The Lair

Or in other words, reality is an interesting thing. Interesting in how it’s depicted, interesting also in how being too realistic causes people to wince. For the purposes of expanding on this observation, trite though it may be, I offer two pieces of (circumstantial) evidence.

I was watching Castaway on TV last night. Yeah, I had nothing better to do etc etc, I was watching a 5 year old movie on television, whatever. Actually, I saw it when it came out because it was the buzz of the month at the time. There, I feel cool and important now I’ve established my movie goer cred. Be that as it may, I was better able to notice small details in the movie last night that I missed the first time around. And one such was the depiction of reality. Reality: if you leave behind a fiancee for four years, don’t expect her to wait around. That’s a chick flick, not a real movie. That’s just silly. Score one to the script writer (or Robert Zemeckis). Equally so, when you make a miraculous return from the dead, don’t expect the said (now ex-) fiancee to fall over you and come over to live happily ever after. There was a point in the movie where it appeared that this was, in fact, going to happen. And I remember the first time around, I was mentally going “No, no, no. That isn’t real“. But the script writers avoided the temptation. And Castaway was a better movie for ending without a happily ever after. Verdict: reality = good. But since I am in a nitpicky mode, it seems slightly incredible that Tom Hanks could retain such muscle mass (based on his diet) after 4 fricking years marooned on an island. Slightly stretching credulity, but oh well. Can’t have everything. And was that ice skate dentistry cool or what ?

Onto the second piece of evidence. The newest craze in a country that regularly seems to drift from one craze to another is the so called Crazy Frog ringtone. Yep. It drives anyone watching day time TV without the mental advertising blinkers on … in a word … crazy. But this is how marketing works in these parts and the crazy frog is … at number one in the UK charts. Further proving that the record buying public in the UK has certainly come a long way. If not exactly in a direction that I’d follow. But no, we’re on reality, right? Well, compare, if you will. The original image. Note the err.. somewhat noticeable protuberance in the frog’s belly area. Can’t see it ? Try the closeup. Now, look at the censored bits on the CNN press photo. And laugh. Some clever artist actually went a bit too far in depicting reality (well, as close as one gets for humanoid looking frogs) and put in a mini set of uhm, well.. wedding tackle on.

We want our cartoon animals to look like humans. But not.. too human, please. Will someone please think of the children ?

as we know it… Yep, REM has been in heavy rotation on the mp3 player these days. People are, unsurprisingly, moving onto various destinations. And if they haven’t moved just yet, the mere preoccupation with the (imminent) move makes things … different somehow.

To qualify, the move is, almost universally, for the good. It just represents a jolt from the familiar, a small erosion of what once was. For that, and perhaps no other reason, I’m noticing how things are eddying and swirling around me. Not exactly calm, but at least the various masks I don to various people are now unifying somewhat. Did I say masks ? Perhaps I meant that. Perhaps I meant hats as in many hats. Either way, things are calming down sufficiently to get some substantial work done. And not a moment too soon, the fancy hardware that was on order for the past 6 months has arrived. And I’ve started watching the Series 1 DVDs of Family Guy to find out what all the fuss is about. It’s the end of the world, and I feel fine.

As promised earlier, I’m going to jot down my thoughts on The El Piano, which I visited with a few others on movie day.

Ok, so the basics. It’s a small cosy place that does (and this is important) only vegetarian cuisine. They have eggs (ie: Spanish omlettes), they have cheese (the curried cheese balls in chutney are brilliant), but no meat. Shocked ? I was. I confess, being about as anti-vegetarian as anyone is likely to get, that I approached the visit with a certain degree of trepidation. Happily, I was wrong.

The decor first. The colours inside are vivid (I noticed greens, yellows, oranges, reds) and the roof is festooned with various ornaments and hangings that look like they may well take one’s eye out. As a result, the place actually does look quite cramped and small, which I didn’t like, and probably wouldn’t appreciate had there been a crowd. Fortunately, we walked into an empty restaurant and immediately set about ordering. For anyone from SL, think of a cross between the Gallery Cafe and Barefoot. But serving Mediterranean and Mexican veggie dishes only.

