Week 114, Thermal Vent

This week saw the launch of a major new self-sufficiency initiative at the top of Western Bank in Sheffield.

A thermal spring was discovered close to the University, and in the spirit of doing things differently this opportunity was taken advantage of within hours.  Soon there would be no need for connection to the National Grid if power could be generated on-site.

Unfortunately though, on further inspection - while in the process of discovering the cause of this thing - it turned out that the thermal vent was the result of a leakage of another power recovery and generation initiative.  The steaming mud-hole was a side-effect of recycling city rubbish and a result of pressure failure in the combined heat and power system.

C'est la vie.

Merry Christmas to one and all, and happy post-sprout venting.

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Week 113, Now Get Out of That

Here to there?

Many have done this sort of thing.  On either outward bound courses, management training courses, leadership courses or other such events that pitch a disparate band of people together with the objective of finding out the qualities of each member to get them working as a functional unit.

It's a little like The Dirty Dozen but without the prison sentence, The Magnificent Seven but without the horses, but mostly like It Ain't Half Hot Mum but without the jungle. 

We've all done it, haven't we?  Feel free to plead ignorance.

So what in this instance is the challenge you now face?

Let me read the instructions.

You are here, as can be determined by the fact that you have a level of awareness of being who you are and in a location that you are at.  The location you are at is not the location that we would like you to remain at, in fact we would like you to be over there.

No, not just over the other side of the large body of water, but yes you do have to cross the large body of water.  What we want is for you to get from here to the top of the hill in the distance, the bit of hill where there is still some snow.  And we want you to do that using the equipment we have provided for you.

First remove all of your clothes.

What?

Yes, clothes are a hindrance.  We have provided some bin liners and gaffer tape for you to improvise some waterproof clothing.  It is better not to attempt to cross the water wearing your normal outdoor clothing as it is likely to get wet and drag you down below the surface where you will be eaten by humpbacked Neguala monsters with two mouths.  Neguala monsters find bin liners particularly unappetising so they will provide some level of protection.

You're kidding?

You don't believe in Neguala monsters?  Suit yourself, don't complain to me as you're having both your legs removed from above the knee by a complete set of razor sharp teeth each housed in a separate mouth on the same creature.

Is this really a sensible course of action?  Anyone?

Once fully attired the team must fashion a device to carry this life-sized spun-sugar sculpture of Freddie Mercury to the target location ensuring it sustains as little damage as possible.  To assist in your task you have also been given a 2m roll of jumbo bubble wrap, twenty duck egg shells, some lint, a Lidl Christmas wreath, and some hummus.  You may also make use of found objects - this does not include human artefacts other than those which have passed through the digestive tract.

You have 120 minutes, starting now!

What?

Oh for goodness sake - ok team, we can do this, does anyone have any knitting needles?

Team?  Where've you gone?  Come back, I'm not bloody doing this on my own!

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Week 112, Weston Park

The facade of Weston Park museum.

This view doesn't work.  The neo-classical pavilion is lopsided with the addition of the extension to the left.  Virtually every other example of neo-classical architecture, available from a quick internet search, reinforces the idea that there should be balance.*  This view leaves you with an uneasy feeling that something isn't right.

The extension to the left was built to replace the original museum building.  The pavilion was until very recently the Mappin Art Gallery, built in 1887 as an extension to the museum.

I feel we should crowdfund an extension to be built on the right to achieve the correct harmony, even if only to be constructed from MDF, pebbles or other discarded technology.  Kevin McCloud could be approached to advise on symmetry, neatness, eco-friendliness, the most appropriate design and how to stay on budget.

Or alternatively knock the bit on the left down, like they did to build the later main entrance, and replace it with the trees being evicted from across the city. 

It's a fundamental design flaw, but does it matter when you can go inside and enjoy the exhibits?  No, not really.  You should do that, and ignore the architectural asymmetry.

And when you think Ionic, but not iconic, think of Sheffield.  Things are done differently here.

* What were they thinking?

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Day 779, Week 111 (W minus 0)

What does day 779 mean to me?

It means a number of things, some of them about the number, some about the reasons for doing this.

