Book Review - David Weber - Honor Harrington series

So, a friend recommended this sci-fi series. He said it was good space opera and technology and tactics were not only self-consistent but even ground in actual physics (read: pretentiously "hard" military sci-fi). He also said the first two (out of at least ten) books are fully and freely available from the publisher's website. The following is what I have to say about "On Basilisk Station" & "The Honor of the Queen".

It's not given away for free because it's so addicting you'll immediately go and buy the rest of the books from Amazon. It's given away for free because of fierce competition from FFN. Seriously.

The only criticism I had for Lois McMaster Bujold's excellent Vorkosigan Saga was that it was too soft to be read by the hard core sci-fi audience (read: boys). That's how I explain it being so unknown among the sci-fi readers I talk to — it's treated like romance fiction, sometimes legitimately and justifiably so. Lois only mentions how spaceships, weapons, propulsion systems, communications, etc. work when necessary. And now I'm sure she's doing the right thing, too: Weber spews (besides too many characters' names and titles) accelerations, orbits, vectors, relative velocities, ranges and all kind of numbers and units all the time, but I'm not going to sit down with Mathematica and my high school physics textbook to run his numbers. It's dull, and it's the only thing he has working for him. The rest of the stuff that make up a good book, like: plot, characters, dialogue, subtlety, style - he has none of those.

The books have a girl-power feeling to them, which is forced and thus counter-productive. The heroine is not Cordelia Naismith by a long shot. In fact, and I ask to forgive my slight here, I think the future Admiral Lady Dame Duchess Honor Harrington is a butch. Also, she enjoys eating the cake and having it too a bit too often: She has forty-five years of experience, but she looks like a college student. She is from a high-gravity planet making her very strong, but she's also tall and graceful. She is self-consciously not pretty, but she possesses a unique beauty that makes her attractive to interesting men. She's bad at math, but is a gifted 3D tactician who can plot intricate trajectories by instinct.

The author's excuse for Regency-era social and political structure in a well-into-the-future galactic empire (which has never had a Time Of Isolation) is as plausible as any other, and the introduction of a six-legged empathic killer cat of plot-device a reasonably original twist (though she appears to love her kitty more than people), but I don't even know what to think of the heroine's naval career closely resembling Admiral Nelson's (I noticed that by myself).

Had it been published as a fanfic, I'd have said "nice try" and "props for having it proofread", but really, it feels like the bad Hollywood-movie version of some good books I've read. Don't waste your time.

HP Fandom - Elsha's D* Theo/Anne series

I don't know if there's an epilogue, but this is the last chapter. Good for Elsha, finishing it before HBP. It is a story about the girl next door and the Death Eater's son, but though this description makes it sound very kitschy, it's actually very good.

ETA: That wasn't the last chapter. That only closed the plot for Harry & Co. The next chapter is closure for the fic's main characters, and an epilogue is promised. Also, she's fixed the character encoding problem.

Personal - "School" Trip

The people at my workplace have a tradition to go on a trip together. It's good for building teams etc. Anyway, since the Golan Heights is a beautiful place and we're never sure whether it will still be in Israel next year (Assad being who he is, it looks like it will, but you never know…) we chose it again. This time we've covered Brehat HaMeshushim and Nahal El-Al. Pics will be added when available.

It was a nice two day trip, sleeping on the beach of the Sea of Galilee (21°C at night, no tent/sleeping bag needed). It was a bit too hot (35°C in the shade, with no shade during most of the ~4 hour hike) and the planning committee have miscalculated the logistics somewhat (too much meat), but everyone has enjoyed it (or so it seems). Seeing one's team lead (or, if you prefer, commanding officer) pissed drunk hitting on girls is a positive experience.

I've come to realize someday soon I'm going to be very angry at myself for completely missing the opportunity while being practically surrounded by reasonably clever very good looking teen girls, the same way I'm angry at myself for basically missing the whole high school experience. It seems a motif in my life, discovering late how I've missed out on something or other. Reminds me of this great quote:

"You don't appreciate a lot of stuff in school until you get older. Little things like being spanked every day by a middle aged woman: Stuff you pay good money for in later life." — Emo Philips

HP Fandom - Harry/Snape in iambic pentameter

Really. Here. Am speechless.

Hacking - Java

Now, I don't know Java. I have zero work experience with it and have never read a book about it (that's not what I'll write in my c.v. of course). I have seen some J2EE code in my life and were able to deduce how it supposedly works, but I really should reserve judgment till I know more. I do work with C# on a regular basis, and though I haven't actually learned it "properly" (i.e. methodically) either I can usually fake it.

Reading smart people's blogs about programming language design (they're usually quite academic types, buy Python is real) I keep feeling their derision of Java coming through very strongly, as the COBOL of our times. Comparing it to readable dynamic languages (meaning those which are not Perl) I tend to agree.

One of my email sigs at work is a quote I can't locate now that (completely paraphrased) says "When in the first example I saw cout left-shifted "Hello World" times, I despaired of learning C++". Another is Marx's "History repeats itself, first as tragedy and then as farce". Well, I ask, how come the situation described in Tim Bray's recent rant on Java 1.5 is better than C++? And I hear C# 2.0 will be like that too…

Personal - This week

I've attended DBA3 (free training provided by the employer) with my future team lead M. He didn't know I'm in his future team till the last day when I told him over launch. Was a bit funny - I told him a bit about the project, the organizational chart, the team members etc. Of course he'll get proper introduction (and a lots of links to stuff he has to read) by my boss' boss when it gets closer to his transfer. He seems okay, considering I kind of demanded a geek for my next boss (since I've been completely spoilt by my current boss). No, I'm not one of those superstar people who interview their own boss, I'm just (unfortunately) the most seasoned programmer on staff who hasn't been pushed into a management role (yet, anyway) and the boss' boss decided to tell me who they chose.

Another funny thing that happened is my mom asking what was the strange new belt I have and then showing me the weapon strap when I looked puzzled. I usually keep it in the backpack so she just didn't recognize it or something. And it looks kind of like a belt (except for the fastenings) and is an unmarked olive green model that doesn't scream "guns! death!". Strange, my service is.

Oh well, off to study pirated OCP 1Z0-033 exam kits for the test next week. I'm thinking of actually spending the money on certification when I'm discharged, although I don't really want to be a full-time DBA…

ETA: today I've found out I got 94% on that test. For some inexplicable reason, I feel more confident with my SQL skills since I've done it.

TV - Alias Season 4 Finale

Wah. This guy is right. Such a waste of bandwidth. I might try Lost now, but it will probably be ruined too after a season or two, like every other thing that got popular and didn't have an ending already written (like Babylon 5 and Harry Potter). Is 24 any good?

In other news, a girl talked to me today, of her own free will and for free I might add. Yes, this is a joke.

TV - Alias 4x04 Ice

I sure hope the episodes improve in this season, but I just had to say I love Kelly Macdonald's accent (or was it only Kiera MacLaine/Meghan Keene's accent? I can't really tell how much of it was real).

ETA: 4x13 has a spork!!!

Web Tech - Markup

Blogger doesn't feature any built-in privacy. You can't mark posts as being private or "friends-only". The FAQ apologetically suggests you publish to your own server via FTP and manage security there (why would you use Blogger if you pay for hosting I have no idea. It's not like the wysiwyg editor or the template system are that good…).

LiveJournal is much more of a social software than Blogger's "push-button publishing for the people". Userpics, f-lists, communities, privacy, FOAF etc. make it very clear. Heck, the Harry Potter Fandom practically lives on LJ!

Personally, I can live without that, but I must be in control of my posts, at the lowest technical level. I want to be able to submit pre-arranged xhtml pieces to post. I want to be able to include any tags I wish (even scripts!) and know my markup won't be tampered with by the editor or the spell checker. And I must be able to just type up some stuff and let it generate sane markup for it, not force me to write my own <p>'s when I don't want to! Why in the name of Marshall McLuhan is the "convert line breaks" setting global???

ETA: So yeah, the point was that now I'll have to add markup to some of my posts and that would make them appear to be updated, although I won't change anything. Sorry for the inconvenience (It should only affect syndication users, though).

Work/Personal - Developers' Attitude, Inspiration, Competence

A recent thread on JOS forums is so apropos it's scary.

