W’s blag

This post contained a bit too many real life details about people and events, so I’ve edited it away and saved it somewhere else.

It’s not a Proper Boomstick unless it has a switch like this:

Well, pretty much what I expected. It’s a Die Hard movie of course, a John McClane movie. Yipee-ki-yay motherfucker and all that. The plot this time revolves around computers, which of course gives room for much hillarity, Movie OS style.

What’s interesting is how close to realism the movie gets. Yes, most computer systems, even vital infrastructure, will have security flaws that can be exploited. But no, you can’t hire eight crackers to break into eight systems synchronized. Yes, some systems are closed, not hooked up to the internet. But why would an anthrax detection system in a federal building be hooked up so it could be cracked? And what struck me most; yes, there ARE people who would take it all down to prove the point, but NO, they’re not secretly just in it for the money. I sympatised with the badguy until that part. You only have to be a little more insane than me to take it to the level that character would; I’ve exploited security flaws to prove they exist, and to teach the ones that allowed them to exist a lesson. I would of course draw the line when actual people are hurt. But I can see how someone could cross that line, how they could, as the character in the movie states, do it “for the good of the nation”, “better I do it than some foreigner with bad intentions” etc. But then at the end they do a 180, and it’s revealed that it was all a plot to get at the money. I guess it follows the tradition of the previous Die Hard villains, but I think it cheapens this movie somewhat. A villain that would hurt you to prove a point is much more scary than one who’d do it for personal gain, and none of the information on the character indicates he was about anything other than proving a point.

At long last I won the hardest game ever, Nethack. The game lasted over a month, mainly due to me not playing while on vacation. I blame my ascension on the early wishes (first a magic lamp then a random wishing wand) and trying to combine stormbringer and pets, which made me really paranoid and careful with every move. Finding a spellbook of polymorph was the cream on the cake. By the time I entered the quest I had -40-something AC, 300+ hp, and was generally immortal. Knew practically every spell (no charm monster though, no matter how many spellbooks I polymorphed), and had more magic markers than I knew what to do with. Ascending was simple, Death was a wimp, and my only scare was when I fought both the arch priest of Moloch and double-trouble Rodney at the same time, they got me down to half HP, and I wished up some potions of full healing. Next turn a cockatrice showed up, and that was that.

As with most of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, this is a movie you’ll either hate, or love. It has nostalgia effects like jumps and repeats in segments of the movie, or abrupt cuts (as if part of the reel was missing), which is jarring at first. But it’s not random, but rather used for effect, as when the movie turns to poorly lit black and white in a bridge between two parts of the story that just emphasises the menace of the “Death Proof” car. The movie has some odd contrasts at times; practically every car is vintage, the music in the bar much of the first part of the movie is set it is from an old jukebox, and the mentioned nostalgia effects, give the impression that the movie is a couple of decades old, but then one of the characters drag up a modern mobile phone and starts SMS’ing, or the characters make a reference to some recent cultural phenomenon, and it sticks out. I liked the effect, but if you’re for consistency of atmosphere, you’ll probably hate it. As for the plot itself, there’s not much to it. Psychopath killer, and the trill of whether he’ll kill again, or be foiled in his plans. It doesn’t matter much, as with the hot women, silly culture references and jokes, car chases, and harsh-but-funny violence in classic Tarantino style, it’s very entertaining.

Yeah here they are at last.

Modern art on the fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square, a statue of Alison Lapper (yeah she really does lack arms).

I can’t recall why I zoomed out when taking this picture…

…but this might have something to do with it…

Trafalgar Square seen from the national museum.

A half-mermaid or something. She *seems* to have two legs (she’s sitting astride a dolphin or something), but at least one of them turns into a fish tail.

Seen from the other side. Rather striking if I may say so.

The Mall leading to Buckingham Palace.

Buckingham palace itself. No I do not know the guy in the bottom right. No, noone else is taking his picture (I was flush up to the statues in the middle of the square, noone to my left or right.) Didn’t even notice him before seeing the picture online.

