CAN I BE OF ASSISTANCE?

Monday, May 30

World

Rainy Rainy Rain

Heavy rain here in Sydney (yay!) with flash flooding reported in several inner-city suburbs and the University of New South Wales under water.

Which is what you get for building a university in a swamp.*

More of the same expected tomorrow, but I stocked up on eatables on the way home and I don't have to go in to the office, so I don't mind much.

Water levels in our dams are at their highest since 2002.  In May 2008 we had just 3mm of rain; I think we've had more than that in the last five minutes...

It's okay though; my new phone has internet access so if my house floats out to sea I'll live-blog it.

* But the fourth one stayed up!

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Sunday, May 29

World

Consonental Drift

I always thought the term Mid-Atlantic in Mid-Atlantic accent refered to the same Mid-Atlantic as the Mid-Atlantic states.

Turns out that it's an artificial accent deliberately created to be equally well-received in America and Britain - half-way between, in fact - so it really means Mid-Atlantic as in the Mid-Atlantic ridge.  Which is why it's not heard any more - it was created at a particular time to serve a particular purpose, rather than arising organically in a regional population.

Which came up because I was watching The Idiot's Lantern just now (new Doctor Who, series 2 episode 7), and the lady in* the television is doing a flawless 1950's received pronunciation (i.e. BBC English) accent.

Which has likewise pretty much disappeared now, encountered only in old TV shows and new period pieces.  Which is what The Idiot's Lantern is.  And when I started looking things up on Wikipedia, things fell into place.

* Yes. **
** Spoilers, as River Song would say.

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Saturday, May 28

World

Cute Sad Funny Weird

In one little photo.

Yes, she's riding a lavender toy horsie.  smile

That's because the real horsies for the event are quarantined due to an outbreak of a lethal horsie virus.  sad

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:23 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Thursday, May 26

Anime

Mid-Season Review

I only get to watch anime at two times: When everything is going smoothly at work and all is well with the world and I have peace and quiet in the evening, and when everything is a multilayered blancmange of disasters and I'm up all night rebuilding servers and need something to keep me company.

That said, where are we at with the Spring season?  I rated it a big fat meh when the previews came out, but I've changed my tune since then.

Must See

Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai

Whenever I want to talk about the show I have to go find a previous post and cut and paste the name.  Other than that, it's awesome.  I haven't talked about it much because I want people to experience that for themselves.

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A Channel

It's a straight-up moe show, cute girls being cute, with no particular gimmick.  And it pulls it off very nicely; the girls are individually and as a group, utterly charming.

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Worth Watching

Hanasaku Iroha

It's a 2-cour (24-26 episode) series, so it's taking longer to get going and hasn't grabbed my attention fully as yet, but it shows great promise.

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The World God Only Knows II

Okay, it's a continuation of the previous season - though not a sequel, because the first season only covered the early chapters of the manga.  And, like the first season, it's fun and has some great comedic moments.

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Fascinating Train Wrecks

C - The Miscibility and Solubility of Colloidal Precipitates

While this show is generally well done, it's the sort of thing where the quality of the show as a whole depends utterly on the denouement.  This show will only be as good as its ending, and I predict that the ending will be absolutely terrible.  (Based on the fact that the story so far makes not the slightest shred of sense.)

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Ao no Exorcist

This suffers similar flaws to C, except where C has excellent storytelling but a nonsensical story, Ao no Exorcist has a serviceable story but nonsensical storytelling; it cannot decide what sort of story it wants to be.

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Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi

It's cliche-blend-o-matic time, and nothing is new under the Sun.  But it's at least nice to look at.

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Astarotte no Omocha

Much much better than its original premise would suggest, but it would pretty much have to be.  It's actually the story of two young girls growing up away from their mothers -

Uh-oh.  I thought I heard something moving around the other day.  There it goes, into the pantry.  Let's see, if I board up the entry to the kitchen, and chase it out of the pantry into this cleverly-placed box, it will - yes, it will escape into the laundry.  Guess someone's going to be buying some mousetraps tomorrow.

Anyway, Astarotte no Omocha:
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Wednesday, May 25

Cool

Borrowed From Brickmuppet


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Geek

Situations Vacant

At my day job, we're looking for two or three sysadmin / programmer types.  The field is real-time social network and web analytics.

Location: Sydney, San Francisco, New York

Required: Solid working knowledge and at least two years practical experience with Linux system administration, Python, and databases.

Useful: MySQL, Redis, Cassandra, Xapian, RabbitMQ, PHP, Apache, Nginx, memcached, Mercurial, networking, virtualisation, system monitoring tools.

Other knowledge: Statistics, parallel processing & scalability.

Not of interest: Java, .Net, Microsoft platform in general

CS or similar degree is valuable but not critical if you have the equivalent practical experience.

Training will be provided at our main office in Sydney; we'll fly you out here for a few weeks if you're based in SF or NY.

Good salary and benefits (commensurate with experience and talent), flexible working hours, opportunity to telecommute part time.  Will be on an on-call roster for system outages.

Email me (use help@mee.nu) if you're interested or have questions and I'll put you in touch with the right people.  Oh, and I'll probably be doing the technical interview. wink

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:42 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Anime

Astarotte No Omocha

Surprisingly, it doesn't suck.

Oh, I'm going to hell now...

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Sunday, May 22

Anime

The World God Only Knows II

Yes, it's more of the same, but just like the first helping, it has its moments.

This scene cracked me up:

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Or this:

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:11 PM | Comments (7) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Anime

Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi

Utterly vapid.  Nice scenery, though.

Some of the background art ain't bad either.  (Boom-tish.)

Four points for the landscapes, minus three for being boring and stupid, plus one point for the railcar at the beginning, minus half a point for that disaster of a closing theme.

For a rainy Sunday only.  And (checks outside) light cloud only at the moment, so what the heck am I doing?

Update: Based on episode two, plus another half a point for ongoing gorgeous scenery.

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This show may be dumb as a rock, but it's sure nice to look at.

Update:

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I couldn't do a full-length figure because she's moving during the camera pan, but this part works well enough.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:57 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Anime

Railcars In Anime News Flash

Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi

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Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:22 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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