I'm a very "Person B" type of guy, having issues with time management and juggling more than a few tasks. I'm also frequently under-motivated because my superiors are unable to control my work environment enough to help me be more productive or even reward me properly. I'm getting increasingly frustrated with some aspects of working slaving for the government and feel like a pat on the back is not enough for me to work like I'd do in a startup. The classic "the reward for good work is more work" approach might work (for me) when one's work saves lives. Mine can only save money, money I see wasted all around me while I wait literally years for upgrades to my workstation I need to be able to do my job.

We've all read Peopleware, and we all know the issues, but it seems like the constraints of obligatory military service are too hard to mitigate. Like in Communism, you are expected to do your best but everyone with the same job description gets essentially the same treatment (and don't get me started on the secretaries). You can play on people's pride and ambition, but I guess I'm just a whiny quitter who calls everyone fake and doesn't want to play their games.

I care deeply about my country, and I care personally for my clients' work, for which my products are crucial, and I take pride in my craft, but next month it'll be two years in this position and I feel disillusioned.

A big head and a low self esteem are a really nasty combination.

This Blog - Bookmarks

A significant part of my Firefox bookmarks has been added to the sidebar in a hopefully manageable way. It should be noted the bookmarks are a mess. Please report problems with navigation, validation, dead links, uselessness, etc. here.

The hefty (30k) thing was not compressed so it would be accessible from non-typical UAs such as lynx (verified!).

Various - Update

• Yesterday on the bus ride home I've seen two girls from Oketz (they are very distinctive by their male uniform, lack of shoulder unit insignia and a Colt Commando). It made me even prouder in my uniform, thinking of the training these girls went through to get into an elite combat unit and how nice they still look and sound. Oketz appear to choose well from Nahal's girl battalion "Karakal".
• I've listened to some Bond (Born, Shine and Classified). It's too world-music and has too much electronic and other interference so you can barely hear the string quartet itself. Few tracks are interesting beyond the first in every album. If I compile a list I'll post it. Also, undressed publicity photos (as well as dance/hip-hop/whatever remixes) cheapen the classical act so it cuts down on the people who came to listen to four classically trained performers while doesn't gain too much of the Britney Spears audience since they don't cut it as pop icons.
• A friend suggested going playing war games* for his birthday. It was very cool (not cheap though), but now I hurt all over: bruises on both thighs, an arm, a shoulder, palm and a bit on the back (only torso and head are well protected during games, so arms and legs get hit a bit). Also, I got splashes of paint in the face some of which is in my hair. Some of those bruises look like they'll stay for a week or so. But hey, it's as close to military action a non-combatant like me is ever likely to get. Was lots of fun.
  Personnel are Russian speakers and were a bit miffed we had two non-Russian speakers in a group of eight so they had to give the instructions in Hebrew. A common problem in modern Israel are those weird people who live here for more than twenty years and still didn't learn Russian…
  * - English site is all "under construction", but a picture is worth a thousand words.

Personal - Social Circle Meme

A variation of the thing from Rebecca:

Why are you on my referrer logs?
Comment and tell me. Then post this in your blog/journal.

Music - Sampling

No, this is not about the process of digitizing an analog signal (though it is well worth your while to find out what "digital" actually means, even of you're not a technophile like me, at least so you know when advertisers clearly lie).

"Sampling" as in tasting a little bit of everything in a buffet or listening to a bit of various unfamiliar musical styles/performers to find out if you're missing out on something good. Like radio is supposed to be. Unfortunately, since all I get at work is commercial (remember payola?) brainwashing courtesy of local recording companies / RIAA franchises, I steal music from the net to find out what I like (Schoolgirl will be glad to hear I don't listen to much Yanni any more...).

So, if, perhaps by accident, you've discovered a large file with a "rar" extension and perhaps the words "ape" or "cue" in its name on your computer and decided you're not afraid of communism and would like to give it a try, here's some advice.

First of all, congrats on choosing the cd image instead of the mp3s. It means you value the quality of your music, and won't let some ripper's poor choice of encoding software to alter your perception and possible appreciation of the artist's work. Having an actual CD image, possibly compressed by some lossless compression method, enables you to recreate a bit-identical copy of the audio CD, so you'll know what you get when you buy it (well, that and the inlay, but that too is often provided as high resolution scans).

What you need to do then is extract the archive using unrar (free from rarlabs.com):

$unrar x foo.rar

Now you can either play it, if your player supports cuesheets and decodes Monkey's Audio (plugins are available for popular media players), burn it to CD (again, plugins are available for popular burning software), or convert it to mp3s (for use in portable players or some such). For that, you need the proper decoder (in this case, mac), cuetools, shntool and of course lame (all free software). When you have the latest versions installed, just:

$cuebreakpoints CDImage.cue | shnsplit -n "band-album-" -o cust ext=mp3 { lame --preset standard - %f } CDImage.ape

and (after a while) - voila!

I have yet to find a way to specify certain tracks to split so you'd be able to do less work to get a single track or even fork off multiple instances to use that SMP machine you might have properly. But at least you don't need to create temporary files.

Shell out for albums you like - the artists do get a little of that money!

Personal - Book meme

I was named by Lou, so now that I have time I shall do her bidding.

1. Total number of books I've owned: I've counted 50 on the shelves. I have no idea how many more are still packed in boxes (no shelf space in the rented place). I don't count the pirated eBooks, or my parents' library.
2. The last book I bought: a preorder of HBP, actually.
3. The last book I read: see last post.
4. Five books that mean a lot to me:
   1. The Potter books, obviously. For all I've lost and gained in Fandom.
   2. Dune
   3. LMB's Vorkosigan books
   4. A book in Hebrew I received as a gift in 4th grade about a Jewish boy who survives alone in a ghetto in Poland during WWII. Being a children's book, it had a happy ending.
   5. I loved Robinson Crusoe as a child. And consequently had a rather mad wish to build a tree house for the longest time.
   It's interesting to note that what I liked most about those books is how the hero manages on his own. The rest are… supporting characters. Damn, that's sad.
5. Tag five people and have them fill this out:
   1. Teri
   2. Emily
   3. Rebecca
   4. Leslie
   5. acemyth

Books - Shadow Of The Giant

So I've just finished the book. It took me three evenings (I'm a very slow reader). Yesterday I thought Orson Scott Card was just publishing more stuff to make money, the way I feel about what has been done to Dune, but today I've changed my mind.

No, it doesn't say anything new, per se, and it was kind of tying up loose ends, exactly as he promised two years ago (he left just a small bit for developing into plots of future books, if he ever needs the money, but then, the afterword in the acknowledgments section feels like it's the last book of the series...). The psychology was a bit simplistic, though it might be just realistic, but the geo-politics sounds about right (again, I don't know what I'm talking about). The last chapter was very touching. Actually, most of his ending are very good (contrast with Neal Stephenson for example). It really is a good book. I don't know about the non-preaching moralism, and how all that stuff gets along with the author's personal beliefs, and when (if at all) are characters speaking for him, but the whole settle-down-and-have-kids as the proper goal for sane people's ambition resonates very well with me.

BTW, the whole marrying the best female of the generation who is not your sister reminded me of themes in HP fandom. I think I read too much fanfic. (go Capt. Obvious!)

Fandom - Congrats Melissa!

I remember in her first few posts on the now happily defunct HP message board, she was in the process of graduating from college... Anyway, hard work does pay off, and you've earned it! Now, anymore Firelox fic? ;-)

Found on The Web - Gangsta CS

I've known for a while there are some hard-core comp-sci geeks on LJ, not just liberal arts and poli-sci _______, but somehow I've never read anything of Brad's before. Anyway, he has a lot of cool stuff, among which I've found the funniest link 3v4r: So Much Drama in the PhD, by Monzi.

ETA: Apparently, there is a genre for this stuff.

Private - Musical taste

I recently loaned a friend a bunch of CDs I had lying around the office for a weekend. He said the music is depressive but it does appear to be conductive to a programmer's productivity. My music, depressive? It's not like I listen to Air's Virgin Suicides soundtrack on repeat or something! (A decent one if that's what you like, though I'd advise a visit to a therapist).

Here's the list. What do you think?

