the corner office

Vaz has an interesting observation:

As both Microsoft and Sony have revealed their next generation gaming consoles, namely XBox 360 and Playstation 3 respectively. Nintendo is going to reveal with its "Revolution" console.

What is so striking is that all three console share same CPU supplier, IBM. This new generation console wars, Only IBM is the winner.

Hmmm.

This is why controversial tattoos are never a good idea. Some newly-studied manuscripts suggest that the number of the beast might be 616, not 666.

I did a quick Google, and it seems this is a rather legit discovery, if not yet proven. The Wikipedia entry on The Number Of The Beast has some more details and background, and rather interesting sections on the number and its effects on pop culture, psychology, conspiracy theories, and the like.

(via Bob Congdon)

Merrily skipping through the meadows; I've escaped from Castle Lots-of-Assignments-To-Do. Phew. Traditionally I've been a bit of a late starter when it came to assignments and stuff, but some silly new law meant that every subject needed an assignment submitted by the 10th. With everything that's happened the past 2 months, it took a while to get into the swing of things, but all done and handed in with one day to spare.

Now to catch up on email, personal admin, housekeeping (yes, dear!), and everything else.

Another assignment done, and my introduction to the world of Prolog programming. Interesting and fun, although it takes a bit of getting used to the changed way of thinking. Everything seems back to front, inside out, but not really kind of thing. Solutions hover in the air as 'logical' ways of doing things, but then old-fashioned 'normal' programming thinking gets in the way and confuses the hell out of everything. By 3 in the morning last night I felt I was reasonably coherent and shock bloody horror, actually managed to write and debug a few procedures.

I probably spent as much time trying to get a Prolog environment up and running as I did actually doing the assignment. Our university software CD had a dog-old, 16-bit version of Amzi! Prolog for Windows 3.1 (woo!). First, I tried that with Wine, and got it working, except the editor wouldn't open documents. The listener interface could consult() files; just the editor was antsy. Not knowing what the hell I was doing, really, this all seemed too intimidating, so I downloaded the latest and greatest student/evaluation version from the Amzi website, which sounded very confusing but sexy at the same time, with an Eclipse plug-in that allows you to do all your work through Eclipse. Cool, thoughts I. Well, pain in the arse enough trying to get my environment working (still dunno why LD_LIBRARY_PATH is so finicky), I finally got the plug-ins loaded in Eclipse. Only to get told that the evaluation period had expired (on day 1. Doh!). That and other misbehaviour left me deciding to give that a skip.

First, I rebooted into Windows and worked with the app there. After a while I started missing my Linux desktop's mod con (hee hee), and with a bit of digging around, realised that all I really wanted was the interactive listener, which I knew was on my Linux box because I'd half-stumbled across it earlier. So, I rebooted, and tried said Linux native listener. Except that was a piece of shite, totally confusing itself with arrow and navigation key escape sequences. So I finally ended up editing my programs in good ole gedit and running the interactive listener and debugger through Wine. Which seemed to work well enough.

Deep in the dungeons of Castle Lots-Of-Assignments-To-Do, I was waylaid by the foul beast Formal Logic, which in times past has been as close to a nemesis as one could wish for. This time though, I bested the curmudgeon, smiting it into submission with a stale piece of bread and a hastily constructed semantic tableau. It slithered back into the darkness to nurse its wounds and prepare for the next time our paths cross. I barely had time to savour the few meagre calories offered by the glue on the back of an assignment envelope, when my evil captors pitched me into a Deathmatch with Computer Networks, whose scary appearance has more to do with its Expensive Textbook than anything else. Bah! I too know something of the dark martial arts of TCP/IP, and I can bullshit my way around multiple-router-configuration algorithms with the best of them.

I emerged victorious, and invigorated for the dreary days ahead, where many more horrid assignments will be trying my patience and resolve. Now for some ironing.

It's Freedom Day in ZA.

I don't feel very free though, I'm imprisoned in Castle Lots-Of-Assignments-To-Do and every now and then I get put in a cage and rolled out to the village of Housework-To-Take-Care-Of where the peasants get to throw rotten vegetables and various pointy objects at me.

