autumn tactics

Merriam-Webster makes a poor effort to raise my morale

Today via email I received the word of the day, “verbose”, twice. Is this some sort of lame attempt at humor by a cron job?

return m_DiffuseColor;

The Midnight Sun

Tokyo attracts so many big names that it’s pretty easy to find good shows, and I’m not really even in the loop this year as far as the electronica scene is concerned. Seeing Ferry Corsten at Velfarre last Saturday completed my mega-DJ checklist for the year (I got Tiesto and Oakenfold back in April).

As usual, Ferry’s set was very good; high energy and plenty of vocal anthems. Aside from the crowd-pleasing Gouryella and System F hits, he also threw in some “old” stuff that caught me by surprise. I nearly went ballistic when he put down a classic mix of the Thrillseekers’ Synaethesia. I think one of the reasons I really like Ferry so much is because you can tell he has an absolute blast DJ-ing. His ever-present beaming smile embodies just about everything I love about electronica: pure souls, terrific music, and sharing the joy of it all. To me he’s like the Dalai Lama of trance, his style is just so lighthearted and honest that he makes everyone around him feel good. Tiesto, on the other hand, is kind of hard-nosed and serious. I’d put Oakenfold somewhere in the middle. Anyway, Ferry’s always a pleasure to see.

I’m not sure if it was just this show or the club in general, but things were a lot different from the last time I went. There weren’t any security pat downs (something very refreshing which made me wish I’d packed some gear), and the entire entry floor had been remodeled with a bar and lounge.

I had a blast, but Mikiko was kind of turned off by the clientele, they’re “too young” for her taste. It didn’t bother me any, I just get such a kick out of seeing high energy people having a good time. Oh well, good times. Now I just gotta get to more outdoor parties next season.

Time is the fire in which we burn

“Time is the essence of life. It is something we all share. Each of us has a limited amount. How we use our time is the guiding force of our lives. How we spend our time tells other people who we are. We define ourselves by our use of time. We are what we do!”- Bob Herman

Yes. Exactly yes. We define ourselves by our use of time. We are what we do. I am a programmer.

Is this all that my life is to be?

delete _player;

Tired. What? Tired.

I was late to work today for the second day in the row. This has never happened in the history of mankind, ever. The main reason was that my alarm gives up after an hour, and I was bound and determined to solve the ideal position for several key vertices in a phrase marker mesh (half awake programming). In addition to waking up at ten I spent half an hour looking through my (freshly cleaned) house for my bike key, which ended up being in the trash (of course). That’s how tired and out of it I am.

In the meantime, here are some pictures of my Christmas tree, or something.

[For the eagle-eyed, yes, that is a Xbox lanyard supporting the wreath. My GDC giga pass is in a drawer at the moment.]

Jumping kids

I’ve been fortunate enough to see plenty of holiday cheer lately, despite my unforgiving working conditions. Supermarkets and small shopping streets alike have been playing lilting carols for the past couple weeks, and nearly every shop is dressed up in some form of garland or tinsel. Personally, I got my Christmas tree last weekend, in addition to a holly wreath and a poinsettia.

The real boost to my spirits today was the stroll through the main courtyard at Opera City, while en route to Subway to pick up lunch. There was a group of kindergarten-aged children frolicking around the giant Christmas tree and the ever-disturbing “singing man” statue. This alone is enough to make me smile broadly, but these kids were ridiculously hyper. You know how it is, when they’re in a group, and they’re bouncy, and they feed off of each other’s energy. These kids were so juiced, some of them were jumping up and down in place and dancing by themselves. That juiced. It was like a scene from Kindergarten Cop, or Billy Madison. It was off the charts. It was awesome. And it took every fibre of resolve in my body to not run around shouting with them.

A Brief History of the Can

While waiting by the microwave for today’s dinner ration of Sunday’s cooking to heat, I stared at the ceiling contemplating how to get into the building via air ducts and other such virtual ploys. After starting my meal, I began to think about the admirable simplicity of Great Grandmother Armstrong’s vegetable soup. Could she ever in her wildest dreams have imagined that someday her great-grandson would be eating soup from the same recipe, in front of a glowing computer monitor in Japan of all places? Probably not. [Will my great-grandchildren eat the same soup? Better still, will they consume liquid compositions made from naturally occurring flora at all?]

More importantly, how faithful is today’s incarnation to Great Grandma’s original recipe? Well, since the soup is basically just fresh vegetables and water, probably pretty close. The only thing that caught my mind was the “1 large can of tomatoes, mashed”. Hmm, Great Grandma was making soup near the turn of the twentieth century, so was that really likely? At first I scoffed at the idea and thought my mother or grandmother had introduced the “canned” part. [Foolish me.]

Spurred by curiosity as always, I set out to spend my “dinner” at work finding out just when the can began to see considerable use for the storage of vegetables. It turned out that I am quite ignorant to the history of modern food packaging conveniences, as Napoleon himself commissioned a 12,000 franc reward for an invention [the can] to preserve food for the French military (in 1795)! Admittedly, cans didn’t become a widespread conveyance for consumables until some prudent usage of interchangeable parts and half a dozen patents later, but by 1856 condensed milk had been registered by Gail Borden (hmm, “Borden”, that name seems familiar). Anyway, automatic canning machineries were up and about by the end of the 1800s, so yes, it’s quite probable that Great Grandma Armstrong did originally use canned tomatoes.

Another mystery solved!

You can learn tons more about the amazing history of the can at CanCentral.com. For further culinary history and enlightenment, Check out the indispensable teacher’s resource, The Food Timeline.

GetParent()->ReleaseDC( pDC );

Coding well is running on dope

And conversely, coding poorly is running on a hangover. That’s all.

I am exhausted, I pulled a huge muscle in my upper back, and I got a cold today. I’ve been at work since nine on five hours sleep. I was out of gas. I should have been out of gas. I got a lot of stuff done today. A lot. Under optimal circumstances I would have left at 6:30 with a clear conscience. But these are never optimal circumstances. Instead, I’m staying here until the last train trying to get rectangular primitives to render a scaled approximation of a dynamically changing TCB spline. I’ve never used raw D3D, really, but I’m doing it.

I thought. I drew a picture in my notebook. I Googled. I hacked at the code for a few minutes. I reasoned, and I got it to work. I’m on fire now. Dead tired, yes, but on fire. I’m fucking fixing bugs left and right, implementing spec changes with ease, and integrating new functionality in a fraction of the time I projected. I’m listening to Armin van Buuren‘s ASOT 142.

I’m running on dope.

And tomorrow I’m going to see Ferry Corsten at Velfarre’s 10th anniversary party. LIGHT IT!

ppLine->Draw( &(vecnPts[0]), vecnPts.size(), D3DCOLOR_RGBA(0,192,0,255) );

I don’t ask for much

I really, really, really, want a stiff martini. Right now.

Really.

GetParent()->GetDC()->InvertRect( m_SavedRect );