When I go to Vegas, I should stay here
The Artisan hotel has rooms with pool tables for a mere $499 US a night. Sounds like fun. Expensive fun. Via Seth Godin.
On customer support
"Please hold -- you're, like, an awesome customer, which is why we're going to play the Casio Keyboard version of Disco Inferno at you for the entire duration of your call. Please hold". Don't let Rory Blyth's slipping sanity distract you from his awesome sense of humour...
Sudanese man forced to marry goat
A Sudanese man was recently forced to marry a goat after being caught having sex with it. What I want to know is how they knew it was real man-goat love, not just a fling. Wont someone think of the children?
In the US you an pack meat in carbon monoxide to keep it red longer?
Apparently you can pack meat in carbon monoxide gas if you're a supermarket in the US and want the meat to be red longer. Ewwww.
Slight update to Chapter 7 images
Thanks to John N. Rayner for pointing out that figure 7-41 wasn't online. It turns out this is because the script that I wrote to convert the images refused to convert that figure for me because it was compressed with an algorithm that ImageMagick doesn't support for legal reasons. That compression was used because the publishing team tweaked that image at some point, and I simply didn't notice. The problem has now been corrected, and I apologise for any inconvenience.
MySQL user’s conference
Ok, Arjen, enough with the conference announcements... I'll talk to my boss tomorrow about coming along. The conference is after all only about a 20 minute drive from my new apartment. It might even help to know some more about MySQL.
US Hi 5
So, we're in America and one of the kid's favourite shows comes on. Hi 5. Except it's not the Australian version -- it's full of five US people. It's strange because the opening sequence is the same as the Australian version (which implies to me that the Australian show might have been licensed over here) and the format seems to be the same, just the actors all have American accents.
Let’s talk about Myth baby, let’s talk about you and me
With apologies to everyone who is reminded of the Salt and Pepa song this title was inspired by, although it's damn hard to find lyric sites which don't do evil things like redirecting you to a page you can't escape from with the back button, or pop up ads. How mid-nineties! Since I moved to the US, I've been using MythTV instead of my previous TiVo setup, and I am mighty happy. I thought that perhaps I should write some of that experience up, so here we go... Let's start my talking about the TV capture card I picked. I purchased a Hauppauge WinTV PVR 350 Personal Video Recorder from Amazon for a little over $100 US. I picked this card because of the hardware MPEG encoder, the hardware decoder, and the remote control. Perhaps in hindsight I should have gone for the WinTV 500, which has two tuners for simultaneous recording but no remote, but I don't generally need to record more than one thing at once -- especially given how often things are repeated over here. I can't find a link to the WinTV 500 at the moment, but here is one to the WinTV PVR 500 media…
Kinderplex
The kids are the in the Kinderplex today (the Google-only child care center). It's the first time I've dropped Matthew off for care and he hasn't gone ape -- I think it's because he loved the center so much... There are computers in every room, and it's probably the nicest laid out and supplied child care center I have ever seen. It makes me wonder if I should be sending Andrew there next year for pre-school.
Sitting in the California DMV office
I'm sitting in the California DMV office in Los Gatos -- I've just passed my California drivers test, which means I am licensed here. I am waiting for Catherine to do her test, and then we will see if she is licensed too. I have a couple of observations on the testing here though: It's a lot easier than I remember it being in Australia The driving test is only 15 minutes long, including a bunch of stuff where the car isn't moving They drive a fixed route which doesn't vary between tests No reverse parking (that you Lord)! In summary, the test wasn't all that hard, and I am now licensed to drive in two difference countries.