When a new version of OS X is released, I immediately look for John Siracusa's Mac OS X review. His reviews are in-depth and fascinating, and they go back all the way to OS X 10.0. Unfortunately, it sounds like this might be the last one. So it's definitely worth reading for anyone who wants to geek out about the details of a new operating system release.
I've been living in Ireland for over six years now, and been recently granted citizenship. So when Ireland makes it into the news, I tend to pay attention.
In the past couple of weeks, I've seen Ireland listed in the news a few times. So given that I have a blog again, I figured I'd summarise what I've seen lately.
First up, postal codes! It might surprise non-Irish residents that the Irish postal system is ... well, we'll call it quaint. Dublin itself is only split into 20-odd postal regions. Surprisingly, the lack of a more accurate postal code system seems to work pretty well - at least for someone like me that occasionally gets some snail mail. There's been a couple of instances where I've been amazed that a letter with a pretty incorrect address arrives at the intended target.
Next, the Irish property market is doing crazy things again. Since I've been resident for awhile, I'm naturally interested in what's going on when the housing prices affect both my prospects of purchasing property and my current cost of renting. Unfortunately, the current market pattern sure looks like a repeat of history, so it looks like it might be a bit painful in the coming years.
Next up, budget 2015 was just announced. I haven't had time to digest what's going on with it just yet. Then again I don't know that I ever really managed the time to go through previous budget announcements. Let's see how long that summary stays open as a tab in my browser!
Lastly, Ireland is this month introducing a water surcharge. Being a Canadian expat, it was surprising to me that water wasn't a utility that was charged by usage. Sure, fresh water is about as plentiful as it gets here. But it still needs to be processed, sanitised, and made suitable for drinking. But the introduction of the charges is being viewed extremely negative by a large number of the population.
A video of a guy opening a sealed Alpha edition Magic: The Gathering starter pack and finds a card apparently worth in the neighbourhood of $27k US. Understandably, he goes a bit nuts.
I'm not sure if I approve of his method of slicing open the plastic-encased cards, but that's not my job I suppose.
There were two stories that crossed my radar today surrounding people attempting to take advantage of the casino.
The first was a story from Wired where someone named John Kane and his friend figured out an exploit on a particular brand of video poker machines which let them win as much money as they wanted to. They aren't particularly smart about it, argue with each other, and eventually got arrested over it. It's a fascinating story. But I don't quite understand how these people can be considered criminals for taking advantage of a thing the machine let them do. The machines are normally rigged in favour of the house.
The other story that hit my radar this week in this vein was Phil Ivey losing his court case this week. He was attempting to claim money that he had won playing high stakes baccarat. It turns out that he had arranged the situation so that he could get an edge in the game, and the casino refused to pay him his winnings by accusing him for cheating. One of the things that gave him this edge was a technique called "edge sorting". Basically, certain cards in the deck were rotated and the card backs were distinguishable when arranged that way.
From an outside perspective, Phil's approach can certainly be viewed as cheating. But the casino allowed him to play in these conditions, and if Phil had lost then would he have had any recourse? Nope! So the casino was totally freerolling him.
These are fascinating stories to me - I've always enjoyed hearing the tales of people trying to beat the casinos at their own game. It's an area fraught with risk though. If you get caught doing the technique you are trying, it can be difficult to claim your winnings.
Edit: This ESPN article does a better job walking through the issue than I did.
History repeats itself?
Many years ago, I got excited about a project a guy was working on to play the classic game Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in a 2d style similar to Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. The project sputtered and died well before it was done. But a day or two ago, Boing Boing had a story about a new attempt at the same project. Enter OoT2D.
I don't know whether to get excited about this or not. If it ever gets done, I will enjoy this immensely. But I don't see the odds of it getting done are very high. Anyway, I'll be watching out for it!
Another video I nearly passed over a couple days ago. A pretty delightful video.
This video did the rounds a couple days ago and I almost didn't watch it. But I saw it enough places that I clicked the play button only to be blown away by it. Anna-Maria Hefele demonstrates singing two tones at the same time. It starts a little slow but picks up a bunch near the three minute mark.
It's been a long time since I've seriously blogged in awhile, but it is kind of something that I've wanted to get back into for awhile now to put down some of my musings, annoyances, and share some of the cool things I find on the internet.
I've found that now that work consumes a large portion of my day, I don't have nearly as much time or energy to devote to hacking around with website design and technical issues. My old Wordpress blog that was at heraldk.ca began showing its age, and that's even after I spent a weekend a year or two back to install an off-the-shelf free theme to give it a facelift. Wordpress seems to be both overkill and insufficient for my website needs: it has too many features that I will never need, and it isn't easy to have a stylish photography portfolio incorporated into it without putting in a lot of time and effort.
So I've decided to reboot and start fresh. I grabbed all the content from the old heraldk.ca and put that here for archival purposes, and the shared blog that my wife and I sparingly update as well. This website will be the home for both that blog and this new one.
Given how busy I am on a normal basis, I don't plan on being as frequent a poster as I used to with my old blog at its peak. However, I hope to give this a little bit of attention and post some thoughts on the tech industry that I pay so close attention to. One problem I have these days is I spend too much time consuming content and don't spend enough time stepping back and synthesizing that information into a proper opinion. At the very least, I can try and provide some entertainment for future me to look back on.