crazyscot

We ventured out to our local Mitre 10 Mega today, in search of sundry DIY materials. What we found was more than just a DIY barn. Think of a large B&Q, then add a wider range of tools, various screws and bolts and fixings available to buy singly (so like the twisted offspring of B&Q and Mackays, so far); then add a better range of kitchen appliances, cutlery, crockery and other kitchenwares; even home safes and gun cabinets.

The forecast is for snow showers starting today and continuing until Wednesday. When we set off this morning the sky was blue; within five minutes we were driving towards a filthy dark cloud, which proceeded to dump hail on us of nearly 1cm diameter. By the time we got to the DIY store it had stopped and the sky was clearing again...

We made a day trip to Akaroa today. ( Read more... ) This morning there was a small troupe of Morris dancers performing on the waterfront. We boggled slightly.

At work, we have a build system.

Up until today I had treated it mostly as a black box: press the button, software is built. It's entirely homegrown and written in Ruby, of which I speak not a single word.

We have multiple firmware deliverables and unit tests to build; the build system compiles and lints everything within sight (both for the target and for the host), then selectively links subsets of the object code into the outputs. As part of doing so, it builds up a map of the symbol dependencies amongst compile units; if something fails, you get a pointer to the linker mapping log which tells you where it started from, where its meanderings took it, graphical representations of same, and an attempt to provide some hints as to what you might need to do to fix it. If everything does build, it then goes on to run all the local unit tests (and it does so under valgrind, for good measure).

There's more. As well as doing all that, it's smart enough to only recompile the compilation units that have changed, relink the affected outputs, and rerun only the affected tests. So in other words your first build takes ages, but they're much faster and pretty reliable after that. Fully automated laziness, I like it :-)

Today's lesson was to not try to outsmart the buildsystem, for it is cleverer than I am. I thought I was being clever and saving myself time in telling it to build only a subset. This was before I had realised it computes the minimal set of tasks anyway, and I got the runes subtly wrong and it bit me (gently).

I half suspect it is plotting world domination while we sleep.

I bought a bike the other day. I've been having a minor tweak in one hamstring recently, but on two days this week I've felt sufficiently discomfort-free and energetic to cycle to work.

The bike cost nearly $900 (£450-500) from a proper bike shop, and a bit more for a pannier rack. That price point is not entirely unreasonable, considering that if I was still in the UK I would have been contemplating spending that sort of money on a new bike. What I have is very nice compared to my old Raleigh; quite light and zippy, and it seems less longitudinally stable though that's possibly more an effect of the reduced weight. (I don't know what price point the cheap crap bicycle-shaped-objects here go for, but I didn't look for them. Google suggests a couple of hundred dollars at K-mart.)

They have a mandatory helmet law here. Myself, I'm pro-choice and don't wear one in the UK in low-risk on-road situations, but having to wear one isn't going to stop me from cycling here. What I have done is to use it as an excuse to make myself seen better; my helmet is dayglo, practically visible from space.

The cycle to work is a little over 4km, takes me around 15 minutes, and is almost entirely flat. The road surface is a bit rough in patches, but it's generally pretty good. (The same cannot be said in the eastern suburbs, some of which we drove through last weekend.) Twenty-four speeds on a road bike seems pretty excessive here on the Canterbury plains, but that description doesn't hold for pretty much the rest of the country.

I felt quite alive on Wednesday after cycling. Tonight I still feel pretty good, but with added saddle soreness, and I bet my legs won't thank me tomorrow...

This house isn't quite so bad now the cold snap has passed. ( Read more... )
We are now renting a PO box. I have updated my contact details post (linked from my profile in case you want to update your address books).

My work are quite keen to recruit more engineers (generally embedded, DSP and hardware) and have a number of positions open, so if you fancy working in a seismically active zone, let me know :-)

Documenting this really for my own benefit... ( Read more... )

Lest anybody think that I only post complaints, the temperature here in Chch today was 17C. Yes, seventeen degrees above freezing. This with snow still on the ground, albeit mostly thawed now. As I write this, two hours after sunset, it's still 10C out there, and the cold water in the taps is merely a bit cold, as opposed to instantly marrow-chilling.

Nothing too exciting here, but just to show that it really is that wintry. When I went out this morning it was generally about 4 inches deep.

By the way, the first pic is our house.

... or perhaps that should be "staying warm" strategies. Living in what passes for a wooden fridge at this time of year means you quickly learn a few tricks. I've spent most of this weekend wearing four or five layers in the house, and will often put on another, as well as my gloves, to go downstairs or to the loo. ( Read more... )

It snowed here yesterday on and off. Not your usual snow but perhaps what the meteorologists call snow grains; a bit like tiny hail, not sticky so blew around a lot. There was a little sleety stuff too, but not much of anything until the evening, when it settled on the lawn.

This morning we have woken up to what's being reported as NZ's worst national snow event in at least 15 years. All the city buses are off; rubbish collections postponed; council facilities closed; police advise motorists to not venture out; I have email advising me not to come to work (which is a shame in that it's warmer there than it is at home!). It seems around ankle deep here on the plains, though is reportedly a foot deep up in the hill suburbs.

Yesterday I bought a bike, though it's going to stay in the garage until the cold snap has gone and I've shaken off this proto-cold. Riding it home from the bike shop with an antarctic gale of a head wind (the harbinger of the snow) was hard enough.