iPhone 3.0!!!

http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/17/apple-previews-iphone-os-3-0/

To save you having to read the actual article:

Landscape text / email
Copy/paste(!)
Voice recorder app
Ability for apps to call Maps
Third party peripheral plug in developer support (not that exciting initially but exceptionally open ended, with ext hardware connected either via dock cable or bluetooth)
Spotlight search (from the left of the home screen)
Inbuilt MMS support!
Push email
Peer-to-Peer bluetooth connections (iPhone to Blackberry, for instance, for file sharing and sending)

And much more...

Squee!

Geek, and loving it.

My new external hard drive arrived today!! 'Sposed to meet James H in town after work for drinks and dinner, but I'm ambivalent about that and REALLY excited about going home and backing up my data. 

I mean, *really* excited. I would put off seeing a girl this evening (unless kisses were guaranteed) to back up that data. It's gonna get backed up good. Oh yeah.

It's a shame, because I look pretty fucking gorgeous today. The women of London have lost out to 750GB. Oh yes, 750. I like a lot of junk in the trunk. Or, as I say in the bedroom to my lucky partners, I like a whole lotta data space in the NTFS-formatted drive. 

Touch me, I'm sexy

Poor teaching

The book I'm working through to try and learn C++ has had about 11 example programs so far, every one of which I've totally ignored to do something involving the just-learned principles myself. In my own little flights of fancy several mistakes have cropped up, and having to go and check them, rectify them and improve the code has taught me quite a lot about the way the language works.

For once though, I thought I'd follow an example program just as I was supposed to, to see if it was worth listening to the book rather than disappearing on my little flights of fancy. The program is designed to work out interest repayments on a loan. It runs:

#include <iostream>
#include <cmath>
using namespace std;

int main()
{

    double start;               //Starting rate
    double intrate;             //Interest rate
    double payperyear;          //Whatever
    double numyears;
    double payment;
    double numer, denom;       //Temp working variables
    double b, e;                //Stuff for maths

    cout << "Enter starting value: ";
    cin >> start;

    cout << "Enter interest rate: ";
    cin >> intrate;

    cout << "And the number of payments per year is: ";
    cin >> payperyear;

    cout << "For this many years: ";
    cin >> numyears;

    numer = intrate * (start/payperyear);
    e = -(payperyear * numyears);
    b = (intrate / payperyear) + 1;

    denom = 1 - pow(b,e);

    payment = numer/denom;

    cout << "Payment is: " << payment;

    return 0;

Having typed that out as the book told me to, I sat back and ran it. It ran perfectly, unsurprisingly, as it has been created perfectly by the authors. What did I learn by 'creating' it? Absolutely nothing, as it was all provided for me.

For example - the symbol "==" is a perfectly valid operator in C++. If I were to take a segment of the code above, and, assuming I was creating it myself typed in

  numer == intrate * (start/payperyear);
    e == -(payperyear * numyears);
    b == (intrate / payperyear) + 1;

Instead of the correct

  numer = intrate * (start/payperyear);
    e = -(payperyear * numyears);
    b = (intrate / payperyear) + 1;

The code itself would compile and run fine. No errors or warnings are generated, because the language I'm using is perfectly valid - but it doesn't make any sense and wouldn't output the correct value when the code was finished.

Now I *made* that mistake the last time I wrote something off my own back, and it took me a while to find and fix it, but in doing that I learned the distinction well. These examples, presented perfectly and requiring no interaction, or thought, are absolutely useless.

Gripe over.

C++

1. cout << "Enter two numbers that, of which one should be a \'7\', and the other number divisible by 9";
2. int a, b;
3. cin >> a;
4. cout << "\n";
5. cin >> b;
6.
7.
8. if ( ( ((a == 7) || (b==7)) && !(b==a && b==7) )
9. && (a%9 == 0 || b%9 == 0) )
10.
11.
12.
13. {cout << "woo";}
14.
15.
16.  return 0;

Took an hour to get right with 2 posts on community CPP forums.

This is going to be a slow learning process...

Bigotry

Is a tough nut to crack.

I recently had the dubious pleasure of stumbling onto the profile of a rather beautiful OKCupid girl, who, judging by what she'd written, had an exceptionally good sense of humour. Good enough, combined with her looks, to warrant half an hour spent typing out a "Hello" email - something I've had a limited amount of success with in the past. Perhaps it's the way I write, perhaps it's the almost complete lack of content or wit, but either way my missives tend to go ignored. Still, I had a good think about this one, tried to be original and sent it on its merry way.

All the bases were covered. A passing reference to WW1 poetry, if she was of a literary persuasion, another to Dickens (erm..the literary thing again), a recent photo, a small compliment, and the entire thing somewhat painstakingly constructed around her profile. People complain that reponses aren't personal enough? A bit too focused on just one aspect? Perhaps...

"Yo baby, I saw that you have tits and was wondrin if you've ever wore spunk as a shirt? Cos I got some raw building materials right here!"

