Sunday, September 28, 2008
Taper Relief
It is a grim picture - the random dots and loops of failure, those little patterns of black and white that cover our sight at times like this. This is the built environment, the place we have made for ourself amongst all the reality that falls in on us before we sleep. The world is comfortable here and yet the depression gets us in the end, drags us down like dogs at a fawn, has us bleeding and breathless in the dying light, leaves us to the night. That grimace hangs over us in curtains of light, aurora brought to earth.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Accoutrement-led Television
To warn you, today is a nugget-led entry, the next one being the fact that Reginald Bosanquet once broke into his ex-wife's flat, an offence which led to him being removed from the judging panel of Dustman of the Year 1975. Please don't ask why I was reading about Reginald Bosanquet. All I can say is that wikipedia caters brilliantly for the butterfly mind.
Next up I have just discovered that the local paper for where I grew up now has message boards to reply to the letters page. I wonder how many of the pensioners who supply most of the missives to this organ ever get to see the flames that are posted in response to their musings.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
First Things First
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Doing Boole's Thing or The Death of 50 Quid Bloke
The back-to-school cold has surfaced in this family - every year the little bu .... viruses lurk somewhere abroad while we gambol and play in the balmy summer days, just waiting to pounce on the little darlings as they go back to school. Of course the children just shake it off and forget to wash their hands and sneeze and generally follow all the rules of How to Spread a Cold (A. R. P. - Faker and Faker - 2005). Result is adults requesting Soup and CBeebies. Oh all right then - it's not that bad but bed seemed more attractive than getting up this morning.
I'm bored with banking crises - or is it just one banking crisis - certainly seems to be just one bank and therefore just one crisis. Bored also with election campaigns, leadership contests, party conferences but I suppose we have to keep one eye on them rather than just playing all the time. Anyway I'm only bored because I don't understand them. Let The Daily WTF extend it's exposure of bad design and coding practice to every aspect of the world. After all, the mess of Information Systems installed in the world only survive because the real scandal of how bad some of them actually are is concealed because non-IT people don't understand them. You might also say that quite a few of the people involved don't understand them and of course that can be extended to almost anything more complicated than going to the fridge for a bottle of milk - witness the number of wide screen TVs with the aspect ratio wrong when it only takes one button press to correct and you wonder if even this is beyond some people. God forbid if the National curriculum got around to teaching about compound interest. Maybe it does already - I just don't know. Now that the US seems to be turning into the world's largest housing association some people are looking at these times as at least a watershed though for some it is no less than The End of Capitalism which must be hyperbole or some way of pushing an alternative agenda. As I said I just don't understand it all. All I do know is that some people are fiddling in both the modern sense and the Nero sense.
Microbangs
Notebook idea for today :-
Motto for new bank - We've got ALL your money peasants!
Up in the nineties I heard! Yes - a great week to be alive - sun is shining - everything coming up roses. To be honest I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. really? I was just thinking what an utterly horrible place to live this really is. It's expensive and dirty and no one talks to you unless it's to shout "gerrout of the way". No - I'd leave as soon as I could. There isn't going to be any space left soon so I'll go and get one of those cheap tickets off the planet. I've heard that you can get hectares and hectares of space on the moon for almost nothing now the Euro has swallowed the Lev. No way! I couldn't face living there, close enough to see earth and and yet unable to return. No - I would hate that. Anyway what is really so bad about living here? The world has always been a dirty place - well it has since I can remember. The first thing I saw when I was a kid and I crawled over to look out of the window was the mess of rubbish blowing along the street - bins lying on their sides - I've never seen anything else so I don't miss it. Anyway - the countryside is just as bad - it might look OK from a distance but up close it smells of mud and cow muck and it all wants to stick to your clothes and come home with you. The country is to be driven through with the windows up and the radio on - when it works of course - the sunspots are causing havoc at the moment. Maybe your're right but I quite like the country - might go and live their instead of the moon. My parents still live there - lovely house it is - when the weather is like this I suppose - bit depressing in the wet but if you don't have to go out it's very nice inside - something good on the TV and a nice glass of scotch - fire throwing shapes on the walls - oh yes - wonderful being there. Thinking about it, I wouldn't get that on the moon. No you wouldn't! Anyway the tentacles of earth spread there as well - I've heard that they are just dumping the rubbish in one crater but that now it's overflowed and while the wind isn't there to blow it about, it does stick to the boots and wheels just like the muddy cow-watering hole I had to wade across last week. Maybe! Maybe! Fancy a drink? Down by the water perhaps? Great idea my friend. Want a push or are you fully charged? Fully charged mate! Plugged in at the desk and set for the week now. Ok - off we go - into the breach. What's yours?
