I spent a little while today entering my games collection into GCstar, a great open-source personal collections manager.
Using GCstar is easy. You just start a video game collection and then enter games by typing in their names. It searches a range of websites to find details on the games (including box/case images and screenshots). You can also add a list of borrowers and set it to automagically send reminder emails; neato!
There’s even a cute “game shelf” view with all your games displayed on a virtual shelf. Here’s a screenshot (resized to fit in a blog post):
It’s much better than that Gnumeric spreadsheet I was maintaining by hand…
Conclusion: Highly Recommended… but I wish there was a decent open-source web-based collections manager (that I could run on onetwenty.org).
Back in the day, frozen beverage machines were few and far between, and most were in a state of perennial disrepair. One would expect them to contain an obviously non-frozen mixture of syrup and water and for each tap to be adorned with an “temporarily out of order” sign.
Then, out of the blue, McDonald’s decided to make Frozen Coke a standard menu item at all of their stores in Australia. It seems that service stations (the traditional home of frozen beverages) have stopped dragging their feet and started giving this contemporary cuisine the attention it deserves! The bold claims embedded in their serving suggestion images are now supported by reality. Behold!:
And to think that a few years ago I thought that frozen beverages were almost a lost cause…
I flew into Canberra and stayed with my brother for a few days, and we drove up to Jindabyne together. We met up with Khan in Jindabyne, and he gave us a ride into Thredbo where my sister was staying.
I was a little apprehensive about the snow because it was so late in the season (our third day was the first day of Spring). Also, the guy at the snow supplies store was a little too assuring that the snow was still good… which made we wonder if it wasn’t really.
I borrowed Khan’s snowboard for our first full day in the snow. Just after we bought our lift passes and headed down our first practise run at “Easy Does It” it started raining. And then pouring. So we stayed inside for a while wondering if we’d just wasted our money.
Finally we decided to brave the weather and head up the mountain anyway. There was a break in the rain as we ascended on the ski lift and the sky was pretty clear when we arrived at the top:
Then, on our second run from the top, it snowed. It was windy and the snow felt like cold sand blowing in our faces, but it was snow. And it was awesome. Khan said that it doesn’t often snow at Thredbo and it hardly ever snows that late in the season. So I was happy.
After snowboarding for a day and a half, I tried skiing. It was my first time, but I was able to pick up the basics (it’s much easier than snowboarding). Pointing my toes in and leaning down the mountain felt very weird after snowboarding; much less… elegant.
On the night of our last day on the slopes, we headed down to Jindabyne for Khan’s going away dinner. It was a nice change from eating out (which I’d been doing pretty much everyday on this trip); it felt good to be in a kitchen helping out (even if it was just cutting things up). His friends were warm and friendly, and it was a good night.
On our way back through Jindabyne, my brother, my sister, and I had lunch at a fish and chips shop with deep-fried Mars bars on the menu. I remember Steve telling me about deep-friend Mars bars (and their effect on the average life expectancy of people in Scotland). We ordered one to share. It was actually pretty good. Warm and gooey.
Due to how my flights panned out, I ended up with an extra day in Canberra. Khan, my brother, and I went to a Pitch and Putt course. It’s like golf, but the courses are smaller and you only use an iron and a putter. It’s better than Supa Golf… which is arguably the closest thing we have in Perth.
It was a great trip, but I’m also glad to be back. I feel rather invested in my work at Interzone Games and really wanted to get back into it when I returned.
Man I hope it’s better than the Transformers movie. I think that would be a given though; There is a lot more character and depth in the Robotech story… and it doesn’t involve giant robots from outer space… well, not in the same sense… Here’s a blurb from the article:
A sprawling sci-fi epic, “Robotech” takes place at a time when Earth has developed giant robots from the technology on an alien spacecraft that crashed on a South Pacific isle. Mankind is forced to use the technology to fend off three successive waves of alien invasions. The first invasion concerns a battle with a race of giant warriors who seek to retrieve their flagship’s energy source known as “protoculture,” and the planet’s survival ends up in the hands of two young pilots.
Well that describes the first series. I can’t imagine that they would be planning a one-off movie; they have to be aiming for a trilogy. I just hope they don’t baulk at making another one after making the second movie (which will be crap if based on the second Robotech series…)
So I’ve been pretty sick the last few days. While watching the news tonight, Heidi suggested that I may have Equine Flu. You know, since I’m a stallion and all… OH RIGHT.
