Day 653, Where is it

A day spent mostly unable to find things.

Not unlike most other days.

Although other days the thing needing to be found might be 'the answer', 'what's wrong', or in those hippyish moments 'myself'.

Today it is mundane.

What's missing is an Infra Red camera for use with the Raspberry Pi.  I've obviously put it 'somewhere safe'.

What I can find is the normal camera, which leads me to another thing that I can't find, which is how to get it to work.  The electrical path is all good, tested end to end with a multimeter, the camera works on an old Pi, but the Pi Zero refuses to accept that there is a camera attached.

Debugging mode tells me that it can detect the camera but refuses to power it on.

assert( camera_subsystem_state.power_enable_ref_count[port] > 0 ) failed; ../../../../../vcfw/drivers/device/camera_subsystem/camera_subsystem.c::camera_disable_ctrl line 1116

Some further fiddling around and I get the LED on the camera to flash at my command.  But I can't find the solution.

I then find something else to do, possibly involving squashing aphids - if I can find any.

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Day 652, Numex Twilight

Loads of chillies on this Numex Twilight, and loads more to come judging by the number of flowers and new flower heads.

The aphid genocide will be well worth it, I'm sure the aphids agree.

Sweet flavoured and medium hot, these chillies will ripen through purple then yellow then orange to red.

Eat them uncooked with a bit of cheese on a cracker.

For added entertainment poke yourself in the eye with the cheese, the cracker, and the chilli. In that order.

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Day 651, No Charge

I'm a human dynamo.

Oh yes.*

I'm a human dynamo.

Apart from when I'm not.

Possibly due to having had one too many.**

So today this human dynamo needs spinning back up to speed, recharging.

Unlike these batteries.

No amount of chocolate, tea, or sitting down watching Celebrity Masterchef will revitalise them.

These batteries are fucked.

Even the rechargeable ones.

Whereas in a few hours time this human will be back at it and tap dancing on the ceiling.***

And for that there will be No Charge.****

* As John Major might have said.
** As ? and the Mysterians might have said.
*** As Lionel Richie might have said.
**** As Tammy Wynette might have said.


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Day 650, Command Console

The Mighty Wurlitzer

The command console.

It's a standing desk

That keyboard needs a clean.

Look at the size of that bolt.

A bottle opener?*

* Available for hire.

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Day 649, Aphid 2, now green death gets serious

Those words should be spoken by Don LaFontaine as the summing up after "In a world where chilli plants are under attack..." 

Getting bored with squish, squish, squish, I decided to take a more methodical, less green fingered approach.  Using a scalpel, some cheap reading glasses and a piece of kitchen towel, I went into battle.

The tiny aphid offspring were suddenly visible, and using the scalpel it was possible to flick them onto the paper towel where they could be squashed with the flat of the blade.  Key areas to locate the buggers are generally around the flower stalks, although sometimes they venture onto the undersides of leaves if they're feeling particularly cosmopolitan.  Looking for shed skin cases is a useful way of tracking them, they are white and look very like a small aphid, these will be seen on the soil or on leaves, and there may often be a recently enlarged beast specimen directly above.  Tidy away any skin cases as new ones will give an indication of further pest activity.

Ten minutes of checking chilli plants three times a day has reduced the population to the point where I need much greater magnification reading glasses.  Either that or the aphid population has been vanquished.*

I'm pretty sure there are still aphids there, tiny, not yet old enough to reproduce, waiting for me to go out.  And as long as I spot them before they get to a week old and pop out more clones then this out of control game of life may become void.

Rules for minimum viable population are probably not the same for aphids reproducing via parthenogenesis.  Infestation from soil borne eggs and winged aphid invaders is also a risk, especially with non-sterilised soil and an environment which it isn't possible to isolate or hermetically seal.**  The only real answer is scorched earth, and that won't produce me any chillies.

With the above in mind, and Don's voice reverberating between my ears, I will steel myself to continue the deadly battle.

Green death gets serious, if only the Doctor and an assistant were available.

