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  <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw</id>
  <title>Facets of BrettW</title>
  <subtitle>BrettW</subtitle>
  <author>
    <name>BrettW</name>
  </author>
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  <updated>2009-09-20T13:31:15Z</updated>
  <lj:journal userid="2106978" username="brettw" type="personal"/>
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  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:234173</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/234173.html"/>
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    <title>Destressing dinner</title>
    <published>2009-09-20T13:31:15Z</published>
    <updated>2009-09-20T13:31:15Z</updated>
    <category term="cooking"/>
    <content type="html">Karly is organizing a conference and it kicks off tomorrow. To help her relax before it all, I offered to cook a fancy meal. Here's the menu:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; (Starter) Roast tomato and mint soup &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; (Mains) Pan-fried chicken with a polenta crust, roast maple pumpkin slices and a potato-and-sweetcorn mash. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; (Dessert) Fig, honey and ginger icecream, with baked caramelized wonton sails and a chunk of homemade honeycomb. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It turned out pretty well. The mash was disappointing (I blame Jamie Oliver). The soup was tasty. The pumpkin was the epitome of deliciousness-is-inversely-proportional-to-healthiness. Honeycomb was fun to make and came out nicely (It actually tastes like honey!)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I can provide recipes if anyone is interested.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:230009</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/230009.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=230009"/>
    <title>Delicious</title>
    <published>2009-04-18T06:43:57Z</published>
    <updated>2009-04-18T06:43:57Z</updated>
    <category term="food"/>
    <content type="html">My tomato plant finally produced a tomato, with not much time to spare before winter. It was delicious! My cucumber plant is a sporadic little bugger - he'll not do anything for forever, then the next day, new cucumbers everywhere, but then they grow to be retarded. I've gotten a few goods ones and they were also delicious.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It's cliched, but there's nothing quite like eating your own home-grown produce.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:226942</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/226942.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=226942"/>
    <title>Strange logic</title>
    <published>2008-12-06T21:40:20Z</published>
    <updated>2008-12-06T21:40:20Z</updated>
    <category term="computer"/>
    <category term="game"/>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <category term="programming"/>
    <content type="html">I have my beasty machine installed with Vista for the sole reason of games. Otherwise, I'd be on Linux. But there's a certain sense of irony that the easiest way for me to program computer games is in Linux. Made stronger by the fact that I bought a laptop yesterday and it'll be easier to develop games on that than my beasty machine.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;font size="-2"&gt;(In before: Wine, VMs and definitions of irony)&lt;/font&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:226445</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/226445.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=226445"/>
    <title>Elections</title>
    <published>2008-11-04T10:03:13Z</published>
    <updated>2008-11-04T10:03:13Z</updated>
    <category term="politics"/>
    <content type="html">Honest to god, if you guys don't vote in Obama, I'll give you all such a pinch!</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:225949</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/225949.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=225949"/>
    <title>A question for all artists/anthropologists</title>
    <published>2008-10-21T21:31:39Z</published>
    <updated>2008-10-21T21:31:39Z</updated>
    <category term="art"/>
    <category term="discussion"/>
    <content type="html">If I asked a random person in the street to draw a person they'd draw a stick figure. If I asked them to draw the sun, they'd draw a circle with maybe "shine lines" coming out of it. These are a bunch of standard ideograms. My question is: Because these ideograms are based on a visual representation of the object, do all cultures (throughout all time) use the same kind of drawings for the same concept? Or more simply, does everyone use stick figures to draw humans real easy?</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:222644</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/222644.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=222644"/>
    <title>Finally, I'm back!</title>
    <published>2008-08-19T07:55:33Z</published>
    <updated>2008-08-19T07:55:33Z</updated>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <content type="html">After weeks being in the (metaphorical) wilderness, I finally got Internet at home. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There is much news to impart, but I have to do stuff then go out.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:222300</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/222300.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=222300"/>
    <title>Grr</title>
    <published>2008-07-24T22:49:04Z</published>
    <updated>2008-07-24T22:49:04Z</updated>
