Getting a new mouse

This afternoon, I finally went out and got a new mouse. After over 7 years of loyal service, my old Logitec M-UAG96B was finally showing signs of wear and tear. We'd gotten it special many years ago (perhaps dating back to 2004/5 or so), but it didn't start seeing active use until I got my Toshiba in 2007, at which point I needed a mouse to use with it for day to day activities (as you do). Over that time, it's done its job pretty darned well, considering that it's just a simple basic mouse.

Karcher Vacuum Window Cleaner

At risk of this sounding like blatant promotional material, I have to say that Karcher's Vacuum Window Cleaner is an absolutely awesome device!

The vacuum cleaner (yellow) and accessories (detergent spray bottle + wiper, and concentrate detergent). The real star here is the vacuum cleaner though...

Image Source: http://www.karcher.co.nz/nz/Products/Home__Garden/Window_cleaner/16331620.htm

You may initially think: what's the point in having a powertool for cleaning windows? Doesn't the detergent do most of the work anyway? And indeed, that's what we initially thought when seeing the ads. However, the true value of this device lies elsewhere...

Gems of Serendipity - Handbook of Perception and Human Performance

Life can be funny sometimes - giving you unexpected surprises even when things did not go according to plan! This morning, I had thought there was an event I was supposed to be at on campus which would last an hour or so. However, upon arrival at the venue, I realised that in fact I'd gotten the wrong date - it was on Thursday instead Tuesday. Doh!

 

With an hour suddenly free, I decided to have a bit of a walkabout. As I was nearing the central library, I remembered that there was a book I wanted to go and take a look at (which I'd seen references to last night), so off to the 11th-floor it was. Unfortunately, all I could remember was that the id of that book began with "BF" (and nothing else!), which meant it was practically impossible to quickly find it. Despite this, it turned out I was in luck today: while wandering the shelves, I stumbled across the gem pictured above.

Fog

With winter, comes wintery weather - like fog, rain, and sometimes snow. Late this afternoon, I watched as a thick blanket of fog enveloped the city leading up to sunset. So I thought: what a great opportunity to try and get some moody fog-lit shots around town, since I'd be heading out anyway.

More Macro Food - Summer Time Food (2012 - 2013)

I've been meaning to post these for a long time, but a growing backlog of unposted shots, a desire to keep things chronological and timed to display at appropriate times, and "because life" have transpired to delay these. Well, since it's now officially the start of summer in the northern hemisphere, I guess this is a good enough excuse!

Food Macros Photos

Here are some highlights from recent months, starting from most recent. Apologies in advance for any hunger pangs which this may incite... ;)

Mum's Tofu and Surimi Soup - A recent and very tasty invention :)

Lo and Behold - 4 Years On

According to the archives, I've been running this blog for 4 (!) years now... yay?

As regular readers may have noticed, the number and frequency of posts here has been falling for the past year or two. A number of reasons have contributed to this decline: notably the factors mentioned in my previous post, but also things like having something like 2 years of backlogged photosets after it took longer than expected to finish writing up my trip notes from HK 2012 (which ended up getting a bit out of hand in the end).

Fear not though. I've still got quite a bit of content lined up - including several on the Depsgraph refactor, NLA/Animation development plans, some proposals for fixing some big-issues in Blender, Windows hacking tips, and a backlog of collections of some of my favourite shots from the past 2 years. Working through the backlog and getting these put together is currently the bottleneck though (admittedly, the burgeoning length/complexity of some of these has been complicating this). So, in the coming months, I'll be experimenting a bit with new ways of getting these out, even if it means that some of these may only be partially complete when first published, and having these update over time as live blogs or as a series of smaller posts? We'll see...

WIP - Towards Being Productive - First Edition

After plodding along for about a year or so, last month turned out to be one of the most productive periods I've had in the past 2 years or so. It felt great to finally be in top productive form again after a long series of stop-start episodes...

Notes on Windows Hacking - Identifying File Browsers and File Dialogs

If you stumbled across this post looking for information about how to identify File Browser windows (i.e. "explorer.exe" instances) and File Dialogs (i.e. Open / Save As dialogs), here is what you need to know:
- GetClassName(hwnd, className, nameBufLen)  or  className = win32gui.GetClassName(hwnd)  in Python with PyWin32 installed  gives you a string for identifying the type of window you're dealing with.

- CabinetWClass = The identifier for File Explorer windows
   - "Rebar" is the navigation toolbar containing the back/forwards, breadcrumbs, and search box
   - "Control Host" the shortcuts pane where favourites, libraries, and the folder hierarchy are shown
   - "Shell Folder View" is the pane where all your files and folders are shown

- #32770 = The identifier for Folder Dialogs (such as Open/Save dialogs)

A few short pieces of music...

From time to time, I like to play around with a music score editor, bashing out some "music" if you can call it that ;)  Here are some recent efforts that I'm reasonably happy about...

1) I got this idea while mulling over pentatonic scales again this morning for some random reason...


2) Inspired by some noises a dripping pipe in the laundry room made one afternoon. I had originally intended for this to be played using some kind of glass-bottle percussion instrument sound instead...


3) Short song I played around with after reading a blog post about pentatonic scales one day, and feeling inspired to have a play around.

The Case Against Automatic Updating Software

After various incidents over the past 2 years, I've reached a point where I now consider "automatic updates" for software as being evil1. As a software engineer, I can understand the attraction of this for critical and genuine security risks (the public safety benefits here I do not dispute). I do however take issue with using automatic updates as a "push mechanism for feature changes"2,3,4, especially when these are inexplicably bundled with important security fixes which cannot be obtained otherwise5.

This classic comic summarises the current situation quite succinctly

Ramblings on the research process...

It's coming up to 1 year since I started my PhD studies, and over 2 years that I've been involved in CS research work. This post is just a random collection of ramblings about various aspects of the research process and/or academia in general.