Grad tickets

I got my grad tickets today at lunch. It's actually assigned seats (since it's at the NAC), so it's a good idea to get them sooner rather than later.

Does anyone know if there is any kind of "event" afterwords? Are people getting together for drinks or anything? It's kind of bad, but I don't even know if people are coming in from out of town... *sigh* I'm so bad about witting people.

Listening to: Faithless - One Step Too Far

QotD

"The wages of sin are death; but after they're done taking out taxes, it's just a tired feeling:"
-- taken from slashdot

Cheating is "accepted" when there is no enforcement

I almost thought that it was a joke when I first read the slashdot article about it. A guy was suing his school over being caught for plagiarism. After reading the article it made me think a bit. Does lack of enforcement of cheating mean that consent is being given for it? His complaint was they "allowed" him to cheat for 3 years, then "changed the rules" right as he was leaving.

I can understand (in a way) where this guy is coming from. Why would you bust your butt to get the same grade as someone else that just downloaded their work and the TA's / profs just turned a blind eye to? (This is leaving out the argument about personal pride, learning skills, etc. This is just about rules and the enforcement of them). Shouldn't you get busted right away? I've seen profs turn a blind eye to cheating and it pissed me off. And I know that I am not the only one. In other things in life, if you don't enforce things all the time, you loose the right to enforce the rule at all (Trademark violation comes to mind). Is it the same with cheating? I don't really think so, but it's an interesting argument.

It reminds me of a joke where a guy was speeding on the highway with a bunch of other cars and this one guy gets pulled over. He asks the cop why he was singled out? The cop asks if the guy has ever gone fishing to which the guy replies yes. Then the cop asks "Have you ever caught all the fish?" Sort of like one of my favourite posters...

Not everyone gets caught when breaking the rules. But as long as someone is enforcing them, no matter how small a percentage of people that they are catching, this still means that you can get caught. So don't cry about it. Take it like an adult.

Listening to: Ian Pooley - rock da disco (Daft Punk Mix)

Traffic experiment

Everyime in the past while driving downtown in rush hour in the fast or almost fast lanes, I've felt screwed by the people in the slow lane. I thought that I was just crazy and it wasn't true. I actually stuck to the slow lane today, from before Pinecrest all the way till I got off. And I beat everyone. Well, almost. At the last couple of minutes people pulled away from me 'cause I was only doing like 80 kph. But it actually works. So strange.

QotD: Competence, like truth, beauty, and contact lenses, is in the eye of the beholder. -- Dr. Laurence J. Peter

I'm graduating!

U of O finally put up the number of guest tickets and who is graduating. Now my problem is that they are only giving out 3 tickets per student. I'd like my folks and my grandma's to be able to go. Does anyone know of anyone who could spare one ticket? I'm sure that I'm not the only one is this boat either... *sigh* Ah well.

Listening to: Pearl Jam - Believe You Me (Rare)

Stretching

Before I totally forget to do it, I found a page with some of the stretches that I do on it. I use the last 2 mostly. I use another one, but it's not there. I'll keep looking.

For the one called "Quadriceps and Hip-flexors", it's hard to tell from the pic, but (from what I have been told), you're supposed to keep your knees side by side. Don't pull / push one knee in front of other.

For the one called "Iliotibial Band" (IT Band), this was my first "essential" stretch. I was having problems with the muscles around my knees, but this helped a lot. I pretty much always do this one. I should do more, but I'm bad. Ah well.

There are a couple of more, but it's easy to find stretching advice on the web if you want to look on your own. ;-)

Listening to: Collective Soul - Burning Bridges

My First Event

Today Betty (the lady that I run with) called me up and said she found an event for me. It's July 1st, which I don't really like, but it's only a 10 km run, so it should only take me about an hour. Not too bad. And I think that it's in the morning, even though I can't find any start times for it (actually, I not even sure that I linked to the right event...).

Anyways, one of the reasons they Betty wants me to run this is because it's not any distance that I have not done before. Hell, I could do that today if I wanted. But she wants me to get over the anxiety of doing an Event (capital E). If I get all uptight I could have a hard run. So it's better to do it on a known "shorter" distance. The idea is that I'll run a half sometime this fall, event unknown. It's twice my longest (distance) run, but I'll train up to that. It'd be cool to put down. If I keep at it, maybe I'll run a full one sometime.

