Unexpected Sushi! - SushiQube

As we hurried towards the bus station yesterday, we found that Drax and Fyrane were already waiting there. It was a fun ride towards the 'Tzimisce' building (Zhimic) and we had a good meeting, as I blogged about yesterday. Subsequently, we rode the bus back, and we spoke of Tiny Tokyo having good sushi, for pre-packaged sushi, at the Utrecht Station. Tiny Tokyo was still open, but alas, most of the sushi was sold already.

Drax and Fyrane suggested going to SushiQube, where they had had marvellous meals and were looking for excuses to go again. It was happily situated at the Hofplein fountain, overlooking the vast roundabout in the heart of Rotterdam - and at walking distance from the Central Station.
Drax called ahead to reserve a table for four, and although it didn't look like the restaurant would be completely filled, there were many people there already. Not bad for an all-you-can eat sushi place that has only been opened for two months.

The menu was diverse enough for anyone: nigiri and maki sushi, tempura, several kinds of ramen, but also fish and beef and tori yaki. *grin*
All manner of yummy, so to speak.

The night was very enjoyable, and the food was above and beyond. Not just great to look at, but also very tasteful. Drax described it as "Japanese food is either very subtle, or an explosion of taste." They got that right down to an art.
I had my fill of sushi and also had some fried rice which was lovely, but a bit too salty. I had a lot of gyoza and also ate some beef tenderloin as wel as yakitori. Sometimes, chicken does not resemble chicken at all...

SushiQube - Pompenburg 646 (Hofplein), Rotterdam
Atmosphere: 8,5
Food: 9
Service: 8

You know, if I plan this right, we could eat there for my birthday three times! *grin*

The first uneasy steps...on Python

The thing that irks me most about many, many tutorials on programming languages, is that the author thinks his/her readers are all programmers already. If html was a bit more complicated, nobody could learn it by themselves, and I pride myself on the fact I learnt it myself when I was 15 (and the internet was new, and Geocities was the height of homepage civilisation, and De Digitale Stad was lame).

For example: I'm trying to learn Python. I've installed a Python Windows interpreter (learned about those when I did the skillport module on COBOL!) and pressed F1 for more info on Python. This brought me to a tutorial. Ready, set, here we go:

Python is an easy to learn, powerful programming language. It has efficient high-level data structures and a simple but effective approach to object-oriented programming. Python’s elegant syntax and dynamic typing, together with its interpreted nature, make it an ideal language for scripting and rapid application development in many areas on most platforms.
From: The Python Tutorial [Python.org]

Whatever. I'm a n00b, so I don't really care about high-level data thingies, whatever those might be, and I've probably never grasped the idea of why object-oriented programming is important. To be honest, NoKey once explained what it entailed, and I've already forgotten it myself. I just want to get down to writing some code!

The Tutorial starts off with some geek jargon that makes you fear for the worst, and truly, the second chapter (Using the Python Interpreter) doesn't bode well. It assumes the reader knows what an interpreter is, and worse: that they know how to use one. Specifically, how to use the Python interpreter itself! Now look here, I've just downloaded this from the intharweb, I've never written a singe page of code before, never even seen the insides of an interpreter and am facing three html closing brackets (>>>) without even a clue what to do with them.
Telling me "The interpreter operates somewhat like the Unix shell: when called with standard input connected to a tty device, it reads and executes commands interactively; when called with a file name argument or with a file as standard input, it reads and executes a script from that file." doesn't help either.
I quit reading at that point. Instead, I just browsed on ahead towards the first comment box, which held and interesting bit of code I couldn't reproduce in my own Python.
*sighs*

Thank goodness I found this lovely book on Skillport: Beginning Python: From Novice to Professional, Second Edition by Magnus Lie Hetland. It starts at the very very beginning, includes simple steps and made me write my first Python program, which consists of two lines of text:

name = raw_input ("What is your name? ")
print "Hello, " + name + "!"

It does exactly this:
What is your name?
[You type in your name and hit enter]
Hello [name you just typed]!

And that's all! Regardless, I am extremely proud, as it took NoKey 37 lines in C to do exactly the same. And the book continues to explain why I used so many quotation marks, why I use raw_input instead of input, and what happens when you use single quotes to mark your string as well as inside the string itself. It's quite comprehensive so far, and I'm eager to learn more.

So ladidah, stupid python.org high level assholes. I'll stick with Magnus for now.