Saturday, 02 February 2008

Sat, 02 Feb 2008 22:20:02 GMT

Watched I heart Huckabees - pretty sure Mel didn't like it: far too similar to Being John Malkovich

Saturday, 05 January 2008

Sat, 05 Jan 2008 12:00:00 GMT

I'm now about half-way through Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. As expected, it's a rant, but a persuasive and powerful rant; convincingly arguing why religion shouldn't just be tolerated, but actively fought. "ID" vs. Darwinian evolution is just one facet of a larger war. However, I wonder whether Dawkins should be choosing his battles more carefully, rather than attacking on all fronts; I'll need to think about this further.

My own agnostic deism is simple: I see no need for a divine being anywhere in creation, except - perhaps - at the very start. Not the origin of life, the origin of everything. Dawkins accepts that the hypotheses here aren't as convincing cosmologically as they are biologically, but then jumps into the same logical traps which he so eloquently dismantles when proposed by theologians. For example, he posits (amongst a few possibilities) that the Big Bang will be eventually followed by a Big Crunch; and that this succession of expansion and collapse could be just one in a series of universes. This'd allow the anthropic principle to say that however unlikely it is for a universe to be in the Goldilocks Zone and so support life, the sheer number of times which this die is rolled - and the fact we're here now - suggests that the bet has been one at least once.

This raises the problem of infinite regress though: where did this series of universes come from? How were they created? Personally, I find the alternative of a bubbling multiversal foam in which universes are constantly being created more appealing. Some will last longer than others. The process by which the universes themselves are created could be similar to that which produces Hawking radiation; but, again, there's the outstanding issue of infinite regress. The creation of an individual universe, and the small number which last long enough to - and have laws of physics suitable for - creating life, are adequately explained by this hypothesis. And it pushes our suppositions back in time further, to before the Big Bang. But it's unsuitable as an answer to everything: there's still the question of how the metaverse was formed, is a divine creator involved here?

I suspect not: given we can repeatedly push further and further back, without requiring the involvement of an intelligent superbeing, there's likely to be a theory which clearly (and relatively simply) explains everything. We just have to keep looking.

Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Tue, 01 Jan 2008 12:00:00 GMT
New Year! New update to stop the diary breaking.

Saturday, 05 January 2008

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:20:02 GMT

I'm now about half-way through Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. As expected, it's a rant, but a persuasive and powerful rant; convincingly arguing why religion shouldn't just be tolerated, but actively fought. "ID" vs. Darwinian evolution is just one facet of a larger war. However, I wonder whether Dawkins should be choosing his battles more carefully, rather than attacking on all fronts; I'll need to think about this further.

My own agnostic deism is simple: I see no need for a divine being anywhere in creation, except - perhaps - at the very start. Not the origin of life, the origin of everything. Dawkins accepts that the hypotheses here aren't as convincing cosmologically as they are biologically, but then jumps into the same logical traps which he so eloquently dismantles when proposed by theologians. For example, he posits (amongst a few possibilities) that the Big Bang will be eventually followed by a Big Crunch; and that this succession of expansion and collapse could be just one in a series of universes. This'd allow the anthropic principle to say that however unlikely it is for a universe to be in the Goldilocks Zone and so support life, the sheer number of times which this die is rolled - and the fact we're here now - suggests that the bet has been one at least once.

This raises the problem of infinite regress though: where did this series of universes come from? How were they created? Personally, I find the alternative of a bubbling multiversal foam in which universes are constantly being created more appealing. Some will last longer than others. The process by which the universes themselves are created could be similar to that which produces Hawking radiation; but, again, there's the outstanding issue of infinite regress. The creation of an individual universe, and the small number which last long enough to - and have laws of physics suitable for - creating life, are adequately explained by this hypothesis. And it pushes our suppositions back in time further, to before the Big Bang. But it's unsuitable as an answer to everything: there's still the question of how the metaverse was formed, is a divine creator involved here?

I suspect not: given we can repeatedly push further and further back, without requiring the involvement of an intelligent superbeing, there's likely to be a theory which clearly (and relatively simply) explains everything. We just have to keep looking.

Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 16:40:02 GMT
New Year! New update to stop the diary breaking.

