Day 133+1, frequency & throughput

Never one to miss an opportunity to shoehorn an inexplicable reference in where none is required, good evening.

PCI-X input/output is controlled by a phase lock loop to register it to a frequency of 133MHz.  A phased locked loop will be familiar to you if you ever did any background reading on radio communications, anyone with a passing knowledge of 80s CB radio will remember the sales pitch.

"It has a phase lock loop (PLL), and some other shit that you haven't a clue what it is, buy it!"  Etc.

In the CB radio world a PLL was used for frequency synthesis and to generate different frequencies for different channels. The channel frequencies needed to be in exact steps apart and the PLL also provided stability so these didn't drift.  PLL was also used in FM CB for demodulation.

Back to that PCI stuff.  Essentially in the computing world the PLL is used to make sure the frequency doesn't drift and so the PCI bus running at 133MHz can safely transfer data without either the input and output getting out synchronisation and it all ending up in an horrible old mess.

So what about throughput?  Yeah.  The higher the frequency, the greater the throughput of data, in this example at least.





Honestly, I don't know why I climbed on this bicycle, the wheels are too large and the foot clips are too tight.

Day 133, LLAP

There was a discarded stool top I found at the bottom of Kelvin Flats, possibly thrown off, it was round.  It reminded me of the floor section of the transporter from Star Trek.  So I took the stool top home and pretended to be in star trek, generally Captain Kirk but occasionally Mr Spock.

"Fascinating"

It disappeared at some point.  I missed it.


Still do sometimes.




There were a shed-load of classic episodes.  This one is particularly fine.

A Piece of the Action

Leonard Nimoy was a class act in real life as well as playing a pretty good role in Star Trek

LLAP

Day 132, Set her free, Mrs Angel

"Damn this wooden lip" and other Ripping Yarns misquotes.


LORD BARTLESHAM: Set her free, Mrs Angel.
LADY BARTLESHAM (exchanging a brief glance with Mrs Angel): She is free, dear.
LORD BARTLESHAM: Judy... free? Surely not.
LADY BARTLESHAM: They're all free, dear... all the servants. There's been no slavery in this country for donkey's years.
LORD BARTLESHAM: But Judy -- little slip of a girl, washes floors all day long...
LADY BARTLESHAM (a hint of impatience): She's still free, dear.
LORD BARTLESHAM: Well, I think it's a great shame...
LADY BARTLESHAM: What is a shame, dear?
LORD BARTLESHAM: Not being able to free people. (He lays his paper down and his eyes begin to glisten.) It must have been a wonderful thing to do... just sort of free a chap... some poor miserable wretch in chains... and along you come and say... "You're free! You're a free man... Off you go! Run around wherever you want!" Imagine the new life that's about to open up for him.
Roger of the Raj


Somewhere in a cobweb covered folder, hidden away in a darkened corner on a D: drive, there are some oddities - zip files of Jimmy McGriff, memtest86, and the odd diagram of a motorcycle.

An Arctic Fox ate my mojo, my black cat bone is broken and needs pinning, and to top it off the rabbits foot has got mange.

Some days there just aren't enough letters in the alphabet, and the order is all incorrect.

Washed down with a glass of the wrong beer.

Cheerbs.

Day 131, Gulls, Herring, IOM

Let's anthropomorphise some wildlife.

Here are Simon and Garfunkgull on the the Isle of Man.  This is about the time that they fell out with each other but had to do some publicity for their new album, Old Herrings.

Gull Simon is contemplating the outrage caused by his Graceland album and is still sore from the experience, here pictured in 1994.

Art Garfunkgull is quite laid back about it all other than wanting a psychiatrist as a third group member to deal with Simon's 'issues'.

Simon squawked back something about Garfunkgull's lack of midrange vocal ability and 'not wanting to go over the old stuff'.

After the photo-shoot we left them glowering in opposite directions to each other and went down the pub to catch last orders at 10pm.



Simon and Garfunkgull haven't performed together since.

