| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
| 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 |
| 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 |
| 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 |
| 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 |
| Months | ||
|---|---|---|
| Jan | Feb | Mar |
| Apr | May | Jun |
| Jul | Aug | Sep |
| Oct | Nov | Dec |
Tue, 27 Nov 2007
[14:54] Blade Runner: The Final Cut
I read a couple of months back that Ridley Scott's Blade Runner: The Final Cut was actually going to see the light of day and would be shown locally in the Embarcadero Center Cinema. After running around squealing for a while I went to purchase tickets, only to find that tickets only go on sale a week from the date the movie will show. Since then I've been checking the site on a daily basis, just in case (I really didn't want to miss out) and today, FINALY, the tickets are on sale! Get em while they're hot here (starting Friday, November the 30th).
[Posted at: 14:54 27/11/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Sun, 04 Nov 2007
[19:05] New shoes!
I tend towards extreme footwear normally, my current shoes are a pair of LaCrosse EMS Steel-cap Leather boots and while you can be pretty sure that your feet will be relatively safe from whatever you kick or drop on them, they're really a bitch to run in. Most of the exercise I normally do can be conducted barefoot so I don't really have any lighter shoes apart from my Dunlop Volleys (speaking of which, check this out: Steel-capped "Safety" Volleys!!).
Anyway, I was introduced to an exciting new concept in footwear this past week, the Vibram FiveFingers! A team-mate at work showed up in a pair of the taupe-clay (apparently that's a colour) Sprints and explained that he'd had them for a while and had gone hiking in them just this past weekend. I was hooked pretty much instantly. I did some digging around and located a semi-local retailer and we drove up to Berkeley and picked up a nice red pair this afternoon.
They were a smidgey bit troublesome to get on initially, my toes aren't used to wearing gloves and these are harder to put on than those socks with toes because they're made of not so pliable rubber. Eventually I got them on (I think the trick is to put them on somewhat approximately and then stand up and let your toes fit themselves as they straighten) and wore them around all afternoon. I usually go barefoot when I can so my feet are quite used to walking without a thick sole but it was nice to have all the advantages of being barefoot (you can feel everything underneath your feeet) with a modicum of protection from the sharp and pointy things in life. I went for a bit of a run around the block on ashphalt and grass and tried out the grip by jumping on a couple of fences and fire hydrants. They felt good, provided nice tactile feedback for balancing on thin poles and didn't flap about like I thought they might as they seem to be designed for people with significantly more bulbous heels than mine. They also stayed on when I jumped in the pool and did a couple of laps and didn't really impede my swimming much (I am a pretty crappy swimmer though). The weren't quite so grippy when I came out of the pool but they weren't super slick either. All in all I'm pretty happy so far but there're a couple more things I'd like to try: everyday usage and bouldering.
[Posted at: 19:05 03/11/2007]
category: /reviews | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Tue, 30 Oct 2007
[23:07] Earthquake ago-go
There was an earthquake today that I actually noticed. There are many, many small quakes on an hourly basis around here but this is the first one that's brought itself to my attention. It was reasonably large (in my opinion), weighing in with a seismic moment of 5.6 and was repotred by Reuters as: "Moderate earthquake hits Northern California".
I played the part of freaked out foreigner to perfection and, despite the fact that it can't have lasted more than five seconds, I'd turned the stove off, grabbed Shona and was in the stairwell with my Google-issue earthquake survival kit on my back before it had finished.
[Posted at: 23:07 30/10/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Thu, 27 Sep 2007
[13:14] Dear America, I think I've worked out why your heart keeps stopping...
[Posted at: 13:14 27/09/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Thu, 13 Sep 2007
[21:40] Blogging and the art of procrastination
I had a couple of hours up my sleeve this evening so I thought I should REALLY update my blog since I'm so many exciting months behind. So instead I wrote a nice little script to help me blog more efficiently.
One assumes that I will be blogging in a very thorough and efficient manner from now on...
[Posted at: 21:40 13/09/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Wed, 04 Jul 2007
[12:24] Transformers - Rating 7/10
We got to go and see Transformers last night as part of a Google pre-relase viewing which was cool! The movie was pretty much like watching a 2 hour version of the original cartoon; which was awesome in all it's three-dimensional glory (we won't talk about the filthy, awful Beast Wars)! There were cool transforming vehicles, angry little mobile phones, fight scenes aplenty and Optimus Prime, bless his titanium soled-slippers, is still a preachy over-righteous do-gooder. The movie didn't try and take itself too seriously so there was plenty of humour interjected with the plot (for want of a better word) and I suspect this is one of those movies that you'll be able to watch frame by frame to pick up all the little jokes (like Barricade's "To punish and enslave" sticker).