Listening to: R Kelly - I Wish

HTA's

One of the scariest reads on things that you can do with IE in a while. Run an "app" by-passing all security restrictions... yikes. I'm glad that I use Mozilla.

Listening to: Gabrielle Destroismaisons - Etc

Cool rims not so important

After thinking about it for a bit and talking it over with my brother, I don't think that I will go for "really cool wheels" for my car. Some of the ones that I was looking at here Virus, Spline, and Rant. And of those, the cheapest (new) seemed to have been 175 CAD before tax. Then I would need to get tires too...

But here's the real kicker why I don't think why I would get rims like this: it would be the only thing "done up" on my car. I don't want to look like an ass where I started to fix up my car, but I could only do the tires. And really, I don't want to be one of those tools with a tricked out cheaper car. So, what I think that I am going to do is just get some steel rims (bigger of course. Probably 16") and some regular tires. Then if I want to do something special for my car, I'll get the paint chips looked at. I think that the extra money that I "save" I'll just use to paying off my car faster.

Listening to: The Tragically Hip - Escape Is At Hand For The Travellin' Man

Guest gifts

This past Saturday I went to the wedding of one of my long-time high school friends. It was really beautiful, but I digress. She had an uncle that she was quite close to, and lost him to CF a few years ago. You know how at most weddings the bride and groom make little "gift bags" for the guests? Well, what they are doing instead of that is to donate 10 $ per guest to the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. It's just stuck in my head how immensely cool and wonderful that is. I think that's a far better way to spend money on your wedding. I've been thinking about all weekend and just wanted to share.

NAC

Something the I enjoy is going to the NAC and checking out the shows there. It's much cheaper if you can go as a live rush, but you can't count on seeing a show on a certain night if you do.

Short story: Laura and I were planning to see a show 2 (?) weekends ago. We bought tickets about 2-2.5 weeks in advance. Had everything planned out. We ate in the west end, and just like me, we were almost "late". We rushed there, and got there with a whole 4 minutes to spare. Sweet. We walked in, looking around, and a lady said "are you looking for the [what we were seeing] show?". I said yes we were. She goes "Oh, it was cancelled like 2-2.5 weeks ago. It's been in all the media.". Grumble. I don't know what "media" she was talking about, 'cause no one in Laura's family or mine heard about it at all. But it wasn't all bad: I didn't have to pay for parking and we got time to wander around the tulip festival. The moral of the story: when going for a show, call / check to see if it's been cancelled first.

My folks went to see Pélagie yesterday and really loved it. My dad has a tendency to fall asleep during shows and never stands for standing ovations. Apparently he was the first one standing last night. Weird. It must have been really good.

Listening to: Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way

Better run

I went for a long run again today. Went a bit further this time, shaved off 2 minutes, and didn't puke (unlike last time). I feel fine. It felt more like a 5 km run. I think that I'll be doing 10's at least once a week now. Soon I have to find an event to get in. Oh, and the other good thing about today's run? We did a negative split (running the second half in less time than the first -> speeding up as you get more tired). ;-)

Listening to: Pixies - Hey

Perception of functionality trumps the actual function

One thing that I have been thinking about for the last couple of days is a quote that I read in EST (it's the title of this post). It's all about how no matter how good something is, the important thing, and how it will be judged is, how good the users *think* it is. This isn't a new thought, but it still keeps me thinking. In the story, the guy bought a PDA (comm) that comes back from "sleep" right away, without the 30 seconds of start-up every other one does. But when he got it, he figured out that you couldn't really do anything when it started up right away. What it did was take a screen shot when it went to sleep, and on reboot displayed this until all the other start-up stuff was done. And (in the story), it actually made it 3 seconds longer. But people bought it because it seemed faster.

There are lots of examples of this in real life. Liz told me about how in most detergents they have a frothing agent. This doesn't do anything, but people think that if there are bubbles, it is good soap. No bubbles, no good.

Another older story about Northern Telecom and how they were testing out a new handset phone. In all of the user studies it failed because everyone said they "felt cheap". What was the solution for the engineers who had made this nice, light, cost efficient phone? Well, they just added a small bar of lead to make the phone heavier. People no longer thought they were cheap.

