29 Jul 2010 (Thursday) 

I've got a P45 from Picsel. Seriously. And a payslip, too. I think it might be the first month when we weren't in administration where I've received a payslip before being paid. Having a P45 before starting a new job is also something of a novelty.

I was walking through town earlier - I popped in for more tape for boxes - and I was just thinking about how much I was going to miss the place. Well, Reading town centre being just 5 minutes walk from home is just nice and easy, despite the fact that I don't do it much.

I'm going through other old things here, and I've just binned a bunch of things that I'll never use - like a 14k4 modem and some LCD displays. It's a pity really, because the LCDs were quite nice but I never really worked out using them usefully. Also there's a 19" touch screen panel I've got which is just going to get binned because I don't really have any use for it. Writing the RISC OS driver for it was great fun though!

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28 Jul 2010 (Wednesday) 

I've cancelled my Demon account, and they asked me to do a 'quick' survey for them. So, I did...

Increases in the fair usage allowance would help - 5 years ago I believe it was introduced (or at least that's when I got my first notice about it) and the cap was 50G/30 day period. That's not changed in those 5 years and yet the proportion of people using the Internet for video streaming has increased massively. Services such as BBC iPlayer alone can easily consume the 1.666 G/day limit that that 50G/30 day imposes. LoveFilm's recent introduction of video-on-demand means that watching films over the Internet is far more likely (and there are other providers who give the same service). Communications through Skype and other similar voice/video communications systems mean that even light usage can quickly add up. Increased bandwidth requirements due to 'HD' additions to YouTube and the like mean that like the other video uses, just simply watching videos has become more expensive in bandwidth. Online gaming takes up more bandwidth due to the availability of higher speed connections. Keeping the applications and operating systems up to data alone can take up large amounts of that quota - consider 1G for the most recent updates to HalfLife 2 and its family of games - and that's old; newer games have even higher demands - and that's before we even consider the regular requirement to download Windows updates. Listening to online radio is an almost invisible area of bandwidth that isn't considered by most, but even 128kbps stream for 4 hours is 230M - that's 1/8 of your total daily bandwidth - which is even more accessible now with consumer hardware which connects to wifi. Whilst many users would not use all of these each day, an consistent usage pattern of some of these services would not be unreasonable, and might regularly exceed the limits imposed by the FUP. 5 years ago, 50G/30 days seemed quite generous, but with modern Internet usage, it begins to look a little limiting. This is made worse by the fact that Demon provide no indication that the usage that they record to the user - other providers have online accessible references that show the usage, so that users can plan accordingly. [ Message to Demon; Me ]

At the end of the survey there's a question asking if I knew about the broadband usage checker at https://usage.demon.net/ which does just what I asked... but I've never had it drawn to my attention.

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27 Jul 2010 (Tuesday) 

In art in 2nd year in Newark (I think it was), we had to draw something we liked and wanted to draw - we were meant to paint it. I've lost the painted version (which is good because I wasn't happy with the painting anyhow) but the original design I drew I was very happy with.

I'm still really happy with him. I wanted to draw a sad dragon, chained up (I didn't really like the swinging ball at the time, I wanted it to be lying on the floor, but I couldn't seem to get that right).

The cafes are all deserted, the streets are wet again, There's nothing quite like an out of season holiday town in the rain. When the tourists go and the cold winds blow, And my girl is on a plane, home... [ Fatal Hesitation, from The Love Songs, by Chris de Burgh ]

I've found a number of old letters and bits and pieces I'd kept over the years, many of which are very sad. Over the last week I've found two letters from Claire, which was very sad for me . In my 'postponed' mailbox, along with the many other things like the postings from yesterday there was a rather good email which said things far more eloquently than I ever have dared to. "Regrets, I've had a few"

My way seems to never quite be the brave way that I wanted. Oh well.

Just watched 'Sherlock', the first episode, and really enjoyed it. It seems that there's only 3 episodes in this series - short for even a UK series. I think it works and could do very well. It's slightly amusing that I find myself thinking it's a bit like House - given that House is styled on Sherlock Holmes.

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26 Jul 2010 (Monday) 

The DataConvert protocol came out of discussions with Niall and general ideas around the time. Essentially DataConvert would have been a module which had registered handlers for certain types of tranformation, and would also handle data type conversion as well, but dispatching to application handlers. These days I consider them different operations and wouldn't bundle them together, but I guess at the time I thought of both as conversions to they would have gone into the same switcher. I've typed them up and tidied them a little - they're not quite how I'd document them now because obviously these were notes for myself, but they're still pretty interesting.