Let's start with the number.  Apparently 779 is a highly cototient number, that is a number which has more solutions to the below equation than any preceding highly cototient number except 1.*

x - phi(x) = k

That is for where phi is Euler's totient function and where k is our number or any of the other highly cototient numbers lower than our number.

Other things of interest about the number 779 is that it is divisible only by itself, by 1, and by the two prime numbers 19 and 41.**  This collection of numbers could be used to illustrate the basics of RSA public key encryption, which is essentially the process of creating a public key from two primes and another number relatively prime to our original numbers.

Moving on from the number.

What has been daily, and continuous, for 779 days will become weekly and continuous.  That doesn't rule out additional days in between where some silliness occurs to me.  This blog started as an exercise in a number of things, amongst others it was about whether I could maintain motivation to do a task regularly, it was about generating ideas, about being able to discard ideas without becoming precious about them, and about extinguishing concerns about how my writing might be judged.  The process has been pretty effective at helping achieve those aims, but it has also become a restriction in that ideas can't be developed further due to a desire to hit the deadline (however arbitrary or self-imposed).

The potential downside to this is that the general silliness might be lost if I start thinking in terms of producing more considered content, so I'll try and keep it light even when being a pompous arse.***†

Here is a Photoshopped image of a PDF document with some text about encryption, perhaps there has been a hidden message in these blogs.****

* More information here.
** You may not necessarily find it as interesting.
*** The intention was to be generally silly, if that hasn't come across then...

† Being a pompous arse can be an asset when working in IT, not so much elsewhere...
**** There has.

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Day 778, W minus 1

The Boss PS3 effects pedal below is set in mode 7, the mode that produces a noise which approximates to backward delay.

Handy for a pseudo-reverse guitar sound when playing live - much simpler than having to create alternate realities moving in different chronological directions between you and your audience to get a similar effect.

Second hand in 1995, the PS3 cost me ninety quid of money I didn't have.

Now here in the future it isn't possible to get one of these for less than £110 on Ebay.  It's held its value pretty well, even accounting for the effect of inflation.

So how much would that lump of 1995 £90 cash be worth now?

The inflation since 1995 and today, December 3rd 2016, is over 79%, which turns ninety quid then into £161.58 today.

If I was in the market for another of these now it would be better for me not to reverse time - they are effectively much cheaper in the present - and with the additional effect of not having to eat boiled rice every day for a fortnight to pay for it.

But, you pays your money and you takes your choice, and back then I didn't have a time machine.

I'm keeping it in mode 7.

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Day 777, W minus 2,

If Hendrix had been a Un*x admin, and 6 were 9, then probably his keyboard was upside down.

With a newbie error like that he'd chmod the devil out of here, waving his freak flag high.

Though having turned 74 within the last week he would probably have retired his typing skills long since.

And in that state of lack of experience he could be excused for having a kiss of keyboard confusion.

At least his guitar was always round the right way, even when behind his head. 

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Day 776, W minus 3

Some bastard has carved some giant letters in my lawn.

I'm sure I'll make good use of it though.

Furrows for seed planting?

Turn it into an anatomically accurate diagram of The Duke of Edinburgh's varicose veins?

Perplex aliens with incoherent landing instructions?

There's almost always a positive.*

* Look at the size of my lawn!

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Day 775, W minus 4

Not a cloud in the sky.

Beautiful, clear blue.

When Aristophanes had a middle aged Athenian persuade the birds of the world to create a new city in the sky, in his drama The Birds, he probably didn't foresee how pertinent it would be a couple of millennia later.

The new city in the sky was intended to gain control over all communications between 'men and gods'.

A little bit like out-hosting of our communications and services to 'the cloud' now, and with the added relevance of the newly passed, by both the Houses of Parliament and Lords, and with the assent of The Queen, Investigatory Powers Act 2016.

Not a cloud in the sky, but there are probably storms coming.

But the bigger question is, where the bloody hell has my middle aged hair gone?

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Day 774, Number's up

Just the ticket.

Unless that's counting chickens.

Hopefully these numbers are real, even when rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise.

That's all part of the choice you make when you take the chance.

Those right hand two will be entered into a separate, binary raffle.