Overall, I think this is a pretty good action movie. The plot is see-through and generally incidental to the movie as an experience. It does contain one of my pet peeves, crazy-ass technobabble (OMG, it hax0r3d your firewall in less than 10 seconds with super-frequency evolving DNA pwnage. WTF!) and I initially was upset at what I thought they'd done to Soundwave, my favourite Decepticon! Turns out that wasn't Soundwave but some dude called Frenzy. If you follow that link you'll find out that they didn't want to have to deal with "morphing" large robots into tiny tape-decks but have reserved the right to bring him in in one of the sequels. Apart from that, the lack of DinoBots and the somewhat extraneous love scenes it was all good! I think it was best summed up in a quote from one of my colleages:
That movie was awesome. If you came in expecting a treatise on the human condition, I could understand disappointment, but for those coming in expecting giant robot fights and explosions, it was pretty sweet.
[Posted at: 04/07/2007 12:24]
category: /reviews | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Tue, 29 May 2007
[15:56] Google Maps Street View
Today Google released Google Maps Street View at the O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference. There's a bit of information about it on the O'Reilly Radar but it's best to just go play with it: Across the road from the Googleplex.
[Posted at: 15:56 29/05/2007]
category: /tech | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Fri, 25 May 2007
[15:00] SRE Crawl
Recently my group at work was subsumed by the overarching SRE group. Since there are now a considerable number of groups operating under the SRE banner it was decided that we should all get together for a bit of a meet 'n greet in the style of your traditional pub crawl, so that's what we did on Thursday. We downed tools at 12:00 and embarked upon a 4-stop tour of the campus. Events included:
- Tricycle Races:
This event involved racing a child-sized tricycle around a traffic-cone course. This was the initial stop on the crawl and, at this stage, most people were still sober so there was some decent competition. The tricycles did not cope well with a succession of ~100Kg+ engineers attempting to propel them at high speeds and depending on how long it had been since the event started your attempt could have been severely hampered by the differential between the direction the front wheel pointed and the direction the handlebars pointed. I managed to come in second place at 59 seconds, well behind the blisteringly fast 29 seconds of our glorious leader.
- Cupcake Eating Contest:
This was advertised in advance so I knew not to eat breakfast or lunch until after this event! Luckily the cupcakes weren't insanely sweet so I was able to deal with them effectively and ended up tying for first place in this one. I managed to ram 14 Safeway cupcakes into my gob in the alloted two minutes. I offered an "eat-off" challenge to the other winner but he graciously declined.
- Karaoke:
Sadly, I got paged and had to go deal with some stuff, by the time I got back the list was o'er long. I got to have a bit of a sing-along with YMCA though so it was all OK! - MarioKart:
Ahh, you don't really appreciate MarioKart until you've seen eight players playing on two projectors :)
[Posted at: 15:00 25/05/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Fri, 18 May 2007
[18:38] One Terabyte consumer hard drives
Holy crap! Hitachi have released the Deskstar 7K1000, a one terabyte consumer level hard drive! A brief search turns up a price range around the $US400 mark which I think is pretty damn reasonable for that much storage.
Of course, it is now:
a) completely impossible to back your stuff up to anything other than another hard-drive; and
b) completely irresponsible to be running without at least RAID 1 on anything that you're storing your massive collection of photos, videos and random text data that living a digital-life implies.
Note to self: Must do something about backups...
[Posted at: 18:38 18/05/2007]
category: /tech | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Thu, 17 May 2007
[17:11] National Bike To Work Day and the Conference Bike
Today was National Bike to Work Day here in the US so, as usual, I biked to work. Not particularly stressful with my massive 1 mile (1.6 kilometres) commute but it seems that a LOT of people biked in from as far away as San Francisco! There were Energiser Stations set up all over the place, including here at Google to keep bikers energised and happy. More interesting though was this interesting bicycle, seen here hanging out at the Google Energiser Station:
It was revealed later in the day that this is one of two new "Conference Rooms", now available for mobile, healthy meetings...I love working here! There are more details on this delightful machine at http://www.conferencebike.com although the details of how it actually works are not readily available.
[Posted at: 17:11 17/05/2007]
UPDATE:
I finally got to take one of these for a spin! We had between five and seven people on-board for a lap of the campus and for the most part it was pretty easy. Uphill they're a bit tough with less than the full contingent (especially when the driver has the handbrake on) but on the flats it's all smooth-sailing and speed-humps present no real obstacle! It seems that the driver can operate it in single-user mode for re-location purposes and, consequently, their pedals are geared much higher than the other six seats which means that at speed, there's no real need for the driver to actually pedal.
[Updated at: 17:28 27/05/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Wed, 25 Apr 2007
[23:29] Yuri's Night
We had the opportunity to attend the Yuri's Night celebrations at nearby Moffett Field on Friday night (as a charming friend of mine pointed out, if there's a "hot" war then we're going to be the first to go since we live practically next-door). Yuri's Night is a celebration held every year on the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's space flight (the first manned (peopled?) space flight in history) in 1961. Specifically we attended the NASA AMES hosted event.
