Today I had a flashback about an old movie with Michael Keaton, “Gung Ho” (1986). A chinese title for a movie about a Japanese carmaker takeover of an American small-town factory.
The movie, a comedy with drama, highlighted the differences between the Japanese worker and the American one. Or at least between the attitude towards work.
One scene in particular that I remember, when a Japanese employee working in the middle of the night, is given the news of his wife having given birth, but he can’t reach her as he’ silently forced to stay in the office.
That was clearly an exaggeration.. however, from time to time it may happen to have to be working late, and to have to give up on social life. Specifically, today, (now yesterday), Sunday 25th, was my birthday, and, incidentally also the day I worked to the latest hour in recent times.
I’m not into birthday celebrations and I’m aware of the need to meet milestones (that’s the nature of the business). However, when one doesn’t have the freedom to decide wether or not to celebrate a birthday, or take a vacation, when it becomes a constriction, the effect is different. One feels like he’s missed a chance. On the other hand, it’s perhaps it’s also a good way to appreciate things. For example, the fact that this summer I didn’t have a chance to take a vacation, made me somewhat want to take one when I can (and not just to go to Italy to visit relatives and to rest).
Friday was also holiday, but I went to work. From 1PM till 9/10PM. So, basically, now I’m heading into a new week of work, without having taken any real rest… and I’ll probably be working again till 10/11PM every day. That’s got to be somewhat heavy 8)
A real issue with that, is that doing simple things such as laundry and getting an haircut, or buying groceries, becomes a bit complicated if not impossible.
Some groceries can be bought at the convenience stores, while getting an haircut is really mostly out of question.
My mealtonin pill is starting to make effect and I think I’ll head to bed… zzzzzzzzz

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 2:28 AM EDT

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Monday I dashed out of the apartment, almost sure to get to work late, only to find out that it was a national holiday 8)
It has happened before, although at one point I learned to check the calendar looking forward to vacations. However, given the current situation, I’m not sure I’m really looking forward to much vacations (need to get work done !), so I let that one slip.
It was for the best anyway.. 50 meters into the way, I see the usual two neighbors that bring out the Japanese flag for the holiday.. a call the office to make sure nobody is there.. and then, straight to Shibuya, where I bought a couple of books (one on kanji, the other with exercises, aimed at some standard language test which I may take one day).
Bought the books, I went to a cafe nearby, the famous Segafredo of Shibuya. Cafes are actually nice, something that is almost unheard of in the Italian culture, where people mostly take they coffee standing up and chatting about soccer. Funny how Segafredo and Lavazza, possibly the largest coffee brands in Italy, have their cafe chains in Japan, but not in Italy.. where even Starbucks is unknown.
For once was nice to be out early in the morning, actually outside, not inside the office. I worked a bit around the math in the Penrose book (onto complex numbers now), then started looking at the kanji book (Decoding Kanji). I’m still only at page 27, but I’ve appreciated what I read so far. The book actually tries to make sense of the radicals composing kanji characters, and gives hints to have a good idea of how a kanji can possibly be read (the single biggest problem with kanji, really !).
I don’t expect this book to be the final and only source for kanji learning, but, as usual, it will have some contribution.
Speaking of contributions, a while ago I bought Who is Fourier?:A Mathematical Adventure and What Is Quantum Mechanics?: A Physics Adventure. I think I may have finished the first one, but I definitely could not finish the second one. They are rather big books, which dwell a bit too much on cheap fiction, while trying to entertain and shamelessly plug their original language teaching business. nevertheless, I’ve learned some interesting things from those books. I liked the fact that quite a bit of math is proposed to the reader, while making it sound like child play.
For example, I liked the explanation of the constant e in one of those two books. While the Penrose book has introduced it by page 80, and still hasn’t introduced derivatives nor has said that e is actually special as its a derivative of itself. ..but there is still a long way to go for me into the book, so I’ll have to wait and see if he’ll spend more time on that.
Damn it’s almost 3AM.. zzzzzz
poof