The conversion is interesting because this was when I still wanted to deal with the conversion as an application process. Has a lot of advantages, but also introduces a few wrinkles that makes it a lot harder to use - take up of application protocols is far lower than that of SWI-based protocols, and the scope for problems increases. Obviously there are other disadvantages with SWI-based protocols but those were clearly less of an issue when I finally completed ImageFileConvert (albeit specific to Image files).

• Transformation API.
• Conversion API.

Whilst mentioning random bits like that, there's a 'grand allocation list' that I referred to back in 2006 which is a list of everything that I registered - not necessarily everything that I worked on, because there's a whole lot of stuff that never even reached the need for a registration because it was so experimental. But may be an interesting read for someone - if you happen to like reading lists of components I allocated stuff for.

It's also amusing reading that entry about all the stuff that I'd done in the past, however old it might seem now!

Together with the notes on the API was a handwritten story about 'James', so I've typed it up and added it to the stories. Not sure I'm keen on leaving such an unfinished thing in there - there's a lot of other unfinished bits elsewhere - but there's a precident already.

And whilst I was at it, I've added in the poem I wrote for Joseph when he was born. I think it's pretty .

Long ago in the depths of July 2005 (yeah, really that long ago) there was a posting to comp.sys.acorn.programmer where the discussion went:

>>> Is this new feature of GCC 3.4.4 Release 3 something of a final piece in
>>> the jigsaw for using GCC with RISC OS, or do I misunderstand?
>>
>> Yes.
>
> Q. "Is it A or B?"
> A. "Yes"
>
> That wasn't a boolean OR ...
> Anybody care to clarify?

I gave a reply to this at the time which I clearly decided was a smidge long and off-topic for a real reply. But reading it back now, it seems quite cool. Plus it involves death-by-volcano, which is always good.

[I'll probably get shot down for this, because it's way off topic and probably going too much in to interpretation, but anyhow. Apologies to Ian and Chris for hearing me whitter on this again.] I've got in to many an argument with people about this because people do not understand the question or the answer. In simple terms, do not phrase a question in a manner in which you cannot understand the answer - and in a public forum it's likely that someone won't understand a question unless it's phrased simply. The most common case is the form of question cited above. When a question is asked where two parts are joined by an 'or', the second clause is a clarification of the question. These questions are referred to here as <query> <alternate> questions. Usually these questions are simple yes/no queries. The common form, as cited above is : "Is it A, or B ?" There are two clauses in the query; the A and the B clause. The A clause is the query. The B clause is the alternate clarifier - it serves only to describe the alternate case which must be true if A is false and to explain to the reader that the person asking the question expects the negative response to correspond to the B clause. That is, a 'Yes' response indicates that A is true. A 'No' response indicates that B is true. All other responses indicate that the question was not understood or that neither of the cases can be indicated as positive. The A part is the actual question, with the B part just serving to make it clearer what the response means. Example: "Is this a new feature, or has it been there for years ?" "Yes" = it's new. "No" = it's been there for years "It's an improvement of a long standing feature" = neither answer was exactly right, and this clarifies. Usually it's easier to restate part of the question to indicate an understanding of what is meant - because not every one follows the same rules for understanding the "<query>, <alternate>" form of question. Example: "Are you giving me a lift, or should I make my own way ?" "I'll give you a lift" = Life's just too short to get into a discussion on what you mean by 'yes' in response to that question And then there's the fun misinterpretation of the question and clarification of intent response, where the Yes/No response is not used as described above but the person responding provides the clarification as part of their answer : "Should I use the snazzy new compiler, or the old one that did the job ?" "Yeah, use the old one" = Use the old compiler; the 'yeah' doesn't actually mean much in terms of the response. The <query> <alternate> form of question can be used in multiples, with a number of alternates being specified in order to describe multiple alternative scenarios. Such cases are more common, and tend to be lists of possibilities which the person asking the question has considered. To which the only possible responses are to restate the appropriate case, or a more applicable case. Example: "Will the volcano kill us when it explodes, or when we get hit by ash, or when the lava reaches us ?" "Probably the ash, I expect" = yay, we're going to die "One of those" = we're going to die and I'm too depressed to think about it "No, we're not going to die" = the glass is half full "Well, when the volcano explodes there'll be a whole load of rocks coming this way for us to dodge, and then the ash will be falling down and it will become very hard to breath so that's going to be fun, and then there's the lava which we're going to have to get away from pretty sharpish, and then if we avoid that then there's going to be no food around here and nobody to help us, and the water will be pretty stagnant and might kill us." = we'll probably die and I'm thinking about it way too much "Pardon ? Hang on, I've nearly killed the bad guy on level 12" = I've got a console and I've become surgically attached to it. "Yes" = I wasn't actually paying attention, or one of those is probably true and I can't be bothered to think about it. Do not confuse the <query> <alternate> form with the connected question form - <query> ? <second query> ? - which indicates two distinct questions which require two answers. Example: "Are you going to the shops ? Do you want to go to the pub ?" "Yes, and ok" = I'm going to the shops and I'll go to the pub "Yes" = dunno what they're saying - probably yes to both "No" = dunno what they're saying - probably no to both And then there's the related conjuction form - <query> and <second query> ? - which is similar to the <query> <alternate> form, except the word 'and' is used between the questions to indicate that multiple questions are being asked. Example: "Are you sure that bridge is safe, and do you really want to walk over it ?" "Yes" = probably yes to both "No, but what the hell" = Not sure it's safe, but I'm going anyhow "Yes, you go first though" = I'm lying, or I'd be going first "Hmm. Maybe we'll try another route" = nope it's not safe and I think we'll go somewhere else However... the general thing is that if there's ever a question which uses the <query> <alternate> form, restate the thing you're saying. It saves you having to explain this lot or to have the person asking it misinterpret what you've said. Of course, if you both understand the form and know that, then you can save a whole lot of bandwidth by just giving the positive or negative response. All of which relates not all that much to the original query, except to say that the question : "Is this new feature of GCC 3.4.4 Release 3 something of a final piece in the jigsaw for using GCC with RISC OS, or do I misunderstand?" is of the <query> <alternate> form and thus the person asking wants to know if it's the final piece, which is their belief. If it is not the case then they have misunderstood. The 'Yes' response indicates that it is the final piece. A 'No' response would have indicated that they had misunderstood - and would have required a clarification of how they had misunderstood (which is not required by the question form, but is generally required to save another email exchange which wastes time and energy... much like this one). -- Gerph <http://gerph.org/> ... It felt like spring time on this February morning [ Ranting about 'X or Y?' questions; Me ]