Day 130, GP appointment charging, what dumb-assery

So I saw 10 minutes of the One Show last night - yes I know, kill me now before my brain dribbles out of my nose - and something really pissed me off. They were interviewing a GP about the difficulties in running a surgery.

One GP at the practice was off on holiday and they were reluctant to hire a locum to cover over the break. This was due to the high cost and the impact that would have on them being able to provide a service.  The GP said that it was often 7 or 7:30 each night by the time the admin work was done and late finishes were not uncommon.  The offspring of the GP was in his fifth year in medical school and said he didn't want to become a GP as he had seen the effect of the long hours. There were clearly a number of issues.

I agree, I don’t think anyone should have to do such long hours.  I was reminded of how many hours my mother worked (at pretty shitty jobs) to make ends meet when she was doing her degree, evenings and during the holidays were always busy, there were only the two of us but money was tight.  Even after graduation when she eventually got a job as a lecturer she would often be doing lesson preparation, or doing marking late into the night, even on days where she didn't finish work at 9pm.  Like laddo above I didn't want to follow in those steps and thought that being a lecturer was a mugs game as you appeared to have the piss taken out of you by the employer.

A GP probably makes a little more money than a lecturer (a lot more?) but even so it is unreasonable to have to work such long hours.

“What”, the presenter asked, “do you think the answer might be?”  Well, apparently there are a lot of patients that turn up with minor ailments or other unimportant issues and these are very time consuming, these people are effectively time wasters.  The answer, said the GP, was to charge for appointments as the health service was underfunded and needed to make up the money some way and put off the time wasters.

Now, that is surely a conflation of multiple points.

Firstly, assuming that there is nothing wrong with the person turning up to see a GP there is an education issue, or an awareness issue on the part of the people making the supposedly ‘unimportant’ appointments.  This may hide other problems, not necessarily physical, perhaps some of these are appropriate for a GP and perhaps some are not.  How should this be addressed? The idea that these unknown people that would be put off might be 'time-wasters' is also a bit of an assumption.

Secondly, this would disproportionately affect the poor, those on low incomes and benefits.  What would happen to them, would the go to A&E instead, or ignore the early detection of a potentially serious condition?

Thirdly, this is an about face on one of the founding principles of the NHS, that it is free at the point of need.  It sounds like further opening the door to privatisation - there’s enough of that already with Tory MPs reaping the rewards of their seats on the boards of various ‘health’ companies.

Fourthly, if the money needs to be made up then why do it in such a time-consuming way which would almost certainly not be at all cost effective.  If there is a shortage of funding for the NHS then that funding should come from central government.

Of course as this was the One Show there was no discussion about any of the points made, they were accepted at face value.  It was also interesting to see that for someone with all the expense, paid for by the state, of becoming a GP how little grasp there was of the realities of life for people, and how little thought appeared to have been put into that statement about charging for appointments.

My points may not be particularly clear or as well aimed as I would like, but what do you want for a 10 minute consultancy session?

Rant over.

Day 129, identifying negative film type

When scanning film negatives you really need to know the film manufacturer and type.  The scanner software has presets for a large list of well-known film types saving a lot of faffing about to find the correct colour settings, ideal if colour interpretation isn't your strong point.  This is easy enough to set up if it says Kodacolor Gold along the edge of your negative, but what do you do if it doesn't say something as obvious as that?

I had a film which had ISO200 and HL5431 printed on it.  The ISO was fine but the HL5431 part meant nothing to me at all. A search for HL5431 just turned up a load of Hansard references...  Would an MP help in these circumstances?

Would my MP, Nick Clegg, suddenly prove to be of some use after at least 4 years of ineptitude?

Of course he wouldn't be of any use.

Digging around in the user forum for the negative scanner software (Silverfast) turned up some references to a website with a Java app usable to interpret DX codes.  DX codes are the markings on the side of film cans and also along the side of negatives.  I'd noticed the strange markings on the negatives but they hadn't penetrated my consciousness enough for me to remember to try to discover what they meant.

