Arc Tangent

Objective-​C sup­ports Array, Dic­tio­nary and Num­ber Lit­er­als in OS X 10.8

Pre­vi­ously:

array = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:a, b, c, nil];

Now:

array = @[ a, b, c ];

Ooooh, yes please. Long over­due. Obj-​C is prob­a­bly my favorite dialect of C so far, but some of its syn­tax is seri­ously eyeball-​smashing.

In other words, the frat boys drink­ing in a bar on a Fri­day night don’t have to be loud and rowdy. They are respond­ing to the sig­nals sent by their imme­di­ate environment—by the puls­ing music, by the crush of peo­ple, by the dimmed light, by the count­less movies and tele­vi­sion shows and gen­eral cul­tural expec­ta­tions that say that young men in a bar with puls­ing music on a Fri­day night have per­mis­sion to be loud and rowdy. “Per­sons learn about drunk­en­ness what their soci­eties import to them, and com­port­ing them­selves in con­so­nance with these under­stand­ings, they become liv­ing con­fir­ma­tions of their society’s teach­ings,” MacAn­drew and Edger­ton con­clude. “Since soci­eties, like indi­vid­u­als, get the sorts of drunken com­port­ment that they allow, they deserve what they get.”

Drink­ing Games at glad​well​.com

It would seem that alco­hol is not the prob­lem; cul­tural norms and expec­ta­tions of behav­iour whilst drunk are the prob­lem. Really inter­est­ing long-​form arti­cle and well worth the read.

“What dis­tin­guished pro­gram­mers at the top-​performing com­pa­nies wasn’t greater expe­ri­ence or bet­ter pay. It was how much pri­vacy, per­sonal work­space and free­dom from inter­rup­tion they enjoyed.” — The Rise of the New Group­think, New York Times

I keep try­ing to get this across to non-​engineers and folk who work in more “social” sorts of roles. It has, thus far, been a very hard con­cept to convey.

After a brief twit­ter exchange, I feel moved to com­ment on this blog post.

Before we start: My goal here is to have a rea­son­able dis­course and I hope that you’ll read on in that spirit. I am white and male and fairly priv­i­leged, and I try not to let that colour my opin­ion too much. I also try to be a man of sci­ence and rea­son, and I def­i­nitely let that colour my opin­ion as much as I can. I am not out to besmirch any­one, I don’t hate women, I don’t hate police, I don’t hate any­one (in fact I love most peo­ple) and if I go on to offend you, it was prob­a­bly acci­den­tal. Unless you deserved it.

(Because Twit­ter is a ter­ri­ble medium for hav­ing srs conversashuns)

Back­ground (As I Under­stand It — Please Cor­rect Me If I’m Wrong)

Some #occu­pymel­bourne pro­test­ers were camp­ing in Flagstaff Gar­dens, and to try and skirt bylaws pro­hibit­ing struc­tures (which appar­ently include tents), they gussied the tents up as out­fits. Which I think is com­mend­ably clever, but appar­ently not enough to sat­isfy the legal beagles.

The police raided Flagstaff, and accord­ing to their account gave plenty of warn­ing that tents — whether or not they be worn as cloth­ing — were con­sid­ered struc­tures for the pur­poses of cer­tain coun­cil by-​laws (which largely exist to enforce health and san­i­ta­tion stan­dards) and would need to go. Again accord­ing the police account, pro­test­ers were given warn­ing over a num­ber of days.

When the fuzz showed (accord­ing to reports) sev­eral of the pro­test­ers moved along, but one par­tic­u­lar pro­tester chose not to budge. The young lady in ques­tion was appar­ently not wear­ing cloth­ing under the tent. Again accord­ing to police reports, she was offered some time to clothe her­self. She appar­ently did not or could not do so. She was (appar­ently) again warned, and when she refused to com­ply, had the tent forcibly removed from her per­son (in a most dis­tress­ing manner).

Key Points (As I See Them)

