As I’ve said before, since leaving my previous position as a C#/ASP.NET minded monkey, I’ve been tooling, (or should I say battling), with the infamous choice of script kiddy and billion dollar social network empire, PHP.  It truly lives up to its meaning as the Palace of Hedonistic Pleasure, and continues to be an outstanding joy to work with, and you know i mean this in a completely non-sarcastic way.

That’s not to say its hard, it just seems to open the void between what is right and wrong a lot more than other languages I’ve worked with of late.  Think of it like riding a bike, there’s a right and wrong way to ride a bike, and once you learn, it’s usually smooth sailling.. You can either keep speed and move forward (right), or fall off (wrong).  PHP works in much the same way, but provides the stupid (me) with many many more ways to fall off.  And from what i’ve seen so far, it doesn’t take much to end up over the handlebars, face planting into a wall with the still-spinning front wheel grinding away at what little is left of your thigh, tummy or scrotum if one is that way inclined.

After an lengthy conversation discussing (bitching) how easy falling off the proverbial bike is, a colleague at work, said, “That’s the way it works, you take the good with the bad, it’s a state of PHP-ness.”

At which point I cracked up laughing, and forever more when I cringe at some of our code base, a smile will peel across my face.

p-h-p-ness  (pee-h-p-ness)

I should prefix this with a bit of background, after about thirty or forty pages of the authors build up to an action scene, the main character, Nick Stone,  describes in detail how stealth is the key to any subtle operation.  He describes in full the surveillance required in the stake out, and how each part of the target (IRA headquarters) was broken into without extreme force.  This goes on, and on, and as you’d expect thing’s eventually go hay wire as Stone is discovered and is seconds away from death via handgun down his throat after being taken out by a fire extinguisher to the back of the head.

By this point, I’m engrossed, the build up was enormous, and I’m literally hanging off the end of my seat wondering what on Earth is going to happen next.  There’s a small scuffle and Stone jams the gun, temporarily disabling it and a scuffle breaks out eventually resulting in the enemy being shot in the head.

This was followed by:

“He was going to die soon.

Tough Shit.”

It’s a pillow, what a horrible prank!

In hindsight it doesn’t seem anywhere near as funny, but it blew me away at the time.  After such an enourmous build up with everything and every moment described in such precious detail, the climax was abrupt, like a kick in the guts.  I have to liken this to getting amazing sex, mind blowing passion with the ultimate build up:

"mmmm...."

"ah..."

"MMMMmmmmm yea!"

"Oh.  Job's done"

"Yea, would you like a cup of tea?"

I’d half expected another ten pages describing the blood as it made its passage from the chest driven by the last few beats of the heart, up the arteries, and out the convinient new escape vent in the head.  But no.. He was dead, and that was it.

Bloody good book though, both Andy McNab books I’ve read so far have been an excellent read, which makes them incredibly hard to put down.

Music

I brought up my ipod before, and the reason I did this, is that anyone who knows me (or those who don’t and are devote readers of this HD911 prodigy, I’m a huge trance music fan.  In fact, since I got this handy little music device over 18 months ago it would have been cleared on average once a week, and contained anything but trance/electronic/DnB music ever so occasionally.  I now find myself on a half Trance/half Other basis, which is a big shift in Dynamic, as it’s a huge difference swapping from Armin van Buuren’s set at LoveParade 2008 straight to Johnny Cash, The Shins, Damien Rice or any other slow rock hit that sits between the uplifting euphoric forest.

Loveparade - It’s even better, with sound!

Yes, I did just say Johnny Cash, whom seems to stand out like a sore thumb even from the older music I’ve liked in the past.  But it’s no surprise, I seem to have taken a liking to a bunch of music that my Mum listened to when I was a kid, and I just thought was the same old country crap…  I’ve liked Dad’s music for years, from Beatles, Dire Straits, The Doors, Simon & Garfunkel, Genisis/Peter Gabriel/Paul Collins, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, Bread, America, etc  It’s about time I picked something out of her music collection right?

Gotta be better than Frank Sinatra, Celine Dion or Patsy Cline, anyway.

Lame Web Idea:  www.whatsonmyipod.com

The Sandwich

I’m making an effort to eat healthily at the moment, I’m still not doing very well mind you (nothings changed), but after seeing this news article on TV the other night (similar to this) about false labels, unhealthy and downright bad for you sandwiches that are available in London, it got me thinking.  I love most of the sandwiches available from the nicer shops, (i.e M & S, Sainsburys & Pret a Manger), but according to this article most all of these lunch treats are packed full of Salt and Saturated salt, even when you’re under the assumption they’re relatively healthy.

