Rants from Vas

Yesterday was simultaneously the best and worst day I’ve had working for ITG. It was the best because I just realised how good I’ve got it: I’m tuning applications for performance on Solaris – I really am doing what I enjoy at work. It just hit me that people when tasks are allocated, [...]

Well, after several years of confirming that I don’t really want to be a software engineer (despite having l33t C and assembly skills), I’m a student again. And to all those people who think they couldn’t take going back to study after being in the workforce, I don’t know what you’re smoking – I’m [...]

Tonight, my wife and I decided to get out of the house for a bit. So we drove to Highpoint and walked around level one looking at the menus on display outside the eateries. We decided to eat at La Porchetta, as it’s quite good value, and I felt like eating a veal [...]

I just read an excellent article on Apple’s current iPod/iPhone strategyby Wil Shipley of Delicious Monster. Definitely worth a read – the current trend is very worrying.

Localising a software product is a painful, time-consuming process. After much thought, I think there is just no simple way. If you ever plan to tackle the process, be prepared to sink a lot of time and effort into it. Then when you’re coming up to the next release, be prepared to [...]

I’ll be honest. When I first heard good things about the movie Ten Canoes, I was sceptical. I wondered if it really was good, or it was just politically correct to give it good reviews. I didn’t see it at the cinema, but I did watch the DVD yesterday (a legitimate, hired [...]

The other day, I felt like playing Ghouls’n Ghosts (also known as 大魔界村). Now I have warm, fuzzy memories of this game. When I was much younger, the was one of them at the Rockdale bus stop. I didn’t know that the protagonist’s name was Arthur, so I called him “Silly Billy”, [...]

Lately I’ve been doing some programming in my spare time, and working on putting the proverbial polish on some applications. Among other things, I’ve been using Shark to profile applications and look for hot spots to optimise.
Now before I say anything else, I just have to say that if you develop for OS X and [...]

This kind of thing really annoys me. Not the whole strip – just the last panel. To suggest that there’s such a thing as “normal-sized” girls is ridiculous. Girls come in all sizes, and the real problem is that shops only carry clothes for “normal-sized” girls.

You know the catgirls that proliferate manga, anime and video games? (These are typically girls with cat-like features, such as cat ears and tails. Look at Zoey/Ichigo from Mew Mew Power for an example.) Or maybe you’ve seen catgirls on the streets of Japanese cities. (These are typically schoolgirls who, for [...]