What's the lesson? No matter how good a product you make, no matter how fast / cool / feature loaded / cutting edge it is, you must never ignore the psychology of the users and how they will perceive the product. This is what the difference is between a successful product and a failure.

Listening to: Tragically Hip - Are you ready

There are always finite limits

Something that we just came across today doing some J2EE dev. work. In our app, there's a huge form where the users will do a lot of their work. (It was the user's decision to make it that big, not ours). Well, we're externalizing the strings 'cause of course it's got to work in French too. It blew up. There's a limit of how big the java complier will accept jsp's. I think that it's got something to do with all the struts libs bring pretty big, but whatever. So, we're going to break out the form into a bunch of includes and hope that works. I'll update later today.

It just goes to show that computers always have finite limits, even most of the time it doesn't seem like it. And at some point people will always hit that limit, perhaps by not doing things they were originally designed / intended for. Hit a wall, push it back, repeat.

As a side note, I just had to point out something the Peter posted about. Check out the atkins diet part, with sound. It's got swearing, so you might not want to do it on your speakers at work. I was hard pressed this morning not to laugh out loud... it would have been hard to explain. :-)

Update: It looks like using includes will work fine. ;-)

Listening to: Shakira - Eyes like yours

Free books

On the bus I've been able to catch up on some of my reading. But 'cause I don't really want to lug around 5 lbs of dead tree to / from work, I've been using Peter's palm pilot to read books on. It's worked out pretty well considering. It's small and light, I can hold it in one hand (so I can brace myself when the crazy drivers are in "control"), and I can read it fine. Right now I've just been using a whole book in a "memo" which means that it gets broken up into like 75-150 "memo's", but it's nearly seamless from one to the next.

The first book that I've read was Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon. It was really interesting reading about what was cutting science (fiction) at the time. Some things that were in the book were in the history part of our 1st year physics course. I remember thinking "wow, why would anyone think that?" back then. Now I understand better why they could have easily thought that. My generation has the benefit of having grown up with all that knowledge being "common knowledge".

The second book that I just finished is Eastern Standard Tribe. I originally read about this in a slashdot article. I found it really interesting in a look at the very near future. I've just started his first novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom which I think that I have started before. They are short-ish novels, so I don't think that it'll take me too long to get through it. I'll give everyone an update once I get past the first chapter. ;-)

The interesting thing about those books is the the author is giving them away for free online if you want. And you can buy a paper copy, which is the only way that he will make money. Pretty interesting if you think about. Instead of fighting the 'net, he's embracing it. Sounds like a pretty good way to become a household name to me.

I'm going to try and make my next book I, Robot. I want to have read this before the movie comes out. I haven't read any Asimov before, but I'm going to start. It's been on my to-read list for a while. Alek suggested that I read them in order because some characters come back at some point. Any other suggestions? Anyone know any more good sci-fi books?

Listening to: Matthew Good Band - Giant

Running vs. Jogging

I think that I've spent too much time on this topic now, but I just have to link to a (funny) comment on slashdot. It's about the difference between running and jogging. Just some one else's advice about going really slowly at first and taking it easy.

One of the ways I think that would help getting into running (like any sport) is to find someone to mentor you and help you out. I have to pay it forward. The running room has clinics, but they cost 70 $. If you're really serious about it and can't find anyone close that can help you out, I would do something like this with a group of supportive people. It's good to establish these habits early, and pretty soon it doesn't even cross your mind not to exercise, it's just "what you do". ;-)

Listening to: Hoobastank - Better

Running Tips, Lesson 5: Psychology of running -> lie.

I think that I am going to stop linking to all the past lessons 'cause I'm getting tired of it.

Okay, here's the big secret that you don't find out in any mags or tv shows or anything: hardcore runners have bad runs. They have times when they come back and they say to themselves "that was shitty". There are time when they are out running and they go "I don't want to be here, I must be nuts". So when you're out there and telling yourself that, 1) you're not alone, 2) no one that you're running with really wants to hear it. If you keep on thinking that you can't run any farther, you won't. You have to lie to yourself for a bit, at least until the endorphins kick in. And that time depends on the person. For me, it takes about 10 minutes before I start to enjoy the run. Other's (almost retirement age people), it's up to 20-25 minutes. Oh, and don't think that you can only run if you are young and fit. I'm one of the few regular runners at work that doesn't have gray hair. And people who look like couch potatoes? They can kick your ass out on a run. Don't judge people by their body type unless you want to be humbled.

