The T-Files
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![[FSF Associate Member]](http://image.thilosophy.com/fsfMember.png){kind=small}
Four loosely connected stories of ordinary people across the globe
in extraordinary unfortunate circumstances. You have to be prepared
for a major feel-bad experience, Babel is quite the downer.
On the other hand, the kids do not die in the desert,
the arm does not come off, and the girl does not jump from the
balcony, so compared to, say, 21 Grams
, this is probably
a happy end by Alejandro González Iñárritu standards.
8 points
El Movimiento sent me their cute wireless router for free, and I am wondering what to do with it. The idea is to form a community of people who share their Internet connection with strangers. If the community grows large enough, you can find a FONspot wherever you go. FON as a company can make a profit by charging non-members for access to the grid.
List of obvious concerns:
On the other hand, privacy on the Internet is an illusion anyway, and security concerns are not too relevant currently, as the only WiFi-enabled device we have right now is the Wii, and Nintendo makes sure that whatever information it may contain (pictures? save games?) is very difficult to access in the first place. FON also has a collaboration with its capital partner Skype ( another one is Google) to provide Skype calls using VoIP phones, no need for a computer, which is quite intriguing for oversees travel (if it works).
Part One: The Silver Nose carries my glasses at night.
Terada-san introduced me to a role playing and board game shop in Akihabara that hosts a monthly gathering of gamers.
Having turned thirty last year the annual health check shifted gears from casual inspection to thorough investigation, and I was served my first ever barium meal. I have to say that it was not as spectacular as I thought. Neither the taste of the barium sulfate, nor the machine that rotated me around made me sick. It was definitely much less unpleasant than the blood sampling. I did well there too this year, especially compared to two years ago when I fainted and last year when they had to go in three times to get enough juice out of me.
Other things on the menu:
Nothing dental. That never seems to be included in the bundle, wherever you go.
37.61 British pounds = 8 863.7533 Japanese yen
Cissy is a big fan of Sisi,
but Tsutaya Discas has nothing in the way of Romy Schneider or even
Helmut Berger.
Amazon and the BBC to the rescue. 11 hrs and 50 minutes (plus bonus
materials) of British
television drama about the tempestuous reigns
of Emperors Franz-Josef, Nicholas II, and Wilhelm II
. Of course,
only the first episode deals with Sisi, but hey, who wants to miss
Patrick Stewart as Lenin?
Not having watched a minute of it yet, I cannot speak on the quality of the series, I just want to proclaim my happiness that Japan and Europe share DVD Region 2, and that orders from Amazon UK take only four days to get here. But would someone please fix the exchange rate ?
Surprisingly gripping movie about Sierra Leone fisherman Solomon who tries to keep his family alive and together during a brutal civil war. Having just escaped from forced labour in a diamond mine operated by the vicious rebel army he finds that his whole village has been displaced and his young son become a child soldier. His only chance is to strike a deal with diamond smuggler Leonardo DiCaprio, who shows much interest in the huge diamond that Solomon is said to have found and hidden, and who in turn has to cooperate with an American journalist wanting to expose the European and South African companies that are buying the blood diamonds.
8 points
The thousand and one reasons to love Perl: [19] Switch
Starting with Perl 5.9.3, Perl finally has an official
switch statement (in versions before there have been various
hacks to emulate it, none of them pretty).
The long wait has paid off, the Perl version is packed with
dwimmery ("do what I mean").
Part nine: Maruyama-san
/* C switch statement */
switch (data) {
case 1: printf ("one\n");
break;
case 2: printf ("two\n");
break;
default: printf ("something else\n");
break;
}
In order to use post-5.8 features you have to enable them
with the new feature pragma. This assures that the new keywords
do not conflict with existing code. The keywords are not
called switch and case, but given
and when. A straightforward translation of above C code
(also using the new say function, which is Perl's println)
is the following:
use feature qw( switch say);
given($data) {
when (1) { say 'one' ; break; };
when (2) { say 'two' ; break; };
default { say 'something else'; break; };
}
The first improvement that has been made is to make the break
optional. Whereas C and Java will fall through to the next option,
which is usually not what you want, Perl will break out by default.
given($data) {
when (1) { say 'one' ; };
when (2) { say 'two' ; };
default { say 'something else'; };
}
Conversely, you cannot get the C behaviour of falling through
to the next option. There is a continue keyword,
which will go to the next when, but that condition will
still be checked.
# this code does not work !
# it will say "something else"
given($data) {
when (1) { continue; };
when (2) { say 'one or two' ; };
default { say 'something else'; };
}
But the when clause is quite smart and can do more
than simple literal comparisons, letting you say
# this works
given($data) {
when ([ 1, 2]) { say 'one or two' ; };
default { say 'something else'; };
}
This smart matching
feature supports
many different types of comparisons and it can also
be used outside of when using the new ~~
operator.
Finally, you can combine the switch with a loop:
my $count = 0;
for (@array) {
when ("foo") { ++$count }
}
say "\@array contains $count copies of 'foo'";
Long live the Organization for the Organized!