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Hi Mum!
Anarchic Monkeys and Timeshare Salesmen : Spot the Difference
As I often point out, I can't imagine any financial calculation ever using anything other than the four basic arithmetical operators - despite the fact that some of these mysterious financial instruments are called derivatives (probably because one person invented them and everyone else copied them without a clue as to how they work). Even the Mandelbrot set - which is infinitely complex - is created using a simple equation (albeit one using the square root of minus 1). Someone convince me that all these financial instruments are necessary for the running of the world rather than being simply the fastest way to turn money into more money, without any hard stuff to back it up.
A trip to Milo's Meadow is required.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Not Incom
Not sure what to say about today. I suppose I could roll about laughing at Noel Edmunds and his belief in melon-sized orbs. Sounds like a schoolboy's attempt to say something rude on telly. He's rapidly catching up with David Icke. And of course for the second week in a row the world is about to end ... or something. I suppose I should have done more to shout about how excessive lending would bring us all to our knees but I thought I would keep it to myself - someone else really ought to have picked up on it and anyway I'm not very good in front of people.
Notebook is empty and I'm not sure why. There is a rough picture of a bridge like I used to do when I was going to be an engineer like my dad. he used to bring us catalogues home to draw on and all I could think of was to copy the diagrams that were already there.
Monday, September 15, 2008
In The City of no Sun
The children decided it was time to feed the ducks at The Victoria Road Duckpond- you get a better class of duck there - though one of them is slightly manic and has a very human laugh. Other local ducks are snobs and will not eat anything they are offered - not sure what they do eat but they turn their bills up at mere bread. Anyway, as the final morsel was gobbled down we turned to leave but my eye was caught by two smooth, round domes which turned out to be feral terrapins basking on a half-sumberged branch, the escapees from the brief craze for Super Hero Ninja Turtles all those years ago. I managed to grab one distant photo but before I could approach closer, the ducks began a pincer movement and after a few reptilian snaps, the terrapins vanished below the water. This is apparently very well know locally - they eat the ducklings - though I read that the temperature in this country means that there will not be the sound of little terrapins - these are just pensioners, grumpy and pining for the warm North American waters of their ancestors.
Purely coincidental that The Orwell Diary entry for today is about Terrapins.
Friday, September 12, 2008
Mr Leary's Waste Flint Disposal Unit
(From http://atlas.ch/)
I can't start without some LHC stuff and the page above gives quite an insight into what is happening. There is also some useful background provided by the creation of 3D models which can be added to Google Earth. They have been added above ground to indicate the size of the constructions below. Discussing the LHC with a colleague yesterday, I was quite impressed with how much interest it has generated - (some) people seem genuinely interested in what this sets out to try and prove though my dad is surprisingly bored by the whole thing. Ornithology is of course his thing and physics falls short of being a proper science in his opinion. I am surprised he is not interested in the sheer engineering of the project though but maybe years of building big things (and knocking them down as well) has made him bored. One of his gripes is that it may takes years to discover anything. My feeling is that it has been hundreds of years since a scientist could make a discovery in the morning and announce it in the evening over drinks in front of the fire. Everything needs to be peer reviewed and placed in context and then published in obscure publications before the sleeping journalists manage to notice a slight increase in the volume of babbling around a particular subject and bring it to the attention of us plebs. And of course that is the way it should be - science wins by virtue of being so controlled and that is why you can have confidence up in the 90th percentile in most science.
As might be becoming clear I have a slight addiction to message boards across the web and of course the most diverting ones are the ones where I know there is going to be something that winds me up. It has been interesting watching the gradual increase in what I call meta-comments - comments about the comments. I am beginning to think that there can actually be meta-meta-comments and probably a continuous GOD-Over-Djinn-like elevation of same. eg. "I've noticed that the commenters to this board are divided into four main types - they are a) ......." - that sort of thing. Sometimes I feel like commenting at some particularly sad missive but I resist. Enlightened Ignorance! You can't beat it.
Talk of GOD Over Djinn has reminded me that I've just found out that GNU is an recursive acronym for GNU's Not Unix. Obviously developed by BRAM Recursive Acronym Man. I should try it I suppose.