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 2:55 AM EDT

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What I haven’t been saying for the past two weeks, is that, thanks to a friend of mine, I found a bookstore that has a lot of interesting books in English.
Two weeks ago, I went and looked at Imperfect C++ (what an inspiring title !) and Effective C++. I was also looking for another book, but the store was closing and eventually bought GPU Gems 2 (a long overdue buy !).
Last week, I went back, all pumped, ready to buy some C++ books. But I just couldn’t force myself to buy any of them. Forget the the Stroustrup’s. Last thing I want to do is to give even more money to the father of C++.. for such a boring book. Effective C++ and Imperfect C++ also don’t seem very interesting: the do’s and don’ts of modern C++ (whatever that means). More indoctrination from the wealthy daddies of C++.. buffoons !
Eventually I moved onto the physics section where I finally found the book I meant to buy the week before: The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe (alternative Wikipedia link) by Roger Penrose. It’s a heavy, 1099 pages book and, apparently, the first 350 pages are dedicated to form a background in mathematics and geometry, needed for the remaining 2/3 of the book.
I’m still only around page 50. It’s a book that is best read sitting down with pen and paper, and I find myself a bit frustrated by the lack of time. At work I’m definitely not doing any “rocket science”, TV can be interesting, going to the gym is certainly useful, but also takes a lot of time, plus it’s filled with smelly people !
In any case, I’m very happy so far with the book. So early into the book and I already went through and introduction to hyperbolic geometry.. which I was eager to read about, because it has some applications to 3D graphics (rendering a hemisphere in one pass, instead of using an hemicube (5 passes).. needed for radiosity calculation).
I plan on speeding up the reading.. although today I left work at 10:30 pm. Lot’s of things to do in the office… I’m almost starting to hate my job.
Game programming can involve some cool technology in the best cases, but on average, it’s really not that stimulating. Sure beats things like data-base programming.. but recently, I feel like it’s become too much of a job. It’s too much about doing things fast, hack together what you can for a deadline so that the business goes well.
Money is nice, but my ultimate goal will always be knowledge.. (also knowledge, is in turn power and then money 8)
I guess that the important thing with work is to find an avenue to improve rather than be milked for the current knowledge and eventually become obsolete. It’s nice when the workplace offers that.. but when it doesn’t, one is on his/her own. I saw the summer coming and going, without even one day of vacation. I’m wondering what’s the point to keep trying to make someone work when the morale obviously can’t be that good.

Lastly, I’ve had two mouth sores for several days now !! The dreaded mouth sores are back. Stresss, stressss.. a real torture, to have to feel pain as one eats. A pleasure turning into a constant pain !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 1:43 AM EDT

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I’ve been stood up for the Nth time in a row. Boy, when do I learn ? “Il buon giorno si vede dal mattino” = “Can tell a day from the morning”. That’s what my mother once told me about a girls. Actually that’s what she said that my grandmother told her (it’s an Italian say). It’s not so much about being stood up, it’s about one taking advantage of one other’s availability.
Samui, much like in English, can be used about a person. Somehow, most of the Japanese girls that either me or my friends have met, seem to be rather cold !
Could it be that most of the the girls we meet can speak English ? A different breed, they will like you if you look foreigner, not like you if you like Japanese, and generally act like complete asses. But then again, even some girls that don’t speak English, aren’t much different.
Busy city, busy life. I understand that, but the heart ? Not there at all ?? No passion, no nothing. Some people equate me to Mr.Spock, as sometimes I exceed with logic.. but at times everyone needs somewhat of a warm feeling !
I’ve slept with Japanese girls (just slept), and felt like I was in a simulator. Zero passion.. other than that created by very artificial situations such as answering to a phone email message a couple of days later (it’s all mostly done by messages). Another thing they like is to flirt with the friend of day ! Wow, I’m suddenly wanted by my friend’s companion.. how cheap is that ? I remember one girl, involved with my friend, asking me out for dinner. She apparently read the Japanese version of the American book “The Rules”, a book that tells women to let the man linger (”wait for him to call you”, etc). That same girl eventually flirted with another friend of mine, as I didn’t give in. What a woman !! I’m so impressed !!

