‮hjap‮

I was awesomesauce bottled tonight. Gods, but I've missed the stage.

And now, a gift for my loyal readers: your very own pajh-inna-box. Go to cereproc.com, and select William (Southern English) from the Live Demo list in the topbar (requires Flash). You can make me say anything you like. If you make me say anything nice about David Cameron, I will find you and kill you.

scattergather is already finding it useful for phrases like please drink my booze, I do not want it.

This entry was originally posted at http://gominokouhai.dreamwidth.org/193887.html. Please comment there using OpenID.

Happy time_t = 1234567890, everybody!

Where's my flying car?

It seems there's no escape.

The old phone died with a pathetic whimper, but the nice people at the Orange Shop told me that I was due for a free upgrade. So now I have this thing with a 3.2 megapixel camera with Zeiss lenses, radio, mp3 player, video player, and an ARM processor core driving quad-band GSM, GPRS, and UMTS. I'm told it makes phone calls too, but I've not found that function yet.

All I actually want is something that will allow me to sometimes make phone calls when I'm not near a telephone. Instead I'm lugging around a billion times the processing power of the Apollo missions on my belt, probably. Meanwhile, even as they cram unsolicited silicon into my pocket, I can't help but think about all of those proteins going unfolded.

Having said that, the radio is quite nice. I'm rapidly learning about the current standard of voiceover talent, and thus that breaking into the industry really shouldn't be very difficult. On the other hand, given the quality of the scripting, I'm not sure I want to any more.

Website backed up, domain registry transferred over, new hosting arranged and paid for. Website backup turns out to be inaccessible, so will try to restore later. Lost my email for a bit, but now I seem to have got it back. Sort of.

I seem to have signed myself up for Google Apps, which seems to be like Gmail but more awesome, or at the very least more awesomely complex. Possibly it's also more Orwellian, which at least starts with the same syllable as awesome. And I have no idea what to do with it.

It would seem that I now have my pajh.org email going into this Google Apps thing, and all of the other emails from my intricate networks of forwards and filters is still going to Gmail. Now I need to decide which one of the two I actually want to use.

Any advice?

More impressive even than the Firefox crop circle, reports are flooding in of the discovery of the snappily-monickered G1.9+0.3: an eighty trillion-mile-wide Firefox logo at the centre of the Galaxy.

God Himself uses Firefox. You can, too.

(Phil Plait, as always, has the scoop on the techie stuff.)

With thanks to lady_rani here:

Doctor Who executive producer Russell T Davies has accused BBC1 of cocking up the scheduling of the show, claiming it will lose 1.5m viewers in its new timeslot.

He then goes on to whine and stamp his feet a lot. More so than I think JNT ever did when they buggered about with the scheduling on his watch, but possibly less than Toby Hadoke did. In any case it's somewhat unbecoming—isn't it?—for the BBC's darling to throw a tantrum in a trade journal instead of maybe doing something about it or getting on with his job.

And frankly, Auntie's new attempt to recapture the glory of Britain's Got Talentless Media Whores needs all the help it can get. Didn't everyone get sick of back-to-back talent shows about three years ago?

Bitching about a scheduling conflict is, like, so 2007, dude. The viewers don't care any more. In times gone past, the announcement of a new season would launch a flurry of panicked complaints about: shit! I'm at work then orbut I have to go to a paaaarty that night. This year, the entire Internet has proffered a collective shrug and said: I'll catch it on iPlayer.

The most common thing I hear about BBC iPlayer, in every case is almost exactly the same words: It has totally revolutionized the way I watch television. I don't make a habit of asking people their opinion of iPlayer, but it often comes up in conversation regardless, because it is a Remarkably Cool Thing.

I still don't own a television set or have TV reception in my flat. (We do pay the licence fee, though.) Over the last two months I have watched infinity per cent more television than ever before. Much of it has been good television, which has forced me to reassess my attitude towards the medium. And my BitTorrent usage has dropped right off.

