Rubenerd

Trying out SmugMug after hearing so many people on The Twitters and other sources rave about it. I've uploaded a few photos from my sister's and my recent trip to Cocolat on Rundle Street in Adelaide. Tastyness!

While I do love the design and think their uploading tools and generated URLs are far superior, I think I'll stick with Flickr for now. I've already got a ton of stuff hosted with them from many years of use, they make it easier to display images externally, not to mention the fact I just topped up my pro account so might as well use them for the next year!

The link to my testing account will still be active for 30 days before it expires. Unless someone else can give me a reason why I should keep it up of course :)

This originally appeared on the Annexe, back when I recorded daily puzzles.

If I were to classify myself on an arbitrary scale of photographic skill, I'd be positioned at the part where "he use manual settings on his DSLR for fun but would probably get better results most of the time if he used automatic!" Well okay I admit most of the time I use aperture priority mode on my Nikon D60 which is cheating a little ;-).

A sign of the times though is the fact that I'm starting to get less excited about new computer gadgets as I do when I find out Nikon/Nikkor has a new lens coming out. Paroozing the Nikon website I confirmed what the British Journal of Photography said, they're releasing a new 85mm prime DX lens!

Despite only being able to manually focus on my Nikon D60, my favourite lens is still my AF 50mm f/1.8. Aside from when I want to take nature shots from afar with my 55-200mm, prime lenses offer sharpness and speed that us amateurs can take advantage of despite our limited skill :).

Unfortunately the price will probably be far too high for someone like me (about £500!!!) but I'll be keeping my eye out.

A few weeks ago I discussed the different ways to include multiple classes in one file, and one of the comments questioned my use of a class within a class. Apparently when they tried to do it in earlier versions of Java all they got in return was grief. I could say something there about swearing being the common language of all programmers but I'll leave it at that :).

From what I can tell, so called inner classes were introduced in Java 5, and they allow you to do some pretty cool stuff. By having an inner class defined within an outer class:

• the inner class can access the data members of the outer class without the need for setter and getter methods
• tidyness and encapsulation es ist gut so!
• if you start getting into using C++’eque <T> object types (something I’m learning now) the outer and inner classes automatically share them (which they need to anyway)
• of lesser importance, you only need to give the Java compiler one file to compile two or more related classes, and you only need to work on the one file

When you compile a java class with inner classes, the resulting compiled bytecode class file whatsits (to use the technical terminology) are divided into outer classes and inner classes with a dollar sign:

% javac OuterClass.java
% ls -l
==> OuterClass.class
==> OuterClass$innerClass.class
% echo Grilled Cheese Sandwich
==> Grilled Cheese Sandwich

My Java linked list stack post shows how a outer link list class uses an inner Node class if you want to check it out. Another example is the Iterator class which belongs to Java's new and very nice to use lists that implement the List interface, other things I'll be blogging about soon once I've had a chance to play around with them more.

Personally I can already see how these could be abused, but I guess as with any great power comes great responsibility, and with any blog post comes the need for a cliché apparently!

News stories are spreading like some sort of fire (a wild one I presume) that initial sales of the Bakemonogatari DVDs and BluRay discs have not only outsold the disastrous and missed opportunity that was the second season of Haruhi, but even K-On! In real terms outselling Haruhi didn't surprise me, but beating the K-On with its huge impact on popular culture (sales of musical instruments, shimapan bowls and whatnot) was quite an achievement.

There seems to be two streams of discussion online about this that I would argue are actually the same thing, but people aren't treating them as such. The first is, despite beating the Kyoani war machine, Shaft still didn't sell as many as any series that have super robots. Fair enough, everybody expected that because they're two completely different genres and types of shows. Then the same people turn around and start arbitrarily discussing how much better Bakemonogatari is to both K-On and Haruhi.

Huh?

Let's get one thing straight; I have adored Bakeomonogatari. I think it's been one of the freshest, most interesting series I've seen since I started watching anime again, and Shaft are to be commended for their successful adaptation. I expected no less from the studio that brought us the brilliant Sayonara Setsubou-Sensei!

That said, I'm of the opinion that arbitrarily comparing Bakemonogatari to both Haruhi and K-On is almost as silly and meaningless as comparing Bakemonogatari to shows with super robots. I preface my proposition with almost because I do concede there is perhaps more of an audience overlap between Kyoani's shows and Shaft's, but my point stands. Mostly.

While I admit I adore K-On and thought the first season of Haruhi was far more interesting than anything else coming out at that time, the first is mostly an unabashed moe blob series and Haruhi for all it's time travellers and espers and universe creation was also largely a slice of life show as well. I think it's safe to say both were comedies. Bakemonogatari has it's lighthearted, fun moments, but it'd be quite a stretch to call it a moe blob series or a comedy. The Bakemonogatari universe is also fundamentally different, and aside from anything else comparing the art in it to any other series (perhaps aside from Sayonara Setsubou-Sensei!) is just unfair!

