Rants from Vas

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, besides sounding a lot classier, has completely different connotations. You see, when we think of knights, we think of honour, chivalry and adventure; when we think of fighters on the other hand, we just think of, well, fighting…

The irony is screaming:

It makes me laugh every morning I walk past!

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 allow a computer connected via Bluetooth or USB to access packet data services. Of course, since airtime is a limited resource, most carriers meter your use of mobile data services and charge proportionally. However, some US carriers are offering unlimited data use on certain contracts, and I believe AT&T’s iPhone contracts that include unlimited data usage are disadvantaging iPhone users on other carriers and stifling development.

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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 around within the code and write decision-making logic.

Fairly early on, people realised that the only things you really need for flow control are a way to make a comparison, and a way to conditionally jump to another point in the program based on the result of a comparison. On top of these primitives, you can build flow structures that are as complex as you like. If you look at the native machine code that computers run, you can see that this has really been taken to heart: most CPUs provide a way to store the result of a comparison and one or more conditional jump instructions. Early programming languages like BASIC and Fortran had flow control based entirely on these primitives, too. If you learned to program on an 8-bit personal computer, you’ll no doubt remember writing statements like “IF condition THEN GOTO line” all the time.

But in 1968, this form of flow control was about to get a major setback (at least in high-level languages), because Edsger Dijkstra had written what was to become a highly influential letter entitled “A Case Against the Goto Statement”. You probably don’t know it by this name, though, because it was published in CACM under the title “ Go To Statement Considered Harmful” (Niklaus Wirth, a CACM editor at the time, changed the title for publication). This letter criticised the goto statement and the form of flow control associated with it, instead advocating structured programming.

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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, and the smash repair place has given me a Getz to drive for now. Now I know I can’t expect a loaner to be a particularly nice car, but I used to own a 2004 Echo, and I’ve spent enough time driving Pulsars, so I think I have a point of reference.

From the moment you sit down, you notice how cheap it feels. It has that hard, nasty, cheap plastic they’ve chosen for the steering wheel and dashboard. It isn’t comfortable, either. I’m not tall, but the seat feels too high. The gearstick seems a long way away down where they’ve placed it. It doesn’t feel good to drive, either. The brake pedal has very little travel and doesn’t give proportional resistance. The turning circle is too big for such a small car. The engine doesn’t deliver, either – you put your foot down and wait for something to happen; at least with an Echo, when you put your foot down it revs eagerly, and you definitely feel the pull at 6,000 rpm.

Sure they’ve thrown in lots of features, like power windows, power mirrors, audio controls on the steering wheel (which are on the wrong side – they belong on the left) and an MP3/WMA compatible CD player. But it doesn’t change the fact that that the car is lacking where it matters; extras don’t make a bad car better.

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 get to choose the tasks that they’re most interested in. That’s not the most common scenario you’ll find.

But it was also the worst day so far, because it was the last day I’d be working with Bruce. I really do wish you all the best in what you’ve chosen to do, but selfishly I wish we didn’t have to let you go. We’ll all miss you, both professionally, because you have so much knowledge of the industry and company, and personally, because you’re a great guy to have around.

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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 the best trade-off for performance in rearward-facing and forward-facing orientations, and thus proceeded to purchase one. It looks quite impressive, and all the cushioning shoud make it comfortable for the baby. It also promised to be easy to install and ideal for smaller cars.

However, after installing it in my car (a 2007 Toyta Corolla Seca, which is called an Auris anywhere but Australia), I am quite dissatisfied. In rearward-facing orientation, the seat is not held down adequately. The “stabilising bar” is supposed to serve this purpose, but it doesn’t even come close to touching the seat back in my car. I think it’s designed to work in cars where the seat backs are close to vertical, but that doesn’t help me. I don’t think I’d trust it enough in that orientation to put a baby in it. In forward-facing orientation, it’s considerably better. The combination of the anchorage strap and seatbelt hold the child restraint in the seat securely both vertically and longitudinally. However, there’s nothing to stabilise it laterally, and there’s a lot of play in that direction. I don’t think it’s unstable to the point of being totally unsafe, but it leaves a lot to be desired.

Now my car is equipped with ISOFIX (ISO-13216 1990, aka LATCH) anchor points. This was actually a consideration for me when buying the car. I asked around about the availability of ISOFIX child restraints, and was told that they aren’t available “because they don’t meet Australian standards.” If that’s the case, then Australian standards are a joke. Attaching a child restraint to ISOFIX anchors is far more secure than trying to hold it in place with a seatbelt. The two anchors at the base of the seat effectively secure the child restraint both laterally and vertically, while the tether holds it securely against the seat back (longitudinally). ISOFIX has been a requirement on new cars in the USA since 2002. It should be a requirement here, too.

This experience doesn’t instil much confidence in Australian standards. In this case, it seems to be about protecting certain businesses while paying lip service to safety. Meanwhile, children’s safety is actually compromised.

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 ride off. One of them falls off his bicycle and scrapes his arm, and he gets his parents and a whole bunch of Africans and tells them that my wife pushed him off his bike. The crowd round her and yell stuff like, “You’re going down, bitch!” and, “We know where you live.” So she calls me in hysterics.

Meanwhile, I’m in South Kensington. I manage to walk to Kensington and get a taxi to where she is (and overpay the driver for speeding) and the cops still aren’t there. When they finally show up, the bunch of Africans all tell the cops that my wife started it. The cops tell us they can’t do anything, because they’re just kids.

Now I’m really fucking pissed off and considering becoming racist for a number of reasons:

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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 reading notes, researching relevant literature, writing assignments and staying up late to cram.

It’s a pretty big change of direction from what I’ve done in the past: I went to uni to study something I knew I could do (electrical) and worked in an area that I knew I was good at (software). Now I’m studying something that I think I would enjoy doing. I’m doing an advanced diploma in teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL). I’m also studying by correspondence with a private education provider. Wix and Rusty, back in high school when you told me I should be a teacher, I never thought it might actually be possible.

Oh, and I have two pieces of advice for anyone considering studying. First of all, paying full fees is a good incentive to do well, because you want to get something for your money. Secondly, this something I came up with, but it’s too cool not to quote: “three things are needed for study: time, space and a brain. If you don’t have the time, make the time; if you don’t have the space, make the space; if you don’t have a brain, go for a surf!”

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 a guy takes a look at a broken piece of consumer electronics for a family member and then regrets it. But it isn’t. I wasn’t too keen on looking at it because of how wrong these things can go, but I was surprised.

Getting the top off the case was easy: just three screws on the back and one on each side. And then came the first surprise: the thing was actually designed to be easy to service! There in front of me were the four circuit boards and drive mechanism. The boards all had component overlays with marked values. The connections between boards were all labelled. The mechanism was plainly exposed. Now this shouldn’t be a surprise – it would be nice if all DVD players were made like this. But in this age of disposable everything, a lot of equipment isn’t made to be fixed (Sony and Pioneer, I’m looking at you).

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