This is LiveJournal, so everyone reading this is acutely aware that the Internet has made it a million times easier to whinge and prate. Sometimes, when done right, the Internet also removes the reasons for such grousery in the first place.

(Although, now I come to think about it, it would make much more sense than it really should for Auntie to continue to determine ratings figures the old way even when everyone in the country is using the newer, more convenient, niftier 21st-century system. As a result, the entire next commissioning round would be decided on the basis of the five people left in the country who think that Satan invented the Internet.)

Oh, one more thing:

I'll rewrite [scripts] 100% if I have to, [Rusty] said. With Steven Moffat's scripts, I don't touch a word, but anyone else's I do.

...is by far the smartest thing I've ever heard him say. And it shows, Russell, oh how it shows.

In my flat, Gary (also known, in some circles, as scattergather) is better at Linux than me. The reason for this, I am sure, largely revolves around the fact that, at any time when Linux goes a little bit wrong, the answer is to stand out in the hallway and call, Garreeee..., and then problem is mostly resolved, and I didn't have to learn anything.

It Is Generally Acknowleged that the going rate for getting a hacker to do something for you, like for instance installing a new operating system, is to provide him with a bottle of Programmers' Fluid, and that generally Programmer's Fluid is a euphemism for single malt whisky.[0]

You may be aware that I am currently suffering computer problems. I also have an Emergency Backup Computer which I'd forgotten about until stormsearch reminded me of it today.

This evening, suddenly I burst into the room! brandishing the requisite bottle of Programmer's Fluid[1]. The subsequent conversation went like this:

Garreeeee.
Muh. whuh? buh.
Gary was in dressing gown and with eyelids only half deployed. On such provocation, I brandished the bottle with a little more aplomb.
Bring me your tired, your poor, your install media.
Not right now, please.
Fine. I'll just have to drink this myself, then.
...Okay.

Thirty minutes later I have a more-or-less fully functional machine, with an Internet connection (on eth1 for some reason we don't fully fathom) and X Windows and I even have sound if I want it. I've just gone for 48 terrifying, lonely hours without Internet and without the comfortable whirring in the far corner of my room that signfies that information of any kind is available to me should I command it. scattergather has entirely earned his bottle of Bushmills.

Hello boys, I'm baaack.

Today I am a walking technological disaster. penelope won't boot and it looks like a motherboard problem. The motherboard is an obsolete type that is going to be interesting to replace.

I just realized that I use penelope for pretty much everything in my flat that's not food-related. She looks after my Internet and my music and my DVD player and my Doctor Who and my porn. She has the only reliable clock in the flat and I use cron and atd to wake me up. I tried reading a book last night, but I couldn't find the power switch.

Also today I walked into one of Jehane's stupid sticking-out doors and shattered my mobile phone case. The phone is currently in my hip pocket, resembling some sort of hideous growth. Dogs snarl at me in the street and children abandon their hopscotch and hide in fear.

And Voga has the Key To Time boxset and the New Beginnings boxset in stock, neither of which are any use to me until I get a functioning DVD player.

Today I have been mostly creating Web 2.0 application interfaces for a major Edinburgh-based film production company.

That's what it's going to say on my CV. Translated, it means working for Hugh for free.

The sum total of my Ruby knowledge this morning was the ability to write Hello World on the command line. Today I created an RSS feed for the Strange Company blog—with standards compliance and everything!—in the Perl It's Okay To Like.

(LJ syndication for RSS feed available, natch, at strangeco_feed.)

Ruby might well be God's own programming language, largely because it works in mysterious ways. I have no clue what I did today, but it seems to have worked. I realize that this is a tiny and largely insignificant piece of code, but it works, and I'm feeling pretty good about myself.

Coding muscles flexed. Brain atrophy process temporarily stemmed. Next: work out how that code was supposed to work, and work from there.

I also got to watch the full, feature-length cut of Bloodspell, and have come away in possession of the only copy of the DVD screener not physically present at Strange Company Towers. (My unpaid working for Hugh now extends to acting as, indeed physically embodying, the official off-site backup server.) I can say with some confidence that turlygod, verdandiweaves, salchichaastuta, stormsearch and digitalraven are all awesome.

