Rubenerd

I've always been fascinated by iron structures, such as the Eiffel Tower, the Cavenagh Bridge and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. How these complicated, heavy structures could have been conceived and constructed without computer aided design (or even electronic calculators!) boggles my mind. Honestly!

For those interested, I took a whole bunch of photos around the bridge last year, including what I hoped were some more unconventional ones.

It also goes without saying that all the best things/people were opened/born in/around March. Ahem.

In response to my previous Java post, I got a DM on Twitter from another university student asking if I'd come across the above error before. Often I do, when I'm programming in a dazed stupor at 3am, and I've done this:

% javac Something.java
% java Something.class

Instead of this:

% javac Something.java
% java Something

The error can be caused by any number of factors, but 99% of the time it's because of this. Much hair ripping has resulted from it!

(It turns out this was the problem. Glad I could help ^^)

A very good friend of mine at UTS and on The Twitters asked about enhanced for loops in Java. I think he understands what's going on now, but just in case I'm putting an example up here!

Caveats

• In the real world, we don’t really use primitive arrays in Java anymore, but given UTS still teaches them for some reason, they’ll do for our example here!

• For some reason I got into the habit of including the above picture from Railgun into my programming posts. Presumably because there’s a laptop involved, and I can’t stand dry posts without pictures! But I digress.

Regular for loops

Say we wanted to create an application that stores a list of moeblob character names into an array, then print each name out to the screen.

public class EnhancedForLoop
{
  public static void main(String[] args)
  {
    String[] keion = new String[3];
    keion[0] = "Mugi";
    keion[1] = "Yui";
    keion[2] = "Azusa";
    for (int count = 0; count < keion.length; count++)
    {
      System.out.println(keion[count]);
    }
  }
}

As you can see, we created an array and populated it with character names. We then used a for loop and printed each character by referencing them one by one.

There's a simpler way!

There are circumstances where a traditional for loop would be preferred (and needed!), but if all you want to do is traverse an array one by one, there's a simpler way!

for (String name : keion)
{
  System.out.println(name);
}

In this loop, instead of referencing each array element by a number, it traverses the array one by one for us, and stores the current element in a temporary variable. In this case, each element in our "keion" array gets put into our temporary "String name" variable! :D

As you can probably tell, for going through an array one by one, an enhanced for loop is:

• shorter and easier to write
• the statements in the loop are easier to read, make more sense
• you don't need to know how many elements there are
• you don't need to do any maths!

These kinds of loops are common

I'm not sure if you've done any scripting, but enhanced for loops are huge in languages like Perl, Ruby and Python. My personal favourite is the former ^_^

#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
my @keion = qw/Mugi Yui Azusa/;
foreach my $name (@keion) {
    print("$namen");
}

I have no idea what this post contained. At some point during the myriad of CMS changes that Rubenerd has had over the years, it lost its content. All I have is this title.

I assume its to do with Malaysians being busted for unlicenced software? Or maybe something Edward Snowden would use. Who knows? What a mystery.

When I first heard of Black Rock Shooter and its anime adaptation, I was expecting a franchise about a kick arse, renewable energy-touting superhero taking down the coal lobby by staring people down. Needless to say, I was entirely wrong.

Forgive me, my last three posts were about more serious news topics, and I needed an entirely pointless break! It seems people are disappointed with the anime, but for those of us who never played the game or read the manga, would it be worth watching?

I know this is rather beyond the scope of a weblog of nerdish interests, but this story really grabbed my attention over the last few days. It also gives me an excuse to an impromptu book review!

Artsy image of the Goldman Sachs headquarters by Quantumquark on Wikimedia Commons.

The story

For those of you who don't follow this kind of thing (and I don't blame you!), a former worker at the investment bank Goldman Sachs has publicly come out describing the firm with some… rather choice words.

From a Reuters report by Douwe Miedema and Lauren Tara LaCapra, which you can tell because the first word of the report is "Reuters":

(Reuters) – Goldman Sachs faced an unprecedented assault from one of its own on Wednesday after a banker published a withering resignation letter in the New York Times, calling the Wall Street titan a “toxic” place where managing directors referred to their own clients as “muppets.”