Anyway, apart from Atom Smashing what else is going on? I was in general agreement with this piece in The Guardian about the lack of respect for UNESCO world heritage sites in Britain. I have to admit that I have not travelled in Europe since I was 18 months old (unless you count that week skiing in Bulgaria in 1979) but I do think that European cities try to have an integrated plan for their heritage. UK cities seem to allow haphazard development and while I like modern architecture I like consistency in development as well and if this means forgoing some avant-garde erection in favour of some bog-standard construction then I am all for it.
My mind is now a whirl of thoughts about the architectural mistakes of the 60s and 70s and how we have to live with them. I can't start to organise what I want to say about it and knowing me I never will. I am really impressed by the ability of some people to write pages of interesting stuff on one subject without getting bored. This is why I am able to write poems and not creative prose. One day I will choose a subject and write a proper essay on it. Actually having thought about it, if someone GIVES me a subject I'm fine even if the results are probably bland. Some structure is what I need.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
Ransome the Artist - Roger Wardale
Corporation Collider
The Museum of Lakeland Life from Waymarking.com
Daughter came home with the story of two boys running in opposite directions around a big circle in the playground yesterday. They were screaming "We're supposed to be deeeaaad! We're supposed to be deeeaaad!" I was then treated to the look she gave them - a look I have seen many times - serious face, sideways glance, slight toss of the head - much contempt. It is at least positive that the boys had got some idea of how the LHC works and I'm not sure if they were gratefully relieved and joyful at not being dead or just taking general mickey out of anyone who did believe it was going to suck the world in. I think they are due to begin colliding in the next few weeks - let's hope one of the teachers picks them up. This morning, the tiles by the bath were decorated with some coloured letters arranged to say "lhc worked" which is quite strange I suppose. Anyway, both of my kids were running around the big circle of paving in that picture up top just a couple of weeks ago. Should have made them go in opposite directions - we might have found something important.
For a hoot - and I make no apologies for my pointing and laughing at sentences such as this - something from a message board (boiled sweet to anyone who can locate it).
What a waste of money as this would never prove anything about the Bang unless a different bag they were doing at the time as black holes would be the end. Oh wrong bang then but if there was nothing how could there be something like atoms then they started moving and the hit each other to cause the Big bang so what made the atom particles and then made them move so in this theory there was always something before the big bang ad before the atoms existed oh well what a mistake when common sense tells you even if they made the bang it does not prove anything.
Somewhere in there might be something about what was around before The Big Bang, something which collided to start it all off ('Branes were the last idea I heard about) and the stream of consciousness does colour it with a slight Joycean tinge but in general it is just rubbish. I could fill the Blog with stuff like this but I don't have to 'cos someone with more time than me has done it for you. It's a bit ribald and forthright in it's mickey-taking but funny with it.
My notebook has the phrase "anything else I want to talk about" after the notes about the above. Well today has been very busy so far. I have deduced that a server volume was full from an intermittent fault email about a file being missing, tracked down some access rights issues which have been mystifying us for days and managed to produce a new version of software for installation. Unfortunately, I have a fault call to work on now. Back on your heads.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Hi GGS! Bo's On His Way! Had Ron Over Yesterday!
I'm almost too excited to write. It may only be the first slow beam injection - nothing like the 14 TeV we can expect to see later but it's working and that's what matters. I should really have taken a day off as our proxy here suggests that we are outside the UK and means that we can't see the live news streaming. Never mind - there is a minuted blog on the Guardian website which is almost better than seeing it - gives it a 1930s ticker-tape feel. If you want something to laugh at then the BBC Have Your Say on the LHC has some statements to make you feel superior. Little enlightened ignorance there, though I have to say the recurring theme I identify with most is why would you NOT want to do this if you could. The argument about spending the money on something more useful is tired and can be demolished easily with a comparison of the cost of the LHC with other things that humans do which have no practical importance. Decrying one human activity in favour of another is like thinking that you are the most important person in an organisation. I am afraid that any argument I construct to follow this collapses into Maslow's Hierarchy and I don't want to bore you with that again. Just marvel at it all.
I have just finished CU Next Tuesday with it leaving me aware of the "just before swearing" moment in my head - especially just now when I saw someone with a hands-free mobile wandering around looking just like some drunk muttering to themselves. On top of my issues with mobiles in lavatories the whole mobile thing has just become another excuse for rudeness and general idiocy. However, the book also made me realise that I don't swear anywhere near as much as is average in our society. I was very interested in the short section about swearing in Japan which I have always known would be an obvious and wrong answer on QI. The Japanese can be extremely insulting just by using the wrong form of second person though even with the minus-10-on-the-rudeness-scale - extremely sweary form, it still manages to use a polite form - like saying "you my esteemed friend are a ******* ********". I was going to point you at insult monger but I have to say it's definitely NOT safe for work so find it yourself.
