3 Nov 2004 (Wednesday) 

I hate the start of the month 'cos it means moving files around in the Diary. It's not a huge deal, but it's just not automated. And it leaves me with an empty diary which loses anything that was in the diary previously. Well, not loses, but because the RSS file starts from empty you end up not seeing those last few entries. Not a huge deal but still frustrating if there were things there that you thought were worthwhile - like I think the description of what happens when you Reinitialise Internet was worthwhile. Actually that's about it for the entire month, so I shouldn't be bothered.

I'm annoyed at myself at the moment. I probably ought apologise to John-Mark Bell for calling him an idiot on usenet. Because the reason was correct. Just that I expressed myself the wrong way. For reference, his was the stupid API in IConv module (which I would question the name of as well, personally - it's not the same as libiconv if it's using the Unicode resources, and as it's not it should really have a more descriptive name... however as I can't actually think of a name that doesn't sound bloody stupid and I actually like the name IConv, I'm saying nothing). The idea of IConv is good anyhow. 10/10 for effort; 5/10 for the API, I'm afraid.

And I know I've done crappy APIs before. Look at the PNG module if you want an interface that is... well, it's not nice. Actually, that's not quite true. The API itself isn't too bad, but a few SWIs don't actually work because the interface that they provide requires too many registers to ever be useful. Fortunately, nobody's actually asked about the PNG library support so it's not been an issue, and the SWIs in question are quite specialised. Still doesn't excuse it being crap.

ImageFileConvert's not so nice. Or was it ImageFileRender ? Whichever one it was that required 10 registers on input to the module, anyhow. I think it was IFR. Could have been done differently, although possibly not quite as cleanly.

Anyhow, nasty API - basically a two fingers to BASIC and assembler programmers. But probably I could have said things better.

Oh, and when you stick a bold claim of "100% portable C" in your sources, it's probably not a good idea to assume packed structures.

It's 6:30am and Dad's just come in to tell me that my school has burnt down. Not Methwold. Not Adwick. Not Grove. Not Coddington. Not St Wilfreds. No, we're going back to my first school - Beeches primary school in Peterborough.

"The fire is believed to have been started ... in a small alleyway that leads to a door that opens into the classrooms" (Peterborough Today, 2, 3). Given that it's the lower years, I think I know where that is; I can't really describe it any better than that, but it's the alley that goes down the far end of the school, farthest away from the upper school area. Of course, it's a long time since I was at that school!

I have this strange image of a load of fire engines racing down the street (Craig Street, IIRC) to the school. Very strange.

Oh, and there was an Election in the US... well, still happening as I write this. Currently 249-221 and Ohio looking very like it's going to go to Bush even though his percentage lead is dropping as time passes.

It's now 249-225 and 8am. Sleep.

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5 Nov 2004 (Friday) 

I'm away at Claire's for a week, so definately no diary update in the next few days. I might write some stuff up on the laptop whilst I'm there and upload the lot when I get home. Maybe. Depends on whether I can be bothered to write anything. I've got the days to myself anyhow, so it'll be a little bit restful. Although if I get too restful I may just be comatose.

A diary spectator asks me to put up what I thought about the elections. Well, I honestly avoid the news in general because it's depressing, but I don't like Bush's policies or actions. I've skimmed through transcripts of two of the debates, IIRC, and I found them to be steeped in attack and religion - neither of which are particularly redeeming features and didn't convince me that either candidate was a better choice.

From chatting to people, I think I don't see why religion is a part of the debates - in places I was seeing (from memory) the candidates using their religion as part of their argument. I never subscribe to the view that the politics should have a religious overtone - or even an undertone.

Having listened to them a little and decided that I couldn't come to any real decision on the matter, I had to really go with my gut and because I'm aware of Bush and his actions I don't want him around. Yeah, ok that's a bit naive, but it's just how I thought of things. It's not my country, so I can justify that I don't need to think about it too much.

As for the voting day itself... well, it's interesting. Kerry conceded earlier than I'd expected. I expected a drawn out argument. However, I think he did the right thing - whether he did it because he was tired and knew he'd lost, or because it was pointless to try to fight, (as I'd like to hope) because a country that's as divided as it obviously is needs to be sure of its leader and not have arguments that question his very legitimacy. I'd like to think it's the latter. I don't know the guy, but I give him the benefit of the doubt on that.

It was a little disheartening to see that Bush had won. Because it means we've got another (insert period) of Blair sucking up to him because they're 'best buds'. It's another country - Hannah put it quite well in her diary (oh my god, I'm back to citing other people's diaries - I'm sorry... I'll try not to) in saying that she wasn't sure that American's quite understood the effect that it has on the rest of the world. I'm not entirely sure I agree as it's a great generalisation - and some might justifiably not care - but it probably is true. Do we consider the effects that we have on other parts of the world when we vote in our elections ? Not particularly, because we vote on who runs our country, and therefore who acts in the best interests of our country.

Of course, this means that Bush is 'unstoppable'. Having ignored UN resolutions and the protestations of another country, he's 'liberated' another country through invasion and depostion of its government and leader, and having now got a free run of the next four years he can pretty much do what he wants - who's going to stop him ?