* Fat chance.
** In one of their incarnations they give birth to live young, in another they can lay eggs, in another they can fly - sneaky buggers.


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Day 648, Mainframe Temperature Chart

It's been a long time since there was a mainframe in our machine room, but up until recently there were still a few relics of the original installation.

The room that was slightly larger than the size of a basketball court has since been partitioned into a much smaller space.  Even in the much smaller space there is a lot of available room, partly due to more powerful computing having a much smaller footprint than previously, and also because we make great use of virtualisation.

Now in rack space no larger than a couple of washing machines we run over 1200 servers.

When the partitioning work took place, in the early 2000's, I liberated this piece of monitoring kit to use as a desk ornament.  It's a Honeywell circular chart used to plot temperature over the time period of a week.  There were probably similar charts to record humidity.  On the panel I removed the chart from there were large indicator lamps to display alert states, and there were outsized and clunky switches to set different modes, all very 1960's in appearance, a classic period.

This chart doesn't appear to have ever been used, although it does have a spreading ink mark where the pen was left in stationary contact with the paper, like a failed chromatography experiment.

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Day 647, Induced entropy

Door of the day.

If it isn't open then consider how you would open it.

But don't break it.

You might say -

"That's easy for you to say, you have the key."

But I don't have the key.

"But you know the combination."

I don't know the combination.

"You know someone inside that will let you in."

That is not the case, and if there were they would not be prepared to do that unless the requirements had been satisfied.*

* Gnomic pronouncement while waiting for iManager plugins to install.

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Day 646, Leverage

Miscellaneous objects held aloft using science.*

Using the technology of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and paper wedging, this shelf is secure enough to sleep a family of four.**

Assuming that's a family of hamsters.***

It would look even more impressive if the really heavy objects to the right were in view.****

* The power of listening to experts.
** Fine tolerances of wedging were adjusted using folded paper, this is a legitimate construction technique.
*** No hamsters were harmed in the making of this shelf.
**** That's overplaying it, it isn't an engineering feat of any significance let alone that of something on the scale of the Clifton suspension bridge.

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Day 645, Aphid busting

That's one way to get green fingers.

Squish, squish, squish.

Two or three times a day, check to see if they've returned, and if they have...

Squish, squish, squish.

Then wipe off the honeydew.

Chilli plants getting eaten by the sap-sucking little blighters?

Who ya gonna call?

Aphid busters.*

I ain't afraid of no parthenogenetic little insects

* This is not being offered as a professional service.

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Day 644, Old Tat

Hands up if you remember Compaq?

This is some of the guff that used to come with servers.  There's a bunch of documentation, some SmartStart CD's, and various other bits and bobs to assist with the setting up process.

As this server was installed before Compaq were acquired by HP it must be from earlier than 2002.  In fact it is probably from 2000 and could be from among the first few servers that I installed after arriving in post - I wouldn't have used the SmartStart CD.

The Compaq hardware has long since left the building.

It's probably about time we had a clear out of the associated bumpf.

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Day 643, Death of the Bulb

Death of the daylight Biobulb.

I have no idea how many hours this Ecozone daylight bulb has been used for but it has just silently failed.

Fortunately there was an identical replacement readily to hand, and bloody hell is it bright.  The old bulb had obviously lost some of daylight quality, but at such a rate that the change was imperceptible to us humans.

Slow change, who'd a thunk that that was still a thing.*

* Who'da thunk?

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Day 642, Do It Yourself Face

This is the image we construct for others.

We choose our costume for the stage and the backstage.

Our actions directed by props.

In social settings we might choose our props and stage too.

We adjust to the settings we are offered.

And all who take part implicitly agree the definition of the situation.*

* Very loosely paraphrasing Erving Goffman.



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Day 641, Idle Doodles

At home with the Idle Doodles, a new multi-part drama from BBC East Kilbride.

I'm on the edge of my seat I really am.

This promises to be an excoriating exposé on the hairstyles of the rich and famous.

