Tron

Something occurred to me tonight. I can make a Tron costume and not be quite like that guy.

My costume would look normal - during the day. Hell, it would actually be a safety thing. All I could need to do it is get some reflective tape and strategically put it on my helmet, bike, and biking clothes. At night I'd light up like, well, a guy on a light bike.

Where have I been, #3

Another update of my travel history. Other places are tracked in #1 and #2. This one is to track our trip to SEA early this year. I'll have to blog about the more memories before they fade.

Bangkok, Thailand
Siem Reap, Cambodia
Vientiane, Laos
Vang Vieng, Laos
Luang Prabang, Laos
Chiang Mai, Thailand
Sukhothai, Thailand
Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam
Mui Ne, Vietnam
Hanoi, Vietnam
Sa Pa, Vietnam
Halong Bay, Vietnam

My Dearest Jaywalker

It's been several days since our meeting and in my quiet moments my thoughts often run to when our paths crossed. When I first laid my eyes upon you, you were like any other woman in the crowd. I soon realized that you were far different than the others. You have a reckless abandon that is revered in the old and feared in the young.

I know that we shared an emotional connection - hearts racing, adrenaline pumping, thoughts madly flying though our heads so quickly that physical reactions were but a snails pace compared to them. Sitting here, I can't even picture your face. All I remember is a mess of dirty blond hair as you boldly decided to dash out into traffic while looking in the opposite direction. Me calling out to you, slowing as I passed you, steering left so that we would not meet in a lovers embrace of bicycle, spandex and pants suit. Just as Rose's drowning of Jack in Titanic saved them both, your reaction of making yourself as narrow as possible saved us.

Not everyone can make emotional connections so quickly and walk away without looking back, but you could. I'll remember our time together and I hope that the next time that you step out into traffic half way between intersections without looking, you'll be able to make another connection with someone else. But hang in there, because ones of these times it won't be with a bicycle and they won't just make an emotional connection with you. They'll make a embrace that will knock you off your feet and leave such an impression on you that it'll be there for the rest of your life.

Or you could look both freaking ways before crossing the street.

Nuclear isn't always clear

Found an interesting post on /. wrt using nuclear plants and powering the US. Like any project, it seems like the technical ones were the easiest to overcome - it's the political ones that will kill it.

A company of fools

Tonight we went and saw A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by a company of fools. We were late and we skipped dinner to make it there for the 7 pm show. Pretty hungry, but it's okay because you're just sitting in a camp chair, in the park by the river while the sun sets and live actors perform a 400+ year play. You know, just another Monday. I was really impressed how funny they were and how much they interacted with the crowd. Honestly going to see the play I didn't know if I'd like it - I suspected that I wouldn't. But I was wrong, and that's a good thing.

My favourite part was their liberal use of "magic potions" - i.e. water balloons. Funny cast, quick improv when something funny and distracting was going on (airplane overhead, car alarm, etc). More along the way that I can imagine the plays originally were - funny, interactive, and with life. Best pay-what-you-can show that I've seen.

Telemarketers

We often get calls from telemarketers. They might be a company that we already have services with and are trying to upsell us on something. Either way, I don't want to talk to them. At the same time, I am curious about what they might have to say. I usually say the person they are trying to reach isn't home, but can I take a message. They almost always decline and say they'll call back. Which, really does not help reduce the calls we receive. I should probably rethink that strategy.

I'm trying to come up with alternative amusing ways to find out what they want without sitting through a whole sales spiel. So far I've got a couple:

• They work nights. Can I take a message and they'll call back at 3 am?
• They've been institutionalized for a couple of weeks. Can I take a message to give to their doctor to pass along?
• They've got a hearing disability and I'll need to write down the question for them.
• She's a mermaid and can't leave the water and the phone won't reach.
• They're in Chile working on the large telescope array and won't be around until after the next lunar eclipse.
• They've gone on a walkabout and they'll be back after they meet their spiritual guide.
• They're out tilting at windmills right now. Can I take a message?
• Mrs. [last name]? Oh. That was before the operation. It's Steve now. Steve's not in.
• Uhh... this is awkward. His court case didn't go so well. It is okay if he calls back in 2 years less a day?
• He went out and got hammered last night and is the hospital. The doctors will be removing the nails tomorrow.
• He never talks on the phone when his stigmata is acting up. He doesn't like getting blood on the phone.
• Sorry for interrupting, but are you a ninja? It's just that ever since he's been involved in piracy he's been deathly afraid of ninjas...

