Andy's witterings

Just in time - Birthday Greetings!

2009-12-09T23:39:25Z

Birthday Greetings

2009-12-09T22:46:28Z

Some delays are good

2009-12-08T22:18:08Z

Tomorrow's visit to customer site to fit and test a prototype of a device that cuts the power consumption and improves reliability of some items fitted to vehicles, has been cancelled due to lack of available test vehicles.

This is actually good, because although it seemed as if everything was going to plan, and indeed, the part that is assembled works exactly to specification, there is more to do than I could complete today. I need to make the very first prototype of a debouncer that should prevent the doors being logged as opening and closing at one second intervals, but also a pulse stretcher to allow the processor to have time to log the engine start (Don't ask!) I did the paper design about ten days ago, and now I have all the parts, there *should* be no surprises, except for how long it takes to solder it all together tidily.

There is up to another four hours work to do before it is all ready for use.

The new test is scheduled for Friday, but three hours drive away instead of locally. You win some, you lose some. At least I can visit muuranker the night before, and be already half way there in the morning. I wasn't looking forward to getting up at 05:30...

Digital economy bill worse than thought

2009-12-03T14:36:54Z

It is being fast tracked, and has already had its second reading the the Lords. tigerfort has written an exposition.

I will add that in the USA, academics have rigorously demonstrated that copyright infringement notices may be issued to printers, routers, and items of hardware that have not had any contatct with anything copyrighted.

In the light of this, I surmise that the lack of any appeal process, and the ability for the authorities to require that someone is disconnected from the Internet without even an accusation of copyright infringement, is because it is known that finding legally admissible evidence is difficult.

I shudder to think what will happen when the government of the day can point at all their opponents and require that they be disconnected from the internet. I think that will be the case before the next election...

Birthday greetings

2009-11-25T23:45:52Z

Hobbit Birthday eldritchhobbit

Birthday joustings

2009-11-24T19:20:55Z

Happy Birthday parrot_knight

Third accusation and you're out

2009-11-23T14:31:29Z

From tigerfort:

The glorious leaders of the UK have published a "Digital Economy Bill" as part of this year's legislative program. The main thrust of it is penalties for people suspected of illegal file sharing, and the ability for more penalties and requirements for ISPs to keep and hand over information to be added later by Mr Mandleson or his successor, with no further debate.

There is also a provision for a royalty collecting organisation to collect royalties on behalf of people not their members, and, presumably, keep them. This was not clear, but I believe it is what is done in the USA.

This is a pretty chilling piece of legislation. We rely increasingly on the internet, and it does not seem to me even vageuely in line with previous traditions of UK law to impose a far reaching penalty in response to accusations for which evidence need not be provided.

In the USA, academics have rigorously demonstrated false identification of illegal file sharing for such devices as printers and routers. Although it may turn out that the majority of the people so accused will be guilty, it would not be prudent to assume that. 'Course, if you've done nothing wrong, you have notihng to fear, right?

There is a Number 10 petition to sign, and I commend to all reading this in the UK that they do so.

Here are links to more info. I particulary liked this comment from one of them: Eroding Democracy and Constitutional Law should be a criminal offense, not a business model...

Happy Birthday muninnhuginn

2009-11-14T14:47:17Z

Hoppy Bird Day to the corbies

Words meme

2009-11-06T00:03:35Z

These words from gayalondiel

I won't post the meme rules this time because I am too tired to think of words for anyone else at present

Curry

I have always enjoyed considerable variety in food, and had eaten the generic curry that my mother made. Then, in my first year at university, I lived in a flat with some people from Sri Lanka, one of whom was a keen and skilful cook. I enjoyed the flavourful food he prepared – things like dall that you could eat with a fork, and that was normally served with a salad, because you would not want to eat it thermally hot, as spicy as it was.

Though I do not usually choose the spiciest curries in Indian restaurants, because I like variety, I certainly don't normally discover anything too spicy for me to want to eat it if I am in the right mood. Remember: 'Everybody likes … good curry'.

Computers

I first encountered an actual computer on a school visit, and I wrote a program in assembly language to make a table of frequencies for an amateur radio design.

At university, there was an IBM 360/65 which we programmed in in Fortran, using a compiler that started as Watfor, but got upgraded. I think it had the massive clock rate of 16kHz (yes, really Kilohertz!).

