BTW the reason that I write this blog is essentially for me. I find that I can never keep my set of links organised and this should provide something that is better maintained or at least it will grow but I can search the words. I work I have become every fond of using elog as a way to store info and find it rather than writing in a paper log book (which all good engineers should)

More good radio programs this time from the open university. Called "Diamonds, rust and a handful of sand" it charts the rise of electronics. It has helped me understand why a crystal radio set works, why a video recorder is such an amazing piece of technology and what dolby means for a sound recording. It makes you so glad that computers are now digital :-)

Techie stuff
An article about reconfigurable computing. The idea of having a set of FPGA inside a PC that could be programmed to do exactly the algorithm that was required at a very high speed seems very appealing but no nearer turning to reality.
I also believe in this Guardian Article that states that most people don't understand computers. I don't know what will happen when the generation that I am from, who got interested in home computers, when they loaded programs from tape, or you could type them in. Will children of today only know about windows and graphical user interfaces and have no interest in how these things work? Computers now come with on programming language by default (unless you count VBA in MS Office)
I admit that we don't necessarily need a C compiler with every OS but some intro to programming.
An article here about reversible computing i.e. not using any power!!

It must be time for people to do Christmas shopping. My house-mate has annoyed me by finished all of his before December. I always like to buy people an even because I always think that most people have all the possessions that they want. Tickets for events, concerts, theatre, health spas, activity days will always be well remembered.

My machine is under attack! Someone within my own ISP is trying to break into my apache webserver. They have been doing this for the last two weeks and don't seem to want to stop trying to exploit frontpage server extensions which I am not running. I will see if the e-mail to the abuse department works ...

Open source windows software. There is a good CD available here
I always think that the smallest utility that does the job is the one you want. I always go to download.com and choose the smallest by size.

Remove programs that are using your computer to track you using Ad-aware. This was referenced from Steve Gibsons superb site at www.grc.com. Make sure you use UnPlug'n'Pray to disable the UPnP service, DCOMbobulator and Shoot the messenger

Ideas to change the world.
Some interesting things It talks about car commuter tokens, to skip swap shops to limited duration marriages to by choice income tax
(This remind me if you asked Dave Gorman he might say that "All freight on the canals" would make a better world)

Rubiks cubes
I have been trying to write a program to solve a Rubiks cube I was bought last year. Stupidly I thought this would be easy but of course the state space is huge. Coping with the corners is easy enough (7!/4 combinations) but the edge pieces have 11! Arrangements and then you can consider that edge pieces can be in the wrong orientation (i.e. right place but colours in the wrong place).
I found two interesting solutions here and here. These people are just too brainy :-)

Techie article
Working out which compiler options are optimal using genetic algorithm's
And another about some more new processors and why transmeta code morphing software is possibly a bad idea. If you need to know one thing about microprocessors it is that the memory system that they have is the one thing that influences their performance the most. A modern processor is always waiting for memory access and everything that the microprocessor architects do is trying to hide that latency.

"The Physics Diet" seems to completely mirror my belief about food. I would be the first person to have 1 tablet a day. This is not to say I don't like good food but I do dislike the everyday effort that goes into preparing food and eating it (but luckily after this a dishwasher solves the rest of the problem)

The content at the BBC (British Broascasting Corporation or Broken Biscuit Company as I once heard it called) website is fantastic. If you have used the internet for long then I am sure that you will agree with me.

I often listen to streamed audio at work especially from Radio 4. Listenting to Marcus Brigstock on the "Now Show" calling David Blaine's latest stunt "Freak Dangle" or to listen to Paul Merton improvising some surreal situation on "Just a Minute".
The BBC is also the only broadcaster that I know to put out truly intellectual programme. Simon Singhs "Another five numbers" or an entire series of lectures (The Reith lectures) over 5 years, that this year focuses on the emerging mind

I mention this because the BBC comes under review next year when the royal charter comes up for renewal. If you did not know then in the UK each television set (well household really) needs a license which costs just over 100UKP/year. This money is paid to our national broadcaster the BBC. They have a remit to not only make programmes that people want but to cater for minority interests as well. It is feared that with recent spats between the BBC and the government (over Gulf war II and especially the suicide/assassination of Dr Kelly - a weapons advisor to the government) and the increasing pressure from commercial broadcasters that the license fee is unfair. I have heard it mentioned that the license fee may be dramatically cut. This can only mean that the BBC would have to retreat to its core television and radio stations. I for one hope that the BBC continues to receive the funding and freedoms that it deserves! especially as the BBC websites is one of the treasures on the internet.

PS if you don't have one already install a virus checker. There is a free (for personal use) windows checker from the kind people at Grisoft

Orange (the UK mobile phone company) have done it again. They seem to find it easy to annoy me. Today my initial 3 months of a 12 month contract expire. After this initial lock in I am meant to be able to change my service plan and Orange do offer a "value promise" which means they will match any other operators plan. So I range them up. They initially said it would be fine but then they realised my 3 months expires yesterday and so they said it would take another month until the change could be made. They couldn't enter it into their computer system today because it was generating my bill. And they couldn't quite match the competitors tariff because although their computer system can only handle one off peak time for the whole network. This is crap. Companies constantly annoy and aggravate their customers by having inflexible computer system. Totally unacceptable.
My link for today is a very good article on understanding the human brain

Oh Dear.
It seems I may be one of the millions of people that start a weblog and then never add to it. Well better fix that

Today I am annoyed by the e-mail service that my mobile phone company provide. I have forgotten my password. Will I phone that 50p/min support line for something so simple? No of course not. To make matters worse there is no automatic service for sending you a password over SMS (but there is for registration). They just want you to call an expensive number. There is no e-mail address for customer services, and to make it all worse there web site is very shoddy.


It lead me to think that would it be possible for a third party to have a better designed version of the same . e.g. there is nothing to stop someone else having a better designed site that contains links to the correct pages or better quality information. OK you cannot use their images, violate their trademarks or try to impersomate another company
what about ....
a site of links that helps you navigate a bad site.
a better web forms for the times when the web page author has coded a tiny box.
a site with sensible font sizes for sites coded with tiny fonts
an index for a site that does not have one

It would obviously be better for a company to improve their site but I have complained about sites before and little happens

Well --- back from holiday :-) and everything is borken - even my ability to type it seems
My main house server (every nerd has one) that sits in my datacentre (loft) is ill.

I thought I was prepared. A pair of software mirrored RAID-1 SCSI disks shouldn't go wrong very often but they seem very troublesome.
I thought I was prepared - I thought having two copies of the data was a good thing but of course you need three, or more.
In my misaprehension I had failed to relaise that RAID provides very nicely for the completely clean failure of one disc, but what if data gets corrupted?
You have two copies they are both different what do you do?
In fact for a RAID-1 array as you read from both discs interchangable you never know that data is corrupted.

The problem
was made worse by the fact that they were boot discs as well, and I had only set up one to boot the system. Doh
was made worse by the fact that I didn't really know my way around the raid tools
was made worse by the fact that you have yet another weird layer between you and your data.

I am now seriously put off RAID solutions, and other disky things like LVM (Logical volume management - no more repartitioning nightmares) because although they may do cool things for the home user who justs wants his machine to work, a good set of backups is just a lot easier.

My first blog entry - just to test