All posts by Yvan

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Violent Memories

Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

A long while back I lived in Harris Park in Sydney and every day after Uni I’d walk home from Granville, Harris Park, or Parramatta station. On three occasions I had altercations on the way home. One wasn’t a problem. Another resulted in me getting 4 stitches in my forehead and losing a worthless mobile phone. The worst of the lot resulted in nothing more than a few bruises. As I wandered home I was approached by a group of youths, I’m not certain of the headcount but it was around 5. One of them asked me for a cigarette, I don’t smoke. Next thing: someone behind me hits me on the head. There was no choice in the matter it was fight and be thrashed or be thrashed anyway (sure, there’s probably some people out there who can fight off 5 attackers – I’m not one of them.) I resisted and got thrashed.

It’s an incident that has played on my mind ever since and altered my behaviour drastically. It wasn’t long before I moved out, found a safer area to live in (Dulwich Hill – inner west), then moved again to a very safe area (Wolstonecraft – northshore). When I move these days the first thing I check is police crime stats. When I inspect an area I spend more time noticing whether or not windows are barred, if there’s broken glass on the road, the level of graffiti, etc. Priority one is the risk-assessment. It’s not just when I’m moving home though, with every step I take I’m measuring up the security of the situation, on the look-out for threats… it isn’t a healthy mindset.

Yesterday in Sydney a 54 year old man was asked for a cigarette, he had none, he was stabbed several times and later died. This was at Granville station, could have been me 5 years ago. Harris Park and surrounds is still a total shit-hole, nothing changes. Don’t live there. Sadly a lot of people don’t have much choice, I was living in Harris Park because that’s where I could afford to live at the time I moved there. It’s a funny old world, with money comes the privilege of improving your chances of not being randomly killed by some arsehole. There’s something broken about that.

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Hitchin Maps

Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

I knocked up some maps with Google during the week, to give an idea of where we’re going and how it relates to where we are. If the embedded maps don’t work out click on the title-links to get to the full-sized Google versions. With all these maps you can click on the icons and lines to get a description, there should also be a key on the left.

  • First: Hitchin, Ricky, and Kat’s work – This shows that Hitchin (north) is significantly further out than Ricky (north-west), the respective “home” locations are shown with yellow house-shape icons. The difference isn’t as much as it seems though, the mapping projection Google uses has a finer scale in lat than long. The crow-line from Kat’s work to Ricky is about 2 thirds the length of the one to Hitchin (despite the fact that it’ll probably look half the length.) Also shown are the overground rail lines beyond the locations, notably in Ricky the line heads to Aylesbury then stops, while in Hitchin the lines extend throughout the UK – so other destinations are more accessible. I’ve also shown airports, while Hitchin has 2 that are fairly close (Luton, and Stansted) they’re not as useful as Heathrow (I’m turning into an airline-snob I’m afraid, preferring BA or Lufthansa to avoid being treated like cattle.) The green pin in the centre of London is Big Ben (Westminster/Parliament) and the one to the right is Greenwich. (Remember, you can drag the map around with the mouse!)
  • London – This maps shows the city giving an idea of the city-end of Kat’s commute. The graphic reminiscent of a female toilet is where Kat works. The black line is the overground from Kings Cross to Hitchin, the purple line the underground (metro line) to Rickmansworth. Kat gets to work from Ricky in one trip, to get in from Hitchin will require switching to the underground at Kings X, but overall the two trips should take about the same time.
  • Hitchin – In this close-up of Hitchin you can see the approximate location of our new place in relation to the train station (6 min walk) and town-centre and market (green pin, 15 minute walk.) Also shown is the continuing rail lines, the one on the right heads up to Cambridge and the other to Peterborough. These lines both continue on to reach almost everywhere in the upper half of the UK, and also provide routes through to everywhere else (though for more southern locations it is probably faster to go via London.) On the topic of travel, Kings Cross is the London terminus of the line from Hitchin and the same general station complex includes St. Pancreas, which is the station that trains to Paris depart from. I’ve also shown the closest chain-gym with a green cycling figure, it’s in Letchworth and is probably a 15 to 20 minute cycle away.
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And the winner is… Hitchin

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Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

After saying we’re going to stick with Letchworth we’ve gone and put a deposit down on a place in Hitchin. I saw it today and put our claim in for it right away. Given our past experience with losing out on places if we delay at all and the ever-nearer final day of our current tenancy it seemed most prudent.

The place is a lot better than the place we chose to take in Letchworth but missed out on. It’s also half the distance to the station (5 min walk), twice the size, and in better condition (just.) It’s also only 50 quid more per month, so that works out OK.