I had heard nice things about the coffee so we (the Don and I) jointly ordered a pot of strong Colombian coffee. The other two, Jeffster and R. split a jug of hot chocolate between them. The coffee was thick, strong and looked much like a watering hole after a herd of elephants had visited. It came complete with a strainer which was essential because there was a lot of coffee grounds and sediment swirling around. Not particularly a coffee connoisseur, but it tasted quite rich and good.

Onto the food. Everything on the menu could be ordered in three sizes. Despite the fancy Spanish names (chica, tapas and racion), it basically means small, medium and large. You buy everything (including tortilla chips, bread or rice) in those portions, mix stuff up and eat. Simple, no?

No meat, remember.. so we had a bit of a tussle figuring out what to order. We (well, the folks who had eaten in there before) went for mushrooms, spicy tofu (which tasted phe-nom-enal), rice, lasagna (which was rather dodgy to me, because I couldn’t wrap my head around a lasagna without meat in it), refried beans, an absolutely wonderful curried cheese ball in mango chutney and umm err.. and a few other things which I can’t recall. Look, we were hungry and it was after 1500, ok ? *looks defensive*. I’ve seen reviews which gush over how large the portions were, but I certainly didn’t experience this myself, we just kept on eating and eating and eating.. and we finished all of it and still felt … not exactly hungry, but peckish. So onto round two, and this was a classic hummus, bread, cottage cheese, tortilla chips and a shallot, mini gherkin, olives in olive oil dealie. And then, finally … we had had enough. Well, almost. We wanted to do ice creams, but the place near the Minster was closed. Bah.

But the point of that description was to say that if it’s a veggie meal that you’re after, then this is a great place. I’ve only seen Indian places (and even then, very few of those) pull off the all-vegetarian menu successfully. Up till that visit, I had no idea that Spanish/Mexican/Mediterranean cuisine could actually taste edible without the near mandatory clumps of fried, roasted or otherwise charred meat portions. What a pleasant way to have my eyes opened. Of course, having said that, it wasn’t an entirely cheap exercise, with the cost of our little jaunt costing .. say the average of 2-3 decent (and by decent I mean HUGE) pub meals. But it was still under £20 a head easily. There is hope for the human race if we all have to stop eating meat tomorrow. Having said that, I give this the same rating I give all other vegetarian restaurants. I’ll eat at them, I’ll like their food. But it would take a strong reason (ie: if one or more of the crowd I’m with are vegetarian themselves) to visit there regularly.

Because if $deity hadn’t intended us to eat animals, why did he make them so tasty ?

Ok, so I’m finally going to act like all the cool kids and go watch Revenge of the Sith at the City Screen today. Along with planned high jinks at the El Piano afterwards. Should be fun. I’ll update this entry with a review of what I remember of the movie when I get back.

And yes, I mention what I remember because we may well adjourn to the Don’s place for more South Park episodes and more cider varieties from the local speciality shop. Unfortunately, due to a novice error with backups, hasty file deletions and the like, I discovered I’ve lost roughly a day’s worth of Jython code so I’ll need to get back to the department to catch up for lost work. Showtime in another hour and half or so, roughly. Start yer engines!

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There was a time when I was addicted to Usenet. Armed with nothing more than my trusty newsreader, I’d be subscribed to dozens of newsgroups on almost every conceivable topic. The first batch of news wouldn’t be read before I got a fresh set of posts, literally. Along with that other staple of geek interaction in the early days, IRC, I’d essentially have both clients running my entire work day. And yes, the obvious question answered: a good bit of work got done too.

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The pubs are crowded (crammed full of people) and there are lots of people intently staring at the screens. I came back to the department a while ago and have since noticed that it is still 0-0. Arsenal vs Manchester United, the FA cup final. But Man U look to be the better side.

update: despite leading on most of the telling stats (more corners, fewer fouls, fewer bookings) and despite Arsenal having a man sent off in the dying moments.. Manchester United were unable to convert positional and tactical advantage into goals. So.. onto a penalty shootout.