It will be aired every third Tuesday in months containing an odd number of letters, rather like QIXL is now.

Here's a sample storyboard found under a pillow on the Caledonian Sleeper train during the stop at Watford Gap.

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Day 640, Broken windows

Once upon a time, in decades now edited from the cerebral cortex of those that spent the intervening decades drinking, there used to be more of these etched windows.

Those windows have been broken, swept away, and lost.

I had a dream.  And if dreams are a representation of our fears and concerns then I'm rather worried about the people I might see on my walk to work.  The concern isn't just that they are all government agents milling around with the pretence of being ordinary employees.  Government agents are easy to deal with.  But there is also a concern that they will be coming to get us, and that could be bad.

Coming to get us for some reason, I have no idea what the reason or why.

But when they come to get us they will have technology.  Clunky, JCB-like technology.  Excavator and digger technology that has extendable grabbers that can smash windows, go round corners, see in infra-red and ultra-violet, and detect smell.

I hid under the bath after filling it with cold water and tried not to fart.  But I have no idea if that worked as the alarm went off and the dream ended.

I walked a different route to work, just in case.  But tomorrow, watch out, if anything untoward happens and triggers me I may have to pretend you don't exist.

Thank you for your understanding.

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Day 639, Pokémon S10

Herds of people, everywhere, staring at their phones.

A Dad, an Uncle and a Grandad, all occupied with finding the Pokémon.

Kids in tow, playing with litter, a polystyrene box, a shrub, some dog muck, no interest in it at all.

A Mother, with kids, as above, not interested.

A family, more of the above, not interested.

It must be good, it gets them out of the house.

Somewhere where the kids can safely be ignored, in public, with the added pretence that it is a family activity.

I can see why it is so popular.*

* Nintendo have a plan for you all, you will be assimilated.


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Day 638, Summary Justice

Out here in the boonies we don't put up with behaviour outside of the norm.  We are quick to act, and punishment follows hard on the heels of an offence.

In Haddock County the Sheriff and Mayor swiftly deal with any problems.

You might say we are not tolerant, but the word 'tolerant' is duplicitous.  You tolerate something but you don't accept it.  It allows the deception of believing you are being progressive, whereas it's just a filter through which to hide your disapproval, it's a lie.*

We aren't like that.  Our outlook is plain and honest, and we make sure we express it in no-nonsense black and white terms.

We don't have time for nuanced arguments.  It is time for plain speaking.

You are either with us, or against us.

The decision has been made.  So shut up, or ship out.**

Otherwise you might end up as a warning to others, hung out, attached to a street sign.

But the Haddock County weather is always pretty good, so maybe it won't be so bad.

Summery justice.***

* Tolerance - a rung on the ladder of acceptance.
** "It's over, done, stop going on about it now."
*** The lengths some people will go to for a crap pun - I'm not aware of any events outlined here being the norm in Crosspool, wherever that is.


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Day 637, Smile!

Smiling is good, it brings out the best in yourself and others.

Let's all take this absolutely great advice and smile, regardless of whether we have any dog crap or whether we are on CCTV.

I'm not really sure the CCTV bit needs an exclamation mark though, we are mostly on it already, it's no big deal.  But the bit about taking your dog crap home, yes, I'm all in favour of exclamation marks there, it makes all the difference - If only more people had done that then maybe the options for the Tory front bench would have been slightly less ridiculous.*

* What I'm saying there is that there is a lot of crap on the Tory front bench, I wasn't really expecting to have to explain that, but hey...


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Day 636, People and process

Post it.

Post it.

Post it.

Post its.

On the walls.

On the doors.

On the windows.

On the sole of my shoes.

And we have an outcome.

A process.

Sorting, categorising, organising, dancing

The proto-process

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Day 635, Long range view

Today's news will pass most people by, there being nothing happening in the world everyone will have wandered off to do some gardening, knitting, or sumo wrestling.

