Some weeks ago, I randomly ran into an old acquaintance with whom I had a brief but extraordinarily profitable working relationship with during my last year of high school. As partners in *Drunken Ogre Entertainment*, we produced this little gem, over the course of a few shorts months of work:

Unfortunately, it won’t run playably under [DOSBox](http://mac.softpedia.com/get/System-Utilities/DOSBox.shtml) on my Mac, but for PC readers interested in trying this out, all you need is a friend and [the download here](http://uwmike.com/wp-content/uploads/empyrean.zip). You may need to turn off the audio (use the “nosound” command-line parameter) to get it to work, but it’s still a bucket of fun.

The thing I remember most about the game was not so much the fun we had making (and playing) it, but how much it taught me about geometry. It was in programming the particles and guided missiles that I finally gained a true understanding of how to apply basic trigonometry; until then, it had been a sort of voodoo-math that revolved around [some strange acronym](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sohcahtoa).

Recently, I was sort of hoping for some similarly practical exercise to teach me all about [Laplace](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laplace_transform).

Last night, in Waterloo, there were two parties.

The first was thrown by a frat, and was bone dry. The second was thrown by a local employer and featured a good deal more beer and liquor than could have been safely consumed by the persons present.

Not that all Waterloo frat parties are dry, or that most employer recruitment sessions *aren’t*, but it’s a little amusing to observe the contrast between students *now* and the students who graduated ten years ago to start companies in town.

This fun little piece just came down the [toronto_lindy mailing list](http://groups.yahoo.com/group/toronto_lindy/):

As they chatted while waiting for the dance to begin, one elderly gentleman in colourful shorts and mismatched knee socks was dancing up a storm with a partner half his age. With his right arm wrapped around his partner’s back and his left hand gently holding her right hand, the man twirled her around the dance floor, unfurling the woman gracefully, then pulling her back into his embrace. It was a beautiful sight, but an anxiety-inducing one for me.

I had reluctantly made my way to Lithuanian House because I wanted to learn how to move like that elderly gentleman. I hadn’t always known I wanted to dance. In fact, I had lived my entire life unaware that I had such a desire…

Catch the whole article [here](http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/news/artslife/torontomag/story.html?id=59ef8704-6c76-44b5-909e-d542bec0273e&p=1). Alana is presently on sabbatical in Ottawa, but she was my teacher over the summer, and I fully second Karastamatis’ experience of her delightful personality and instruction.

I’ll have a real post next week, but in the meantime you can catch some articles at my [book's blog](http://googlemapsbook.com/); I’m particularly proud of [this demo](http://uwmike.com/maps/states/gd/), which I think will open a lot of people’s eyes to the possibility of making cool maps based on regional statistics.

At the moment, I’m working on my work term report for University of Waterloo. I’m once again using Simon Law’s powerful [LaTeX class](http://www.law.yi.org/~sfllaw/programs/uw-ece-workreport/) to typeset the document; the big drawback of not having to waste time on formatting is, I can’t fiddle with the page numbering while I cast about for inspiration. On that note, if you’re interested—or know someone interested—in offering me an engineering-related job for January through April of 2007, please check out my [sales pitch](http://uwmike.com/about/work/) and maybe [give me a shout](http://uwmike.com/contact/).

It looks like my We-Create co-worker Jeffrey Sambells is attending [php|works](http://hades.phparch.com/ceres/public/page/index.php/works) again this year. I was there last year and enjoyed it; keep an eye on [his site](http://jeffreysambells.com/) for rundowns of the events.

A review of my book has [just made Slashdot](http://books.slashdot.org/books/06/08/28/1333228.shtml). [Michael J. Ross](http://www.ross.ws/index.html) gives us an 8/10 and an overwhelmingly positive run-down, concluding thus:

> Overall, Beginning Google Maps Applications with PHP and Ajax is an excellent introduction to extending the power of Google Maps on the Web, and provides enough detail to both help and entice readers to build their own Google Maps mashups.

Within the next day or two, I’ll have a very sweet example ready to show off on the blog; stay tuned. ([ht](http://terrill.ca/))

We’ve just posted up the [fourth chapter of Beginning Google Maps Applications](http://googlemapsbook.com/sample/Beginning_Google_Maps_Applications_CH4_Sample.pdf), which is about the art of geocoding.

[Cam](http://www.camturner.com/) was the primary author on this chapter, and did splendid job of researching and presenting the multiple options available—Google, Yahoo, Geocoder.us/ca—and then also demonstrating a finished project, [located here](http://googlemapsbook.com/chapter4/StoreLocationMap/). (You can see all of Chapter 4’s source code [here](http://googlemapsbook.com/chapter4/).)

In the spirit of Web 2.0, I feel compelled to share a video of my brother’s lizard eating a cricket.

Boy I thought I was clever, until I got it on YouTube and discovered that approximately a gazillion other people had the [exact same idea](http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=lizard+cricket&search=Search). Viva là interweb.

(And yes, the blurriness is my fault, not the iSight’s. But Gawayne isn’t hungry any more, so the re-shoot will have to hold off until tomorrow…)

John Marshall has posted some gorgeous snaps of his [2006 Wolf River trip](http://gallery.marshallweb.ca/albums/dominionday2006/). (I designed and host the site, but the artwork is all his…)

I’ve been on Wordpress for [just a month](http://uwmike.com/articles/2006/07/06/wordpress/), but I’ve got a first plugin to release: [WP-Cats](http://uwmike.com/wordpress/wp-cats/), an elegant tool that adds Ajax category management to to the *Manage Posts* screen.