brent//BLOG: 2005

Oh yeah

Thu 29 September 2005, 1:42 AM ⁄⁄ Comment

The following is the essence of a conversation from ballroom dance practice, earlier this evening (yes, it’s that time* of year again!):

[*Whether “that time” refers to me babbling about dancing a bunch, or to my excessive and unwarranted use of faux-play-script as a narrative device, is up for debate.]

<Brent and Jenny are dancing a hustle>

Brent: So, didja do anything exciting over the summer?

Jenny: Not really. I guess I went to a fireworks festival in Canada, but that’s about it.

<Brent notices, near the end of the song, a ring on Jenny’s left hand. He suspects strongly that it is new.>

[Time passes]

<Brent notices that Jenny’s ring is indeed on her fourth finger, and it looks pretty darn nice.>

[Time passes]

<Brent catches Jenny when she’s not otherwise occupied.>

Brent: A’ight, missy, let’s see your left hand.

<Jenny shows her left hand; Brent verifies that the ring is real.>

Brent: …so you actually had an eventful summer, eh?

Jenny: …

<Brent shakes his head; Jenny laughs.>

How in the world does getting engaged not qualify as an important event in your summer, let alone your life? (In her defense, she did say that she normally only thinks about vacations when asked about summers…) And, yes, this was “my genius” Jenny from west coast. *sob*

I also received a backhanded compliment, in the form of a complaint about a gal not knowing whether or not I could actually dance lindy hop when I said I was terrible at it—because I had earlier claimed not to be very good at west coast, and then kicked ass (her words). Yeah. (Fortunately, she eventually took me at my word that I was in poor lindy-hop shape; that and salsa are two dances that have been lost to the ever-more-dense and expanding fog of my memory.)

Back

Wed 28 September 2005, 12:41 AM ⁄⁄ 2 Comments

I survived Japan—or, perhaps, Japan survived me. The only thing I completely flubbed was getting back to a normal routine quickly; I caved and took a nap (that turned into a five-hour nap) the day I got back, and that set me back something fierce.

Oddly enough, none of us had trouble getting up at 7:00 am in Japan; the fact that it was equivalent to 3:00 pm our-time didn’t hurt.

While I continue to try and get back to a decent routine (which, you might correctly guess, I wasn’t on when I left for Japan), here are some random observations from my trip:

Many Japanese haven’t figured out that smoking is Bad For You. You can buy cigarettes (and beer) from vending machines for not much more than you would pay for a soda.

Pachinko is a horrible, horrible game. Laughing at gaijin who throw away 1000 yen trying pachinko for kicks, however, transcends all language barriers.

Japanese toilet paper “squares” are twice as long as US toilet paper squares. Japanese toilets frequently have both “big flush” and “little flush” options, and most have a weird seat/device made by Toto that senses when you’re sitting down on the seat and adjusts things (water level, the status of a deodorizer) appropriately.

Akihabara is my home away from home, and my wallet’s worst enemy.

Jeff is right: though the stores might say it’s autumn, it is definitely not autumn. We had ninety-degree heat and ninety-percent humidity for most of our trip, which made for lots of fun.

English karaoke songs are predominantly from the ’80s, which means I actually know most of them. Crazy. Karaoke can actually be fun, too. (Crazier!)

And now, a working hypothesis: Americans are the only people in the world who are well-hydrated. My experiences through Europe and Japan (and those of my comrades) have been that glasses for everything—expect possibly alcohol—are bloody small. Haven’t people heard about eight glasses a day? (Actually, that link might explain the answer of my rhetorical question…)

Off to Japan

Fri 9 September 2005, 3:03 AM ⁄⁄ Comment

Brian, Andy and I aren’t actually leaving until Saturday, but the way things are going this is the last shot I’ll have to post before I’m out of the country for two weeks. Our travel plan, in short: hit Tokyo, and then move west. It’ll be like Manifest Destiny, only in Japan. (I can’t believe I just wrote that.)

So, yeah. I’ll be gone. You probably won’t notice any difference. (Hopefully I’ll have more time—and consequently will actually post things—when I return, as work-related junk should start dying down shortly.)

Until that fateful day, though, remember to be happy:

Photoshop Friday

Fri 2 September 2005, 11:41 PM ⁄⁄ Comment

This week used and discarded me like a tissue, so I’ve pretty much been drooling on myself in front of my computer this evening. Somehow, in my comatose state, I opened up my copy of Photoshop and discovered a tool I didn’t know existed: Extract. (For all I know, extract was added to Photoshop in version 2; back in my yearbook days I pretty much used Photoshop to crop and adjust levels.) As the name suggests, extract allows you to separate part of a picture from its background.

My sister, for the last two years running, has bought me an anime calendar for Christmas. This year’s calendar featured Yotsubato! (or, as marketed in the US, Yotsuba&!). When I got my new camera a few weeks ago, I took a shot of the August picture of this calendar—mostly for the halibut. The only problem with the photo was that it was marred by an eerie outline of a panda; next month’s picture had bled through when I took my shot.

You can see where I’m going with this. After dinking around for an hour, I had this absolutely stunning desktop picture:

I’d lie and say I did this in honor of Something Awful’s Photoshop Phriday feature (SA is currently down due to Katrina’s destruction), but in reality the best I could hope for would be a showing in the Page of Shame.

Nearing fruition

Wed 31 August 2005, 12:11 AM ⁄⁄ Comment

My coworkers don’t know it yet, but the unification of information project has already seen stunning success. Soon people will refer to me as Mr. Carpenter, and those especially close will call me Joker.