Tuesday, 04 December 2007

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 17:20:02 GMT

Been playing with the Asus Eee 701 PC I picked up from Toys r Us on Sunday for 219ukp for a couple of days now, so it's probably time to write down some of my thoughts.

It's about the same size as a Psion netBook, although thinner and fully stocked with a bevy of USB ports, Ethernet, VGA and removable media slot. However, as the keyboard's got all the standard laptop keys - and a trackpad (eugh) - it's much fiddlier to type on than a netBook. Having said that, it's certainly possible to type on it relatively quickly without too many typos; almost certainly quicker than on a Nokia N810 (which I've not got yet).

The Xandros distribution can be run in "simple" or "advanced" modes, the latter being a full KDE desktop. However, I prefer the simple mode - running in IceWM - and a few simple tweaks make it a perfectly usable little system.

Despite the development of the simple mode launcher, the level of UI polish and integration in Nokia's Maemo devices puts the Asus to shame: many of the dialogue boxes are unmodified and, by default, are taller than the 480px screen. The big, XP-like theme takes up lots of space, and all the applications have their menubars still visible. This can be improved by installing the Thinblack2 theme for IceWM:

Press Ctrl-Alt-T to open a terminal.

Download Thinblack2.

Unpack the tarball in /usr/share/themes.

Create ~/.icewm/.

Create an empty file in there called toolbar2.

Copy all the important lines from the default IceWM configuration using the command: grep = /etc/X11/icewm/preferences | egrep -v '^#' >~/.icewm/preferences.

Edit the new preferences file using vim and set TaskBarShowStartMenu to 1.

Reboot and select Settings > Themes > Thinblack2 from the IceWM start menu.

There are instructions for enabling the standard Xandros repositories in /etc/apt/sources.list. This enabled me to install matchbox (the full-screen window manager as used in Maemo and Ubuntu Mobile) and play with it by creating a ~/.xsession containing just "xterm". I'm not yet decided whether this efficient full screen interface is the best on the screen, or whether a thin theme in IceWM is sufficient.

Video playback seems fine of transcoded videos (for size reasons) using tablet-encode, although occasionally it seems to struggle to keep up with the video, pausing for a frame and then speeding the video back up temporarily to catch-up. This is where, again, the Nokia puts the Asus to shame, with a 400MHz ARM outperforming a 900MHz Celeron.

It's a nice little device, and a bargain for less than 220 quid, but the software lets it down. There's some promise in the simplified interface, but little things like confusing set-up of wireless LAN access (there are two icons in the status bar: one for configuration only, one for status of wifi & ethernet connections); the use of big, heavyweight sub-optimal applications like Amarok and the lack of optimisation for the screen estate.

The lack of Bluetooth is a real killer making it semi-useless as an email accessing device when, say, in the middle of Sherwood Forest. It's still useful as a writers' tool, of course. A USB Bluetooth dongle should also work, but again - the polish of Nokia's IT OS for setting up Bluetooth DUN connections isn't there, so it's command line and scripting all the way.

Ubuntu Mobile Edition may well be the best OS for the device, but I've not yet had a chance to play. Running a Hildon desktop on it would certainly be a good idea, alternatively some other slim window manager, which positioned all windows as 800x480+0-20 until the "menu" hotkey is pressed, when it is resized to 800x460+0+0 and the menubar appears. Pressing menu again would resize it back off the top of the screen. I'm not sure whether any existing window manager can be configured like this, perhaps something for me to have a play with.

The N810 and the Eee don't really compete at all except at price-point; you'd have to be a gadget-mad freak to have both, but they are complementary. Get the Nokia N810 if you want:

A mostly pocketable device.

Internet access on the move.

A portable media player.

An in-car GPS.

A fun, little, device which tries to be different.

Get the Asus Eee 701 PC if you want:

A small, lightweight, laptop.

Something to write documents or essays on.

Something from which to give presentations.

Neither are PDA replacements (unfortunately), although with the right software I could imagine the Eee being just about usable to take meeting minutes (still nowhere near as useful as a Psion Series 5mx or netBook with Jotter, though); although it remains to be seen how the N810's slide-out keyboard fares.