And that brings myself to another point: after a point, the run gets better. You enjoy it. But the first bit is usually crappy. Most people run for the crappy part and then quit saying they can't do anymore. Keep going! For me, if I run 20 minutes, I enjoy only 50 % of the run. If I run for 30 minutes, I enjoy 66 %. Run for an hour? You can do the math.

And expect that you'll have good days and bad. It happens. Just pretend that it's going well; that you *like* hills; that the gale force wind blowing in your face is just filling your lungs and going to push you home on your way back. Think positively and it will be so.

One trick is to keep a journal of your runs. In it put the weather (temp, wind, sunny / cloudy, humidity, ...), your times (running, stops, walking), your goal before you went out, and how you felt. Some days when you think that you did really badly and feel like crap, you actually can end up doing better than you did on another day. This also helps to motivate yourself by showing how much you improved. It's very helpful. But you have to wear a watch to mark the times. ;-)

When I am out for a long run, I need to keep myself focused only on the present. I just focus on running the next short distance. And then the next. Etc etc etc... I don't focus on any specific goal (like a sign post), because I speed up to get there (horse racing when it sees the barn door), and then burn out. The woman that I run with, her trick is to "just run her 5 km". And when she's done 5 km, she's "just starting her 5 km", etc. That works for her, but not me. You have to find the lie to tell yourself that works for you.

Another one is to keep pace behind someone and imagine that there is a string tied from them to you, and they are "pulling you along" (it might not be a good idea for a guy alone to do this to a woman, the woman will creep out). Or, there's a goal like a set of stairs with a cord pulling you in... so you're not in control of your pace, but it's something external to you.

When I get near the end of my run one thing that works for me is to imagine someone waiting at the end for me, cheering me on. Of course you have to pick someone that you would want to show off for, but that's just motivation. Whatever turns your crank. ;-)

In the end, you just have to figure out what works for you. Lying to myself works for me, but you have to pick the "right" lies.

Listening to: Great Big Sea - My Apology

Running Tips, Lesson 4: Rolling Your Feet.

Rolling can be one of the hardest things to do. Especially when you are tired. But it's also really important. But before I explain that, let me make sure that I mention the other lessons, 1, 2, and 3.

Okay, first off, one of he biggest complaints people have is that running hurts their knees, or that it's too much impact. I maintain that they are doing it wrong, just like I used to. If you have hear a flap-flap-flap sound when you're running, you're not rolling. You're "flapping" (my word). Rolling is very similar to walking, you land on your heals and roll forward on your feet. The cool thing is that you run nearly silent. All you can hear is the sound of your breathing, not your shoes pounding the pavement.

This is one of the things that I still find challenging. I have to make a conscience effort to roll until my body remembers how to run. It helps to run with someone that knows to look out for this. The lady that I run with gives me small reminders like "you're flapping" or "remember to breath". Small things, but as you get tired or anxious you can forget them.

This is important that it is established early. If you are "pounding the pavement" then you're sure to injure yourself a lot more, and if you are into running at that point, it'll piss you off to no end. And running badly isn't smart if you want to keep your knees for later. I think that this and breathing properly at the two big things in running, and once you figure out those two things, everything else falls into place.

Next lesson: Psychology of running -> lie.

Listening to: Underworld - River of Bass

Running Tips, Lesson 3: Being Constant is Better

Continuing our lesson after 1 and 2, we're going to talk about being constant.

When you first start running, it's not a good idea to go out and just try and run till you drop. You're not going to get better very fast. What I would say would be best is if you go out for 20 minutes, doing 2 minutes running, 1 minute of walking. Constant. When you are okay with this and don't feel like you're going to die at the end, step it up (the times, not the pace). Work your way up to 5 and 1's. Keep going. Do 10 and 1's. But make sure you do those the whole time you are out running.