    <content type="html">I'm still stuck without Internets at my new place. It sucks. Moving sucks, generally. I'm making use of Internet cafes at the moment, which irks me no end.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And last night, my monitor and/or graphics card decided to die. I don't know which because both show tiny signs of life, so I have no idea what's going on. It's more sadness, though.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, off to work.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:222136</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/222136.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=222136"/>
    <title>Moving on up...</title>
    <published>2008-07-20T03:43:05Z</published>
    <updated>2008-07-20T03:43:05Z</updated>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <content type="html">For the last two days I've been moving house. It's a bit exhausting but not too bad. Moving into the new house was orders of magnitude easier than moving out of the old one. Everyone has been impressed with our new place, mostly because it's massive and awesome.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Anyway, I've got more stuff to do and these kids in the cyber cafe are annoying.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:220668</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/220668.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=220668"/>
    <title>Points</title>
    <published>2008-06-29T13:17:49Z</published>
    <updated>2008-06-29T13:17:49Z</updated>
    <category term="scoring"/>
    <content type="html">This week was pretty good - equal with my top scoring week at 75 pts. I could have easily broken a new record by attending a party (25 pts) but I felt too shy and antisocial for that. Which, of course, is the point of the achievement, but yeah. Most of my points were from cheering up a friend (50 pts), and socializing with girls (10 pts). Oh and I got 10 pts for carpooling.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;However, I have struck upon a points-scoring hack: Blenders. You see, you can easily make up a smoothie with your daily required fruit intake. Add into that a serve of vegetables for dinner, you only need to snack on a carrot and some celery and that's 5 points in da bag! I might even get fancy and make vegetable-based blended drinks or soups. Exploit!&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Some of the things intended to be semi-regular occurences haven't happened at all in the past month. There may be some rescaling soon.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;&lt;b&gt;Statistics:&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/i&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;Weeks so far:&lt;/i&gt; 4&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;Highest score:&lt;/i&gt; 75 pts&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;Average score:&lt;/i&gt; 55 pts&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;Lowest score:&lt;/i&gt; 10 pts&lt;br /&gt;&lt;i&gt;Total score:&lt;/i&gt; 220</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:218913</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/218913.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=218913"/>
    <title>Legalese</title>
    <published>2008-06-01T04:38:53Z</published>
    <updated>2008-06-01T04:38:53Z</updated>
    <category term="random"/>
    <content type="html">The legal system seems to me to be like consensual abuse.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I was mostly thinking in the legal fees (abuse of society by lawyers) but I guess the original line applies much more widely.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:218348</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/218348.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=218348"/>
    <title>Data mining &amp; Facebook</title>
    <published>2008-05-25T15:05:26Z</published>
    <updated>2008-05-25T15:05:26Z</updated>
    <category term="science"/>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <content type="html">I reckon you should wander on over to &lt;a href="http://www.illuminatingscience.org/"&gt;Illuminating Science&lt;/a&gt; to see Joel's neat post on &lt;a href="http://www.illuminatingscience.org/facebook-dating-data/"&gt;data mining Facebook' relationship status information&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Dooo eeeet. *shakes fist*</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:217861</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/217861.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=217861"/>
    <title>Er, No thanks...</title>
    <published>2008-05-22T07:51:20Z</published>
    <updated>2008-05-22T07:51:20Z</updated>
    <category term="random"/>
    <content type="html">My spam just gave me not one, but two offers for free LASIK evaluation. As in, for free, they shoot lasers into my eyeballs? What could possibly go wrong with that?&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;It is a bit better than the recent "Update your penis" email. What's that? Are you offering me an iPhone? &amp;lt;/apple-stab&amp;gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:217188</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/217188.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=217188"/>
    <title>Feels so wrong, but tastes so right</title>
    <published>2008-05-07T12:49:38Z</published>
    <updated>2008-05-07T12:49:38Z</updated>
    <category term="food"/>
