Searching and metadata

Since the primary purpose of this blog is to note things down of interest that may otherwise be quickly forgotten, I've been giving the idea of searching this blog more thought. This is all assuming I can get the darn search thing to work on here! Anyway the ability to search this blog will be of immense value, I can write things down as they pop up and refer to them easily later.

One of the challenges to searching this blog may be the lack of a structure, despite Google's boasts about its search abilities it may be prudent to include some metadata in each post. At first I thought the title of each post may provide enough data to structure this blog for searching. However things may pop up which I haven't created a unique, meaningful title for either through sheer laziness or its a regular post (things like friday night dining).

At this point I've hit upon the idea of using meta data in the text embedded in an escape sequence at the start of the post. So when I finally get to search the blog, I can search for metadata instead of coming up with an elabourate search string, For example my recent friday night dining post might have the following metadata on the first line:
[1!review][2!restaurant]

Perhaps the extra effort involved won't make it much better than searching it via google but then again most search engines do use metadata if available. This is one topic which will require more practice and tuning, now to get search working on this blog...

Fizzled Fox

I promise this will be my last post today... Installed Mozilla Firefox (British English Version 1.0) today, heard it's easier to use than Opera and more compatible. Actually I've been composing this post and the others today using it, hoping that it would show the right page when I update and view this blog. Alas, it was not to be, seems to me Mozilla is still too half-arsed. It seems to be not much easier to use than Opera, actually I reckon it's clunkier than Opera, and it's just as incompatible with this blog platform.

First signs of trouble came when I was using it a few days ago at work. Tabbed handling wasn't as streamlined as in Opera and mouse gestures were missing. Perhaps I can address both of those with a bit more poking around but Opera is all slicked up straight out. File transfers are just a bit of an improvement on Internet Explorer but have nothing on Opera's geek sleek. Again perhaps I could poke around and improve things but there should be no need.

Customisation is also more limited with Firefox than with Opera. Bars and icons aren't as flexible and the range of options presented is rather limited. When stacked up against Internet Explorer sure Firefox is a clear winner but I certainly won't be replacing Opera any time soon.

House of Flying Daggers

Well what can I say I've developed a blogging bug, probably cos I can forget the details of life outside office hours so easily. Continuing on my last post we saw House of Flying Daggers afterwards. I was a bit disappointed, people had been saying it had no plot and it was superbly shot. Well it was superbly shot but it didn't have enough fisticuffs for my liking and the plot just seemed to have been dragged out too much.

A couple of twists and turns is nice but a whole lot in one scene is just too much. Reminds of some other Chinese/Hong Kong flicks and shows, where everything changes in an instant beyond credibility. I was hanging out to see that big battle they were all alluding to but no I had to witness a Chinese version of a fight on Jerry Springer. The forests scenes, which were shot in the Ukraine, just didn't evoke the visions of China that usually comes to mind but I'm just being picky now.

Still it was a gorgeous film which didn't quite stand up to the torch of anticipation I had put it to. Despite all my misgivings I do hope there are more films like this being released into mainstream cinema. Let's just hope they don't become the cinematic equivalent of mainstream sweet chilli sauce: overly sweet and generally not enjoyed by those where it originated from but still marketed as authentic stuff.

Mapo

Continuing on with trying not to forget things and expanding this blog to cover cuisine, I went to Mapo on Friday night. It's a Korean restaurant on Gouger Street with a seperate Korean barbecue and a la carte sections. As I was introducing some of the guys to the delights of Korean cuisine we opted for the a la carte section.

The cool thing I love about this place is they have this gong which they hit as you go to your table. Oh it's probably prudent to book, last time I've went on a Friday night it wasn't too hard getting a nice table but I guess summer time brings out the diners more. Then again Korean is great winter heartening food.

We had bulgogi (barbecue beef stir fry), japchae (sweet potata noodles fry up), battered barramundi fillets in a nice soy based sauce and chicken teriyaki (obviously I didn't have the last one and I know it's not really Korean). I had some Cass beer (the others stuck to Pale Ale, Coopers of course) as well as a 2003 Mornington Estate Pinot Noir (yes I have watched Sideways and couldn't resist, it just reminded me how delicate pinot is and hence how well it suits east Asian cuisine). The food as is always the case at Mapo was lovely and the wine matched it quite nicely.

The wine was good value for $30 a bottle with good structure and a lovely bouquet of plums and cherry. The wine had just the right amount of oak and tannins to balance the nice fruit flavours, just the right body and grip to go with the food. I was a bit underwhelmed by the Cass beer, last time I had it in came in a nice round frosted mug and was an excellent refresher. Perhaps this time I had the full strength rather than light they served before and the glass wasn't as frosty.

Overall it was a nice restaurant experience although the servings weren't as hearty as last time and the dishes seemed to be going more for style than substance. What I love about Korean food is that it's still quite delicate, like Japanese, but also quite satisfying, like Chinese, but perhaps we should have had more signature dishes. The service also seemed to be a bit off the usual friendly efficiency I'm used to there, seems they've had a big staff turnover.