Slowly increase the amount of time you are out, but not too much at a time. The general rule is that you are not supposed to increase more than 20 minutes in a 2 week span. So, when you are up to running for 20 minutes one week, don't try to take it up to 1 hour the next no matter what times you have done before. Run that much for 2 weeks, then step it up, nice and easy. Adding even 5 more minutes can be challenging at first. And you don't have to be fast. In fact, most runners I have talked to say "oh, I run slow". Any people who are out going fast, most of the time I pass them on the way back as they are walking. The turtle and the rabbit and all that.

At the start of any run, I usually bolt out at a fast pace. This is wrong. I have to tell myself to slow down. If at the end I have energy, I sprint the last part. Same with hills. For some reason guys tend to run faster up hills. Again, this is wrong. Go up hill the same pace as you went on the flat, and close to what you do going down the hills. Being consistent will take you a long way to running long distances.

Next lesson: Rolling Your Feet.

Listening to: Linkin Park - A Place For My Head

Running Tips, Lesson 2: Breathing

Okay, lesson 2. Lesson 1 was about equipment. This is silly, but it's about breathing. Yes, and I am still having troubles doing it right. :-P

Okay, this is one of the hardest thing of running in my opinion. Everyone breaths right? I breath all the time, when I do climbing, when I go kayaking, when I go biking, so why would this be different? Well, my answer to this is that it is different. In other sports, there are pauses, times where you rest. Paddle-paddle-paddle-gliiiidde.... climb-climb-climb-rest.... Well, you get the point. I think for all of those sports, I've been breathing just from the top of my lungs, not the whole thing. And here is the trick that worked for me. You don't actually have to concentrate on breathing. Just focus on breathing out. Exhale. Push everything out. Deep breaths. Don't worry, your body will take care of the breathing in all by itself. See, we just got rid of 50 % of the work!

If you find that you are gasping for breath, slow down. Simple, but it works. As you get better at breathing, you'll be able to do more, but that's it for now. Just focus on breathing out.

Next lesson: Being Constant is Better.

Listening to: Quartetto Gelato - Passacaglia

Running Tips, Lesson 1: Equipment

First off, let me say that these are things that I found helpful and wanted to pass them along. They might not work for you, but they did for me.

First thing: don't go out and buy 500 $ worth of gear. You don't need it, and if you decide later that running isn't for you, you'll just have a whole lot of running gear sitting in the closet. Besides, if you are out running all decked out but don't know how to run, you'll look silly. Only go out and start buying more pieces of gear (shorts, shirts, ...) when you're at a point that not going out for a run doesn't occur to you. Wait till you get all fidgety if you're not running 3+ days a week.

Okay, having said that there is one important piece of equipment that you might want to get early on: shoes. At first when I was running I was going out in my nike hiking shoes and having a bad time: my knees hurt, my hips hurt, and I was getting bad pains in my side. Then I went out and got some asics, and everything was wonderful. But that's not how you get shoes. Go to a running store and tell them that you'd like to get some shoes and want their help. Now, the next thing that they should say is (and I'm not kidding): "take off your shoes and socks. Roll up your pant legs". They'll get you to walk up and down the store and look at how you walk. If they just go "humm, well, these are on sale", that's a good reason to believe that you are not in a running store and time to get out of there.

Okay, so you're walking up and down the store and looking like a fool. No worries. This is how they will pick the shoes that are right for you, and that's why you're there. Now, I have some serious pronation for my feet, so I ended up getting asics foundation 4's with some super feet (which I now wear in all my shoes). That's what worked for me. Also cushy socks. I'll figure out the brand name, but they're good.

Next lesson: breathing.

Listening to: Shawshank Redemption Soundtrack - Duetto Sul'Aria (Berlin Opera)

Longest run so far

Today I went on my longest run ever: 10.2 km. And I did it in 62 minutes, including water stops etc. That's better time that I did on my 8 k's last summer. And it was hot. And I sprinted the last bit racing Betty (and then promptly threw up). We did it slower than we used to do the 8, but we took less stops, and our stops were very short, and did it in less time. So, doing 10.2 I took less time than 8. Did I mention that I ran 10.2 km?

Time to eat and then brush my teeth...