    <content type="html">Today we had a "welcome back" lunch for a guy in my team that I've never met before. We went to the Ironbark Cafe in Manuka, which is a very Australian restaurant. I order the "Australian Tastes plate" which was crocodile, kangaroo and emu (sorry veg*ans), served with a salad made out of Australian leaves and herbs. I had a wild bush lime lemonade, though I should have had the lilly pilly drink. So I basically ate the animals on our national coat of arms, which you can't do in many countries. It felt morally wrong, but it was reasonably tasty.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;For the record, crocodile tastes like fish and chicken simultaneously. Kangaroo is like a very gamey steak. Emu is a lame version of kangaroo. The little steak strips came with kipfler potatoes which looked like sausages, but surprised the hell out of me by being, well, potatoes.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Oh, I forgot the best bit: for entree/starters I had this macadamia nut bread. They crush macadamia nuts into something on the shy side of paste, slather it on a half-piece of damper and roast it. Oh gawd. Delicious.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I would blame this outing for ruining my recent good eating (healthy soups for dinner, healthy sandwiches for lunch), but I think it was in trouble anyway after Danielle kept talking about creme brulee and I keep watching Gordon Ramsay for the food.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:216160</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/216160.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=216160"/>
    <title>End of an Era</title>
    <published>2008-03-21T06:21:01Z</published>
    <updated>2008-03-21T06:21:01Z</updated>
    <category term="car"/>
    <lj:music>Ben Folds - Still Fighting It</lj:music>
    <content type="html">Yesterday I handed in my car to the insurance folk. This is the final step of the process of turning a damaged car into money. My new car comes soon.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I feel a bit off-center. I had gotten my car just as I was leaving Brisbane for Canberra. I was leaving my undergrad days behind and starting on my PhD. I had to leave my friends and old life behind and start anew in a city I'd only visited once for a day.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I called my car Harold, after the chubby old man from &lt;i&gt;Neighbours&lt;/i&gt;. Harold wasn't flashy, but he had a gentle confidence. Harold was my first car. I didn't really have that "This is your first car, son" moment. I just sort of took ownership of it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Harold and I drove out of Brisbane on the way south in February of 2004. The radio was a little weak, so I spent most of the time talking to myself. We drove along the East Coast, stopping off in Port Macquarie for a night. The next morning we made our way through Newcastle and onto Sydney. This was one of the most memorable times of my life - driving down the motorway at 120 km/hr in thick rain that was barely wiped away before the windscreen was blurry again. Traffic was only metres away in all directions. It was delirious, insane and fun. I stopped off in Sydney for a day or so and then onto Canberra. It was the longest solitary drive I had ever done in my life.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Harold was my car whilst I did my PhD. Every day for a year or more we crossed the NSW/ACT border between Queanbeyan and Canberra to go to work. At one time, Harold's engine was having issues which was basically that a cable to a spark plug was dodgy and so the engine was literally not firing on all pistons. This lead to a few hair-raising attempts at getting onto The Roundabout of Death during peak hour with an engine with close to no accelerative ability.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Later, a friend of &lt;span class='ljuser  ljuser-name_el_moofo' lj:user='el_moofo' style='white-space: nowrap;'&gt;&lt;a href='http://el-moofo.livejournal.com/profile'&gt;&lt;img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href='http://el-moofo.livejournal.com/'&gt;&lt;b&gt;el_moofo&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;'s ran into my car after a very late night watching the World Cup. This began the decline of my appreciation for Harold. After then it was all expensive repairs, nuisances and general idiosyncracies. Then last year, some jerk ran into my car and drove off. That was the beginning of the end for Harold. It took us ages to get resolved, and the final result was that Harold was an insurance writeoff - it was more expensive to repair him than replace him. So now he's being sold for spare parts. The money is going towards my new car, who is yet to be named as I haven't met him in person.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Yesterday I had to drop Harold off at the auto refinishers where we'd visited a few times after his run-ins with silly cars. I cleaned out the cash tray, gave them my keys and then walked away.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;You've gotta make a clean break, but I just had to look back once more. Look back at the car that helped me, infuriated me, but took me so many places and looked after me when I was sad. I looked back and this is what I saw.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a href="http://pics.livejournal.com/brettw/pic/0000g8h8"&gt;&lt;img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/brettw/pic/0000g8h8/s320x240"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Harold The Car, 1988-2008&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/center&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Goodbye Harold you unlucky, unfashionable bugger.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:212552</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/212552.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=212552"/>
    <title>To write and write again</title>
    <published>2008-02-10T09:34:57Z</published>
    <updated>2008-02-10T09:34:57Z</updated>
    <category term="writing"/>