I also found a reply to an old posting on comp.sys.acorn which might have been worth people reading, so I posted it up on there on the off chance that someone might find it interesting or useful. If not, no loss.

I was watching a bit of Wallace and Gromit's "A Close Shave" earlier and something occurred to me... you never hear anyone ever say "Daddy build the robot for evil, but it turned out good!".

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25 Jul 2010 (Sunday) 

More packing today. There's a lot of stuff here and I'm beginning to worry how I'm going to fit it all in. I really hope it does go in the new place or I may have a problem. Well, obviously.

It's been pretty lonely today again, but I've got a few things packed. I'm doing a little every day, with no clear goal other than to get most things packed by Thursday. Saturday (or Sunday morning) is the real hard deadline.

Tomorrow is first day-when-I'm-not-working, also known as 'Holiday'. I think that I've left a little long for my packing really and I could have got it all done before now if I'd not left the long.

Otherwise there's nothing exciting to tell today.

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24 Jul 2010 (Saturday) 

Feeling a little lost today and lonely. I've got a lot of boxes of stuff. It's a scary amount of things that I've got now. Hopefully I'll get this lot sorted before the end of the week .

Trying not to think about how I'll be without anyone around that I know. It's all very... saddening .

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23 Jul 2010 (Friday) 

Last day at Picsel today! Yay.

Such a relief to be getting away. There's so many things to be frustrated about, right up until the end (which, strictly I remain frustrated about) but... I don't have to be there any more. I'm sure I'll be loads more relaxed tomorrow. Laptop's all boxed up to go, and other things are starting to get packed away. I've deleted the 'picsel mail' folder in Pine, so I shouldn't be checking on that. I'm sure there's stuff that I've forgotten, but... all done now.

I left a bit of a rambly entry on my diary at work which people can have a look at - or delete or whatever. I'd really like to think that people could take away the 'jobs ? I want to go there' thing from it, rather than it being a little smug - I didn't mean it as smug anyhow - but I can at least try to tell it like it is. They've lived through everything that happened last year with me, so it's not like there's really much need to go over that again with them. Plus, I'm a lazy arse .

