Thursday, June 30, 2016

June 30, 2016

(Warning: Game of Thrones Season 6 spoilers)

Well, Season 6 of Game of Thrones is over. This is easily the best season so far for me, notwithstanding the WTFs involving Arya's Braavos escapades and Dany's crappy plot line. To be fair, I watched seasons 1 to 4 in more or less binge mode (bless you and RIP, Show Box), so I may be wrong. The post-premiere discussion megathreads at reddit are the place to be after watching the episode, where you get to experience the depth of emotions people exhibit for having R+L = J confirmed for them after waiting for 20 years and also some hilarious comments ("Lancel should have crawled zig zag" and "Tommen took the name 'Kings Landing' too literally").

Episodes like "Battle of the Bastards" and "Winds of Winter" are always better appreciated on the second viewing; half of the first time is spent in nervousness/dread, wondering what unexpectedly crappy thing is going to happen next. The second time you're more relaxed, knowing what's coming next, and are also on the lookout for the minor but important details you missed the first time (pointed out helpfully in the relevant reddit thread).

On a related note, I started watching The Walking Dead, and after two episodes I can't for the life of me figure out why it's held in such high regard; bad acting, bad editing, cliches all over the place, you name it. Maybe GoT has spoiled me, but things better start looking up in the next episode or two.

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"Family life" my ass:
CAIT national president B.C.Bhartia and Praveen Khandelwal maintained that allowing shops and establishments freedom to operate on a 24/7 basis would have a detrimental impact on the traders. Their case is that it would have repercussions on law & order, environment, health, social and family issues.
Why not be upfront about the real reason, i.e., "Our business and profits will be at risk if this act is passed"?

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pLisp has been ported to 64 bit. I thought I had already taken care of potential 64 bit issues, but boy was I wrong. The things that bite you in the ass are not the obvious gotchas like unsigned ints that were used to hold pointer values, but stupid effing stuff like missing function prototypes which screw you over in oh so unexpected ways. Nah, I'm not bitter at all, why do you ask?