Archive for August, 2007
August 24, 2007 at 11:18 am · Filed under F1
I won’t be blogging over the next couple of weeks, in fact I’m planning not to go near any computers at all.
So as I won’t be able to give a post-race report on the Turkish Grand Prix, I’ll do some pre-race predictions instead.
I think Ferrari will be dominant this weekend. The circuit suits their cars and I’m sure they haven’t been idle for the past three weeks. Maclaren will give them a run for their money but I don’t think they’ll have the pace to get the win.
Alonso and Hamilton had “peace talks” yesterday and seem to have kissed and made up. I don’t expect them to be holding hands all weekend but hopefully the dirty tricks are behind them.
Silly season has arrived so I’m expecting lots of rumours this weekend. BMW have already confirmed their line-up for next year and I don’t expect Ferrari or Maclaren to change drivers, unless Alonso decides to bail. The biggest uncertainty is Renault, where neither driver has been particularly inspiring this season. I’m expecting at least one of them to be replaced, possibly both. Toyota is the other team I expect changes from. Yarno is already confirmed for 2008 but I’m guessing Ralf will be gone. I’ve also heard rumours of Sato possibly going to one of the Toyota teams.
I’m looking forward to a good race, I just hope I get time to watch it before we leave…
Tangential Update: Jacques Villeneuve has announced he’s going to Nascar. I hope they’re paying him plenty to make him stoop that low.
August 22, 2007 at 11:42 am · Filed under Geeky
There are certain things in computer programming that some people do right, and some people do lazily. There have been times where I’ve taken the lazy option, but those are very rare, and when they do happen they don’t affect the user experience.
The worst kind of laziness is the kind that the person using the software can immediately notice, and nothing is more noticeable than bad grammar. A computer program doesn’t understand spoken language grammar, but the person writing the code should.
The classic example of this shoddiness is when an email program tells you:
You have 1 new messages.
It’s uncomfortable to read, and it’s completely un-necessary. Some programmers might take the next level of laziness as acceptable and show you:
You have 1 new message(s).
OK, it’s better, but it’s still up to the reader to decide if the s in brackets is needed to make the sentence work. It’s still incredibly lazy, because the code required to make it perfect is so trivial:
print(”You have “+msgs+”new message”+ (msgs == 1 ? “.” : “s.”));
So now, if the user has 1 message, there will be no s, otherwise message will be pluralized. A simple piece of extra code has given the end result the polish it deserves. You could even take this example a stage further by converting ‘1′ into ‘one’. The code for that isn’t so trivial but it would be a nice touch.
The example that made me write this post is a little different. I’m currently addicted to the Traveler IQ Facebook application, which reports in my news-feed when I improve my traveler IQ. The latest report says:
Mark now has a Oceania/Australasia Traveler IQ of 91.
Ignoring the fact that my southern hemisphere geography seems to suck, it’s a sloppy sentence. I can’t read it out loud, or even in my head, without cringing slightly, and it’s another trivial piece of code to make it right:
print(name+” now has a” + (substr(challenge,1,1) in (’A',’E',’I',’O',’U',’H') ? “n ” : ” “) + challenge + ” of ” + score + “.”);
(Note I’m using pseudo-code in these examples, but most languages have similar constructs.)
So if you’re writing programs which output information to the user in plain English, please take a moment to consider if that plain English will be correct for all possible values of your variables. It doesn’t take long, and your end product will look more professional.
August 20, 2007 at 11:05 am · Filed under Family+Friends
My brother-in-law, his wife and two kids arrived on Friday evening to spend the week here in Montreal before we all drive to Prince Edward Island next weekend. This arrival was a bit of a shock for Aidan, who has never had to deal with a rambunctious three year old before. There were tears and pouty faces but overall the encounter went well.
We went out for breakfast on Saturday morning, followed by a trip to the park which made all the kids very happy, including the grown-up ones. Simon and Aidan played well together on the climbing frame, slide and swings and their were no tears or injuries.
I spent the rest of Saturday cooking. I’d planned to make braised short ribs, but the butcher was all out of short ribs so we ended up with a joint of beef, braised in red wine, tomatoes and herbs until it literally fell apart with some gentle pressure from my knife. I served the beef on garlic mashed potato with roasted asparagus and braised leeks. I made a gremolata too but forgot to use it.
Yesterday we all went to see the great-grandmother, a rare gathering of all four generations which made great granny very happy.
The invaders left for the country for a couple of days after that, giving Aidan a chance to get his whelmed status a bit lower before they return on Tuesday.
