Binary Bonsai

As I left work yesterday to meet up with Rikke so we could go out and find me some clothes to wear for today’s Hitman: Contracts release party – which is an entirely private party, sorry – I was both embarrased and somewhat flabbergasted to see the city making such a spectacle of the me turning 26. Roadblocks are one thing, as is diverting pretty much all traffic in rushhour, but the helicopters were definitly the touch that made my day… That is until I found out it wasn’t so much my birthday (since it’s all gone today), as it was Colin Powell’s blitzvisit to Copenhagen.

Oh well.

But undeterred time marches on and today is my birthday, helicopter security or not. I ate breakfast with rikke, something we usually never do, and I giddily unwrapped her present, which turned out to be a beautiful poster that I’m very eager to get up in our living room.

I might add by the way, that I was quite surprised to find that conincidentally it’s one year since it was last my birthday. Who would’ve known that I was lucky enough to have another this year, and then on the same day! Tsk tsk, I guess God just loves some more than others :)

Work beckons, thoughts on Kill Bill 2 and Intolerable Cruelty will be along tomorrow.

PS: The guy on that picture isn’t me, but one of the thousands of fans I had to literally kick my way through to go to work this morning.

Someone posted this on /. in this thread about cultural influences on games and the marketplaces. I paraphrase:

It’s not that the Xbox isn’t popular in Japan, it’s just that noone can get the zoning rights!

Hehe. Anyway, I’m off to see Kill Bill 2 tonight as well as pick up some clothes for the Hitman: Contracts release party tomorrow. So fear not if I fall off the radar for a few days.

It’s my birthday on friday. Weeee.

I found this well-written article on science fiction writing, and there was a nice quote that I would like to keep around for prosperity:

Einstein said: “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” Any fool can oversimplify. Far from talking down, flatter your reader. Don’t apologise for elitism, encourage your reader to join the elite. Don’t shrink from choosing the exact word that says it best, even if it drives your reader to the dictionary. A dictionary never harmed anyone, and a word can excite by its very unfamiliarity.

There’s also this one, which I think describes exactly what makes Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon so great:

[…] a sufficiently skilled writer can cut through the difficulty without losing content and without dumbing down.

And finally this one:

You may write to inform. You should write to inspire.

All in all I don’t think most of these are new to you, I know that I have heard them or their echoes many times before, but a good lesson is worth repeating as ‘they’ (theomnipresent hivemind of smart-people) say.