Random Developments

Ravens in the Melbourne CBD don’t say “never more”. They say “sleep no more”.

A few months ago, we were woken by one of them calling out from just outside our window, around 6am; it went away when we opened the blinds. This Saturday, another one (presumably) seemed to be a few blocks away, but was still loud enough to wake us up around 7am. And there was no way to make it stop, it being too far away…

On a related note: if I ever run for mayor, my only platform will be the prohibition of car alarms within a 500-meter radius of residential buildings, under penalty of towing and destruction of the car.

Seeing as the Iron Chef (see also this) seems to be a very popular show with IT professionals, I bring you… Iron Hacker!

Nearly a decade ago, a man’s fantasy became reality in a form never seen before: Coding Stadium, a giant hacking arena. The motivation for spending his fortune to create Coding Stadium was to encounter new, original programming, which could be called true, artistic creations. To realize his dream, he started choosing the top hackers of various languages of programming, and he named his men the Iron Hackers, the invincible men of code hacking skill. Iron Hacker Assembler is Rokusaburo Michiba; Iron Hacker Perl is Hiroyuki Sakai; Iron Hacker C is Chen Kenichi; and Masahiko Kobe is Iron Hacker Python.

Coding Stadium is the arena where Iron Hackers await the challenges of master hackers from all over the world. Both the Iron Hacker and challenger have one hour to tackle the theme of the day. Using all their senses, skills, creativity, they’re to prepare artistic programs never ran before. And if ever a challenger wins over the Iron Hacker, he or she will gain the people’s ovation, and fame forever. Every battle, reputations are on the line in Coding Stadium, where master hackers pit their artistic creations against each other. What inspiration will today’s challenger bring, and how will the Iron Hackers fight back? The heat will be on!

Now all I need is a producer. Any takers?

And so a new year begins. After a 10-day break, I returned to work yesterday. And it has rained on and off since. Considering that we had sunshine basically during the whole break, it’s kind of interesting.

I didn’t manage to read everything I had planned to during the holidays, obviously. I did finish two books, but two others are “pending”, and I didn’t even start on my pile of magazines.

On the reading front, in 2004 I read 28 books (that is, I finished 28 books in 2004; one of them was started in 2003, and the two I finished in 2005 already were started in 2004). It looks like a lot, but I think it’s below average for me… part of it is probably because I more or less stopped reading from mid March to late June, because of the big move. Part of it is because some of the books were somewhat “heavy” (the Baroque Cycle trilogy, for example). Let’s see how things develop in 2005…