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22 Jul 2010 (Thursday) 

Feeling pretty sad today. Partly 'cos it's my penultimate day at work, partly 'cos I just feel lonely. It may also be partly because I've been trying one of my t-shirts on and I think it's a bit small so it's making me feel fat. I even found myself saying...

gerph feels fat and lonely today gerph blames the t-shirt and considers throwing it out [ Fat and lonely; Me ]

... because clearly it's the t-shirt's fault that I feel fat. It's an old t-shirt and I know I've put on a little weight . So getting rid of something that makes me feel bad is probably a good plan. I should give it one more chance though. Seems a bit unfair to base that decision on just one attempt - maybe it was just having a bad day .

Now if I could be as accepting of other things that are bad to me, I'd probably feel a lot better. Oh, wait, I'm already leaving Picsel .

Got a few more things packed today - there's a lot of stuff here. I'm hoping that it'll all pack into boxes well.

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20 Jul 2010 (Tuesday) 

I wanted to make a key shortcut in Opera for 'open the clipboard url in a new tab'. Easy you might think ? Well actually... yes, it is. "New page, 1 & Paste and go" is the command you need, and you can obviously bind it to any key you like (Preferences->Advanced->Shortcuts->Keyboard->Application->New). I've got it bound to shift-ctrl-t which is quite handy I hope.

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17 Jul 2010 (Saturday) 

We went to the Cinema today - both the kids and us, which was pretty nice and fun. And Bethany and Alex and I had a nice time playing in the Garden. Bethany was very huggy this evening, which was quite nice. Alex sometimes seems to look away and not want to talk to me, but at least he's talking . Bethany wrote me some lovely letters today as well. She was really sweet!

Had a little chance to talk to Claire today, although didn't really manage to talk about much; I'm still very wary of that. Usually when I open my mouth I say the wrong thing so despite being told I can say anything I'm still scared.

Had a much longer chance to talk to Justin, though. He seems to be ... Justin. There's not a lot I can say there except that I probably seem more disproportionately bothered (externally) than him, but I'm sure that's just me being me. After talking to him, though, I feel a lot less frustrated at things, and don't feel quite so weird. But anyhow, if they're friends you treat them as such and need to try to be accepting of what you can understand and help where you can. That's sometimes hard to live up to, it seems.

I've got a very sore right thumb today. It's been sore for the last couple of weeks, but it's got worse recently. It's like it's bruised inside but I don't remember doing anything to it.

I've just remembered that I've not replied to Christina. I don't think I can do that tonight. It's just too late - it's just gone 1am and I can't really put in the time to make it worthwhile. It's strange, when I'm here, I seem to be far tireder - kids notwithstanding - than when I'm at home. I have a feeling that may be partly due to not being at home - having a chance to relax differently.

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15 Jul 2010 (Thursday) 

Simon and I went to Giraffe in dressing gowns... and now there's photos to prove it!. I'm the one with the Google t-shirt on, Simon's laughing! Yay!

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13 Jul 2010 (Tuesday) 

Simon and I went to Giraffe yesterday morning in our dressing gowns. They were doing a 'free bap if you turn up between 8 and 9 in your dressing gown' which seemed pretty fun, so we went along. When we got there, there were a group of 4 girls there, and a couple of guys. Not a huge turnout, but still quite fun. We got out baps, and had a photo taken . On the way home it was raining a little so we got a bit wet but that's the handy thing about having your dressing gown on. You can take it off when you go home.

I don't feel half as bad today as I felt yesterday, which is a good thing, but I'm still not well. I've got another few days of tablets to go and then I'm hoping... stuff will be better.

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11 Jul 2010 (Sunday) 

I feel awful today. Not like 'I can't function' awful, but awkward, a little unbalanced and with a head that's aching a lot. I'm not sure if it's the tablets or not, because I was getting the headaches before I started taking them.

I was watching Chuck, whilst waiting for Caroline, this evening, from the beginning. One of the things that Chuck says when he's reciting secrets in the second episode is "Oceanic Flight 815 was shot down by a surface-to-air..." - Oceanic Flight 815 being the plane in Lost. Made me laugh anyhow .

Giraffe are doing a free breakfast bap between 8am and 9am on Monday (tomorrow). So, if I'm awake I might go give that a whirl. The only caveat is that you have to be wearing your dressing gown. Fine with me - I'm only down the road. So if I'm still waking up at silly times, that'll be worth trying.