    <content type="html">Tomorrow I'm going on another writing retreat. It'll be familiar enough for me, so while the novelty might not there, I know I can do loads of good work there. I plan to keep you dudes updated. Watch how my writing style changes through the week as I throw off the mathematical/programmatic working-man shackles and become the wild artiste.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'm thinking of doing a "sentence of the day" - a single sentence I'm really proud of. Feel free to throw questions my way.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'm getting up to the Blue Mountains by a rental car. It'll have a CD player so I might be driving a fair bit safer (last time I wore headphones - which is conceivably more dangerous, but deaf people can drive, can't they?)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Also on the agenda: Going to Sydney on the Saturday to catch up with Jenny and maybe do some shopping. I have concerns about being in Sydney with my rental car, but oh well.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:212144</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/212144.html"/>
    <link rel="self" type="text/xml" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/data/atom/?itemid=212144"/>
    <title>New Computer: Week 1</title>
    <published>2008-01-31T12:38:05Z</published>
    <updated>2008-01-31T12:39:15Z</updated>
    <category term="computer"/>
    <content type="html">So I bought my &lt;a href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/211253.html"&gt;beasty computer&lt;/a&gt;. So far, it's been pretty good. Games work absolutely fantastically on it. Crysis, the current benchmark of PC-killingness, requires a 3.0 rating to run on Vista, and 5.0 to run at recommended specs. My computer is a 5.6. I run it at the "Very High" level of settings and it looks beautiful.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a name="cutid1"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So I'm running Vista (Home Premium, 64-bit version). Lots of people wail and gnash their teeth about Vista. I think it's perfectly fine. People love bandwagons these days and "Vista is terrible" is one of them. Straight up: Vista is a super-charged Windows XP. It looks flashier, things are better integrated, there's various stylistic/design choices made that are different, but arguably better, and there's more security options about. If I were to be greedy, this is what XP should have been.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Issues I've had:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;The case I got was 3mm too high to fit between my desk and the shelf. So it's on an angle at the moment.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;Windows Firewall prevented Windows Update from doing its thing. Windows Firewall either blocks or allows traffic and never informs you of either (compared to, say, Zonealarm that is an attention seeker at the best of times). So it took a while to debug that one. But you can easily turn off the firewall, get an update and then turn it back on.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;Dissatisfied with Windows Firewall, I went looking for a free firewall. Zonealarm refuses point-blank to enter the 64-bit era. I don't see why there'd be a big deal about it, but I guess there's technical details that make this hard. Turns out there are very few firewalls that a) are free, b) support Vista, c) support 64bit CPUs/Operating Systems. Which I think is pretty rubbish. Luckily, COMODO firewall satisfies all three conditions and works pretty well. It's prettier and more comprehensive than Zonealarm, but needs more hand-holding.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;I wanted to dual-boot Vista with some form of Linux. I initially opted for Gentoo because I love configuring things, but their LiveCDs leave much to be desired. Then I went for Ubuntu for that "easy yet powerful" approach. Too bad whenever I tried to install Ubuntu it had a kernel panic. Even after modifying and updating my BIOS and adding every little command-line argument suggested on the forums, it still had a kernel panic (dying on APIC stuff, which as far as I can tell, is power-saving stuff). So much for that. And it's strictly Linux's fault.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Surprises:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;Vista has a "Diagnose and Repair" command for LAN/Internet links. In XP that command essentially shut down the LAN port, flushed caches and tried again. If that didn't work, it'd give up. Vista's will diagnose the problem, offer solutions for you to choose from (you can even say, "No thanks") and point you to the right support pages. It's wonderful.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;When you install games, Vista automagically adds the appropriate icons to a special "Games" area. In the games area you can see what the minimum and recommended computer ratings for that game are, and what your system is (hence the Crysis bragging above). It even downloads box art for the gigantic icons. It's hells cool having all the Sims 2 icons lined up.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;Vista has a decent zip file capability. It's better than the one in XP and sufficiently implemented to make me not care about Winzip.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;I was playing Unreal Tournament 3. With the new system it ran silky smooth. So smooth that I initially had trouble aiming because I'd overshoot. (I was calibrated to a slower machine) Also, since the computer had a whole bunch more CPU power to use, the AI actually improved markedly! They followed me intelligently on Capture the Flag runs, defended correctly and didn't drive tanks into walls so much. This was unexpected, but very, very cool.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;I've come to learn that multiple cores means a smoother experience &lt;i&gt;in general&lt;/i&gt;. Single programs can still wig out and steal a CPU, but you still have the manoeuverability to get around that.