Honour

After my dad passed away, one of his friends said something to my mother, and this is still on my mind. He said "You know Aisha, Cassam was not a high achiever, but everything he did, he did it with honour" (that is the translation of my recollection of the 'Kreol Morisiyen' version).

I guess the reason why I still think about this is because there are moments in your life when your 'balance sheet' suddenly becomes clear. In the business world, this would be at the end of the financial year, when accounts are made public. In the life of presidents, it is at the end of their last term. In the life of most human beings, death is an occasion for others to reflect on your balance sheet.

And so it was with my Dad. He was not a 'high flyer', but all he did was with honour. I wondered if maybe we are also kinder to people who have passed away. Do we maybe not see their faults anymore... and if so, is that because we are sad they are gone ? I don't really know.

But I thought the idea that maybe it is more important to do something (anything) honourable, that it is be a 'high achiever'. Is there a parallel here with the idea of 'quality v/s qualtity' ?

Anyway, I would be interested in your comments/thoughts, etc ... if you are reading this :-)

Amazing new site from Flickr - dynamic pictures

This is just an amazing new site from Flickr... it displays a map of the world and shows you new pictures being posted onto Flickr and where they are from. I opened it up for about 5 minutes, and there were pictures from all over the world being posted every few seconds... from photographic 'moody' ones, to family pictures, to sports events...etc...

Just fascinating. Check it out http://flickrvision.com/

Orbiting the Giant Hairball

What a delightful book! You have to read this - if you interested in fostering creativity within a corporation.

The author is Gordon McKenzie, who worked for Hallmark Cards (the main greeting card company here in the US) for 30 years. His last title at the company was ‘Creative Paradox’.

The main point in his book is that corporations come into existence through the creativity of their founders, but subsequently start to become stratified and ossified because of the need to do things ‘that we know work’, thereby discouraging creativity.

The bias against creativity does not just exist in large corporations. I particularly liked his story about asking school children in different grades how many thought they were artists. Invariably, the older the kids, they less hands would go up. They have been taught that they were not creative, or that being creative is not ‘normal’.

The giant hairball is his analogy for the corporate body with all the rules and regulations, and his prescription is to know how to keep within the orbit of the corporation without being absorbed and suffocated into the main mass. Another useful analogy is how when water-skiing, you do not need to follow directly in the wake of the boat, but can at times move in an arc around the back of the boat, or even sometimes get ahead of the boat.

This is a small book full of gems! I highly recommend it.

Here is a quote I really like:

“If we do not let go, we make prisoners of ourselves”

The book’s subtitle is: “A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace.” So, go ahead and read it. You too can become a Corporate Fool J.

Tracking down origins of my violin

I am trying to track the origins of my violin. My mother bought it for me when I was still in school in Mauritius. She used to go to Loretto Convent Port-louis, and had a friend there called Monique Bassy, whose father played music at the Immaculée Church in Port-Louis. Her father taught her to play the violin, and my mum and her classmates admired her for this.

The school attended a music concert at the Port-Louis Theatre one day, and Monique Bassy fell in love with Herbert Barnes, who played in the police band. They had a full-blown love affair and Herbert eventually left his wife to live with Monique.

Subsequently, Monique passed away from cancer, and when I got interested in playing the violin, my mother thought of Monique and called Herbert to see if maybe she could buy Monique's violin. But Herbert did not want to sell, but suggested two sisters who lived in Rose-Hill, who may have a violin to sell.


I remember visiting them with my mother, and seem to recall that one of the sisters played the cello, and the other played the violin; but she was having problems with her left wrist, and could not play the violin anymore. That was why she was selling it. She also gave us some sheet music. This is what I remember.

If anyone out there knows the name of the two sisters and more information on the violin, please let me know. :-)

Thanks.

I am trying to use the new Google gadgets feature. I need a picture of myself so I can customize one of the gadgets. I realized I did not have one on-line, so this is just so I can hyperlink to it. Also, you get to see how I look like ! 2 for the price of 1. Actually 2 for free in the wonderful world of the web.

Rabin Ezra

Rabin's Emails

Since I held on to some of my old email files, I trawled through them looking for some from Rabin, and selected 3...

Rabin being conscise:


Not a bug.
RE
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: 10 April 2002 18:03
> To: rw-bug@csl.com
> Subject: PS2 chain block pre allocation when not using freelists
> (PR#3327)
>
>
> when not using freelists and swePreAlloc(..., ..., FALSE) has been
> called:
>
> _sweOpen doesn't allocate anything; it just allocates chain blocks
> using RwMalloc and then frees them using RwFree.
> _sweClose doesn't display the number of chain blocks used.
>


Rabin not happy :


Someone who doesn't understand the implications of their actions added RenderWare Debugging macros to sweDmaSend. They have been removed.
It would be very useful if people who don't know what they are doing left device code alone. It would be anoying to have to perminantly lock files...
RE

Rabin's unique blend of consciseness and wit:


Its what PS2's do. We call the Sony libs to do mode setup so have no control
over this; have you found a non-RW game that does 60Hz MPAL?
RE
> -----Original Message-----
> Sent: 13 February 2002 10:17
> To: Engineers Support; Engineers Technology
> Subject: Is this a bug : switch to NTSC at 60hz ..
>
>
> Hi !
>
> On a PAL/Secam TV, when I set Rw (any game made with it) to
> 60hz it switches to NTSC .. which sometimes produces a white image ..
>
> Is this a bug ? (well .. not a feature !)

Rabin Ezra

Rabin Ezra

I had picked up a copy of the latest Burnout (revenge ) for PS/2 recently, and finally got to try it yesterday, and I had a shock when I saw one of the screens dedicated to Rabin.

I had worked for Criterion since around 2001, but took a break from 2004-2005. So I guess this explains why I had not heard about this before.

I worked at the US office of Criterion, and one of my roles was supporting Renderware customers. Rabin was usually the port of call for the toughest PS2 low level queries...usually when other engineers had given up on figuring out what was going wrong. I smiled when I read the post about his 40 page PhD submission...it does sound like Rabin. Why waste words when you can express yourself more succintly.

Being that I was in the US office, we did not meet that often, but I remember a lunch we had in San Antonio when he was there for a Siggraph. I was there to introduce our consultant engineer (Chucky) to the UK development team. Somehow we started discussing politics, and I saw another side to Rabin. He would come up with sensible, rational explanations to events and would calm the discussion down. We need more Rabins in this world !

Welcome

Hi there,

Welcome to my blog. Not much in here yet, I have just set it up. I will be adding more soon. Just a quick intro to me... I was born in the UK, but grew up on the Island of Mauritius (next to East Africa). Went back to the UK for studies (University of Manchester), then worked at Pafec Ltd in Nottingham for 5 years, then Datapath Ltd in Derby for 5 years, then moved to Langley (near Heathrow) to work for STB systems. Moved to the US with STB, and was in Dallas for a year, then moved to Criterion software Inc in Austin,TX. Now with EA in Orlando, FL.