A few of a recently took a random (random in that we went largely due to the availability of cheap airfares when we hadn’t been considering travelling at all let alone the particular destination; a certain amount of planning did go into the trip after initial conception of the idea) trip to Surfer’s Paradise on The Gold Coast in Queensland.
Flights were reasonable, no major difficulties were encountered and the accomodation was excellent; a good time was had by all.
Day 1 - getting there:
9 of us meant multiple drivers to reach the airport. I drove one car, picking up Nat, Tyle, Brooke and Ro on the way and parked in long-term parking at the airport. Thanks to Steve’s mum for dropping off (including picking up Sean from work on the way) the others at the airport. We were pre-checked in for this flight and avoided most of the potential queueing involved with flight as a result. Upon arrival we settled into our two rooms on the top floor of the Centre Point Hotel, purchased a few supplies — mostly of the alcoholic variety — and settled into one of the rooms for some drinking games and general hanging out before heading off to bed for the night.
Day 2 - Dream World:
First full day there we got up in the morning, got some coffee for a few folks and headed off to catch the bus to Dream World for a day of awesome rides. An Ibis tried to steal my hotdog at the themepark. That evening we headed to the Hard Rock Cafe for an excellent dinner and drinks before heading back to our rooms to have a few quiet drinks and watch people we could see in the windows or on the balconies of neighboring hotels; slightly creepy, but entertaining none-the-less.
Day 3 - Wet ‘n Wild:
Second full day there we headed to Wet ‘n Wild (where the picture above was taken) for another day of cool rides and a bit of sunburn.
Day 4 - Ice Ice Baby:
Last day we checked out of our rooms in the morning and left the majority of our stuff in lockers at the hotel before heading out for some exploration. Vanilla Ice was doing a little meet-and-greet session at the Hard Rock Cafe, where Sean, Nat and Brooke got photos taken with him. Benjamin and Ro tried a “slingshot” ride, and a few of us tried a fantastic contraption given the alluring name of “The Vomitron”. The flight back was very mildly turbulent, scared a couple of people with louder-than-normal engine noise on take-off but was largely uneventful.
All in all an excellent trip with a good mix of chillaxing and awesome rides, etc. We must do it again sometime, perhaps with a few of those who didn’t attend this time tagging along.
I’m currently typing up this post using the freely available Windows Live Writer rather than the WordPress control panel as per usual. I installed the software as an optional extra when updating to the latest version of Windows Live Messenger and thought I may as well give it a try, and I must say that I’m reasonably impressed.
Installation and setup of the software was quick and painless, and the package appears to offer support for numerous blogging platforms including Windows Live Spaces, Blogger, WordPress, TypePad and more. Upon selecting the option to use WordPress (actually bundled in with a few other platforms in the menu) the software politely asked permission to contact my site and make a test-post (which it did without error and immediately removed) in order to generate the data required to show live previews within the package of how the post will look on my site.
All publishing features normally exposed through the WordPress control panel appear to be present without the hassle of having to connect to the site using a web-browser. I’m unsure if I’ll continue to use WLW for all my posting needs, but it definitely seems worthy of further investigation – I’ll make another post in a few weeks with my decision on continued use as well as a more detailed review once I’ve had a chance to play with some of the features on offer.
Video Games Live have just announced a bunch of new tour dates, and although the actual date and venue are currently TBA I noticed there’s a Melbourne, Australia show on the list. The show comes very highly recommended even for those who aren’t into videogames and includes the experience of seeing a live orchestra, interactive show, and pre-recorded videogame footage matched to the live show, as well as pre-show entertainment and meet-and-greets in an optional festival made available to ticket-holders at no additional cost. You can read a review by Drew ‘Gaiiden’ Sikora for a bit more information as well as checking out the official website. It comes highly recommended and I’d really like to go - is anyone interested in joining me assuming the dates and cost aren’t a major prohibitive issue once announced?
At my pizza store job we have to make our own dough each day. Once a batch is mixed it comes out as a single fairlylarge lump which needs to be cut into smaller lumps that are the correct weight for the style of pizza base you’re trying to make at the time, and each of these lumps is then rolled into a ball so that it will come out round when we put it through another machine which is essentially a glorified automated set of rolling pins. When you’re done cutting up and balling a batch of dough to make classic-crust bases you ideally end up with 52 dough-balls, so there are quite a lot of lumps to be cut and balled.
