Stephen's Den

So, we got the goods and it was all very exciting, just like Christmas. Then…

Aaaaaaaarrrrggh!
The graphics cooling down thingy didn’t work. It was the wrong make. Good waste of $30 (but it was so pretty). Before we had any bright ideas, we tried wedging the graphics card fan under the graphics card with a few chopsticks (I shit you not). Needless to say, that didn’t work.

To top it all off, the stupid thing still overheated even with the new PSU. We were going to need to cool down the CPU…

So, we ordered even more hardware and waited a week for it to arrive.
Continue reading Cooldown 2

Well, at work we received a present from Dean Maguire. A master chief action figure. There’s not much more to say, really, except that Pikachu didn’t stand much chance against a guy in body-armour.

I should point out that that the idea of Pikachu getting sodomised by a master chief action figure was that of Dean Heard’s!

In other news, I made Pikachu’s glasses with a paper clip, cute eh?

For a few months there, I had comments turned off because the comments kept filling up with spam about gambling, porno and drugs.

So, I hacked my wordpress installation. Now you have to check a checkbox, declaring yourself to not be a robot or you will get a rude message rather than successfully posting a comment.

On the plus side, I learnt about a whole bunch of new drugs:

Phentermine

Triggers neurotransmitters in the brain in an attempt to suppress hunger. Essentially gets you pumped up on adrenaline so you don’t feel hungry.

Cialis

Helps give you an erection, but it may make you blind…

Adipex

Another hunger depressant. However, this one shouldn’t be taken while agitated.

Propecia

Helps fight baldness but may give you man-breasts. Sweet!

Use only as directed and if symptoms persist, see a doctor.

It all started with a break-in. Our little flat was broken into and the bastards stole both of our laptops, the playstation and a few games. I suppose it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise to us considering that we live very near to Glen Innes. Continue reading Cooldown

Cécile from Beca had her birthday recently. I took the opportunity to chronical the steps required to ice a cake in fondant.

Requirements:

• Cake
• Cake leveller
• Icing sugar
• Butter & Milk
• Fondant
• Fondant applicator

Continue reading Cécile’s Birthday cake

So, for many reasons I quit my job at Cecil and started working for Beca.

It turns out that developers are the same, no matter where you go. They all have the same purile sense of humour and similar approach to things. This is strangely comforting.

On the right is my development team leader Dean Heard. He took an instant liking to my Pikachu hammer.

In this image he’s approaching an “unsupecting” Richard Adlard (another senior developer) with the hammer behind his back. Reminicient of Tom & Jerry, wouldn’t you think? I wonder which one is Tom 😉
Continue reading Starting at Beca

I have a keen interest in Artificial Intelligence. Mainly because if it can be achieved it poses interesting philosopical questions. Unfortunately I have neither been trained in AI or Neurology, so it’s pretty much like trying to read a language you’ve only ever heard.

That said, I do, however, believe the following:

1. AI is possible in my lifetime
2. It is only possible through a bottom-up approach
3. Neural Networks will have to be understood and mastered in order to achieve this
4. Current Artificial Neural Networks fall short in a number of ways

Continue reading Neural Networks

She said yes, apparently. 😉 Sarah & I made this wedding cake for our dear friends Andrew & Sally:

It’s 3 layers of solid chocolate mud cake. Covered in layers of chocolate icing. The chocolate decorations are moulding chocolate piped in a zig-zag pattern, then stuck to the sides with more chocolate. It feeds over 100 people and there was plenty to spare after the wedding.

Click more for the recipe Continue reading Andrew & Sally Eberhard’s wedding cake

I have seen a number of different drivers for development endeavours:. Data driven, model driven and user interface driven. I believe that for the purposes of end user development, the interface driven development method is most appropriate. In fact, I think it is the most appropriate not only for end users but for the average application programmer as well.
Continue reading What drives development?

This is a common analogy to building software, I thought I would use it to draw a distinction between programmers, software architects, user interface designers and graphic designers.

These four groups of people represent four distinct skill sets. Let’s see how they do building a house.
Continue reading Building Houses