It was a fun event, we turned up pretty early (around 1830) while the place was still deserted so we didn't have to line up or undergo the rigorous searching that the later attendees scored! As sold to me it was meant to be a selection of technical presentations based on the theme of space travel and exploration. The reality was an amalgamation of Burning Man, a giant rave, a NASA recruiting drive (with schwag!), a telescope and coconuts - all topped off with a keynote address from Anousheh Ansari. The keynote was interesting, although plauged with technical difficulties (there were quite a few comments in the crowd regarding inability to project a slideshow and lack of flying cars in the world today). Anousheh was the first female space tourist and her talk described why she spent so much money for a joyride and was followed by a video she shot on-board the ISS (including a scene quite reminiscent of the Simpsons episode "Deep Space Homer" - specifically this).
After the keynote the music started and we wandered around checking out the flashing lights, illuminated budha, perspex bicycles, NASA airplanes and assorted merchandise stores. There were a couple of talks but for the most part it was an eat, drink and be merry kind of affair. We didn't learn a lot but it was fun, we got to check out a 200x magnified Saturn, I got several foam aliens, a world globe stress-ball and a NASA paddle ball! You can check it out in static form at Flikr or see the magical moving pictures over at YouTube!
[Posted at: 13:01 14/04/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
[18:53] California Road Rules
I was riding home this afternoon when I had a slight altercation with a local bus driver. Here's what happened:
The road on which I was travelling has 4-lanes, 2 each way. I was riding on the far right-hand side, in the bike lane (a smaller third lane). Approaching a set of orange traffic lights, I moved out of the bike lane and into the furthest right lane so I wouldn't be obstructing traffic, since you're allowed to turn right at any time here in California (land of the ridiculous road rules*). So far so good.
A bus pulled up behind me and, after a few moments, the driver beeped his horn and started gesticulating through the window at me. I got close enough to hear him tell me that I should be in the bike lane, I pointed out that I would be obstructing traffic and he pointed out that I should be in the bike lane some more. At this point the lights went green and we couldn't debate the finer points of who was correct. Whilst pedalling onwards I pondered on whether or not what I was doing was actually legal. I had been considering chasing the bus down at the next stop but since I didn't know if what I was doing was something I'd made up or actually a law I'd read in the handbook whilst swotting for my drivers license I didn't.
Turns out it is a law and I did read it in the California Driver Hndbook, on page 54 and 55 - with pictures no less! More formally, it's Division 11, Chapter 1, Article 4, Section 21208.4 of the California Vehicle Code. So there Mr Bus Driver, *thbbbt*.
* OK, so that doesn't seem so ridiculous when you read it but DAMN you should see the chaos caused by a pedestrian just walking near a road!
[Posted as: 18:53 25/04/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Fri, 13 Apr 2007
[10:49] Coolest Animated GIF Ever!
This is nice: Blue Ball Machine.
It's actually a lot smaller than it looks originally because it's tiled, but it's still cool! Be aware that an annoying MP3 will play when you initially hit the site - it doesn't loop though. If you want the untiled, non-mp3-playing version it's here (this is a deep link so it may break).
[Posted at: 10:49 13/04/2007]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Sat, 07 Apr 2007
[13:43] Vinni Puh
Someone at work pointed out the video below, it's Winnie-the-Pooh, but a version created by the Russian animation studio Soyuzmultfilm in 1971. I really enjoyed it, a lot more than the insipid Disney version! So far this is the only one that's received the subtitling, but I'm annoying the folks in question into doing the other two. Enjoy:
[Posted at: 07/04/2007 13:43]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Wed, 07 Mar 2007
[20:39] Funrunning in the USA
It's been a long, long time since I ran in any kind of semi-competitive fashion (university I suspect) but today I participated in the, somewhat bizzarely named, Google Pardi-Gras Fun Run. I assumed that "Pardi-Gras" was some kind of bastardisation of St Patricks Day and the Mardi Gras that Google made up but it seems the Parrot-Heads are the culprits (I'm not explaining - it's all too weird, follow the link if you care).
Anyway, I went for a 5km run with a hundred or so other folks, didn't die and didn't come last. I'll get the official timing and results tomorrow but I think it's safe to say I didn't break any records!
UPDATE: Seems that the official timer opfficially busted about 5 people before me. The last registered time was 27:23:77 so I'd estimate that I came in around 30 minutes or so.
[Posted at: 07/03/07 20:39]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores
Sun, 25 Feb 2007
[17:46] No, I'm not dead!
Several people have inquired regarding my recent lack of output and I just wanted to re-assure you that I'm not dead, thanks for caring! I got a bit behind with the posts and now the unposted notes are all leering at me from their directory and there's always more of them everytime I look and I've been busy and blah blah blah.
So anyway, we've done HEAPS of cool stuff since I last posted and I do want to get it all up here before I forget so that I can come and reminisce when I'm all old and forgetful, say next week. I'll try to keep up to date from now but I'll also start getting all the non-posted stuff from the dim and distant past (about November last year) up here as well with the requsite photos. This includes stuff from our Yosemite trip, Christams in Australia and assorted American miscellany. Stay posted for excitement and adventure!
[Posted At: 25/02/2007 17:46]
category: /life | permalink | Comments suspended due to spamwhores