In tribute to stacks I have popped CU Next Tuesday and am now back on A Devil's Chaplain. I wonder how far back I would have to go to clear the nominal stack. In reality, many of the pushed books have been physically jettisoned but in the great logical stack of my mind they are all there backed up. I estimate the ratio of complete to finished books as about 5:1 - maybe 4:1 if you include library books. I have a horrible feeling that the human brain is quite capable of subconsciously keeping track of all the books you have started and that must add to the incomplete feeling of life. It's like always knowing whether you have coffee in the cup at your desk and indeed knowing exactly how much there is in the cup. I mentioned this a few weeks ago and I find it most disconcerting if something interferes with the amount of coffee I have left. Somewhere in my brain is an area that keeps track of this with reasonable accuracy. You can of course extend the stack of incomplete things to your whole life which makes we wonder whether anyone ever dies without feeling there was something missing. It maybe that we just start forgetting things as we get older and none of it seems to matter. There is of course a tenuous link to what must be one of the most tragic demises ever here.
Got to go - I need a lie down.
Monday, September 08, 2008
Hope
It is the ultimate noble quest for truth and whether it discovers the Higgs Boson or not it will have been worth it on a purely intellectual level.
Old Tin Whiskers
Friday, September 05, 2008
Higgs Boson and the Giant Aardvark
Focus People! Focus!
I was not entirely wrong about last night's first Big Bang Broadcast but it was actually quite interesting, being a collection of clips from various past Horizon programmes. Not that they managed to use the evocative theme music of the 80s (you have to wait until a minute into this clip to see the titles). It was nice to see Feynman and the usual crew and even Fred Hoyle who whatever his opposition to the Big Bang Theory, was a nice guy. Next programme about the LHC itself is on PVR as two hours of physics is enough for anybody (I remember Wednesday mornings very well). However, there was no escape as there were 5 minutes of Physics-based jollity on Mock the Week involving the idea that the black holes will gradually pull us all towards Switzerland - "All I can see is the gateway into doom - I was expecting chocolate and cuckoo clocks!".
A few minutes of the second LHC programme actually got me really into what they are trying to find out - the idea that NOT finding the Higgs boson would be almost as exciting as it popping up within a nano-second of switch on waving a contract with Max Clifford. My wife still shrugs with the opinion (I think) that the whole thing is a pointless waste of money and that it has no real-world purpose. My reply would be that everything that makes our modern western lifestyle physically comfortable is the product of science. I have had the sudden revelation that this includes the technology used to broadcast Big Brother and talent shows which means I have to accept them even if I really hate them (and you have to believe me when I say I do). Task for today - make a list of everything that genuinely has no real-world purpose. This has made me think of the old fall-back of Maslow's hierarchy of needs- we need water - food - warmth - shelter and after that anything else is just dressing. The LHC is at the top of that pyramid and yet to me it seems to have more importance to our existence than many things which would be traditionally lower down the list. I not sure Tom Manuel - my Sociology Tutor would have let us discuss this in class. And before you snigger, yes - I did sociology - get over it - it was only an hour a week - I could handle it.
Right! No more noodling observations. My dad is talking about getting a laptop and I'm trying to persuade him to make sure it's got wireless and to get broadband. This of course makes me wonder whether he'll actually read this. His take on blogs is that they're just web-based ego supporters and what with the majority of visitors to here being robots I imagine, he may well be right. Having said that, if he decided to write a blog at about the level this one is pitched at, I would probably make the effort to read it but then again he is my dad. I don't actually have any friends who have blogs but if I did I would probably read them as well, unless they were really boring of course. He does contribute to this page occasionally but I am sure he sends the entries in on paper. The page reminds me of The Orwell Diaries.
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Fever Few
The Large Hadron Collider yesterday - It's in Keswick you know.
