We haven't been sailing lately - either the weather has been against us, or other issues took priority. I did mention that I was going to add a pic, though, so this one was taken while doing the Competent Crew course through the Marine Academy. We were motoring in the harbour at the time, and the light seemed promising. I don't have a picture of her under sail, yet - we've tried, but the people who took the photos used a camera phone, so they weren't worth worrying about. Luck holding I'll have a nice camera soon (a Pentax K7, in case anyone is interested), so I might make a serious attempt to organise some shots on the water.



( Details after the break )

Sad news - the Grammy Award for polkas is no more.

I wrote a post about the Natcon and my thoughts about how it went, and then I got all nervous and hid it. Maybe I'll display it again some time, but writing it made things feel better. (Not that I had anything bad to say, I should add - it went as well as we had hoped, with some things going great and some not-so-great, but overall a success).

Anyway, on completely unrelated news - sailing has been going well. We ended up buying the 34 foot boat, and I've been told that I'm part owner. I don't feel like a part owner, (I didn't put any money into the purchase) but I do feel like sailing, so I'll shut up and refrain from complaining. :) I'll try and post a pic or two later, but it is nice sailing again.

Unfortunately, we're still trying to gain a decent level of competency - we're ok, and have been able to handle all of the conditions we've taken her out in, but have felt a tad uncertain. After all, both of us had only previously sailed off-the-beach boats, except for crewing on a family trailer sailer when we were very young. So a couple of weeks ago we went in for a two day "competent crew" course. It was good. Our boat compared well to the one we sailed there, and while we picked up a lot, (especially in regard to the Man Overboard drills) we also gained confidence as we discovered that what we had been doing was generally correct and that we knew a lot more than we realised. The Sydney-to-Hobart may remain a distant dream, but I certainly feel more confident now, and if I ever do get the chance there's now a hope that I'll be more than movable ballast.

One important lesson, though - if you have a "bit of a cold", spending two days on the deck of a boat during winter is not as wise as one might have thought.

It took seven episodes, but finally there was an episode of Dollhouse worth watching. I'm most pleased.

I just finished watching season one of Demons, or the "British Buffy" as I tend to think of it. It's certainly the closest thing to Buffy that I've seen for a while. A high school student discovers that he possesses unique abilities allowing him to fight evil after an older mentor appears on the scene. Teaming up with a misfit band of friends, they fight evil unbeknownst to the rest of humanity, protecting us all while trying to juggle school and a social life. Naturally, the young hero doesn't want to fight evil, but his unique talents were always going to bring him to the attention of the enemy, and thus he had no choice but to accept his new life (in spite of some attempts to retain old habits). They even have a large occult library on hand, where the gang retreat to research the villain of the week. Sound familiar?

It's not all the same. The mentor is American, not British (which makes sense, of course). Buffy is male, Xander female, and Willow is blind. And older. But it works. Mostly, I think, by the constant references to "smiting" evil and feeling one's wrath, along with the use of guns. Neat guns that explode bad guys.

If you have a Buffy-shaped hole in your heart, this is the closest thing I've seen to filling it. It may be a clone, but it's a good clone, with some unique aspects, good characters, and monster-of-the-week. Not to mention slightly less angst. It's only six episodes long, which was a bit of a disappointment, but I'd certainly recommend it.

Just 'cause it is cool, the Let's Polka accordion blog^[1] is having a "25 Days of Accordions" series of posts, with a new MP3 to download each day. There's some good music in there (if you can cope with the accordion) and a rather eclectic mix of styles (with only a couple of polkas), at: http://www.letspolka.com/

^[1] Ruth seems to have a hard time coping with the existance of the blog - well, either that or the fact that I'm a regular reader. But one does enjoy a good polka now and then, and they reveal some neat stuff - like the Wild Women of the Accordion calendar (naturally, I've ordered my copy).

It seemed that the world hasn't ended. Yet. But as mentioned on the radio, maybe they should have waited until just past 7 today to turn it on, making the time:

10/09/08 07:06:54 ...

It would have been a nice touch.

The "Cool Things" course is going rather well, I think - I just did the AI lecture (mostly involving watching my WowWee collection explore the room while I tired valiantly to explain the Frame Problem), and I think it may have been my best lecture ever. Even better than the one where we explained polymorphism using pirate and ninja penguins. So I'm happy.

Anyway, my somewhat insane assistant had an idea - next week we're covering the development of MMORPGs. I'm planning to start with Adventure, cover MUDs, King's Quest, Nethack and a few other odds and ends. But she suggested that we should run a 5 minute D&D session during the lecture, with volunteers from the students. I was thinking of a single room puzzle of some sort, with no combat. But the last time I played D&D was 20 years ago. So is there anything I should keep in mind?

The Adelaide battle:

http://122.100.2.246:1684/

Saturday, August 9th.

Arrr!

I'm got a bit of a problem at uni - I'm supposed to be creating a new course that covers "cool things" that would be of interest to non-computing students. Students are required to take one course that is outside of their area of study here, so the various departments tend to offer special, "light", courses to attract them. Things like "The History of Paper". Our school doesn't have one of these courses, but apparently we want to offer one, and, naturally, it seems to be my problem. (I have lots of bitchy complaints to insert here, but I'll save you from them).

