Rants, raves, whinges… all of the above
Joel Spolsky has written an article on why you need the best programmers in order to succeed as a software company, and why substituting a good programmer with more mediocre programmers simply doesn't work:
You can't afford to be number two, or to have a "good enough" product. It has to be remarkably good, by which I mean, so good that people remark about it. The lagniappe that you get from the really, really, really talented software developers is your only hope for remarkableness.
I couldn't ask for much more on a Saturday afternoon:
Sun and serenity.
Coffee and a good book.
On Wednesday, I attended my first "communication workshop" at Atlassian, which involved donning green "overalls" and a mask, and running into the bush holding a gun. Oh no, not just any gun. A PAINTBALL gun.
Throughout the day, we learnt skills vital to office life, such as team communication ("Who the fuck's shooting at us?" "He's over there!" *pffft pffft pffft* "Got him!"), camouflage and reconnaissance, and overcoming the pain barrier (Jens!). I am certain the skills we have learnt will serve us well in the future, and undoubtedly improve employee relations.
I look forward to many more similar "workshops". 
I just installed Keyword Assistant 1.8.7, and was notified that there's an Appcast (RSS) feed available for it. Nice!
After a bit of shuffling and screwing around, I've got the blog working on the new server at MediaTemple. There were some issues getting the old URL to work with the RewriteRules, so I decided to register a domain name (for $5!!!) and just forward everything across. All traffic from the old location *should* be redirected without any problems…
If there's actually anyone out there reading, there is a new location for the subscription feed (although again, they should be redirected from the old location): http://bura-bura.com/blog/feed/.
This domain (and another) are currently in the progress of migrating to MediaTemple. For some reason, simply transferring the weblog directory (and the database) didn't work (after editing any hard-coded paths), so I resorted to installing a new version and importing all of the important database tables.
As a result, none of the plugins are here, nor the old design. Perhaps this will give me a chance to work on a new one! (Or just copy stuff over, bit by bit.)
As I mentioned previously, I've been having issues burning CDs after doing a clean install of Tiger (10.4) and updating to 10.4.1.
I came across a thread on the Apple Discussion boards tonight, which seems to have fixed the problem! Yay! I have no idea how this affects disc burning, but it works, and that's all that matters. 
Thanks to "Pete" for the solution to this problem:
open system preferences.
go to international
under languages: drag any of the other languages to the top, then drag english back to the top.
make sure "order for sorted lists" is set to enlish
make sure "work break" is set to english(united states, computer)
then restart.
The details on the fix are here.
Wil Shipley has asked for readers to contribute code, which he will critique and fix up. The first "insult" has been posted, and I was surprised by the amount I learnt from it. Hopefully other people interested in Cocoa programming will find it useful, too.
Today (yesterday, now) was my first day at Atlassian (I don't waste time, do I?), which is my placement for IT2. It was a pretty good day. Firstly, I got to come in at 10.30 (thanks Scott!!!), got shown around the place, setup with a computer (a Dell, ick!) and settled in. I went with a bunch of guys to a Chinese/Malay restaurant in Castlereagh Street, and ate quite a good laksa for lunch. Mmm…
I've got a good feeling about this IT and this company. My placement at Oracle was bad at times, but ended up being OK. I think this one's going to be great. There's an excellent bunch of people (all quite young), I'll be getting a heap of Java and testing experience (since I'm working on Confluence), and it's a small business, so I 'get' the vibe. To top it off, there's a fridge filled with drinks and lots of snacks, so I'm set.
I also got a welcome pack. Yippee!
One of the guys in the office (Jens) showed me around Confluence, and I found out he had been working on some AJAX-stuff for the program, which is quite cool. You can see it (and the other results of their "Fed-Ex" day), here.
The other night, my PowerBook's hard disk decided to die. Disk utility refused to repair the drive, saying that there was an "Invalid key length" in the Catalog file. Whoopee.
I tried DiskWarrior, but it spat back an error along the lines of:
Your disk is fucked. I can't repair it.
You're screwed.
Sorry!
(Well, that's my interpretation of it.)
I managed to borrow a 60Gb drive the next day and after some false starts, backed up my user files and applications using SuperDuper!. It's now functioning OK. Phew! I was afraid I'd lose all of my recent university work (not that I need it now that exams are over) and Mail!
Lesson of the day: Back up. Real often.
