Jay McGavren's Journal

It's magic!

I wanted to look at my logs directory today, and before I knew it, the window was in front of me. After considering for a moment, I realized I had typed “open logs” (a shortcut I’d set up) into Enso without thinking.

This is the point I have been seeking to get to with computer interfaces, any computer interface, for years now. Humanized had to do a horrible, terrifying Windows hack to make it work, but they made it work.

Now, where are my LEAP keys?

OK, Campfire Headphase is getting old, and Trans Canada Highway was little more than a teaser. Where is the next Boards of Canada release?

I haven’t heard the loop on their discography page before - is that new? (Yes, I really do need a fix that bad.)

“researchers now say last-minute second thoughts come from a specific part of the brain.”

I remembered this article last night after taking advantage of Halo 3’s feature where you have 5 seconds to abort just after hitting the “start game” menu. Someone at Bungie is keeping up on their cognitive psychology.

(Actually this feature’s been around since Halo 2, which predates this particular study. But that feature wasn’t thrown in at random, and the study vindicates it.)

Finished Legendary on Saturday. Collected the last of the skulls last night.

I told Diana she has to let me sleep now.

Inside the black box...

Got an invite to a Google tech talk via the Java Users Group, and of course I was curious to see the inside of a Google office, so I went. Pretty swank, even though they’re just renting from ASU for now. Wii and XBox 360 on an HDTV (I didn’t play). Cafeteria area with containers labelled things like “vegetarian” and “low-cholesterol” (and no cash register).

For the event itself - catered hors d’oeuvres and beer, door prizes for half the people in the room, swag bags for everyone. (Diana and Lenny love their new flashing-LED Google pins.)

From Google’s perspective, it’s part of a recruitment effort, and I’m betting they’re happy with their results - a turnout of over 100 people. Some of these people had rather expensive degrees, too. I wound up talking shop with a guy from Lowell Observatory (astrophysics PhD). (I mentioned the tour we took earlier this year, and the guide who told us that Lowell has a program for deflecting Earth-bound asteroids (they don’t, he confirmed :) .)

Josh Bloch was the speaker, and he had some very scary Java pitfalls to share with us. At his recommendation, I made myself a note to research FindBugs (for the second time this year; I really need to get around to that).

Anyway, a fun evening all around. They’ll be getting Vint Cerf in January. I’ll definitely be there, for networking if not for the speaker.

I forgot to update a production crontab after last night’s installation, and the old version (which used a different release mechanism) ran instead of the current one - a potentially hazardous situation that fortunately worked out OK anyway. I got a slap on the wrist from my boss, though. I need to ensure the next release goes smoother, which means having a checklist of pitfalls, even the ones I’ve never encountered before.

I sought advice from a co-worker, which essentially amounted to “live and learn”. I sought advice from Code Complete, which offered no advice on releasing your highly-polished code. I need to check Release It! tonight, though I’m not sure how helpful that will be with a small-scale app like this.

It’s very frustrating. This stuff really needs to be automated, so I can just code.