Call of the shadows

When I was about eight or nine years old I got (from where I don’t remember) a shareware copy of a game called Raptor: Call of the Shadows. In those days it was quite common for a game to have a free version with a part of it and you then had to pay for the rest. This happens today as well with demos, but you’d usually get a larger portion for free back then.

I loved it, but of course getting the full game wasn’t that easy. This was in the days before the internet had become the central repository for all data it is now and before dedicated games stores, and finding a specific computer game wasn’t always that easy. We tried our ISPs bulletin board, but the phone line just wasn’t up to downloading the four or five megabytes of game we found there.

Eventually I got given a copy for a birthday or Christmas, and managed to finish the thing, however it’s still one of my favourite games of all times. Well, it’s just been released on the Mac App Store, the 2010 edition (so I suppose it was somewhere else first), with updated graphics. And this little trip down nostalgia lane is only going to cost me €2.39, which isn’t so bad.

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The Original Take-away

Presenting:

Mathematics – The Original Take-away

Ever since buying a badge with this slogan on it at the Maths Talent Quest nearly 20 years ago, I’ve thought this was a clever joke.

Now I have a web-site.

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Prove it

In the world of mathematics, proofs are everything. Unfortunately as a 21st century computer scientist my background in proofs is somewhere between zero and nothing (to be fair we were taught proofs in cse1303 – but it went way over my head at the time).

However today I completed my first proof, of which I’m quite proud, although it’s long and ugly, so not proud enough to share, it also might be wrong.

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Addicted

I tend to drink a fair amount of coffee, not as much as when I lived in the UK, but three or four espressos a day is fairy normal. I used to try and balance what’s most likely an addiction by not drinking coffee for a week each year.

I hadn’t done this in a while, but had been meaning to, and since I was sick at the beginning of last week and didn’t drink any coffee on Monday in case it upset up stomach, I decided to keep going.

Pretty short story shorter, I felt the effects (more tired at the end of the day), but I managed it without splitting headaches or dizzy spells, so I figure I’m probably alright for now.

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It’s Nice That (2010)

Once again it’s time for my incredibly presumptuous self-inflicted It’s Nice That yearly review. I’m cutting it a little fine this year, with a little less than three hours to go before the end of the year, but here we go.

Mark of of 10 for 2010?

9. For various reasons, amongst them are the two masters theses that I completed this year, but at the front of the list is Andrea. It’s not 10, because I don’t believe in a perfect score.

What broke? How did you fix it?

My web-site broke, a number of times, I fixed it by first, taking Bruce’s site offline (which was the original cause because it was running an old version of python) and then replacing both sites with WordPress blogs.

What was the best thing you saw this year?

The expression on my masters thesis directors face when I showed up to uni a couple of days before my defence with a pink mohawk – he had told me I needed more colour in my presentation.

What was your favourite day of the year?

The day Andrea and I went to see Maria Rodés live together, almost ruined by a volcano preventing me from flying back to Australia for Sally and Mike’s wedding, but saved by a few hours searching for flights from cities in Europe not affected by volcanic ash clouds.

Most dangerous/scariest moment?

I have done nothing dangerous or scary all year, which is a bit sad really.

Best Google image search of the year?

‘dragon ball carrer’ in which my street (Carrer Progrés) shows up with our Festa de Gràcia decorations, which were awesome and deserved far better than 7th place.

Best man/woman of the year?

It’s a bit sappy I know, but it could be no other person than Andrea.

Your finest moment?

Presenting my Computational Science and Engineering masters thesis with the afore mentioned pink mohawk (in the picture).

If you could only take one thing that you bought in 2010 into 2011, what would it be?

My nice (still kind of) new digital SLR, I can’t think of anything else that I bought, and taking one green shoe won’t do me a lot of good.

What would you like to say to 2010?

So long and thanks for all the fish.

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Life’s good…

Screengrab from Rapnews episode 5, Soma ad

I found a link to an episode of Rapnews, an alternative news programme where the news is rapped (as in hip hop) by a number of impersonated people. The link was in an article on The Age about how Julian Assange cameos in this specific video, however I had to stop the video and laugh half way through because of the “sponsor message”.

The ad for Soma, the government supplied drug with no side effects and no come down from the book Brave New World had the fantastic tag line, Life’s Good – Shut up. It’s in episode 5 at about 3:10.

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Cirque du Soleil: Varekai

On Tuesday night Andrea and I went to see the Cirque du Soleil show that’s in Barcelona at the moment, Varekai. Apart from a free circus show at an ocupa that I saw at the beginning of the year, I think the last time I went to the circus there were bears, so quite a while ago.

The show was fantastic, incredibly colourful, and had some great moments. Most of all I loved the acrobats, some of the stunts they performed were absolutely incredible, the one thing I’ve never understood about some of those stunts is how you start practicing them, as in the moment they always seem sort of do-or-die, with not a lot of room for error.

However, I think my favourite part of the show was the pink rabbit that laughed at the magician that failed to pull it out of a hat.

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Alphabattle: U

Plot y=x^4So, after 40 weeks of Alphabattle, I’ve finally got around to joining in, just in time for U. I completed my entry in typically geeky style

You can see all of Bruce’s entries on his Alphabattle page, over on Moustache.

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Beanie come rasta hat

Beanie come rasta hatPartially in an effort to use some of the thousands of metres of wool that I’ve got lying around at home and partially because I wanted to finish something quickly I decided to crochet a beanie for Andrea last week.

I started with a pattern I’m not even even going to link to because I’m embarrassed about how it doesn’t look a thing like it. End result, the beanie turned out enormous and I didn’t realise until it was almost finished, so I stuck a few rows of reductions in there and it came out looking like a rasta hat.

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The curse of pure mathematics

When I explained my recent attempt to explain what I’m studying to my parents, my thesis director replied (I’m translating a paraphrasing here):

That’s the curse of what we do, you’ll never be able to explain it to your friends. In fact no one will really care unless they’re a number theorist.

So there we are, shall we talk about the weather?

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