The size of the place is the headline feature, it is really rather huge. Three large double-size bedrooms, a kitchen I can swing a cat in (just), and three “receptions,” also large. I don’t quite know what this English “reception” concept encompasses, based on what we’ve seen in our hunting it is any room that isn’t a bedroom. The place is two story and each story has about the same floorspace as our apartment.

The rent is pretty good for the area and the size, it’s also 150 less per month than we’ve been paying. Though we don’t save anything, the extra cost of the train travel demolishes that difference. The annual Hitchin to London ticket price is £2880, and that doesn’t include tube travel! To add tube travel the price goes to £3840! (Try not to think of those numbers in Australian $… oops, too late, ouch!) That’s 74 quid per week, and that’s with the 30% discount you can only get if you buy an annual ticket. (You’d be crazy not to, even if you didn’t have the cash handy the pain on a personal loan over a year doesn’t nullify the 30% saving. But better yet, get a 12-month 0% CC deal and let your 3840 sit in a high interest savings account earning you a bit before flushing it into the CC. Just don’t forget to settle the CC before the 12 months is up!)

Anyway, in other crazy rent news, the landlord of our current place seems to have given up on selling it (buying demand is really low right now) and put it back on the rental market. Rental demand is very high at the moment and the place has been listed £200 higher than we’ve been paying! That’s about 3x inflation, but is actually about right for what we’ve seen in the area. Our original preference was to stay in the Ricky area, but moving into a house around here would cost a lot, at least £400 more than we’re paying now. That’s our primary motivation for dragging our butts somewhere else, thus Hitchin. We end up paying less rent for a huge place (the same sort of place here would be about £600 more than we’re paying now – approaching twice our Hitchin rent!)

Anyway, more on this another time. It’s one hell of a relief to have found a place, stress level can be downgraded to amber. Right after we’ve finished filling in the agent’s 5 pages of paperwork (and we’re not even close to a tenancy agreement yet, the bloody British and their love of forms. Must find my Brazil soundtrack and put on Harry Tuttle — “A Man Consumed by Paperwork”.)

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Packing Nightmare

Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

Some things suck 100%, packing in one of those things. Yesterday I decided it was time to disassemble my work equipment, since I only need one machine for the foreseeable future. This involved taking everything out of a 6 ft rack (6 machines) and stripping the rack down to parts. I thought it’d be a couple of hours of my day – fool. One whole day later it was done. I managed to do it without putting any holes in the wall, but I managed to put one hole in myself. The underside of my right wrist, this makes using the mouse difficult since it turns out I typically rest my wrist on the desk as I hold the mouse.

We moved a lot of stuff to boxes this weekend. Now boxed is: all the books, half the kitchen equipment (the things I won’t need in the next month), all the gym stuff, many clothes, and most computer equipment (all except laptops, and Kat and my desktops.) Moving around the apartment is now a case of weaving a maze of boxes. Yet we’re less than half way there I’d say.

We have next weekend to pack everything else we don’t need immediately. We really need to be moving the weekend after, at latest during the subsequent week. May 3rd is our last day here, I’d rather spend that week cleaning than moving.

Still haven’t found a place though… all packed up with nowhere to go.

My work todo list is lagging and I lost the time this weekend I expected to use making up time lost last week. Time to knuckle down and get shit done.

(My personal todo list is undefined until May sometime.)

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Rubbing it in

Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

I was amused to receive a letter from my new bank that informed me that all the direct debits I’d had with my old bank had been transferred over to my new account. The amusing part is that included was a letter from me addressed to my old bank asking them to close the account and transfer any remaining funds to my new account. The letter, of course, printed using the nice bright letterhead of the new bank. Essentially saying: “Hey – we nabbed your customer. Har har.”

I’m not using their letter though. It isn’t because I care about hurting my old bank’s feelings or anything though, it’s because the letter has a WTF. The sentence: “Please action this on 31/12/9999.” Oooookaaaaaay. Not really in a hurry, eh? I guess they’ll get it in before the Y10K bug shuts down our robotic brains at least.

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No Letchworth this Weekend

Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

Looks like the showerless place has been taken already. Guess someone was willing to forgo showering as a reasonable compromise for being damn close to the town centre and rail station. Given the low rent, location, and back-yard it isn’t unimaginable. It does have a bath of course, we could’ve probably fitted one of those shower heads that attaches to a tap, a bracket for it, and a shower-curtain. Maybe. Kat and I had decided it wasn’t an unlivable option and that we could fall back to it if the other place didn’t work out. No longer possible.

I’m still waiting on the “other place.” It was supposed to be ready for viewing this week but this has not turned out to be the case. The owner still has the builders in, or something. Time is running out, we need to have a place to move to on the weekend of the 26th/27th … only two weeks away. The paperwork and credit-checks take about a week we’re told, so we really only have a week.

