The greatest music video in the world is The Perfect Kiss by New Order. There's no question about it. That's because I have absolute taste in music (as opposed to absolute pitch), and I'm telling you. Here's a YouTube link to it.
The video is revolutionary in an astonishingly simple way. In it the musicians actually play the song live in the studio, and that's it. Seeing the musicians actually playing, instead of pretending to play, as is usual in music videos, is really exciting and refreshing. They're really concentrating on the performance, and as they aren't actually virtuous players/singers, it's not obvious that they're going to make it through the song without major errors. But they do. And the few bum notes just make it more interesting, in my opinion.
The video is great also because it includes possibly the greatest bass player ever, Peter Hook, wearing a biker jacket and some kind of funny looking sweater pants, playing kick-ass bass. The main riff of the song is a high bass line. The line goes so high it must be played on a bass that has more frets than usual. Now that's kick-ass. And the bass part in the end of the song is just so... ass-kicky. (Appreciate the kick-ass range of my vocabulary. This review might end up resembling the one Homer's dog wrote.)
Other groin-grabbingly great moments in the video:
- The boyish haircut of Bernard Sumner. I love it.
- The 80's-style businesswoman look of Gillian Gilbert. I love it.
- Unusual instruments: synth drums, cowbell, weird synthesizer sounds (including frog samples).
- The Joy Division references: the Joy Division poster visible behind Bernard Sumner in the end of the video and the out of focus person watching the band perform (reference to Joy Division singer Ian Curtis put there by director Jonathan Demme according to speculations).
- The bored facial expressions of the band members in the very end of the video. They seem to say "Ok, it's done, now let's go get pie". They're musicians at work, not clowns prancing around for the camera. You just can't get any cooler than that.
Ok, I think this post is done. Now let's go get pie.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Cleaning, meditating and burping
Tonight I've been doing what I like best: beer cleaning, or cleaBURRRPning, as I like to call it. You know, having a couple of beers while cleaning the household while having a couple of beers. And cleaning the household while I'm at it. My wife and kid are away visiting relatives this week, and I've been having a relaxing week all by myself. Except my wife gave me two minor tasks to accomplish during the week: 1) work overtime as much as possible and 2) clean the household thoroughly. So I'm afraid this week of sweet, peaceful relaxation might kill me with exertion.
(Wow, they fixed the publish by pressing ctrl-s feature I complained a couple of posts ago. Way to go, Blogger! Yippee-wippee! Wippee!)
But seriously, it's nice to have a lot of things to do. I definitely prefer that to being idle. I can't properly enjoy slacking off anymore, or more accurately, I think I can't, I don't know because I haven't done it in a long time. I need to accomplish something every day to feel worthwhile. I wonder how I will survive the oncoming summer vacation, you know, with all the sleeping-in-the-hammock, wearing-a-straw-hat-and-a-straw-in-your-mouth and spitting-to-the-ceiling kind of stuff. Well, fortunately, you can't just sit around on your hands all day when you have a small kid. They are good at keeping you busy.
I just thought of an aforism of some kind. "Everything is made for hard usage". Take my genitals, for example. No wait, don't, take a human for example. I think that a human feels well when it is put to use instead of just lying around. This also applies to sports cars, sneakers and about everything else. I can't understand people who collect sneakers and never use them. Of course, eventually, things break, when they're used, but usually it does not happen too early if things are used properly, and serviced every now and then.
By the way, here was a thought that was not carefully thought out, but I just presented it to you with a straight face. Actually most of these blog entries are written very fast. This blog is about blurting things out, not thinking them through, dammit!
Might I say, that I wrote this blog entry while I was cleaning. I just did it in my head, and when it was done, attached a USB cable to my ear, downloaded the file to my computer and copy-pasted it here. It's nicer to do it like that, instead of sitting down to write. When cleaning, you don't actually have to think hard, it just happens automatically, while you scrub away.
(Wow, they fixed the publish by pressing ctrl-s feature I complained a couple of posts ago. Way to go, Blogger! Yippee-wippee! Wippee!)
But seriously, it's nice to have a lot of things to do. I definitely prefer that to being idle. I can't properly enjoy slacking off anymore, or more accurately, I think I can't, I don't know because I haven't done it in a long time. I need to accomplish something every day to feel worthwhile. I wonder how I will survive the oncoming summer vacation, you know, with all the sleeping-in-the-hammock, wearing-a-straw-hat-and-a-straw-in-your-mouth and spitting-to-the-ceiling kind of stuff. Well, fortunately, you can't just sit around on your hands all day when you have a small kid. They are good at keeping you busy.
I just thought of an aforism of some kind. "Everything is made for hard usage". Take my genitals, for example. No wait, don't, take a human for example. I think that a human feels well when it is put to use instead of just lying around. This also applies to sports cars, sneakers and about everything else. I can't understand people who collect sneakers and never use them. Of course, eventually, things break, when they're used, but usually it does not happen too early if things are used properly, and serviced every now and then.
By the way, here was a thought that was not carefully thought out, but I just presented it to you with a straight face. Actually most of these blog entries are written very fast. This blog is about blurting things out, not thinking them through, dammit!