Disgruntled staff talking bluntly about their previous place of employment is hardly new, but these comments from Greg Smith made me raise an eyebrow. If I were capable of raising a single eyebrow. I tried my best to teach myself as a kid, but I never could do it. Perhaps I should have spent that time studying finance. But I digress.

The book review

One of the first books I read when I procured a Kindle was "Money and Power". In the book, William D. Cohan outlined in painstaking detail the history of Goldman Sachs, paying particular attenton to the course of events that led to what the firm is today, how they bundled and marketed all their derivatives into "products", as well as opinions internally and externally about the firm. I find myself shaking my head in disbelief at times, but there was no doubt it was fascinating.

The recurring theme from the book was the idea senior management (the "partners" everyone strove to be) wanted to give the impression that the firm only succeeded when their clients did. There were some glaring examples of where this clearly wasn't true; such as their numerous conflicts of interest.

Still, the press release from Goldman Sachs in response to Greg's comments seemed to reinforce this sentiment. Good heavens, that was a long sentence.

“We disagree with the views expressed, which we don’t think reflect the way we run our business. In our view, we will only be successful if our clients are successful. This fundamental truth lies at the heart of how we conduct ourselves.”

Hmm, wait a minute!

This is where it gets interesting though. Read this report much further, and towards the end we get this comment from a banker at a competing institution:

“In my experience … client success and firm success can peacefully coexist; in fact thrive,” Harris Private Bank Chief Investment Officer Jack Ablin said in an open letter.

Note the wording. Mr Albin didn't say client and firm success "always coexist", or "needs to coexist", he said "can coexist". That suggests the capability to coexist, but whether or not that's what happens in the real world is another point entirely.

Perhaps I'm reading a little too far into a single word, but it sounds like political speak to me. You don't want to admit your firm is doing something, but on the other hand you don't want to deny it and later be called out for it.

In any case, Jack Albin doesn't work for Goldman Sachs, but I think he spoke an untold truth of the whole investment banking community with that comment. No doubt Goldman's PR department would be far too sharp to let such a comment slip ;).

Tristin Hopper writing for the Canadian National Post:

He felt that in Canada the risk of violent protest was simply too high,” said Ryan Ruppert, president of promotions company Spectre Live Corp., which had booked Mr. Cheney for an April 24 appearance at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

So you're brave enough to send thousands to their deaths and shoot animals in a reserve, but not to face your critics? You sir, are beneath contempt.

Celebrating Empire Day in style here in the Schade family household, by posting a veritable litany of randomness, eating crumpets and drinking tea. At least half my genes are pleased with this arrangement, the others aren't so sure. Oh, I say, rah-ther.

Britanime

We start our cavalcade of British Empire blogging whatnot (a spot of tea?) with an image from Detective Conan, and from the K-On! movie where the girls found themselves eating cake in London. I can only imagine the latter, having never seen it.

First image submitted by 穂積 on Pixiv, the second by the fabulously smashing folks at Kyoto Animation who managed to distill moe and dispense it in lethal doses!

Cathay Pacific Sherlock

We continue by flying to Hong Kong, one of their former colonial possessions. Given I only just posted a story about aviation, it seemed fitting. Wait a minute, Singapore was a colonial posession too. Those Brits have been everywhere; and they weren't exactly original with their subordinate's flag designs either.

Anyway, we're getting distracted chaps. On the Australian Business Traveler site, what did the reviewer use to test the new inflight entertainment system of select Cathay Pacific aircraft? That's right, Sherlock!

Naturally, I rewatched an episode of the show again this evening. The first of season two, because it was rather cheeky. I still haven't got over the anger that CBS will be creating an American version, what an abject travesty against decency and good taste!

To help calm down from this, here's a photo of our favourite duo:

Little did they know when meeting for the first time… :'). Oh dear, I'm using emoticons and writing vague sentences with regards to this show just like fangirls. They're so dreamy… ^^

The Brittas Empire

Speaking of British television, one of my favourites from years past is The Brittas Empire. Along with Fawlty Towers, Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em, Keeping Up Appearances, Red Dwarf, Monty Python and too many others to count, this was one of the British television shows growing up that I simply could not get enough of.