Am I completely wrong? Probably. I just wish people could celebrate the incredible success and achievement Shaft have had with their superb new series without instantly saying it's because it's "just better". A fine bottle of Barossa Valley red is better than a can of Coke, but that doesn't mean the comparison means anything :P.

In the paraphrased and modified words of Tom Lehrer, if I may digress momentarily from the mainstream of blog posts here, I would like to share something that is completely pointless. Aside from the lack of wood veneer on some of the walls, don't you think Yerevan's new airport kinda looks a bit like Adelaide's new airport? It even has the slanted roof, round skylights, free standing signs and whatnot.

Hard hitting stuff.

Singapore's Anime Festival Asia 2009 has been announced for the 21st to the 22nd of November, in 2009 of all years. I guess it makes sense that it'd be in 2009 given the name is Anime Festival Asia 2009. Sometimes I worry that I could be too funny. I lie, I really never think that, and I'm sure you don't either.

What's epic about this years one (aside from the fact I'll be back in Singapore at that time which means I could go this time!) is the seiyuus from K-On will be there answering questions and even doing a live dub!! What's more, my spell checker is telling me seiyuu should be spelt seizure. I guess that could be seen as an interpretation of an expected result of this.

Anyone planning on going this year?

In the movie About a Boy (I didn't ever read the book), Hugh Grant's character had a system whereby he'd split up his day into half hour units. A haircut would be two units. Having lunch would be another unit. Throwing grilled cheese sandwiches at kids who walk up his door would be three units.

I'm fortunate that despite having mountains of stuff to do every day, I generally have at least a few units I can dedicate to doing frivolous things like watching anime, blogging about nonsense and taking walks around the park while listening to Miles Davis and Michael Franks.

I belabour all this nonsense (even more than usual) because for the first time in over two months I had some… concurrent units! I instantly set about redesigning my site again, I've never been pleased with my designs and this latest one solves many of the problems with the current one. I've also tweaked my latest software redesign so I can finally get off WordPress once and for all.

Knowing me, neither will get implemented. Fun to think about alternative possibilities though. And as for the coffee? I put it on it's side to imply greater impact. How does a coffee on its side imply greater impact? I have no friggen idea, but it sounded good in my head.

One of the banes of my existence now that I'm predominately a notebook computer user is external hard drives. I can't afford to shell out a small fortune for an integrated solution such as a Drobo, so (to shamelessly borrow a phrase I've already used here!) I have to make do with a veritable Stonehenge of external hard drives, each with their own space on the desk, individual data and power cables and a huge padded bag to carry them in when I go back to Singapore, Adelaide and so on.

This tangled spaghetti mess that will probably morph into an intelligent being and take over the world one day isn't the main problem for me though.

I think the problem stems with the way contemporary operating systems deal with them in two tiny yet painfully irritating ways that I think are the result of historically not having so many drives attached to a single personal computer. This happens on Windows and Mac OS X, but curiously not on my FreeBSD machines.

When I go to save or open a file with a application's modal dialog box, the OS insists on powering up and checking each external drive before it will let me do anything. This means every time I open a dialog box like this it can take upwards of 30 seconds before I can do anything! Leaving aside the issue of sleeping hard drives entirely (a possible future post topic) I just can't understand why a 2009 operating system can't determine that by opening a dialog box focused on an internal drive that I don't want to use the external ones, and even if I did I would only be saving a file to ONE of them not to all six!

As an addendum, why must external hard drives be awoken from sleep one at a time? Surely a modern, multi tasking operating system has the ability to process a few status check threads for separate hardware devices concurrently. I can understand the idea of minimising peak loads when we're dealing with server farms with hundreds of drives, but I just need my six to wake up in a reasonable time, and combined they'd still only draw a fraction of the power that, say, a refrigerator or grilled cheese sandwich iron would.

I'm a computer science student not a engineer so perhaps there are reasonable, logical reasons for why hardware like this behaves in this manner, but as it stands I can't see why the logic can't follow the second diagram above instead of the first. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, in fact I encourage it!

Something has happened in an undisclosed location with ramifications that could potentially be felt by living people.

The event took place earlier this evening Earth time with as many as no, one or more than one witnesses.

An interviewee commented that "[they] was just standing there, when suddenly it happened. [They] weren't anywhere near where it happened, but [they] know that it did. At least [they] think it did.".

There will be more news as this breaking story develops, most likely to do with matters that have nothing in common with this story.