August 14, 2007 at 8:49 am · Filed under Montreal
As I was leaving work last night, my bike suffered a malfunction, causing the back wheel to become wedged against the frame. With no tools, and faced with carrying my bike home, I decided to call Jen and ask her to come pick me up. Thankfully she obliged and I met her at Elgin Place apartments on Doctor Penfield and Peel. I threw the bike in the back, jumped in the car and we went home.
It wasn’t until this morning that I realised I’d left my backpack sitting outside Elgin Place apartments. My backpack with my two bike locks in it. My backpack with my ipod and a camera in it. Fuck.
I walked back there this morning, but the backpack was nowhere to be seen and the doorman hadn’t had anything handed in. I stuck a sign up but I don’t hold out much hope.
So, if anyone happened to find a green backpack last night, I’d love to have it back. If the contents are intact I’ll even give you a reward.
August 13, 2007 at 9:47 am · Filed under Montreal, Music
Last night I accompanied my betrothed to the Crowded House concert at Theatre St Denis. I’m not a huge Crowded House fan, but she is, so I just went along to keep her company. It was a crowded house, apart from a few empty seats in the front row which almost caused a stampede when Neil Finn suggested people should fill them.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. There were two other acts before Neil and his band took the stage. First up was Liam Finn, Neil’s son, who did a quick set of three songs on his own, singing, playing guitar, going crazy on the drums, and waving his wa-wa joystick about. It was innovative, creative, and slightly manic.
Second on stage was Pete Yorn, who started on his own with an acoustic number before bringing the rest of his band on for a fun set, in which he played the drums as his drummer had been “detained at the border”. The songs were upbeat and foot-tappingly good, and rounded off nicely by a rendition of Elvis’ Suspicious Minds.
Finally Crowded House came on stage to a standing ovation and launched straight into a couple of their hit songs, before settling back for a few less well known (to me anyway) numbers. In the breaks between songs the band joked with each other and with the audience, about lederhosen and Avant Garde underwear, breakfast in the John and Yoko suite, empty front row seats and whether or not they’d been to Montreal before.
Towards the end of the set they got the crowd on their feet before two encores, finishing the evening with an audience sing-a-long of Take the Weather With You.
I’m always very cynical about concert encores, especially when the band are so obviously guaranteed to be coming back, whatever the audience does. It’s even more obvious when the roadies bring on new pieces of set after the band have “said goodnight”. But the encores got the crowd going, and the concert finished very nicely with a group bow from the band before they all ran to the front of the stage to shake hands with the front row of the audience and Nick Seymour made comments to audience members further back.
So, despite not being a big fan, I enjoyed the concert. We had good seats, about 13 rows back with a clear view, despite the 6′ tall guy who sat in front of me at one point before switching places with his shorter friend. It’s always a pleasure to see a band obviously having fun and making an effort to interact with the audience, and the music was pretty good too.
August 6, 2007 at 9:29 am · Filed under F1
I’ve never been interested in Nascar, primarily because most Nascar races happen on ovals, and oval racing is just incredibly dull. There is also the fact that I’m a Formula One fan, and everyone knows you can’t be a true F1 fan and like Nascar too (call it F1 snobbery if you like).
So when Nascar came to Montreal at the weekend I was in two minds, but decided to give it a go as it was taking place on the Gilles Villeneuve circuit. Even Nascar can be interesting on a circuit like that, right? Well no, not really.
TSN, a broadcaster who grudgingly gives us a two hour slot for a Formula One race, sometimes not even live, dedicated seven hours of live TV to the Nascar race. Yes, seven hours! To make matters worse, nothing happened for the first four hours. What was that about?
We had the most boring qualifying procedure I’ve ever seen (and that’s saying something considering some of the dreary qualifying formats the FIA have experimented with) followed by an hour of analysis of why someone’s car broke down and an interview with a driver about his dislocated thumb. This lack of anything happening, coupled with the American commentator’s nasty habit of telling us the race was on “Circuit Jill Villnoove on ill note-rah dayme” almost made me switch off, but I perservered.
Finally the race started, now things would get exciting wouldn’t they? Wrong again. What is so exciting about these crappy little cars? My MG went almost as fast as they do and it was certainly more agile. They lumbered around the track, occasionally bumping into each other in a half-hearted fashion for two hours while the commentators tried to find something interesting to talk about.
Needless to say, I won’t be watching Nascar again. The Volkswagen Beetle challenge and the Ferrari challenge races that happen before the Canadian F1 Grand Prix were more exciting than what I sat through on Saturday.
