No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow.
Monday, May 30
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!
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
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.
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
Cute Sad Funny Weird
In one little photo.
Yes, she's riding a lavender toy horsie.
That's because the real horsies for the event are quarantined due to an outbreak of a lethal horsie virus.
In one little photo.
Yes, she's riding a lavender toy horsie.
That's because the real horsies for the event are quarantined due to an outbreak of a lethal horsie virus.
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Thursday, May 26
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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
Borrowed From Brickmuppet
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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.
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.
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Astarotte No Omocha
Surprisingly, it doesn't suck.
Oh, I'm going to hell now...
Surprisingly, it doesn't suck.
Oh, I'm going to hell now...
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Sunday, May 22
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:
Or this:
Yes, it's more of the same, but just like the first helping, it has its moments.
This scene cracked me up:
Or this:
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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.
This show may be dumb as a rock, but it's sure nice to look at.
Update:
I couldn't do a full-length figure because she's moving during the camera pan, but this part works well enough.
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.
This show may be dumb as a rock, but it's sure nice to look at.
Update:
I couldn't do a full-length figure because she's moving during the camera pan, but this part works well enough.
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Railcars In Anime News Flash
Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi
Hoshizora e Kakaru Hashi
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C - The Monsoon Of Controversial Possums
There's a line between well-constructed mystery and stupid crap, and I'm not at all convinced that C is on the right side of it.
Also, whoever directed the currency animation sequence in the opening credits: Read a history book, asshole.
One and a half delicious banknotes out of four, subject to later revision upwards... Or downwards.
There's a line between well-constructed mystery and stupid crap, and I'm not at all convinced that C is on the right side of it.
Also, whoever directed the currency animation sequence in the opening credits: Read a history book, asshole.
One and a half delicious banknotes out of four, subject to later revision upwards... Or downwards.
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Wednesday, May 18
Hidan No Aria
...
Wut?
Though it does have a monorail (That Imouto Show, Midori no Hibi) so it's not all bad.
With Ao no Exorcist, I get the feeling that the director is talented, but not as a director. As an episode director or animation director, with someone else overseeing the project, he's probably quite good.
With Hidan no Aria, I get the impression that the director's talents lie with directing.... But he's either no good at it or has stopped caring. Since it's (google google...) Takashi Watanabe, who previously directed all of Slayers and Shakugan no Shana and a bunch of other stuff (Lost Universe, Ikki Tousen, Stellar Buster Mito), he's clearly capable of much better work.
Very disappointing.
One twintailed tsundere out of four.
...
Wut?
Though it does have a monorail (That Imouto Show, Midori no Hibi) so it's not all bad.
With Ao no Exorcist, I get the feeling that the director is talented, but not as a director. As an episode director or animation director, with someone else overseeing the project, he's probably quite good.
With Hidan no Aria, I get the impression that the director's talents lie with directing.... But he's either no good at it or has stopped caring. Since it's (google google...) Takashi Watanabe, who previously directed all of Slayers and Shakugan no Shana and a bunch of other stuff (Lost Universe, Ikki Tousen, Stellar Buster Mito), he's clearly capable of much better work.
Very disappointing.
One twintailed tsundere out of four.
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Ao No Exorcist
Wow, this is a train wreck. It has plenty of good elements - well-defined characters, strong action and dramatic scenes - but as a whole it teeters on the brink of complete incoherence.
Directed by Tensai Okamura (Darker than Black, which did not impress either) from a manga (apparently a debut work) by Kazue Kato. I'd like to check out the manga to see where things went wrong.
Two coal tar sprite thingies out of four.
Wow, this is a train wreck. It has plenty of good elements - well-defined characters, strong action and dramatic scenes - but as a whole it teeters on the brink of complete incoherence.
Directed by Tensai Okamura (Darker than Black, which did not impress either) from a manga (apparently a debut work) by Kazue Kato. I'd like to check out the manga to see where things went wrong.
Two coal tar sprite thingies out of four.
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Monday, May 16
Another Story
One of the drives in Nagi (my Windows box) is on the way out, as evidenced by system free
zes that leave the drive light solidly on but no
thing happening. If I don't mess around too much I can still move my mouse and maybe switch to an app
lication that doesn't want to access the disk right now.
This is not a good thing.
Not good.
So I went out to get some external drives to back everything up. My friendly local electronics and computer stuff store offered several options: A 1TB Western Digital MyBook Essential drive for $129.99, a 2TB Western Digital MyBook Essential drive for $129, and a 3TB Western Digital MyBook Essential drive for $269.
I love that kind of pricing; it makes decisions so easy.
Anyway, I bought four of them.
I actually have more than 8TB of internal disk across all my computers, quite a bit more, but a fair chunk of that is backups, and backups of backups, and really bad anime that I'll never ever watch, and about a terabyte of Steam content which I can download again with one click (and two weeks of waiting).
So I'm running backups.
Running backups.
I have enough spare disks sitting around to replace all the drives in Nagi, mainly because I bought them with the intention of replacing all the drives in Nagi.* So once the backups are done that's probably what I'll do.
But first I'm going to get me a USB 3 card, because as things are, just restoring my C drive would take me more than 24 hours.
The drives themselves are quite small and neat, certainly smaller and neater and much less flaky than my previous Western Digital MyBook experience. That was a 500GB drive that I bought for $250 not all that long ago.** It worked, for a while, but then it would go into death sleep (rather like a ferret) from which the only way it could be awoken was to unplug and replug the power cord (rather like a ferret).
Western Digital MyBook Essential (left), ferret (right).
Not terribly convenient. It never actually lost any data or failed while it was actively in use, but it was annoying enough that I ended up just filing it away in a drawer.