…

Damn it’s been a long year. I’ll be glad when I finally have something to show for all my effort—even though that just means that people will ask even more of me. (*sob*) This is the last time I ever have a bright idea.

Extreme Bad Luck

Tue 30 August 2005, 1:30 AM ⁄⁄ Comment

That title just about sums me up (while simultaneously implying that I’ve read a bit of the Kodansha Bilingual version of the Love Hina manga… but that’s neither here nor there). Work is going to put the big pain on me in the next two weeks, which will allow me lots of time to prepare for going to Japan. Tomorrow I implement the database I’ve been working on for ages (slight exaggeration), and so tomorrow I figure out how many bugs I’ve yet to squash. I’m betting that will be a non-zero number.

Tomorrow is also the last day of work for the cute gal at Subway. *sob* Cute gal, I hardly knew ye.

I’m already tired and stressed and grumpy, so by the end of this all I should be some sort of demon of vengeance. The first target of my rage will be Sony, as it seems my camcorder will no longer start up without use of the “reset” button—and it’s not as if I’ve been using the heck out of it.

Damn you, Sony!

Processing

Wed 24 August 2005, 2:18 AM ⁄⁄ Comment

Well, it’s officially two and a half weeks after my artificial, self-imposed deadline for finishing my programming project. If this project were a progress bar, it would now stand at about 95% completion; once it reaches 100%, it’ll then change into an indeterminate progress bar and cycle for a while longer. If this project were a process on a computer, it would be the one using 97% of system resources without any terribly good reason.

Fortunately for me, my office won’t have everything it needs to implement this program until next Monday; busting my hump over the last two weeks means that meeting the actual deadline is physically possible.

…

I do take breaks from programming—which is to say I’ll poke around on the web every once in a while (off the clock, of course). One of the blogs I’ve discovered more recently is the DrunkenBlog, which tends to cover Mac-related topics in between talk of alcoholic beverages. Specifically, drunkenbatman recently posted an article about the lack of quality coming out of Apple—especially with respect to Mac OS X. I’m not sure what I can add, other than that I agree with him.

Figures

Tue 16 August 2005, 1:34 AM ⁄⁄ 1 Comment

It’s apparently not bad enough that I have a deadline to meet—that deadline had to be pushed back, allowing for an extra week of torture on my end. (Nothing annoys a procrastinator more than a deadline that moves after (s)he has started working on whatever is due.) Consequently, this week is now crunch week. I’m optimistic that I’ll actually have a finished (defined as “working without making a total mess of itself”*) product by the end of this week.

[*Power tip: keep expectations low, for the win.]

In typical Brent fashion, I’m also sick during this deadline. I know exactly who to blame, too: Eric wasn’t doing so well on the evening we went to Nick’s wedding. I missed the second wedding I was to attend (gah), and ultimately wound up sleeping the entire weekend.

One of the few sources of entertainment I had last week was from Marin poking around Sloganizer.net and reading funny slogans to me as I coded away. The best one, by far: oh my gods, it’s a Marin!

Hope

Fri 12 August 2005, 1:33 AM ⁄⁄ Comment

The impending Japan Trip managed to be enough to get me off my duff and order an image-stabilizing camera. I’m now the very happy owner of a Canon Powershot S2 IS.

As I’ve mentioned before (albeit long ago), I have an intention tremor—my hands shake whenever I try to do something with them. It’s far from debilitating, but the gals I dance with frequently ask if I’m nervous (I’m not; I’ve been dancing long enough), and I can get mighty frustrated when I need to do reasonably precise work with my hands. Changing a calculator battery causes me a bit more consternation than most.

This tremor also means that the quality of any picture I take is a crapshoot. I never bothered with film-based photography—that would be like me lighting twenties for the sake of watching them burn—but I decided to take the plunge once digital photography emerged. After all, you can just delete the picture if it doesn’t turn out, right?

I did delete pictures. Lots of them. I’d occasionally get something that was usable (or, if I was lucky, downright nice), but most of my shots turned out mediocre: when my composition didn’t stink, my focus did. After a while, that gets kind of depressing.

When we visited Craig in San Francisco, I basically gave Brian my camera for the entire trip. It was a good move on my part; we got some nice pictures out of the deal.

Flash forward to now.

These pictures aren’t anything special—but they’re a frickin’ miracle to me. These were all taken at 12x zoom. Taken by me, none the less, without any real effort to keep my hands still. (The second image is actually a closer look at the text on the controller cord in the first image; they’re from the same picture.) The camera isn’t infallible—I can still screw up a shot, image stabilization or not—but this is the first time I’ve had significantly more usable shots than not. (In fairness, the uglier ones were mostly taken while ignoring low light/bad focus/etc. messages from the camera.)

I now grin like a loon every time I take a picture. It’s sweet.

Homebody

Thu 4 August 2005, 5:15 PM ⁄⁄ Comment

There are definite perks to working from home. The main one I’ve exploited, so far, is the ability to listen to The Beat Of The Bay (via internet streaming) while toiling away in front of code that refuses to work. I do like myself a strong backbeat.

The downside—if you’ve outfitted your home properly—is that there are a whole lotta distractions ready to entice you away from putting time on the clock. (Actually, I’m one-track-mindeded enough to not have difficulty focusing on work once I dig in; it’s that whole “getting started” thing that I’m not so hot at.)