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt;Even with four case fans, a massive CPU fan and a massive cooling frame for the GPU card, the system runs extremely quietly. Sometimes I can hear the difference when I shut the machine down, but not always. The blue LEDs on the fans are kinda cool, but bad because one shines directly into my eyeball if I'm at my normal sitting position. Uncool.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I still haven't moved everything over, so I'm running on a bit of a barebones setup. I've had to remember the names of websites and go without music. But soon I shall salvage all the good stuff from my old machine and reincarnate it as a dedicated Linux box. Fingers crossed Ubuntu installs on it.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:211848</id>
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    <title>The Result of the Car</title>
    <published>2008-01-23T21:45:04Z</published>
    <updated>2008-01-23T21:45:04Z</updated>
    <content type="html">So GIO Insurance rang me this morning. The guys at Canberra automotive had done up a quote and it was something like $2000 in parts. Which means my car is a total write-off. GIO are gonna check out market values and all that and get back to me.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is good because it's a resolution to &lt;a href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/205246.html&amp;quot;"&gt;this silly story&lt;/a&gt;. And it means I can get rid of this car (I wasn't especially happy with it the last while). It's inconvenient because I need to get a new car (or hire one for a week) because I'm going on another writing retreat. It's reasonably okay to drive to work in, but dunno for how long (it's been coughing and wheezing for the last little while).</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:211477</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/211477.html"/>
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    <title>Simulated Architecture #4: The right tools</title>
    <published>2008-01-21T12:51:45Z</published>
    <updated>2008-01-21T12:51:45Z</updated>
    <category term="simulated architecture"/>
    <category term="programming"/>
    <content type="html">Most of my effort in the last while on my Simulated Architecture project has been tool design. I think it's an important part of the project, so I might discuss it for a bit in &lt;a name="cutid1"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;this instalment.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Having the right tools for the job is essential. Everyone knows this. But given a project, can you choose the right tools? Do you even know what they are? Before I plunge into my project, I've decided to take a step back and evaluate my tool set.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The first important tool is the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) and the associated compiler. Time spent formatting code, writing command lines or building makefiles is wasted time. One of the golden philosophies for this project (and every project) is that if it is tedious or repetitive, then automate it. Get the computer to do it. If the computer can't do it, find a way for it to do so. Putting code on the electronic page and telling a compiler to have at it is easy. I shouldn't have to worry about compiler settings unless I really want to. I shouldn't have to remember the exact spelling and case of a function defined elsewhere. The computer should know all this. Choosing a good IDE gets you most of the way there. I laboured with XEmacs for a while on other projects and had to abandon it. There are more modern, more comprehensive tools out there. I eventually settled on Eclipse. It does all the cool things you want it to: source code highlighting and formatting, auto-complete, auto-compile, function call hierarchies... It's pretty fast and unobtrusive. This is important. You don't want a tool to get in the way of your work. When I had a stab at a modified TADS 3 mode for XEmacs, I spent a fair amount of time battling Lisp and the peculiarities of my mode and XEmacs itself. For what? Nothing. Your tools should augment and enable you. You shouldn't have to augment or enable your computer.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The next important thing is a way to capture knowledge about the project. Commenting your code is only a small part of this. And no matter how wonderful your IDE is at code beautifying, source code is always hard to read to get an idea of the components. Source code is a document of computational process. &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming"&gt;Literate programming&lt;/a&gt; is probably the pinnacle of source code - source that is as readable as any technical document. However, I think for a large project you need to be able to pull back and see the code as objects and relations. This requires detaching yourself from the process of what's happening, and hence, relying less on the source code. The low-level solution I use here is &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxygen"&gt;Doxygen&lt;/a&gt;. By adding a little bit of metadata and markup to my source code's comments, I can embed concepts inside the code and have Doyxgen take care of showing me relations between code objects. For example, I have an Application object. It controls all the major subsystems in the game: sound, input, graphics, resource management and AI. This is the concept that the Application object has to embody. Naturally, I define member variables like:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
class Application {

private:
    GraphicsManager mGraphics;
    SoundManager mSound;

...