I desperately hope we don’t have to fall back to an apartment. 🙁

*sigh* I hate this crap, stressful and distracting.

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Don’t store references to boost::shared_ptr

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Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

I should have known better, in fact I’m pretty sure I did know better, but it is so easy to fall into the trap of using reference members as often as possible. Actually, in other code I’ve not done this, so I’ll call it a “typo”, yeah. 🙂

No time to go into details with examples and all that, best to keep things simple anyway.

Avoid storing auto/smart/shared pointer references in the name of avoiding premature optimisation. You always have to think: will this be destroyed before this is destroyed. If it takes more than 10 seconds to work that out then steer clear of the reference path! Hoping it’ll all be OK is asking for trouble. Especially if you don’t own the calling code!

A shared pointer instance stores little state, so just copy the damn thing. This way the target instance will be destroyed when nothing needs it anymore, which is the whole point. Better a few copies than having things vanish earlier than you expected because you tried to game the system.

My new personal rule is: always copy shared/auto/smart pointers.

If the copy is a problem it’ll show up in profiling later and that’s when you work out how to fix it.

(Alas there isn’t an easy way around avoiding circular references.)

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Letchworth, another one bites the dust

Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

Yesterday I took half a day off to inspect a place in Letchworth (it’s a 2 hour tube+train journey each way.) The place had much potential! Small but roomy enough for the two of us. In a bit a messy state, but that’d be professionally fixed before we got there. A smallish electric-top stove, but I found a gas connection behind it so we’d have the ability to put in something nice. A back yard to die for, seriously. Massive by UK standards, maybe 10m wide bu 30m deep, and in two parts with a dividing hedge. Clearly the back ⅔ was once the veggie garden but has been grassed over at some time. There’s a fruit tree in the middle of the rear section, probably apple, and blackberry vines throughout the hedging. The yard was a bit rough around the edges, but that’s exactly what I’m after – something I can play with without worrying about messing up manicured lawns.

The place would be dead quiet, set back far from the road (a cul-de-sac), seemingly surrounded by older folk, and with nothing but extensive gardens and greenery to the rear. Only a 590 metre walk from the station according to my GPS, walking through the central shopping district. The entire route open, well lit, and probably very safe.

Problem: No shower! Tiny little bathroom, but that’s OK. But no shower?! C’mon? Bloody English.

*sigh* So, good yet fatally flawed. It’d be an ideal purchase, a little work and you’d probably make up for any short-term value loss (unless things go really pear shaped.) In the long run it’d be a safe investment I’d say, thanks to the location. Not sure if it’d be freehold or leasehold, but if the latter it’d have about 900 years left as this is part of the original Garden City “demo village” built in the early 1900s. The building is certainly listed though, probably grade II, so there’s very little prospect of extension the place. It’s end-of-terrace so an end-side rear conservatory may be allowable (I think the place at the opposite end has an extension of the sort.) That’d provide for a better, more open, kitchen space I think. Also, maybe, a sympathetically designed far-rear-shed-cum-office could be possible. Gah, I shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff, depressing.

I’m trying to arrange to see another place this week. On paper it looks good. According to the agent I spoke with yesterday the area isn’t as nice, but should be safe. It’s twice as far from the station compared to the place I looked at on Monday, I timed the walk today: 10 minutes at a brisk pace (probably 15 for Kat.) Not too bad. In the evening I tried researching the street but could find no record of crime in the area and nothing else untoward. The main claims to Internet fame seem to be that a taxi driver is registered there and the Letchworth Buddhist centre was, until recently, located at one end. Being the location of a Buddhist temple is surely a good sign, right? Maybe we’ll find out.

I also tested out the commute to Kat’s work (The City) using the non-fast train since the direct LET-KGX trains only run during commuter hours. I went via train to Finsbury Park, then Victoria line to Kings Cross, then Northern to Bank. After walking from Bank to the vicinity of Kat’s office 1 hour and 10 minutes had passed. Not too much more than the current commute (barely over an hour.) However this was the slower-than-fast train, double-however the time was taken from Letchworth station and doesn’t account for walking from some other location in town. Overall it shouldn’t work out as too bad a commute though, not worse than the current arrangement anyway.

(As for Colchester, not possible for a couple of logistic reasons.)

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Looking at Letchworth

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Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

Today we trekked to Letchworth and spent the day there. I’ve mentioned Letchworth before, the “garden city,” it’s one stop north of Hitchin on the Cambridge line. It has an interesting history, though I’ll leave it up to Wikipedia and various other sites to document the details.