But behold, they are of terrific use


Here's the output of my test exercise of reading the DX code.  Read from the bottom upward.

This is a screenshot with my arrows and text to indicate the key areas.

Some clicky-clicky on the black bars on the simulator allows you to match those on your film negative.

Of course the real world isn't as simple as that.  The film I had didn't match this exactly, it only had the bottom portion of the code, it didn't include the frame number.  But this isn't a problem, I'm guessing there must be occasions where the frame number isn't printed along the negative edge in human readable form but I've never seen it.

Here's the offending film negative with the DX codes with added arrows and text description.

Sideways view of Tynwald Hill and St John's Chapel where the Isle of Man parliament does ceremonial bits

So that's another film scanned, with pretty reasonable colour correction.

It's a step closer to producing an image of the one true tower.

Day 10000000, binary minded

But this is day 128.

I'm in two minds about what to do for this day.

Now I settled on some nonsense about binary, and it being day 128, which is 10000000 in binary.

And then my energy ran out.

Regardless, just carry on and see what transpires.

Yet still I'm struggling to keep my eyes open, so must stop here.

Day 127, Ponds Forge construction

I used to get the bus to Oughtibridge when I worked as a care worker there.  Sitting on the top deck of the bus gave a decent view of the construction work on Ponds Forge International Sports Centre as it was being built for the World Student Games of 1991.

Built on the site of the earliest iron forge known as Pond Forge, the area was the location of iron and steel working for hundreds of years.  There are some signs that this used to be a steel works, there's a large anvil at one point, and at the back of the building there is an archway with the legend "George Senior and Sons Ltd Ponds Forge". 

I've only swum there once, the water was bloody freezing, they need to add some molten steel to give it a little heat.

Day 126, Parisienne walkways

Like George Orwell I've spent a little time in Paris.  Unlike George Orwell I've never been employed as a 'plongeur' (well not in Paris anyway) - someone that washes dishes or does other menial work in restaurants.

Here is a view of one of those pavement cafés, the arrondissement escapes me.

This chair design is pretty typical.  That street food vendor on the corner there may be selling crepes although he doesn't appear to have the cooking equipment for that.

I have no idea if there is a tower anywhere in the vicinity.

Day 125, moon over the Pompidou

No tower yet but not too far away now, I have high hopes.

Here's a building that looks like it may have had a problem with a teleport machine and a Dyson vacuum cleaner and came out as some sort of hybrid.

The Centre Georges Pompidou.

What a great building, and the Musée National d'Art Moderne within it (along with the public library and other items of interest) is also terrific.

Here is a modern art installation on the roof pretending to be some sort of cafe

Day 124, Hawksmoor Processionary Baguette update

It's bad news I'm afraid.  Our rare Hawksmoor Processionary Baguette moth has been infected and effectively predated by the Osmotic Chlorophytic Bacteriophage.

This virus permeates the protective membrane of the larvae when in the chrysalis phase and turns it a green colour.

The matrix of the creature is then rendered in to a thin layer of material of cardboard like texture.

However, it is simultaneously good news as this product of the activity of the virus produces a completely non-toxic sweetener with, as far as science has thus far determined, no adverse long term negative effects.  This sample will be analysed by the Miles-Schinkley labs in Dinnington where there is some optimism that if the process can be decoded there may be a possibility of commercial exploitation of the product, with no harm being done to wildlife.

Archaeologists have suggested that a process of farming the moth and deliberately infecting them with the virus to capture the unusual sweetener was developed by early hominids, and no doubt archaeologists have some mocked up images of this somewhere to prove it.

That's all from A Country Diary this week.  Next week, Sheep Farming in Barnet and the impact that that had on New Wave music in the late 1970s.

Day 123, "no Stairway..."