1. Most impor­tantly: Using knives to cut some­thing off a young female pro­tester seems extremely heavy-​handed and ill-​advised (or, worse, uneth­i­cal and ille­gal). I hope that inves­ti­ga­tions related to the sub­se­quently lev­elled at the police will bring to light the exact cir­cum­stances around this case and that any wrong-​doing will be appro­pri­ately addressed. How­ever: I was not there, and for most peo­ple read­ing this — nei­ther were you.
2. I have yet to see com­ment from any­one who was actu­ally there for the whole series of events. A lot of the com­men­tary I’m see­ing on Twit­ter and blogs seems at best sec­ond hand and at worst com­plete hearsay. Peo­ple: you don’t get to just pull an opin­ion out of a hat and argue it vocif­er­ously as if it were fact based on some­thing you didn’t wit­ness in full your­self. That’s what the bloody reli­gious right do. We need to estab­lish facts and then dis­cuss those — calmly and ratio­nally. I’m not see­ing a lot of facts. Or a lot of rationality.
3. Think it through. Many of these laws exist for a rea­son. It’s not because “The Man” is out to get you. Most of the peo­ple who made those laws are peo­ple very sim­i­lar to your­selves. Some­times the laws are fun­da­men­tally flawed and should be opposed. I do not believe “no tents in Flagstaff Gar­dens” qual­i­fies as such a law. We have big­ger bat­tles to fight.
4. In my mind, pitch­ing a tent for days/​weeks on end isn’t “peace­ably assem­bling”. It’s camp­ing, which brings with it issues of health and san­i­ta­tion that need to be addressed.
5. You can’t just pitch a tent any­where you want to in Aus­tralia. This is (and I hes­i­tate to use the term, but here goes) com­mon knowl­edge. You can camp in des­ig­nated camp­ing grounds. This is a san­i­ta­tion require­ment and to me, seems rea­son­ably okay as laws go. Crash on a mate’s couch, come back in the morn­ing! (Right?)
6. Indi­vid­u­als were (appar­ently) warned, repeat­edly, over the course of sev­eral days, that the tents (as the col­lo­qui­al­ism goes) would not fly. If this is the case — pre­cisely what was their expec­ta­tion, and what skill did they dis­play in work­ing around these by-​laws?
7. I’m a lit­tle con­fused as to com­ments about “insti­tu­tion­alised sex­ism and misog­yny” in regards to this event given that there were male and female offi­cers and coun­cil work­ers present. Hav­ing met some female police offi­cers, I would chal­lenge you to call them sex­ist or misog­y­nist to their faces. In my expe­ri­ence they are not. YMMV, but it seems like a sweep­ing gen­er­al­i­sa­tion with lit­tle basis in fact.
8. Camp­ing out doesn’t seem the most effec­tive way to protest, to me. The point of a protest is to get pub­lic mind­share, and to do that you get in people’s faces. Per­sonal expe­ri­ence tells me that at 11pm-​6am on a Tuesday/​Wednesday is a pretty dead time in Flagstaff Gar­dens and does not accom­plish the goals of protesting.
9. Com­ments on the Inter­net are fuck­ing ter­ri­ble things. Ratio­nal peo­ple can and should choose to ignore them lib­er­ally, because John Gabriel’s Greater Inter­net Fuck­wad The­ory still holds true (and prob­a­bly always will). Pick­ing and choos­ing from Inter­net com­ments and com­ments from spokes­peo­ple seems slightly disin­ge­nous and non-​productive (“ass­holes gunna asshole”).
10. The police offi­cers and coun­cil work­ers involved thus far seem entirely silent (and will prob­a­bly remain so given that an inves­ti­ga­tion is pend­ing). I’m hes­i­tant to base any opin­ion on just one side of the story, no mat­ter who they are or how well inten­tioned. (This seems like a ratio­nal response to me?)

I’ve delib­er­ately avoided com­ment­ing on #occu­pymel­bourne in gen­eral and tried to con­fine my post to this spe­cific event which — again — I was not there for, and except in a notable few cases, nei­ther were you.

To sum up my posi­tion: the video is har­row­ing and the sit­u­a­tion seems like a nasty one, and it’s quite pos­si­ble that a young lady was wronged. It’s also quite pos­si­ble that she was com­plicit in the events that tran­spired by her refusal to obey some fairly rea­son­able requests. The sit­u­a­tion is far more com­plex and sub­tle than pun­dits are giv­ing credit and jump­ing on the “OMG SEXUAL ASSAULT” band­wagon seems (to me) unrea­son­able and ill-​advised.

TL;DR: STORM IN A FUCKING TEACUP GET OFF YOUR HIGH HORSES AND LET’S GET SOME FACTS UP INS PLZ

A Tale Of Rol­lick­ing Adven­ture
By Andrew R. C. White, BIT, Esq

It all began one mar­gin­ally hung over Sat­ur­day morn­ing — as these things often do — with me rolling roughly out of bed. This would nor­mally be an unre­mark­able thing to do of a morn­ing, save that my fur­nish­ings have yet to arrive in my new apart­ment. I thus awoke to find my face planted firmly in the floor.

Head aching and dehy­drated, I realise with alarm that it’s nearly 8.30am and I’m due to be sea kayak­ing at 9. A hasty shower and brush of the teeth later and I’m on my way (large bot­tle of water firmly in hand).

I man­age to arrive on time — not even break­ing any speed lim­its — and spend the next hour and a half falling uncer­e­mo­ni­ously out of my water­craft. Inter­spersed with my amus­ing hops out of, and back into, the sea kayak, I man­age to keep up a fairly crack­ing pace. This typ­i­cally lasts until a boat (usu­ally owned by some­one fan­tas­ti­cally richer and higher in sta­tion than myself) zooms past and upsets the oth­er­wise com­fort­ingly flat sur­face of Syd­ney Harbour.

