Sometimes I forget that maybe I should snap a picture now and then that isn’t of an inanimate object or static scene. And although my cheap Nokia camera phone takes terrible photos it’s better than nothing, and I always have it on my person, so I think I shall try to use it more often.

Here’s Sandy and I listing badly atop Mount Eden on a freezing day in the middle of Auckland. The strange painterly effect in the background is due to the image compression used by the phone, not any post-processing on my part. I picked this shot because my head doesn’t look five times bigger than hers, due to a trick where I am actually standing three feet behind (a technique known as forced perspective ).

For the second night in a row I dropped in to a supermarket tonight to pick up some bubble bath, and for the second time I came away empty handed. After scouring the shelves in the bathroom aisle for what must have been nearly 10 minutes, I finally gave up and went and asked a guy if he could show me where the bubble bath was. He made me repeat myself and then led me to the condiments aisle where he pointed at some poppadoms. Awkward. A second attempt and he brought me to some scrubbing brushes and replacement mop-heads… I couldn’t see how that worked at all, so thanked him for his help and moved on.

Anyhow, the point of this story is not to laugh at some poor guy with bad English, rather it is to express outrage at the fact that bubble bath seems to have vanished from the shelves, to replaced by a thousand different scented body washes and shower gels… and this makes me really cross! I can’t actually remember where I got my last bottle from– obviously it wasn’t one of the two major supermarkets I just tried.

Bubble bath solution does not just make bathtime fun, it also makes bathtime more energy efficient by retaining the heat in the bath, and further it stops my bathroom walls from becoming sopping wet with condensation (from all the vapor freely escaping from the surface of the water).

Bubbles make great insulation, in the same way any foam does.

The same principle applies with hot coffee; a coffee with a layer on froth on top gives up its heat more slowly, mostly via radiation and conduction through the sides of the cup, rather than convection and evaporation, which is what occurs without the protecting layer. An added bonus in the case of hot drinks is that the foam layer has a dampening effect on the motion of the liquid underneath, so while I am always spilling my tea when simply crossing the room with it, with a nice creamy latte/cappucino I can pretty much run from the kitchen to my office without spilling a drop.

So remember this next time you imply someone is in some way a ponce for drinking a slightly fancy hot beverage; they may in fact be going with the most practical option.

A nice thing about the iPhone SDK is that it includes an emulator, so even without an iPhone I can still mess around with one (up to a point– no actual GSM/3G/GPS functionality is available for obvious reasons). As well as a slick rendering of the actual iphone itself (not just the screen) the emulator allows you to view horizontally as well (causing Safari and the photo viewer do their animated screen rotations just like on the real thing).

Unfortunately by the time I get around to trying any iPhone development the iTunes App store will no doubt be utterly flooded with garbage (if it isn’t already) and all the good territory will be taken by the people who have a clue.

Some people have asked about the possibility of Drivey on the iPhone, but to be honest I don’t think it belongs there– at least not in its "dreamy" mode. Drivey is not intended as a quick distraction, rather as an immersive experience. Also it would totally eat battery life on a mobile device. It would look pretty cool though. Here’s a mockup just to annoy the people who look at the pictures before they read the text.

Speaking of Drivey, I got some nice feedback recently (I have actually received hundreds over the years; I keep meaning to collect them together and make a best of list to inspire me to pick it up again). I hope A.T. won’t mind me posting this here:

I first tried Drivey about three years ago. Since then, I’ve been through a couple of new PCs (losing the installation along the way), but, feeling all nostalgic, I came looking for Drivey tonight and it’s still one of the finest graphical demos/screensavers/idontknowwhatthehellitisbutiloveit-its I’ve ever seen. Don’t worry about collision detection, or game features: it’s perfect the way it is.

Feedback like this reminds me of what I love about programming– although of course I’m sure many people would disagree that Drivey needs no further work :)

Not a mini– that dream is dead. Instead it’s a 2002 Volkwagen Lupo, a small car of which I had never even heard until I saw this one (and so very sensibly decided to buy it).

Features

• room for two real people in the front and up to three cardboard cutouts in the back.
• MiniDisc player– which is such a relief because I had heard a rumor that the format was dying.
• Airbag brand dashboard and seats
• charcoal and red color scheme– no poxy mid-grey plastic/upholstery
• breathing holes
• cup holders! As someone who has managed to spill coffee on the inside of a windscreen, these bring me great satisfaction.
• no lame-o glove box– who needs those!

I bought it in an online auction* having looked at it in real life for about 10 minutes and driven it back and forth a distance of 2 metres or so. It was pissing with rain during the hours of inspection, so I hoped that not too many people would show up and I might get a better deal with less competition. In the end (ie the last 5 minutes of the auction, of course) it turned out a few others were interested, so I didn’t quite get it for the song I was hoping, but it still felt like a pretty good deal at NZ$6050.

Problems

• Passenger window not working… not sure if this is going to be expensive to repair, but not a huge priority right now (I was aware of it at time of sale)
• Loss of engine power/smoothness after leaving it parked in the rain. This seems to have been a problem with wet contacts/sparkplugs– a few spritzes of WD40 has kept this problem from recurring (Auckland is very soggy lately)
• I still can’t work out how to set the damn clock [UPDATE: see comments] Being an import from Japan (obviously not made there) it did not come with an owner’s manual, and I can’t seem to find an English one online because VW are total dicks like that it seems– Major kudos to anyone who can point me in the right direction there

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* to anyone in Auckland who wants to try their luck with a cheap import: I bought this car through www.oval.co.nz, a business that imports used cars from Japan and sells them directly on TradeMe** without detailing or servicing.

** TradeMe is a daggy but awesome auction site whose popularity has thus far prevented the evil eBay from gaining a foothold in New Zealand.