Italians and Football

My wife often accuses the English (and me, personally) of taking football too seriously. But we are no match for the Italians it seems. I'm glad that the Danish Consulate is still in one piece. Although it might congeal into a huge pastry..

Postscriptum. The ref who decided against the English goal in the England vs. Portugal match had his email address published in a tabloid newspaper and had to get security after recieving a lot of death threats. Clue, up folks! It's only a game for gossake. The Portugese deserve a home win. And so do the Greeks, and Czechs, come to think of it. It's a hard life. Only one team wins. Roll on 2006...

Mozilla Firefox as a newsreader

I made a plesant discovery today, the Mozilla extension: Sage, which turns Mozilla or Firefox (or Firebird, or Phoenix) into a newsreader. It's great to have a list of newsfeeds as a sidebar in my browser and finally integrate the two things. Now all we need is MozBlog in Firefox and the perfect blogging platform would be here..

Lisp Hacking

I did my first Lisp hacking for eight years last night. I'd forgotten what fun it was to use such a dynamic, fluid language. Glenn Eherlich was right: "Programming in Lisp is like playing with the primordial forces of the universe. It feels like lightning between your fingertips. No other language even feels close.". I am pleasantly surprised by how much has changed since I last programmed in it: an ANSI standard has emerged, a Universal Foreign Function Interface has been designed and implemented, usable by many implementations for binding to C libraries - like the SDL. The popularity of other dynamic, interpreted languages like Python and Perl are leading a new generation of programmers to appreciate the advantages of non-static code, and opening minds to LISP. Right now, coming to it as an outsider, it feels like a language on the verge of a breakthrough. Maybe it always felt that way, though.

Another coridoor of the infinite library

If you search here for long enough you might find a Mondrian or a Pollock. Search for even longer and you might find Hopper or Rembrandt. It's a visual equivalent of Borges's infinite library. How tedious and dangerous infinity is..

Silly Google Search of the Day

After a mishap with a broken $ gave my blog a title of $BlogTitle I thought I'd search for "BlogTitle" in Google, just to see if it was a common probelm. It was. Blog after blog, with a broken title..who is going to tell them all?

Switching on the Cyborg

I finally have a date for my implant to be switched on. This is the most interesting part of the process. The initial experience varies wildly - some people report clicks and whistles and random noise, other people report voices that sound like there's been a serious leak in the local helium bottling plant...it seems to be different from individual to individual. I await with curiosity and a certain amount of eagerness, after all It's not every day you gain a new sense. Most people go through life with just the ordinary five ;)

Writers block

I used to think writers block was an affliction of the self-indulgent, but now I know better. I slump around the flat: a completely useless lump in a continual daze. Probably I'm going to have to do something drastic to unblock. I'm not sure what..if only it was as simple as cleaning the toilet. Probably my problem is simply over-work compounded by domestic monotony. I need a crisis, an emergency..something..anything.

Poem of the Day : The Palace

I first came across this poem as a quoted fragment in Gene Wolfe's "There are Doors" ( a highly reccomended read for fans of the Kafkaesque ) and I like it a lot - it expresses well how people build on the efforts of previous people to build whatever it is they are interested in - an art form, a bridge, a palace, a computer program, whatever - and how human achievement is actually a form of collaboration spread over the ages that one individual can only ever claim to be part of..

On becoming a Cyborg

Recently I decided to have some quite drastic surgery: I elected to become a cochlear implantee. Philosophically, I have very mixed feelings about this. I work in an environment where people communicate verbally all the time, and all the people around me are hearing, and socially a much greater premium is being placed on my ability to hear. I know the alternative is to change this, to become part of the deaf community and get a deaf-related job, where the empathis is on sign language skills - there are a few: teacher of the deaf, social worker, etc. However, I've never felt accepted in Deaf society as a Deafened person. So, what the hell, I may as well go with the medical model. I can't help getting the feeling that I'm loosing a lot by surrendering the social model of my deafness. There are a lot of good things about community - the power and creativity of people acting in a team brings good things. However, there's also loss of flexibility and a "crab principle" that excludes people from outside or makes it impossible to raise aspirations. Going round in circles..

Restlessness

Strange dreams last night. I was dreaming I understood Icelandic, and was being interviewed for a job in the USA in that language via a device that looked partly like an old Remmington typewriter with a large screen attached, and was an intriguing mixture of webphone and instant messenger.

I should probably travel more and watch less Terry Gillam films..

The birth of a new Blog

Yet Another Graphomaniacs Compendium really wasn't meant to be about game development, but more about other things, too. So I have decided to start maintaining two blogs on a left-brain, right-brain basis. This here is the right brain: it will deal with the more right-brain things I do and a more personal things as a more traditional personal blog might. Game Development and programming moves to the Bad Byte Bootstrap Blues. You clicks your URL and you takes your choice..