As far as passion goes, it’s a bit like being 10 years into a marriage, only that you don’t need to wait 10 years, nor to get married.
Exotic women ? Yeah, I’ll tell you ! Sure, one can find some cheap women everywhere. But the actual thing.. not seen here.
Tears, they can do that. In Japan even men cry rather easily on TV shows. A girl can cry for you being slightly upset and the next day she’ll accept $400 dollars worth of a bag ! (No, that wasn’t me.. you know who you are ;).

What’s the logic behind ?! For what I know, Tokyo is such a big city, you see so many people everyday, everyone has to adapt to the fact that he or she will see several attractive people every day (on the subway for example). So many faces to ignore, one more, one less. Who’s your friend ? It’s the famous people !! Those on TV !!
Are you famous ? Nope ? Bhaaaaa…

Once a (rather crazy) girl that I knew, insisted for me to take the train with her to take her home. Once in the train she said: “now that you’ll know where I live, I hope that you are not going to stalk on me” …..not in you fucking dreams !!! “I’m so scared, look at these missed calls (some psycho is on me)”.. yeah yeah.. go find yourself another prototype for a psycho, I have too many important things to do in my life other than trying to call a piece of meat+makeup that must be married by the age of 26.

I wasn’t born to do humble jobs. I’ll never do any humble job, unless it’s for somebody I care. Seeking women is a humble job. A job that takes more time than it’s worth. Do I need to be a Japanese TV star before I can get girls to seek me ? I’ll wait for that. In the meantime I have so many intelligent things to do. Actually I just hope that I’ll never be so famous.. because I want to be intelligent, spend time on important things, rather than playing the mating game. Intelligence seems to be something that is getting more and more hard to find nowadays. Or perhaps was never within the grasp of the mass.

I hope I’m an exception, I think I am, I just want to be outside the spectre of all those statistics that associate people. I want to be unique, even if that means that 99% of women won’t like me.

Welcome to my world !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 11:41 PM EDT

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Although recently I had the urge to go back to ‘C’.. I have to admit that there are some reasons to keep trying with C++. An important one is, ironically, not really a feature of the language, but rather a functionality that is now pretty much standard in every major IDE (Integrated Development Environment). In VisualStudio it’s called IntelliSense. It basically suggests the available methods for a certain class as code is being written.
This feature actually comes very handy, especially if one is using a class made by somebody else. This is often the case for most programmers as it’s implicit in the teamwork to have to use somebody else’s code.
It’s a feature or, more specifically, an aid, that can be considered part of the documentation, something that certainly can make it much simpler for others to try digest a library made by somebody else (cough cough)… I’ve always been very worried about the usability of my code, especially now that it’s hard to communicate with my coworkers (Japanese vs English: a matter of language but also of culture, as Japanese rarely speak out).

So basically, I feel like keeping onto C++, because it somewhat helps me some to write my own code, and can probably help a lot more those that one day may have to use my code.
Of course C++ still allows to write very obfuscated code.. and there comes the programmer’s ability not make a mess. For this, one can only rely on the good will and the experience of the programmer. Luckily, in my current company C++ seems to be used neatly. The C++ code that I’ve seen from the coworkers, seems rather well done, not filled with bullshit C++ tricks of the month. ..although I have a problem with some coding standards that have been set some time ago and that I truly think I’ll never want to adapt to (hint: underscore before every parameter and local variable !).