And cairmen as well, but we all knew that, obviously.

Dear Windows®:

I KNOW WHICH PART OF THE TEXT I AM TRYING TO SELECT.

DO NOT DEIGN TO ASSUME THAT YOU KNOW BETTER THAN I.

Die horribly,

pajh

( For the geeks )

If we combine the last two, we're close to getting full searchable functionality in the real non-computer 3D world.

Even grep ~bedroom socks would be a start.

The other night, after eighteen months, I logged into my university account.

The poor dears have been holding it for me, as if in the vain hope that someday I may return to sort their fucking lives out again. In England's hour of greatest need....

Several thousand unread messages—maybe I'll deal with those another time—and my essays. Oh, my essays.

Some of you may recall the Systems Design Project. Some of you may recall the vomitous torrent of bile, hatred and vitriol that I handed in as my report. The phrases obsolete hardware, could not charitably be described as cutting-edge and dysfunctional group dynamic abound.

( Highlights behind the cut. It's a `best of pajh' retrospective spleen-o-rama, just for you )

The whole thing is here if you're interested. (See, I can `host files' on my `web space' now. I have the technology.) I remain quite impressed that I managed to write 6,127 words and not one of them was `fuck'.

I handed that in and had a nervous breakdown two days later. On reflection, I can't say I'm at all surprised.

~

Oh, and if anyone can tell me what I was going on about in this document, I'd be much obliged if they could tell me. This was the one in which I fixed all of the problems inherent in the current approach to genetic algorithms and suggested a way forward based on common sense and less frenetic mid-nineties grubbing for research money.

I was some kind of fucking genius two years ago. Now I have very little idea what any of those words mean.

I am now the proud owner of pajh.org, not to mention a generous hosting solution that involves more bandwidth in two years than I will conceivably require in the next ten (and that's assuming that we've all uploaded our consciousnesses to the Blogosfear™ by then).

Due to the weak dollar (and a money-off coupon from the SA fora, courtesy of figg), two years' worth of owning more real estate on the Internet than I will ever need—like a ranch in cyberspace— came to rather under eighty quid. I love the weak dollar. Keep provokin' those unnecessary wars, Dubya, because my purchasing power keeps going right up.

(Although, on reflection, the weak dollar means that we get fewer American guests, and they're the ones who tip. So, on reflection, I'm probably just about breaking even.)

(And lots of people are dying unnecessarily, but logically that's their problem, not mine.)

So I am now the proud owner of pajh.org. Don't bother whois-ing for me just now, because the domain registration won't have propagated yet. But it is in the process of doing so.

If you took the world away and left only the electricity, it would look like the most exquisite filigree ever made—a ball of twinkling silver lines with the occasional coruscating spike of a satellite beam. Even the dark areas would glow with radar and commercial radio waves. It could be the nervous system of a great beast.

Here and there cities make knots in the web but most of the electricity is, as it were, mere musculature, concerned only with crude work. But for fifty years or so people had been giving electricity brains.

And now it was alive, in the same way that fire is alive.

That's what's happening to pajh.org right now. Domain name servers across the internet are being advised of my presence, and they in turn are advising others. My name is radiating outwards across the invisible expanses of the internet, blossoming outwards into cyberspace like a newborn barbaric yawp. And soon the whole world will know my name.

I can get this kind of power trip for eighty quid? I feel like a mad scientist. I want another hit.

Give it a week or two, and there may even be a website there, of sorts.

OAAT: Barbaric Yawp wbaenfarb.

UseNeXT - Next Generation Downloading

Do you want Videos, MP3s, Software, Games and Erotica, want to talk about your favourite Topics, but still torture yourself with common file sharing tools like BitTorrent or eDonkey?

We offer very fast, anonymous and uncensored access to Usenet – the mother of all file sharing services. With UseNeXT’s unique software, you get an easy-to-use access to Usenet, that used to be so complicated that only internet experts could use it - until now.

