Rubenerd

Well okay it means I reached 1960+ blog posts, but the point stands: Peace, health, happiness and all that stuff! This is for you Mumster :).

Photo of Adelaide traffic above by Cold Citrus on Flickr.

Todd Tyrtle shared an interesting article on Google Reader this morning about the myth of cyclists causing more accidents than motorists. I've always thought the claim was dubious.

Dr. Chris Cavacuiti, a Toronto physician who cycles competitively, started doing some research into how most bike-versus-car collisions happen while recovering from a nasty bike-versus-car collision. His findings:

While there is a public perception that cyclists are usually the cause of accidents between cars and bikes, an analysis of Toronto police collision reports shows otherwise: The most common type of crash in this study involved a motorist entering an intersection and either failing to stop properly…

As someone who lives most of his life as a pedestrian and public transport taker I can completely believe this. The number of times I've been clipped by cars and have almost been run over when I have the green light at a pedestrian crossing just isn't funny any more. Well, it was never funny but you get the idea. I look both ways when crossing the street, but cars are much faster than my reflexes and I am. What also irritates me is how often people don't indicate when they're turning; it only takes a tiny flick of the wrist for the driver but apparently that's too much effort for most. This is true in both Adelaide and Singapore.

The problem for people like me and bike riders like Todd is we're expected to put up with lousy drivers because cars are an "entitlement" when they should be seen as a privilege, and as such bear a certain level of responsibility. Demerit points don't discourage reckless driving because they just punish actions rather than dealing with the underlying entitlement problem which I think is endemic to our society, much like binge drinking. I could get onto the selfishness of drunk drivers, but I've decided to keep that Pandora's box closed!

There are some people who legitimately need cars, but that shouldn't excuse everyone from having one and driving them inconsiderately. Safe drivers as well as bike riders and pedestrians are affected by such people.

When it comes to simple video editing on the Mac, iMovie HD that came bundled with iLife 06 is still the best in my opinion. The new iMovie versions that came out with the subsequent versions of iLife were a huge step backwards, but for small projects Final Cut Express is overkill and far too expensive to justify. Even though I use iLife 08 for other applications, I still have my copy of iLife 06 just for the older version of iMovie. iUsed a lot of iWords in that sentence iThink.

Problem is, its as unreliable as Firefox 3.5 which means you need to remember to constantly save. Guess it's a good thing to get into the habit of doing, but it means when you haven't saved for a few minutes after positioning frames perfectly in the timeline (which neither iMovie 07 and 08 have) you might have to do it all again. Command+S is my friend!

Aside from this I'm okay with my current setup, my original generation MacBook Pro has a shot FireWire port but I'm able to use an ExpressCard to get FireWire functionality back, and iMovie HD still runs on Leopard just fine. I guess I'm just a little paranoid that any one of these tenuous things could fail and I'll be up an electronic creek without a paddle.

I have had so much work and studying to do this weekend I was worried my brain would spontaneously combust, so I deemed some downtime every now and then would be appropriate. Given I was four episodes into K-On when my first anime blog was wiped and because it's such a light-hearted (get it?) show I thought I may as well start watching it again from the beginning to maintain my sanity. It worked surprisingly well in this capacity!

If you've been living under a rock, K-On! is the story of four girls who try to rescue their high school's light music club from being cancelled. I admit it seemed like an overly simple premise to me initially, but when I started watching it was such a pleasantly fun distraction that also didn't take itself too seriously I was hooked.

We start with Hirasawa Yui who's energetic, incredibly clumsy and allegedly can't read analogue clocks early in the morning, though she is capable of the infamous eating toast while running routine! She does make it to school in time and is accosted by clubs asking for her membership in much the same way people used to ask me to join ECAs in high school, but just like I was she has no friggen idea what she wanted to do.

Meanwhile we're introduced to Tainaka Ritsu and Akiyama Mio who is anxious to join the light music club and who was forced to give up plans to join the literary club respectively. Apparently they go back quite far, even to an earlier time when they attended a live rock concert and knew that's what they wanted to to! Well okay as Mio pointed out they only watched it on television, but the point stands! Cue a frustrated Mio headshot.

The entire plot for the series is realised when Ritsu and Mio attempt to join the light music club only to be told by the sensei that it's going to be cancelled due to a lack of members; turns out you need four people and they've only got two. That scene where Yui drops all the papers and Ritus and Mio roll their eyes was so awkward but so well done!