I’ve been very busy at work recently (with an internal deadline looming). It’s been rewarding, but I’ve had less time to browse the web, read e-mails, and post to my blog.
While at work I don’t use the internet for anything unrelated to work, and when I get home… well, I don’t really want to look at a computer most of the time… for a little while at least! 😛 How does everyone else feel about internet use while at work?
Anyhow, since work is pretty full-on all week (if I’m not at work, I’m probably thinking about it), I’ve been trying concentrated recreation on weekends. Recently, this has manifested itself in playing God of War 2 with Tone.
Since it’s a single-player game, we’ve been taking it life-or-level; meaning that you hand over the controller when your character dies or when you complete a level. It’s been awesome actually… it reminds me of playing SNES or Genesis games over at friends’ houses when I was in middle school. 🙂
We just finished the game and are looking for something else to play in a few weeks time. Any suggestions?
I went to see OK Go last night… um… this is sounding familiar. Anyhow… given that you are obviously on The Internet, you probably know OK Go as the treadmill dance band or possibly even the backyard dance band.
Either way, you probably already know that they exude awesome… at least at choreographed dancing to their own music. What you may not know is that they totally kick ass live… even without treadmills (they were playing at Capitol which has a pretty tight stage).
Aside from being very talented musicians, they are very personable showmen. The entire show was more than just a band on a stage playing music. From a production angle, they had synchronised video including live feeds from cameras embedded around the stage and on the lead microphone.
In regards to the performance, they kept the audience engaged with conversation and encouraging participation. Damian (lead vocals) came out into the crowd a few times (which isn’t too out of the ordinary for a band), but I was surprised when most of the band came down into the crowd!
Around half-way through the show, Damian, Tim, and Andy (all band members except for Dan, the drummer) set up in the middle of the crowd and performed a few acoustic songs. They asked people standing nearby to sit down so that everyone could see. It was great!
One of the songs they played while in the crowd was A Million Ways, and someone in the audience started doing the associated dance. When OK Go realised, they stopped playing and asked for his name (“Dave” I think it was). He was really chuffed. It was cool.
At the end of the evening, they lined up and took a bow. It was fitting because they’re real performers. I wish that I had flowers to throw.
Conclusion: Superb! Best show I’ve been to in a long time.
I didn’t have my camera with me on the night, but I’ll try to get some photos from Minh or Tone (who used their fancy camera phones). In the meantime, I’ve embedded a few of the famous YouTube videos (of the band; not of this particular gig) after the jump.
I went to see The Cure last night, and joked that I would have to blog about the concert using the title “En-Cure” because they played an insane 3 encores for a total concert time of over 3 hours. Ultimately that blog title was too lame… even for me.
Here are some photos. We had great seats, but my camera is pretty ordinary:
The concert was pretty different to the last time they were here. The most noticeable difference was that they didn’t have to cut the concert short because of a midnight curfew (like that imposed when they played at the Entertainment Centre). Other differences were the instruments used (no keyboard this time, just guitars and drums) and the visuals (better lights and projected video this time).
Overall, it was a good night out.
Update: Some of their new stuff is pretty good; classic Cure but with a bit more of a rock/pop feel. Embedded videos after the jump.
Note: This post is pretty much only of interest (and will only make sense) to programmers.
I’ve been using Python a lot for around 6 months now, and just yesterday I run into an apparently common gotcha. I’ve boiled it down to a very basic example.
First, let’s define a simple function with a default argument:
def f( a = [] ):
a.append(1)
print a
Now, let’s call it twice and see what happens:
> f()
[1]
> f()
[1, 1]
Probably not what you expected? From the POV of a C programmer, this just means that Python default arguments map to something like:
static int a[] = {};
rather than:
int a[] = {};
at the start of a function. (For those whom may not know; yes, C allows for static variables nested within functions.)
My Sunday started with the sounds of trucks doing bog laps around Langley Park.
I peered outside and as the trucks started stopping (and blocking Riverside Drive), I assumed that it was some sort of protest. Turns out it was “Truckies for a Cure [to Cancer]” or something like that. That would explain why there were so many kids I guess.
