the rank of gokyuu (五級, "fifth grade").
For the first time in my life, I don't have to wear the white belt that marks me as a total noob to martial arts class, which is nice. (Instead, I get the yellow belt that marks me as merely being a major noob.) Staying in one place for a few months at a time without moving or going to camp really seems to help with that. =)
Terse bullet-point update to try and summarize the past few months...
- Job: I've been hoping to get on at Socialtext since last November, and in September they hired me on as a Software QA and QA Tools Engineer. It's awesome to work with such amazing and talented people. Doing QA is a switch-up for me from straight-up development work, but I'm really interested in what we can do in terms of controls and practices to produce the best software. Telling your developers to "code harder" doesn't work -- most of us write the best code that we can, and for the Socialtext devs that code is pretty damn good -- but bugs still get in, and we need to find ways to weed them out or make sure they never get in to begin with.
- Judo: I also started judo back in September. Before shipping out for a youth exchange to Japan in my teens, I actually tried a few judo classes at the local YMCA before my exchange-student stuff crowded them out of my life. I've been looking for something to get me out of the house and doing something physical a few times a week, and this fit the bill incredibly well. In fact, I now realize how much I missed doing it -- the scientific principles of physics and anatomy that it's based on, the geeky appeal of trying to solve a neat "puzzle" in real time, and philosophical aspects of redirecting your opponent's energy instead of meeting force with force combine to produce an art that really appeals to me.
- 日本語: my Japanese has been coming back to mind a tiny bit more lately. It's still < 1% of what I was capable of at the end of my exchange year, but I think the refreshers generated by judo, a bit of i18n work, listening to J-Pop with my daughter, and having coworkers who speak a bit of the language are having a bit of an effect.
- Espresso: for my birthday, my dear wife bought me a serious hard-core espresso machine. Well, actually, she wasn't quite sure which one to pick up, and wasn't about to make that decision on my behalf, so she gave me a budget and left me to do the research. So, by the beginning of November, I decided on a Gaggia Coffee paired up with an MDF grinder. Only one problem -- the Coffee is ridiculously backordered, and it turns out there won't be enough to meet demand until at least February. Incredibly enough, the folks at WholeLatteLove called me up last week and asked if I'd rather get a Gaggia Baby instead, for the same price, right now. Given that that's a machine that's worth $150 more and has a nice feature (3-way valve) that the Coffee lacks, it wasn't hard to make my decision. They've been having some problems charging my credit card but I think that's finally cleared up tonight -- the goods should be on their way tomorrow.
- Penguicon: I still have a fair deal of work to do on creating the restaurant & cafe locator web tool that I promised to put together before the conference. Ideally I'd like to have it ready before ConFusion, but work and family manage to fill my schedule to the brim every week. If time doesn't allow me to get it going within a reasonable timeframe, I'll use one of the commercial mapbuilding sites to hack something together, but I'd really like to put this together myself if I can find the time at all.
- Website: Finally, my own website is in dire need of an overhaul. Given that I've now moved up to a less laughable computer, I can ditch the static-page-management Perl scripts that I hacked together a few years ago and take advantage of some easy to operate system that generates pages dynamically. Specifically, I think I'm going to replace the whole kit and kaboodle with MoinMoin. That'll let me add new sections, blog entries, etc, with a lot more ease. And besides, I work for a wiki company now, so why not?
I haven't flown since before the liquids ban came into effect, and as I now collect all of my precious 3oz liquid containers into the requisite 1-quart plastic bag, I'm terribly tempted to write "SECURITY THEATRE PROPS" in black magic marker on the outside of the bag. Somehow I don't think it'd go over, but who knows? Maybe it could be the start of a sort of education campaign.
All right -- here's my long-awaited post-con wrapup. I was worried
that I was going to be the last person in the known universe to
finish a Penguicon 5.0 con report, but twoofdtm,
in her benevolence, has kindly refrained from posting her Saturday
and Sunday writeups so as not to hurt my feelings.
*poke* *poke* =)
(Between the length of the text, starting a new job, taking a week-long trip down south, and the other sundry pressures of life, I suppose it's no wonder it took so long, but still.)
( It came from Penguicon 5.0... )Tags:
Wheeee!
The great folks over at SingleFeed have decided to bring me on for a trial contract, going to long-term if they like me. I'm soooooo amped! The pay is decent, the work sounds interesting, and the people are really awesome judging from the phone conversations I've had with them so far. Possibly the coolest thing so far: I care a lot about the code that I write and the work that I do; it's a reflection on me, so I want it to be the best it possibly can. The folks at Singlefeed picked up on the line in my resume that says "An artisan, not just a technician -- technology is my passion" and totally grokked that. Super good!
All right, I am tired and must now retire to bed.
Yaaay job!
Tags:
After seeing how many of my fellow ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif){kind=small}
penguicon congoers are on lj, I may have to start posting real, actual journal entries here again. When somebody friends you out of the blue, it's nice to have some kind of context to figure out who they are, no? Squinting at 100x100px userpics isn't always the easiest way to identify someone you've bumped into in real life.
I am still pretty wiped out from the con...my daughter woke up just as I was getting to sleep Sunday night, and understandably wanted to stay awake and spend some quality time with Daddy, since I'd been away all weekend. Despite a latte and two cans of Bawls, I am still ready to fall over -- I'm only being propped up by the anti-sleep field that all computers seem to radiate in my presence.
So, if you're amongst the dozen or so people I've friended today, hi! If you have no idea who I am, it's most likely that I ran into you at Penguicon and thought you to be interesting, intelligent, et al. Don't worry, I don't have any lj-drama reciprocal-friend hangups.
Ok, a stab at a con writeup will follow rest, as will the explanation I feel I owe to socbiters as to why I quit posting here to begin with.
Tags:
Check out the interview with Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadcasting:
JK: I'm a big believer we have to make television more convenient or we will drive the penetration of PVRs and things like that, which I'm not sure is good for the cable industry or the broadcast industry or the networks.
CW: Why not?
JK: Because of the ad skips.... It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming.
Hate tuh break it to ya, guy, but this "contract" exists only in your imagination. D'you get the feeling that if this guy had his way, the Intellectual Property Police would show up at your door if you muted the commercials? Yappari, ne...
Current Flavour: Field berry yogourt, mmmm...