[emphasis in original]

I've been using Usenet since 1999. Round about 2004, I gave it up in order to concentrate my time on LiveJournal.

It seems that makes me an internet expert now. Don't I get a certificate?

~

And you bastards complain about the September That Never Ended. Welcome to the Eternal October Of Infinite Mediocrity. d00d, u5en3t is s0 l33t! g0t nekkid picz of n1kk1 off Big Bruv?

I just had a folding table collapse on my foot and then managed to punch myself in the throat with an electric-cable safety strip. Oh, the irony.

Today at work has been pretty quiet for a Monday. Nonetheless I have some questions:

1. Why does the `on-hold' recorded message need to specify that you can ``enjoy'' the ``best of Scottish hospitality in a smoke-free zone'' due to a ban on smoking in ``enclosed areas''? It's Scotland! EVERYTHING is an enclosed area! I love my adopted country[0], but if you go outside it's---well---Scotland out there and it's bloody freezing. We're going to see the pneumonia rate among smokers go way up, and then all the anti-smoking organisations can sit back with a smug look on their faces and say ``see, it does fuck up your lungs''. No, you bastards, you sent us out into the cold and now you have to pay taxes to fund our medical bills.
2. When your travel agent has informed you that you have a room in the basement, because there are no other rooms in the hotel, what in the name of SWEET MERCIFUL JEHOVAH makes you think that you can bring your daughter along, unannounced, and then wonder loudly why we don't have any rooms for her? What the fuck do you expect us to do, run out and buy a tent?
3. Who steals half a cruet set?

I think I need a holiday.

~

Spent Saturday morning recording for bloodspell. Had to do the first scene about sixteen times because Hugh hasn't bought pop shields yet. On the plus side, by the last few takes I was able to do the whole thing without a script and my acting must have significantly improved as a result.

verdandiweaves was enjoying Act 2---in which my character is being intimidated by hers---altogether too much. I had to explain to her later that I was acting.

~

On Saturday night J & I went `clubbing', as I believe the young'uns call it these days. We went into Teviot and tried the Mezz Bar first (free entry, no loss). It was full of Yah-types[1], some of whom were wearing ties, gyrating like retards to something could only loosely be described as `music'. So we got a drink at the bar (no queue) and headed straight dowstairs to Ascension. On the way out Jehane observed to me ``darling, I think we're Goths''.

Ascension was, as expected, a bit bleepy, but I actually like that stuff.

~

On Sunday we went to the late seolta's flat to pick up some of her now-unwanted clothes. I didn't know Sarah very well and felt a little guilty rooting through all her stuff, but there were a lot of things there that suited Jehane marvellously. Sarah could get away with an awful lot in terms of dress and there were a lot of clothes that Jehane wouldn't ordinarily consider if we saw them in a shop. They will be used and well loved, and some of Sarah's attitude will go with them.

People don't die really. Information is preserved. All her friends' memories of Sarah are intact and new thoughts are still being made. In informational terms, we distribute: those of us who are left carry on a legacy by continuing to think about those who have gone, wondering what they would think in a given situation---thinking for them---and, maybe, living the way they would want us to.

I know I have at least three facial expressions I inherited from Emma.

~

The rest of Sunday was spent in a prolonged consumerist frenzy. Vast quantities of food were acquired from Sainsbury's, as well as (reduced) cocktail glasses---because you never know when they'll come in handy. Then I picked up a second-hand speaker set (Dolby 5.1 surround sound, trivia-fans) from a shifty-looking guy we'd arranged to meet outside the Potterrow. I now own a subwoofer dubbed the `Cube of +5 Neighbour Annoyance'. Much time last night was spent listening to the 1812 Overture, with cannon fire, and the Master and Commander DVD.

Now I need a soundcard that actually supports 5.1 surround.

--
[0] Best said in a Gustav Graves voice, obviously.

[1] Not actually Yahs, since some Yahs are quite attractive. The American word preppy works best to describe this crowd.