(I’ll take a moment to aside here, in some small degree of self-​defense; the ves­sel I occu­pied was a V10 rac­ing surf kayak, a fairly unsteady beast. When allowed to pilot instead my mother’s V8 — a much wider-​draughted affair — I remain firmly out of the water).

Still hung over, I even­tu­ally exit the water and we tod­dle off to con­sume morn­ing vict­uals at a local café (where the cof­fee is, some­what sur­pris­ingly, of rea­son­ably good stan­dard; gone seem to be the days when Syd­ney remained a rel­a­tive back­wa­ter of qual­ity beans).

We shop, we rest, we laugh. I pur­chase, with my first pay­cheque, some body­board­ing equip­ment with full-​hearted intent to use it that very after­noon, then self-​defeatingly have a nap when we return to our friend’s place.

We go snorkelling (with newly pur­chased equip­ment) at the South end of Manly beach (a small aquatic reserve known to the locals as Cab­bage Tree Bay — I can only assume the name was bestowed upon the bay, which is hardly deserv­ing of even that title, in pure whimsy). In the course of inves­ti­gat­ing a small flock of cut­tle­fish, I feel my snorkel detach from my mask. I reach up to try and grab it — too late! — only to see it sink into the sty­gian depths.

I sur­face, take a breath, and dive again, almost man­ag­ing to reach the irri­tat­ingly non-​floatational device. My fin­gers gen­tly brush it — pres­sure pound­ing in my ears — when … alas and alack, the thin tube of plas­tic slips between two rocks, and is lost to sight.

The rest of the hour is spent with me “snorkelling” sans snorkel (an activ­ity that is far more labo­ri­ous than it may at first blush appear).

We pack up, and I head home.

There had been some sort of surf car­ni­val on, and the traf­fic was thick. I man­age to cross the sole bridge in and out of Manly (Spit Rd. Bridge) in fairly good time, keep­ing ahead of a large surge of traf­fic. I reach down to adjust my radio (find­ing old-​timey rock not to my taste) when sud­denly, the car surges and begins to smoke.

In a word: shit.

I’m ascend­ing the hill on the other side of Spit Rd Bridge, a 3 lane high­way with no safe shoul­der upon which to pull off.

My car has com­pletely given up the ghost. It’s not mov­ing. I put on the brakes. Smoke con­tin­ues to pour out. I rapidly dis­en­gage the engine as a kindly motorist runs for­ward to offer me her fire extin­guisher. We pop the bon­net — mer­ci­fully, there is no fire.

The car, how­ever, is not going any­where, much as the traf­fic behind me would very much like it to.

Said traf­fic man­ages to hold up my tow-​truck by a good half hour — my car planted incon­ve­niently in the left­most lane, unmov­ing. We even­tu­ally get it back to my apart­ment com­plex, only to dis­cover that the tow-​truck is too wide to fit down the thin road to the dri­ve­way. I pay the good gen­tle­men (of Egypt­ian extrac­tion; a sturdy, friendly fel­low with a pen­chant for highly aro­matic cig­a­rettes) the whop­ping sum of $230 for his time and roll my car down the dri­ve­way, assisted solely by Newton’s the­ory of gravitation.

Manoeu­vring the car into my park­ing space proves a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge. Some friendly neigh­bours assist me with loco­mo­tion and we man­age to park the dis­tressed auto­mo­bile, only once chanc­ing to lose the driver-​side door (a fate nar­rowly averted by quick-​thinkingly slam­ming said door shut).

Exhausted and defeated, I pull out a fas­ci­nat­ing book on the nature of beaches and waves (Dr Rip’s Essen­tial Beach Book, highly rec­om­mended), make it 10 pages in and promptly fall asleep, thumb still mark­ing my place.

A rather colour­ful post on the canon­i­sa­tion of Mary McKil­lop by @ruzkin (fol­lowed by a slightly longer expla­na­tion of his posi­tion) got me think­ing. (First, go read those posts; I can’t say I dis­agree with a word he’s writ­ten, but you might want to. Go on. I dare you.)

I often hear the faith­ful claim that ‘your belief in sci­ence is just faith of another stripe’. I finally found a way to express why that isn’t so:

The sci­en­tific method exposes itself to sci­en­tific analy­sis. You can form a hypoth­e­sis (that the sci­en­tific method works, or does not) and given ade­quate con­trols and data (i.e. meta-​research), prove or dis­prove the util­ity of the sci­en­tific method. Sci­ence is self-​referentially prov­able or dis­prov­able, by definition.

