Blog

Great quotes during this trip…

• “I’m hungry like the wolf.”
• “It was like buying pies with rainman.”
• “But I’ve never even owned a flute.”
• “Pony Poo - $1 a bag”
• “Yes, I am here with the intention of dining.”
• “Pull out your prawns and smile.”
• “It’s where I discovered that adrenaline is brown.” Well, trust me, they were funny at the time. Anyways, we went to Taupo, Rotorua and around. Stewart did his bungy and loved it, and we met up with some mates of his up there and had a great evening. Before it was over, Stewart had been leaping into topiary, and Kim & I had been given a rare opportunity to hear the nocturnal call of the Liverpudlian Wolf.

We’ve seen the world’s smallest pony, been to the rather fine thermal areas of Orakei Korako and Craters Of The Moon, bathed in piping hot springs, seen the daily gush at the Aratiatia Dam and the rapids that it creates on the Waikato River, visited the Huka Falls, watched Kim & Stewart Zorb, eaten geothermal prawns, been to Trout Central, visited an elevator from The Shining via a tunnel from a hippy...

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Travels

Well, I’m off to Taupo with Stewart (my flatmate) and Kim (a visitor to the lab) this weekend. Should be good. It’s Stewart’s birthday on Sunday, and he’s going to bungy-jump and then get very drunk. My Dad suggested that this was the wrong way around.

And, I’ve just booked a flight to Christchurch and back, for a week of adventures on the south island. I’ll fly out on the 16th and return on the 26th, and see as much as humanly possible in the meantime. Planning a HeliHike on a glacier - weather permitting of course.

After that, I’ll have to sort out the return to the UK. Blimey.

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Travels

Was looking for some cake recipes, as I am cooking cakes for friday-buns-on-thursday this week. During the process I discovered DeliaOnline and The BBC Recipe Archive which both seem to be excellent recipe sauces.

Unfortunately, I just remembered that my flat does not have a proper oven. It’s a blokes flat where everything is either fried, boiled or microwaved (but mostly fried). Looks like I’ll be buying a cake instead of making one, but at least I have a good excuse!

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Top Tips

Well, finally tracked down the optimization bug. A weird Intel chip + gcc issue that can be described as an ‘extended precision problem’. Its pretty dull, but likely to hit many folks doing my kind of work, so I’m putting a summary on a seperate page. On a lighter note this is scarily human, and this is pretty cool.

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Development

Horrible day. One of the codes I’ve inherited behaves very bizarrely. Usually it works, but sometimes if it’s compiler with optimization (which should not change anything except the speed) it hangs itself out to die. Can’t see an darn thing wrong with it. Grrr.

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Development

Came across this quote, which I rather like.

‘Women are meant to be loved, not to be understood.’

from The Sphinx Without a Secret by Oscar Wilde.

Go to http://www.classicreader.com/read.php/sid.6/bookid.1968/ to read the whole story.

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General