Anyway, the idea is to just cover cool stuff that are more-or-less related to computing. After some missteps, I've decided to just write a list of everything that I think is cool and find some way of designing a course around it (and no, it isn't exactly the best teaching model, but I'm reasonably convinced that I can bring in some academic value if the school doesn't stop me). The problem is that I'm unsure of the validity of my list. So (after the jump), I'd greatly appreciate people having a look and telling me what things should be there, what things perhaps shouldn't, and any suggestions that might make it appealing to non-computing students. (Apparently I'm enough of a geek to write it, but too much of a geek to have a normal perspective - and I'm afraid they might have a point).

Boing Boing recommended the short story WikiHistory by Desmond Warzel. It was a good recommendation. :)

I'm not sure what to think of this. Out of all the characters I could have been, I end up as ...

I just got stuck spending a few days setting up an eCommerce system for online sales for a client. It was annoying. The first problem was that the client wanted to calculate shipping by weight. This seemed sensible to me. But all the software packages I could find either a) didn't calculate shipping by weight, or b) did, but were horribly complex. The closest I could find to a decent compromise was YAK, but YAK assumes a steady shipping rate per 500gm. Australia Post uses a tiered system based on 250gm increments.

The client insisted that PayPal would calculate shipping by weight, and that this would make it easy. Indeed, PayPal does. For businesses not in Australia.

The solution was to make major modifications to YAK in order to provide a shipping system suitable for Australia. Which I did last night. And it worked perfectly.

Thus today I connected it up to PayPal, thinking that I'd only have to run a few tests and then I could launch. I'm not very bright, you see.

This is where problem number two comes in - PayPal was modified in mid-October so that it doesn't always accept shipping costs. Thus my software calculated shipping, told PayPal what the shipping was, and PayPal happily ignored it. PayPal have said that this is a known bug, but they're not modifying code until after Christmas, so it should be fixed in January some time. I can see their point, but this isn't exactly the best time of year to break people's online businesses.

Eventually, after reading dozens of forums, I found a fix (set shipping_1 to the shipping cost, and don't include the no_shipping attribute, in case someone needs to know). The site now appears to be working. And I can sleep.

As an aside, I now have software to turn a WordPress blog into an online store that calculates shipping at Australian rates, if anyone wants such a beast. :)

I was having a look at http://worsethanfailure.com/ today, and came across a link to this website:

http://www.wmfs.net/deafsite.xtml

It's the West Midlands Fire Service. As far as I can tell, they decided that they needed to make their website accessible to people with hearing impairments. A worthy aim. So they provided animations of people signing the text on the page. After all, many people are deaf - so they can't possibly read the site.

Nicely done, though. Just a tad confusing.

After months on waiting, I finally saw Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds: Live on Stage in Melbourne on Friday night. The short review: it wasn't anywhere near as good as it could of been, but overall I was very happy. A (much, much) longer review after the jump.

( Read more... )

Avast! That lubber should 'av known better than t' have me proof read the beauty's PhD proposal on Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I had my weekly accordion lesson tonight. I wasn't exactly feeling positive - I've gone temporarily deaf in my good ear, and uni has been so hectic that I didn't even manage to find 15 minutes for practice during the last week. So for the first time since I started, I went a full week without picking up the accordion (unless you count three bars of "Over the Waves" for maelorin just before leaving). The problem isn't that I can't find the time, so much as I can't find time for practice before the children go to sleep. And I'm banned from playing afterwards. :)

Anyway, I survived, as near as I could tell given that I could barely hear the notes (if you're in a small room with two accordions playing in unison, and you can't really hear them, then you have a significant problem). And at the end I was rewarded with a delightful document which I was told to read and "start thinking about" for future lessons. Entitled "Playing the Accordion for Fun and Profit" it consists of instructions and recommendations for one's performances. Such as "have a repertoire of 15 songs" and "be sure to dress properly, be on time, be courteous and set up as quickly as possible". In particular, I should follow the instructions on organising my first gigs, with the top recommendation being to "call the local retirement homes and ask if they could use entertainment for their residents (most can)". I figure that after a few months of retirement homes, one or two of the recommended Bar/Bat Mitzvahs, a couple of local restaurants and some busking at Glenelg (although they seem to already have a resident accordion player, who is always admirably surprised when I give him money) I should be ready to fulfill my dream of performing in the Eurovision Song Contest.

I can't honestly believe that he thinks I could perform in public one day, but I've been told that in future lessons we'll be focusing on building up my repertoire of 15 memorized songs, and learning some of the ethnic songs I'll need in the future. :) Maybe it is time to consider giving up academia for a minstrel's career.

In unrelated music news, Ruth and I are off to Melbourne this weekend for Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of War of the Worlds: Live on Stage. I'd seriously considered going to England to catch the original performances, so I'm ecstatic about seeing this in Australia. And Ruth has nether been to Melbourne nor been on a plane, so she's looking forward to the trip - perhaps in spite of the show. :)

I just want to make it clear that I am not a nerd. Geek, I'll consider - but I'm not convinced of that, either.

medge42 provided some horrible news the other day - in the remake of "The Day the Earth Stood Still", the role of Klaatu is to be performed by Keanu Reeves. I was concerned about breaking the news to Ruth, but did so on the grounds that I would rather she heard from me in a safe environment than she discovered it while out in public, away from her support network. :)

She took the news better than I had expected. Unfortunately why became horribly clear: she'd watched the trailer for "The Seeker" - the movie adaption of Susan Cooper's "The Dark is Rising". I suspect that the horror (and resulting numbness) was enough to protect her from even Keanu Reeves. Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge, states that the movie "introduces significant plot and character changes from the book". Indeed. Judging by the trailer, it has about as much to do with the book as "The Lawnmower Man" movie had to do with Steven King's short story.

The books are wonderful. I suspect that the film will be less so.