So far my new MyBooks are working flawlessly. Which is good, because there's fundamentally only two ways a disk drive can work: Flawlessly and not at all.
* And that is because all the drives in Nagi are the infamous death-by-ring-buffer Seagate 7200.11. The gist of the story is this: The drives have a ring buffer in non-volatile memory to store the last 256 SMART alerts. But there's a bug such that if you power on while the pointer is on the last entry (255), rather than going back to zero, it increments to 256 and overwrites the drive firmware. In other words, if you have a drive that's not quite perfect - even running a little warm - then every time you turn your computer on there's a 0.4% chance that your drive will brick itself. As an added bonus, Seagate's first patch for the problem also bricked your drive. So far my drives have survived unpatched and unbricked.
** But several centuries in computer years.
One of the drives in Nagi (my Windows box) is on the way out, as evidenced by system free
zes that leave the drive light solidly on but no
thing happening. If I don't mess around too much I can still move my mouse and maybe switch to an app
lication that doesn't want to access the disk right now.
This is not a good thing.
So I went out to get some external drives to back everything up. My friendly local electronics and computer stuff store offered several options: A 1TB Western Digital MyBook Essential drive for $129.99, a 2TB Western Digital MyBook Essential drive for $129, and a 3TB Western Digital MyBook Essential drive for $269.
I love that kind of pricing; it makes decisions so easy.
Anyway, I bought four of them.
I actually have more than 8TB of internal disk across all my computers, quite a bit more, but a fair chunk of that is backups, and backups of backups, and really bad anime that I'll never ever watch, and about a terabyte of Steam content which I can download again with one click (and two weeks of waiting).
So I'm running backups.
I have enough spare disks sitting around to replace all the drives in Nagi, mainly because I bought them with the intention of replacing all the drives in Nagi.* So once the backups are done that's probably what I'll do.
But first I'm going to get me a USB 3 card, because as things are, just restoring my C drive would take me more than 24 hours.
The drives themselves are quite small and neat, certainly smaller and neater and much less flaky than my previous Western Digital MyBook experience. That was a 500GB drive that I bought for $250 not all that long ago.** It worked, for a while, but then it would go into death sleep (rather like a ferret) from which the only way it could be awoken was to unplug and replug the power cord (rather like a ferret).
Not terribly convenient. It never actually lost any data or failed while it was actively in use, but it was annoying enough that I ended up just filing it away in a drawer.
So far my new MyBooks are working flawlessly. Which is good, because there's fundamentally only two ways a disk drive can work: Flawlessly and not at all.
* And that is because all the drives in Nagi are the infamous death-by-ring-buffer Seagate 7200.11. The gist of the story is this: The drives have a ring buffer in non-volatile memory to store the last 256 SMART alerts. But there's a bug such that if you power on while the pointer is on the last entry (255), rather than going back to zero, it increments to 256 and overwrites the drive firmware. In other words, if you have a drive that's not quite perfect - even running a little warm - then every time you turn your computer on there's a 0.4% chance that your drive will brick itself. As an added bonus, Seagate's first patch for the problem also bricked your drive. So far my drives have survived unpatched and unbricked.
** But several centuries in computer years.
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Improvements
USB 3.0 is full-duplex, catching up with serial ports of, oh, 1970 or thereabouts.
I was curious as to how close it is to PCIe 2.0. The low-level encoding is the same (8b/10b) as is the raw speed (5Gb/s). Beyond that there doesn't seem much detail floating around unless you download the entire specification.
So I did.
I was wondering whether the weird connectors on my new external drives* were standard or some propietary Western Digital nonsense. Turns out they're standard micro-USB-3 connectors. Which is good and bad; good because they're standard; bad because the standard is horrible.
Turns out USB 3, to maintain backwards compatibility with old-and-busted USB, includes old-and-busted USB.
Bearckwards compatibility.... Sorry.
That is, the cable and plugs and sockets and controllers all provide the two differential pairs for USB 3 transmit and receive (four wires total) plus the original USB 1/2 bus (two wires) plus power and ground (two wires). Which makes the connectors twice the size (except for the standard A-type connector (the flat one) which sneakily hides the four new contacts) and the cables twice as thick.
I can understand the need to switch from a turnaround bus to a proper full-duplex point-to-point connection. I'm surprised USB 2 even works as well as it does, having to turn around the connection constantly at 480Mb/s.
USB turnaround.
But this sort of kitchen-sink compatibility never turns out well.
On the other hand... 5Gb/s.
* Another story.
USB 3.0 is full-duplex, catching up with serial ports of, oh, 1970 or thereabouts.
I was curious as to how close it is to PCIe 2.0. The low-level encoding is the same (8b/10b) as is the raw speed (5Gb/s). Beyond that there doesn't seem much detail floating around unless you download the entire specification.
So I did.
I was wondering whether the weird connectors on my new external drives* were standard or some propietary Western Digital nonsense. Turns out they're standard micro-USB-3 connectors. Which is good and bad; good because they're standard; bad because the standard is horrible.
Turns out USB 3, to maintain backwards compatibility with old-and-busted USB, includes old-and-busted USB.
That is, the cable and plugs and sockets and controllers all provide the two differential pairs for USB 3 transmit and receive (four wires total) plus the original USB 1/2 bus (two wires) plus power and ground (two wires). Which makes the connectors twice the size (except for the standard A-type connector (the flat one) which sneakily hides the four new contacts) and the cables twice as thick.
I can understand the need to switch from a turnaround bus to a proper full-duplex point-to-point connection. I'm surprised USB 2 even works as well as it does, having to turn around the connection constantly at 480Mb/s.
But this sort of kitchen-sink compatibility never turns out well.
On the other hand... 5Gb/s.
* Another story.
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