Midwinter, Harry Potter, Labor Party, CCNA, Hack the Army, and Space!

[tcpip]

With the passing of midwinter (which, for some unfathomable reason, always seems significant to me), I've taken stock with my activities for the year. Surprisingly, because I always tend to overextend myself, I'm on target. My thesis is on target. My publications are on target. My skills are improving at the rate that I wanted them to. The only thing that is out of whack is my budget and the inability of AVI to find me another overseas placement - not that I entirely blame them - the organization has been defunded for all of their state offices and placements are now "competitive".

On Sunday, severina_242 organized a little group to see Harry Potter at the Gold Class cinema (i.e., recliner seats). I went as Professor Snape of course, and played his demeanor sufficiently well that I was asked whether everything was OK. As far as enterainment goes, the Potter thing is OK, certainly better than most rubbish that is churned out under the name of 'culture'. One must also appreciate the marketing skills involved - I can easily see one book per year, one film per year after the book and we'll have Potter for the rest of our lives.

The following night I found myself in the role of guest speaker as president of Labor for Refugees at the Williamstown branch of the ALP - unbelievably it is the first Labor Party branch meeting I'd been to since I'd returned from Timor. Maybe I'm getting a taste for politics again. The branch were an extremely smart bunch, well aware of the tactical issues involved, and asked all the right questions. I was presented with a box of chocolates at the end of it, which was thoroughly unexpected!

Another unexpected event this week was some linguistic institute asking me translate some phrases into Tetum, which I carried out with a minimum of fuss. Guess my knowledge of this obscure Austronesian language is finally paying off (literally!).

My CCNA reseach and course preparation goes well, although I'm getting much more out of the CCNP books. Whilst more or less on topic, I'm must confess I'm in a bit of a quandry. What do I specialize my programming efforts on? C/C++ is something I've had a lot of history with and it has enormous flexibility. Java/J2EE has that incredible pre-existing webpresence and it's good to know if you want to hack build dynamic websites whereas PHP is a clear and simple language that works very well with databases. *sigh* I'll probably do all three.

My social calendar for the upcoming week is too busy! ruthalas has birthday drinks on Friday, there's the Kilmore Celtic Festival where smilesnspiders will be on Saturday, ditto for Tim's fourtieth birthday gathering, Tariq Ali on Monday, reynardo is having a birthday dinner on Tuesday....

Thanks to the generosity of ravensbreath I now have a gmail account. One gigabyte of storage. I guess that means my speedymail's (paid) life is limited.

So, now there's no weapons of mass destruction and it's been shown that there were no links with 9/11. Meanwhile Australia resumes links with the biggest and most dangerous terrorist organization in south-east Asia -
Kopassus. Seems to fit well with our policy of knowing about torture and not doing anything about it. And, on a technical notes, an opportunity to hack the Australian army....

Brain breaker. Possibly caused by recent viewing of a 12-part 'Space' series on video. Nearly seventy percent of college students claimed that matter existed before the big bang. Personally, I think answering a question like this wrong should exclude one from voting. Or something like that... Grrr...

Comments

[greylock.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Somehow the whole Kopassus thing slipped under my radar.
I thought Howard et al were keen to distance us from the 'Slanty-eyed Terror' to the north in all ways.

You know, I haven't given the concept of matter prior to the Big Bang any thought in recent times, and the concept of 'something from nothing' breaks my brain.

Last I heard the Big Bang Theory was on the outs.

[smilesnspiders.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that the two of you are coming along to the Celtic Festival market? Would you like a lift out to be organised?

programming

[strangedave.livejournal.com]

On the programming question, of course it depends what you actually want to do. Horses for courses and all that - and even if your intent is mostly just to learn, learn what exactly?

If you do go the J2EE route, you really don't want to just head in, because the basic J2EE frameworks suck. There are plenty of libraries etc that make it suck far less. I like the looks of Tapestry for web apps, and Cayenne for dealing with the database side, though some swear by Hibernate.

Love to email chat about programming should you feel the urge

[morrigan77.livejournal.com]

All sounds good!

I love mid-winter; such a lovely moon and feel, contentedness all round - My mood was one of peace until I realised that it's not exactly MID winter but onethird-winter and THEN (insult to injury) it was pointed out that summer is thus closer (only a sun-lover could think of this) as the days now get longer. :) Ahhh how brief the joy! Enjoy the Celtic Festival, there really aren't enough and at least this time of year is excellent for large fires!

I have been happy to pass over the Potter movies - favouring Shrek sequel!

[blow-saidjulian.livejournal.com]

'I was presented with a box of chocolates at the end of it, which was thoroughly unexpected!'

I once received a huge block of Socialist Left preferences from Williamstown/Yarraville, in a Young Labour Left election, despite being - shock, horror - tne Youth convenor of the Pledge at the time. IMHO, yes, they can be quite unexpectedly sweet :)

[zey.livejournal.com]

My recommendations:
C++ if you want to do X/MS Windows apps programming.
Java/J2EE if you want to get a job.
PHP if you want to do web programming that actually does stuff :-).

Not specifically useful for CCNA qualification per se, but, for Cisco related knowledge, you can't go past The Cisco Router Handbook, published by Osbourne Press.

[redcountess]

please give my best wishes to ruthalas for Friday :-)

[cptjohnc.livejournal.com]

I'm fluffy...

Potter movies have always been disappointing for me, but entertaining enough not to be terrible. The books are fun stories, and I can enjoy them unabashedly, while acknowledging that they are not 'great works of literature' But then, what is these days? only time will tell.

Big Bang: I read something someone wrote referring the big bang as the theory explaining the 'end of the world'. Made me grin. might have been in convert_me