}
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Doxygen is smart enough to know about the GraphicsManager and SoundManager classes, and provides hyperlinks to these classes. This documents the implicit relationship between the Application and the various managers. When I'm writing code for the Application, I can browse the relationships between the Application and the managers and get the concepts working correctly, quite distinct from getting the code accurate. It's a fairly simple idea, but it's helpful and effective. It's a step away from the code (unlike elaborate source comments or literate programming) and works best in object-oriented situations.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;But still, this documents the code, not the project. They always say: code in the language of the problem, not the language of the machine. This is ideal, but you always need to make compromises and wrangle the computer because it is a pretty stubborn beast. Furthermore, certain subtleties or overarching concepts might be beyond the scope of code comments. People in the business of writing software for a living write design documents and specs. My project is more fluid, more amateur. I don't need to answer to a boss or a deadline. I don't need to worry about the end user so much. My designs can fit this casualness. To this end, I've created a local Wiki. I've downloaded the &lt;a href="http://www.mediawiki.org/"&gt;MediaWiki&lt;/a&gt; code (yep, the same that runs &lt;a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/"&gt;Wikipedia&lt;/a&gt;). It's easy to install and get running. From there you can design the wiki to capture all your ideas, plans, subsystem documentation and results. It's easy to edit and all you need is a browser, so you needn't worry about Yet Another Piece of Software.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Organizing the wiki takes care. I previously held my Simulated Architecture plans in my main project wiki (which stores all my ideas for stories, games, mathematics and miscellaneous projects). There were two problems with this:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ol&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; If I wanted to open up the Simulated Architecture stuff to people, I'd have to open the whole wiki up, which I wouldn't want to do. &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; The structure of the Simulated Architecture pages had to fit the mould of the whole wiki. Adding categories required prepending a title to each, to make sure it was specific to that project. This was a pain.&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/ol&gt;&lt;br /&gt;There are ways around this, but I felt the best solution was to create another wiki so the conceptual and software boundaries helped wall this project off from my others. This way I could create a general category for Graphics, say, and know it only meant graphics for this project.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I have to be honest - this wasn't my first idea. My first idea was inspired by Tarn Adams' &lt;a href="http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/dev.html"&gt;development page&lt;/a&gt; for &lt;a href="http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/index.html"&gt;Dwarf Fortress&lt;/a&gt;. He has a whole bunch of enumerated goals, organized into separate webpages. They've got cross-references, so in theory you can tell what needs to be worked on first to achieve a particular set of goals. I emailed him about the site. He's got a bunch of tools to help him with all this (some that store information he doesn't share with the public). Inspired by this, I devoted a weekend to writing a PHP backend that recorded my development tasks in a MySQL database. I even learned how Ajax worked so I could add tasks and not have to refresh pages or anything like that. In the end, I gave it up. It was a lot of work and it didn't look pretty. If I wanted to add something fairly simple, it'd take a lot of modifications. After a while, I realized that I was duplicating a lot of work that a wiki gives you for free (and they do it so much better). So I wrote that down as a learning experience and embraced the wiki.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is where I'm at, at the moment. I'm starting to flesh out the wiki, storing all my ideas. I've got a template setup for development tasks so if I have the idea to add, say, Shader Model 3.0 support, I just smash out a page and it's all appropriately categorized and linked to other relevant tasks. When the knowledge base becomes very large, I won't have a good birds'-eye view of it all, like which tasks are development bottleneck. Some extra coding in PHP might alleviate this.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;In any case, if I want to show people this knowledge base, I can upload the wiki to my website. I don't think I'd want to keep the wiki concept in that case - other people don't have a need to be editing my development plans. I have absolutely no plans to share this project with anyone else (so open source is right out). This may change, so having this sort of potentially collaborative development backend is a good thing.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;What else do I need? The next major tools encompass most of the project: I need a tool to create the city, and a tool to view the city. In many games, the tool is one and the same. I think separating them is important in my game as the creation is a hell of a lot more involved than the viewing. But the viewing has its own complications. I certainly can't keep an entire 3d city in memory at once. Memory management for viewing the city is quite different to creating it, and I think there's a lot less coding hassle if I break the two up.  Maybe some time in the future it'd be neat to walk around a pre-built city and point to a building and command the computer to fix a bug or just generate something different.  