10 things I’m sorry about and regret doing at the work black tie christmas do 2011

by admin on December 10, 2011 at 6:50 pm

1. phone hacking
2. telling a girl she that her ‘costume’ looked like it was made of tinsel
3. telling a girl her dress was two years out of date
4. trying to lift two men simultaneously whilst they were embracing and causing a pile on
5. somehow acquiring an additional bow tie and overcoat
6. pretending to kiss a girl who arrived with, but was explicitly not the date of a colleague
7. engaging in dinner conversation about herpes and HIV for approximately 35 minutes
8. spilling vodka cranberry on a vintage clutch handbag and not telling its owner
9. not wearing a pocket square despite having declared the rules of pocket square enagagement to my colleagues weeks previously
10. switching the place cards at the table

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Airplay Dojo

by admin on June 6, 2011 at 10:53 pm

I’ve been working on Airplay SDK for Ideaworks3d for 6 months now, and it’s been a blast. I’ve learned a crazy amount about all sort of deep and dirty technical areas, and become an order of magnitude more productive using the GNU GCC toolchain, vi, python and git. My focus is better and I can work harder for longer than ever before. These things are all linked- the more I learn, the more interested I am, and the more interested I am, the less I need to eat cakes and watch DVD box sets by the carton.

On thursday I gave a 30 minute presentation to the London Python Dojo about Airplay SDK, and some work some colleagues and I did on porting python and creating some bindings. The project is hosted at https://github.com/guy127917/python-airplay. It’s kind of raw at the moment, but we have some basic stuff running, and the slow down doesn’t seem too bad for 3d stuff, so it looks promising. Some of the bindings require changes to the SDK which aren’t available to the public right now, but let me know if that is an issue and I’ll see what we can do.

The presentation went quite well I think, I guess it was more of a talk than a presentation since I didn’t take any slides. I didn’t really get through everything that I wanted to- 30 minutes absolutely flew by! So moral of the story is, though you may be able to wing it, it’s better to have some structure. The main reason I didn’t do more preparation is because I spent all my time getting a tech demo running, which only accounted for about 15 seconds of the talk. An iPad is a lot less impressive than a projector in front of a crowd!

I really appreciate having the opportunity to present though, so thanks to the Dojo and Mr Tollervey for giving me the chance. I really enjoyed it and hopefully can do something similar in the future. I actually wrote about wanting to do some talks not very long ago, so it’s nice to see a bit of progress there.

In fact, that post has reminded me why I like writing things down from time to time- it makes the whole “I was such an idiot 2 years ago, now I’m MUCH wiser” mentality more transparent and you can see it and isolate it if it is causing issues. So hopefully I will write more regularly in the future (famous last blog words).

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The Walls Are Bare

by admin on June 6, 2011 at 10:33 pm

It’s 5.25″ long, 0.50″ in diameter, weighs 3.83oz and is made out of high grade stainless steel. Available as surplus stock from an order by the CIA, the County Comm Embassy Elite pen is a fairly ridiculous specification for a pen if ever I heard one. I bought one a few months ago, out of boredom I guess. Obviously I have no need for a pen designed to survive a nuclear war, but it is a very nice object nonetheless. It is a very pleasing weight, the screw action on the lid and body grips nicely with the bite of metal on metal.

It’s nice to have objects like these in your life. Just little pieces of quality innocuously reminding you the value of doing things properly. People seem to find this in many ways- watches, cars, motorbikes, Apple *cough* products, and also less techy things- designer clothes, hand made jewellery, specialty coffee and many many more places. Having either pointless or pointlessly specified objects around is a very common thing in western civilization, and why not!

R and I have been trying to find some items to decorate the walls of our flat since we moved in, and so far we’ve come up a bit blank. We kind of agree about a few different pieces, but haven’t committed to buying anything. Personally I like the idea of having some sort of inspiring imagery on the walls, something thought provoking, or even something which just looks nice, as long as it is consistent and not a novelty. But I can’t get excited about choosing something, and I’m not sure exactly why.

I think my first reaction to buying some piece of ‘art’ to put on the wall is to think of all of the other million people who have that particular print. I guess there is very little ‘quality’ which I would like to surround myself with in a digital print.