Jens Lehmann, you rock my world. I take back all the imprecations. Arsenal for teh win!!1111

Hmm, well… Despite the near superhuman dedication to duty by blogging on the very day I came back from London; I’ve sort of let things slip a bit. Oh, I still have the odd link to toss about, things to talk about and so on. My workload, as is normal immediately following one of these big meetings, is at manageable limits. Various people to whom the fruits of my programming labour have been dispersed are making noises, but evading, ignoring, deliberately misunderstanding and just plain acting dumb about their feature requests tends to keep them out of my overly long and slightly tangled locks.

There I go. I managed to work in a reference to my hair despite a previous decision to the contrary. I swear, I need a narcissistic tag in here. Or call it obsessive navel gazing. Which reminds me, this year is looking increasingly like the one in which I revert back to a conventional 2 inch length of hair.

Actually, although I’ve moved, things are still slightly in flux. The site is in some degree of disarray, mainly because I don’t have enough time (or to be honest, inclination) to sit down and finish all the twiddly bits and pieces. Perhaps more importantly, I haven’t yet decided on how to - for want of a better word - relaunch myself in a slightly less Googleable fashion yet. *shudder*. That sounded like a phrase to describe the debut of some fashionable female. Or even worse, some marketing manager describing a product.

Ok, so I have a pseudonym of sorts. Well, not exactly. I defaulted to a pseudonym that sort of made sense, but the obsessive poking, pushing and prodding to examine if it conveys the right impression continues. Perhaps I don’t mean impression because I’m, on the surface at least, slightly indifferent to outside opinions. I’m still not sure about what goes here and what doesn’t. A pseudonym confers a degree of anonymity only to those who don’t know the real person writing these inanities. What then, of the larger audience ? I just don’t know yet; and since the site has been discovered and the visitor numbers are beginning to err.. climb, I suppose I should figure this shit out soonish.

Any ideas for a pseudonym? I’ve opted for drac in keeping with the whole fierydragon and lair theme. What else works? I dunno. As with most things in my life, it may simply be a question of finding it and then waiting for the clock to tick down to the point where I just decide to pick an available option and then forget about the agonizing.

I have returned. A few comments, I’m tired and I wanna order food, go home and sleep

The British Rail isn’t marvellous, but it’s not bad enough to bitch about. 2.5 hours for a 220 mile journey going to London, a mere 2 hours coming back. 2 hours isn’t the norm, so it was blogworthy, for a reason which escapes me. Oh. yeah. That means I got home early. And even better, I got one of those spiffy seats with a table between them (and the trains weren’t crowded) and bliss, a working power socket under the table. Yes, so I pretended to work because my supervisor was sitting opposite me, but that soon gave way to an intense game or 10 of Feeding Frenzy. I hope my scowl as the fish got eaten was mistaken for a frown of concentration, but I’m not really optimistic on that one. Wireless intarweb access on the train, unfortunately, was not free.. and I felt disinclined to fork out the odd 5 quid to try it out.

I actually wardrove in London. w00t!. I is ze leet h4×0r. phear me. Pssst. It’s technically illegal and could get my ass arrested, I suppose. My (5th floor) hotel room had a choice of 3 open APs and quite a few encrypted ones.. the massive office complex where I spent most of today had even more. I’d guess some of those people left their wireless access point open deliberately; but a few numbnuts obviously didn’t know how to secure it (SSID of Netgear ? Bwaahahahaha). I didn’t run anything to crack the encryption (although some were running 40bit instead 128bit WEP). Tested it out by connecting to each open AP, waiting for an IP and then trying to connect to Google and search for something. All but 3 of the open APs worked. Damn. Forget Starbucks, just grab someone else’s internet connection. Ok, so I’ve gotten in on the whole wifi business a bit late, ok ? This stuff is very 2001 or earlier, I know.

So, I made a rash prediction about the greatest war movie and I was wrong. The results are here. And in hindsight, I should have guessed it. Somewhat flatteringly though, I had watched quite a few of the top 20. This, by the way, from someone who does not consider himself a film buff, who rarely watches movies and generally isn’t that interested in the Hollywood latest releases.

And I’m immediately giving the lie to my disavowal of film related interests by saying that there was a report on the BBC this morning about the Cannes premier of that film. And the response (which sounds credible to me) is that it’s better than the previous two; but the script is still bad and the acting is still not so good. And Natalie Portman has done a Sinead O’Connor. Not bad.

