Harry Potter, Software Engineer

I realized something last night. Harry Potter knows Python! For that matter, so does Voldemort, and Salazar Slytherin.

Mixed company, at best, but still. Who knew we had such famous companionship in the industry?

Also, this is my 100th post on this blog. Woo-hoo.

Ironic error

I just saw this H&R block ad on a forum I frequent:

Awfully ironic that there's an error in an ad about finding errors.

Feeling good

I was talking to a friend the other day, giving some general relationship advice. At the end of it, she said:

[Yellow], that was the perfect thing to say.

Can I just say how awesome that made me feel? Million bucks, right there.

Mega Man 9

Sometime during the first week of January, I bought Mega Man 9 for our Wii. Having grown up on the original Mega Man, this was a serious trip down nostalgia lane. The developers of MM9 intentionally made the game feel like the originals in the series, right down to the flickering sprites when you get hit.

I've been at the final Dr. Wily stage for probably 3-4 weeks now, but I had no E tanks (special items that refill your life.) I didn't want to go buy some, because I'd have to go through a lot of work to get back to where I was. So instead, I worked on perfecting my strategies and working with what I had.

Today I beat the game. I can't tell you how satisfying a game it was. It was great; everything I could have hoped for in the latest contribution to the Mega Man series. I didn't end up using the Magma Man weapon much, which seems odd, since it's one that gives you nearly unlimited usage. I may have to play with it some more. But overall... man, what a game. Best $8 I've spent in a long time.

Pet Peeves: The Back-Button loop

Have you ever browsed to a website, attempted to go back to your previous page, and found that you stay on the same page you're on? And then, when you look at the back history, it turns out you have to jump back four or five pages in order to get out? (See here for an example.)

Why do people do this? Is there some advertising revenue that they gain by trapping people on their website that don't want to be there? I suppose they get additional impressions on their ads, but trapping me on a website when I'm trying to leave is not going to make me more likely to visit your site in the future.

Surely they must think me a scholar

I got a letter in the mail the other day. In it, I found the following line:

Sweet! I get to spend the next 5 years... uh... being poor!

Guys, life is awesome.

I'm happy

It's interesting how you learn things about yourself simply by your own actions.

...

Okay, that sounds incredibly obvious and utterly cliché. I'll just cut to the story.

I crossed paths with an old friend this morning, one I haven't talked to in months. We didn't have time for an extended conversation, just a brief exchange as we passed. She asked me how I was doing; I responded "Still alive!" with a smile. She said "Good!" and the conversation was over. As I walked away, I realized that my response expressed a somewhat pessimistic outlook on life; it suggested that one would expect there to be a question as to whether I was surviving school.

That's not my outlook on life; I'm quite an optimistic person. My response came from a habit I've developed: when I ask someone how they're doing, they usually say "Fine." That's a boring response, so I often follow up with "Surviving?" or "Still alive?" That usually brings out a little more information about how life is going, etc., and makes the conversation more intersting. Since most people are, in fact, still alive, they give me a response about how they're doing better than what I had asked, and the conversation is a positive one.

But when I responsed "Still alive," I wasn't expressing my inner optimism. I wish I had responded "I'm happy," not because of any particular effect that it would have had on the other party, but because I want to be the kind of person that is actually happy.

Okay, enough of the sappy self-analysis. Happy January 8th, everybody!

Dear iTunes haters

Dear iTunes haters,

I understand if you don't like the software. That's fine. But just so you know, as of today there are 8 million DRM-free songs on iTunes, and by the end of the first quarter, they'll all be DRM-free. Straight from apple.com/itunes/whatsnew/:

High-quality, DRM-free music.
iTunes Plus is the new standard on iTunes.
Now, you can choose from millions of iTunes Plus songs from all four major music labels and thousands of independents. With iTunes Plus, you get high-quality, 256-Kbps AAC encoding. All free of burn limits and digital rights management (DRM). So iTunes Plus music will play on iPod, Apple TV, all Mac and Windows computers, and many other digital music players. It’s also easy to upgrade your iTunes library to iTunes Plus. You don’t have to buy the song or album again. Just pay the 30¢ per song upgrade price. (Music video upgrades are 60¢ and entire albums can be upgraded for 30 percent of the album price.)

So. No more complaining. And in case you're wondering about that funny "AAC" encoding, here's what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at many bit rates. AAC has been standardized by ISO and IEC, as part of the MPEG-2 & MPEG-4 specifications

And here's a list from Wikipedia of common portable media players that support AAC:

• Apple iPod/iPhone
• Creative Zen Portable
• Microsoft Zune
• SanDisk Sansa
• Sony PlayStation Portable (PSP) with firmware 2.0 or greater
• Sony Walkman
• SonyEricsson Walkman Phones-W series, e.g. W890i
• Nintendo DSi (To be released in America mid-2009)
• Slacker G2 Personal Radio Player

So. No more complaining, you hear? I want none of it.

Just so you know, I have no problem with people buying music from other legal sources, such as Amazon.com. There are plenty of reasons to do so. But DRM-free-ness is no longer one of them. I find the iTunes store to be very conveninent, and I'll continue using it myself. You're free to do as you will.