There are a couple of approaches to this task. You can either cut off and then roll each lump into a ball as you go, or you can cut the whole batch into lumps and then roll them all into balls. If you wanted to you could take the middle ground and cut off a few lumps before balling till the whole batch is done. As it turns out however, the most efficient way is to cut the whole batch into lumps first and then roll them into balls, because changing between the two tasks involves a slight delay each time that quickly adds up if you do it more than once.
If you’re carrying out a task with multiple steps — or even carrying out multiple discrete tasks — you can save some serious time over the long run by making sure each step or sub-task is complete before moving on to the next.
Check it out!
Additionally, the band Gotthard rock.
…if you’re looking for information on an overly broad or specific topic.
Online tutorials can be a great source of information on a topic (they can also be terrible, as many are out-of-date, incomplete or written by unqualified people who shouldn’t be writing tutorials) especially if you’re just looking for a quick reference to get you started in a certain subject. A good tutorial — or even a bad one as long as you take it for what it is and do further research — gives you a foundation to build on by teaching you about a particular topic, usually by demonstrating one possible solution to the problem at hand.
This is both the strength and weakness of an online tutorial; it will usually cover a single approach to solving a problem, only in rare cases pointing you in the direction of resources to study alternatives. The single approach will hopefully be covered in detail and will allow you to very quickly get up and running. It will not however generally educate you particularly well on why the approach was chosen over possible alternatives and will very rarely go over weaknesses of the chosen method. It will also be entirely up to the reader to adapt the technique as necessary if they’re trying to achieve something slightly different from the covered subject. This has two consequences for those seeking tutorials:
- You’re unlikely to find a tutorial covering a broad topic, although you may in some cases find a series that attempts to do so. Tutorials cover a specific solution to a specific problem, so rather than looking for one that covers the entirety of your project (”building a house”, or “developing a multi-player game”) you will have better luck if you look for resources covering smaller steps involved in getting the project done (”building a brick wall”, or “creating a network connection”). If you really need a resource that covers a broad topic in detail then you’re almost certainly not looking for a tutorial; you should instead look for books or classes.
- You may not be able to find a tutorial covering exactly what you want to do, especially if the subject is particularly specific (”replacing the ink in <blah> model of printer”, or “animating a werewolf-shaman”). Instead you need to generalise your problem somewhat (”changing the ink in printers”, or “animating a character”) and then look for resources you can get started with; they won’t tell you exactly what to do, but they can give you a good starting point which you can then experiment from in order to solve your own problem.
Lastly, if you have managed to find a tutorial that covers the problem you’re trying to solve (or a similar one that you think can give you a good starting point) you should always check with other resources to see if there are alternative approaches that may be better suited to your particular case. You may well find that the first tutorial you found is completely incorrect, or is correct but that there is a much easier way to solve the problem. In some cases you might be better of with a book or a class in your local area.
In the same vein as my earlier post on Why You Shouldn’t Use Dev-C++ I’d like to outline a few reasons you shouldn’t still be using Visual C++ 6.0. These arguments may not apply if you’re working with a computer that is both particularly underpowered and running a very old (pre-’98) version of Windows, but in the overwhelming majority of cases VC++6 is a terrible choice of development environment.
- Visual Studio 6 was released over a decade ago in 1998. It is not only unsupported, but also predates the C++ standard and therefore behaves incorrectly in some cases; you may get errors when trying to compile perfectly valid C++!
- There are serious problems with the version of the STL which shipped with this compiler, leading to the need to use STLPort or similar solutions in many cases. Newer products ship with vastly improved versions of the C++ Standard Library (of which the majority of the STL is a subset).
- Newer libraries do not typically support the VS6 compiler or environment. You’ll often have trouble finding compatible binaries to work with (although you may still be able to compile from source yourself) and likely won’t find documentation for your outdated environment either.
- The programming community has moved on for the most part, making it hard to find people familiar with the error messages or layout of VC++6 if you need help.
- Alternatives are freely available. Cost should therefore not need to be a factor in your decision.
My recommendations for alternatives are the same as last time:
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 Express Edition is by far the best option when it comes to Windows-based IDEs; it costs nothing, allows commercial distribution of products, and is a fully featured solution including excellent debugging facilities.
- Code::Blocks is a good alternative if you for some reason wish to avoid the Microsoft offering.
- If you really want a simpler programming environment you would be better off using your choice of compiler in combination with Programmer’s Notepad or one of the many similar products out there: minimal resource usage, and no extra tools or features to clutter your screen-space or confuse you.