Might I say, that I wrote this blog entry while I was cleaning. I just did it in my head, and when it was done, attached a USB cable to my ear, downloaded the file to my computer and copy-pasted it here. It's nicer to do it like that, instead of sitting down to write. When cleaning, you don't actually have to think hard, it just happens automatically, while you scrub away.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Touch typing rules
Touch typing is a great skill for an IT worker like myself, or anybody who uses a computer, come to think of it. I'm really glad I learnt how to do it when I first became an in-front-of-the-computer-sitting, doing-all-kinds-of-nerdy-things guy. Sure, it was hard for a couple of months, and I remember being really frustrated when my fingers wouldn't do what my brain told them to do. But after a while it got easier, and now, several years later, typing comes from the spine. I don't need to think about it.
The main advantages of touch typing (and using all ten fingers to type), compared to locating keys by sight and typing with 1-10 fingers, your nose, or whatever appendages the unenlightened like to use, are, in my opinion:
1) you don't have to look at the keyboard, instead you can keep your sight focused on the screen
2) typing is much faster
3) you look cool, in a nerdy way.
For some reason, I still remember part a conversation I overheard when I studied to become a software engineer. A student was presenting his project, a touch typing tutorial program, to a teacher. The part I remember was the teacher saying something like "it's not important for a programmer to know touch typing". I strongly disagree. I think it's a great, sharp tool for any programmer and should be taught (and obligatory) wherever programmers are taught.
I can understand the teacher's point of view. He probably thought of programming as intellectual exercises, of perfecting algorithms. Well, it is that, but it usually involves lots of other related work, like writing documentation, testing, doing maintenance work and so on. The teacher probably liked solving programming problems at evening, sitting in an armchair in his mansion while sipping cognac. If that's what programming is to you, then you might as well punch the keys with your cigar, if you like. But when you're churning out code and documentation for a living, 24/7, as I'm doing right now, speed becomes important. That's right, I work so hard that I'm actually coding right now with my back hands, or feet if that's what you like to call them. Whew. It ain't easy, you know.
I would claim that typing by touch makes you a better programmer. Nowadays, most programs have graphical user interfaces. If you find typing hard, you will use graphical tools to do things instead of command line tools. That is okay in some cases, but not always. An example: I've noticed that many of my coworkers like to use the graphical schema browser of Toad to look at data in database tables. Toad is allright (despite being a buggy piece of s**t) for some things, but I maintain that only amateurs inspect database tables through a graphical user interface. You should write the queries yourself. It's faster. And if you do that, you get to practice SQL all the time, and that makes you a better programmer. I guess that it's the same in most programming environments today: you can do a lot of things by clicking in an IDE. That's okay, but you should know what happens under the hood, and whether the GUI is slowing you down or making your work easier.
In my experience, it seems that a surprisingly large portion of programmers are trying to get away with less typing. I think that it partially explains the sparse comments, bad naming conventions and wrong indentation, which are all very common properties of bad code. If typing is drudgery for you, you will be reluctant to do these things properly. Also, you will be more reluctant to change things, when they're once done, and rewriting code is important to make it better. Usually, you don't get it completely right the first time.
I pictured this an epic subject before beginning to write, but now, what I've managed to get written seems sparse. Well, the book will be more elaborate, I promise. Now, to get some well deserved sleep...
The main advantages of touch typing (and using all ten fingers to type), compared to locating keys by sight and typing with 1-10 fingers, your nose, or whatever appendages the unenlightened like to use, are, in my opinion:
1) you don't have to look at the keyboard, instead you can keep your sight focused on the screen
2) typing is much faster
3) you look cool, in a nerdy way.
For some reason, I still remember part a conversation I overheard when I studied to become a software engineer. A student was presenting his project, a touch typing tutorial program, to a teacher. The part I remember was the teacher saying something like "it's not important for a programmer to know touch typing". I strongly disagree. I think it's a great, sharp tool for any programmer and should be taught (and obligatory) wherever programmers are taught.
I can understand the teacher's point of view. He probably thought of programming as intellectual exercises, of perfecting algorithms. Well, it is that, but it usually involves lots of other related work, like writing documentation, testing, doing maintenance work and so on. The teacher probably liked solving programming problems at evening, sitting in an armchair in his mansion while sipping cognac. If that's what programming is to you, then you might as well punch the keys with your cigar, if you like. But when you're churning out code and documentation for a living, 24/7, as I'm doing right now, speed becomes important. That's right, I work so hard that I'm actually coding right now with my back hands, or feet if that's what you like to call them. Whew. It ain't easy, you know.
I would claim that typing by touch makes you a better programmer. Nowadays, most programs have graphical user interfaces. If you find typing hard, you will use graphical tools to do things instead of command line tools. That is okay in some cases, but not always. An example: I've noticed that many of my coworkers like to use the graphical schema browser of Toad to look at data in database tables. Toad is allright (despite being a buggy piece of s**t) for some things, but I maintain that only amateurs inspect database tables through a graphical user interface. You should write the queries yourself. It's faster. And if you do that, you get to practice SQL all the time, and that makes you a better programmer. I guess that it's the same in most programming environments today: you can do a lot of things by clicking in an IDE. That's okay, but you should know what happens under the hood, and whether the GUI is slowing you down or making your work easier.
In my experience, it seems that a surprisingly large portion of programmers are trying to get away with less typing. I think that it partially explains the sparse comments, bad naming conventions and wrong indentation, which are all very common properties of bad code. If typing is drudgery for you, you will be reluctant to do these things properly. Also, you will be more reluctant to change things, when they're once done, and rewriting code is important to make it better. Usually, you don't get it completely right the first time.
I pictured this an epic subject before beginning to write, but now, what I've managed to get written seems sparse. Well, the book will be more elaborate, I promise. Now, to get some well deserved sleep...
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