• Mike Oldfield - Voyager
• Epica - The Phantom Agony
• Enya
  • Watermark
  • Shepherd Moons
  • The Celts
  • The Memory of Trees
  • A Day Without Rain
  • Paint the Sky with Stars: The Best of Enya
• Era
  • Era
  • Era, Vol. 2
  • The Mass

Private - This week

The 5th was the Israeli Day of The Holocaust, the 9th was 60 years since the end of The Great Patriotic War (my grandparents are veterans), today is the Israeli Memorial Day and tomorrow Israel will celebrate its 57th birthday. Personally I think it's too close together. It's symbolic of course, but you have to separate the days a bit more to let it sink in.

This time it was a bit more personal for me, a bit less abstract. I wish future years won't add more specific faces to the image I have in my mind's eye during the minute of silence.

News - Maccabi Tel-Aviv won the Euroleague

No news links yet, but I've seen it on TV. Yeah! :-)

Maccabi, Euroleague.

Tech - QEMU

So, as I said earlier, I've installed the latest release of windows for home users in qemu (also latest release, 0.7.0) to test my dhtml (not ajax) in m$ie. It works, but:

• official documentation is sparse and unofficial is not up to date and user-friendliness is of the sort that gives open source its bad reputation.
• Performance is nowhere near "good" (even with kqemu), but can be made tolerable by keeping tabs on the swapping (or having lots of RAM). I had to decrease memory allocation for the guest in order for it to be responsive while I have Firefox open on the host. Also I switched from KDE to Fluxbox, applied a patch enabling dma on the winnt guest and switched to raw rather than sparse disk image file format.
• Installing and configuring Samba for file-exchange between guest and host isn't terribly user-friendly as well, BTW.

I've browsed the developers' mailing list archives and they do have many good ideas, so I believe the future is bright for emulation (running OS X on an Athlon 64 is in the roadmap, and that is close to the holy grail for me). Basically, computer-savvy users only for now, unless you wan to pay for Virtual PC or VMWare (and that can't run an architecture different from the host's).

It turned out my blog's CSS editing doesn't work in m$ie. Have not debugged it yet, but it being deployed for a while now and nobody saying anything is kind of depressing (since I know for a fact not all of my hits are made with Firefox).

Obligatory pic.

Personal - Hmmm

I went with my parents to a family friend's 50th birthday party. Despite being a classic civil engineer (exasperatingly pedantic) working for the national telco he's a good guy. I was prepared for a rather dull evening, but party games for tispy 45 to 55 y/o ex-Soviet engineers and their wives turned out to be funnier to observe than I'd imagined (and I didn't even know anyone present!).

I got cornered by the birthday-boy's elderly uncle (who I later found out was a physics professor or something) with the "I've been told you're good with computers, could you please help me out with this small problem I have" line I know so well (I briefly regretted not wearing this shirt). He introduced himself as a total dummy, but as he was explaining his problem in bits and pieces, it turned out he wasn't clueless at all - he was editing his registry and he'd switched to Firefox etc. I honestly believe he was proving himself or something by "testing" me. Way more cool than my grandparents, anyway.

Web Tech - JavaScript/DOM performance

I've done some extremely unscientific and informal comparison of Firefox 1.0.3, Opera 8.0 and Konqueror 3.4 running my dynamic table script on 100K of data and I have to say I'm very impressed with Opera. It feels like the code is JIT-compiled while KHTML feels like it's running in an emulator (I'm talking about being 50 times(!) slower while crawling DOM etc.). There are things where Konq. actually does better than dear old Gecko, though compatibility is definitely not one of them (I had to code around many KHTML issues). Opera's choice of when to actually reflow the DOM changes is a bit weird, but it might be doing the right thing performance-wise.

I'm working on getting the browser from Redmond to work in QEMU, will update here when I have more info.

ETA: It's working, but I can't really do any performance comparisons.

ETA #2: KHTML 3.4.1 bugfixes should allow me to remove a few lines of code. It's my policy to only support the (near) latest version of each browser engine. There's no good reason to still use IE 5.5, pre-1.0 Mozilla (or even pre-1.0 Firefox, which is Mozilla 1.7), Opera 6, etc. I expect the UA to either have full support of the W3C DOM and CSS DOM and things like Array.push (so no IE 5.0) or be treated like Lynx, but I won't use Mozilla 1.8b2's proprietary Array.ForEach (although it's brilliant!). For the people stuck with the version of KDE/Mozilla they have on their binary distro: too bad, you probably don't use Konq as your primary web browser anyway. :-)

HP Fandom - update

Since there is no FFDB (yet), I'll keep posting updates.

• Caitlyn updated Letters From Home. Definitely the cutest OFC in Fandom and a long time personal favourite, despite continuous markup issues (for me that's saying a lot).
• Anneth Lagamo has posted cool new stuff on her artwork site: Edgeworlds. Highly recommended, though I'm sure I don't have to introduce a talent like her.
• J.L. Matthews updated Slytherin Rising: Year Of The Cat. For years I've kept coming back for more Slyth Four while I let Lorific get stale in my inbox. That's praise.

Web Tech - marketing gimmick of the year?

After the SpreadFirefox counters (never had one of those buttons myself, but I did tell everyone I know to use it ever since I switched to Phoenix 0.4) and other Firefox publicity, and the imminent release of IE 7 looming overhead, the Opera people probably decided to have a splash of their own. Literally. I think it's a bit much, but drastic measures are probably the answer if you want to continue to compete (successfully!) with both Microsoft and the Free/Open community.

Personal - Update

1. Last week my team got a replacement for the member we stand to lose in a few months. Training a newbie (the guy was literally two days out of basic training when we got him) takes years when he's not a self-trained computer geek (we weren't that lucky) and I suspect it's going to be partially my job. He spent more time reading Asimov than the C# book we gave him, but that might turn out ok too.

   "Mother," said Miles, "calls it my great gift. Tests are a gift, she says, and great tests are a great gift. Of course," he added thoughtfully, "it's widely agreed my mother is a bit strange…"

   The Warrior's Apprentice, Lois McMaster Bujold.

2. The weather is stifling. You constantly feel as if you'd just exercised hard and had not yet have the chance to catch up your breath. It gets better only after 8PM. Being cooped up in a hermetically sealed room breathing air conditioner air is not much fun either, as it appears to have a lower oxygen level than the real thing.

3. Ate a lot of really delicious food in two get-togethers on the same day. I was afraid I'd be sick I ate so much. Then I walked for more than an hour on the way home.

4. The "new" officer arranged for us to do some target practice on the laser trainer (because of bureaucracy, we're not supposed to be using it). Stationary targets feel the same since the mechanics are preserved (or rather simulated), all except for the recoil (but you barely notice it anyway), meaning the barrel moves up when you cock the trigger etc. (it can even simulate jams!), but the best part is there's moving targets mode. It's probably as close as I'll ever get to the real thing though for obvious reasons it feels more like a really cool game with the mouse replaced by what feels like standard issue firearms than actual life threatening situation (which is the only situation you're allowed to use weapons). Surprisingly, I'm better with an Uzi than with an M16A1. At least at close range, anyway.

5. While we watched the building's lobby being cleaned up after an enormous soap bubble spill (a huge ankle thick puddle of white foam, reminded me of Gred & Forge's escapades in OoTP. It looked like the stuff used to control fire but people said it was just soap) a crowd began gathering on the other side. Turns out a guy wanted to jump off the roof of the mall across the street. Police and firefighters took two hours to get him off the roof, while a huge crowd gathered to watch, impeding traffic. People are odd about other people jumping off buildings: Some watch fascinated, some cry, others offer suggestions and critique his choice of location. The various reactions are not clear cut between the sexes.
   Reminds me I wanted to post a few pics so you'll get to see my new (temporary) office…

6. Have been thinking more about FFDB. Who here wants to help gathering a bit of info on fics you like?

Evils of LJ - N.S.F.W.

So, I was scrolling down my friends page and my mother comes into the room (the door was ajar, can't blame anyone but myself). The post visible on the screen was (Don't click it!) this, by jwz. How do you explain the non-selective nature of LJ Friends Pages to your technophobic and rather Victorian mother? I think I'll email this to a guy from work who might enjoy it, though...

Cinema - "Don't judge a book by its movie"

This review of the new Hitchhiker's Guide film by Douglas Adams' biographer reminds me of Alec's raving about Peter Jackson's Orcish ancestry after watching LoTR:FoTR for the first time. Let's hope it's just that, or it will be very sad.