It's easy to pick up on the simple mistakes, problems with speeches, etc, and put it down to overworked staff, but when it comes to his actions over a prolonged period, I don't think you can say that it's just a few mistakes.

And to return to the religion that I mentioned as being a part of the election and his actions, Bush's god appears to be one of the Christian Old Testament - a god who smites those that have done wrong or displeased him - rather than the Christian New Testament - where turning the other cheek, and forgiveness are the order of the day. I don't know what religion he is, and I don't much care. To be honest, I thought that religion within a developed society that the USA is meant to be would not be such a big deal. From speaking to others, I think my viewpoint is naive, but still, that's what I think.

Watched Battlestar Galactica last night, with Richard Hatch in it as a terrorist. Interesting idea; and quite a useful examination of their situation - the original series did touch on the disparity between the different ships, but not in the same kind of way. And nice to have him on the show, too. Still very camera wavey.

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13 Nov 2004 (Saturday) 

Quick entry tonight 'cos I'm too tired to write anything more useful. Back from Claire and Justin's now, which was rather a fun little break from having to do anything at all - thanks . Last night, on coming back, we went to a concert; 'Think Floyd', a Pink Floyd tribute band, in Kings Lynn. Rather cool actually - although I've not been to the 'real thing' to compare against.

And finally HDA on the linux box decided to play silly buggers today and needed extreme fscking. Which is fine, except that I was left without certain files that were needed to... well, do pretty much anything network related - even sysklogd wouldn't start so I had to fight past console spam just to do anything. Fortunately, CMJ managed to point me in the correct direction and I now have a working disc again. A few files will need restoring from backups, but on the whole it seems to have survived. Still, it was a good way to waste about 4 hours .

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18 Nov 2004 (Thursday) 

Well, it looks like a minor cock up on my part left me without email or a website yesterday and the day before. Basically I got a new card, began using it and forgot to update the details on the website provider. Managed to do everyone else. Anyhow, it's up and running now which is good.

Most of the day has been taken up with updating the laptop. I bought a larger disc for it, partly because the 20G disc was feeling a little stifling but mainly because it was giving me CRC errors, which I'm pretty sure isn't a good sign . Fortunately I lost nothing of consequence, and now I have a 40G disc in there. We'll see how that goes. It's actually been relatively painless changing everything over. It's a little annoying that things like the Opera settings are such a pain to copy over and more than a little annoying that the file and settings transfer wizard isn't as complete as you might like. But nonetheless, I've got most things over now.

The most fun bit was finding most of the USB kit and plugging it in so that the system could identify it and then install the drivers. Not that I will need most of the USB bits, but it saves me having to worry whether I've got the driver disc, or more to the point where I left it.

The room now looks a mess because there's bits of things that I've been trying to make do things. I'll tidy tomorrow. It's not like it's that much, but I'm not in the mood for it right now.

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19 Nov 2004 (Friday) 

I was watching Star Trek TNG this afternoon, whilst doing some research on the laptop downstairs (which is still quite fun), and the episode was 'The Royale'. As they go to the desk, I noticed that the guy behind it looks startlingly like Holland Manners on Angel. And what do you know... it is him. Coo. And he was in The West Wing's 'Shibboleth' episode, too.

Speaking of which, Ainsley Hayes in The West Wing was in Friends, in The One With The Breast Milk, as one of the girls that Joey worked with at the department store selling cologne.

Today I've built up a big library. Built that is, but not made work. Now all I need to do is build the clients to use it. And write a pthreads implementation. And work it into a RISC OS interface that's actually usable. Like that's going to happen easily. Might just give up on it, 'cos it's a whole lot of work for little gain.

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23 Nov 2004 (Tuesday) 

I gave someone at Kraft Foods a little bit of a laugh today. The conversation on the talker drifted, as it does, from Coding Standards to Chocolate Oranges. Actually that's not that hard... "What's a segment ?" "Things you get in Chocolate Oranges" "With Chocolate Pips". At which point I thought it'd be interesting to know why they don't make little chocolate pips in the oranges.

So off I went to the Kraft webpage and got their phone number and began ringing. By this time, Chris had suggested it was so that you don't plant them and thus grow your own chocolate orange trees. So when I got through to the customer service lady (which was very quick and she was very nice), I explained this to her. She was amused at the idea but explained that there was no need to make the pips as well.

Anyhow, that's the amusing story of the day. And thanks to Joseph, Alex, Ian and Chris for providing the inspiration for it .

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24 Nov 2004 (Wednesday) 

Ok, so tonight was Maya's attempt's on Dev and Sunnita's lives in their flat in Coronation Street. Briefly, in case I forget, Maya's crazy solicitor woman who Dev was engaged to and tried to help be more balanced before finally breaking it off with her to get engaged to Sunnita. Maya spoilt their engagement party, then went on to pretend to be Sunnita and get married to a number of immigrants before finally ensuring that they Dev and Sunnita were 'caught' by the police on their wedding day. Having finally got Sunnita from prison when Maya was found to have set it up, they were all happy and finally settled together with her family and then the call came in that one of Dev's shops' alarms was going off. That was Monday.