At this time, I need to be thinking about creating content or showing it. Not both at once.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Having lobotomised sections of code as separate tools can be useful. For example, having texture generation code in its own program would let me debug texture generation before unleashing it on 3d models. There will probably be things that I can't get the computer to create, so I'll need a modelling/importing tool.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I'll need profilers to gauge general performance and pin-point performance troublemakers. You can profile your C++ code and GPU code quite easily. Once the AI and sound is up and running, getting a grip on its performance would be key - AI especially as it's easy to bring a weighty solution to something that needs to be lightweight.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The last tool is the most important one of the lot: motivation and focus. This is not so easily downloaded and utilised :) But I'm working on it.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:211253</id>
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    <title>Ninja II</title>
    <published>2008-01-07T06:41:00Z</published>
    <updated>2008-01-07T06:41:00Z</updated>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <content type="html">I've been talking about it for a while, but I've finally taken the plunge and bought a new computer. This will be the first computer bought solely out of my own funds.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;And she's a beauty.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a name="cutid1"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;Specs:&lt;br /&gt;&lt;ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; CPU: Intel Quad Core Q6600 &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P35-DS4 with dual PCI-Express x16s and all the usual built-ins &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; Memory: 4Gb of RAM (Corsair, 2x2048Mb sticks at 800MHz) &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; Video card: Geforce 8800GT with 1Gb of Video RAM &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; HD: 500Gb (Samsung SpinPoint with 16Mb cache, 7200 RPM)&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; PSU: 620W &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; Cooler: Zalman CNPS8700NT CPU cooler &lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;li&gt; Case: Antec NINE HUNDRED&lt;/li&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/ul&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I also got standard DVD burner combo, cordless keyboard/mouse, 2yr warranty and... dun-dun-DUN Windows Vista x64.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I got the quad-core CPU because I can probably overclock it to roughly 3.2GHz, which means I'd have 4 times my current CPU. RAM is always good. The video card is probably excessive with 1Gb RAM, but it's good for bragging rights (it also necessitates the 4Gb of main RAM because OSes will subtract the video RAM from the available system RAM... no foolin') It also turns out that a two 8800GTs are about the same price as a single 8800GTX, the only benefit with the latter is higher bus speeds and bandwidth (I think).&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I've got a zillion fans to prevent this baby from overheating. My current computer has a single extractor fan and a CPU heatsink. The GPU has a tiny little fan. In the summer it busts a nut trying to stay cool. The Antec case has about four fans, with room to put two more in. I hope four case fans is enough. Allegedly two of the front fans have LEDs in it, which doesn't tickle my fancy.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;So yeah, it's a pretty beasty system. It gobbles whole the $2,500 I had saved aside for such a purchase. So yeah, good times. Good times indeed. I will turn my current computer into a media center/backup server. My plans for a cluster have been put on the furthest backburner because of money and no real need for a cluster more than the one I'll have by the end of the week. In any case, I'll have a mighty computer and will be very content. What's that? No, I don't have a girlfriend. Why do you ask? :P</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:210969</id>
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    <title>It's not quite karmic</title>
    <published>2008-01-03T12:52:22Z</published>
    <updated>2008-01-03T12:52:22Z</updated>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <content type="html">Great idea: Steamed vegetables for dinner.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Atrocious idea: Making my own butter popcorn afterwards.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;I need that opera guy from Scrubs: "Mistaaaaaaaaaake!"</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:209648</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/209648.html"/>
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    <title>I Heart...</title>
    <published>2007-12-06T12:16:05Z</published>
    <updated>2007-12-06T12:16:05Z</updated>
    <content type="html">&lt;a href="http://www.doxygen.org/"&gt;Doxygen&lt;/a&gt;. I used to think it was pretty silly and useless. I have since seen the light.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The Eclipse plugin for it also rocks.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:209327</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/209327.html"/>
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    <title>A request</title>
    <published>2007-12-02T13:47:28Z</published>
    <updated>2007-12-02T13:47:28Z</updated>