Hardware Shopping - NF4 and low exch. rate!

Continuing the recurring theme of shopping for PC hardware (with other people's money, of course), we take the availability of nVidia's newest chipset (actually, it's a single-chip solution for mainboard logic, but anyway) and the drop in USD to ISL exchange rate into account to produce the following budget-oriented (but fully-featured!) setup:

Hardware	Recommended Component	US Price	ISL exchange rate	US price in ISL	IL price inc. 17% VAT	ripoff rate
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ 512K 1.8GHz 90nm for 939	$142	4.33	615	860	39.8%
Motherboard	MSI K8N Neo4 Platinum (s939, nForce4 Ultra)	$140		606	860	41.9%
Memory	Brand 512MB PC-3200 CL3 x2	$100		433	640	47.8%
Video Card	Pine XFX 6600GT PCIe 128MB GDDR3	$172		745	1060	42.8%
Hard Drive	Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 160GB SATA w/ NCQ	$100		433	600	38.5%
sum:		$654		2,832	4,020	41.9%

Again, it's not a full computer, it's not necessarily the best offer in any way, the prices are from an unspecified vendor (including shipping but not assembling) and I take no responsibility for anything you do with this information I do not even guarantee is true.

1. The entry-level CPU was chosen because the 5%-10% advantage offered by the next step up isn't worth the money.
2. A non-SLI motherboard was chosen because buying a second video card is not a real option (notice it's the priciest item!).
3. CAS-3 memory was chosen because of the price premium for CAS-2.5 (not to mention CAS-2!), and hearsay stating it often works in CAS-2.5 timings just as well.
4. The 6600GT is the current sweet-spot (overly drawn discussion of reasons why isn't worth typing up). Because the motherboard is of the newer PCI-Express varienty (instead of the dying-out AGP), we take the PCIe version.
5. The 7200.7 NCQ has the best performance and warranty conditions (3 years full + 2 years limited warranty). The newer 7200.8 behemoth is slower, the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 and 10 have a really crappy warranty by the Israeli importer and the Western Digital is outperformed (hasn't happened in years!). Just take care to get an NCQ part - the same model exists without NCQ, which is a vital feature for heavy multitasking performance, as recently shown by Anand Lal Shimpi.

Of the 42% difference between US and IL prices, 17% goes to the government. The other 25% is for shipping and someone's kids' college.

HP Fandom - Amor Vincit Omnia?

Theowyn's "Harry Potter and the Enemy Within", Chapter 18: Hogsmeade, wherein Harry and Snape's great and t00by love has successfully overcome their first major fight, all thanks to Harry's infinite capacity to love everyone, even those who'd wronged him (aka "the power Voldemort knows not"). And on the H/G front? As usual:

he spent most of this time with Ginny, either flying or taking walks. Ron had given them a curious look one afternoon as they left the common room together, but ... Harry hadn't given it another thought.

Barely a mention, and it still seems Ginny is "one of the guys". Sigh.

Nerdery - metanerdery

As a kid, I used to browse encyclopedias and watch the local channel 8 (Science/Art/History/Culture). Now, I can easily spend a whole night on c2, E2 or wikipedia. My other time-wasting hobby obsession is Harry Potter fan fiction. I never combine the two, but seriously discussing Shipping and using metasyntactic variables when describing ship naming conventions is just so über-geeky I can't resist blogging about it! Apparently, the fandom is better documented than I guessed: Cassie is now part of history. Anyone else?

Found on the web - Virtual Tourism

Via jwz, a very cool blog with satellite photos of interesting places in North America as found in Google Maps.

Linux - I'm such a n00b

Do you have any idea how long it takes to build the Ximianized version of OpenOffice.org on a P!!!-733? I don't either (because I can't be bothered to check the logs), but it's a long time. So how did I feel when I found out after a whole night of crunching, an error message saying emerge failed because of an IO error on a copy operation? Confused. Dismayed. Angry. And finally, curios. df -h showed I had 1MB left free on the root partition. du -hx --max-depth=1 on / and then on /root showed I've been neglecting some housekeeping business since the last time I logged in as root to recover from my tinkering. A few judicious rm -r's later, I had enough room to try again. I really have to repartition...

Personal - Up & Down

The previous post was down. This is up.

I've had a perfectly good time this past weekend. Got to talk at length with a guy I had known for two years whom I've never taken the time to really talk to before. He turned out to be the kind of fellow I can pleasantly disagree with. He's a religious nationalist, a rather rare thing in military high-tech. Talking to him made me more conscious of the needs of the observant minority in service (with whom I sympathize) and of my own beliefs (which today I can formulate at best as "I'm pro separation of morality from religion"). We've agreed to continue the conversation through the mail.

The most recent batch of IT-girls, or at least the sample I got to talk to, was really sub-par. I got a very strong feeling of channeling Prof. Snape. Extreme mediocrity, incompetence and professed complete lack of interest in the subject matter is infuriating. How am I expected to work with those? Sure hope for some responsibility from the people handling their assignments.

Last week got stressed out because of some "legacy" blunder at work. Legacy systems/code/support is a terrible thing and I fully intend to do everything in my power to modernize the things and ditch the ball and chain, ASAP (meaning "in the next three years"). Thankfully, I have my CO's complete support.

Have been working on an unusual skunkworks project. This time it's educational, and most of the work-hours went into a PowerPoint presentation (a first for me). It's highly technical and is intended to get my colleagues to think about certain technicalities I believe code monkeys should be aware of, but was astonished to find out nearly none are. I tried to make it less boring by appealing to their competitive spirit. I hope to find out this week if I succeeded. The general theme is "contemporary microprocessor and compiler technologies", and full disclosure will follow presentation at work.

Personal - Jerk

I am the absolute worst person I know at keeping in touch. I do not speak with any of the people who used to be my friends at various points in time. Good, true friends too, not just friendly acquaintances.

I cannot prioritize to save my life.

I am as empathic as a doorknob.

For someone so introverted, I sure talk way too much.

Also, according to some people, my personal hygiene needs more attention and my sexual deprivation is showing. There might be some truth in that.

Finally, I'm about to spend a very depressed (and extended) April Fools weekend alone with an Uzi.

This Blog - Style Editing

I've implemented a very basic CSS editor. If you know CSS - it works (in Gecko; should also work in IE6 but never tested. Doesn't work in KHTML). Saving is in cookies and which was last chosen is not saved so on subsequent loads the same one is chosen again as if you didn't save anything. No validation is performed - write invalid CSS, get no template. If you feel you need more hand-holding with syntax, I might be persuaded to build more UI (list of valid properties, color picker, more validation) but you have to ask. Obviously, pretty designs (copy and mail me) will get added to the site for everyone to see (and the prettiest will replace the default). Bug reports are welcome. Especially from Windows and Mac users.

Web Tech - nifty

zipdecode. link via jwz.

Web Tech - "new" technologies

Opera developer Ian Hickson says the new names for old web technologies confuse the people who build those technologies, so people should please stop making up new names for HTTP, HTML, XML, CSS and MumbleScript. I agree.

Fandom - push technology meets plugs

I got this in the mail a few days ago (to my soon to be abandoned hotmail address, which is clogged with penis enlargement ads. Consider it - M$ gives you only 2MB storage while average spam item is 136K!).

Dear Friends,

My new Harry Potter fanfic has begun to be posted at the Sugar Quill. It's called "[snip]" and you can access my author page there at the address [snip].

You are on this mailing list because you made a positive comment about one of my previous stories ([snip], [snip] or [snip]). I will remove your name from the list on request.

Best regards,

[snip]

So, is this spam payback for being a good reader and leaving a signed review? Or is this a legitimate service I should be thankful for? Personally, I like to subscribe to updates myself, and many authors use Yahoo! Groups exactly for this purpose.

This Blog - Redesign

I'm doing massive re-write of the template. The site might be broken in the interim.

