repton_infinity

New iPhone pricing.

32GB iPhone 3GS with no plan: $1379
32GB iPhone 3GS with $40/month plan: $899
$40/month early cancellation fee: $350
$899 + $350 + $40 = $1289 – instant $90 discount!

The maths are even better for the 16GB iPhone 3G:

16GB iPhone 3G with no plan: $1129
16GB iPhone 3G with $40/month plan: $499
$40/month early cancellation fee: $350
$499 + $350 + $40 = $889 – instant $240 discount!

So, over the weekend I thought I lost my wallet. Turns out I was merely an idiot, which I guess is better.

But it did set me thinking about what I actually need to carry around. So when I got home, I put my wallet in storage and pulled out a replacement.

Currently in my pocket where my wallet used to be are: two eftpos cards, two access cards, and my gym membership card. What else do I need? Drivers licence and credit card I don't need, and I can certainly do without the plethora of loyalty cards I used to carry. Cash? Easy to do without. What's more, the whole thing is practically disposable. Eftpos cards will cost about $10 each to replace, and the rest probably nothing. And the only thing with identifying marks on it is my gym card.

Makes me think how silly it was to carry around stuff that (a) I didn't need, and (b) would cost me time and money to replace if lost or stolen..

So, a little while ago I acquired a new personal trainer from Brazil. He's keen on plyometrics and agility, which is great, but he's also keen on ginastica netural, a Brazilian floor workout which is a bit hard to explain, so I'll just link some youtube videos:

One (2:49) Two (0:56) Three (1:03).

I've been doing this once a week for about a month and a half now, albeit at a less advanced level than some of the stuff you see in those videos. Liking it so far. I failed on jujitsu because I didn't like the actual fighting element, and I got bored of tai chi because it was insufficiently energetic (and similar problems with ypga and pilates), so this looks like a good medium.

Also picked up a pair of Vibram Fivefingers (in red). Here is a PT's view. I've been for a few runs – last Saturday and today, ~30 minutes each on the road, and I had a crack at the wind turbine before that. Wind turbine didn't go so well, ended up walking back with sore knees, and I struggled for grip in the steep sections (as you might expect for offroad Wellington in winter). On-road running has been fine, though, with the expected soreness in my calves. Hopefully if I keep it up I'll get better strength in my calves :-)

This is an amazing site to look at, if you are interested in programming: The speed, size and dependability of programming languages

Readability: Javascript magic that declutters web pages. Amazing.

Playing for Change: a bunch of musicians all around the world play/sing the same song (using headphones for timing). Pretty neat.

Thought for the day: 36,000 people day every year of this disease in the United States. Thousands have died already this year. Do we care?

Right wing:
"The economy is booming! We should take advantage of surplusses to cut taxes."
"The economy is in recession! We should cut taxes to stimulate growth."

Left wing:
"The economy is booming! The government should spend more on useful projects."
"The economy is in recession! The government should spend more to stimulate growth."

Here's the latest goss about everyone's favourite online bookseller: Amazon have decided to remove "adult" material from searches and best-seller lists. By "adult" they apparently mean a haphazard selection of books with gay or lesbian themes.
(but not, for instance, straight porn)

1.30am on a Thursday morning is not the optimum time to be letting off fireworks in the carpark outside our house.

So I know I'm late for this bus, I've been doing problems on Project Euler for a few weeks. It's interesting to look at how problems that might once have required thought are being overtaken by computing power.

I was just looking through the problems around 40-50 to see what's coming up, and I noticed a spike in the "solved by number of people" column at 48: "Find the last ten digits of 1^1 + 2^2 + ... + 1000^1000." So I'm thinking, ok, 1000^1000 won't have any effect on the last ten digits, in fact any multiple of 10 can be ignored, but that still leaves ...". Then it occurs to me that it's obviously easier than that:

y = sum(i**i for i in range(2, 1001))

Less than half a second to run the code.

Or there's problem 97, another spike: "Find the last ten digits of the Mersenne prime 28433×2^7830457+1.

..surely this one must be more difficult, right? Nah; according to the timeit module, my computer can calculate that number in about 7 milliseconds. Although taking the modulo 10000000000 pushes the time up to a whole 50 milliseconds.

And in Euler's day, just calculating big numbers was a valid occupation for mathematicians..

I don't post youtube links very often, but this is pretty good: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8fbrUjjivw

It's one of many parodies of a scene from the German movie Downfall.

What do you get when you combine the Wellington Sevens, a public holiday, and beautiful weather?

( Answer under the cut.. )

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4825860a11.html

"European-only 'mini-state' planned"

Former skinhead, National Front leader and Christchurch mayoral candidate Kyle Chapman is attempting to set up a "unified mini-state" in North Canterbury.
[...]
Other "benefits" included:

• "Ability to put our European skills and intelligence to create new technologies and build something to be proud of."

Clearly I wasted all those years at university. I just needed to concentrate on expressing my european-ness!

Another indy game: Auditorium. 2d puzzler using music. Play the demo online – it's worth your time.

Auditorium will be selling the full version soon, for US$11 – still as a browser-based flash game. Will be interesting to watch how that turns out – are people willing to pay for online flash games?
(and will there be an offline option?)

Video of the day: http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5lpz1_high-voltage-cable-inspection_lifestyle

These are the guys who do maintenance on live high-voltage power lines. But what's a million volts here or there?

I keep reading developers and "industry commentators" and the like bemoaning the state of gaming on the PC. The typical argument runs thus:

Developing games for the PC is a problem because:

1. The hardware is a moving target.
2. Piracy.

Consoles have neither problem, and are cheaper than gaming PCs, thus there is lots more money to be made in console games. So we will make them and not bother with PC games.

There's a lot of merit in this argument. But the counter argument seems equally simple:

1. Many people own PCs (and, to a lesser extent, Macs) at home.
2. Many of these people like playing games on their computers.

Clearly a market exists. So the Invisible Hand (tm) should summon up someone willing to supply to that market.

I also recall the days of my youth, when most games were literally one man jobs (or perhaps two). These games made money at the time. Why not again? (especially if the big game firms decide to fully abandon the platform)
( A couple of short reviews )

Seen on a back of a bus: Ad for the Wellington Cup Carnival.

I wonder if "rampant phallic symbolism" was part of the design brief..

Speed check to Citylink Wellington (whose offices I could probably bike to in 15 minutes): 1800Kb/s downstream, 170ms ping.

Speed check to Sydney: Nearly 8000Kb/s down, 44ms ping.

Speed check to LA: 8200Kb/s down, 150ms ping.

Gah...

Ever since Durin's day [1], fantasy authors have given dwarves cities carved out of the inside of mountains. I've often wondered how feasible such delvings would be in real-life – especially real-life without electric lighting. How would you deal with smoke from burning torches or oil lamps? How would you ensure enough fresh air for everyone to breathe? What do you do with sewerage? Is there any danger of literally undermining the mountain, and bringing it down onto your head?

Has there ever been an underground city in the real world?

Well, it seems that the answer to that last question is: Yes.

[1] And gnomes and dwarfs and the like in myth and folklore..

A caption contest for a photo of John Key holding a kitten and not a single lolcat reference.

Fortunately the wellingtonista comes to the rescue.