There’s a LOT of signs in London. Most declare that some act or other (littering, letting your dog shit in the park, crossing the street without looking to both sides, not reading all the signs you see) to be forbidden, and liable to be fined so and so many pounds. Some are rather obvious, and this one just struk me as hillarious, both because of the obviousness of it, and the way it’s worded like a polite warning.

I went for a walk in Bankside, along the Thames

As you can see, the weather was rather gray, (what the #php people informed me was “nice weather” for London,) but it was warm enough. Here you can see London Bridge from a bit away.

A replica of the Golden Hinde.

The dock the Golden Hinde replica was in actually had fish in it. Not small bottomfeeders either.

I really liked this statue, though I’m not quite sure why.

The same statue and the church it was in front of.

The sun did actually peak out from the cloud cover while I was in London, while I took a walk in St. James park (I think it is). Here photographic proof that geese are limber creatures.

Some church

Some other church.

I actually did go see London Bridge, though I didn’t get closer than this, since I had to rush back to see Oceans 11 that I had a ticket for.

I haven’t written about my travels here yet because I planned to wait until I bought a laptop to upload and edit pictures on, but now that I have one, I discover that the network here is really locked down, so I’ll just write something, and upload pictures later.

#PHP meet in Hammersmith, London

Others have posted the group picture so rather than copying that over here, I’ll write a little of my impression of the people I met.

Andy/Sir-millar: The host of the meet, in my mind “the Russian” since he looks very much like a Russian coworker. Has a nice roof, and a not-so-nice security guard that chase you off it.

Steve: He worried early on in the meet about whether I’d understand his “not exactly the Queen’s” English, which at the time wasn’t a problem. As the evening progressed I less and less understood him. Whether the problem was me getting tired or not is hard to determine, but lets just say that me thinking of him as “the stoner” is sticking.

Alex/Newbie: He was already “the guy with the scooter” (which I after a while learned wasn’t really a scooter) when I arrived. A cheerful and a tad hyper fellow. Tied a garland made from some bottle label to the lightbulb in the room we were sitting in, which had to be hastilly torn down when Andy’s girlfriend turned the lights on.

Matt/Kloopy: I remember him only as “the owl”, as he started hooting like one at “nighttime” when we were playing werewolf. Insisted he was trying for pidgeon-sounds.

Karl/the_angry_angel: I can’t help but think of him as a East-European terrorist, due to his name, his looks.

Hannah/Er00: Girl. Redhead! Really does wears a bell around her neck, and she makes cat-like sounds when tickled. Clearly the most interesting person at the meet.

Ashley: “The other girl”. Part of the laptop duo, as she and Keith got stuck on IRC after the games of werewolf died off.

Keith: Other half of the laptop duo. Don’t remember much else of this guy.

Gus/Webvictim: Least memorable guy at the meet award.

Ros: The outsider. Andy’s girlfriend. Got stuck with us geeks when her original plans were cancelled. Smart, pretty, and tolerant of geekery; lucky Andy!

Sorely missed: Theory and Hotwire, let me know when you drop by Norway

The rest of London

Fairly uneventful. Was really exhausted after lots of stress at work lately+the travel, and took a few days merely relaxing, walking around with a camera taking pictures of what I felt like. Went and saw Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty’s theatre (great), missed seeing Les Miserables (sucked, but I’ll be back to see it), and saw Oceans 13 (for £12.5, finally found something that’s more expensive in London than in Oslo!), got some pictures of Buckingham Palace, London Bridge etc.