People who got here Googling for "A script from … was denied UniversalBrowserRead privileges": This has to do with Gecko's (the engine for Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape/etc. browsers) security policy. Scripts on webpages are prevented from doing certain things (like violating the user's privacy) unless the user concedes first to allow them. To establish this trust, the user must be sure the script is written by the author she trusts rather than for example by disreputable clients of the author's banner-ad provider. So it was decided the script's URL is not enough to establish its credentials, and the user should be guarded from trusting scripts based solely on their location. And thus the option to trust scripts was disabled by default. The only way the browser is even going to bother the user with "Do you really want to allow this bloke from perverts.de to virtually feel you up?" is if the script is electronically signed (this way you can be reasonably sure the script is written by whoever it says its author is). But my scripts aren't signed, so when they try to do something (I swear does not violate your privacy in any way, but of course I'd say that anyway) Gecko just slaps them on the wrist without consulting you and informs you as an afterthought ("that guy was so checking out your butt!").

If you want to tell Gecko you're a grownup and would like to choose your companions yourself, type "about:config" into your address bar, there filter for "signed.applets.codebase_principal_support" and change its value to "true" by double clicking it. This tells Gecko to ask you whether you let a scripts reach into your personal space or not, every time it tries.

More details from the horse's mouth are available here.

EDIT: A later template edit removed the client-side AJAX-based feedreader. It was a pioneering work, but it caused firefox to crash too much.

Found On The Web - Teh Funnay!

Just when the show finally got better (or even "good", some say), Enterprise has been canceled. Angry Trekkers worldwide, who dissed if for years now suddenly fight to keep it alive (even funding it themselves!).
Anyway, this cartoon is just funny. "Australian cartoonist John Cook" draws Sev-Space "a parody of the sci-fi/fantasy genres including Star Trek & Lord of the Rings" (and lots more, though the HP ones are not as good). I loved this one for Alias. Notice the names.

ETA: bandwidth costs drove him to a subscription program. A pity, but inevitable when you think about it.

Personal - Fashion

Sometimes I stumble upon a fic with… character. One such mentioned t-shirts with cool slogans and a link to a real shop you can buy similar items from. I especially liked this one, but they have many more inconsiderate designs for all occasions. I can totally picture a guy from work wearing many of those.

Personal - TODO

So, there are a number of things I would've liked to do had I been less lazy. I'll list them here.

1. Design and implement a pessimistic soft locking thingy for work.
2. Redesign the blog with a side panel, redoing the bookmarks/feedreader. Add calendar, memories, more easily maintainable code.
3. Talk to a doctor about my RSI before it gets much worse. Make necessary alterations to work environment at work and at home.
4. Refactor the hell out of the HTML grid widget experiment to make it usable. It was really neat, and really ugly too…
   1. Before XForms (or whatever the replaces XHTML) makes it obsolete…
5. Profile a major MFC app at work to at least find the performance bottleneck(s). It's suspiciously slow, even on state of the art hardware. I bet it's the UI, but it could be anything (dynamic memory allocation, too much copying, not using parallelism, etc.)
6. Compile list of hackers I admire for inspiration at work (and to use as excuse for not shaving).
7. Write the self-challenging short-story plot bunny I had.
8. Design a prototype eXtensible Fanfic Description Format.
   1. with strong validation and performance oriented characteristics, but language and fandom independent.
   2. With diff's embeddable in Atom feeds.
9. Design a normalized ERD to store XFDF documents.
   1. In as much an implementation-independent way as possible, leaning to postgresql (there are good reasons, but not personal experience yet).
10. Implement two-way conversion between data represented in the two previous forms.
    1. mod_python for Apache2. I speak out of hype, not experience, here.
11. Design XSLT (or something) to represent XFDF documents on the web, search for them in a database etc.
    1. As in, a site.
12. exercize.
13. read less fic.
14. Consider writing my own fractal thingy.
    1. Probably playing with a real one will satisfy me.
15. Build the 3D project I fantasize about.
    1. Well, it's a portable OpenGL Rubik's Cube. With "scramble" and "solve" buttons, of course. Google turned up a few projects, but none of which I'm entirely happy with.

This is roughly in order of most likely to be completed first. Note: Everything is subject to change.

Fandom - demographics

A bold statement by Kokopelli. At the risk of being strung up on the next lamppost, I agree. BTW here's a link to his collaboration work with Mr. Intel - a (gasp!) H/Hr story titled "The Phoenix Reborn".

Personal - Scriptures

Today, my unit was merged (well, it was more of a hostile takeover) with another one, changing my boss'-boss'-boss'-boss' boss (I counted twice). It does not influence me even slightly, but we had to stand on parade for an hour and listen to boring speeches. I understand similar things happen in the real world, but this was with attention! and at-ease! each time the speaker changed. Urgh. Anyway, what the merger did change is the unit's name. Now instead of a cryptic acronym we have an appropriately biblical name (it all has to do with the brass' political views). It's a gemstone that appears on the high priest's breastplate. I have tried to identify it, but failed. This is what I have turned up (using links from a wikipedia article). Any suggestions? Edit: This and this reach the same conclusion: nobody knows what it was, but it was probably sparkly.

Fandom - uncommon fic for archive

I know of several weird things that happened at SQ.net, but this fic really surprises me. Expecting the usual R/H & H/G I keep getting an increasingly stronger Snape/Harry feeling from a Theowyn's work-in-progress "Harry Potter and the Enemy Within", where Harry keeps missing chances to hook up with Ginny. If this turns into actual explicit Slash, it would be a first for me. Well, actually I've followed and fangirl'd (this verb doesn't have a male counterpart, does it?) one ambiguously-gay fic in the past, but I've stopped reading it when it seemed to turn Slash.

Misc - Update

• Via someone on the AnandTech forums (I'm a much less frequent visitor there than I used to be. It feels stale, but maybe it's just me.) - ThinkGeek's April Fools products for 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004. LOL
• When we've read "All My Sons" in school, I assumed the author was long gone (Usually I'm less prone than my peers to cast everything before my time to a single time period, but it happens). Then I hear about Arthur Miller's passing and it rings a bell. At least now I've read the obituary.
• I discovered gerbils are completely unknown to my parents. You must understand my parents know everything (unless it was censored by the Soviet propaganda machine or happened after I was born so they had no free time to keep up), and finding they have never heard of the little critters was strange (they are not mentioned in the Soviet encyclopedia. Why would the existence of gerbils be hushed up in the KGB?). I learned about them in primary school, because they are a very common form of wildlife in sandy Ashdod.
• A programming idiom I've never heard before, but have frequently used: RAII. I'll have to make a little informal report at work, to stir up some thinking about a standard way to handle this in our projects, since I've already seen some less-than-perfect code.
• Have been learning ANTLR for work. Found myself reading about the halting problem for fun. Eek.
• Orson Scott Card's new book "Shadow of the Giant" will be out soon. First three chapters are available on his site. w00t!
• Latest episodes of "Enterprise" are actually better. I've been watching them as 0-day bittorrent releases for a while, and I'm almost sorry it's been cancelled.

Tech History - spreadsheets

It's not-so-common knowledge these days (among my generation, at least) that the killer-application for personal computers (circa 1979) was VisiCalc - the first electronic spreadsheet. Its creator, Dan Bricklin, has a web page (he's a real pioneer blogger, in fact) on which he has a history section. It's very interesting, and it includes a reference manual and working version 1 software. Yes, actual working spreadsheet application for the IBM PC from 1981 (27K download), reportedly works out of the box on Windows. I confirm it does work on my machine (using dosemu) and I guess it should work in dosbox (if you're not on a PC-compatible).

Tech - Groupware

Via Tim Bray, Jamie Zawinski's excellent post on the topic of open source groupware.

Groupware being one of the top reasons I started screaming and shouting every time they cautiously raised the topic of commission*, I completely agree with jwz - it's just not sexy enough to succeed as open source.
Even our managers, who need their link to our Exchange** server more than oxygen, hate Outlook** and all it represents, and although all developers/designers need some collaboration software, to the point where I think it's the #1 most important CASE*** tool beyond the standard issue whiteboard, I too feel more comfortable with wiki, IM and plain email (my "employer"'s approach to VPN is a bit more drastic than Sun's though…).

Apropos software that can get a twenty-something laid:
I've been thinking about reviving the FFDB project as a "for personal use" thing and developing it informally, since I didn't get enough support in an attempt of actual case study or just requirements analysis.

* - didn't happen lately, I think I've made my point clear.
** - it's no secret we're all-Microsoft on the desktop at work.
*** - Rational and Mercury - take a hint. Actually, forget it. I don't care about shelfware anyway.