Got any other good ones?

Three degrees to happy

It's been relatively cooler lately, so 2 days ago we turned off the AC and opened all the windows to get some fresh air in the house. So it got warmer. Not much, just a couple of degrees. Well, those couple of degrees for Laura and me are what separate happy from grumpy. I was grumpy around the house. I slept like crap because it was a bit too warm (I didn't get the fans because of the grumpyness) and to get air flow we left the blind open which meant it was too bright to sleep well.

Today the AC is keeping the house at a chilly 23 C. Sooooo happy.

Taking care of the Jim

What I would like is for the house to take care of me, rather than me taking care of the house. I know that's how the future will go. You can see it starting with things like the roomba and automatic lawn mowers. I want the house to be aware of the people in it. Turn up the heat (or AC) before people come home. Adjust the blinds throughout the day to maximize energy efficiency. Turn off the stereo when I leave and lock the house. Unlock the house when I come home. Turn on the bathroom fan when it's stinky or humid. Keep track of how much food is in the fridge and what needs to be reordered. Sync / push the grocery list to my phone / mobile device or just send the order directly to the store so I can go pick it up without spending an extra 45 minutes looking for the dried cranberries. Give me a heads up that Laura's on her way home. Scrub the toilet automatically daily because that's something I really, really hate doing.

I do believe that we're living in the future. I just want all the parts to catch up to my expectations.

Paging algorithm

For some reasons my brain has trouble with some things. Spelling is one, another one is the algorithm for pagination - at least that's what I'm calling it. Basically it's when you've got a large result set and want to make subsets with a given max size to be processed. I recently ran into this when writing a small program to dump data to a excel spreadsheet and I found out that there is a 256 column limit.

After 10 minutes of fruitless googling I had to think for myself and write something (in java). I'm blogging my solution so that I don't have to think again. Please excuse the formatting.

public static <T> List<List<T>> page(List<T>  artifacts, int pageSize) {
List<List<T>> result = new ArrayList<List<T>>();

for (int sheetNumber = 0; sheetNumber <= (artifacts.size() / pageSize); sheetNumber++) {

int fromIndex = sheetNumber * pageSize;
int toIndex = Math.min(artifacts.size(), fromIndex + pageSize);

// create a shorter view on this list
List<T> subList = artifacts.subList(fromIndex, toIndex);

result.add(subList);
}
return result;
}

Need a new backup / organize strategy

I'm starting to feel the rubbing point in needing a new strategy for backing up photos. The strategy used to be that I would copy the pictures from the camera to the computer. Then I'd upload them to flickr as well as an external drive. But this is starting to break down now that we're getting devices that can upload directly to flickr / facebook.

I've got to make a decision: is flickr the authoritative source? Currently I think that there is pictures on flickr that are no where else due to me losing a drive. There are tools that will allow you to pull down all your pictures, but I'm not sure if it can just pull down the diff's. Ideally I'd love to just be able to cross reference any picture that I have on my computer with what's in flickr rather then re-downloading the ~ 17 k shots.

After I've figured out that issue, I think that I need to start looking at photo manipulation as more of a standard procedure. That way I could merge pictures like this with something like this and end up with a good picture. It seems like it's almost impossible to take a nice picture of groups more than 2. Ah well.

Unconquerable

... I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

A couple of weeks ago I watched a game trailer that has a voice over of the Invictus poem. I found it very powerful and it lead me to track down the actual poem and read about it. I can't actually find that game trailer - I think that it was a fan modified version of the Gears of War 3 Trailer - Ashes to Ashes. It's been especially hard to try and track down any info because of the Invictus movie that came out 6 months ago.

I've re-read this poem a couple of dozen times in the last few weeks, and it still sends a shiver down my spine.