There is some ambivalence towards Big Bang Day in our house. Despite excitement about the Torchwood Radio play, there is some worry amongst the younger members of the household regarding the possibility of the whole thing going on at the Large Hadron Collider causing a real Big Bang instead of just a hyperbolic BBC one. Some sleep has been lost. I blame The Radio Times. I suppose this is not a conspiracy theory because the nay-sayers are not claiming that the scientists want the world to end - just that it might if something unforeseen happens. However at least they won't be able to come out shouting "I told you so!" - if anything does happen, our end will be the instantaneous separation of the particles making up our bodies meaning that the thought won't even begin to be able to speculate about the merest possibility of crossing our minds. The ultimate humane death I suppose. It won't be hell - it will be blankness. Pah! Shake of head and dismissal of doomsday scenario. See you next Wednesday.
To be honest I don't hold out much hope of the programmes to accompany the "hitting of return" that will start the whole thing off, being anything other than the standard BBC puff that is science broadcasting these days. The exception at the moment is Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery which is a wonderfully measured programme - harking back to the glory days of such programmes as The Body in Question and The Ascent of Man. The only problem with it is the lack of time - no documentary series gets a 13 week run these days with 3 or 5 being the standard number while Casualty and the cliche-by-numbers that is Holby City get continuous slots. A few extra seconds between scenes gives TV programmes an serious air which when missing renders everything like a soap opera aimed at those with short attention spans. Still, if that's they way we get people to be interested in science and culture then so be it. Last night's surgery was lacking in gore but I suspect that next week's might be quite shocking as it is about facial reconstruction. Click the picture below for related information.
Sweep of notes:
Dark Autumn Afternoon. Handwriting changes "feel" of writing depending on mood
and other things. I've forgotten something in the meantime. Forgotten it twice
now! Got it! My extremes of mood seem to be smoothed out, like keeping the value
of a currency between arbitrary values to allow its future conversion. I like
this attempt to join up every letter.
And that's your lot.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
Ruskin Speared. All Ego and no Id
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
Slithy Slitheen Slakes Slim Sluggard
I am all out of notebook ideas apart from a slightly ribald poem which references a strange ode by Clive James (ironically I hope - though that is itself ironic in an attempt to further distance myself from the old man of television). Postmodernism - dontcha just love it?
I am currently in the middle of at least three books, though this ignores the countless volumes jettisoned over the years - I'm trying to use the library more to avoid pointless purchases - yet another result of The Credit Crunch. I suppose it is sufficiently advanced to warrant capitalisation along with such things as Global Warming and Sarah Palin though I suspect that Ms. Palin might well be in the Anti-Global Warming camp what with her links to the Oil Industry. She's six days younger than me you know. And - yes - there it is - "Palin does not believe that global warming is human-caused". My problem with that is - even if that is the case - and climate cycles have indeed changed over the years without any humans being around - I am sure that dirty industry is still bad for us. Emissions of any sort are accompanied by good-old, dirty pollution. If we are going to warm up anyway, let's not add carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide and all the other nasty "ides" to the mix. Too simple an argument I suppose but I have never liked the idea of complexity for its own sake. Simplify people!
Some nice wind power for you to finish. This is on Coniston again, right down at the South end away from the main jetties where it all seems so small and out of another age. The house used as Beckfoot (The Amazons' home) in the film is just to the right of this picture. There were two Herons on the lawn, not disturbed at all by all the canoes, launches and dinghies sputtering about. I wish I was back there.
Och A Vay.
Monday, September 01, 2008
Orang Borealis
Daughter managed to fall in with other S&A obsessives on the cruise we did on Coniston Water and they all went almost speechless when they saw The Jolly Roger flying on an otherwise very un-piratical yacht. Personally I was trying to work out where the 70 years between then and now had managed to hide themselves. I think we were both disappointed not to get closer to the real Wildcat Island. Friends of ours with both a proper berth-possessing yacht and a smaller dinghy have suggested we meet up to actually land in the secret harbour as the crowds of nautical youngsters were doing as we passed.
I was going to try and not mention the weather but as one of the staff at Coniston Tourist Information Centre said he was getting a bit cynical about the weather forecast I suppose I can say that it did rain a bit. Actually it rained a lot - even when the sun came out. Not that we were bothered - some new walking boots and who is worried about the weather? Not sure I would have wanted to camp though. There were plenty of people around who looked like they were struggling to keep from being completely covered in mud but then there is the joy of camping.
Finally for today a picture of Cormorant Fishermen lining up to sell their catch in some high-up tributary of one of the big Chinese rivers. OK then - it's the queue to board a launch on Derwent Water at Keswick. There are of course real Cormorants on all the lakes .. and Grebes and other lesser birds as well. I have no lens long enough to make any of these appear as anything other than a blur in the distance but we saw them.