"The worlds best pizza and ice-cream since 1983."

A rather surreal breakfast

I believe this was in December, 2005. The sand dunes are the ones a little outside Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. I distinctly recall sleeping tent-less, and that it was very cold.

Many Izakayas transform into simple restaurants serving regular inexpensive meals during the day, especially during lunch time on weekdays. Though I had noticed that about this place, I had only so far been there during lunch time, so nothing stopped me from walking in at 9 PM hoping to get myself some Soba/Tempura.

This can be awkward on many levels: dress-code is never explicit in such places, but one still stand outs out wearing a T-shirt and jeans, when everyone else is still in business attire after a hard day's work. The other thing is that Izakayas are not just about drinking, but the group ritual of drinking together. I was the only person there by myself, and only because it would have been too rude to walk out right after walking in.

Still, it had been a while since I'd been to one; mostly because of the relatively low profile I have been keeping at least where the social life around work is concerned. Izakaya food, which is basically healthy, small-plate dishes usually meant to accompany drinks, is very innovative and one requires a certain amount of knowledge to be able to order properly, so I had to sort of wing it.

That awkwardness behind me, everything was simply delicious, not surprisingly the Tempura no Moriawase. I accidentally ordered the Wafu-Shumai, which was rather amazing too. Not a mistake that I am regretting too much at this point.

Bikkle, in retro-looking glass bottles. The Japanese (Katakana) text under the logo reads 'Bifidus'

Having discovered that there's a 100-yen vending machine nearby that sells it, it's been a constant rate of two bottles a day. It also seems that I'm not the only Gaijin who is a big fan of this drink: I could list a few people, but maybe I'll simply hope that Google leads other Bikkle lovers to this page.

I switched to Sawfish simply because it's scripting language, librep is a Lisp - one that I had been spending many commuting Zaurus hours on. Life has been very good with this the way it is.

Until I read yesterday's LTU article a post that talks about side-effects in imperative languages that cause closures to capture variables in less-than-desirable ways. It was not the actual post itself, but a link to a series, with one interesting post featuring a tour of Haskell and a rather fabulous example to use as a working demo program: XMonad, a really good window manager written in and extensible in Haskell:

• Windows are automatically tiled
• Mouseless
• Configurable (even in real time), using Haskell

I'm tempted to try it; given todays large displays, arranging windows with your mouse just feels silly.

Imperative-style Iterations and closures don't mix well

my @arr = ();
for (my $i = 4; $i < 7; $i++) {
    push @arr, sub {
        return $i;
    };
}

for (my $i = 4; $i < @arr; $i++) {
    my $f = $arr[$i];
    print $f->(), "\n";
}

my @arr = map {
    my $i = $_;
    sub {
        return $i;
    }
} (4..7);

print $_->(), "\n" foreach @arr;

var delayedActions = [4,5,6,7].map(function (n) {
    return function (i) {
        return i;
    };
});