Been to a few gigs at the Mucky Duck, or The Boardwalk as it inexplicably became known under the stewardship of that bloke that played guitar for Van Morrison. sub, check that name.  Oh yes, that’s his name*, he said something along the lines of “pretty good riffing” when I played there with my band, he then proceeded to ‘borrow’ our PA and play an indeterminately long** version of Brown Eyed Girl.***

* Herbie Armstrong

** Pretty sure it went on for a week, meaning our PA hire charges were extortionate.

*** Actually they finished in time for us to get the PA back before it turned into carnivorous creatures or an empty, pumpkin shaped box full of spoons, just before midnight.

Among the many bands seen there were a couple that these tickets were for.

This was 5 quid to see a Led Zep tribute act.  They were probably ok. One thing stuck out in my mind though and clouded my view of them, prejudiced my view in fact.  They played Babe I’m Gonna Leave You.  Now, this song contains a large amount of finger-picked guitar.  I’m no expert, and I’m a bit of a half-arsed, half hearted practice guitar player, I haven’t picked up the guitar in nearly 5 months due to a finger injury (possibly a torn nail, or bad bruising or even a mild fracture) but I can still make an almost recognisable attempt at finger picking this tune and I haven’t played it in years.  As I’d recently learned 50% of the song myself I was somewhat miffed, no, significantly miffed, that the guitarist didn’t make even the slightest attempt to finger-pick any part of the song and in fact just strummed chords all the way through.

What a cop out, five bloody quid!  I’d have played it properly for nowt.

So, they may have been great otherwise but they put a match to their methane filled, heavier than air ambition, stayed solidly on earth and burst into a ball of came crashing down in a ball of weedy blue flame leaving a strange smell.  Led Zep?  Flaming rip off.

I'm probably being a bit mean about them, pretty sure everything else they did was good.

So why on earth then, given that they charged a whole fiver, that it cost only the absolutely reasonable and bargain cost of 6 quid to see Wilko Johnson with Norman Watt-Roy on bass?

Wilko Johnson was so good I would gladly have paid four times as much, fucking excellent, and in fact it does cost about four times as much as that to see him now.  And with inflation that is still a bargain.  Energy, honesty, connection with the crowd, talent.

Sublime.

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

Wilko
Wilko

...

Day 122, quids in

Some more curiosities found while rummaging around in my drawers.


Here's an old quid, no longer legal tender.  Last issue date 1978, withdrawn on 31 May 1979.

Here's a less old quid, also no longer legal tender.  Withdrawn 11 March 1988.

Information on old British banknotes can be found here.


Here's a Scottish quid, still legal tender throughout the UK.  There's probably some rule or law I've broken by taking a picture of it and putting it on a web site.  This variation was issued during the period 1972 to 1981 inclusive.

The busy background is designed to confuse and distract from the possible legal infringement.

Day 121, cyborg, human, weight, exercise, die

As an instruction based life-form, operating as wet-ware programmed by previous experience, bootstrapped by birth and loaded into a running state by parental guidance for some time after, I am now functioning as a completely autonomous operating system.

In fact it is now possible to self program and provide instructions, is this self-determinism?  How much of this can be directly attributable to parental input, how much of it to DNA?

I have no idea.

But whatever, this is the output of the instructions I provided myself a month ago when I started the ‘workout routine’.

As you can see there has been a trend downward in weight - I know, I know, this is not really enough data to be making that assumption from but there is a tendency downward.

It should also be noticeable that there is significant variation in either direction in that weight can change by as much as a kilo between adjacent days.  This is pretty natural for humans whether deliberately dieting, exercising or just watching Midsomer Murders from a position of reclination.  If you are trying to increase or reduce body weight/mass for whatever reason then probably a change of 2 kilos in either direction would indicate a definite change over short term periods.

So after a month of the weights thing and some general stretching it is now time to incrementally run. Assuming BP is ok - 124/75 and HR of 69, yup, that looks fine. Right, I'm off to disrupt some pavement dust with a sedate interval run. Toodle pip.

* None of this is untrue.

