A Different Kind of Tourism

If a person were to walk from downtown Mountain View (in so far as Mountain View has a town to be down of) to the Computer History Museum, and then kept going, they might find themselves wandering into Shoreline Business Park. This is where you would find the silicon in this part of the valley. Of course, there isn’t actually a lot of touristin... Read more
05 Jun 2011 / 3 minute read / hacker, 2 more

The Process and the Platform

The effort required to actually publish that last post was… considerable. Several factors contributed to this: I have slow internet access at my hotel; Currently, my only (full) computer is my work laptop; This doesn’t have iPhoto installed (this is mostly for reasons of simplicity, I’d probably get it if I asked). In the end, I wrote ... Read more
03 Jun 2011 / 4 minute read / blogger, globe-trotter

...In Which I Go Full Nerd

Jet lag is a funny thing. Right now it actually seems to be working in my favour; it’s managed to knock a couple of bad habits out of me. Specifically, these happen to be the not entirely unrelated habits of going to bed too late (then making it later by reading for a good long while) and getting up too late. Right now I seem to be fighting to k... Read more
02 Jun 2011 / 4 minute read / hacker, 2 more

This Morning.

You’re going to have to wait a little while longer for the Computer History Museum, Silicon Valley Wandering and San Francisco based updates I had in mind, since I still haven’t found a good way of adding the images I wanted to. In the meantime, I thought I’d tell you about my morning, in a similar (if significantly smaller in scope) fashion to ... Read more
02 Jun 2011 / 2 minute read / hacker, globe-trotter

A brief update

Most people can definitively trace at least one or two traits directly back to one of their parents. In my case I can definitely lay the blame for two at the feet of my father: I know the rules of cricket inside out; Walking right across town doesn’t faze me in the slightest. The first isn’t really important right now (unless you need to... Read more
31 May 2011 / 1 minute read / globe-trotter

Fourteen Days in the Valley

I can see the mountains, but I suppose that’s only to be expected. I am in Mountain View, after all. As of today, I’m in Silicon Valley for my “noogler training,” something which most companies would just refer to as an induction. At Google, though, there’s a bit more to it than that. There are a lot of tools and technologies to learn, because ... Read more
28 May 2011 / 2 minute read / hacker, globe-trotter

What's the Downside?

I’m reading a Peter F Hamilton book right now. His work isn’t perfect, but I like it. He achieves a fairly staggering level of scale, whilst corralling a considerable number of characters who are worth your time1 and develop naturally, if exceptionally. His books are, however, frikkin’ gigantic. This one is 725 pages long, and is shorter than a ... Read more
26 May 2011 / 2 minute read / bibliophile

Day One

This is going to be short. Suffice to say: almost everything you’ve heard about working for Google is true. That being the case, there is no slide in my office. I’m told they have them in Mountain View and Zurich, however, and I’ll apparently be visiting both this year (Mountain View next week!). The food / restaurants / kitchens are awesome in... Read more
23 May 2011 / less than 1 minute read / hacker

s/@seebyte\.com/@google\.com/g

Yes. That’s right. I did it. I used a sed expression as post title. I’ve been very quiet as of late, though in my defence I’ve been very busy for a few months. In the middle of that I had a potentially life changing decision to make, and then I was dealing with the ramifications of the choice I made. As you may have gathered from the post titl... Read more
22 May 2011 / 3 minute read / hacker, globe-trotter

Procedural Landscape Generation:

Features

So, in my last post I remarked that for procedurally generated landscapes to be interesting, they would need features. But what sort of features was I talking about? Population centres, in particular, tend to to be found close to certain kinds of… things. The first of these which always comes to my mind is the “defensible position.” Something li... Read more
24 Mar 2011 / 3 minute read / hacker