Nerds - I <3 /.

Self-ridicule is bad for self-esteem, but it is funny.

Fandom - reccs

I'll post here reccs I got while commuting to work today. I do not necessarily endorse those myself, but that's just because I haven't read them yet.

• Kate's fanart on SQ. Pretty darn good!
• Seldes Katne's In the Presence of Angels. See my review here - it's #113596 (silly SQ webdesigner didn't make anchor tags for reviews, no to mention the horrible URLs…)
• Thing1. A long running Lupin-centric series.
• Rabbit's Yet Another Snape Meets the Dursleys Story.
• FernWithy's Shifts. If (you haven't read it yet) {   read it now! (Warning: WIP) } else {   why in the devil's name haven't you told me to read it? }

I'll R/R, and update here. Also, should write down observations about living on less than four hours of sleep per day for weeks. Executive summary: don't do it.

Programming - Perl, in Latin

Those who think Perl looks like cartoon characters swearing and hate the worship at the altar of terseness that plagues the Perl hacking culture, should consider this: you can write Perl in Latin, and yes it will work, without much loss of language features or performance. That is easily the best way I've seen to write unmaintainable code to ensure continued employment. As the saying goes: Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur. I'm dying to show this to our IT staff... :-)

Fandom - Kokopelli writes more!

He posted a follow up to his excellent summer-after-5th-year story "The Letters Of Summer". I already said I prefer fic written by men, and John does it just right.

Commerce - Ripoff, take 2

Following my previous rant on the topic of hardware prices in Israel, AnandTech published a new mid-range guide so I've made another spreadsheet. Again: this does not describe a full PC, this isn't the best combination of parts (not even price/performance wise) for every task, and you should really talk with someone knowledgeable who isn't getting any of your money before buying anything. Prices include shipping (either in US or in IL, appropriately).

Hardware	Recommended Component	US Price	US price in ISL	IL price	ripoff rate
Processor	AMD Athlon 64 3200+ 512K 2.0GHz 90nm for 939 (Retail)	200	974	1300	25.08%
Motherboard	MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (NF3 250Gb)	146	711.02	1010	29.60%
Memory	Corsair Value Select 512MB DDR PC-3200 CL2.5 x 2	120	584.4	1400	58.25%
Video Card	6600GT AGP 128MB GDDR3	210	1022.7	1100	7.03%
Hard Drive	Seagate 160GB SATA w/ NCQ	105	511.35	670	23.68%
	exchange rate:	4.87

Finding an AGP video card in Israel is near impossible, and the prices for RAM are really excessive. Also, vendors don't really publish (or know themselves, I kid you not) the correct full specs (or at least the correct SKU) for products, so it's anyone's guess e.g. whether that DIMM is CAS-2.5 or CAS-3. Zap still has problems following the hardware industry, or it seems like their analyst is really lazy - their list or models and features is always out of date, and they don't sort out parts into models all that well (meaning they let vendors lie). This time, the ripoff-rate is the markup for living here, instead of the proportion of local prices to US prices. Oh, and I have to say I'm impressed with the Mac Mini. Not enough to buy one, but still - If it had a G5, a gig of RAM, a 7200rpm hard drive and 6-channel audio (for double the price, let's say) - I'd be all over it.

Leisure Time - Fantasy

I'm a technical person, more specifically a computer geek. I'm good at it, and when I'm not depressed I like it a lot. I used to be hard sci-fi fan. For me, "hard sci-fi" is when the author makes efforts to explain faster-than-light travel, communications, weaponry etc. rather than just assume it all works the way to readership expects it to work and then carry on with the plot. In an imperfect world, the quality of an average product behaves by the rules of zero-sum economy: when you raise the mark on one parameter inevitably you lower it on another, e.g. in a tech-centric book the character development, dialogue and even plot will suffer. I didn't mind. And then I'd read Dune, and Hyperion, and Bujold's saga. So then I figured out, if I can not just stomach but enjoy a romance novel (I mean A Civil Campaign, and I'm sorry if I hurt anyone) - it doesn't matter if it's sci-fi. So now I'm half way through Dragons Of Winter Night. I'm not terribly impressed, but I'll save my review for when I'm done at least with the first trilogy (won't be too long I think). I now have two requests from my own (rather limited) readership:

• Do any of you know of a decent official or fan artwork of Tika Waylan? (say it with me: duh)
• What can you tell me (from personal experience, mind!) about not computerized RPGs, D&D style?

I'd really like to get some feedback. If anyone feels I'm neglecting to read & review on one's blog - it's true I've been slacking, but I do read, even if I don't comment.

Personal - regrets

Some people decide to live their lives with no regrets, sometimes because they believe "everything happens for a reason". I am not one of those people. I'm reading Paul Graham's latest essay, "What You'll Wish You'd Known", meant to be given as a speech to high school grads. My eyes are watery and I'm hitting the chair's armrest. The tragic thing is, even if it had been published six years ago and I was given it to read, I'm afraid it wouldn't have made any difference, because I'm not sure I was ready to "get it" then.

TV - Star Dreck

Enterprise-3x15-Harbinger. So, they finally undressed T'Pol. Ick.

Personal - observations

Maybe because I'm a geek, maybe because I'm an INTJ, or because I'm socially inept and thus a perpetual outsider, but I often find myself taking an anthropologist's stance with regard to my peers. It's elitist and lonely and kind of sad, but it's the way it is. Anyway, it's a well known fact that females travel in packs to the bathroom. Numerous explanations for this behavior have been suggested over the years, including but not limited to security and opportunity to gossip. Personally I believe the real reason is a combination of a number of them (you're invited to share your $.02). What I have noticed is something else peculiar about girls and the girls' rooms - they believe, on an unconscious level, that the grith they enjoy in restrooms and bathrooms applies to sound waves, as if the door is a portal to another dimension where only females exist, and no physical phenomena travel between the two worlds by means other than the door. I don't know how universal that is, but at work male and female bathrooms and restrooms often share the wet wall, and although the doors may be in opposite sides and far apart, the facilities themselves are in fact very close together, allowing for excellent sound transmission. Men are aware of this, but they don't treat bathrooms as absolutely private – either because it's an unwritten rule of men or maybe because the residual hunter instincts (part of the reason for stalking and voyeurism) caution them. So for the last two years I've unwittingly heard girls I don't know talk about their boyfriends, periods and all kinds of private things. During my last weekend on base I've also endured a horrible rendition of No Doubt's “Don't Speak” in the showers, which led to this post. Now, am I the only one to notice this?

Politics - Economic Freedom etc.

I'll have to think long and hard to formulate and express my beliefs on copyright, intellectual property, business, society and freedom but I'm too lazy to actually do it well and because I'm a perfectionist I won't publish anything that's not done "well" (a pretty high standard to live up to, since the net allows me to compare my work with the best and not just the neighborhood), like for example the three themes(1,2,3) of Tim Bray's OnGoing. So the same way I can't write the perfect fic myself but keep looking for it on archive sites, I can't express my beliefs but I can provide links. As you might know, I use Gentoo and Firefox (exclusively, at last!), and my blog is CC licensed (because I believe in the cluetrain and unprofessional journalism). I've reread Frederik Pohl's "The Space Merchants" and "The Merchants' War" twice, and each time was horrified to find it much closer to reality than fiction than I think it was when written (or maybe I'm just romanticizing). I don't particularly like RMS' very strong style and generally seem to prefer ESR's philosophy as more practical (as in my ability to make a living off the thing I love) but he has been proven right a few too many times, and The Right to Read has touched me. I deeply despise "lock-in" as a business strategy (a free iPod anyone?). Microsoft's and Big Media's attempts in recent years to become Big Brother unsurprisingly lead to P2P pirates becoming "cool" and denying the RIAA and MPAA their money seem almost noble. An ex-pirate myself, today I break copyright law only to watch already-aired episodes of TV series, but I sure do understand the motivation for resisting DRM and other things that make you not the boss of stuff you paid your hard earned money for. Various repeated anti-competitive behavior and aggressive FUD marketing campaigns as well as the revival of McCarthyism only strengthen people's willingness to support Google's "Don't Be Evil".