Speaking of coding standards, I’ve update mine with C++:

class MyClass          // UpperLower style (most people just like it better !)
{
    int     _value;         // Unix programming style variables
    int     _other_member;  // underscore to avoid mixing up members with locals

public:
    int     GetValue();     // UpperLower again for public methods
    void    SetValue( int new_value );

private:
    void    updateSomething();  // lowerUpper for private methods
};

The logic behind:

- Classes and public methods need to be clearly visible, so the upper and lower style, with the capital in uppercase.

- It’s nice to be able to recognize at a glance private methods, so comes the capital lower-case. This way, they don’t jump to the eye as quickly as the public ones.

- Members and variables in general are lowercase, separated by underscore. It’s very readable to me and doesn’t make confusion with methods, functions, etc.

- Members need to be distinguished from other variables, so they start with an underscore. The popoular “m_” is a bit too distracting, while the underscore at the end of the member doesn’t stand out enough, and actually I just don’t like the stupid “tail” 8)

Goodnight !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 1:56 AM EDT

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Friday morning in the office we received the final XBox 360 devkits. I went on to unplug and pack the two Beta kits I was using. A relatively slow process, as I have to get under the desk to reach for cables and make sure that I don’t mix the cables of one console with those of the other one (every item/cable has a sticker with an ID).
Then I proceeded to setup one of the new kits. Updated the BIOS, etc etc. Once I verified that all worked, I went to place the second console next to the first one.. and BOOM ! The first console fell ! The power display went red and the system was dead. Could do nothing but replace that one (more packing and unpacking work for me).
So, basically, Microsoft is going to ship a console with an hard-disk, that can stand vertically… ummm ! This is not even the first time that this happens to me. This time however the console was turned on.. so the HD was spinning. The devkit is a bit taller than the actual console, so the center of mass is a bit higher, but I don’t think that that makes such a big difference. There is always going to be an opportunity to knock the thing down.. and I can see this as potential recurrent problem..

Friday night I went clubbing. Not much motivation to do anything. The friend that went with me (or rather, I went cause he went) started off in a not very sober state (not very active). The music was awful. It’s not ever RAP anymore, now they play some sort of tribal pseudo-African music. I think it’s pushed by artists like Sean Paul, whose music I can’t really seem to appreciate (and I think for a good reason !). At one point I just sat down tired and activated my MP3 player at the tune of A State of Trance (a state of trance ? I wish !). However, even with my silicon ear-buds, the music coming from outside was too loud (yo ! yo ! yooooo !!). I really wished I had noise cancelling headphones to at least try to mitigate the effect of the music coming from outside. Sony released some new, not so large, noise cancelling headphones (actually ear buds) but I’m still debating on whether I should buy them. Perhaps it would be more economic to just avoid BS music.. is that’s possible anymore !

Saturday I went to the swimming pool for a few hours. It’s an indoor one, but there is some outdoor space (filled with tanned men in tight briefs ..ouch !). Being the summer over, the space outside was officially closed, but luckily, was actually open.
Then I went again clubbing ! This time with a different friend (one that speaks louder than the music ! So I can just listen to him if I don’t like the music 8). This time around, the music was much better. Different club, several nice girls, none really seemed too interested in socializing with me.. and I surely wasn’t in the mood to go begging for attention.

Speaking of begging ! Supposedly two girls wanted to meet me this weekend (wow !). But I surely haven’t seen much of them.. other than a few keitai-mails (keitai = cellphone).
Those Tokyo girls all seem to be so busy with either school, work, golf, scuba diving, wtfucking ?!
To meet a girl in Tokyo, you may actually have to schedule it one or two weeks in advance ! If you are scheduling a future meeting while in the middle of a meeting, some of them will actually pull out their cell-phone and start checking their schedule on the calendar… …I’ve always hated that ! It truly pisses me off.. leave scheduling to business, I just want to see you, talk, get a coffee !!
Even worse, this can happen not just with a friend, but with your actual girlfriend ! “Dear, can I see you this weekend ?”, “well, let me see my schedule… sorry this weekend I’m busy, let’s meet next weekend”. ..a typical dialogue, possibly done just by keitai-mail.. no need to waste time with voice.