** Cyborg - specs wearer.

Day 120, Satie et al artefact

The music of Eric Satie, insert your list of adjectives here.  I remember hearing it from an early age.  It appeared as background/incidental music on a 1970s BBC programme about mysterious happenings in bygone days, murders, ghostly occurrences, perhaps typhoid Mary even made a look in in this series.  Satie is very familiar today due to it being a natural fit for any sort of programme where a particular feel is being sought.

The written scores are famous for having unusual instructions and directions for the performer of the piece, "as light as an egg" being one.  The standard dynamic, articulation or phrasing markings were very often missing.  This leads to a wide variety of interpretations of most Satie pieces.

I attended a performance of Satie, Ravel, Debussy, Poulenc, and Fauré pieces by the internationally acclaimed French pianist Pascal Rogé at the Crucible Studio Theatre sixteen years ago.  This list of composers have been referred to as the "Twentieth Century French Masters."


Here is the playlist.

It was a most excellent performance, and the atmosphere created by the audience being on each of the four sides was incredible.

Much thanks must go to a friend of mine for suggesting attending this.

Day 119, Solarization

Discovered more photographs while trying to locate the tower.  Still no sign of the tower.  Here we have a couple of examples of Solarization.  This technique is listed under Advanced Manipulations in the fully revised edition of The Darkroom Handbook by Michael Langford (1989).

As The Darkroom Handbook says:

Solarization (or, more accurately, the "Sabatier effect") involves fogging an image to light part way through development.  This has the effect of darkening undeveloped areas, and reversing some of the tones.  It also forms a fine, clear "Mackie line" along the borders of originally light and dark areas.

Some of these effects can be seen in the above image, the image below is less successful.

Here in the modern age, where everything is better and complex techniques are now computerised, it takes about two clicks to create a very unconvincing version of the same technique using Adobe Photoshop.

I'll spare you an example of the Photoshop version as it has absolutely no redeeming features.  Why is the Photoshop solarize so completely and utterly pants?  No wait, I'm not interested.

*Those in the know will spot that the images above are not solarization, I can't find the solarizations either... Cheeky huh.

Day 118, strings

Here they are.  Been looking for these for a while.  They were in a box, of course.  What's worse, given that I struggled to find them, is that they were in a box of music stuff i.e. exactly the place where they should have been.

Oh well, so much for organisation.

Stuff is always easier to find if it's all on the floor.  Henceforth all boxes will be emptied on the floor.

This is clearly the most sensible option.  If you disagree I expect you barcode your stuff and organise it in neat utility structures all tracked by database.

That sums up today's string theory.

Day 117, moving stuff from A to B

It depends what you are moving.  If it's bits, bytes, electrons etc then maybe you don't need to shift things out of the way, not unless there's congestion at least.  If it's the items you might find kicking around in a box, on a shelf, on the floor - real, tangible stuff - then it becomes a different matter.

In this case the stuff has made it to the floor as part of the process of movement from A to B - is the floor A prime (A') in this case?

So there's this cable bundle.  Modern computer PSUs are pretty groovy, if that's your bag, they have pluggable cables so you can select the right sets and not clutter up the PC case.  What happens over a period of time if you deal with these cool cats are that there becomes a preponderance of spares, a rotten stinking plethora of cables.  Obviously chucking them out into the recycling is the right thing to do, but that rankles hep cats as there's always the possibility that they will come in useful.

At what point is this threshold of keep/recycle reached, how deep a tidal level of cables do you need before action is required?

Dunno.

So in the interim period one is required to continue to make progress in the activity of tidying and rearranging.  So back to the 'shifting stuff' element.

Space has to be made somewhere to enable reorganising and moving items around.  Hence the A' position of the cables.  Thus it becomes apparent that such phrases as 'it gets worse before it gets better' and 'you can't make an omelette without breaking eggs' loosely apply.

That is all.

That is my explanation and reasoning for why my office floor is knee deep in stuff.

It is not an excuse.

No, really.

I rest my case - if only there was somewhere to put it.