While waiting in the clubroom for new recruits we're introduced to Kotobuki Tsumugi, the soft spoken, well to do wealthy Mikuru character who says she can play keyboards. They're thrilled and take her to a fast food restaurant where she admits to looking forward to being asked "whether she wants fries with that" because she'd never had fast food before. Cue a surprised shot of Ritsu and Mio!

At this stage the story is largely about Yui deciding to join the light music club after realising how good she is at the castanets ^_^. Initially she's too shy but eventually she bumps into Ritsu and joins the other three in the club room where she eats far too much cake and tea while the others grill her on her favourite guitar players. Just a minor inconvenience that she can't play guitar of course!

She's convinced to stay when finally she's given an impromptu performance with Ritsu on drums, Mio on bass and Tsumugi on keyboards. Yui is brutally honest in her awesome way, but I gotta say if the bands we had in our high school were half as good as their supposed lacklustre one, I would have paid attention!

I can't quite put my finger on why, but I love the graphics in this series, they're in keeping with the show's overall whimsical nature. The designs of the characters' faces are simple but are able to show a surprising array of emotion… and cuteness. Sorry, it had to be said! There are also an above average amount of awesome frames; I know people who upload hundreds of screenshots for their reviews but as usual I try to restrain myself to no more than half a dozen. It's easy when the show is dull or repetitive, it's harder for a show like this!

As I also talked about previously, I think much of the criticism levelled against K-On and shows like it is people start watching it with unrealistic expectations and get frustrated when said expectations aren't met. Yes it's KyoAni but if you expect the same level of weirdness and awesomeness as from Suzumiya (prior to Endless Eight) you're going to be disappointed, plan and simple folks!

J… J… Jimi Hendrix!

Moving back from Firefox 3.5.x to 3.0.13 was probably one of the smartest things I've done in a while, but that's not to say 3.0.13 is perfect either. For some reason whenever my master password is required at the moment the above dialog box will pop up followed by the actual authentication dialog box. Not quite sure what it is, when I typed "grilled cheese sandwich" or "Senjougahara is insane" nothing happened, so I'm assuming this means its a dummy of some description.

Microsoft were always fabled for having the most cryptic error messages, but what's more cryptic than a dialog box with nothing whatsoever? Elwood Blues would probably dig it.

This afternoon I did something extraordinarily productive and created an extended #SongsInCode rendition of Message in a Bottle that compiles. Now all somebody in this distant future needs to do is create a new class to fetch Sting's bottle and read his message!

Sting.java

public class Sting {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    Bottle oceanBottle = new Bottle("SOS!");
  }
}

Bottle.java

public class Bottle {
  String message = "";
  boolean opened = false;
  public Bottle(String message) {
    this.message = message;
  }
  public void pullCork() {
    opened = true;
  }
  public String getMessage() throws NotOpenException {
    if (opened)
      return message;
    else
      throw new NotOpenException();
  }
}

NotOpenException.java

public class NotOpenException extends Throwable {
  public NotOpenException() {
    super("You haven't opened the bottle yet!");
  }
}

Couldn't have said it better myself. Almost makes up for this, and for her spelling. Good think I'd never be caught making spelling or grammar mistakes on my blog here.

I know I've posted about it far too much, but I just have to post one more time about my experiences with this amazing little machine.

It's been over a week since I installed Debian Lenny on my newly bought second hand ThinkPad X40 and it's exceeded all my expectations. I honestly have not been as impressed with a non-Mac piece of hardware for years. It's extremely lightweight, has a fantastic full keyboard and despite having an old battery I still get 3+ hours with the screen set to full brightness and WiFi on. I've literally walked into lectures and tutorials at uni with just this machine which has been such a tremendous relief on my back compared to lugging my 15" MacBook Pro. It's light, solidly built and it's 1.4GHz Pentium M with a scant 512MiB of memory perform far above what I expected.

As an Xfce user on FreeBSD the other thing I've been surprised by is how much I'm enjoying Gnome 2.26. The problem is I tend to use FreeBSD on older machines and servers so Gnome has always been overkill but it works beautifully even on this older hardware. The built in graphical tools allow me to update software, configure wireless networks and even have true composting video effects which means I can have translucent menubars and all that cool stuff. The system also boots up quickly and standby works. It's almost feels as if IBM shipped me this ThinkPad with the software preinstalled.

