Joke's on me

If there was one thing I absolutely despised during my undergrad career, it was stats. I didn't find it interesting, it was always taught in a very uninspiring way, and I found the definitions of a lot of concepts unsatisfyingly imprecise. So I kinda just muddled through it, crammed for the exams, got ok marks, but never really learned the material (yet more proof that it is entirely possible to get good marks and not learn anything).

Anyway, it turns out the joke's on me, because working with large systems and quantities of data at Google it turns out that statistics are actually kinda useful. Who knew?

June 06, 2008 (link)

Vala

I am pretty excited about the new Vala stuff going on in GNOME. It sounds like exactly what I wanted a few years ago. You get to write code in a high-level language, you don't have to muck with tons of boilerplate macros, and it all gets compiled down to C so that bindings can be created for other languages and you don't need a VM. Plus you can use existing GObjects, written in C, from the high-level language as well. So all the utility classes like hash tables, lists, etc. in GObject are there.

I definitely have to try this out soon.

June 19, 2008 (link)

Espresso Tour

As you may know, I am a fan of espresso. Now becoming truly fascinated with any topic, studying and sampling it, and learning the facets in detail, can be both exhilarating and depressing at the same time. Why? Well, the more you learn, the better you know how much crap is out there. It's the same with software. The more you know, the more you realize that everything is shit and a properly-implemented piece of code is a real gem.

Anyway, I have had a passion for things caffeinated for over 12 years now. It started with Jolt Cola but has since become more refined into the world of espresso. My journey there started with a simple Krups machine given to me by my parents for Christmas one year. I used that machine daily throughout high school, and took it with me to college. It also accompanied me on co-op terms to Oxford, UK, Montréal, QC and Palo Alto, CA. It was enough to quench my thirst for caffeine but was not really enough to make a truly great espresso.

I am often asked why I like espresso so much. Isn't it bitter? Doesn't it taste burnt? Man you must be soooo addicted to caffeine to be able to drink that crap! All of these questions completely miss the fact that that a good espresso doesn't taste bitter, or burnt, or require a serious substance addiction to enjoy. The problem is that almost all of the espresso you encounter on a daily basis (at least in North America) is complete and utter crap. That's why they dress it up with loads of whole milk, whipped cream, chocolate and caramel. To hide the fact that they can't make a real espresso worth shit. Now of course if whole milk, whipped cream, chocolate or caramel (or all of the above) are your thing, then I won't stop you from savouring your triple caramel macchiato (or whatever) at Starbucks (or Second Cup, si tu viens du Canada).

However, my current passion is good espresso. And to that end, I recently did an espresso tour of sorts in New York with my friend Shirin. It's a big city. With lots of people. There must be some good espresso somewhere, right?

For your reading pleasure, the results:

El Biet. Order: 1 skinny cap, 1 skinny latte.
Foam: decent. Latte art: average.
Espresso: disappointing; bitter aftertaste.

Joe. Order: 1 skinny cap, 1 skinny latte.
Foam: disappointing, large bubbles.
Latte art: average.
Espresso: weak, lacking body.

Cafe Grumpy. Order: 1 skinny cap, 1 skinny latte.
Foam: too bubbly.
Latte art: good.
Espresso: the cap tasted downright burnt, latte was ok.

Gimme Coffee (Manhattan). Order: 1 skinny cap, 1 skinny latte, 1 espresso.
Foam: excellent, smooth and consistent.
Latte art: good.
Espresso: delicious.

Gorilla Coffee. Order: 1 skinny cap, 1 skinny latte.
Foam: too thick and airy.
Latte art: none.
Espresso: cap was weak, latte was decent.

Root Hill. Order: 1 skinny cap, 1 skinny latte.
Foam: spooned, not poured. Need I say more?
Latte art: none.
Espresso: burnt.

9th Street Espresso (9th street). Order: 1 skinny cap, 1 skinny latte.
Foam: excellent.
Latte art: very good.
Espresso: delicious.
Also bonus: they had delicious cookies that were like large oreos that we termed "ginoreos".

And the winner is: Toss up between Gimme and 9th Street for me.

Clear loser: Root Hill.

Other notes: On other occasions, I have also visited the Brooklyn (Williamsburg) Gimme and find it to be equal in quality to the Manhattan one. The Manhattan one has no seats, which is a bit of a bummer. I've also been to the 9th Street Espresso in Chelsea Market and don't find it nearly as good as the one that's actually on 9th Street. The foam isn't as good IMO.

June 21, 2008 (link)

0 for 2

Upgraded my second machine to Hardy. This one is my laptop. It had some interesting issues too. On first boot, kinda failed to start X but then started in VESA mode only to tell me that since I didn't have displayconfig-gtk installed I couldn't configure X. Brilliant! Why wasn't it installed then?

So then I dropped in to a terminal, installed the silly config program, as well as linux-restricted-modules since I knew from experience that wouldn't get upgraded automatically. Reboot. X config thingy kinda works. Except X is ridiculously, unbelievably slow. No DRI for me. And something seems intent on changing the /etc/X11/corg.conf symlink to point to a file for radeon instead of fglrx. My solution was to make xorg.conf a concrete file instead of a symlink and set the immutable attribute.

One problem down, but still no DRI. Turns out, after some Googling, that the solution to this is:

mkdir -p .config/xserver-xgl
touch !$/disable

Yeah, that was obvious. I know I am asking for trouble by using fglrx but there are other major issues not related to that. Like not installing a configuration utility that the system seems to depend on and having some process that re-writes xorg.conf willy nilly.

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Next: July 2008