Of course, the faith­ful will still refute the valid­ity of sci­ence. “God is just not sci­en­tif­i­cally explain­able” is an easy cop-​out. It’s still igno­rant as hell and morally cor­rupt, how­ever. If you truly believe God exists, pony up and prove it in a testable and repeat­able manner.

Noth­ing in the world can take the place of per­sis­tence. Tal­ent will not; noth­ing is more com­mon than unsuc­cess­ful men with tal­ent. Genius will not; unre­warded genius is almost a proverb. Edu­ca­tion alone will not; the world is full of edu­cated dere­licts. Per­sis­tence and deter­mi­na­tion alone are omnipotent.

Attrib­uted to Calvin Coolidge

Long time betwixt updates. Time for some short form posts. So, some things!

Geck­board — Got in on the beta of this. A pretty slick web-​based sta­tus board, auto­mat­i­cally pulls in data from Google Ana­lyt­ics, Base­camp, and sev­eral other apps. Also sup­ports cus­tom pulls from REST­ful APIs. Unfor­tu­nately, the colour scheme is not con­trasty enough for our office plasma screen, so no dice. (We’re work­ing on some­thing cus­tom instead).

Twit­ter mov­ing to OAuth (via Wired​.com) — Annoy­ing for me, but a good idea in gen­eral. The blogs install at work is stuck on a PHP4 box until I can move it (later this week), block­ing our upgrade path to a new twit­ter post­ing plu­gin that sup­ports OAuth. So much to do!

Future updates will prob­a­bly con­tinue in short-​form until I have some time to really write some­thing. I doubt the few site-​scraper ‘bots that visit this blog will mind overmuch. ;)

I want to buy BT’s new album, These Hope­ful Machines. BT is a rad dude and his music is excel­lently sweet. I’ve heard some tracks off this col­la­tion of musi­cally arranged bits, and I know that it is some­thing I wish to par­take of more deeply. Sadly, despite the album being legally avail­able in some places around the world today, I can’t buy it because I’m in Australia.

Now, Aus­tralia is not a large coun­try, but we are fairly tech­no­log­i­cally advanced. We’re well con­nected. Sure we’re slip­ping back­wards a bit in the sociopo­lit­i­cal sphere but we’re doing pretty well as denizens of the planet. We con­tribute. We get stuff done.

So why is it, in the era of the Inter­net, of cheap copy­ing and dig­i­tal dis­tri­b­u­tion, a time of won­der and joy — why is it that I have to wait 10 more days than the rest of the world to buy these eas­ily repli­cated bits? I want to give these peo­ple my money and they’re mak­ing it hard for me because I live in Australia.

They’re mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for me to give them money.

Let those words sink in for a moment. It’s easy for me to acquire this album. I can go to any num­ber of tor­rent track­ing sites and get instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion right now. Today. It’ll take all of an hour, at most, for this album to down­load, and I’ll have what I want. The effort of doing so is vir­tu­ally nonexistent.

Or, I can wait another 10 days for iTunes, Ama­zon and Beat­Port to release this album to me in Aus­tralia. I can choose not to lis­ten to the music, to be patient, and then hand over my $12 to have a dig­i­tal copy of the album. In my imag­i­na­tion, I can see myself impa­tiently eking out my 10 day wait as a bit­ter second-​class cit­i­zen, hop­ping from foot to foot to pre­vent the cold from set­ting in. Bat­tered by adver­tis­ing, I slouch into their dig­i­tal stores, and weakly hand over my money.

Dear music indus­try: Do you even WANT my money? Quit your bitch­ing and get with the program.

The pho­tos below were taken yes­ter­day, as I drove South from Can­berra to Mel­bourne. It’s about a 680km drive — only trance music and caf­feine kept me going!

The first is The Dog on the Tucker­box. Story goes some­thing like: old drover orders his dog to guard his tucker­box as he goes into town to wet his whis­tle at the local pub. Being the kind of man he is, he gets into a bit of a biff, and loses his life over some­thing silly. The dog, ever loyal, guards the tucker­box — howl­ing and pin­ing for her mas­ter — until she finally expires.

Gets me all misty eyed every time.

The sec­ond is a bloody great sub­ma­rine in the ground. It’s HMAS Hol­brook — which I guess is named after the town — and it’s a weird sight as you drive down the arid NSW stretch of the Hume High­way. The town styles itself ‘the sub­ma­rine town’ and has a top-​notch bak­ery in it!

So. My story. I’m now work­ing for site​point​.com, and just to make it clear, my opin­ions and expres­sions on this blog are wholly my own and do not reflect upon my employer, etc etc!

I’m in Mel­bourne. To live. Look­ing for a place to call home, camped out in some friends’ largely empty flat. It’s weird and excit­ing to think I’m liv­ing here now — not going home at the end of the week like usual.