The news is this, I successfully managed to not transpose the 2 and the 3 in the subject line.  Or, successfully managed to get the 6 and the 3 in the right order.  Either description is correct, but doesn't rule out other correct descriptions.  Apart from that I've just noticed I said "the 2 and the 3" where what I meant was "the 6 and the 3", which suggests that the problem hasn't passed.

As you were.

And relax.

Here is a calming view, no bright colours, no scary fast-action, just a reasonably gentle stretch of water surrounded by trees.

Enjoy.

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Day 634, Cat mining

Cats, they're everywhere.  Scaling high walls, staring down, spying on people, doing the bidding of Theresa May, except not quite in the 'internet spy powers' digital manner.  This unknown cat below is obviously in training.

Concerned about our new watcher-class it came as a shock to see neighbour cat Cato in the garden when I got in.  Not that the neighbour cat was there, that wasn't the shock, it was his activity.  He appeared to be digging a hole to the depth of the Mariana Trench.  At first I thought this was a typical poo-hole, but he kept digging.

And digging.

And more, frantic digging.  There must be something down there he's after

Some of the spoil from the hole was thrown against the fence, the noise surprised him and for a moment he was distracted and walked away from the hole.

Then when he returned he appeared to have forgotten the hole was there and promptly fell in.  He completely vanished for a moment.  But then he reappeared with that look of deliberate nonchalance cats get when they do something foolish.  He turned and licked his tail and rearranged some fur, all to indicate "I meant to fall into the hole, it was all deliberate."

Then he continued digging.

What on earth is down there?

He then turned his backside to the hole and did a crap in it.

Once he'd finished his business he filled the hole in, partially, and wandered off.

Not spying after all, but sort of indistinguishable from it.

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Day 633, Tin Town

When my pension disappears down the pan, if it hasn't already, I'm going to move here.

Tin Town.

A well appointed row of delightful, prefabricated metal, houses.  Or at least that's what used to be there before the Howden, Derwent and Ladybower reservoirs were completed and the navvies moved on.

And here's what it looks like along that stretch of street now.

A handy reminder that when humankind has finished fucking everything up before fucking off, that nature will sort out quite a lot of the mess.






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Day 632, Gourmet dish of the day

We're accustomed to being served food on a slate, we're accustomed to it arriving on a plank, but today my food arrived on a raised-bed.*

Served on a toasted, garlic-crumb base these ratatouille balls in a copse of courgette trees were quite delightful.

The table was also unique with the tablecloth being reminiscent of paving slabs, and with a cruet set fashioned in the shape of bicycles the stage was set rather like that of public plaza.

As is typical in these situations I had to go home via the chippy to fill the space around the novelty.**

* Just bring it on a plate mate.
** Jay Rayner will return with greater verbosity next week.

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Day 631, Inverse giant foot alerted

Deep within the mouldering cavities of the Cambrian hills the last Bigfoot considers whether or not to get out the gazebo.

If the weather turns for the better then it would be good to put aside the repeats of Springwatch, get out the suncream, and then pour a decent glass of red while surveying the glorious views of the valleys.  The cost of suncream for a Bigfoot shouldn't be underestimated, it does need a rather liberal amount to penetrate the thick fur.

Fur you say, shouldn't that protect the Bigfoot from the rays of the sun?

You would think so wouldn't you, but apparently it is nonsense.  The Bigfoot is particularly susceptible to the bandwidth of ultra violet light and high doses of this can easily penetrate their furage.  Bigfoot numbers have apparently been reducing, much to the dismay of Brian Blessed.  This reduction is partially as a consequence of ozone depletion leading to greater incidence of carcinoma among Bigfoot, partially due to their difficulty in determining when not to go outside, and also partially due to their sensitive hearing which causes them to shun booming Yorkshiremen.  The second of these factors has mainly been due to their inability to correctly use Shannon's equation.

Obviously the unintended consequences of our over-reliance on underarm deodorant in the 1960's and 70's, combined with our inability to detect pollution from industry for the better part of 200 years, has really caused problems to our lesser-known, mountain dwelling, relations.*

So think on.