Today at work I fixed the Millennium Bug[0] with a single-line SQL query. Half an hour to work out how to do it. Half an hour to determine that the reason it wasn't working was that Microsoft, not me, had fucked up the code, and half an hour to determine that the reason it still wasn't working was that Microsoft, not me, had fucked up the code again, but this time in a completely new and interesting way.

I'd forgotten how much I swear when I'm programming. Loudly and continuously. Especially when bloody Access keeps insisting on making things `easier for me' by BREAKING EVERYTHING. And this time I was fully within earshot of all the guests in the bar.

Then, when it finally worked, there was an involuntary air-punch and a mighty, Peter Serafinowicz-esque ``YES!!! Was there ever any doubt?!'' drifting through the halls of the sedate Victorian mansion.

It's been a while since I had a progasm, even a small one.

And now, off to the pub.

--
[0] A very restricted subset thereof; 793 records ganked from a legacy database.

Google Fight results:

"SQL is case sensitive": 316 results on Google
"SQL is not case sensitive": 870 results on Google

I love the internet.

UK police chiefs seek powers to attack terror web sites

The Association of Chief Police Officers has asked for new legislation giving the security services "powers to attack identified websites". The proposal, along with one for a new offence covering "use of the internet to prepare, encourage, facilitate acts of terrorism" was part of the terror law 'shopping list' presented by ACPO at the Prime Minister's meeting with law enforcement agencies on Thursday.

That's me up the creek then. I have in the past, on this very blog, attempted to recruit people to go and punch Blunkett. I suppose that counts as terrorism now.

Since terrorism remains almost entirely undefined, this is rapidly going to degenerate into a law against stating any opinion the Powers find unpalatable. Here's one to get you started: stick to stopping the bombs gong off, law-monkeys. The internet has never killed anyone yet.[0]

The secret war on terror: The Sunday Times alleges that MI5 have special, magic powers far beyond the comprehension of mortal man. From their secret base hidden in a decomissioned Tube station hewn from the very living rock of the bed of the Thames, they can reach into your pocket and transmogrify your phone into a completely different device. And they can modulate the very speech that comes out of your mouth so that it resonates in the electromagnetic spectrum. Full rebuttal here---alternatively, it's just possible that Angleton really does work for the Government.

--
[0] Except, possibly, for that one guy.

When Computers Were Human, by David Alan Grier (whoever the fuck he is).

I suspect that the vast majority of people reading this will have read Cryptonomicon, and I hope that nobody thinks I'm placing my own blog entries on the same level. For those of you who haven't read it, just go out and read the damn thing: yes, Jehane, this includes you.

For those of you who haven't read it, there once existed a time when the word `computer' referred to one of a team of human people tasked with the performance of arithmetical calculations. Lots of people, lots of calculations, all day, every day. The Manhattan Project was completed in this manner. During the War, females in particular were used for this kind of work: at that time, computing power was not measured in megahertz or teraflops, but in ``kilogirls''. (I have no way of knowing whether this terminology is historical fact or something made up for the slashdot review, but it sounds cool.)

During the Great Depression, it was a requirement that jobs be created for people with few or no skills. (Judging by customers_suck, these people still have money coming in from somewhere.) A whole rank of computers were created who were allowed to perform addition, but not subtraction, or anything more complex. To facilitate this, it was arranged that positive numbers would be written in black, and negative numbers would be written in red. A poster was put up on the wall in front of the serried ranks of computers, proclaiming the rules of mathematics in simple terms:

Black plus black is black
Red plus red is red
Black plus red or red plus black, hand the sheets to team 2

And sometimes we wonder why, every time we call Tech Support, we get an immediate urge to ask for the call to be elevated to the second tier.

I don't usually read slashdot, because it's full of bollocks, but occasionally it comes up with gems like this.

Fuckers.

"Today's unanimous ruling is an historic victory for intellectual property in the digital age, and is good news for consumers, artists, innovation and lawful Internet businesses."

In other news: stock prices soar in the buggy-whip manufacture sector.

.torrent link to Supreme Court decision