thekua.com@rest – Page 96

In the middle of time (well sort of)

November 27, 2005 Patrick UK Life

Yesterday I decided to take the advice of Karl and Caroline and take a trip down to Greenwich with one of the many ferries that cruise up and down the river. It is a great way of getting to Greenwich as you get to see all the interesting sights by the river and some of them even give you a guided tour. Better yet you can get one third off the ticket price (at least from one of the companies) if you show your Travelcard or Oyster card. The other alternative is the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) which is probably faster, but is not as nice a journey.

Although Greenwich is not in the middle of London, bordering on the outskirts of zone two, there is still plenty to keep you entertained. I visited the National Maritime Museum which I found pretty interested because England had the strongest naval forces in the world for such a long time in the past. Stretching out behind the Maritime Museum you can find Greenwich Park which is yet another really nice park to sit and pass the time. Towering above the park, is the Royal Observatory that marks the location of the Prime Meridian of the World, and is the point for Greenwich Mean Time. It is definitely worth going up to the hill for both the Observatory as well as the good viewing location for the rest of London. If you run out of things to look at, you should also probably drop into the Greenwich markets which are housed close to where the ferries drop you off. They are not as big as many of the markets that I have been to, but I’m sure you could find something of interest to buy there.

A Muso’s Muso

November 25, 2005 Patrick Music, UK Life

Earlier this week I found out I won tickets to The Musos, a awards ceremony for musicians entirely voted for by other musicians. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with a number of smaller acts named to perform, and a realistic expectation that even if bands like Coldplay, Franz Ferdinand, Bloc Party, Gorillaz were nominated, I’m sure they had better places to be. I had a pretty good night all around but I will admit that if I had to pay the £20 then I think I would have felt seriously cheated.

Everything about the night seriously screamed B-class although I suspected this going in. If anything, I hoped I would at least come away learning about some new band with the worst case being just another tube ride around London. The event was held at Koko, which in itself, was worth visiting. The club is located just around the corner from the Mornington Crescent tube (on the Northern line) and still looks like the Victorian theatre it used to be in the 1800s with three separate floors and numerous private booths along the side. The wall behind the bar on the bottom floor is backed by red lighting, casting an alluring shadow to all the bottles lined up on the glass shelves.

The awards went out pretty quickly and most of them, with no surprise, went to a few lesser known acts. Several went to some better known acts such as Gaz from Supergrass winning Best Vocal for 2005 and the Kaiser Chiefs for Best Live Act, but to no surprise, were not there to collect it. There were several bands that performed that night, most of them not really that memorable. I really enjoyed the act by the href=”http://www.indielondon.co.uk/music/mu_dogs_biog.html”>Dogs (and some other act I didn’t know their name) who were the most professional and probably better rock acts. I was stunned by the last band whose passionate, almost psychotic, lead singer seemed to strangely negate the lack of energy the rest of the band members exhibited. His jumping around, falling into the group of photographers and general strange behaviour won no credit from me. They also coupled with a visibly drunk Shane McGowan (from The Pogues) to perform an awful rendition of She’ll Be Comin’ Round the Mountain. I was quite happy at that point to ease my way back through the crowd to make my exit.

Details: The Musos
Highlights: Free tickets to see some new rock bands. Dogs (and some other band who I thought were the Artic Monkeys) were pretty awesome acts as well.
Room for improvement: Organisation was terrible, it was extremely cold inside and Shane McGowan, one of the “bigger” acts was completely trashed.
The Kua Rating: 5 out of 10

Issues With Eclipse

November 22, 2005 Patrick Work Related

I’ve always been an avid IntelliJ user, even when I was forced to use JBuilder and JDeveloper quite some time ago. I’ve been trying to give Eclipse a fair go, and despite having to change the way that I think, the transition hasn’t been too bad. I’m perhaps suffering a little bit more RSI (a consequence of having to press CTRL-SHIFT a lot more combined with my bad habit of always using the left hand side for CTRL and SHIFT), but other than that, most things are about learning different keystrokes.

I’m not a big believer in saying that IntelliJ is better than Eclipse because I haven’t used Eclipse in anger as much, so I’m still open to giving it a fair go. There are a few things that I do miss that I haven’t been able to find, so if someone can knows about them, or can suggest (yet another) plugin to fix, then I’ll be happy to try it out.

My current list includes:

ALT-F8 also known as Expression Evaluation (both code fragment mode and expression mode) – Since I’m a lot faster when I use the keyboard over the mouse, I like to use this feature of IntelliJ rather than setting watches and inspecting values. It’s easier for me to add a break point, debug, fire this up and then evaluate at runtime to my heart’s content. I can easily focus on working out the values of the things I care, the state of things to come, and blocks of code to see if I change code, what the effects would be. Better yet, a lot of the normal IDE features are available in this mode, including code completion, normal import options (ALT-ENTER) and the rest of niceities IntelliJ offers. The closest thing I have found is the “Evaluate Expression” in Eclipse but it seems to be constrainted to static values in code. (The closest thing for Rubyists is the IRB)
CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-N also known as Symbol Search – I find this feature is most useful, for when you are new to a code base (you can easily find which class it belongs to) and in finding a specific test case that is failing. I don’t really use this that much if I’m familiar with the code base as there are faster ways of navigating, but it is really useful in the right circumstances. I haven’t been able to find any alternative
CTRL-SHIFT-10 (inside a test method) also known as the execution of a single test method – When I have a test method fail inside a test class, my first instinct is to go and run that test in the IDE to see if I can replicate it. IntelliJ makes that easy by understanding the context where you are – if your cursor is inside a test method it will run that single test instead of the entire suite. The best that I have seen so far is for someone to run a test suite, stop it and then right click and run the single test (no shortcut key!)
CTRL-ALT-L (autoformat) – Although there are pretty code formatters for Eclipse, I love the fact that I can use the same shortcut in IntelliJ and get the same result, be it Java, XML, HTML or even Javascript! Better yet it can be run over an entire directory without having to touch the mouse.

