5561

When I went to Cape Town to do my Great White cage dive there was a huge picture on the front page of a surfer grinning with a big ass bitemark in his board.

But the few shark attacks that happens are vastly overreported, because people have this primal fear of them. And there’s beeches with shark nets.
Also surfers are crazy…

Acid, Matt - I’m sorry about what you’re going through. Matt I hope that even if you don’t get your dad back (but there’s still hope) you’ll get to say your goodbyes.

5562

condolences, dude.

5563

Yeah, we have the great white, but in the 20 odd years I’ve been bodyboarding, I’ve never seen or encountered one. I’ve been in the water with a couple of seals, some whales and a pod of dolphins, all different occasions, but never a shark though.

The attacks are few and far between, more people get killed by chairs or sporks a year that by sharks.

I surf around Cape Town and the West coast, the freezing water coast, so I suppose that helps a little too. All the shark nets are up the East Coast, around Durban.

There was an incident about 3 years ago where an old lady was doing her usual swim in Fish Hoek bay. She got taken by a shark and all that they found was her swimming cap. She’d been doing the same swim every day for the last 50 odd years.

It’s an awesome sport though - full body work out, stress relief and really awesome to be sitting out in the water watching the sunset while catching some waves with buddies :)

5564

Awesome. Glad you’re getting so much out of it!

5565

I’m finished all of my University exams forever! As long as I don’t have to repeat any.

Now I just have to go to a meeting to see if I can be excused from an attendance requirement for medical reasons. Should be ok, they have me on record and I can get a note from doctors if needs be. And also to see if I can do an essay now, which is about two months later than when I should have done it. Hopefully this will be allowed and I won’t be gimped 30% for my final result. Type it all up tonight and tomorrow. Get smashed on Thursday when I’ll be properly finished.

Still, woot! No more exams! \o/

5566

I was there when that happened! My mom lived there and my sister had just taken a surfing lesson like the day before. I think that was the year that the seals followed a bunch of fishermen in and as everyone was going about their business, a shark jumped up out of the water and ate one in front of everybody.

I stuck to the pool from then on.

5567

A seal or a fisherman?

5568

A seal!

5569

Weak.

5570

Cue “OH NO!! I have not studied and I am about to write my finals” nightmares in a couple of days. Congrats though!

It then went on to eat the old lady.

There was another attack last year, also in Fish Hoek where a guy got taken in the surf. They reckon it could be the same shark.

5571

Thanks. :D I’m delighted. And I just got permission to hand an essay in late. So come tomorrow evening, I’ll be home free.

I already get nightmares about the Leaving Cert. The Leaving Cert is quite possibly the most daunting exam anyone in Ireland will ever sit. It’s a week of three hour twenty minute exams twice a day. Then another two weeks of a three hour exam every second or so day. They’re state sponsored and they decide what course you can do in University, and if you even get in. Most people do 7 subjects, 100 marks for each subject, results choose your best six and get a total mark out of 600. Some courses are up in the 550+ region, so you have to be getting A1s in all your exams, a tough ask, but people still regularly get 600 points out of 600. I sat mine seven years ago and still get nightmares. My father, who is in his 50s and sat it more then 35 years ago said he still wakes up in cold sweats from it.

I think if there’s any truly global cross-cultural entity, getting nightmares about having to resit exams is it.

5572

One of my external hard drives just died. The one with 500 GB of music on. The music i spent the best part of last year ripping. The music that was not backed up because i have a black belt in procrastination. Dammit.

5573

From what I understand the sharks usually roam further out from Cape Town then where people normally go into the water, and there are a slew of nets and other preventative measures. It’s not really a “clear the beaches” kind of thing.

You know if you live in San Francisco you only live about 20 miles away from one of the greatest great white concentrations in North America. Doesn’t really get advertised much when you go hang around in the water.

— Alan

5574

I have now joined the ranks of the unemployed, because I couldn’t do the jobs of two people.

Anyone know of any positions for an Administrative Assistant in SF?

5575

But that seal ate Buster’s hand.

5576

Just came home from the doctors. I have psoriasis, and got an ointment and orders to stay out in the sun a lot.

Anyone want to calm me down with stories about how it’s not that bad? :(

5577

Maybe Whitta is hiring?

5578

So I decide to make a game. Nothing big, a little flash thing while I learn Actionscript.

I get my killer gameplay idea at 3 AM while rocking little mini-Lurb in her craddle.
The thing still seems clear in my mind in the morning despite the sleep deprivation, and doesn’t seem that hard to implement. One day for basic gameplay, another for polish and I’m done. And my wife likes it, it might even make 10 quid on Kongregate or something.

So I code the thing, and yeah, I’m ready to test in a few hours. And the goddam mobs refuse to behave according to my simple AI scheme. I tweak it and it gets worse. No bugs, they just refuse to actually end up where I want them.

I sleep over it and wake up to an extremely clever way to make it work. How naive I was, this way sure must work. Only it doesn’t work either. And I tweak for another day. Worse and worse, the little sprites seem to mock me while I poke at them with the debugger.

Then I think that well, it’s a pretty simple and obvious thing and I’m overcomplicating it, I bet someone has some nice implementation I can port over and get done with this.

A few minutes later I learn that I have stumbled upon an open and unresolved AI/Alife/Data mining subject, and I notice that I can breeze through recent hard theoretical papers on it because I’ve just spent most the last 48 hours blindly reproducing all the basic research about it.
There have been fucking international meetings named and dedicated to just this thing alone. I bet they’d love to play in there this little Flash game I won’t ever make.

At least it’s easy to reform into a generic match-3 thing. Yay! Sob…

5579

@Lurb: You’re making a game about a salesman? That won’t fly.

5580

I’ve been trying to talk him into hiring an assistant (if only to have the assistant remind him when we have plans and do menial tasks like walk the dog and make sure we’re not pre-ordering the same game 3x) and it’s totally not working ;(