Ralph Fiennes delivering that line sounds like it'll give me chills, but I hope Daniel Radcliffe delivering that line doesn't end up being another cheesy movie thing.

I'm finding an interesting application of operating systems to coding and debugging my little robot -- tentatively named HAL 0.

I found a great site for baking recipes, http://joyofbaking.com/, and I've been putting their recipes to good use - at least I think it's been good. So far, I've tried their biscuits and scones. I seem to have managed to not take pictures of the scones, so I'll just have to make more this weekend. But for now, biscuits!

From Randomness

From Randomness

The main trick to making biscuits is using really cold butter and not over mixing or over kneading the dough. In fact, my biggest baking tip is to bake with cold butter. If you microwave the butter or use margarine, then you've completely killed the recipe and you're better off using a mix.

I think I just found my dream gadget. It's a little bit out of my price range, but it would shave off $80,000 dollars! That's the pitch I'd sell to anyone I'd try to convince to buy this, though I have sneaking suspicion that someone will be me.

It has a strange name, but who cares, this tool will apparently help you debug your c/c++ code! And after the all nighter I just pulled, I must say I wish I'd known about this before when I was diagnosing that stupid segfault (c++ shall be the death of me). Big plus: it will work on Mac OS X, but unfortunately it won't work on Windows. Will report back on how useful Valgrind actually is, since I apparently will be spending a lot of time with good old c++.

Inspiration comes in many forms. Today I took a little moment to watch this amazing video of JK Rowling:

J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo.

It's an interesting speech, with jokes sprinkled throughout, - "Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion" - on the benefits of failure. This being something that I've been tackling recently, it really struck a chord. My favorite quotes?

I know I'm way later than I should be, but at long last I'm learning all sorts of useful command line stuff. For instance, if you've ssh'ed to a machine and you're running ubuntu over a virtual machine, do you know how to shutdown? You type shutdown! I know, why didn't I think of that. It's actually:

sudo shutdown -h now

I was so pleased with Half Blood Prince that I'm dying to see the last two installments of the Harry Potter franchise. This was leaked about a month ago, but has now supposedly been officially released:


What are your thoughts? It's not much so far, and I suspect that there may be parts from both Deathly Hallows Parts 1 and 2 (otherwise there really isn't much left for part 2). It's quite exciting. The image of a horrified Hermione looking at bloody hands (perhaps from Ron splinching) is very eerie. Also, thanks to Pottercast, my sister and I are convinced that the eyes belong to Bill Nighy as Scrimgeour (he has the exact same expression in Pirates of the Caribbean 3). Splitting the book into 2 movies may end up being not just a financially smart decision after all.

Another exciting tidbit is that Miranda Richardson will reprise her role as Rita Skeeter. Now all we need is for John Williams to confirm that he's back as composer and I can safely say we're in for a treat.

I wanted to make a short little note on my Gaucho's experience. A week or so ago, some friends and I made an impromptu decision to dine at Gaucho's Grill. This, unfortunately, was not an entirely satisfactory decision. While I have no complaints about the food (their Ye Ole Fish Sandwich, a fillet of snapper sandwich), the service left something to desire. There is no exageration in saying that we were first ignored before being seated, then we waited at least 5 minutes before demanding menus, and then after that waited a good half hour before being moved to another table. After another 20 minutes, our orders were finally taken and we were finally given some glasses of water. Needless to say, they were not tipped.

Now then, this rant is more a message for the management. You have a couple of options. You can (1) hire more waiters/waitresses, because when we first arrived there were none in sight, and we were told by the hostess that the reason for our interminable wait was that the waitresses were busy bringing out food for other tables. You could also (2) reduce the number of tables, since clearly you cannot handle the current capacity. It is unforgivable to have people waiting for an hour just to be served water and to give their orders. You should also retrain your hostess, because I am really in no mood to hear any sad and sorry tales about having to serve other tables who got there first. You see without this, you'll lose customers, because as much as I enjoyed your food and your manageable prices, I'm in no mood to plan to have to wait an extra hour just to place my order.

That's all.

Edit: Though this post was started while in Japan, and much of it written in Japan, I didn’t finish it till recently so have decided to move the publishing date. Originally this was going to be in multiple posts, but I decided to put my 4 days in Tokyo in one post – a tall order, I know! Hope you stick through to the end, sorry this is so delayed, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed all the experiences. =)
Being the geeks that we are, our first order of business in Tokyo was Akihabara, home of the electronic flea market.

This place had everything electronic you could think of. Really, everything.

If I weren’t a starving grad student, I’d have gone to town here. And of course where you find nerds you’ll find anime and manga fans, so….