Today's Musings

So I just hit "compile" on WaitZar 1.1 when I heard a funny sound coming from my computer. Now, I'm no stranger to the "click-click-click" that means your hard drive's about to crash, so I brought it in. Turns on the fan was broken, and the hard drive was, er, trying to break? (Running slowly, some bad sectors, etc.) So I got a new one and a new fan.

The end result was that I sat in McDonalds with an iced latte, waiting for my old data to copy over (it didn't, but that's a different story) and thinking about McDonalds in general. I guess I can give you the intro: for one thing, McDonalds in Singapore (and Burger King) is a place where you won't see primarily Chinese. Because both restaurants are Halal, you tend to get a lot of Muslims showing up. Also, people who eat at McDonalds here are unimaginably thin. I'm not sure why...

But actually, I want to explain something else about McDonalds. For me, it's the perfect place to do work. (Well, my lab is better. I mean, if I need a break from lab.) McDonalds has two things which, to me, are essential for getting work done:

1. Background noise, optimally provided by people talking in a language I don't understand.
2. WiFi

Moreover, no-one bothers you. No-one even notices you! Taken from a Buddhist perspective, McDonalds heralds independent arising. Each table is an island. No tables affect other tables. If someone walked into McDonalds and yelled "Excuse me!" no-one would think he was talking to them in particular. Try doing that in a library. Sometimes I feel that I can only "shut off" my senses by surrounding them with static. McDonalds fills this niche perfectly.

On to more esoteric things, the inside of my laptop was beyond dusty --approaching grimy-- and I was dismayed to learn that Singapore doesn't stock compressed air. That's right, almost no-one sells it, and it's almost never in stock. This is air we're talking about, mind you.

Speaking of random things, I recently finished Phoenix Wright, Ace Attorney, a game which commits a dozen game design faux pas, but yet remains amazingly fun. Interestingly enough, I can't imagine it being fun even if it "fixed" these "flaws". Anyways, it's the perfect game for me, because you spend most of your time walking around crime scenes, talking to people, and gathering evidence, ultimately building up a case for your client's innocence. Since I perform this meticulous bookkeeping regardless of the outcome (e.g., while watching TV series), I enjoy putting my filed-away knowledge to the test.

Speaking of games, my next research project involves making a distributed game-based simulation. It's going to be pretty interesting, too; I'm really enjoying making it. We're using the XNA Framework -Microsoft's development kit for the XBOX 360.

Speaking of Microsoft, my feelings these days are mixed. For one thing, all the Win32 programming I'm doing for WaitZar is really refreshing... Microsoft's online documentation is excellent, and when it's not so clear (e.g., "How do I read an embedded file as a byte stream") there's an excellent community who'll gladly answer your questions. Then again, it seems like they take cheap shots whenever possible. For example, it's almost impossible to "clone" your copy of Vista, which is a reasonable thing to want to do if, say, you buy a new hard drive. Secondly, whereas Google will throw out things that don't work, Microsoft just keeps on pushing Visual Source Safe and the J# language... may I remind you that one of these doesn't work and the other will seriously mess up your computer. Dealing with Microsoft requires so much meta-knowledge... I just wish they'd document what's right and what's wrong.

That's all for today, folks. Stay tuned.