Pret - Home of the tastiest lunch time snack in all of England

Stupidly, there’s a sandwich from Pret which I assumed was at least relatively healthy, which is the roasted tomato and cheddar cheese on grain bread.  Really, if I wanted to eat unhealthily, I’d make the trip to a McDonalds and get a large Quarterpounder Meal.  You can imagine my surprise when the man in the television claimed that this particular sandwich was worse in salt and saturated fat content than the Maccy D’s meal.  I get it, there’s nothing specifically healthy about any type of cheese (especially cheddar), or tomato’s that have been dried and stored in oil since last year, but you don’t go out for a sandwich expecting it to be that unhealthy.

Which begs the question, what on earth are you supposed to eat, whilst on the go in a big city, which won’t add to the body’s fat content.  A stick of Celery perhaps?  Nope, probably not good enough, it’s probably had salt artificially added to it.  I’m realising that added salt is this invisible villian, but then I wonder why it’s been added in the first place?  Personally, the only food I’ll ever add additional salt to is Chips/Fries, and don’t see why it needs to be added to other foods, especially not a roasted chicken sandwich.

Yes, the connisours (spelling?) will probably say that its not tasty enough, but I don’t notice the difference in taste.  Seems the only way I’ve got of winning the health war is to make my own lunch, though I think the Salmonella and other harmful bacteria/disease acquired by chicken bits on my 30 minute train ride to the city and 10 minute in the tube/sauna is probably a whole lot worse than even Salt anyway.

Celery it is, just hold the salt… OK?

I still feel like a nance, especially as I keep seeing others wearing long sleeves, and even layers (one thing I will never understand about English people, their ability to layer clothes is second to none), but I can’t wait for the winter to come back again.  It was nice being able to walk to work without sweating, and sit at the office without sweating, though that is partly due to the terrible quality air conditioner we’ve got in our basement Nike factory, despite the fact its in most expensive area for office/business rent in all of the European Union.  Perhaps that’s the reason the air conditioner doesn’t work.

Here comes the worst part, it was only 28 degrees today, which is only just bordering on acceptable swimming weather in Australia, but I’d have happily taken a swim in the Thames to cool down.  Yesterday was a little hotter again, at 31 celsius, but its a different kind of heat, and there’s a whole lot less air conditioning.

What have I become? My sweetest friend…

Johnny Cash - Hurt

Johnny Cash - Hurt (Nine Inch Nails Original)

It’s not that I don’t have anything to say, there’s a billion thoughts swimming around in my head, but s….

Shit, hit the wall again!

As part of the build process we’ve done a recent refactor which improves performance and security and aims to generally make our service easier to consume by every device that uses it.  This process has taken the better part of six weeks next to full time work by four of us and at least two weeks work from a fifth person that left recently.  I don’t want to say I’ve poured my heart and soul into it, that would be lieing, but its definitely been something that we’ve become immensely proud of.

Anyway, today the decision was made to drop all the work completed toward the new version, and continue where we forked off on the previous release, which really is a huge shame.  Now I feel like we’ve taken a step backward, erasing a bunch of work that would have ultimately made the project a lot more stable and laid a few of the foundations for future-proofivity, if thats even a word.  I shouldn’t get too aread of myself though, in reality it was months away from the final goal, but at least there was move towards that goal.

I shouldn’t be surprised though, there seems to be many examples of this and far worse (mal)practices in the IT industry around the web, and it seems to me to often be the way the things work, especially in smaller Software Development situations.  I’ve even seen it before at previous jobs, and its never pretty.

The thing that gets me though, is the absolute waste of resources and man-hours that goes into a mistake such as this.  Assuming we worked two thirds of the week each, I’d put the time spent at:

4.5 staff x 27 hours x 6 weeks  = 729 man hours

By my crude calculations this is just about enough man hours to build a small skyscraper, or the Titanic if you will, but… That’s Life, after all!

Who knows, in another month, the project will probaly take another path altogether requiring a complete rewrite, refactor or perhaps disbanded altogether!

After all, it’s no Isaac Newton thesis, or Oscar Wilde novel.