Living at work

Alek and I were briefly talking about living at work. What do you need to live? Somewhere to sleep, somewhere to put food, a place to get cleaned up (showers etc). So, if you were new to the country and really couldn't find a place to live, you could live at work if you had to. I thought that I had just figured out our "fatal flaw" in our plan -> no laundry. But lots of places don't have laundry. And hell, there's a dry cleaners downstairs. Load up the fridge with some frozen food, grab your therm-a-rest and a sleeping bag, some soap etc. and you're good to go.

And the sad thing is, it's got so many pluses: location, closeness to food / drug stores, etc., right downtown, short commute, fast internet, great view, no bugs, great running paths, water pressure in the showers.... Okay, I'm stopping now 'cause I'm getting depressed. One thing: no place to store my kayak. :-P

Listening to: Stan Rogers - Northwest Passage

UN award

The higher-ups here at work have been pretty happy about winning a 2004 UN award (Category One). I think that it's pretty cool myself especially since it's not a huge group. Yay us! ;-)

Translating

I was thinking on the drive home tonight again about how I really wish that I could speak French. This probably came from the fact that I saw Seducing Doctor Lewis on the weekend (excellent movie, go see it). So then I got to thinking....

How would you get a program to recognize what is correct French / English, or how to translate it? It can be very hard to program all the rules and exceptions, and then it's still not going to be perfect. So I was thinking how my email filter finds spam. It does it based on stats on what is recognized as being spam before, and makes a guess of what the new email is. Could we sort of make something like this for languages? Start feeding in simple words, then short sentences, and then larger ones? Let the computer make a guess as what it is, and then make corrections as you go. I'm sure that I'm not the first to think of this and it's probably a bunch of people's master's / PhD thesis, if this isn't how programs like Google's language tools already work.

And there's lots of translated literature that we can feed through the program to "teach it". I'm sure that this solution is way too simple and I don't fully understand the problem, but I can dream can't I? That's how we got here. ;-)

Listening to: Chicane - Don't Give Up

Red is the colour of happiness

Just a quick entry 'cause I'm really tired and going to go for a nap. I picked up a Necky Eskia kayak today (make sure to mouse over the 3/4 view and top view to see it all). Not only did I pick up that boat (jpg), but I also got a pump, throw bag, paddle, and a skirt, and a couple of foam blocks for the roof racks (which I don't have) for my car. There are a couple more things that I would like to get before doing any tripping (like a paddle float). And I have to get a paddling jacket, but that wasn't as required as the other things today.

It was a boat used for rentals, so it's slightly banged up, but not too much. Does anyone know if there's a good way to smooth out minor scrapes on a plastic boat? If there is then I could make is an smooth as a baby's butt. ;-)

The seat is really cool... it's got a air pump that you can inflate and make it more comfy. Pretty cool... Now I just need a garage to put it in. :-P

Listening to: Jay-Z + DJ Danger Mouse - Change Clothes

Kayak sale

I've been looking at stuff for the kayak sale that I am planning to go to this weekend, but I don't think that it's just for used boats like I thought. It looks more like a "buy a new boat" sort of thing... I don't think that I have the cash to shell out for a new one, nor do I really want to get a new one. If I can get a used one, what I get will depend on if I fit in it. I don't know if I can fit in a boat for an "average sized" paddler... Ones that I'm keeping an eye on are the Caspian Sea Expedition and the Bering Sea. We'll see though... I hope that it's not a waste of time for me.

Update: It looks like it is for used boats as well. Yay!

Listening to: Darude - Sandstorm [Original Mix]

Crappy weather is the best time to run

Personally I love it when the weather is a bit crappy and I go out running. It's because most people look out and go "Ugg, no, I'm not going out today". This means that there is hardly anyone that gets in my way, and you know the people out there are the "regulars" because only the mad run in the rain or crappy weather.

And for the most part, when it looks crappy, it's really not that bad. Everyone missed out on a great day to be outside. But Shhhh! Don't let the secret out or I'll have to run around people more.

Listening to: Prodigy - Poison

Artificial deadlines

Something that has put me into a bad (well, at least not great) mood all day is artificial deadlines. Like being at work for 0830. Why the hell would I have to be there at that time? Does it make any difference to anyone? I'm not even interacting with other people about work today, or tomorrow or even the next day. So does it matter when I work, or only that I put in the hours? But that's SO hard to explain to other people. It drives me mad sometimes (if you had not noticed).

