Take Two

All these years I thought I could not stand Gin. Not so any more. It turns out it’s actually the Tonic water that so violently disagree with me. Gin, a twist of lime, and lemonade or coke is really quite enjoyable. Who would’ve thunk it?

Dean and I went to see Avenue Q last night, having heard rave reviews about it. Plus, he found some cheap tickets, which turned out to be really good. There was only one problem: we both hated the show. So much, in fact, that we left at the intermission and didn’t bother going back for the second part. It was just too dull to waste another hour of our lives on.

It wasn’t the fault of the actors. (Not all of them, at least.) In particular, Mark Goldthorp animated his characters with great skill. And Rebecca Lock, the leading monster, did a hell of a job on the singing front. But skilful actors is not enough; it has to be entertaining too, and this one was not. It was just full of platitudes.

This came as a bit of a surprise. We seemed to be the only ones in the audience not enjoying the show. And it came with recommendations from people that we thought of as friends that have (allegedly) been to see it several times. Now we need to re-assess these friendships: real friends wouldn’t trick friends into viewing Avenue Q.

The pulled-pork sandwich I had afterwards lifted the evening somewhat.

Today is the first day, since I started in a new job at the beginning of January, that I’ve forgotten to shave before going to work in the morning. I remembered as I was walking to the bus, but didn’t have time to go back and do it. When I got in there was no fanfare. Nor any telling off. (Nobody even seemed to notice. Not that I’m bitter or anything. Oh no.) Nevertheless it somehow seems important. As if the honeymoon is over. The new car smell is gone.

I’m sure it wasn’t so fun for his neighbours, whose houses allegedly were at risk from his excavations, but I found this story of a man who spent 40 years digging a labyrinth under his house to be incredibly amusing. You’ve just got to applaud it.

People who appreciate beautiful art are said to have depth. People who put a lot of weight on beauty in a partner are regarded shallow. Discuss.

Dear Lazyweb,

Please buy my handmade Tanglewood acoustic guitar and metal Chess pieces. Thank you!

Want to join me seeing Paradise Lost at the Islington Academy this evening at 19:00? I have a spare ticket to give away. Send me an email at stig@brautaset.org with your name and phone number if you’re interested. First come first serve.

Will comments on a story in the Manchester Evening News about a lottery that has been scratched because a lot of people get confused about which number is lower: -6 or -7.

I’m in two minds about the “news”. My immediate reaction was to find it hilarious. It proves rule #1: people are stupid. But then I started to think. Nobody could really be that stupid, could they? I can’t help feeling that the story must be fabricated. Maybe it was a slow news day, so the paper cut a few corners. Or could it be that people are so eager to be in the limelight that they’re willing to come off as complete idiots to get their 15 minutes of fame?

My second reaction is depression, and a deep sadness about the state of education in UK. I knew it was bad, but it was news to me that the level of reading and numeracy is so poor here that a significant portion of grown-ups can’t even read a thermometer.

I’ve started a new blog, Hot Chocolate, where I’ll be posting on Cocoa development. Check it out.

I’ve released a new version of Desdemona, my Reversi game. From the release note:

Fixed a nasty bug in the AI which could lead it to make strange (and terrible) moves near the end of the game. Also fixed an error in the search optimisation code that caused the AI to perform much weaker than it should be.

Given the latter fix I also took the opportunity to overhaul the difficulty levels. There was too little difference between them. The same range of levels from 1-10 is available, but they now represent a wider range of ability in the AI.

Difficulty level 1 is about the same as it was before. However, at level 10 it will now take about 22 seconds to search for a move, up from about 10 seconds previously. (Because of the bugfixes, however, the prior version would have to use about 5 minutes or more to perform as well!)