Ice Cream

Last week when I was on-call I had a craving for ice cream, but I didn't have any in my freezer. When I was at the grocery store yesterday I found a flavour called Moose Tracks. It's vanilla with chocolate streaks as well as chunks of chocolate too. Watching Grey's Anatomy and eating ice cream is a good way to end the week.

Great Design

Joel on Software has started a series of articles on Great Design.

Skiing

Yesterday, I went skiing at Summit with Suor (who was snowboarding). It was my first time skiing. Well, that's not quite true. Went I was in grade 6 they took us skiing at Chicopee Ski Hill. But that was like 15 years ago, so I don't remember anything. And Chicopee is a rather desperate foray at downhill skiing. (If you're Waterloo you know what I mean. If you're from Seattle, it's smaller than the hill I live on. Otherwise, note that the emphasis is strongly on hill).

I spend the first two-and-half hours in lessons. They didn't give me poles either. The instructor (Stan) talked about balance, pressure, rotating, and edging for a bit. (Skiing is more complicated that it looks). Then we tried balancing with only one ski on and going down a slight incline. Then with two skis. After that, we made it up the easier slope (Holiday) and went down a few times and that was it for the first lesson. (There are a total of three lessons over three days).

Afterward, I went down Holiday several more times with Suor, which was fun. The chair lift is a bit crazy - I don't like heights, and it took a few tries before I could figure out how get off it without falling. Overall, I had a goodtime, but skiing is hard on your lower legs. Everything from my knees down was quite sore yesterday. And I can't walk too well today - my left-calf muscle is not very happy.

I'll probably go again at the start of March.

Assorted Links

superfluous is a cool word.

Lazy Monday - A parody of the SNL Lazy Sunday (i.e. Narnia) rap video that's worth watching.

Segway creator unveils his next act - Providing electricity and clean water to villages in the Developing World. That's a cool idea.

Calculating Dogs - Apparently dogs can perform Calculus.

Thursday

I'm in good mood. It's almost the weekend, men's hockey has started at the Olympics (Canada beat Italy 7-2 yesterday and played Germany earlier today - I'm currently waiting for CBC to re-broadcast that game), I bought a new pair of New Balance running shoes that are very nice. I'm also planning on trying to cook risotto for dinner tomorrow night. (I've never tried making it before).

Last night I watched the last disc from season one of Lost. I can't believe how good a TV show it is. It's one of the best things since sliced bread. The season finale was even more crazy-mad than usual. (e.g. Pouring gun power in a wound and setting it on fire to suture it. Damn). I can't wait for season two to come out on DVD.

The Pragmatic Programmer

I finished reading The Pragmatic Programmer a couple weeks ago. (And have been meaning to mention it, but kept forgetting). The book outlines an approach to software development summed up by its first "tip": Care About Your Craft - Why spend your life developing software unless you care about doing it well?

What you learn in school tends to be either aspects of Computer Science or the syntax and features of various programming languages. Both are useful, but developing software and working with complex systems have many other facets, many of which are best learned though experience. The book is a collection of short chapters that discuss what the authors' have learned about the later.

The engineering process - creating maintainable and testable software, design, documentation, and debugging - receives a lot of coverage. But other engineering topics and skills, including tools, architecture, communication, scoping and estimation, as well as career development, are discussed. The writing style is clear and full of examples, but concise (in a good way).

I highly recommend this book as it will (likely) introduce many new and helpful ideas as well as solidifying things that you may have learned along the way but aren't quite sure how to articulate or reason about.

Crossing the Aisle

Being an expatriate, I have a difficult time following the Canadian news. In theory, I could watch the CBC news (as the Vancouver feed is available), but I mostly just rely on finding news articles online.

The post-election defection of David Emerson from the Liberals to the Conservatives seems to be the most topical - just days after running as a Liberal and winning, Emerson abandoned the Liberal Party for a post in Harper's cabinet saying "I am pursuing the very agenda I got involved to pursue when I was in the Liberal party supporting Paul Martin...I thought that would bear more fruit for the people of the riding and the people of the province." [1] As he was expounding the Liberal agenda and slamming Harper and the Conservatives just a few days ago, I fail to see how he could be following his conscience. Similarly, in his riding the vote breakdown was 43% Liberal, 34% NDP, and 20% Conservative, so I don't see how he can claim to be doing this to better represent his constituents.

Another Conservative MP, Garth Turner is proposing legislation that would require MPs to win a by-election before switching parties. (However, they would still have the ability to decide sit an independent). "Anybody who switches parties should go back to the people. To do otherwise is to place politicians above the people when, actually, it’s the other way around." [2] This sounds quite reasonable and logical. (But, I doubt it will even happen, as it's not in the interest of the parties).

Netflix

CNN has an interesting article, Netflix's best customers penalized which states that Netflix uses a "throttling" scheme so that customers who rent movies at a high-frequency (e.g. 18 per month) get slower service and they are less likely to receive popular movies. This is done because each movie costs Netflix money (e.g. 78 cents in postage), but the customer pays a flat monthly rate for "unlimited" movies. As a matter of principle this sounds wrong, so I can see why people are upset. Personally, I've never had any issues with Netflix and think they are one of the best things since sliced bread.

I watched Matchstick Men last night. It's a drama starring Nicholas Cage as an obsessive-compulsive con artist who finds out that he has a teenage daughter that he's never met. It was pretty good and is the kind of movie that I like, but I also felt that the movie was a little slow to develop (especially at the start). Hence, I'll judge it at 3 stars.

The World Is Calling

Jeff Martin's solo album, Exile and the Kingdom, is due to be released on April 11th. I wonder if I will be able to get it here in the US.

The first single, The World Is Calling is available for sampling. Also, Shedding No Tears is a brief article about the album and the breakup of the band.