Challenge
Actually put 99 bottles of beer on a wall.
Take one bottle.
Drink aforementioned bottle of beer.
Place empty bottle on the ground.
Repeat until zero bottles of beer on the wall.
Or until death / hospitalisation.
After Exams?
Spam
Some spam made it though Gmail's spam filter, thought I would share. I especially like the capitals.
Dear Friend,
I am Mrs. Barbara Gunnarsson from Iceland, married to Late Engr Brown Gunnarsson {PhD} who worked with MULTINATIONAL OIL COMPANY EXXON AS A DRILLING RIG SUPPLIER in Saudi Arabia for 19 years before he died on the 25th of August, 2008. We were married for twenty four years without a child. He died after a brief illness that lasted for only four days. Before his death, he deposited the sum of 6,143,728.00 US Dollars with a bank In Canada and this fund is presently with the bank awaiting my disbursement as beneficiary and next of kin to the funds. Recently, my Doctor told me that I would not last for the next eight months due to cancer problem. Having known my condition, I decided to donate this fund to a church, organization or good person that will utilize this money in good faith.
I took this decision because I don't have any child that will inherit this money. I kept this deposit secret till date, this is why I am taking this decision. I don't think I will need any telephone communication in this regard because of the confidentiality of this transfer. Upon your reply I shall give you the contact of the bank. I will also issue a letter of authorization to the bank that will prove you the present beneficiary of this money. Reply to my very confidential email address barb_narsson12@live.com
Await your responds and God bless you.
Mrs. Barbara Gunnarsson
Email: barb_narsson12@live.com
Evolution / China / etc.
15 Facts About China That Will Blow Your Mind.
The most worrying thing about those stats is not that only 42% of Americans believe in evolution, that was pretty obvious to begin with, but how few people in the UK do, 63%.
37% of British people do not think " life on Earth, including human life, evolved over time either by a process guided by God or as a result of natural selection in which no God played a part."
The Browser Choice Screen for Europe
The Browser Choice Screen for Europe: What to Expect, When to Expect It - Microsoft On The Issues.
I wondered how they would end up doing this. So seems like we will all get the option if we are using IE as default at the moment. Would be interesting to see Chrome / Firefox etc. stats for when the update is released.
GMB union confirms strike ballot over Corus mothballing
BBC News - GMB union confirms strike ballot over Corus mothballing.
Just what a company about to go under needs.*
I really don't understand unions sometimes. They can be fantastic things, ensuring worker safety, decent working conditions etc. etc. However they seem to pick the worst time to strike, which in the end will only make the company they work for worse off, making less profit and able to employ less people in the long run. For example see Royal Mail strike just before Christmas and BA attempted strike over Christmas (now on for Easter I think I have heard).
An honourable mention has to go to the RMT and TFL for going on strike so many god damn times that even if there were a legitimate safety concern or a legitimate and serious grievance no one would ever believe them.
Even people with the best intentions can be stupid sometimes.
*I have no idea how Corus are doing financially now, however a year ago they were laying thousands off and shutting just about everywhere down, it is probably a small miracle they still exist at all.
Apple granted patent on capacitive multitouch displays
Apple granted patent on capacitive multitouch displays -- Engadget.
FFS Apple.
The whole patent system really needs fixing at some point.
Waiting for Results
I had a random attack of insomnia tonight, so decided to be constructive with my time and work on my project, it is running right now and I am waiting for some results of a large test to pop out, should be about 5 mins or so, and then I will probably find out something is not quite right, fix a few things and run it again.
Project is going well, sort of. It is going a lot slower than I had expected, and we are going to struggle to get any real 'physics' in the project. There is plenty to write a report on, or will be. I would just rather not write a report about lots of tests on how well our code works, would like to do part that and then say 1/3 to 1/2 on an 'experiment'.
Hopefully we are nearing the point where we can do that soon, a few small little things, but should hopefully have some physical situations by the end of the week.
Anyway, on to other stuff. I have just finished Starship Troopers, will write about that soon I expect. It was good, although a bit disappointing towards the end, could have done with the last 1/3 being twice as long.
I have started watching The Wire, so far so good. I asked the internet for a new quality show to watch similar to The West Wing or The Soprano's, and this was the internet's suggestion. As much as I like shows like How I Met Your Mother, House, American Dad etc. etc. there is something to be said for another class of show, something with that bit extra to push it through the quality barrier. There are not many shows that can do it.
So far I have found:
- West Wing
- Sopranos
- Mad Men
And that is about it really. Possibly the first seasons of Heroes and Prison Break, but they have been let down by their continued existence. I also remember watching something called Absolute Power years and years ago, Stephen Fry was in it.
And this leads me to try and quantify this 'quality' I have mentioned. I can't really. However I do remember trying to watch The West Wing when I was younger (14ish I think) and I remember finding it difficult. They spoke to fast, there were too many people and plot points to keep track of. I had to really pay attention to understand anything at all. The same was true for Absolute Power. So this perhaps goes some-way to describing what I mean by an extra quality. Something that is more complex than usual. That is not designed for everyone to watch, this is not dumbed down to an EastEnders-style Level that most things seem to be. Something with a complex story, a complex plot, a complex set of real characters in realistic situations. A show where you want to see the next episode straight after the one you have watched, rather than it just being an hour of mindless entertainment.