What I have to say about it is: we’re keen on it. We’ve now seen Stevenage, Hitchin, and Letchworth close-up and have a good feeling for these original three moving options. Stevenage is out, we were very disappointed by both the old and new town centres. Picking between Hitchin and Letchworth is difficult though, they’re very different places. The main drawback of Hitchin is that it there is a 15 minute walk between the town centre and the rail station, which significantly limits the viable housing locations (must be somewhere between the two, essentially a 7.5-minute-radius circle.) In Letchworth the train station is central so the viable area is a 15-minute-radius circle around the town centre.

In a practical sense there isn’t much else to differentiate the two towns. They both have a large number of shops. Hitchin has, perhaps, a few more choices for the same things. Letchworth has a much larger supermarket, though we do try to avoid the things. They both have butchers that look good (judged by ample advertising of game being available on-season), acceptable coffee places, and some central green-space. Hitchin is much more historic, while Letchworth is greener and more open. This latter point is is probably Letchworth’s main attraction aside from the better transport arrangement. Hitchin’s opposing next-best major attraction is the large and regular market (3 days a week.) As far as the market goes though, Hitchin is only a 5 minute train ride away followed by a 15 minute walk (weekend trains seem to be every 30 minutes.)

Coffee is at least a little important of course. In Hitchin we didn’t see anything much in the way of coffee places other than Starbucks… could be worse. In Letchworth the only chain place we saw was Costa, which is about the same as Starbucks as far as espresso goes — the huge bonus of the Letchworth Costa is free wifi (Starbucks has wifi but it is stupidly expensive for casual use.) Neither of these options are really great on the espresso scale and won’t make up for the loss of Rickmansworth’s Cinnamon Square and Coffee Cube goodness. So, using Costa-wifi, we hunted down other coffee places. We found a couple of promising options and gave them a try (we actually found 3 but the 3rd seemed to not do coffee at all, that’s the ‘net for you.) The first seemed promising but turned out to be terrible, ick. The second didn’t seem promising, we thought we’d found a “caff”, but turned out to be surprisingly good. This latter place was Moon’s Café in “The Arcade” off Letchworth’s main drag “Leys Avenue.”

No doubt we haven’t tried all the coffee places in town. Also, according to the sites above and one of the agents we spoke with today, there are big plans for the “café culture” in Letchworth. Well, that remains to be seen and I can’t imagine it’ll be seen in a hurry. Promising though, the plans for the town centre do look good.

Some other differences include:

  • Rent is lower in Letchworth, maybe about 100 quid difference between equivalent places.
  • Despite being one stop further away from London, Letchworth has a slightly faster train service to Kings Cross. A 25-minute no-stop train every hour.
  • Real estate agents are friendlier, that’s probably just luck though. We dealt with 2 very pleasant agents today (Country Properties and Willows), but in Hitchin spoke with 4 that were either indifferent or even bordering on hostile and 1 that was very good (Norgans).

On the topic of agents, I’ve got all the way to here without mentioning how we went with looking for places today! The summary is: so/so. We looked at two places. The first was about 15 minutes walk from the station (our limit) and can best be described as “poky.” It also smelt of cigarette smoke, a smell you generally have to replace the carpet and repaint to get rid of. The second place was an apartment, shitty kitchen, no outdoors space, and on the ground floor. In other words: the exact opposite of what we’re looking for (we only looked at it because it was on the way back from the previous one.) The only thing these two places had going for them was price, one was a full £400 a month less than our current rent – for good reason though.

It’s not all bad, there are two decent looking options but one requires 24 hours notice before inspection and the other isn’t ready for inspection yet. Hopefully I’ll be able to arrange to see them sometime next week. They’re both semi-detached and available in the right time-frame. One is more central being only 2 minutes from the shopping area and 10 from the station (opposite side of shopping area.) The other is a bit further out, 15 minutes from both the shops and the station. However this latter one seems nigh on luxurious and, on paper, seems to be our pick.

In the end I think we’ll be focusing on Letchworth for our move, it’s far easier to target just one town. Time is ticking away, it’s now less than a month before we have to be out of our current place.

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Bjarnterview

Note: This entry has been restored from old archives.

If you have an interest in C++ (and CS/SE education) it is highly worth your time reading this interview with Bjarne Stroustrup.

Choice quote:

“Learn to use the language features to solve simple programs at first. That might sound trivial, but I receive many questions from people who have “studied C++” for a couple of weeks and are seriously confused by examples of multiple inheritance using names like B1, B2, D, D2, f, and mf. They are—usually without knowing it—trying to become language lawyers rather than programmers.”

The linked JSF++ and Performance TR are likely to be worth reading too, but with both being well over 100 pages I’ve only had time for a brief skim.