Off to London to jaw jaw jaw at some (probably) bored people and justify expenses. Might just blog from there if I can get a working net connection. If not … Wednesday or so. Toodle pip!

I’ve been following (with predominantly amusement) how it all began between loki and reg. Amusement isn’t quite the word I’m looking for.. it’s a mix of glee, enthusiasm and also a dash of aha moments as I recognize portions of the storyline from previous descriptions. One half of the story seems to be much terser than the other though. Be that as it may, it’s shaping up nicely and the synchronized storylines are a very neat touch… and it also serves to dovetail nicely with this post.

Memories. We all have them. But which ones are important ? Which processes decide the details in our existence worthy of being transferred from the short term electrical to the longer term chemical storage ?
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So I saw the Goblet of Fire trailer on TV today (direct link, snippet link). And it looks good. The dragon looked a bit weird, but the biggest upset is the choice of casting for Fleur Delacour.
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It’s Friday the 13th today. Does this bother me ? Umm. Not really. I didn’t notice the date except that a few people were discussing the origins this morning. I’m mildly superstitious… sometimes more so than others, but the whole Friday the 13th deal is only good to joke about…

So, the competing arguments for the origin of bad luck are: either the Knights of the Templar were tortured on the day in mediaeval times; or there were 13 at the last supper. Wikipedia mentions both theories. What Wikipedia doesn’t mention here is the third piece of folklore about Friday the 13th. Today is also blame someone else day. Yep. Today, I can blame someone else for anything. Think of the possibilities.

I blame the Friday the 13th superstition on everyone else.

I live for these life experiences, you know. The sort of deadline or task that wrings one out, leaves one feeling drained and physically exhausted, the sort of deadline that … in retrospect … seems rather inconsequential.
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Work has been pretty stop-start the past few weeks. A few hours of intense activity in figuring out something or converting a vaguely identifiable idea into an electronic form. This is followed by a few hours of intense boredom while I wait for results, wait for feedback … or in the worst case, float into this malaise, this mood where the world and all in it deserves only Meh as a response, question or rejoinder.
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Been having some downtime on this server recently, as some people have already noted. The holy grail for a server or site with heavy traffic is the elusive 5 nines principle. Curiosity, I just did a rough calculation of the reliability figures.
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[A] reason for the adoption of the apple as Christian symbol is that in Latin, the words for “apple” and for “evil” are identical (malum). It is often used to symbolize the fall into sin, or sin itself. [Wikipedia].

But on the plus side, apples are good. Not only does it proverbially promise to make a bankrupt of your friendly neighbourhood medicine man, but it also provides an incredibly delicious eating experience. Unless your name happened to be Eve, of course. But let’s not go there. The subject of today’s writing is the potential for refreshing and tasty beverages made from apples.
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It’s VE day today and the media is filled with images of commemoration ceremonies, wreath laying and speeches. All well and good. 60 years ago, Nazi Germany threw in the towel and decided (not a moment too soon) to end the war. As Wikipedia notes, this is not the same day on which the Japanese surrender is celebrated, that comes later in the year; a fact a few reports seem to be missing. The oddity is that The Independent makes a really good point. The German ambassador to London wants people to move on. It’s been 60 years, but people still identify Germans with Hitler, he says… and it’s time to turn the page. But is it really ?
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After that initial impetus to get off my lazy rear end and do something, I’ve fallen into a bit of a trap. The major hump had been climbed, the main obstacle surmounted, hosting and a domain were now mine. But blogging software doesn’t really install itself, does it ? Well, it might in the future, but certainly not in 2005. So, I needed to find some time to actually hack something together. The usual war between my inner perfectionist and pragmatic selves ensued. A kickass template ? Umm. No. It sorta does the job. Did I actually finish those dark and mysterious plugins that promised to revolutionize my blogging experience ? Did I hell. The source code is lying forlornly abandoned, consigned to the graveyard of “I just can’t be bothered right now“. Lots of shipwrecked or becalmed projects in that graveyard. But anyway… moving right along.

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For some inexplicable reason, I’ve been compelled to ignore the mounds of work heaped on my head and install blogging software. Yay for procrastination.