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Day 773, Out of touch visionary

Do you struggle to keep up with the zeitgeist?  Has the word 'zeitgeist' even been overtaken by a new word de jour?  It will happen to us all, if only by sheer dint of not being arsed about it any longer.

And that last might be one reason might well be why gargantuan vendors of software get into a tangle of lunacy over licensing.  Ask almost anyone that works in IT and licensing will produce a lot of noise, much of it containing the words "what is the point of it, it only ever causes trouble to legitimate users of the software, it won't stop the pirates."  That's the tidied up and de-sweared version of the response.

Imagine a situation where licensing of a piece of software to run in a virtualised environment was based not only on the CPU count of the virtual machine the software was to run on, but on the entire virtual environment.  That's every CPU, on every host across the environment, which rather than 2 CPU's could easily be in the many hundreds of CPU's.  Surely this is ridiculous, and based on the premise that the software vendor doesn't trust the large organisation purchasing the software, even though the penalties for abusing that trust are very high.

And then the software vendor says - the environment has to be completely isolated due to the technology having the ability to migrate the guest machine and software to other virtual environments within the organisation.

For goodness sake.

Get with the program daddio, in the words of the hip and cool.  You don't need to travel to Delphi to get a prediction that this behaviour will limit your sales.  But on the other hand I don't expect the business owner needs any more yachts, and in any case it could be a ploy to drive their 'cloud' service.

Here's a picture of a pleasant, if rather dark, woodland view to take my mind off the above completely made up madness.*

* Obviously it isn't true, it can't be, it's ridiculous.

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Day 772, Detect this

American crime fiction.

Fill your boots.

With concrete.

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Day 771, Uni-Vibe

Those LED's are really bright.

And with new strings and the volume on 'not very high' the sound is pretty bright too, goodness knows what would happen if it could be cranked up.

The Uni-Vibe is set to an approximation of Gilmour's DSOTM Breathe sound, whereas the Octavix adds fuzz and removes any of that similarity other than a mystic wobbliness.

I'd better stick a Wah on the end and see what happens next.

And maybe put some masking tape over the LED's.

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Day 770, Character-lite

Is your commercial enterprise somewhat lacking in character and atmos'?

Why not add a few sheets of fake snow and a deflated snow person!

With luck, and a following wind, this will raise the level of melancholy, desolation and wretched misery to outstanding levels.

It even took my focus off the incorrect use of a millstone as a logo rather than a grindstone for a moment.*

Class.

* Honestly, people these days can't tell the difference, almost as if they weren't born in the 17th Century.

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Day 769, The holy trinity

Plus some ginger.

The holy trinity* - onion, chili, garlic.

Cook slowly.

Add protein carrier - pulses, meat, etc.

Cook slowly.

Add flavour bearing and enhancing ingredients - salt, pepper, herbs, spices, etc.

Serve with a cooked carbohydrate - pasta, rice, noodles, etc.

Eat. 

* In Cajun cooking this may be: onion, bell peppers, celery.

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Day 768, Toxteth

The last time I was in Toxteth I don't recall there being any eponymous association with IPA.

But here it is.

Quite pleasant, but as it's a week or so since I drank it I have no further tasting details.

It's Liverpool 8!*

* Cockney rhyming slang for 'great', although I may have just made that up in a futile attempt at humour.

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Day 767, Odd shaped spaces

My room has changed, can you see it?  It's the shape.  I'm sure it's the shape, almost but not quite imperceptible, it has changed.

Really, I will argue that black is white, it has changed.

Awkward isn't it.  You not believing but not wanting to push the point yet wondering why I am so insistent.

It.  Has.  Changed.

I could tell as soon as I entered.  At first there was something, not a smell, not a taste but apparent to some non-visual sense.

No one has rearranged the plaster ducks into a nose dive, nobody has moved the furniture, the windows are in the place where they've always been.

Like stepping into an alternate reality one door along from my own.  Is the paint the same colour, what about the wallpaper?  It is becoming less clear, the longer I am here the less I feel it.

Panic is setting in.  Panic not because of the displacement but due to the feeling of loss of connection to the old world.  A connection to the old world that...

