Memorial Day 2006

Monday was Memorial Day. It is a very important day in the US, for various reasons:

• First of all, all the troops that have fallen are remembered. As a super power, the USA has always been involved in wars everywhere, so there is a lot to remember. Unlike May 4th in Holland, which emphasizes mourning about anyone dying in any conflict anywhere, Memorial day is purely about USA soldiers.
• Memorial day also marks the beginning of the summer. Granted, Baseball season is already on its way, but grilling outside is simply not done before Memorial day.
• For that reason, Memorial simply cannot be celebrated in any other way than with the parade, followed by a meal of hamburgers and hotdogs.

The opening of the parade is done by the local police force, and the Grand Marshall of the parade:

Then, off course, there are the veterans. They come in all kinds of shapes and sizes and groups, the old ones, from WW2 and Korea, from Vietnam, but also veterans that recently returned from Iraq. As Memorial day kicks off the summer, you can expect the weather to be hot, and not all veterans are able to walk the parade in uniform in weather like that, even in summer uniform. So they'll be driven around in fancy vehicles as well.

Then there is the rest of the parade. No parade is complete without marching bands!
Then there is the local fire brigade, counting four engines in Elmwood Park. Engine #4 is the one closest to us, wedged between the railroad tracks and the local sports fields.
Poor Dakota really doesn't like all the sirens and horns from the ambulances and the fire trucks. So we always bring his ear mufflers to any parade that we take him to.
Then it is time for all the special interest groups: little league teams, soccer teams, boy scouts, girl scouts, more marching bands and the local Hot Rod association
And with the last Little League team disappearing in the distance, the parade is over...
But that doesn't mean that Memorial Day is over! Now it's time to visit the inlaws, play around the pool, and eat hamburgers and hotdogs from the grill! Happy Memorial Day!

Photography == Money pit

Diddlbiker discovers that the more money you pour into your photography gear, the more you'll need. The never ending spiral of more! more! better! faster! bigger! seems to be feeding on the stuff that you throw in it, and as the Monster is getting bigger, so does its appetite.

When recently going through some pictures, I discovered how much better RAW is than JPEG. One would think that the difference wouldn't be that big, and if only Rawshooter would handle JPEG as well and everything, but the pictures in Rawshooter really do come out better than the JPEG's straight from the camera - at least the ones that need some post processing, since there is a lot more room (bits) to play with. When the light is good, the problem isn't that big, but in bad light, when a lot of curving and levelling is needed, RAW is sooo much better.
So, where does the money pit part come into this story? Well, there is of course a price to be paid for all that RAW goodness. I wasn't shooting the Five borough tour in JPEG just for the hell of it - 8MB per RAW picture versus 2MB per JPEG means that you can fit a lot more on your memory card! "So? Get a bigger memory card!", and there is the money pit part. I also need a sensor cleaner, but that is an entirely different story...

Use the right style

One of the things I have learned is that there is great value in being familiar with more than one programming language. The value of being 'multi-lingual' increases if the languages are from different families as well. Without digressing too much - programming language trees are usually horribly incorrect. I saw one where VB.Net was pictured as a derivate from VB 6, and not from C#, what it effectively is (may with a dotted line coming from VB6?).
I never realized the style issue until I got better at writing Python code. Before that, the only languages I knew where Pascal, Visual Basic, Javascript, and C++ - and there is, quite honestly, not much difference in coding style between VB and C++. The possibilities might be different, but the chosen solutions are conceptually the same. After all, they're both Algol-like languages.
It took my a while to figure out why I had such a hard time with larger Python projects: I was trying to design them as Algol-like solutions. Not that Python is completely Lisp-oriented, but once I started to think of tuples as basic variable primitive object types, solutions became elegant instead of just efficient.
Forcing good practice or habits from one language into another is not only dumb, it prevents you from writing efficient code. For example, unlike most languages, VB doesn't exit a function when the return value is assigned. Which is convenient, because it allows cleanup before exiting the function (DAO recordsets have a history of leaking when not explicitly closed). If you're unaware of this, or you force yourself do do an exit function immediately after assigning the return value 'because any other language does it this way', then you'll end up with storing the return value in a temporary variable, cleaning up, and returning the temp. value. And probably showing off your ignorance by telling all your 'coderz' friendz how uncool VB is.

Back from hibernation

Actually, Diddlbiker didn't hibernate, he was just very busy. I'm not a ! So, what kept me so busy?
Mainly work - a few business trips to Charlotte, NC, a place that I yet have to see under a clear blue sky. The last trip had a Semi Flight From Hell on the way back, more about that in a second.
My blogging plan for the coming weeks is to write a lot about Python. I did a lot of coding in it, and yesterday was the magical day where I Saw The Light. What light? At the end of the tunnel? The one in the basement that allways burns out? Nope - the same light that Jake of the Blues Brothers saw. Exactly - that light. I'm now Enlightened in How To Write Pythonian code - but that will be subject for another blog.

So, what about the Flight From Hell? I was supposed to fly with a colleague on the 19:30 back to Newark, but I never saw him. The flight was heavily delayed, due to thunderstorms over Newark - and according to my wife, the sky in northern Jersey was as clear as glass. So, the pilots explained to us that the thunderstorms would be there when we'd land, and that nobody really understands what Washington traffic control is thinking anyway.
We finally boarded around 22:00, and were warned that take-off would only be at 23:11 - but we had to clear the gate for an incoming flight. Most passengers had already canceled and stayed in a hotel at that point, so the flight was very empty and service was good.
We landed in Newark around 0:30, in thunderstorms, just as traffic control had told us - thunderstorms that started when we got there - if our flight wasn't delayed for four hours, we would have been fine!

And my colleague? He was "lucky" enough to get a seat on the 18:00 flight (completely booked full of course), selfishly not thinking about me. His punishment: their flight sat on the tarmac for three and a half hours before leaving at 21:30. Now, that was a real Flight From Hell...

Bike New York

Diddlbiker hasn't posted in a very long time, and feels very bad about that. I do have some valid excuses (or not?). Business trips and family time ate up most of my time available to blog. Of course, 'no time' is not a valid excuse, you can always make time. Let's just say that I made time for things that I deemed more important...
Anyway, today was the Five Borough tour, a bike tour trough the five boroughs of New York: Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. To be honest, the ride is mainly Manhatten, Queens and Brooklyn - both the Bronx and Staten Island are 'enter and then leave via the shortest way' kind of adventures. Later this week I'll post some pictures of the event.
Traditionally we finished the event with a dinner at Carmine's. It still amazes me - we had appetizers, four different entrees, icecream and coffee and a large amount of wine - all for $33 per person (including a generous tip).
And no, I didn't get weighted this week - traffic was so back on the way back from my son's karate class that I missed weight watchers - but I did watch what I ate.