I regard myself as a generally logical person. Someone that likes to discretize human behavior, a de-romanticizer. But, at the same time, I realize that everyone should take a break from things.. break a schedule for the sake of feeling free to do so.. to assert one’s individuality.
However that doesn’t seem possible. Schedule must come first ! But, dear Davide, I may be able to squeeze a few hours to see you.. oh yeah ? Fack that ! ..I say ! I’d rather stay alone than meeting someone by the tight bounds of a sacred schedule. This is somehow, still a way to assert my individuality and my freedom. (Perhaps I’m starting to become a social bum when it comes to women 8)
It’s important to accept some compromises, but sometimes the cost is too big. More than once I had to kill a potential relationship from the start, just because I couldn’t bend at the will of the God of Schedules.

My conclusion, is that tolerance should be kept to a safe level.. sometimes I accept big compromises, but that’s in the name of curiosity, personal recreation: “I really want to see how far is this woman is going to go”. But normally, no bullshit should really be accepted.. and that includes those that message you in the middle of the night when something in their head rings.. but can’t actually move their asses to answer a mail for days after you kindly invited them because “they so much wanted to meet you and recently asked you to, please, invite them”.
Bull-shit !

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 2:36 AM EDT

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These days I’m very busy at work. Sometimes leaving the office after 11PM. I haven’t had much time to go to the gym and I’m becoming a bit obsessed with my belly growing. I really can’t afford to put more weight.. although I’m not really fat.
Monday and today (Thursday), on lunch break I went to the swimming pool at the gym near work. There I could relax a bit and lay for a little while under the sun.
I’m not a big fan of outdoor activities, especially not the beach etc, however it’s a bit depressing to see the summer go away. My body is generally a too cold and I should try to get some sunlight when I can.

At work I’m dealing with network programming. Suddenly, everything is message driven and tasks have to be subdivided by client and server side. Also, because there is no dedicated server, every console is a potential server by itself. That means that even locally some things will work by network messages, communicating by loopback.
My experience with network gaming is rather limited, although it started as early as 1995, when I worked on the PC (MS-DOS) port of Toshinden, which as an extra feature, it supported network play thought modem !
Most of the network work was done by the lead programmer (it was really just him and me working full time on it). What I learned from that experience is something that I still value to this day (that’s to say how little my skills in that field have improved !).

To the message driven nature of the application, it’s added a general need to make everything work asynchronously. A message from the server may bring the request to accept or reject a game session. Then one has a message box that has to answer to, the message box needs to be open as everything goes on behind. Unlike applications, one can’t really stop everything waiting for the user to respond. The game needs to stay alert as other messages could come to cancel an operation in the middle.

The problem with asynchronous programming, is that a simple program flow needs to be adapted to a state machine. Things are the thought in term of: I’m in this state, if this and this happens, then jump to the next state, if something goes wrong, go to the previous state, or possibly just another state. Then there are tasks that need to be started, wait for a result to come by some network messages then stopped. Also a task may partially or totally overlap another task in execution.
Basically, it all can get pretty confusing very quickly. There are always some exceptions that one deals with, one at the time, fixing something and breaking something else. Step by step, consistency is lost and the code becomes messy.

I really don’t like what’s happening with my code. I blame it on the lack of time. That’s generally true I think, but it’s also true that if I had more experience, time now would be less of a problem.

With frustration, also comes the willingness to find a clean solution to all this. Ideally, I’d like to get to the bottom of the whole message driven thing, become fluent at that kind of programming, minimizing the thinking. Also I’d generally get rid of the state-machine concept or, at least, be able to build a higher level interface which can bring me to the typical if/then/else/while concepts.

Posted by Davide Pasca as Uncategorized at 2:20 AM EDT

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