(Okay, obviously I don't do crude that well. You get the gist though).

A response! Joy. A few messages bounced back and forth - she worked in a bookstore (hooray!), had an English lit degree (hooray!), and seemed to find me - if not funny, then at least tolerable in my attempts to be so. Can't complain. All went well until I eventually asked if she wanted to meet for a coffee sometime. Not with the intention of sealing ourselves together under God, but for a chat and a piece of pie. There was a longer than usual delay before the response, which came back in the negative, explaining itself by pointing the quivering finger of disgust at my sexuality (bi). Past experiences, blah de blah.

First came rage, naturally, that I had been judged in such a premptory fashion. Confusion tagged along, then pity, then a round-circle trip back to rage. Still, I decided to take the higher ground, and assumed that some bisexual people had upset her in the past. That's fine - all she'd done was mistaken "bisexual" for "lying, manipulative, cheating moral-free fucks, relying on pathetic excuses". It's an easy mistake to make, right? Well, no, but nevermind - she was otherwise lovely, and I forgive people too easily. So I persevered, messaged back, mentioned the above and said the invitation for a coffee was freestanding, up until the point she had gotten over the strange phobia she had. An acceptance - perhaps grudging, came through.

40 messages passed. *Forty*. (Bear with me now, we're getting to the end).

Until she queried, one balmy Friday afternoon, the ring on my finger, in this photo: . Was it, perchance, a wedding ring?

Two days went by. I had friends visiting for the weekend, I was busy and didn't have time to sit down and answer what was a faintly absurd question, inspired I assumed by an underlying distrust of bisexual people as inherently unfaithful. When I sat down to respond Monday morning, I found that my apparently suspicious absence had prompted this:

"Er, I take it that really was a wedding ring. Interesting. Anyway, to avoid confusion, you may want to switch your byline from "Single" to "Available." This lets the savvy OKC user know you're not single, but are still available. Clever, no? According to the directions in the Details tab from the Settings page, you can do this by selecting "Married" from the drop-down menu and making sure you've also checked the boxes next to either "Long-term dating," "Short-term dating" or "Casual encounters" (or all three - it doesn't matter, as long as at least one of them is selected)."

(Something that was more or less then copied verbatim as a journal post on her profile).

Fury, once more. Rage beyond imagining. I couldn't even bring myself to get out of bed that morning until I had smothered the sarcastic, biting responses that came to mind and tried to correct her - which I did, as gently as possible. Whatever I said it clearly did no good however, as we are now, apparently, no longer messaging.

A friend much wiser than I, having had experiece of bi-phobic people in the past, warned me of this at the start. It doesn't matter, he said, how understanding, patient, kind or friendly you can be. Bigotry is a self-fulfilling prophecy, and it will pick even the meanest excuse to flower, the tiniest crevice to insinuate itself. In her mind, despite my protestations, the messages we exchanged or the fact that I'm 22, I am clearly married and looking for something on the side. There must me *something* wrong or shifty or morally debased about me, for I am, after all, bisexual.

So - here's the culmination of this post, and something I'll probably feel guilty about at a later date and edit out. For now though:

Fuck you, iPolly.

For judging me, confusing me with whatever other cunt it was that tried to hurt you - for ascribing to me the pitiful fears and personal demons that swim around your tiny, bigoted head - for giving me the need to defend myself to someone I don't know for something I never did, and for failing to realise, not necessarily that I was a good person, but that I certainly wasn't intrinsically bad...

Fuck you.

That is all.

Eccentricities

On the phone to a female friend last night, my character was being enthusiastically critiqued. Apparently I'm too odd, too bizarre. As an example of this she quoted a recent text I had sent to a mutual female friend. Rather than asking if our friend "fanc[ied] a film on Sunday?", I had pointed out that "two hours in a dark room watching thousands of static pictures rapidly flit across a screen would be vastly improved by your delightful company. Can I tempt you into coming with?". 

Having (perhaps obviously) a vague predilection for childishly toying with language, I saw nothing wrong with this. It was a bit more sparkly than a normal invitation, and allowed me to pay the girl in question a small - and well deserved - compliment, that would otherwise have gone unsaid.

My examiner disagreed, and noted in substantiation that she had known me very well for some years without having been my friend - which implied in turn that in order to deeply understand my character, all that's needed is a series of stories of eccentric behaviour, related back to her by drunken or drugged acquaintances. I was preparing to heartily object to this before deciding, on reflection, that she was probably right - at which point I responded by "baaaah"-ing at her for some time and then quoting some utterly irrelevant Macbeth. 

I suppose our friend's expectations help make us what we are. Ho-hum. I'm seeing her for drink next week and am determined now to construct a greeting that takes no less than three minutes to recite and requires that I wear a cravat. She is expecting oddity, after all, and it would be a terrible shame to deprive the poor lass. 

...

I have writer's block. Which in itself is such a revoltingly clichéd phrase that it more or less makes the point for me. Is there much better? I'm muse-damned. Extinguished by banality.