On Sunday night we got home from our week long jaunt through Russia, from St Petersburg (4 days), to Novgorod (1 night) and finally to Moscow (3 days).  All I can say is what an amazing country, the food, drink, sites, everything.  The whole week I was there, I don’t think I had one bad meal, which says a lot for a foreign country, especially one which serves pretty much anything in a pancake (pork roast, caviar, salmon, etc) or an omlette (pork steak omlette, mmm).

But it wasn’t without it’s dramas, like me leaving my card in a cash machine on the first day of the holiday.  I can still recall the moment it happened too:

• Walk up to machine, insert card
• Perform transaction, receive cash
• Hear funny beep, assume it means end of transaction
• Put cash in wallet, walk away with ATM still beeping.

TopDecks Tours - Vodka Caviar 2008

Yet another case of the stupidity of me.  But, the holiday went on.  The other biggie was the tour group we with for the week, a Topdeck Tour, called Vodka Caviar 2008.  The tour itself was fine, with ample time to go off and do your own thing, whilst still seeing an awful lot of the tourist attractions and each city.  But the group itself pretty much consisted completely of 30 post high school age Aussie people, or at least some older people who acted like they were this age.  Honestly, the whole trip was like a soap opera, with sex, bitching, crying, and the horribly annoying Australian habit of groups of friends at the complete exclusion of others, something which I haven’t noticed since leaving the home land.  And thats a good thing.

The Amazing Moscow Underground

The reason we chose to go on a tour instead of battling it on our own was purely due to the fear and perceived danger in Evil Russia.   Looking back, this was a silly point of view and apart from few things its no worse, than anywhere else we’ve been so far like Paris, or Prague, and I’d consider our weekend in Brussels last year a lot more intimidating than anything we saw in Russia.  A few things that you need to do when you’re over there though:

• Always carry a passport with your travel Visa, as police can request this at any time, and you’ll (apparently) be locked up without it.
• Whilst being questioned by Police, never hand over passports of wallets, as these apparently have a habit of going missing (according to guide books, police corruption is an apparent worry)
• Before arriving, make sure you’re travel insurance is up to date and active, given the visa/passport situation it’d be a hell of a country/authority to deal with without outside help.
• Keep yours wits about you, and common sense, common sense, common sense.

We weren’t actually questioned at all on our time in the country, but the police/army/guards/etc were quite intimidating, as they were pretty much everywhere on the streets in the city, though this was a slight comfort as well.  I’ve never been anywhere yet in my travels where there were so many uniformed officials everywhere.

The Church of Spilled Blood, St Petersburg

I found the key with Russia was definitely to keep an open mind, and take pretty much anything anyone else has said about the country with a grain of salt.  Friends/people I’d talked to before the trip had warned me that St Petersburg was dodgy (whilst Moscow was nice), and vice versa, and the whole country was terribly expensive and everything is a complete rip off.  In fact, our tour guide seemed to do whatever he could to diss the country with warnings of muggings, cons, bad water, bad food, dodgy cops, expensive travel.  Though I guess thats his job, to make sure nobody gets hurt or loses anything on his tour.

Anyway, I’d definitely recommend Russia, it was a fun packed week.

Not since seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull a week ago have I seen a movie quite as bad as The Happening.  In fact, I didn’t see another movie in between the time I saw these two, and thats not giving me any confidence in the quality of new releases in 2008.  Usually, I can appreciate a low budget movie, when executed well these movies are just as good as any other, Clerks, Napolean Dynamite and even The Blair Witch Project come to mind here.

The happening just felt, looked, smelt, no stank of an extremely low budget film, but at $57 million, it must have either been made in Zimbabwe, or someone knows how to do a very tacky (relatively) high budget film in a completely low budget way.

The Story

The movie starts off with a suspected terrorist attack in Central Park in New York which mysteriously causes people to speak in tongues, walk backwards, and then find the quickest way of killing themselves, all whilst under a trance.  Within a few hours, the citizens of the North Eastern states are hurredly evacuating all the major cities, only to get knocked down like flies to this killer toxin.  Naturally, as the movie goes on, the main character discovers it’s plants who are emitting the toxin, and large packs of human beings were somehow setting off the plants.

People die, in fact pretty much everyone dies within about 5 states of New York (I’m going to estimate a quarter of the population of the U.S), but the main character, his disfunctional girlfriend, and their newly acquired daughter (due to loss of her parents) survive by talking nicely to plants, eating hotdogs, lieing low in a house with a crazy woman and making a final daring dash into the wilderness that had already taken so many.