Wednesday, 17 October 2007

Thu, 18 Oct 2007 09:40:01 GMT

Everything seems to be going to shit: house is falling apart, and no-one wants to do anything about it; not enough time to spend with family or do the projects I want to work on; politics and back-stabbing everywhere, including random online communities where I accidentally seemed to have triggered a flamewar. Ho hum.

Is this that oft-talked about SAD? I don't think so, I think someone must be out to get me...

More positively, Nokia's slider & GPS-toting version of the N800 was announced today. Slightly smaller in all dimensions, it's got a nice distinctive look, without the retro chrome grill of the N800.

Most interesting of all is IT OS 2008 which looks to be a good step forward with a more polished UI, improved multimedia codecs and - apparently a speed boost. Even better, IT OS 2008 and the following version (IT OS 2009?) will be freely available for the N800. Nokia have learnt from the 770 debacle.

Also announced today is that the iPhone/iPod Touch will get an SDK next year for third-party apps. This'll be very cool, especially if there's ever a version of the Touch with Bluetooth. Then the N800 and N810 will be being competed with in a way that no-one could deny.

Saturday, 08 September 2007

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Finished mapping the keys on my UK Apple keyboard in X.org. It's a lovely keyboard, I'm very happy with it. Unfortunately, the mapping is slightly out-of-date on Ubuntu Feisty (and in Freedesktop's CVS).

I've created #12369, so hopefully the updates will get into upstream soon. However, in the meantime, here're instructions:

As root, type:
cd /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols wget -O - http://www.bleb.org/software/xkeyboard-config-apple_pro.patch \ | sudo patch

Go to System > Prferences > Keyboard > Layout.

Choose Apple for the Keyboard model.

Add United Kingdom > Macintosh to the Selected layouts and move it to the top.

Untick Separate group for each window.

Go to Layout options and check if you're impacted by #7430.

Wednesday, 05 September 2007

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT

A senior appeals' court judge thinks the current situation with the National DNA database is indefensible (correct) and therefore the only conclusion is to put everyone on it (incorrect). Let's, for the sake of argument, assume he's not going to the logical extreme to make the counter-point.

Many people were emailing Today genuinely asking what the fuss was about. Apart from it being a national ID DB by the back door, DNA fingerprints are unique to one in a million. Which means for every crime committed in the country, there are 60 people who'll match the DNA found. And, of course, it can be faked (apparently) by injecting yourself with different blood, yet in both these cases it will be viewed as infallible.

Apple have announced a revamp of their entire iPod range. The new iPod Touch, effectively an iPhone without the phone bit looks interesting. It'd be especially interesting if it had Bluetooth (headphones, sync and Internet-access) and runs the same UNIX-like OS as the iPhone. I think the latter's a no-brainer, but there's been no mention of the former. If it did, it'd be the consumer's ideal implementation of the Nokia N800. Remember, the "N" prefix means "multimedia" which is the justification for not having PIM or other business-focused applications on it, as that'd make it the "E800".

And, on the same day, Palm cancel their Psion netBook-like Linux-running Foleo. More thoughts on my Maemopeople blog.

Saturday, 01 September 2007

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT
Put stalkmybrother.com live after a few hours of more fighting with CSS in IE6. Suggestions welcome; I recommend you buy a T-shirt (or, if you prefer, a thong).

Saturday, 08 September 2007

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 11:00:02 GMT

Finished mapping the keys on my UK Apple keyboard in X.org. It's a lovely keyboard, I'm very happy with it. Unfortunately, the mapping is slightly out-of-date on Ubuntu Feisty (and in Freedesktop's CVS).

I've created #12369, so hopefully the updates will get into upstream soon. However, in the meantime, here're instructions:

As root, type:
cd /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols wget -O - http://www.bleb.org/software/xkeyboard-config-apple_pro.patch \ | sudo patch

Go to System > Prferences > Keyboard > Layout.

Choose Apple for the Keyboard model.

Add United Kingdom > Macintosh to the Selected layouts and move it to the top.

Untick Separate group for each window.

Go to Layout options and check if you're impacted by #7430.