* This is all true.

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Day 630, Giant foot alert

The terrifying, Odessa File, foot conspiracy.

All of the above, and more, can be yours for just £5.99 in 36 monthly instalments.

No, it's no use, I have no idea either.

Best go change socks before the bullfinch nests in them.*

* Honestly, I only had one half pint and a quarter of a game of snooker on a full sized table, I am not even slightly pissed.

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Day 629, Home Installation Team

A new start.

And a new life.

A new husband.

And a new wife.

A new street.

And a new footing.

A new kitchen.

And new cooking.

A new dishwasher.

And a new drainpipe.

A new front door.

And a new cookie-cutter, pour on boiling water, instant, ideal home centre-spread lifestyle type.*

* Just call the John Lewis Home Installation Team.

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Day 628, Budget Portmeirion

It's a discoloured, borrowers sized, cut-price version of Rover from The Prisoner.

I didn't see any micro-McGoohan either running away or being incapacitated, but I don't doubt that Number 6 is somewhere in the vicinity.

This is the reality, don't deny what you see, you know it's the truth.

Whose side are you on?

That would be telling.  We want information.

You won't get it.

Etc.

Be seeing you.

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Day 627, Philosophy 101

If a tree falls in a forest and nobody witnesses it, is Nigel Farage still an arse?

That's a non-sequitur, in that the conclusion is not a necessary consequence of the premise.  Both the premise and conclusion may be true (the conclusion definitely is in this case) but the truth of the conclusion is independent of the truth of the premise.

The statement could also be considered to be an ad-hominem argument, one where it attacks the character of the person making the argument rather than the substance of the argument.  However, as NF is clearly an arse it is not an ad-hominem.*

When a dog whistle is blown on broadcast media without being identified as such, is that an example of bias, balance, or irresponsibility?

As has been happening for years there has been a strong desire to create a false balance between any two points of view of an argument.  A leading expert is invited to discuss a particular point, and an opposing person is brought on to provide the 'balance' - i.e. someone from NASA and a believer in a flat earth.  It matters not that the overwhelming body of evidence suggests to us that the world is spherical, the flat-earther has an equal amount of broadcast air-time to put their point of view that they believe the earth is flatter than unprimed beer.  This can lead to accusations of bias.

In the example of the flat earth believer above this 'balance' is just mildly annoying, but in the case of the dog-whistle blowers on immigration, and other subjects that the far right seem to like, it is irresponsible of the broadcaster concerned to give an equal weighting.

That's obvious you would think, wouldn't you?

There is some movement to try and remove this false balance, and maybe it will succeed.  But until then let's content ourselves with another consideration of a problem of unperceived existence.

If Nigel Farage leaps off his leadership perch in a forest, is he still an arse?**

* This is clearly a joke and not philosophically correct, whatever the outcome however Nigel is still an arse.
** We all know the answer to that, as it is a rhetorical question.

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Day 626, The Irish Rover

On the fourth of July twenty sixteen we set on the brief walk to work
And all of the day it was hard not to say that this tune was not once in my head
er, etc...*

On the Fourth of July 1806 we set sail from the sweet cove of Cork
We were sailing away with a cargo of bricks for the grand City Hall in New York
'twas a wonderful craft, she was rigged fore and aft and oh, how the wild wind drove her
She stood several blasts, she had twenty-seven masts and they called her the Irish Rover

We had one million bags of the best Sligo rags, we had two million barrels of stone
We had three million sides of old blind horses hides, we had four million barrels of bones
We had five million hogs, and six million dogs, seven million barrels of porter
We had eight million bails of old nanny-goats' tails in the hold of the Irish Rover

There was awl Mickey Coote who played hard on his flute when the ladies lined up for a set
He was tootlin' with skill for each sparkling quadrille, though the dancers were fluther'd and bet
With his smart witty talk, he was cock of the walk and he rolled the dames under and over
They all knew at a glance when he took up his stance that he sailed in the Irish Rover

