Slept, ate, read SF short stories, sat in the bath reading SF short stories, played Mario Kart a bit, read about OOP patterns and refactoring techniques, did a lot of thinking, partially de-crufted Hippo’s underbelly, failed to add any visible new features to Hippo, failed to see The Return of The King, watched lots of ‘The Two Towers Very Big Edition’ on DVD, listened to lots of bhangra, Juno Reactor, Pink Floyd and Clannad, and tried not to worry about the cliff I’m about to plunge over. And a few other things.

All made immeasurably nicer by the presence of A., who is always the best thing about time at home over the Yule break.

Long ago I read that in the Far East, people refer to “the rabbit in the moon”, not “the man in the moon”. Ever since then I’ve tried to see the rabbit, and eventually I thought I’d worked it out.

I was wrong - my rabbit was facing the wrong way, at least when compared the the Japanese rabbit, who is busy making mochi. Mmm, mochi.

Link: The Rice Cake Making Rabbit In The Moon

One of the best things about Christmas: The Perl Advent Calendar. Well, for me at least. Sainsbury’s had some Lord of The Rings advent calendars, which just seemed too weird. Camels are, after all, Christmassy.

Link: The Perl Advent Calendar

Ironic timing for this article, via Slashdot…

The author believes that a plague of systems adminstators is crippling business, and software development in particular. I’ve seen this happen (from a distance) so I can’t deny it, but I’ve also seen it go the other way too - in my opinion the greatest threat to an organisation’s data security is a project manager with a deadline: “Just open the firewall for it!”

The article is a mix of reasonable points badly presented, and plain whining, but the comments following it address that just fine, so I won’t bother. I did find this part particularly spot-on, though:

Firstly, the true cost of administration must be accounted for when totalling up the cost of any project. Administration dead-time is a significant and growing aspect of all projects I have witnessed in the past 5 years. Dead-time waiting for software to arrive, files to be undeleted, versions to be mandated: it all needs to be added up and made explicit.

The curse of systems administration is that only the bad sysadmins and the absent sysadmins are visible. A good sysadmin fades into the background, sadly.

Link: Role Fragmentation

(Article starts with an unpleasant picture of an unfortunate donkey)

… I’d feel more sympathy when KKK people shoot each other. Must try harder.

Link: Participant at KKK initiation wounded after shots fired into sky

Japanese art depicting Go, a marvelous game. It’s about time I posted my Go bookmarks, but tonight I’m too lazy.

Link: Japanese Prints and the World of Go

(Link found on Metafilter)

Well, OK, just one then. Chinese terms for Go, which originated in China. I used to play Go (Wei Qi) at lunch, then I changed to learning Chinese instead. Now I can try to do both :-)

Link: Chinese Go Terms

A page that at first glance is full of “stupid” comments by web designer’s clients. While many of the quotes deserve laughter, I think that some of them actually show a lot more about the designer’s ignorance, rather than the client’s:

• “our web site doesn’t load if I turn javascript off … please fix this”
• “well I dont like pages who has loading when u get to the website, I dont want’ to haft to wait”

(Spelling from the designers, I suspect)

I must admit that a page from my late-90s website took so long to render on a 200Mhz Mac, you could probably go off and make a cup of tea in the meantime, as I was relying on some extraordinary table-layout-abuse. Sorry.

Link: Client Quotes (Also via Metafilter)

Some of the “fashionable anti-Americanism” that various ministers keep mentioning:

Just for the record, I’m not anti-American (I can prove that quite convincingly, believe me), I’ve never liked Saddam (unlike Mr. Blair), and I’ve not been paid to complain (where can I hire these famous rent-a-protestors? Is there an online shop?).

Up-to-the-minute info is here: Chasing Bush

Nurses discuss what really makes them feel queasy.

Reading this can put things into perspective, give an insight into the unpleasant side of life and a greater appreciation of medical workers.

It will also put you off your food for a while.

Link: What freaks you out?