TV - not quite plagiarism

I googled "canticle" and got the classic SF book reading the reviews of which I immediately thought "B5 4th season finale!" and yup - JMS kind of admits it, though he says he reached that independently.

Tech - IMAGE_DOS_HEADER.e_magic = 0x5A4D

As those of you who have used the computer before Microsoft decided to set "hide file extensions for known file types" default to "on" know, usually the file's extension (the last part after the last period in its name) is used to identify which type of file it is (like "doc" for Word and "jpeg" for pictures). But, that can be misleading as the file's extension is easy to change. So, some software that needs to know the file's type (like antivirus software to needs to scan only infectable files, or multimedia cataloguer that will find pictures in everything) has to actually look into the file and check. While reading and analyzing the entire file is the safest method, it is much too slow and requires the software (or person) doing it to know everything about all the file formats (impossible), so what's usually done is you look at the beginning, what's called the "header", and see if you recognize anything. This method is surprisingly good - Zip files all start with "PK", PDF files start with "%PDF", etc. Some people know that EXE files (programs) since the earliest versions of DOS till today's Windows executables all start with "MZ". What I'm ashamed to admit is I didn't know "MZ" are the initials of one Mark Zbikowski, one of the architects of DOS 2.0. What an interesting piece of trivia! bibliographic references:

• Win32 PE File Format
• Free On-Line Dictionary Of Computing's entree for "mz"

Fandom - Kokopelli's The Letters of Summer

Chapter 21 is up on SQ. Squeee!

Update: It was the final chapter (epilogue expected Q1 2005), so those of you who have so far deterred from reading it because of its WIP status no longer have this excuse.

The story wasn't perfect, in fact I felt it skirted the edge of the "too big" trap (I've tried to formulate a coherent definition several times, but I can't even name the phenomenon. I've blogged about it previously, but in short it's when the character's special abilities and the associated special effects completely overshadow all other aspects of the story, it enters a kind of arms race and gets farther and farther from believable till it resembles a bad comic book or maybe a manga cartoon (not to bash illustrated novels, of course)) but it always managed to stay more or less IC for the characters and settings created by JKR and (almost more importantly) never ceased to entertain. It successfully incorporates non-Potterverse Fantasy elements (a popular thing in fandom, but hard to pull off) and a PG non-soapy romantic arc. I must stress how much the high level of English contributed to my enjoying the story (remember how I raved about Amberite!Draco ?) - after all, it's not every day you see a word like "amanuensis" in fanfic! (albeit misspelled) *hats off to the editors for a marvelous job*

Now, for the more important part of this review:

As you might know, although I personally resent the concept of organized religion (I believe it always becomes political and thus immoral) I have the utmost respect for people who genuinely Believe and live by decent moral codes as it seems to be very healthy for individuals and society in general, as long as their belief is non-viral and especially if it does not claim exclusivity on the absolute truth/afterlife/whatever it promises its devotees (something that Judaism for example miserably fails at, but at least it was never evangelic…).

So, while I don't believe Harry will ever find Jesus (whose circumcision I plan to dutifully celebrate in best Soviet Russia tradition) in canon (JKR, like Prof. Tolkien before her, won't mention her belief by name, the same way she can't say the word "Nazi", but it doesn't mean we don't understand what she's talking about), and although this subplot didn't contribute much to the main plot arc nor was it extended enough for me to grasp the hero's spiritual development, I see nothing wrong in the author's inclusion of an obviously important to him aspect of life into the story, especially as it's really not pushy and works plot-wise (better at least than the notion of Nymphadora Tonks being a flashy Cordelia Naismith knock off common in a certain kind of Honks stories).

In conclusion — keep up the good work John, and don't mind the flamers.

Personal - Ill

I've contracted some kind of flu. It's a real pandemic - everyone seems to get it. My nose leaks like a tap and yesterday I've lost my voice in the middle of a presentation if front of school kids (very scary and very funny afterwards). I got three sickdays I can't really enjoy because my head hurts so much (oxygen deficiency probably). And just as we got a new toy! That's about it I think.

Web Design - wow

Just look at 1976design.com/blog! I feel so inadequate. Time to rewrite blog.

Commerce - ripoff

If I were in the market for PC hardware today (I'm not 'coz I'm poor), this is what I would be shopping for (listed is barebones system only, this is not a full computer!).

The system is "most bang for the buck" oriented, for general work (actually it's supposed to be the best for anything but multimedia encoding (not creation, mind!)) and mild gaming (actually, I'd leave my fanless Radeon 9000 as I'm not running any games at all), the processor would get overclocked as far as it would go while being rock solid during Israeli summer using standard heatsink and fan combo (or a cheap & quiet alternative), and of course you need two identical DIMMs (pieces of RAM) - I just couldn't decide which.

I only used reputable vendors I know, prices include shipping & handling. Exchange rate is for December 17th. Spreadsheet work done using OpenOffice's Calc.

category	part description	USD	rate	US price in NIS	price in Israel incl. VAT	ripoff rate
CPU	AMD Athlon 64 3000+ (939, 512K)	159	4.34	690.06	1040	150.71%
Motherboard	MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (nForce3 Ultra, 939)	139		603.26	1175	194.78%
RAM	Corsair PC-3200 512MB XMS (DDR400, CL2)	105		455.7	865	189.82%
	Corsair PC-3200 512MB Value (DDR400, CL2.5)	75		325.5	685	210.45%
HDD	WD 200GB, 7200rpm, 8MB, SATA	125		542.5	734	135.3%
Video	ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB	230		998.2	1225	122.72%

I've used www.zap.co.il for local prices as it's the industry's standard here, but I have to say the site is horrible compared to Anand's. Numbers are fairly reliable, though.

I write no conclusions, as this is self explanatory.

Personal - Dream

I woke up today from a really weird dream (in technicolor with Dolby surround, PG, in a theater near you) that incorporated action scenes inspired (perhaps) by reading Aaron Swartz's recount of watching all of BtVS in three months and a romantic plot that seems taken straight out of something archived at portkey.org. The timeframe was my highschool days and the identity of the heroine really freaked me out once I woke up and thought about what my subconscious had cooked up. The intensity of the dialogue surprised me more than the complete surrealism of the entire portrayed situation. It has served to prove (to my satisfaction) a theory I had about my preferences, so now I only need to think what I'm going to do about it. It also probably means I need to get laid, but I already knew that.

Personal - Buses

For the past few months I've been seeing the same woman on a bus. I've noticed her because she has red hair and freckles and is always in a skirt and with a baseball-style hat. She wears glasses and her nose is without fail in a non-translated Sci-Fi paperback.

As all people, I'm always happy to find kindred spirits, which for me basically means "geeks". When such spirit is in a female body (or do spirits have gender preference, so it's a "female spirit"?) it's doubly better, because it means geeks as a species have a chance.

A few weeks ago I've noticed the military's programmers' training program's emblem on her sweatshirt. She's a civilian (doesn't look like a teenager either) so must be discharged already (reserve), but still - one of us!

Today, while standing near in a packed city bus during rush hour I kept staring at her, thinking of what to say. God, I'm such a dweeb! Just saying anything was really hard.

Finally I've asked about the book and said I can't read in a bus, she said she's lucky with that but she can't sleep (meaning she has noticed I tend to fall asleep whenever I sit down. It's all because of fanfic and Gentoo). She asked me why I don't wear my pins, and correctly guessed my department (she knows two of our guys, one of which is my direct superior). We've talked a bit about Sci-Fi (she has recommended Bujold, and upon hearing I've read what's published of the Vorkosigan saga including Winterfair Gifts heartily recommended the Chalion series), the service (all veterans are the same, I think they just repeat the phrases they heard their veterans say, the same way I repeated the same (true) things I was told to those who were one year behind us), employment prospects and a "career or family" vs. "career and family" thing. Looking back now, I don't think I've made the best impression (Note to self: practice dialogue (rather than the more common (for me) monologue) with live people) - see what I mean? Nested parentheses are not a natural construct in English!

I figure she's about three to four years older than I. I wonder if she has any younger friends? In any case, it's good to know I can get decent reccs offline.