I forget which station I used to tune in with The Family™ to watch this each week in Singapore, but it was absolutely hilarious. The gist was an uptight manager of a recreation centre in suburban England that had to contend with incompetent and/or silly staff, government regulations and… customers! With comedic results ;).

On this Empire Day, I found myself learning something new about the show, from the @BrittasEmpire Twitter account:

You bastard! You’ll never get away with this! (Brittas swears for first & only time) S1 Ep4.

It also took me this long to realise that I'm discussing the Brittas Empire on Empire Day. Who'd have thought.

Britanime part two, fine folks

I was going to round off this post with a mention of Hetalia, the anime series featuring moe anthropomorphisms of nation states with ridiculous results, but I figure this page unfairly slants towards depicting British gentleman.

So here is a picture of Lynette Bishop, the moe anthropomorphism of the British Spitfire from the 501st Joint Figher Wing of Strike Witches. You'd better believe it.

Don't worry, I didn't understand it either. A jolly Empire Day to you!

Everyone is all abuzz at the news that CNN may acquire Mashable. Presumably to tap into their social energy and reach, CNN will use them to adapt their infinitely larger, more bureaucratic, slow moving organisation into a nimble social media powerhouse. As all the tech pundits are saying, it's a brilliant strategy! A perfect fit! Synergistic paradigms!

Of course not. In reality, I predict Mashable would still be relevant for a year or so, then Peter Cashmore will leave CNN and start a new blog network. It happens. Every. Single. Time.

As an aside, the last (and only other) time I mentioned Mashable here was in 2009 for their Open Web Awards, of which I was less than impressed and came up with my own recommendations!

It's sure been a month of anniversaries and milestones, for better or worse. Here's one that I feel compelled (and able) to discuss in more detail, the last revenue passenger flights of the Singapore Airlines 747.

Photo by Terence Ong on Wikimedia Commons.

No more SIA 747s

From Asian Skies on Flight Global:

After nearly four decades of successful operations, Singapore Airlines is about to retire its last remaining Boeing 747s from passenger service. The Boeing 747 has been an icon of Singapore Airlines’ fleet since a pair Boeing 747-200s first landed at Paya Lebar Airport on the 3rd of September of 1973.

Since that date the Singaporean flag carrier has operated several variants of the Jumbo jet, adding its first Boeing 747-300 in May 1983 and later on the 747-400. Its first international Boeing 747-400 service, from Singapore to London, was flown on 31st May of 1989.

According to the site, the type's final scheduled flight will be from Singapore to Melborune and back on the 25th and 26th of March, and that cargo 747 operations will continue. In other worse, unless we're crew on a freighter, no more SIA 747 service for us!

Photo of Singapore in 1998 from here, of all places. It's sure changed a lot since! :O

Nostalgia time!

With the possible exception of Concorde, few airframes are as instantly recognisable to the general public as the Boeing 747. With its forward upper deck (FUD, to you non-IT people) and large wings, it was the first commercial widebody passenger jetliner, and became a household name. We started referring to things by comparing them to the size of a 747.

For my sister and I though, the Singapore Airlines 747 fleet will always hold a special place in our hearts and minds, as it were. Boarding our flight from Brisbane in the mid 1990s, it was the first part of Singapore we saw having been told our father's job was transferring us there.

Aside from transferring us away from Australia and forever changing our perceptions of life, the universe and everything (as well as firmly cementing my obsession with Asian culture, food, history, language, people and living!), at the time what we were most excited about were our seats. My father's company had shouted us business class tickets, which meant we got to sit "upstairs"! Compared to the gigantic cabin downstairs with its rows of cattle class seats and noise, the top section felt cozy. It was small, had few seats, and was tiny!

As my sister said:

That’s one of the few flights I do remember… which is weird!

Ironically enough, with my father being transferred back to Australia recently and my sister and I being accepted into UTS, our last flight back from Singapore to Sydney on Singapore Airlines was on one of their brand new A380s, the very plane that most likely lead to the retirement of their 747s. Funny how the world works like that.

Anyway, another aspect of our childhoods flying away. Which reminds me, something else from our childhoods had a massive anniversary recently, I'll need to blog about that soon too!