There was Barney McGee from the banks of the Lee, there was Hogan from County Tyrone
There was Johnny McGurk who was scared stiff of work and a man from Westmeath called Malone
There was Slugger O'Toole who was drunk as a rule and Fighting Bill Tracey from Dover
And your man, Mike McCann from the banks of the Bann was the skipper on the Irish Rover

For a sailor it's always a bother in life It's so lonesome by night and day
That he longs for the shore and a charming young whore who will melt all his troubles away
Oh, the noise and the rout swillin' potin and stout for him soon the torment's over
Of the love of a maid, he is never afraid an old salt from the Irish Rover

We had sailed seven years when the measles broke out and the ship lost it's way in the fog
And that whale of a crew was reduced down to two, just meself and the Captain's old dog
Then the ship struck a rock, Oh Lord! what a shock, the bulkhead was turned right over
Turned nine times around and the poor old dog was drowned I'm the last of the Irish Rover

* Lazy.

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Day 625, Lines, metal, road rage

Nobody expects Gary Numan to pull the wings off a duck no matter how much road rage he has when he's in his car.

That's just daft.  Don't do it Gary, the duck meant no harm.  It just isn't in your character, chill man.

What is it with the modern popular beat combo, and other performance artistes, that they have these obsessions?

Like that silly sandman character that the Metallica got all worked up about.  Keeping one eye open at night, and holding on to their pillow tight, like a bunch of horror-film obsessed girl guides.

Come on the Metallica, get your act together, anyone would think you were a bunch of religion obsessed, gun loving, paranoid Republican fruit cakes.  If you go on the duck hunt as well you might end up just like Gary, driving his little dodgem car around,* and without any friends that don't require constant access to the national grid.**

* Here he is in his dodgem car.
** Apropos of nothing.

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Day 624, There to watch over us

The basket of vegetables has been upturned, someone took a step back and squashed a courgette with their size 9's, turnips roll out into the street.

Sometimes chaos ensues for no apparent reason.

There's always a reason.

I blame Have I Got News For You for giving a platform to one of these fuckwits reasons and making it appear dippy and a bit cuddly.  There's the 'common sense for common people' sloganeering approach too, it appeals to people's wish for simplicity, for easy answers, and desire to blame.

Rather than being governed by what amounts to little more than a collection of vegetables who play us for fools we need to make a change.

So with that in mind what I propose is this.  That we get invaded by an alien race who will give us a common focus to aim our displeasure with the world.  That this alien race enslaves us and keeps us occupied, giving us the simple answer of our desire to blame, and thus making our lives easier.*

What could go wrong, we wouldn't need a stock-market, we wouldn't need to spend money, and assuming the aliens couldn't tell us apart there would be no sexism, racism, etc, etc.**

A benign (-ish) presence to give us common focus in our lives.

Obviously there's a problem with all of that, if we had a common focus then any rebellion could actually be effective.  Imagine that, humans gathering together with a common cause with the aim of overthrowing those that subjugate us.

I suspect the aliens are way ahead of us though.  They would create a more complex world where we would work for their ends without recognising that they are squeezing us like lemons.

There'd be jobs very like those we have now, events for entertainment such as sports, concerts, and plays.  There would be aspiration, there would be trends and fashions for us to follow.  There would be industries whose sole aim was to persuade us to do things we hadn't considered doing and to buy things we hadn't considered buying, and the people working for them wouldn't be aware that this was all part of the great machinery of distraction.  Education, industry, business, all part of the facade, painted into our psyche from birth.

Comprehensive and complex.

And all rather how it is now.***

Time to roll the turnips into the street.****

* Rarely is the word 'thus' needed, why then does my phone never suggest 'this' when accidentally hitting the U instead of the I?
** They can't tell us apart, I've decided that's the case.
*** What suckers we are.
**** Vive la révolution, let's man the barricades - just let me watch F1 qualifying first, and finish this beer, and have a bit of a lie down.

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