Anyway, code is done now. Everything works eventually. Well, sort of. Almost everything works. And the things that don't are not too important right now and will work soon.
MPs to decide on vote system referendum
BBC News - MPs to decide on vote system referendum.
Is it just me or is this a bit sudden? I have heard very little about this recently. There was a fair bit of noise around the time of the expenses scandal last year, but nothing specific. And only the occasional news story in the past week or so.
I think I am a fan of AV, but I have not really thought about it too much. I have not really read anything about it in too much detail, possible shortcomings etc. So I am slightly worried this is being rushed. The first past the post system has worked quite well so far, I am sure it can handle things for a while longer while this is though about and discussed a bit more.
Also, is this not the sort of thing there should be a referendum on? That way we, the people, would get the choice. And by being given the choice the reasons for it would have to be explained and debated.
Hang on, there do appear to be plans for a referendum. Good.
So why do this now? Apparently it was a 1997 election pledge, which was brushed to the side (by Gordon Brown according to Paddy Ashdown), and it has been attributed by the Prime Minister to the need to act to help parliaments reputation after the problems last year. But does the whole expenses kerfuffle really warrant this much of a shake up? Sure it was a terrible thing to allow to happen, but surely just better accounting, better regulation and much more freedom of the information to the public would be enough to prevent it in the future would be a better idea? I would like to think that there are more sound and thoughtful minds behind this, rather than politicians being reactionary and trying to win votes.
However I do like the idea of open primaries that were proposed a while back though, and I believe there have been quite a few seats whose future party candidates have already been chosen this way. It is at this stage that I feel democracy and more openness would help, to try and remove the idea of a 'safe seat'. That along with a better method for removing an MP. Public selection and possible public removal can only make MPs more accountable, it could make their lives more difficult, but then again do we really want people running the country who were only doing it for an easy pay-check? I would like to think that it is something that the decent ones would be willing to give up to make the whole system better.
Anyway, I am yet to decide my views, just a few half formed thoughts as I have though of them while waiting for chicken to defrost to make lunch for tomorrow.
Back to the Future DeLorean optical illusion in glorious tape-o-vision 3D Boing Boing
Back to the Future DeLorean optical illusion in glorious tape-o-vision 3D Boing Boing.
How awesome is this.
Adding it to my list of things to do when I own my own house. Perhaps not a DeLorean, but I like the overall idea.
The Forever War
About a week or so ago I finished reading The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, who I had never heard of before and it turned out to be one of my favourite books. I heard about it via Felicia Day via her blog and it won the Hugo Award in 1976, I am reading a lot of book recently from this award.
It is different to Clarke's style, and has a much more bleak outlook on the future, but poses some fascinating questions and things to think about, and it is about me...sort of. It discusses the inhumanity of inter-stellar war against an alien race no-one has ever seen before, sent there by some large unfeeling government of the world, and then having to deal with 'future shock' when the soldiers return due to the effect of time dilation.
Basic outline: in the future (technically our past, book is old) a wormhole like effect is discovered allowing ships to travel thousands of light years is a split second, however to get to these 'collapsars' the ships travel at near light speed, causing huge relativistic effects. Only soldiers of extremely high intellectual abilities are recruited to fight in this war, conscripted under military legislation after the takeover of all of Earth's governments by the military.
The war is bloody and dangerous and pointless, men die, lives are ruined and for no particular reason. They keep on fighting because of psycho-training, implanting notions of the enemy being evil killing babies and raping women etc. etc.
However the main plot points of the book revolve around the travel at near to light speed everywhere, resulting in extreme time dilation. So the solders were never sure exactly what they were going to be up against because the enemy was also suffering from the same effects. A few months of travel from the crews perspective could be several decades to the outside world, and imagine fighting a war today with the technology from the 1950s.
The space battles were quite cool too, very realistic. When there are eventually wars in space it will not be in Star Trek style, where you fly around in any direction you please, it will be more like naval maneuvers, with all things directed by orbits and initial velocities. You will fight by predicting the enemy's path and altering your orbit and momentum to intercept or avoid. This will be made even more complicated by the application of relativity. I remember reading something about this on Digg a while back, I will try and find it again.
But anyway, the book talks about this very well, realism and ergo believability usually make thing better. (no light speed / sound in space etc. etc.)
Then on top of all this there was a love story. The main character of the book meets a woman while at training camp, and they end up on several mission together and get injured together, they go back to earth together etc. etc. (Their trip back to eart could have been an entire book by itself, the world has descended into chaos, with the stress of this interstellar war, it is dangerous and overcrowded and everything is rationed with the only currency being calories.) they eventually end up in Love, only to be separated by both space and time (those pesky relativistic effects again) by the military. Him sent on a 700 year mission, her on a 500 year one. However it is revealed at the end that they eventually find each other again with the help of relativistic time dilation.
There is a second book, Forever Free, but it generally has bad review. However there is also an associated book Forever Peace, while not related is set in the same universe and it won the Hugo Award too,
It was a generally awesome book, and I want to read more like it. It reminded me of The Amber Spyglass, and the whole His Dark Materials Trilogy, in more ways than one. I highly recommend reading it, I have an electronic copy if anyone wants to borrow it.
Next up: Starship troopers. I have seen the film, and have just started reading the book and it is all good so far.
After that: Little Brother