And this got me to thinking that just about all deadlines we have in life are just made up. Being at work (for people with flex hours), handing in co-op reports, ... For the most part, they are just deadlines for the sake of deadlines in an effort to ensure that they actually get done. What will happen if we don't meet those deadlines? Not much. But it can be hard sometimes for me to distinguish what are "real" deadlines, and what ones can be safely ignored / bent, so I end up treating all deadlines equally. And it's driving me mad. *sigh*

I just have to keep focused... Hopefully I'll get a kayak this weekend, so it's all good... *focus*

Listening to: Dave Weckl Band - High Life

Star Wars Day!!!

I write about this every year, but I just wanted to wish everyone a happy Star Wars Day! You'll have to notice the date... May the Fourth.... be with you. ;-)

Listening to: Godsmack - Voodoo

hotmail spam

Damn. It looks like I have started to get spam to my hotmail account. I had my email address published in my resumé. So I changed that now... dammit. I had been able to keep my hotmail no spam for so long... *sigh* I guess I just wasn't smart enough about it.

Listening to: The Civilian Project - Shadow On The Sun

Pensive while it rains

I don't know why I feel so pensive today, but maybe it has something to do with spending all day in bed to avoid my headache (damn weather change). I keep on wondering about the future, and what shape it will take, and how futile it can be to try and guess.

I've heard before to try and plan like you are going to live forever, but live like this is your last day on earth. Well, it would be a lot easier if I actually knew, but I think that would be horrible too. What would you do if you knew? If someone told you that you would die when you are 100, does that mean you are going to be more reckless now? Save more? Not live every day to the last, nor tell people how special they are? I don't know how I would deal with something like that, and I guess it doesn't matter one way or another. I think that I'll go back to bed... I'm not good at this philosophy thing, especially when my head is not 100 %... man, I need to go for a run tomorrow.

Listening to: System of a Down - Deer Dance

Faster, better, stronger testing

One of the things that I have been working on for the first time has been testing my application that connects to a database. I know, it's silly that this is the first time this has happened, but that's the way things are.

First, when we run the test suite, we want it nice and clean, so we tear down and rebuild the structure. This means that every time we run the tests, we should get the same results. We had to make sure that we were not stepping on each other's feet, so we are just using different schemas. This is configured in the web server setup, so it's not in the application code itself. So far, so good.

One problem has been when the server that does hosts the oracle db had to shutdown. That stopped testing -> development. A problem that just occurred to me is also if you share tables across schemas. That would be a problem too. And the third problem: we don't actually need persistence writing to the disk. We just need something to simulate it. And I think that the additional I/O just slows down testing too, but that could just be a case of thinking that I know where the bottle neck is, but I don't for sure.

I've asked Andrew about this before and he wrote about using a in memory database as another option. This was part of "the doing the simplest thing first" part of XP. Something that I didn't really figure out before. Ah well. Well, we just jumped right into having a database, so no in memory persistence mech. was made.

What I would like to do is have a "in memory" database. Something that I could

• run the queries against
• something that I wouldn't have to worry about connecting to a "real" database without installing one on each workstation
• where the developers would not be stepping on each other's toes
• where it would be as fast as possible

HSQL looks like it would almost be perfect for this since it seems to have a "in memory" mode. I would think that this means that it will behave the same in both cases, and I wouldn't have to worry about maintaining 2 different persistence types. I know that I don't have time to play around with that now, but I'll see if I can do that in the future.

Listening to: John Williams - Star Wars Soundtrack - Imperial March

Blogs as letters to the editor?

While I was reading a copy of popular science I checked out the letters to the editor. Nothing special so far, okay. But they had a section for blogs where they said how many blogs had written entries about last months stories and had some comments from them. I thought that was just so cool that using the web they are showing what people are writing about them, and not just what people have written to them.

TV at first was very similar to live performances, and over time has changed into a completely different medium. The web at first was very similar to magazines and papers, it's changing into something completely different. I just don't know into what. ;-)

Listening to: Harry Simeone Chorale - What Child Is This