The Pret-A-Manager Experience

November 21, 2005 Patrick Food, The 'He Who Knows' Challenge, UK Life

As part of the “He Who Knows” challenge, one of the simplest tasks has been to go and describe the Pret-A-Manager experience, but to be honest, I have never really stepped into one for anything other than a bottle of water until this weekend. Of all of the places I have worked and visited so far, there has always been something more enticing than what any massive retail chain has been able to offer me. Having said that, this weekend, I decided to stop in and finally see what all the fuss was about and fully immerse myself in the Pret-A-Manager experience.

When you walk in, like most cafes or takeaway joints that prepare freshly made sandwiches, the choice at Pret can be overwhelming. Pret specialises in freshly pre-packaged food including but not limited to sandwiches, wraps, baguettes, muffins, croissants, and a variety of slices or cakes for dessert. They also prepare fresh coffee and also offer a variety of sides including crisps (chips for those back home) and the standard assortment of drinks.

With food preparation generally taken care of much earlier in advance, Pret also seems to have the process of serving customers well thought out. In the ten minutes that I spent observing them, three people, including those making coffee, seemed to be doing an excellent service by English standards getting through at least 30 people during a ten minute period. You are either handed a plastic bag for take away or a silver platter for eating in, which you have to load your food into/on to and carry to the small circular tables and high chairs more suited for faster eating and less conversing without evidently being too obvious.

Some people appeared to enter just for the coffee, but it did not appear at the same level as those that follow the Starbucks or Café Nero chains on every corner. I was quite pleased with my lunch consisting of a cup of Italian Meatball soup accompanied with some soup bread, followed by a cup of fresh yogurt, crunchy granola and honey all washed down with a bottle of still water with a trace of lime. Although I would not rate Pret cheap food, you definitely get better food than you would at any fast food joint.

I would not go out of my way to visit a Pret with all of the other hidden offerings London can provide, but if you have a choice between McDonalds, Burger King or Pret, definitely hit the latter one.

The Kua Rating: 7 out of 10

Music Blast Off

November 20, 2005 Patrick Music, UK Life

After having moved into my room for a while now, there has been something completely missing – the ability to play any music that actually sounds decent. Proper hi-fi systems over here are pretty expensive, and ideally I just wanted something I could play music off my mp3 player or computer without it sounding really tinny through my laptop speakers.

Even though I enjoy listening to music, I don’t really know that much when it comes to speakers, and thanks to Gerrod’s help I was able to learn a few things and work out exactly what I wanted in a system. So this Friday I ended up going out and purchasing the JBL Encounter set of speakers where the satellite speakers look like alien heads and the subwoofer like a space ship. I set them up and tested them, especially to see how the loudness would affect my flatmates and I’m glad to see that our walls are really thick and you can barely hear anything. They look great, but more importantly they produce really fantastic sound.

Mylo @ The Brixton Academy

November 15, 2005 Patrick Music, UK Life

One of the reasons I came to London was to take advantage of the opportunities see some more musicians do what they love doing and at a more reasonable price than the AU$70+ that some can charge back home. The first lesson that you learn when you first start looking is that it can take a while to actually get some tickets, with many artists selling out months in advance. This Saturday I finally got to see my first act, Mylo at the Brixton Academy.

The Brixton Academy has been voted many times as one of the better venues in London and understandably so. The building itself is an older building having been built in 1929 and its two floors has enough capacity for 4921 people (although it certainly felt like more on Saturday). The ground floor, and most likely the top one, is on a slight incline so that even if you are standing at the back, you have a good chance of seeing the stage instead of just the sea of people in front of you.

The doors to the Academy opened at 9 and like most dance acts, Mylo didn’t actually come on until after midnight (I think closer to 1). Before Mylo there were a few DJs that helped to warm up the crowd with a mix of some classic club tracks and even some cheesy 80s and early 90s songs. As for Mylo, I had heard and read that his performances were generally disappointing as it was just him DJing but it was obvious that he’d been working hard to change that perception. He had on stage with him a couple of other people doing various things as well as a massive screen and several tubes of light pulsating and cycling through images all in perfect time with the music. Mylo even had a go at playing a bit of sythn guitar to vary it up

To be honest I was pretty impressed with the entire night especially just because the atmosphere of the place was amazing. Mylo mixed all of his tracks from Destroy Rock ‘N’ Roll and predictably topped off his final encore with his most crowd-pleasingly tracks Muscle Car, and Drop the Pressure.

The only let down of the evening was probably the two night buses I had to catch home, taking me over an hour and a half to get home. It was still a great experience and certainly one that I would do again in a flash.