I can't put my finger on it.

Something, what was it now?

Meh, can't recall.

I'll put the kettle on.

Everything is ok.

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Day 766, Things can only get wetter

Although not perhaps by much.

The quality of the picture doesn't give any indication of the depth or speed of flow of this torrent.

From rainfall alone my socks are wet to above the ankle.

Northumberland Road is only passable to amphibious vehicles and SCUBA divers.

Isn't rain lovely.

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Day 765, Northern Exposure

It's a bit chilly up north and numbers start to merge in their lethargy.

Not too chilly though to ponder the meaning of this out of proportion inverted pi symbol.

What could it mean.

Is it rational and irregular?*

Perhaps this version of pi is not transcendent in any way other than its vertical elements disappear to infinity off the top of the image.

I would ask an expert but they're all in hiding, hoping not to be abruptly shortened from the neck up.**

Maybe akin to an inverted French Revolution, after which understanding of mathematical concepts widened.***

Where we become less open to broader ideas.

Perhaps the vertical elements narrow and meet at a point closer than infinity.

Maybe this explains my entering a PIN as a mashup of all my PIN numbers rendering me unable to retrieve cash.

There is far too much uncertainty.

Perhaps.

Maybe.

How many mathematicians use a PIN of 3141.

Pi Number.****

* The opposite of this.
** People have had enough of experts, anything above the neck is of no consequence.
*** The guillotine, a handy way of removing the bit above the neck.
**** All the previous words are a pretentious contrived flotsam leading up to the discovery of the PIN's of mathematicians: 3141; 6174; 3435; 5141; 1729; ...



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Day 764, Pig nuts

Foraging for pubs last week we went to this place in Broomhill and had some drinks.

In the style of the Walkley Beer Co. but without the character of dishevelled bonhomie.

Pleasant nonetheless.

Jay Rayner will be back next week.

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Day 763, Ripper mate*

The access to one of our spaces has changed.

New rooms have appeared where before there was the set of a Bond villain's undersea lair, complete with human remains.

The remains are gone and, in a gruesome connection, in their place we have the Ripper Lab.

Previously we had to navigate passageways, up, along, down, around, up again, through a Doom like mazed environment.

These stairs look familiar, how did we end up back here?

Now entry is simplified, a card swipe, a few metres walk, a key turn and an alarm disabled using an actual working code.

Next time we'll remember to take the key...

* Aussie slang for something being very good.

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Day 762, Current Northern Grit

Good, wholesome grit applied to plastic trunking.

Like a cliff face road littered with the debris of numerous accidents.

And according to a compass it points north, although that may be due to Faraday's law of induction.

Which could also suggest there is a current running through it.*

* Barrel scraping, really, though why so much debris next to expensive computer kit air intakes?

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Day 761, Scratch build a computer

Not in the 'model railway' sense, unless you really want to build every logic IC from transistors.

Even if you want to do that, or perhaps not quite from such first principles, then this book isn't a bad place to start.

And it's available free, in PDF form, here:

http://www.nand2tetris.org/

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Day 760, Twentieth Anniversary

Quite a popular item at the CICS 20th anniversary exhibition was this - the original NAMCO Pacman running on a Raspberry Pi on MAME.*

There was also a lot of interest in the antique Apple machines on display, and some quite detailed technical knowledge was demonstrated by visitors.

Interesting and fun.

* http://www.mame.net/


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Day 759, Odd dog

That's one g, two o and 3 d.

Whereas the image below is only 2d.

But you can't have it all.

And what's more it isn't even a dog, what's the point of that?

At least it's obeying some sort of dog style order "airedale, come here, STANDBY."*

* I'm almost certain Barbara Woodhouse used this exact phrase.

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Day 758, You will be rendered two-dimensional

Sweeping statements, everybody loves 'em.

Over a third of the leave vote came from middle and upper class voters.

It appears you can think you are left behind when you are not.

And can believe you are disenfranchised even in the act of demonstrating that you are not.

There may be some truth in some of these sweeping statements.

The Social Stratification of Ducks: Perspective and Meaning on the Mill Pond - D.C.K.Ling & M.A.Lard*

* Image taken from the cover of their seminal work, available from Waterfowls or any decent duck shop.