The engineering link computer allowed us to run our programs, on punched cards, without going to the computer centre. All it did was to read the cards and send the data to the mainframe, then control the line printer to print what came back. (All the output was on a line printer.) Every morning the link operator had to program the computer using binary data and address switches, until it had a bootstrap loader that allowed it to read its operating system from a deck of punched cards.

Later, we had different computers to work with. My first task in my first job was to simulate part of a radar system using an online HP computer and a bastardised form of basic. Online meant a teletype that used paper tape to store the programs, and a dialup connection – which was fast enough for something that used only text and printed IN CAPITAL LETTERS all the time.

Later in my career, I wrote BASIC on an Apple IIE to do things like simulate the operation of analogue circuits in the time domain.

Now at least half my work involves a computer, normally as a tool for designing electronic equipment, or occasionally websites. I really liked Fortran, but in order to cope with object oriented languages, I must put it out of my mind.

'Course, being an electronics designer, I am also happy to dismantle and try to repair failed computers, or, in a pinch, to try conclusions with the software. There are others on my flist who are much more expert than I with software.

Conventions, science fiction of course

We first went to a worldcon in Brighton in 1987, and somehow I failed to got the Hawkwind gig. I did buy a 5 year subscription to Analog, to which I have subscribed ever since.

Then a group of us built what turned out to be the winning masquerade entry for the 1995 Worldcon in Glasgow, and I enjoyed that so much that we have been to all but two or three worldcons in the intervening period, and have seem little bits of parts of the world we would otherwise never have gone to.

We have also gone to most Eastercons, but few others apart from those two, over the years.

We have made a few new friends at cons over the years. On leaving a con I feel as if I am leaving the place where I should live and returning to an alien civilisation where I have to spend most of my time.

All this derives from my lifelong interest in reading science fiction books and magazines, and I think it is the common cultural background that helps a lot in feeling relaxed among other science fiction readers.

Tech

I have liked music for as long as I can remember, and in my early teens designed and build a stereo record player, back in the days when mono was more usual. The parallel intersts in sound quality and electronics have continued throughout my life, so it was a no-brainer to start by setting up a simple microphone and amplifier system when Oxonmoot grew large enough to need it, and my involvement in tech has grown with the need for it.

I think that my formal education helps me assess the acoustic properties of an environment, something I believe is central to the task, because we were taught about Fouirrioer series and even Fourrier transforms, so I find myself assessing an acoustic environment both from the time domain and frequency domain points of view. (it is the concept, not the maths, that helps here!) In different situations, one or the other gives greater insight, and often both contribute to dealing with the situation.

The Tolkien Society

It was Hibernia who introduced me to the Tolkien Society. Tolkien Society events, for me, share a factor with science fiction conventions: there is an important common cultural background. Maybe it is because people who have read, considered, and seen some point in The Lord of the Rings are very likely to share some attitudes towards life, and about reasonable ways to interact with other people. I don't feel alien in the company of Tolkien Society people either. It is many of the Mundanes who bemuse me.

I have met more friends via the Tolkien Society than by any route.

Words meme

2009-10-31T23:06:26Z

Rules:

Reply to this meme by yelling 'WORDS!', and I will give you five words that remind me of you. Then post them in your journal and explain what they mean to you. Keep in mind that if I don't know you that well, your words might end up kind of esoteric/oblique. You'll only get given five words if you do include 'WORDS!' in a reply to this post, meaning you can safely comment (should you wish to do so) without having to play.

Words from sally_maria

Beer...: ...is proof that God exists and wants us to be happy. Should that have been "hoppy"? Anyway, I really enjoy good beer, of many different types and flavours. Generally the good stuff is served using a handpump, or straight from a barrel, un the UK, but I find some French "pression" more flavourful than the lager I have encountered in the UK. I tend to drink several beers a day when on holiday, but rarely get around to even one during the week at home. At the Eastercon held in Blackppool a few years ago, the venue did not believe the organisers' assertion that real ale would be popular, but fizzy beer less so. As a reault I averaged less than one beer a day on that holiday. My greatest consumption of lighter beers in when skiing, when, at lunch time, the first one seems to hiss down.
Electronics: I have been interested in *electricity* since I was old enough to hold a pair of pliers and twist two pieces of wire together. While at kindergarten age my main toys were low voltage lamps, switches, and electric motors. I powered a Heath Robinson assembly of such items from a 6V battery of the type with two springs on the top - nowadays used for high power hand lamps. At age 7 I built a crystal radio, following instructions in a small pamphlet given to me by my father. At about 11 or 12 I was introduced to a radio amateur, and was so interested that I passed the amateur radio exam and the morse test to get my amateur radio licence at the youngest age then permissible, 14. Subsequently I studied electrical engineering at University, then worked for a while at a radar company, then at one making electronic lab instruments (such items as oscilloscopes and digital meters). There I worked on one of the very early digital oscilloscopes.

