the corner office

The study-go-round is still going on in full swing, so no real fun stuff happening at the moment. We went to register to vote yesterday morning. In the past we've always voted at Northcliff Primary School, which is just a few hundred metres down the road from us. It turns out that we're just past the border of the Northcliff ward, so we're actually part of another ward, and got sent off to register at the Berario Rec Club, which must itself be about 500 metres from Northcliff Primary as the crow flies. Anyhoo, we found the rec club, and got ourselves registered and our ID books barcoded in about 5 minutes. Nice and easy.

There was also a teddy bear expo going on at the club, and we had a quick look-see. There were bears of every shape and size, and dare I say it, personality. Some of them truly amazing... works of art, except that I can't dispel the image of little kids puking all over them, ripping arms and legs and eyes and ears off and generally putting these cute little creations through several kinds of hell. What really got me though is the scale of this expo. Sure, you'd expect a few people to be teddy-bear makers and that there'd be something of a cottage industry, selling these bears through flea markets and specialist toy shops. No way... a huge hall packed to the brim with teddy-bear makers, raw material suppliers, the whole 9 yards. A hard-core subculture of teddy bear people living and prospering right under our very noses. Very obscure.

Apart from that, it's hard to avoid the on-going back-and-forthing and mountain of media and footage of Katrina and New Orleans. Again, this Internets thing has changed the world so much. In the past, you'd get the Sunday papers and see a few shocking pictures and a few write-ups. Now, there are a zillion people talking about it, writing about their experiences, arguing about who's right and who's wrong and who should be fired and who should be praised, picking apart the news and discussing every minute detail of everything. On top of that, so much footage - web cam feeds, photo albums and literally thousands upon thousands of photos from amateurs to pros. Instead of a single newspaper or two, there are articles and op-eds from dozens and dozens of papers, all of which is out there and accessible by a few clicks. I've seen the term 'disaster pornography' being used, and it seems quite apt, even for a superficial onlooker. I'm not sure that my life is done any favours by aimlessly reading and seeing so much, when there's so much else I could be doing. But it's there, and it's hard to drag oneself away from it.

Apart from that, I have actually managed to get through more university work this weekend. I'm currently plowing into what I've realised is my most enjoyable subject this year - advanced database theory. Living in a relational SQL world now, this is the one course which probably has the most relevance to what I do day to day. It seems that after spending the past few years studying database theory, and SQL on a 'vocational' level, this course is finally the real nitty gritty. (I must admit that a number of my honours courses feel like that this year). Getting deep, deep under the hood and starting to get insights into things that you're sort of aware of but don't have to truly understand to use a database. Fascinating stuff.