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Day 757, Presidential plant

Is this the new president of the most powerful nation on the planet?

Let's ask it.

Plant, are you the new president of the most powerful nation on the planet?

I'm in a pot, and the pot is making artificial restrictions on my ability to do better.

Wooah, I wasn't expecting an answer, you can talk.

Talking is overrated, unless it's me doing it, my words are important, I am an extremely credible source.

No shit?

Yes I shit, what decent American doesn't, my shit is some of the best shit you'll find, nobody shits better than me.

You have some small leaves off to the right, is this deliberate?

I guarantee you there's no problem on the right, small leaves, does that mean something else is small, no, it's proportionate.

Some people have suggested you are a Russian plant, what do you say to that?

To be honest with, no I'm not, but don't let that mean it's a bad thing, it could be a good thing, it really could.

A talking plant claiming presidential power, I must be hallucinating.

If this is a decriminalized state then ok, good, don't overdo it, but watch out if you don't know what state you're in.

Thank you for this insight plant president, I'll bear that in mind.

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Day 756, Time to go...

... to the pub!

In a bit.

But first, what time is it right now?

Hmm, I think this clock is wrong.

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Day 755, Comms Fail

Battered and bruised, creaking voice traffic, intermittent crashes.

It's almost the fourth anniversary of this Nexus 4.

Battery life is quite good with 58% left at 17:00 after being off-charge since 06:30 and after a reasonable amount of use.

Given an increasing number of random restarts perhaps it isn't going to make that many more anniversaries.

Two hundred and forty quid for nearly four years use isn't bad, and it still does all that I need it to very well.

Well done you antique phone you.

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Day 754, Cheese connector

Due to SATA connectors on disks being fabricated completely of cheese I had to effect a repair.

Lessons learned:

• When fitting disks do so with their connectors nearest to the outer case
• When removing disks do not put even the slightest pressure on the cable connectors.
• When soldering very small and close connectors a solder-sucker can help immensely.
• Buy a machine that has no user serviceable parts.

When the disk connector broke it left the connector pins poking out of the case.  It is possible to strip the end of a SATA cable to reveal the other connector pins, and with some care, and plenty of gaffa tape, the connectors can be lined up.

Then solder the connectors together.  Ha ha ha.

Easier said than done, they are so small and closely aligned that neighbouring pins all end up soldered as a lump.  However, melting the solder and using a solder sucker to remove excess actually left enough on each connector for them to stay intact.  What a stroke of luck.  Due to great fortune this worked across all seven connectors.

And the disk worked.

In the picture below the disk is sitting nicely in position on the right.

And on the left there's an SSD gaffa taped to the desk.

Here's a closer view of the repaired connector.

Take that Trump you racist, misogynist, fascist, disk breaker.

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Day 753, Name that building

Many landmark items are contained in this picture of Sheffield buildings.

A few of them are constructions which are no longer with us.

The larger part of Hyde Park Flats (Park Hill phase 2 as it was originally known) is gone.

The Wedding Cake is gone.

The cooling towers are gone.

A couple of the places I can't name, there's the church shown just below Hyde Park in the picture, I recognise it but can't place it, and there's the steep road in the foreground which I can't identify.

Other than those two it's all under wraps.

If you've any idea then contact me via the usual means.

The final quiz question for today is - 

What was on the wall where the picture is now but in the year 2002?

Answers on a postcard made of Dodo eggshells please.

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Day 752, Random beer image #1

I'm pretty sure Andy Warhol would have done something similar if he'd had access to the internet.

Random images, apropos of nothing, and then a diary entry typed up by someone else.

But in this case it isn't someone else - revealed, the power of the internet, made mundane.

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Day 751, Spoke too soon

Status Quo are still touring and haven't yet been involved in a takeover bid by the remnants of Led Zeppelin.

I guess there's still time.

Whatever happens I've still got this 4GB USB card freebie.

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Day 750, Cough

Probably about time this damage got sorted out.

In fact it's time I sorted it out.

What was VFRoooom is currently, VFR phut, splutter, phut, phut...

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