Now I work as a freelance electronics consultant, specialising in power electronics and some other areas which may in house engineers regard as a black art - because that is a major reason for wanting to use a consultant. I really enjoy the sense of achievement when I am able to solve a problem that others have been unable to solve, and, for example, substantially improve reliability of a product, or make something work that I had been told was not believed to be possible (like flicker-free dimming of neon tubes).

From the earliest time I could conceive of what working for a living might involve, I wanted to work in some area involving the application of electricity, so I am pleased to be doing so.
Tolkien: I always used to read science fiction, and was less impressed with the fantasy I had read, because it seemed that the plot got sorted out by some hitherto unknown bit of magic. Then my girlfriend, now my wife, told me I *really* should read The Lord of the Rings. One evening I sat down in the shared student kitchen with a coffee and started reading - and found I was still there in the morning when I should go to a maths lecture. I had often had difficulty putting down a book when I should do something else, but rarely if ever quite so pronounced. Over the years I have re-read LotR many times, listened to the BBC dramatisation, watched the movies, listened to the audio book while driving, and have always found it has repaid a re-read after a period of time. Yes, I have read other books by Tolkien, but LotR is, for me, by far his greatest work. The philosophy embodied in it seems to me wholesome, like Lembas.

When Hibernia first introduced me to the Tolkien Society, I initially expected to find slightly strange people. As it turned out I have found more and better friends via The Tolkien Society than I had expected to find in my lifetime.
Cats: I used to think I did not like cats, only dogs, but Hibernia liked cats, and got me to agree that as and when she found a cat that needed a good home, she could adopt it. This she did, when we were living in Ilford, and she brought home on the train from central London (in a wicker basket), a white cat who turned out to be deaf. I named her Goldie, after Goldie Hawn, who is good at *playing* the dumb bolnd, but who I do not believe to be dumb at all. Goldie appeared in a photograph taken at a Tolkien Society smial, and published in the Radio Times when the radio dramatisation of LotR was first broadcast. She may have been the worlds most relaxed cat - travelling in the car, she would go to sleep on the driver's lap.

Now we have our fourth cat, who we adopted by a circuitous route after her owner died. She was somewhat nervous and covered in fleas when she first arived, but now the fleas have long since been banished, and, far from being nervous, she periodically lies on her back and asks me to stroke her tum.
Skiing: Skiing is my preferred holiday activity. I regard it as the closest you can get to the sensation of flying while still on the ground, and the most fun you can have when fully clothed. It is just about the only time of the year when all the many streams of thought, some of them negative and unhelpful, quit and I get to think of one thing. I am keen on skiing *well*, and I find that in order to ski as skilfully as my current level of training permits, with no compromise, there is only room in my mind for the thoughts directly related to the skiing. I reckon I return from skiing more sane by a significant margin than when I stasrted the holiday.

Gurthaew has or had a t-shirt with apicture of a skier and the slogan "Better than sex", but I would not go that far. It is too close to call.

After all that, I might just indulge in a bottle of beer!

The Haloween meme

2009-10-31T22:10:24Z

My LiveJournal Trick-or-Treat Haul
alitalf goes trick-or-treating, dressed up as Gandalf.
atreic tricks you! You get a rock.
chainmailmaiden gives you 12 orange vanilla-flavoured gummy worms.
crazyscot gives you 2 light green evil-flavoured pieces of bubblegum.
emperor tricks you! You lose 2 pieces of candy!
foradan gives you 4 dark blue lemon-flavoured gummy worms.
gayalondiel gives you 9 yellow peach-flavoured pieces of taffy.
gurthaew gives you 3 mottled green licorice-flavoured jawbreakers.
jason_finch gives you 1 brown tropical-flavoured gummy bats.
muuranker gives you 3 green grapefruit-flavoured gummy worms.
rustica tricks you! You get an eraser.
alitalf ends up with 32 pieces of candy, a rock, and an eraser.
Go trick-or-treating! Username:
Another fun meme brought to you by rfreebern.