Hoo hoo... oh my. Reminds me of folks who'd tell IRC newbies to hit Alt-F4 to get channel ops, but this is a million billion times funnier.

(via Chumpstyle)

Something else that happened during the recent tumult is that I've rejoined the ranks of economically productive members of society and y'know, started working again. It sounds silly, but I didn't want to mention it at first in case I jinxed it, or it didn't work out or something. But it's all good, I'm learning new things and experiencing new things and loving it. Seeing other parts of the IT world and moving into more 'mainstream' development has been the Master Plan for years, and at times it felt like a jump I'd never be able to make; but I've managed to spread my wings a bit, and I'm now getting to do fun stuff with Java and J2EE for a living.

I've decided to take the more careful/paranoid approach and keep work and blogging totally separate, so that I can stay relatively opinionated and 'free' here and not worry about it turning into drama back at the office. Not that I'm doing anything high profile or important or significant, but rather safe than sorry.

So yep, I'm working again after a delightfully long 'sabbatical,' I'm having a ball, and in case any of my geek readers have been wondering why I've had progressively less and less to say about Notes (that's a bit of a bittersweet thing), now you know why. I guess I'll have progressively more and more to say about the new things I'm working with and learning about, so hopefully that'll make up for it.

There was an awful accident on the N1 south tonight between the Hans Strydom and Beyers Naude offramps and I got there pretty soon after it happened. I sat in traffic for about half an hour before getting past it, and it freaked me the hell out. I don't know what happened (unlike some accursed rubber-neckers, no doubt), but as I was waved past I could see that a red car had smashed straight into the side of a taxi, in the middle lane of the highway. It looked like it was a pretty high speed collision. As they say in the classics, the taxi was well and truly fscked, and the red car didn't look much like a car anymore.

One of the taxi's wheels was lying against the barrier about 50 metres down the road. Maybe it wasn't the taxi's fault, but I think I'm covered by the law of probabilities in suspecting that the taxi tried to turn across the highway, or lost a wheel (or control) and swerved in front of the red car.

While I was waiting in the traffic jam, I saw four ambulances and I don't know how many police and emergency response cars racing past us. Driving past the actual accident, there were even more ambulances, fire engines, there must have easily been 10 or more Metro Police cars blockading the scene.

The cops really pissed me off. I can't help but ask myself where these useless traffic 'enforcement' officers are when taxi drivers are flagrantly and aggressively breaking the law? Maybe my anger is misplaced, but if it is, probably not by much. But I also have plenty of ire to spare for local politicians who're also full of shit. I'm so sick of hearing about industry regulation and upgraded behemoth buses and blah blah frigging blah when it comes to taxi drivers. Here's a novel idea: start enforcing the traffic laws that are already there. Make sure traffic officers do their jobs and give them the clout they need to make people take them seriously. Fine taxi drivers for the slightest traffic infringement, impound unroadworthy vehicles and arrest taxi drivers who haven't paid their fines. Hit them where it hurts - their potential to generate income. This isn't a hard concept, surely.

Not that your average non-taxi driver makes much of an effort to obey the rules of the road either, but starting off with taxis would probably halve our road death toll in no time.

I was planning a longer rant, but I see that Wayne's had a bit to say about this kinda stuff as well.

It's not like I'm living in a complete funk every day. I have ups and downs. It's a bit hard to map that regular blogging, though. You can't go from "my mom died" to "here's a cool link about inconsequential crap" without seeming a little, well, off colour. At the same time I don't want to talk about "grieving" and publically feeling sorry for myself either. So I just haven't blogged.

But I got a call last night from halfway around the globe, and got reminded that my blog is more than just words into the ether. People read it, and the most important part of it is being able to talk and connect with the handful of friends, and family, and readers I barely know, but who take the time to take an interest in my life. And that was enough to get me wanting to write again. So this is just a hello to all of you who're kind or crazy or bored enough to read my blog. Thanks for reading, thanks for your words and prayers. The blogging rate should start picking up again...