I am still primarily a Mac guy, but I must admit I'm tempted at some point when I decide to replace my MacBook Pro to spend the same amount of money on a brand new ThinkPad and put Debian or FreeBSD on it. If Debian with one of the heaviest *nix desktop environments performs this amazingly well on a four year old machine, imagine how well it would run on a current one! It'd be stunning!

Having used Macs I cringe at the very sight of so many nasty, horribly flimsy, cheap and plastic PC laptops being passed off as well designed and expensive (not to even start on the budget craptops) but my dad always said his ThinkPads were fantastic machines and now that I have a tiny one of my own I can honestly say I see the appeal.

Given I spend so much time at the Boatdeck Cafe programming and drinking their amazing coffee I'd noticed the owner Joe Karem hadn't been there for a while since I came back. Turns out he didn't divulge himself of his shares after all, he was on holidays in Lebanon around the same time as I was back in Singapore but stayed there longer.

Lebanon is on my ever expanding laundry list of places I want to visit because Beirut has some amazing architecture and cultural sights, but mostly because I love Lebanese food! The best Lebanese I've had in Australia was in a kebab stall in Canberra of all places, in South-East Asia I had a great lunch at the Alamanda shopping centre in Putrajaya. Does being a capital ensure you have good Lebanese food, is that it?

I'd be interested to hear what people reckon is the best place to get it in Adelaide, I admit now I'm having insane cravings!

After the relatively slow pace and harmlessness of the Mayoi Snail story arc of Bakemonogatari, this first episode of the Suruga Monkey arc seemed to return to the more surreal, darker theme of the earlier episodes that I'd expected the entire series to be. Perhaps it's an alternating thing; heck as long as they don't pull an Endless Eight I'll be happy.

The graphics have also returned to their brilliance. I really mean it, the art is amazing. We also had Koyomi's descending the impossibly huge staircase again, we have Hitagi pointing sharp stationary at him, it's as if the last three episodes didn't happen!

Well in fact the last three episodes did happen because in the very first scene Koyomi is walking and talking with Mayoi again, this time while he's on his way to study with Hitagi for his exams which (surprise surprise!) he's not confident about. Of course Mayoi implies a study date with a guy and girl is never that innocent which results in some hasty fighting and resumption of walking within seconds as we've come to expect from their relationship. No biting though this time. Do spirits need to visit dentists?

Of course it turns out a girl we're introduced to in this story arc going by the name of Kanbaru has been tailing them the entire time, and after some mad sprinting that apparently whipped the air in the same way as a turbojet if we were to believe the sounds, she catches up and attempts to strike up a conversation. Turns out she knew Hitagi from middle school, a time of schooling I'm assuming as someone who went to an Aussie school in Singapore which doesn't have it occurs between primary and secondary school. Yes that was a joke by the way ;).

Suffice to say their study date (I'm sorry Koyomi, your study "session") starts out pretty well; Hitagi confesses her love for him a few more times and makes suggestions about living together when they both finish school and start university, assuming Koyomi knows what he wants to do and get good enough grades. Where were the super smart girls who take interest in introverts when I was in school I ask you now!?

Well let's just say the metaphorical crap hits the fan as soon as Koyomi mentions that he met Kanbaru on his way over to study with her. She comes out with stationary blazing and nearly pokes his damn eye out; only a frantic pledge of dedication to only her subdues her. Fortunately they leave on good terms and she asks him to deliver rental payment for her which he obliges, how sweet ^^.

As the sky gets dark The Class President to End All Class Presidents explains to Koyomi over the phone why Hitagi snapped the way she did which was darn decent of her I thought. Turns out they were great friends at one point, but Kanbaru had started developing feelings for Hitagi which just like a steam turbine weren't reciprocated which caused tensions to say the least. Another joke thrown in there, shaddup.

What came next though for Koyomi was insane. If the eye poking incident hadn't set my teeth on edge, this scene did. I know these reviews have basically turned into giant spoilers as they stand, but this really did take me by surprise and I won't be putting it here. Suffice to say, Hitagi manages to help out given she was trying to catch up with him and managed to see it happen and I'm assuming his special ability fixed everything after the scene ended but damn, talk about left field!

Bakemonogatari is back people. The previous three episodes were kind of sweet which I'm all for in regular doses, but this episode was all back to what the show was originally.

Oh and did I tell you the graphics are amazing? I mean, really amazing. I watched an episode of The Simpsons after seeing this and it looked flatter than a pancake with gravy. A pancake with gravy?