They say longboarding is like snowboarding
( Well, they probably haven’t been falling much )
A while ago I had the opportunity to try out a couple of longboards. You know a longboard is like a skateboard, only longer. It feels a lot different than a skateboard though. A skateboard is quite twitchy and requires pretty good focus. There is not a lot of room for error on a skateboard. A longboard is more relaxed. I personally do not like to stand on a skateboard at all, I just know it’s going to throw me off at an unpredictable point in space and time. But I did like the feel of a longboard very much. I also noticed it was quite a workout for my feet and knees.
So I do what I always do when I get interested in something that’s not too expensive : consume !
That’s’ right, I got myself a nice budget longboard.
it’s long, it’s a board
And off I went riding it. Around the house a bit. A parking lot here, a basketball court there, the street. As long as it has a relatively smooth surface it can be ridden.
Today I tried to do the toeside pushup-slide. It’s supposed to be the simplest slide in longboarding. My main reason for learning this, is to have a way to stop. So I am not yet interested in a fancy 180 slide, or whatever variation this trick has to offer, I just need a way for my wheels to come to a complete stop as soon as possible.
The good news is that my protective gear was completely undamaged.
And that I did manage to pull off something where my wheels were sliding orthogonally to the natural longboard direction, for a short while.
Now excuse me, as I am going to ice my hip some more.
So long, and thanks for all the phish
Oh so very recently I acquired an iPhone 3GS. My better half had gotten one for her 10th year working at her company – now that is what I call a gift – and as soon as I touched it, I was convinced. Convinced that I held the future of consumer computing. The iPhone can only be bought simlock-free in Belgium, which makes it too expensive for sure. But it’s also too cool, so you can see the dilemma I faced.
It’s almost two months since I got mine – the 16GB version – and I can most surely testify that our laptop is seldom used anymore. Mail, feeds, Facebook, browsing, reading ( Kindle for iPhone, best app ever ), music, maps, routes, text messages, photo’s, phone (duh) … it’s all right there in the palm of my hand. The only glaring omission is a banking app. That’s the main reason the laptop is still awoken from its sleep these days.
Using an iPhone is very different from using mouse and keyboard. It’s a much smoother experience. What I do have to say though, is that an iPhone generally does not lend itself to textual content creation. For example, while I used to think about blogging actively, because the laptop was always on anyway, I now discard most ideas because it would require booting the laptop.
This is not completely the iPhone’s fault however, although it has a very small keyboard, it’s just that the management interface of this blog is not adjusted to mobile devices.
Well anyway, most people don’t really get it that I seldom use the laptop anymore. Just as I wouldn’t have when someone would have told me this up-front.
Oh yeah, one last point, there is no need for any fear of malicious websites anymore. The evil codes have no idea what to do when faced with the iPhone platform.
elife
there are times to be bill,
there are times to be steve,
there are times to be i
there are times to be my
and sometimes you just gotta say : why?
Less
There are very few rules in programming that are always right. Ever rule ends up losing a fight when it ends up in the wrong corner.
There is however one rule that seems to be always correct, in whatever code base it wanders into, and that rule is : less.
Because you see, less code is less prone to have bugs, because there is less of it.
Concise is also less than verbose, which means that if you go less you have a good chance of making yourself understood.
Less also tends to be faster because there is less to transfer and execute.
You are forced into writing better abstractions by writing less code, because you have less real estate to express semantics.
Redundancy is reduced by orders of magnitude when you try to have less code because redundancy is trivial to remove.
Less is easier to refactor, because you have to refactor less.
You could try to argue that less is just the result of striving for orthogonality, speed, clear code and zero bugs, and that I have it backwards. But you would argue wrong.
I like, eees nice
Sometimes I like to prepare food. I would use the word ‘cook’ but that could remind you of a real cook. Someone like him
or her
( i also like, eees also nice )
So let’s just call me a food-preparer. Basically, I like to keep it very basic, putting my faith more in my ingredients than in my own food-preparing skillzzzz.
However, how-very-much-ever, I do need to use the same utensils that actual cooks use. And my main utensil is the venerable wok.
Since I don’t have one of these bad mofo’s :
I don’t use one of these babies :
But I did use one of these beauties :
A cast-iron Le Creuset wok. Its ability to store a lot of heat, made it possible to do some reasonable wokking on a vitroceramic cooking plate.
Cleaning it afterwards is something else. The best way to do it was to fill it partly with water and some washing powder and letting it soak for a night.
And even then, you’d need to scrub and scratch until completely ready for the next session. Yes, I do know that you have to season it, by letting some arachide oil cook in it for a while.
This is something you have to repeat when the wok becomes sticky again, but mine turned sticky right away. The seasoning itself is not a pleasant task either. Would like you to keep yourself busy watching hot oil boil in a pot? Not to mention the fact that the whole house smells like a fastfood joint afterwards.
So I decided that seasoning was not for me, and continued using the sticky wok while thouroughly cleaning it afterwards.
That is why I am so happy that I have recently acquired this fly boy :
It has a non-stick Thermolon layer which can withstand temperatures of 400+ degrees celsius and is completely non-toxic. It’s also much smoother than Teflon.
If you dig in, and read the interweb reviews for Thermolon pans you will find two camps : very happy or very sad customers.
Some claim that the non-stick properties soon fade, and that the layer starts to crack.
Since I have only used it once – which great results – I can’t really comment on the long term quality. What I did find out however, is that you need to let it heat up sufficiently because some foods can stick to it at lower temperatures.
I had absolutely nothing stick to it, and cleaning it consisted of a rinse with some soapy water and a soft sponge.
So this wok is another great addition to my food preparing arsenal. I will keep you guys posted on the long term effects of food preparing on this wok.
Groundbreaking ! 