Wednesday, 05 September 2007

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:20:04 GMT

A senior appeals' court judge thinks the current situation with the National DNA database is indefensible (correct) and therefore the only conclusion is to put everyone on it (incorrect). Let's, for the sake of argument, assume he's not going to the logical extreme to make the counter-point.

Many people were emailing Today genuinely asking what the fuss was about. Apart from it being a national ID DB by the back door, DNA fingerprints are unique to one in a million. Which means for every crime committed in the country, there are 60 people who'll match the DNA found. And, of course, it can be faked (apparently) by injecting yourself with different blood, yet in both these cases it will be viewed as infallible.

Apple have announced a revamp of their entire iPod range. The new iPod Touch, effectively an iPhone without the phone bit looks interesting. It'd be especially interesting if it had Bluetooth (headphones, sync and Internet-access) and runs the same UNIX-like OS as the iPhone. I think the latter's a no-brainer, but there's been no mention of the former. If it did, it'd be the consumer's ideal implementation of the Nokia N800. Remember, the "N" prefix means "multimedia" which is the justification for not having PIM or other business-focused applications on it, as that'd make it the "E800".

And, on the same day, Palm cancel their Psion netBook-like Linux-running Foleo. More thoughts on my Maemopeople blog.

Saturday, 01 September 2007

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:49:19 GMT
Put stalkmybrother.com live after a few hours of more fighting with CSS in IE6. Suggestions welcome; I recommend you buy a T-shirt (or, if you prefer, a thong).

Thursday, 30 August 2007

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:49:19 GMT

The first full day of the NFJS Exchange Tour in London. Excellent conference, with the keynotes this evening particularly interesting. The key concept that all these experts - including, in particular, Neal Ford and Scott Davis - kept coming back to was that the more expressive, dynamic languages such as JRuby and Groovy are the future of the Java platform.

Historically, changing language meant changing platform - whether that's hardware, OS, third party libraries or in-house libraries etc. This is expensive, risky and confusing (sound familiar?). However, the legacy of Java won't be the Java language which, although better than its ancestors, still contains a lot of legacy cruft to initially attract C++ developers. A Groovy application can integrate seamlessly with your existing Java libraries. From a language point of view, it's almost perfect.

The problem in my eyes, though, is lack of tools. Eclipse's refactoring and code completion utilities make writing Java effortless - the tooling support for the dynamic languages just isn't there yet; and may never be because of the Halting Problem. The really strong advocates argue that the tools aren't quite as necessary, though, and they're there because of Java's flaws. I think this is disingenuous, and is more likely to be because no Groovy or (J)Ruby application has ever been written which is as big as the largest Java application.

I'm also unsure about losing a lot of type safety (by making it optional), although this isn't a real requirement of using Groovy it means writing a lot of noddy tests which in a statically-typed language can be considered as being done by the compiler. Again, tools could help here: from Source > Generate getters/setters... to Source > Generate base tests...?

I think Groovy could be the next biggest thing on the Java platform, once the RoR hype subsides slightly. But it needs to reach a critical mass. Both Neal and Mel have made the same point, though: the name sucks (personally I disagree). So, here we come _EXX_L.

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 07:49:19 GMT

Back to work after a lovely week off and finally got my hands on my Sony DR-BT10CX Bluetooth headphones. Being A2DP they'll work with both my W850i and N800. Being on a short wire with a dongle means they'll be comfortable with glasses.

The headphones themselves are the same as the ones which came with my W850i: very good, in-ear ones with rubber pieces to ensure the entire ear canal is filled; cutting down on background noise. The are directly attached, however, so there's no swapping them.

The dongle (i.e. the bit containing all the Bluetooth stuff and the control buttons) is bigger than I expected, but nowhere near too large. The charging dock is perfectly functional, unfortunately there's no way of charging them AFAICT without it: another charger to carry on trips.

The sound quality is good. Certainly not the excellent sound quality got from the same headphones directly wired into my W850i. The sound is a little thin, especially at the low-end. The low-end is the most disappointing: when there's a wall of sound, for example in the chorus of Green Day's Boulevard Of Broken Dreams the backing guitars are a little muddy.

This muddy bass works well, however, with classic soul and motown, adding to the delta-blues ambience on tracks like Percy Sledge's When A Man Loves A Woman and most Sam & Dave stuff.