Update: Was unsure about a ring I've noticed, so I've done a little invasion of privacy and the record confirms: I've seen a wedding band. Of course, you say, otherwise she wouldn't have worn a hat, but it was so unorthodox I didn't even think about it (don't know if it's even compliant, what with me being able to tell the color of her hair and all). We talked again and she made a point not to wander too far from universes I'm familiar with. I've drawn a "Cetaganda = Elves" parallel I'd like to explore a bit more. So far I have Miles' "by Rian's hair, Dug" in DI and Gimli's wish of Galadriel in LOTR.

Web Tech - Google Suggest

As published all around the web-tech blogs (I've first noticed on /. about 24 hours ago, much sooner than Google Weblog said anything) - Google has form autocompletion (if your browser has XMLHttpRequest, that is). This post amounts to me showing off - As Mr. Spolsky said, Google is publicly raising the bar of good web UI, but yours truly has been quietly doing it for close to ten months now!

Software Development - Hebrew(?!)

Joel Spolsky just made me laugh so hard my mother (who is used to me being weird in front of the computer) asked me what's going on. Update: There's translation for non-Hebrew speakers.

Tech - woes

Geekiness ahead.

Have upgraded to kernel 2.6 without RTFM-ing first. Naturally, didn't quite work (did boot though!). So have installed udev and module-init-tools and changed a few kernel components to modules or vice-versa and it all worked (except for the weird bug still sometimes get in ALSA, but will look into it). But for some unexplained reason, internet connection repeatedly disconnected after few minutes. Afetr much fooling around with pptp and ppp, testing that NIC, DSL “modem” and ISP are ok using a knoppix CD (a real lifesaver, should be in every home) have finally decided to ditch PPTP VPN tunneling in favor of real PPP. There are instructions for dummies available, and am glad to report all went smoothly (used opportunity to also update modem's firmware version) and now have blessed DHCP peace.

I've been following Joe Gregorio's work from references made by Mark Pilgrim and Tim Bray. He's worth a read if you're a web-tech geek like I am. Now listen to me, pompously recc'-ing A-listers like I'm some kind of authority!

I want to have a blog at work. Not just for myself, but for whomever wants to publish something internally. It's difficult to bring blogging software into our closed environment (especially regulary updated open-source software, which is the only kind I use), and even more difficult to get it hosted. So I thought I'd make an unsanctioned underground project implementing it myself in Perl and IIS (yes, perl on IIS. What did you think I'll use — VBScript?) on my personal win2k box and get it all authorised later. But I want it to be an example of good web development practices, which means Python, Apache, and Atom protocol support (or maybe J2EE since my employers try very hard to appear to be a regular sinister corporate entity). With my own cool Mozilla/MSIE compliant client side code, of course.

But then I groked it's beyond the scope of my free time at work. So I'm stuck dreaming, like always.

Movie/Personal - The Incredibles / update

So I've sent a poll to my department's mailing list asking who wants to pay to see a cartoon. Surprisingly we got an almost full turnout, and here are my $0.02.

The graphics were fine, although I didn't see anything much better than Final Fantasy (though I'm hardly a computer animation expert), the characters were lovable clichés (I especially liked Samuel L. Jackson's work as comic relief), but the plot was too comic-book driven and it generally was more of a movie for the kids made bearable for the parents than a truly film for the entire family (like “Shrek” was, I think). But maybe it's just my dislike for comic books...I know I would've enjoyed it much more had I seen it at 12 with my buddy Eli (dude, if you're reading this – go see it!).

After the movie, in accordance with my department's Wednesday tradition we went to a pub (conveniently located in the same mall as the movie theater). The pub required sits' reservation and asked for our ages. They claim to be Irish-themed/styled, but that turned out to mean they play parts from Michael Flatley's “Lord of The Dance” (which would've been an OK show had it not been hijacked and ruined by its director/choreographer/producer) on plasma TVs they have decorating ever wall (admittedly, there was a piece from some live performance of Depeche Mode, but they aren't an Irish Folk band AFAIK ;) ). I've found out the reason I can't stand Guinness and Kilkenny — they're made by the same company! Also, I prefer light beer.

I wanted to write about some strange/rare uniform-sidearms-badge combinations I've noticed in public transport in the last few months, but I'll have to edit it and provide more explanation (in all probability this means it will never be posted unless people ask).

A blog-worthy episode that happened today: I was sitting in front of my PC, finishing the hardcover Russian translation of Ender's Game when I've reached the end of an odd-numbered page. So I've reached for my trusty Wheel Mouse Optical (the only Microsoft product I've ever paid for) to scroll to the next page, then burst out laughing because when I've read a very similar story as a piece of geek folklore I thought someone's imagination was too wild but Life once again proved it's more surprising than Fiction.

There is nothing to tell about the Eilat trip, I'll post pics with Akaba in the background when I get'em.

I write this post in OOo's Writer (after Blogger ate the first draft), and I must say – I'm impressed, and I don't for a minute regret ditching winXP.And since I've mentioned Sun's Office suite I'll note I like their people – they have good taste in clothes!

Personal - back online, whoohoo!!!

So, I've ordered a new motherboard. I've collected it and am now back online.

<Boring>
Back in mid-2000, I've bought a brand spanking new Coppermine Pentium III 550E (with the new 0.18um die from the fab in Qiryat-Gat, which I've visited) which they only had in the then-new socket-370 format. But they didn't yet have motherboards with the new socket, so I've bought a Slot-A mobo and a "slotcket" - a device that allows one to connect a socket CPU to a slot motherboard.
Well, it died. But, since they stopped needing these a few months after I've bought mine (the new motherboards compatible with the new processors came out) they stopped making them more than 4 years ago, which is a very long time for hardware parts. In fact, they are so rare these days, it's significantly cheaper to just buy a socket-370 motherboard (which too is the last of its kind, but at least it's from 2002, not 2000!). That's exactly what I've done.
</Boring>

Lou: 1$ payraise. I kid you not. The three years males are obligated to serve in Israel, we get less than 80$ per month.

Sgt. Yevgenii Shmurak crashed his car full speed into a light pole early Saturday morning, while returning from someone's birthday party. He was in the car with his girlfriend and some other friend. He was rushed to the hospital but died shortly afterwards. The friend and the girlfriend are seriously injured. He was an only child and left two completely heart broken parents. He was 21 years old, RIP.
Genya and I were best friends in 4th to 6th grades (I was 9 - 11 years old).
Update: Later I found out the girlfriend didn't make it either. :-(

I don't know what else. It's late and I have to be up early to go to Eilat with my unit (rant will follow surely).

On to Kokopelli's The Letters of Summer.

Personal - Offline Update

Still offline. Now a 20 year-old sergeant, I enjoy my newfound free time reading dead-tree editions of books. I have not read any blogs, so I don't know what's been going on, if any (suddenly some things seem a bit more inconsiquental, but not my friends. I'll get online for more than 5 minutes to get an update on all your lives someday soon). If there is anything you think I really need to know - pease leave a comment or mail me.

Personal - Offline

I've been offline since my last post because of a hardware failure. I'm still offline. With luck, the part will be replaced (my computer's advanced age (4.5 years) makes finding compatible parts very difficult, and I have no wish to buy a new system) soon. It has not been as hard as I thought it would - humans are truely very adaptible creatures.

Web Tech - behaviors

Well, I've ditched moz-behaviors (which remains a brilliant tool for enabling legacy proprietary code to be used with the Gecko family of standards-compliant browsers) in favor of a cleaner vanilla-javascript implementation. It gives me more control, is much easier to debug (exceptions fire in your code, not in the wrapper, so you know where they are) and works in other browsers (currently Opera users can enjoy almost full functionality). Fortunately, the refactoring process was surprisingly painless.

Now I suffer from integration difficulties (what's good for resizing UI is very bad for sorting performance) and the CTS from hell.

I'm contemplating a blog redesign (long overdue, I'm afraid). I don't want to do anything drastic, but I want the main page to have only titles (so crawlers correctly point to the entree and not the ever-changing index.html) and add history and memories sidebars. In the memories sidebar I'll link all posts with unfinished business, whereupon I'll kindly request your attention to some outstanding issues.

If you're wondering about FFDB, no work has been done. I blame lack of encouragement and participation - if it is to ever move forward, it will be because other people want it to. And it will be implemented before it is designed, because I don't want to get into over-engineering (after all, I'm a coder, not a systems architect). An IT person from work suggested I could use VMWare to have both the Linux server and the WinXP client on the same machine - sounds cool.