Train to Praha

Missed my 7am Eurostar train by an inch, and had to wait a few hours at Waterloo station. Switched at Lille, France, for a regular train onward to Bruxelles. Bruxelles was suck. No internet cafés at all, no McDonalds, no Burger King, finally found a Subways. (Yeah yeah groan about the fastfood, but when I’m travelling and hungry, I fall back on the chains I know rather than explore or experiment.) Caught a train to Frankfurt (my thoughts were something like “finally back to civilization!” after the Bruxelles experience), where I stressed out over the ticket office just closing (at 10 pm!) and the night train to Praha having mandatory reservation. On the train from Lille to Bruxelles the conductor had threatened to fine me since I didn’t have a reservation, so I was naturally worried. No need to worry though, as here there were no problem paying onboard. Went for a seat rather than couchette, thinking I could save the money and sleep just as well. Regretted that, as the seats were hard plastic and not comfortable to sleep on at all, even if I did have the whole compartment to myself, and I found out when I arrived that the price difference was just 0.50 euro…

Praha

Heat! 30+ degrees even if it was cloudy. First impression is a pretty seedy train station, including an internet cafe with cubicles with curtains so you can close them off entirely… I fully expected to hear rubbing and grunting sounds from the cubicle next to me while I looked for information on the metro system… Once I actually got on the metro the impression changed though. It’s all clean and maintained, and the rest of the city was very nice. Downtown shopping area is huge, I walked for ages down one street, and crossed others like it several times. Finally bought a laptop (a neat little Sony thing that fits in my backpack), and discovered that prices on computer equipment is actually comparable to Norway or London (and, I assume, the rest of the world, which stands to reason.) Today I walked all over the “lesser town” and got very nice pictures of all of Praha from the excellent view at St. Vitus, a massive gothic cathedral inside Praha castle. Ate at a Italian restaurant, where two bottles of water cost more than the meal! (All together it came to about 500 Czech koruna, or about £12, still a bargain.) I climbed up to Petrin Hill, which made my walk a total 150 meters in elevation distance, before heading back down towards the metro and the hostel. Arriving at the bottom by the station, I notice it getting a bit stuffy, and dark clouds are gliding in from one direction, while the rest of the sky is clear and blue. I hurry down the station and take the metro to where the hostel is, and when I get out from the station, it’s like I’m in another country entirely. Massive horizontal rain (flooding the indoors station area), lightning strikes seconds apart, and then huge hail. I sit it out inside the station building as people pile up from the metro. 15 minutes later the hail and rain stops, the station personell get out squeegees to get rid of the water like this was a daily occurance, and before I can complete the five minute walk to the hostel, the sun is back out. Freaky weather, just as I complete book four of the “weather warden” scifi/fantasy series (recommended if you like contemporary “attitude heroinne” scifi/fantasy ala Rachel Caine, Kim Harrison or Laurell K Hamilton (pre-vamp-porn)). Tomorrow I’m checking out and heading for Budapest, a city I already know and love, but have no pictures of (which will be corrected.)

The Vigeland park has some rather beautiful and awesome statues, which I got to test my new camera on:

It’s not our problem that…

• you have a deadline and need help now. Help comes when those that can provide it want to, and mentioning deadlines, how urgent your question is, or similar, will only lessen the chance of getting timely help.
• your professor gives you an assignment limiting what tools you can use to solve it. Don’t be upset when we recommend what you aren’t allowed to use. Chances are your professor wants you to think for yourself anyway; ask him, or your fellow students, for help instead. Unless the constraints of the problem are really interesting, no one on irc is going to help you solve it in an unrealistic way.
• your boss or client thinks there is something wrong with the correct way to do things. We can help you with arguments you can use to convince your boss or client, but don’t push for alternate solutions. It’s your job to guide him to the correct solution, not to blindly give him what he says he wants.
• you use sucky software X. We’ll suggest sane solutions, not hacks to work around deficiencies in obsolete products.
• you don’t want to redesign your system from the bottom up, doing it the right way this time. You shouldn’t add features to a broken system.
• the proper IRC channel where your question is on topic is dead or empty. No, we don’t know where you should go for help. Search the web or something, find a mailing list or a forum if an active IRC channel does not exist.

W joins the blagohypersphere (yeah, that’s a four-dimensional blagosphere)