It is immensely frustrating, on more than one level. The first, the most and the worst is that when I sit down to entertain myself for an hour or two, there is nothing. Like the oldest sailor, who in search of excitement and vivacity seeks out with exulted abandon: "Here Be Dragons!" - and finds there only placid water. I have nothing with which to grapple, no ideas to try and carve.

The second frustration is that when such a muzzling enforces itself, if the world presents me with a circumstance undeserved, a judgement that wounds or an argument propped up by prejudice, it finds me helpless and unarmed, subject to the whim of whichever blow unkind providence bestows. Cathartic release is denied.

Words can be manipulated so easily. The almost infinite variations of our language never cease to inspire and amaze. Vicissitudes, cupidity, transitivity and shun. Fuck. Momentous, incenses, isomophic, 'ere begun. Illumination, confrontation, conflagration, all in crumbs.

It was slow/It drifted slowly/A quiet progress/Like the march of a continent/Taking an eon to move a second/Time could not hear its gentle tread/It weren't fast, mate/As quick as the sun/As speedy as my dead granny/Outpaced by an iceberg/Just lost to the tortoise. Ad infinitum.

Ceteris paribus, ignoratio elenchi, quid quo pro. Vice versa, cogito ergo sum. Quid custodiet ipsos custodes. QUA.

Don't they all sound delightful? A caress, both oral and aural. But without the ideas, the substance, they're just daytime TV. The ear and the eye are kept entertained, and upstairs it's a quiet and lonely place.

This is, to use the parlance of our times, really fucking pissing me off.

Not sure getting healthy is worth the pain.

Eschewing all logic and reason, on arising from my bed this morning I decided to go for a run. It will be, I thought, magnificent! The sedentary ways into which my body has so avariciously sunk will be torn from me, and a fresh, crisp purpose take its place!

09:17 - Leave house. Enter park. Check time and aim for a starting block of ten minutes before taking a break. I am cautiously optimistic! Lungs gently query what's going on.

09:19 - Complete first hill. Jogging surprisingly hard. Lungs exhausted and alarmed, everything else fine. Throat, very cold.

09:21 - Have. (t) stop - thoat, closed. Go to.. spit. Miss. Dribble on self. Pain. Shards of cold are slicing sensitive, blackened lung tissue. They cry to me - such pain, such pain.

09:22 - Weep softly

09:23 - Resume jogging at gentler pace. Confidence will not return. I am a hounded man.

09:24 - See a nice tree. Consider stopping and sitting on tree. No! Absorb last vestiges of determination and continue. I am not so pathetic to be defeated like that!

09:24 - Double back and climb on tree. A doggy comes to say hello and wee at me. Hello doggy!

09:25 - Play iPhone games. Have a nap. Listen to the birds and the wind.

09:27 - Wonder if exercising intellect can be substituted for exercising body. Run through the typical objections to Plato's Forms, try and remember Aristotle's virtues. Feel good about myself. Healthy.

09:28 - Remember 4 years of exceptionally heavy drug use. Intellectual exercises of a moment ago seem like a piss in the ocean. Sigh resignedly.

09:30 - Decide to jog back home. Leave tree, cross grass, exit park and enter house.

10:06 - Finish blog post. Lungs still hacking up crap and agony. Not worth it. NOT WORTH IT.

-------------

Cradle-snatching

The first thing I did when I got into the office was search for the bakery on Google. The girl had been slim, luxurious red hair, softly spoken - she handed me my pastry and I had given her my heart in payment (also though, money). I had cursed myself for a fool for leaving without asking her, remembering the way her hand had rested for a moment in mine with the change. Never before in the history of human romance had grimy 20p coins been such a potent aphrodisiac.

Google came through. The phone rang. A woman answered, husky and mature. She was aged stilton against the fluffy souffle of my bakery love. Her cordial reception turned briefly sour as I enquired as to whether this was the bakery with the beautiful young woman in it - and in a flutter of breathless seconds I had been handed over. 

"Hello?" she asked, tentative, perhaps amused?

"Hi", I ingeniously replied. "I came in about half an hour ago wearing this and that. All the way to work I was cursing a missed opportunity, because you're so extravagantly beautiful. Could I maybe take you out to dinner?"

There! It was in the open. Time paused its stately pace for images of our life together to flash through my mind; the feel of her interlocking fingers as we perused the funfair, her squeal as I made dinner for us, splashing the flour at her - my hearty guffaw as she nervously got lowered into the shark-cake by the Galapagos. Perhaps the feel of her smooth skin under my lips. My life was about to take a drastic and profound turn towards the better, loneliness banished and true companionship settling as a foundation into my heart. Neil Diamond would have loved it. 

"Well" she breathed, and my breath caught with her. "I'm only 16".

"Oh," I deftly countered. "Shitters. Never mind then."

Farewell, oddly aged bakery love. Steak and onion pie brought us briefly together, the tender age of your delectable flesh tore us apart.

Such is life.