Chrome to Phone is awesome

Soooo fast, and cool!

More details via the official Google Blog:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/03/20-percent-time-spent-coding-in-clouds.html


Starting to get a little scared though, if Froyo is the requirement, hopefully Gingerbread/Honeycomb don't become requirements too soon for these new features (or HTC and Telstra update more frequently). Still this was heartening:
http://www.androidcentral.com/three-uk-suggests-original-htc-desire-will-get-gingerbread-update

CSE Camp - Epic bus fail, broom game, newspaper towers and internet memes

It's been about 6 years since I've had the pleasure of being on a camp, the last I can remember was a Year 11 Thredbo/Jindabyne trip. So ending yesterday, for a little over 48 hours CSE@UNSW first years, and me since it's my first year at UNSW, were at Wombaroo Adventure Center in the southern highlands about half way from Sydney to Canberra, Australia.

Internet Memes
The theme, one pretty awesome one. I just couldn't resist going as Happycat (pics may come later). Memes in attendance (by Ben Pinto):

Pirates vs ninjas
Im on a boat
Portal
Troll science
Trollface
Fffffuuuuu
F**k yeah
Forever alone
Anon
Milhouse is not a meme
Lolcat
Domokun
Luigi
Goatse
Mac vs pc
Wonka bar
The ring/ grudge girl
Charlie the unicorn
Shamwow guy
Old spice guy
Hello world
Dancing star wars kid
Hide yo kids guy
Double rainbow guy
Leekspin
Dickinabox
Engineer (teamfortress)

The engineer won the award for best costume...not sure I agree since Callum's PC was epic but that's democracy for you.

Broom Game
Simply put - hold broom and face upwards, spin 15 times then jump over it. Your inner ear's motion detector will deceive you - good luck! (Not me but some of those who participated - the end is a must see :- )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwgXt6Lr5BE

Newspaper Towers
aka Fun with Newspaper. The Australians were by far the best general building material, literally just separate, roll up and build up. You learn quickly the best ways to build things like rope to tie things together.

The two most successful teams maxed out their towers to the 4 m ceiling using tripod-based designs with a spire on top. One other got very close with a spire like a knight's jousting post on top of a 3 very solid base rings of compacted newspaper. Guess which one I was ;)

Epic Fail Bus
Well 'twas begging to have little more than the chance of a wee snowball in the fires and brimstone of hell. A little context and story:

• Driver tries to start bus on slight slope at Wombaroo. Driver fails a couple of dozen times, including rolling backwards several meters (luckily no one was back there).
• Driver finally succeeds in starting the engine for more than 15 seconds, gets the bus up the incline. This is over 30 minutes after we should have left!
• Bus breaks down at least twice on the freeway (I dozed off so it may have been more).
• Driver decides to continue following M5 into the longest and most congested tunnel in Sydney (and possibly still the world), despite his engine trouble.
• Driver continues in the right hand lane, starts off well on the tunnel descent.
• ...
• *Kffppppphh*...*splutter*...*cough*...*bang*...and we're coasting to a stop.
• ...
• Driver attempts a restart a good dozen times before giving up.
• Realisation of being (semi) trapped inside a bus inside a 4 km tunnel with hundreds of cars passing very close sets in for some team members. I feel for their claustrophia.
• Some 15-20 mins in, a redirecting sign truck arrives behind us.
• To great applause, 52 minutes in, we greet the tow truck...
• Only to wait another half hour to be fully towed out!
• And another 20 minutes trapped inside on the side of Marsh Street, or thereabouts. But at least with fresh air through the top air vents...some compared it to being reborn or other life changing experiences. Quite the saga.

Clearly the cases of:

• the forgotten sleeping bag (yes someone slept the entire night before discovering their sleeping bag was actually right where it should have been), and 
• the 7 am fire alarm (don't go playing with circuit breakers at 4am, you don't know when the cabin battery power will run out)

were awarded camp's "Biggest fail" far too soon. Everyone scored a trophy - the limited edition purple cake camp shirt.

In summary:

"The cake was awesome."

LaTeX3.1415926 on Win7x64 = pain, on Ubuntu 10.10 = pleasure

I can't be bothered ranting...title said it all. I wasted a good 2-3 hours setting stuff up on Windows (and didn't get there), it was like 2 commands on Ubuntu Linux Maverick Meerkat (10.10). Those two commands were discovered by typing the commands found at:
http://www.ringlord.com/publications/latex-pdf-howto/

Basically typing latex and thumbpdf, and following the Ubuntu command prompt instructions. Kind of felt like xkcd's python:
http://www.xkcd.com/353/
import antigravity

<3 Ubuntu + LaTeX, especially awesome for all the math-oriented stuff. Donald Knuth's years of toiling were not in vain!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX#History

Google and social, go together?

So here's one experience I've just had - and an insight into why it's sometimes said Google doesn't get social.

Social is about conversation and interaction - here's something I can do for you, would you mind doing this for me?


So here's why - the first comment on this blog, 3 months ago. Discovered by me just because I decided to go back and see what I was writing on this humble weblog, see what I was thinking.

Now Blogger has the option to turn on comment notification email. But if I'm not Engadget, Gizmodo, Dvorak, i.e. someone or something that can afford a real hosting / blogging / content management solution, this is the kind of thing I'd like to know about!

Basically this "Comment Notification Email" box, buried at the bottom of Settings > Comments, should have had the email address I signed up with. It's not spam if its a real person behind the scenes (and the link that's not a link and contains the Session ID and a blog behind it is a clear example of that =). And it's easy enough to link back to these settings in such an email so if the user decides it is spam - they have the option to turn it off.

Google - time to listen to dear leader turned advisor and think a little less engineering and a little more social. We'll like you more for it, promise!

First house move, memories and moving on to future opportunities

Moving house for the first time in 22 years takes a phenomenal amount of time.

Time to clean, to prepare, to pack, to decide what to take, to decide what to box and put in storage, to decide what is important and what is junk. Sorting, sharing, helping the rest of the family, cleaning, washing, bubble-wrapping, padding, taping, vacuuming, clearing out.
And then more on the other side unpacking...

Unwiring the sprawling Cat5/Cat6/TV/phone/power mess with its tentacles reaching into nearly every room of the sprawling multi-story six bedroom mansion.

Finding old school projects and taking photos because there's no way you can keep them. Clearing the areas where life, water, and wildlife (possums were adventurous - one once poked its head through a hole in my wall and stared at me, at least before I taped over it).

Yes 'twas a grand old house, but one which really is reaching the end of its life. The brick fireplace roof flew off in strong winds last year so it's just a column up to open sky. The roof is still mostly covered in aging wooden shingles where the possums haven't knocked them off, and leaks in many places. Mosses and fungi are starting to invade sections of walls. Lichen grows on the fireplace bricks, especially in the cracks over the old cement. Some of the glass has been broken and taped over as a quick fix to keep the elements more outside than in.

Still much is habitable and the house still feels solid, even when it's hailing and pouring with rain. The downstairs is generally far more pleasant, especially in the hot summers when hot air escapes leaving the downstairs areas cool. It has a charm, an air about it, though perhaps that's just 22 years of memories staring back at me.


In any case, on to the future, apartment living and continuing study for this year at least. Let the good times roll, being closer to a new university in a new suburb, being close to good buses and trains, meeting new people and just keeping up with the continuous learning, the wave often likened to a tsunami, or the tide itself rising up - the ever-growing ocean of  the sum of human data, information, knowledge and wisdom on the internet.