Minty Freshness

2009-10-31T15:46:35Z

After a couple of false starts, there is now a WUBI installation of Linux Mint on my small laptop computer. The computer is running Win 7 RC, for which the installation procedure for other windows operating systems does not quite work. I found a web page that suggested that it is necessary to run the installation program in compatibility mode for Vista. I also set it to run as administrator, to be extra sure.

It will be interesting to find out how often I use Win 7 instead of Mint. There are certainly some applications that need windows, which will prevent complete migration.

Numenor suffers power cut

2009-10-29T15:17:56Z

Anyone trying to see the Tolkien Society website, or get an email response from any Tolkien Society email address, will have no success for an undetermined time. The data centre where the TS server is housed has no electricity.

Get those white mice revved up in their little mouse wheels! Add amphetamine to their water?

ETA: And it is back online now :-)

Silly meme

2009-10-18T21:25:23Z

You are The Hermit

Prudence, Caution, Deliberation.

The Hermit points to all things hidden, such as knowledge and inspiration,hidden enemies. The illumination is from within, and retirement from participation in current events.

The Hermit is a card of introspection, analysis and, well, virginity. You do not desire to socialize; the card indicates, instead, a desire for peace and solitude. You prefer to take the time to think, organize, ruminate, take stock. There may be feelings of frustration and discontent but these feelings eventually lead to enlightenment, illumination, clarity.

The Hermit represents a wise, inspirational person, friend, teacher, therapist. This a person who can shine a light on things that were previously mysterious and confusing.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

I don't really think that either the lack of wish to socialise nor yet the virginity quite fit, and as for the rest, who can tell? - but it is a silly meme!

Google Wave

2009-10-14T12:52:58Z

I watched the preview video about Google Wave, and it looks truly wonderful. It is to be mostly open sourced, and has an API on which third parties can build gadgets - like Google Maps but more so.

For many purposes it may be an up to date replacement for email. Think of the sharing capability of Google Docs, but with character by character interactivity between all participants, real time translation, hierarchy of waves in waves, multi media, realtime translation as messages are typed...

I hope they give me an invite code for the beta test version.

Flash Forward...

2009-09-28T17:05:21Z

...is a book I really enjoyed, written by Robert Sawyer. So far his books have never disappointed me.

There is a 22 episode TV series of Flash Forward starting on Channel 5 this evening, at 21:00. I have no idea whether the series will be as good as the book, but in case it is I suggest having a look.

Happy Birthday emperor

2009-09-22T15:24:33Z

I hope you have a good day

Happy Birthday

2009-09-22T15:16:23Z

Have a good Birthday pellegrina

I had my arm emptied today

2009-09-08T19:56:38Z

It seems that swine 'flu and fear of swine 'flu is reducing blood stocks. There was a leaflet requesting that donors remind anyone who might donate blood but hasn't got around to it recently, that it would be a helpful time to do so.

Consider yourselves reminded ;-)

Birthday greetings

2009-09-07T09:23:06Z

Happy Birthday na_lon

Its your birthday...

2009-08-24T19:20:25Z

Happy Birthday malaheed

The biter bit

2009-08-14T13:08:38Z

It seems that Microsoft has fallen foul of a fatuous software patent, that MS Office apprently infringes. Oh dear! My nose bleeds for them. Here is the story on ZDNET.

Home are the travellers

2009-08-12T18:54:27Z

...but the luggage is in Toronto - or maybe now on a flight to London *from* Toronto.

Our route was from Montreal to Toronto, then from Toronto to London Heathrow. When we checked in, the flight we were booked on (18:00) had no known snags, but after lounging around for a while because we were very early for the flight, the departure board showed that two flights to Toronto were cancelled. As it turned out, Air Canada found seats for us on a flight scheduled to depart at 16:00, but which did not start boarding until about 16:30, so there was no need to run to the gate.

That departed a little earlier than the flight we were booked on *should* have departed. On arrival in Toronto, we asked where to go for the connecting flight we were booked on, and then spent about an hour at the departure gate waiting for boarding to start.

When we arrived at the desk they told us that because our flight from Toronto had been cancelled, we were no longer on the flight that our boarding cards said we would be on. Eventually, the customer services people discovered that there were two seats available, but, of courtse, not next to each other. At that stage we were relieved to be able to go to the right destination at the right time.