    <category term="rant"/>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <content type="html">I'd like to change the English language. Just a little. I'd like tougher conditions on the word "worth". In particular when applied to celebrities. I'd prefer "Celebrity A has been valued at $50 million a movie" than "Celebrity A is worth $50 million a movie". The former, I think, says that someone's value system has pegged them at $50 million dollars. The latter, I think, means that irrespective of the value system (or that there is a universal one), they are automatically worth the value of $50 million dollars.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Today's flagrant violation of my request: John Laws retired. The Australian said: "[...] he's worth an estimated $100 million." Maybe on opposites day. He is rubbish. You couldn't pick him up in a Lucasarts adventure game. He moulds his opinion to the highest bidder. He's sexist and homophobic. He's arrogant. You couldn't pay me enough to take him. So no, The Australian, he is not worth $100 million. Idiots have given him money that perhaps sum to $100 million. That is all.</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:209014</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/209014.html"/>
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    <title>Literal Mind Map</title>
    <published>2007-11-27T13:21:48Z</published>
    <updated>2007-11-27T13:21:48Z</updated>
    <category term="random"/>
    <category term="miscellaneous"/>
    <content type="html">Inspired by &lt;span class='ljuser  ljuser-name_maga_dogg' lj:user='maga_dogg' style='white-space: nowrap;'&gt;&lt;a href='http://maga-dogg.livejournal.com/profile'&gt;&lt;img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href='http://maga-dogg.livejournal.com/'&gt;&lt;b&gt;maga_dogg&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;' and &lt;span class='ljuser  ljuser-name_el_moofo' lj:user='el_moofo' style='white-space: nowrap;'&gt;&lt;a href='http://el-moofo.livejournal.com/profile'&gt;&lt;img src='http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif' alt='[info]' width='17' height='17' style='vertical-align: bottom; border: 0; padding-right: 1px;' /&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;a href='http://el-moofo.livejournal.com/'&gt;&lt;b&gt;el_moofo&lt;/b&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/span&gt;'s recent posts on mnemonics, I thought I'd finally share with you part of my literal mind map. To explain, when I'm thinking about certain topics, certain real places in the world pop into my head. I guess it's a mnemonic aid because I'm excellent with geography and places. The places have no bearing on the topic. You'll find a lot of advanced mathematics around my primary school. There is no way that I could have even known about half the stuff then. For the most part, it is concepts and interests of mine that are geographically situated. People generally aren't part of my mind map.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;(I'm new to the whole "make a Google map and share it" thing so if there's any troubles, let me know)&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;small&gt;&lt;a href="http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&amp;amp;hl=en&amp;amp;om=1&amp;amp;msa=0&amp;amp;msid=108788112034991128146.00043fe7d8b9df8c506de&amp;amp;ll=-35.267226,149.129479&amp;amp;spn=0.024527,0.036478&amp;amp;z=14&amp;amp;source=embed" style="color:#0000FF;text-align:left"&gt;View Larger Map&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/small&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:208642</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/208642.html"/>
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    <title>Photos of babies</title>
    <published>2007-11-25T09:45:07Z</published>
    <updated>2007-11-25T09:45:56Z</updated>
    <category term="family"/>
    <content type="html">The Surgeon General warns: If you have seen too many puppies or kittens today, you might want to avoid looking at these photos. There is a real risk of Cuteness Overload.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;a name="cutid1"&gt;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Baby Loot plus Baby&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/brettw/pic/0000ay93" title="Baby Loot plus Baby" align="Center"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Danika and The Big Sleep&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/brettw/pic/0000bqxt" title="Danika and The Big Sleep" align="Center"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;She's only be around for a few days and she's already complaining&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/brettw/pic/0000c94f" title="Unhappy" align="Center"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;b&gt;Awwwwwwww...&lt;/b&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/brettw/pic/0000dt62" title="Awwww" align="Center"&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;</content>
  </entry>
  <entry>
    <id>urn:lj:livejournal.com:atom1:brettw:208519</id>
    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="http://brettw.livejournal.com/208519.html"/>
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    <title>A Public Service Announcement</title>
    <published>2007-11-25T09:21:26Z</published>
    <updated>2007-11-25T09:21:26Z</updated>
    <category term="silliness"/>
    <content type="html">For years, senior scientists have been warning about this. Nevertheless many people are unaware of the inherent dangers... Al Gore presents &lt;i&gt;An Inconvenient Knuth&lt;/i&gt;, a no-holds-barred look at the world's obsession with algorithms that run in time O(n), but ignoring that the hidden constant is prohibitively large.  Without realising the inherent risks, a computer scientist may raise his CPU temp by two or three degrees by 20:50. For your algorithm's sake, for your kids' algorithms sake, see this movie.</content>
  </entry>
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