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9 Jul 2010 (Friday) 

I watched 'xXx 2 - The Next Level' tonight because I wanted something that didn't involve thinking. It was unfotunately a bit painful. Well, very painfully bad. I tried to think of a film that 'felt' the same and was equally bad, and came up with 'Ghosts Of Mars'. I must have subconsciously known, because when I looked it up on IMDB, 'Ghosts Of Mars' also stars Ice Cube.

Went to the doctor today. Got some little tablets to take for a week and hopefully everything will be well.

Very tired though - again I barely slept much last night. I'm hoping I do better tonight.

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8 Jul 2010 (Thursday) 

Well, I've worried myself enough that I'm going to the doctor tomorrow. I'll hope that there's nothing too wrong with me, but that - like most of my hopes - may be based on very little.

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4 Jul 2010 (Sunday) 

I got a few nice emails from Christina recently, which is really sweet - she's really nice to chat to and I've missed her emails.

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1 Jul 2010 (Thursday) 

I had to send a parcel to a friend, today. So I used Parcel2Go, which I've used before and which they recommended. Giving them my mobile number would, they said, mean that I could get notified when they were on their way. Which seemed handy. They said that the pickup will be some time between 7am and 7pm which was frustrating but acceptable as I'm working from home. So... morning comes around and I get a text saying that it's been scheduled for between 12pm and 3pm. Which is fine with me - I reckon I can go out and buy some things for tomorrow's picnic and maybe get my hair cut. 4:30 goes by and I'm bothered so I track the parcel throug their interface online. This says that the Parcel was collected at 3:15 in the morning, which seems silly. So I try the live chat. I get someone and give them the details. When I say about the fact that it's gone 3pm, they say that this is just an estimate - which I question as why give a separate text message saying times that are significantly inaccurate. I mention that the tracking doesn't seem to make sense, to which the answer is that you can't track before it's been collected. Suggestion that you can track but the answer is nonsense elicits the response that 'Parcel collected at depot' actually means 'Paperwork processed'.

So that's about as clear as mud and I'm not happy and say I'll wait until 7pm. I forget and suddenly it's 7:30. So I go to the live chat again and give my details and say that it's not been picked up. They ask for a minute to look into it. 3 minutes go by. I go to make a cup of tea, checking as it goes. Another 10 minuts go by and I've got my tea and I'm chatting away to friends... and they say they're sorry could they schedule for tomorrow. Well, I'm out tomorrow so that's no use. I suggest Saturday, which they say is not possible with this service. I suggest that they change it to another service, but apparently they can't do that - I'd have to cancel and reorder at my expense.

At which I'm a little cross... they can't actually provide the service that's being paid for, nor organise a replacement service. At which point they say that they only guarantee to pick up 96% of parcels. Which is... boggling. And something that I was not informed of during the ordering process. I went through it afterward - there is no place that says anything about the 96% in the path that I took. Only if you look at the courier details does it say anything about a collection rate. When trying to get you to book a dedicated time slot it says that the local courier 'will' collect between 7am and 7pm - their actual word is 'will'. The terms and conditions don't seem to include anything about non-collection either.

Anyhow, they offered me the choice - either get credit with them for the amount, or have the money refunded through the same payment method, which may take up to 5 days. Which annoys me further because they've taken the money immediately yet they feel they should hang on to it for 5 days. So in theory at any given time there is an expectation that they won't pick up 4% of parcels and therefore they'll gain interest on an extra 4% of their revenue for 5 days.

Quick maths... their site says 750,000 parcels per year, which is 14423 per week. 4% won't be collected on time, and let's assume that those people cancel - which is the worst case, obviously (best case is that those people go 'pfft' and get it collected another time). That's 576 parcels a week which aren't collected. It takes us 5 days to refund those (hence the use of a week in this calculation) so that's 576 lots of (let's say) £6 that we've got sitting in our account that we can get interest on... That's £3456 extra sitting in our account gaining interest. Now that's not too much to a company that size, but 1% interest on that means that over the year they gain £34 on this. Y'know, that's way less than I was expecting when I started this.

So... bit narked that the service is so poor. 4%, is, if I've got the maths right more likely than 5 heads in coin tosses (3.125%).

Finally someone did turn up at 9:15pm. Which is a bit later than I expected.

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