My second reaction is that whatever you have on your wall is making a statement, and I just look at things an think, ‘well it looks nice and all, but do I really want people to look at this and just think “he likes dogs”.’ It’s like people who walk around with t-shirts which say “DRAG RACER ’78″ on. I just don’t understand why people want people to associate themselves with shit like that. Not that there is anything wrong with drag racing, but I’m pretty sure there is a stupid t-shirt to drag racer ratio in the world right now.

I like the idea of buying something from an unknown or young artist, maybe getting something at least a little bit unique. I wouldn’t mind paying a bit for the privilige either, I guess I just need to get out and see some exhibitions or something. Also, R and I have to agree on stuff too, so it’s not like I can just go out and buy a 10 ft canvas of a melting skeleton or something (on balance, probably a positive thing…)

I probably sound super pretentious here, but actually I’m not. As with most walks of life I think everyone should surround themselves with whatever they want. Just because I walk into a room and think “if I had to wake up everyday and see that I’d probably rip my face off”, it doesn’t mean I think any less of the proprietor, except maybe in the “me-and-you-art-compatability” column, which let’s face it, isn’t that important.

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Free Thought

by admin on March 8, 2011 at 10:50 pm

Say I was looking you in the face, and I said

“None of things I am about to say have any relation to my opinions. They are just words and sentences- the meaning of them is completely arbitrary.

“You are fat. You are a liar. You smell.”

I don’t know why you would do this, maybe you think that the sound of those syllables are particularly pleasant, maybe you never get the chance to say those things to someone in a meaningful way but you were interested to find out what it would feel like to speak the words out loud anyway, maybe you are reciting the lyrics to a song. But why shouldn’t you be free to do this? The point is, the words convey a meaning on their own, regardless of the intention of the speaker (pre-disclosed or not). It would take a very strong character to ignore completely those derisions, even with the preceding sentences- a character who could ignore the nagging doubt that they were the true feelings of the speaker.

So what if you want to explore the rhythm, rhyme and role of language? What if you want to see how other people react to the simple words, meaningful to your or their life or not? For example if you want to write a book about a promiscuous man, without your girlfriend questioning your faithfulness or desires, how would you separate to her your real and fictional psyche? It is certainly not unacceptable to want to explore the world through one’s imagination, and sharing this should be encouraged, but yet you will be judged based on the fictional characters and plots you create as if they were your own desires.

In many ways the situation is entirely expected. If I wrote a book about killing in a particularly brutal way, I would expect for people to look at me a little different, presumably thinking “is he looking at that knife and salivating?”. This isn’t a good thing though, in fact I think it is a terrible thing. Just because you are thinking about and considering the idea of cheating or stealing or paedophilia, it doesn’t mean you are considering cheating or stealing or wanking off over naked children. We are capable of meta thought!

In my opinion the mind should be totally protected. No man should be judged for his thoughts, good, evil and indifferent thoughts included. Only when actions manifesting these thoughts could negatively affect other people should judgement take place. In my opinion writing, art, and music are all physical manifestations of thought, not actions, and thus should come under the same protection. I am thus opposed to censorship, though I do support content rating, and publishing channels should be free to support whatever they want.

I think there is a gap between the ideal freedom of thought, and the natural human ability to separate the meaning of words or thought from intent- “genuine” or “real” thought. That is not to say however that with consideration every one of us cannot come to fair conclusions on these matters, but I think this is one place that it is important to use this consideration rather than resort to instinctual feelings. I think that as a society we should avoid knee-jerk reactions to every day things, like what people say, and bigger things, like the Wikileaks cablegate scandal. I think we should be very careful about protecting freedom of thought and communication.

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Update

by admin on March 8, 2011 at 10:49 pm

I haven’t written anything recently- I’ve been kind of busy, recently moving to a new job and flat in London. I have had spare time, obviously, so to claim I haven’t had the ability to write anything would be a lie. However my mind has been immersed in discovering new and exciting things and I haven’t had the inclination to take time out to write for a while. I’m pretty sure that a while ago I wrote about making sure you always take time out to reflect and write stuff, so I kind of failed there, but… nevermind.

The next post is something I wrote a while ago.

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