The Little Things

The thing I love about using Mac OS X is that it constantly makes me appreciate the work it does for me. The operating system does things that just make sense. This happens all the time of course and I don't even notice it or I take it for granted. However, there are moments of brilliance when I encounter something new or through repetition I am enlightened to the wonderful behavior of my computer.

The most recent example of this comes when I was writing an application in Xcode. Keep in mind that this is the free development environment that Apple gives away with every copy of Mac OS X. When writing a new class, one usually needs to provide a deallocate method that cleans up after the object once it has been discarded. If implementing this method explicitly, a well behaved class should call the deallocate method on its parent class as well so that all parts of the object are cleaned up properly. You can imagine how this single line of code, which is pretty much boiler plate, could be overlooked if you are concentrating on other interesting things about your new class.

Thankfully at compile time, Xcode was gracious enough to let me know that I probably made a mistake. In the context of the compiler this warning is a pretty trivial thing to implement. The important thing is that someone thought that a feature like that should be implemented. They decided to change the compiler so that it would throw a warning in this case to bring the developers attention to a probable mistake, even though this code is completely legal. The attention to detail can even be seen in the wording of the error.

method possibly missing a [super dealloc] call

This is a readable sentence and implies that you may know what you are doing, but you probably forgot to include this one call.

There are plenty of other examples of wow moments. The one I remember best was coming home from a trip where the only computer available was a Windows 98 machine on dial up. The computer served its purpose and did what I needed it to do, but it was pretty much hell to use. I must have gotten slightly used to it though because by the time I got home and sat down at my Mac I was in ecstasy for a little while. My friend said it best:

Using the Mac after 2 weeks on Windows 98 is like breathing.

I'll be giving Chris Angel a run for his money

Returning to the world of blogging is kind of like riding a bike. You never really forget how to ride a bike, but usually when you finally try again you've been drinking and your new neighbors need cigarettes and you volunteer to zip over to the seven eleven in exchange for a beer. Needless to say the famliarity and enebriation go hand in hand and before you know it you've found yourself on the losing end of double backflip with only the laughter and stares to comfort you. Well I won't be doing any backflips just yet, but stay tuned... I'll be giving Chris Angel a run for his money.

I'm thinking of becoming straight... but I've got a few questions first

So I find myself downtown on one Saturday night after an evening of Cinco de Mayo wii-fest. This should not surprise you. I wasn't planning on going out so I was thoroughly enjoying said wii-fest until a girl called me. You can be surprised about this. She was going out after work to some show and I decided that I was going to go down and try and meet up with her.

Pecan Street Festival was going on so it was fairly crowded on 6th. I met up with Lisa and Michael who were gracious enough to accompany me while I waited for this girl. We started off at Buffalo Billiards which has gone significantly downhill ever since the Orbit Lounge remodeled and started charging 4 dollars for a 2 dollar vodka soda. No sign of the girl after a game of shuffle board, so after a drink we moved on to SoHo. Yeah you read that right.

So we're standing in SoHo which is suffocatingly packed at the entrance yet spacious in the back. There is a hardcore make-out session going on right behind us on the couches which everyone was enjoying. Let's stop there for a minute. I was previously at a friends house playing video games drinking margaritas, so I'm dressed in like a t-shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. I am not wearing cologne or even deodorant for that matter. I am hopelessly under-equipped to pickup a girl, which was my purpose, or a guy if I was so inclined. I'm drinking a Lone Star and enjoying a nice hetero-make-out session, when this chick comes over to me and asks, "Are you gay?" Now I've been known to screw with people who make bad assumptions and alcohol tends to increase this desire. So I end up meeting a friend of hers who is "A nice boy, but is too shy." I felt bad for the guy because here I was making him totally nervous by pretending to be gay and the chick that I was really trying to mess with wasn't even around. Anyway, I've got some advice for dudes out there looking to meet other dudes. SoHo is probably not the place for you, unless you want to drug some dudebras.

In the end I never met up with the girl, but I'm still thinking of becoming straight.

I am a flightless bird

A flightless bird has wings but can not fly.
A flightless bird has not lost the ability to fly. It did not squander its gift by flying too dangerously or recklessly. The flightless bird was born the way it is.
A flightless bird did not choose to abdicate flight. It does not prefer running over land or swimming in the sea. The flightless bird was never given a choice.
A flightless bird does not pity itself. It doesn't blame itself for its inabilities and does not wish ill of flying birds. The flightless bird does not feel shame.
Oh if a flightless bird could fly...

Today was a good day on the Internet

It wasn't actually today, but recently I had a very good day on the internet. I decided that all you noobs need a lesson on navigating the information super highway. After all it is a series of tubes.

Start here. Then read this, skim this, then read this and then finish with this.

In order to laugh at this you don't have to have seen Uwe Boll's movies, you just have to recognize that he is funny looking and the a reason you haven't seen his movies is because they are terrible. Start here, then read this, follow with this and this, then quickly read this and end here.

Ghostbusters plus great Gizmodo writing equals absolute enjoyment.

My new favorite comedian is Demitri Martin.

The N-Gage was a Nokia "gaming phone" that you had to turn on it's side to talk like a taco. It was sort of a flop and spawned a great website that is apparently closing shop so check it out wile you can. Then read this and feel more of the Gizmodo love. Don't make stupid comments on Gizmodo or they take your ass out.