Later we were told that the luggage had not even been sent from Montreal to Toronto on the flight we were on, which seems to me to go against the current principles of security.

The customer information people at Heathrow called us on the public address system to tell us that the luggage was still in Toronto, and would be delivered to us on Thursday morning.

We are still a bit tired after an overnight flight and a 5-hour change of timezone back, so that it will seem like getting up at 3am for a while.

Notes from Anticipation [2]

2009-08-10T02:11:16Z

The Panopticon Society

In the background of David Brin’s Earth, there were cheap cameras everywhere, and this affected how people lived, how crime could take place.

David Brin believes that ubiquitous surveillance by the rich and powerful is inevitable, so suggests that the only way to limit the downside is to look the other way as well. He has been portrayed as thinking that this is a good thing, but he actually thinks it is unavoidable.

Interesting aside: the UK has ubiquitous cctv cameras, but Japan mostly only has them in stations.

Lenseless cameras are under development, and may soon become possible to make. Dust mote cameras are then a future possibility.

Today, face recognition, natural language recognition etc is not good, but it will be. Then, future software will be able to analyse the recordings currently being made and it will know what you did now that may have been made illegal in the future, and you will be in a position to be punished.

Copyright and Creative Commons

Copying an email body into the reply could be technically a copyright violation. If a five year old child makes a recording by holding a recorder up to the TV, then you ask her to negotiate the rights required to make that legal, she can't. Copyright law is at best crufty and can only be understood by experts, at worst is inconsistent with itself. This allows for vindictive enforcement.

Creative Commons is an attempt to import into law the kind of “Acting reasonable” that fandom would normally accept. There is a range of creative commons licences for people to choose from. No laws were changed (obviously), but there are a lot of templates that have been hacked to work in many different jurisdictions.

As it turns out, inalienable rights for artists often become a weapon for the right holders.

One real problem is that the law protects DRM against the rights holders. For example Sony could not sell a digital walkman and authorise people who bought sony copyright music on the ipod to transfer that music.

The BBC have DRM on the iplayer, but not on broadcasts of the same program. It is like having an impregnable safe with a cardboard door.

One big publisher has banned authors from doing CC stuff – an edict from corporate headquarters.

“We tend to reify copying as something that occurs rarely.” said Cory Doctorow.

If you tell someone that if they print a copy of your webcomic, stick it to the wall, then take a picture of their office wall, then they cannot put a copy of the photo on the web, then they will say you are crazy and walk away.

One means to keep enforcement of ASCAP (public performance) is to keep the licence cost low, so if in doubt it is easier to pay for a licence if you might perhaps play music in some public area. If the licence cost 100 times as much the cost of enforcement could be 1000 times as much.

Comments from Anticipation [1]

2009-08-10T01:57:07Z

There have been too many good and intersting things for me to write anything that even pretends to be a complete account, so instead I have posted some notes on some topics that I found particularly interesting.

From the panel covering consciousness:

Saying I want to ... can be deterministic just as a robotic toy attempting to find re-charge. This does not demonstrate the existence of free will.

The bit rate of consciousness is maybe 15BPS or maybe up to 50BPS. It seems silly when you consider the number of pixels in the eye, but a lot of the processing is done by non-conscious parts. “Face, face, face – maybe a byte to indicate approximate number of faces”

Using cameras in a manikin, and VR specs, the location of “I” swops to the manikin quickly. Perhaps road rage can be caused by identifying the car as the body.

We do not look at reality, but at a simulation model that is normally controlled by input. Anton’s syndrome is, for example, someone who is blind insisting that they can see, because the simulation has not reset. “Someone moves the furniture around. I was distracted looking out of the window.”

(I think that serious confabulation is needed as well. IF you have no problem you can devise ways to prove whether or not you can see.)

When the brain is divided down the middle, communication between the halves is greater, but the halves can still communicate. There may be an amount of delay beyond which a single brain cannot consider itself a single “I”.

Because the conscious bit of the brain gets its information after the action has already started, it may be like the pointy haired boss getting an executive summary of what is happening and saying “I am glad I thought of that idea”.

This surprised me: "Without emotions decision making is not possible. Someone who had his emotional centres destroyed could not easily put on his shoes because he could not decide which one to put on first."