I highlighted the silent killer in the paragraph above, just in case you missed it, that’s right, the killer was plants, and apart from some rather gruesome death scenes the film involved some rather B-grade actors walking through North American bushland.

The Actor

There was something I didn’t mention before, and it could explain the rather high budget for this bottom of the barrel film.  That is the main actor in The Happening is Mark Wahlberg, whom apart from his 14-inch penis in Boogie Nights and some solid performances in The Departed and The Big Hit, is a horrible excuse for a “holywood” actor.  I’m sure someone else could have played the part far more convincingly at about half the cost as well.

Worst of all, the film is written and directed by M. Night Shyamalan, whom I know nothing about, and don’t know any of his/her past work either, but from what others have said this film was definitely not Shyamalan’s best.

I don’t know what else to say, and I don’t usually bother commenting on movies, what could I possibly say that someone else hasn’t said before?  But when its this bad, it has to be spoken of.  The Happening, really was this bad!

Update:

I’ve just received a reply from another poster who has a blog, The Not Happening at http://thenothappening.blogspot.com/. I can’t believe just how much of a negatively following this movie has, staged walkouts.  Who knows, it may even go down as a cult classic.  Kudos!

Going down there as a foursome should be interested, just like old times again.  It has its advantages too, I wasn’t there to pick up the hire car, which means I don’t have to drive.  This is a good and a bad thing, bad because I desperately want to drive an automobile again (even if it is a four door Focus), but good because I’ll compensate by drinking, and catching up on some further reading of a new book or Arrested Development episodes.  I swear, this show gets better every time I watch it.

I’ve taken it upon myself to come up with a challenge for this extended weekend, but this challenge won’t involve the best sub £1,000 replacement vehicle for a UK Police Astra Diesel (ala the latest episode of Top Gear). I’m going to attempt to try every Cornish beer I can find, and write a small set of notes on each, The Great Cornish Beer Review.  This will involve going over my favourites from previous trips down to the foot, such as:

• Tribute Ale - A deliciously smooth brown ale, continuously drinkable all night, available in both Oxford, and the Twickenham Tup (20m from our front door), plus probably many other locations around London.  (Warning: ghastly when warm).
• Sharps Doom Bar - If I remember correctly, this bitter had a deceivingly strong taste to it, not that it’s in anyway a low alcohol beer.

The hardest thing about this of course is, despite my vast vocabulary (riiight), I have a pallete about as sensitive as the calloused palms of a full time grave digger.  Indeed, I think the words are in there, but picking the taste of raspberries from a 20 year old bottle of Shiraz doesn’t come to me naturally, at least not without reading the label.  I know what i like, but why I like Guinness, Tribute, Victoria Bitter and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale even though they’re vastly different types of beer, I don’t really understand.

We’ll see how that goes, anyway.

In just less than 12 weeks, I’ll be drinking Vodka (and eating Caviar apparently), in a Russian tour group, over the course of 7 days from St. Petersburg, through Novgorod and finally to Moscow.  I’m sure it’ll be great, and I’ve been checking the weather for Moscow recently, and they’ve been enjoying 21º Celsius temperatures, which may even be warm enough for shorts.  But we’ll see.  One thing I’ve learnt about the world (in my vast travels), is that the brisk 15-18º (almost sweater weather) in Australia is perfectly fine for shorts and a T-shirt in the UK.  Going by this logic, I’m going to stock up on thongs (no, not flip-flops), as I might just enjoy it.

When in Russia, I guess!

The tour we’re going on is the Vodka Caviar 2008 tour run by Top Deck Tours, which seems to be jam packed with included food, outings and theatre/circus tickets, though it’d definitely want to be for the cost.  But, all in all, it looks to be great fun, and I’m looking forward to seeing parts of the former Soviet machine.

We’ll be travelling around in a “modern air-conditioned bus”, and the group usually consists of about 20 people (of which 16 I’m expecting to be Brits).  I’m hoping for a fun piss-up, but I hope its not like all these Contiki Tours I’ve heard about friends doing over the years, I think I’m getting too old (hell, I am 25 now). Soft, I know!

The last thing we had to do in preparation for the trip was get the Visa organised, which as always was an annoying process (the two visa applications and postage cost (just over £40) almost £150, but amazingly enough, the website told me we’d have the passports back on the 20th of June, what do you know, they turned up on Friday night.  Perfect timing.  A little too perfect perhaps.

Shannon looks around suspiciously…..Шпионы, они всегда наблюдают

Similar, except mines got a hologram (how very 2008)