Still Mapo is capable of a great restaurant experience if perhaps the poor waitress we had didn't have quite a bad day , I counted at least 2 collisions with careless customers, and we'd booked a better table. Wow what a long post but what can I say I love my wining and dining.

Visual Age eclipsed

Before I forget, which is what I'm trying to avoid by using this blog, talked with the guy from work who'll be going over to the same company I'll go going to soon about Java development. He showed me Eclipse, a development environment written in Java, running quite smoothly and sorta supporting C++, obviously it supports Java. I was suprised by the slickness and responsiveness of it but I'm told it actually uses native OS GUI support so it should be way faster than Swing.

Apparently it was it donated by IBM to the open source community and based upon the Visual Age development environment which I last used back in 2000 for my engineering work experience. Eclipse is what he'll be using at the new place, and since we're both working in Java I guess I'll be using it as well. Visual Age was quite good so this should be even bettter yet still familiar which should ease some of my new job jitters.

Greasing the mental cogs

Here's another book to include in my tax return for this year:
Stahler, W. 2004, Beginning Math and Physics for Game Programmers, New Riders.
[Borders (Rundle Mall), paperback, AU$59.95]

It seems to be a good book for someone as rusty with their maths and physics as myself. The book covers the fundamentals of geometry, linear algebra and motion quite well. Should be a good basis for tackling the maths and physics in the realm of games, graphics and simulators.

Fight Back Against Rhetoric!

There are certain people in this world because of their job or lecturers think they can ignore the fact that "the geek shall inherit the earth". They think they can bamboozle geeks and plebs into submission, but I say fight those subjectivists and all that accompanies them (false product claims, moral relativism, deconstructionism blah blah blah). Blah, blah, blah was the gist of the cartoon by Jon Kudelka that accompanied Stephen Matchett's article on the back page of the current edition of the Weekend Australian's Review section. A superb insight into rhetoric (yes, that includes humanities and sales bullies) and defence mechanisms to deploy against them. He cited a few good resources and books which I'll list here:

Matchett, S. 2005, Schope out your rivals, The Weekend Australian Review, 19-20 March, p. 40.

Burton, G. 2003, Silvae Rhetoricae: The Forest of Rhetoric [Online, accessed 20 Feb. 2005]. URL: http://humanities.byu.edu/rhetoric/silva.htm

Schopenhauer, A. 1896, The Art of Controversy, trans. T. B. Saunders [Online, accessed 20 Feb. 2005]. URL: http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/s/schopenhauer/arthur/controversy

Cialdini, R. B. 1998, "Influence: The Pyschology of Persuasion", Perennial Currents.

These people have gotten away with belittling us geeks and proletariat for too long, let's fight back against the self-proclaimed "intellectuals" and bourgeoisie. Yikes now I sound like one of them, anyway we need protection against these professional nihilists so let's use some of their tricks on them.

Books for the new project

This new job will involve 3D Graphics, Java, GUI programming, MATLAB and perhaps OpenGL. Frankly I'm rather rusty so I've got a lot of reading ahead of me. The following books, mostly recommended by Bruce Eckel, should prove quite handy (I've included the current prices at Amazon):

- Computer Graphics:
Vince, J. 2001, Essential Mathematics for Computer Graphics Fast, Springer. [Paperback, US$16.97]

Hearn, D. & Baker, M. P. 2003, Computer Graphics with OpenGL (3rd Edition), Prentice Hall. [Hardcover, US$83.75]

- Java Programming:
Eckel, B. 2003, Thinking in Java (3rd Edition), Prentice Hall, 2002. [Paperback, US$34.96]

Horstmann, C. & Cornell, G. 2004, Core Java 2, Volume I - Fundamentals (7th Edition), Prentice Hall. [Paperback, US$34.87]

Horstman, C. & Cornell, G. 2004, Core Java 2, Volume II - Advanced Features (7th Edition), Prentice Hall. [Paperback, US$33.99]

- Software Engineering:
Gamma, E. et al 1995, Design Patterns, Addison-Wesley. [Hardcover, US$47.04]

Fowler, M. 2003, UML Distilled: A Brief Guide to the Standard Object Modelling Language (3rd Edition), Addison-Wesley. [Paperback, US$23.09]

As funds will be a little bit tight I guess the priorities are the ones at the top of each subject list...

Manchild's Log: Mandate 17205.23

Finally I've made the first entry in a blog. Thought it'd be a good idea to write down things I've learnt and ideas as they pop up. This should save me a lot of paper, space and time looking for bits and pieces I've jotted down.

Accepted a contract job offer today, generous pay and interesting work. Will give me a foothold in the defence industry as well as more experience in 3D graphics. It's a pity to leave my current place but it was only part time work and the job security's about the same. Still would like to return there sometime, a great bunch of people with huge potential.