SBS showed Gérard Pirès’ film Les Chevaliers du Ciel last night. It’s got fast jets and hot girls, and it’s set against the backdrop of beautiful France. What’s not to like? I’ll tell you what — the stupid English translation of the film title: Sky Fighters. The French title means “Knights of the Sky” which, […]
Author Archive
Unlimited but Useless
Mobile data was one of the coolest things that came with GSM: I could connect a serial cable to my Nokia 5110 and get ISDN connectivity everywhere. It was billed at one cent per second and ran at about 9600 bits per second. Now most GSM and UMTS handsets can run a PPP server to […]
On Spaghetti
Most programming languages have flow control features of some kind. Yeah, I know there are some languages that lack them, for example early programmable shader languages, some macro languages, and I think some programmable calculators just run a program straight through from beginning to end. But by and large, programming languages provide ways to jump […]
Good as a Getz?
Can someone explain to me why car magazines love the Hyundai Getz so much? Wheels gave it “Gold Star Car” in 2007; SHEdrives gave it “Best First Car” in 2007; it even got the NRMA/RACV/RACQ/AA “Best Small Car” in 2003 and 2005. I can’t for the life of me see why. Someone sideswiped my car, […]
Goodbye
Yesterday was simultaneously the best and worst day I’ve had working for ITG. It was the best because I just realised how good I’ve got it: I’m tuning applications for performance on Solaris – I really am doing what I enjoy at work. It just hit me that people when tasks are allocated, people actually […]
Safe-n-Sound my foot!
With the baby almost here, one of the last things to get was a car seat. These things are not cheap, and I wanted to get the best solution. Being a geek, I actually went and read last year’s NRMA/RACV/RTA assessment of child restraints, and came to the conclusion that the Safe-n-Sound Compaq Deluxe gave […]
F*#@ing hell I'm angry
OK, my pregnant wife was walking round the local park for exercise, when this African kid on a bicycle yells at her, “This is, my park, not yours!” She says, “Excuse me, the park belongs to everyone.” They abuse her some more and she says, “I’m calling the cops,” and does. They get scared and […]
Back Into It!
Well, after several years of confirming that I don’t really want to be a software engineer (despite having l33t C and assembly skills), I’m a student again. And to all those people who think they couldn’t take going back to study after being in the workforce, I don’t know what you’re smoking – I’m enjoying […]
The Serviceman
Today I had the opportunity to work on an LG DVD/VCD/DivX player. You see, my little nephew Eric had somehow managed to get two discs into it, and it would no longer display anything. Plugging it in would just make some motors whir. Now you’re probably thinking that this is one of those stories where […]