All in, I'm very happy for seventeen quid!

Saturday, 25 August 2007

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Started playing with open source CMSes to back stalkmybrother.com. The best regarded seems to be Joomla which, of course, is written in PHP.

Installation was painless, but the set of themes available is dire with loads of naff, fixed-width designs. Fortunately, it's relatively straight forward to produce your own theme. So I did. Perhaps I'll even publish it separately.

The internal structure is a little "organic" however it's a fully pluggable system, so things like Community Builder, Fireboard Forum, rsGallery2 and CaPoomla provide better profiles, forums, user galleries and CafePress integration.

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Back to work after a lovely week off and finally got my hands on my Sony DR-BT10CX Bluetooth headphones. Being A2DP they'll work with both my W850i and N800. Being on a short wire with a dongle means they'll be comfortable with glasses.

The headphones themselves are the same as the ones which came with my W850i: very good, in-ear ones with rubber pieces to ensure the entire ear canal is filled; cutting down on background noise. The are directly attached, however, so there's no swapping them.

The dongle (i.e. the bit containing all the Bluetooth stuff and the control buttons) is bigger than I expected, but nowhere near too large. The charging dock is perfectly functional, unfortunately there's no way of charging them AFAICT without it: another charger to carry on trips.

The sound quality is good. Certainly not the excellent sound quality got from the same headphones directly wired into my W850i. The sound is a little thin, especially at the low-end. The low-end is the most disappointing: when there's a wall of sound, for example in the chorus of Green Day's Boulevard Of Broken Dreams the backing guitars are a little muddy.

This muddy bass works well, however, with classic soul and motown, adding to the delta-blues ambience on tracks like Percy Sledge's When A Man Loves A Woman and most Sam & Dave stuff.

All in, I'm very happy for seventeen quid!

Saturday, 25 August 2007

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Started playing with open source CMSes to back stalkmybrother.com. The best regarded seems to be Joomla which, of course, is written in PHP.

Installation was painless, but the set of themes available is dire with loads of naff, fixed-width designs. Fortunately, it's relatively straight forward to produce your own theme. So I did. Perhaps I'll even publish it separately.

The internal structure is a little "organic" however it's a fully pluggable system, so things like Community Builder, Fireboard Forum, rsGallery2 and CaPoomla provide better profiles, forums, user galleries and CafePress integration.

Saturday, 28 July 2007

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT

After a long faff, finally got "working" Netgear Powerline HD adapters from Amazon (short version: City Link lost the replacement package from eBuyer for the DOA ones).

Unfortunately, I'm sending them back: I get 3Mbps from one side of the house to the other (downstairs to upstairs and diagonally opposing rooms). I suspect it's either because this is a brand new house with shonky wiring, or it's the RCD boundary for the downstairs/upstairs circuits causing a problem. Will have to fall back to drilling/cutting/laying some Cat5e, which Mel's going to love ;-)

Saturday, 28 July 2007

Sat, 28 Jul 2007 12:00:00 GMT

After a long faff, finally got "working" Netgear Powerline HD adapters from Amazon (short version: City Link lost the replacement package from eBuyer for the DOA ones).

Unfortunately, I'm sending them back: I get 3Mbps from one side of the house to the other (downstairs to upstairs and diagonally opposing rooms). I suspect it's either because this is a brand new house with shonky wiring, or it's the RCD boundary for the downstairs/upstairs circuits causing a problem. Will have to fall back to drilling/cutting/laying some Cat5e, which Mel's going to love ;-)

Andrew's Diary

Saturday, 02 February 2008

Saturday, 05 January 2008

Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Saturday, 05 January 2008

Tuesday, 01 January 2008

Tuesday, 04 December 2007

Wednesday, 17 October 2007

Saturday, 08 September 2007

Wednesday, 05 September 2007

Saturday, 01 September 2007

Saturday, 08 September 2007

Wednesday, 05 September 2007

Saturday, 01 September 2007

Thursday, 30 August 2007

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

Saturday, 25 August 2007

Tuesday, 28 August 2007

Saturday, 25 August 2007

Saturday, 28 July 2007

Saturday, 28 July 2007