Sleep Interrupted

While I was parking to get to the gig on Wednesday I encountered an insidious new development in parking technology. The ticket machine required you to enter your car registration. I assume this is a petty attempt to claw back a few pence in revenue by the local council, by stopping people donating their half-used tickets. If this was America, though, I might be worried that this was a conspiracy to track my movements.

Having entered my registration number, I squinted at the remaining instructions in the orange neon glow of the street lights. They indicated I should press the green button. Four coloured buttons huddled in the top right-hand corner of the box: Red, yellow, green, blue. I pressed green. I pressed green again. Nothing.

Green. Green. Green. Green. Green!

Nothing.

I pressed red for cancel, got my coins back and moved over to the machine’s twin, assuming that my first choice must be broken. Reg-is-tra-tion typ-ed in and green. Green. Green. Green. Green!

Nothing.

Having been thwarted by both machines I resorted to re-reading the instructions. Red button cancels, yellow is unused, blue is unused, green to get the ticket. Red, yellow, blue then green? Who the hell puts colours in that order?

I pressed the blue button and out popped my ticket.

As I triumphed over stupid design I had to surpress my dual desires to dance a little jig and kick the machine, because a young woman came up to the other machine, looking confused at the above average number of buttons on the machine.

“Do you have to enter your registration number?!”

“Yes, and also, you need to press this button not that button to get your ticket. I thought this button was the green button, but actually it’s this one, because they’re in the wrong order.”

“Sorry?”

“This button’s the green button not that one. I got confused, because they’re in the wrong order.”

“What? Are you colour blind or something?”

Thanks to my brother Pete, I got to get to see The Cooper Temple Clause play at the Zodiac in Oxford on Wednesday. It was a small venue of 400-500 people and the atmosphere was great. The band had a bit of a slow start, it being their first gig in about a year, but after a couple of tracks they really picked up.

They played about six new songs. The difference from the last album was marked — much tighter, loosing some of the atmospheric build ups and fade outs, but still wonderfully varied. Damage still sticks in my mind at as high point; it would be massive if they released it. I was also reminded when they played New Toys just what a superb drummer Jon Harper is.

I’m looking forward to the next album already!

I have certain keywords that I know Mark will be interested in, one of which is “LaTeX”. So, when I saw that AbiWord supports a dialect of LaTeX for formula entry, I knew I had to post the link here. For those of you who don’t know, AbiWord is a light-weight, cross-platform, free word processor.

Version 2.4 of The GIMP looks to be shaping up well, with the good influence of GNOME starting to show in the simplification of the user interface. Most interesting, though, is the addition of a new selection tool that uses the SOIX algorithm. This allows the extraction of a foreground item from the background by simply selecting a small sample of the foregound item in question.

I’m beginning to wonder if I should have a category specifically for things Mark will find interesting…

Ben seems to get all the attention round here — what with his walking and talking and all that — so it’s nice to have some news about Jessica for once: Today she cut her first tooth! She’s been taking to solids really well over the last couple of weeks, so this should really help her on her way.

Via a couple of posts on Planet GNOME, I bring you passing by reference in C and why you should arrange your animation frames vertically.

Last week I watched All Star Poker Challenge and it reminded me just how much I’d like to play some Poker, Texas Hold’em in particular.

Now this is strange, because I’m really not the gambling type. I’m mean really. I’m not a risk taker and I am, by training at least, a Mathematian.

Perhaps it’s because of the skill element. Perhaps it’s because I realised that it doesn’t have to be about the money. Perhaps it’s because Wil makes it sound like a lot of fun.

Whatever. I need to get some chips and invite some friends round for a game. Interested…?