There followed Dev's racing to the shop to arrive just in time for it to explode (rather impressively, actually). Recovering from that, he hears that another shop alarm is going off and tells the family above it to leave now, and starts driving there. On arriving there, he hears that another one is on fire and heads to it. Whilst on route, a shopkeeper living near to another shop rings to say that his shop alarm is going off and moments later we hear it too explode. Dev's expression as his business literally goes up in flames was very amusing. Hey, add in Bruce Willis and you've got an action movie.

Anyhow, that was Monday. Today Sunnita and Dev are tied up in their flat over the last of their corner shops, with Maya explaining how wrong Dev was for dumping her - well you've got to have your 'evil speech' section, haven't you ? So she turns on the gas cooker and takes off the knobs so they can't get it off again and leaves them there with the cooker pouring gas out and then goes down to the shop and lights a fire before leaving to go to her car.

Exciting ? A bit, yeah. So we've got a few people up and about in the morning and someone spots the smoke coming from the shop and starts getting people out of their houses whilst a couple break in to the flat to get Dev and Sunnita out. Dev gets dragged out - he's still hand cuffed but he's out, and Maya, just pulls by and sees that he's out. Obviously she's pissed but then the shop explodes and she thinks that Sunnita's upstairs in the flat, and she starts to smile. Except that she's been got out and she's in front of the shop with everyone else, safe with Dev. Drama ? Could be.

So, very pissed now, Maya drives at them - she's going to finish them off - except they move (well wouldn't you if there's a car coming at you), and she drives into a building. But then we see that she's ok and she starts to back out again... Only to have a lorry from nowhere drive into the back of her, ramming the car into another wall.

Up to then they were doing fine. Unfortunately that last touch was more of Wilie Coyote class than anything else. Seriously. You know that bit where Wilie thinks that he's safe and that he's not going to be flattened by whatever inane plan he's put together... and then he does ? Well, it just felt like that. Good bit of drama, but do you have to really have the cartoon humour at the end ?

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25 Nov 2004 (Thursday) 

Ok, today's Galactica was interesting. Interesting to see how amazingly dull they could manage to make an episode. Basically take the episode 'Drumhead' from 'Star Trek: TNG' and remove any sense of actual purpose. 'Drumhead' was a poor episode anyhow, and it's not made any better for Galactica.

Having now had a reasonable number of episodes, I think it's fair to start to draw some proper thoughts about the series. Now it's difficult because I remember the original series fondly because it was so long ago and it was whilst I was young (obviously). So if a critique can be levelled at the original series as well, then that's just the way it's going to be.

The series appears to be focusing on the whole 'there's a cylon amongst us' thing. Side-theme are things like the fact that they're actually on the run from the cylons (although that's really a middle-theme rather than side), they're the last people left of the civilisation, and that they're trying to stay alive. It's good to see the civilian government represented in the programme, although it's 'unified' government with no distinction and no representation from the other colonies doesn't seem realistic - much as I like the president, her advisors appear to be Adama/Apollo for military, Baltar for science, and her aide for just about everything else. She never seems to consult with anyone else and it doesn't seem so much a democracy (although they are on the run for their lives) as a military supported dictatorship.

So you might argue that the 'science' part of this through Baltar is intended to focus on the uncovering of the Cylons within the fleet - a focus that I'm not that interested in. And being a show about the 'battlestar' you might argue that it's got to have a military focus. But we've had precious little in the way of action after the pilot, to be honest - and the fight scenes aren't worth watching anyhow because of the poor filming style. There's been very little consultation on matters of - for example - overcrowding on ships that were never designed for deep space missions, of food rationing, of entertainment (hell, you've got 50,000 people out there, you desperately need to keep morale up), of health issues, of maintenance and support (outside of the Viper hangars), not to mention rudimentary problems like dispute resolution (you've got 50,000 people crammed into ships together; you've going to have problems - ok, so there was the prison ship episode which was actually worthwhile and I rather liked and not just because of who was in it). We did see some of the organised family searches that were going on in an earlier episode, so obviously there are some things like that going on, but it's not represented within the fleet.

I would like to jump back to tonights episode for a real inconsistency (to my mind)... I've already talked about the disperate use of technology - Faster Than Light ships, but only nuclear weapons (another thing occurs here; surely a biological agent, within the enclosed environment of a ship, with recycled air would be more effective - particularly coming from a race which is artificial) in use against one another - but during the press conference (which was weird - you've got a load of reporters, some with boom microphones and all competing with one another... wouldn't you have divided these to the ships they came from and have representatives report, as well as having only a single recorded version that was distributed ? you wouldn't have effectively different networks vying for attention, would you ?) it was broadcast around the fleet. For reasons that escape me, the crew were picking the conference up on radios that come from the 1960s. And this is on the Galactica too - we don't get to see what the 'people' think of this - which (one presumes) has its own PA system which would have been much better used for this announcement to ensure that everyone got the same information and nobody was relying on hearsay.

Anyhow, back to the whole series. Am I being too harsh ? And is the belief that I am being too harsh keeping me watching it ? Possibly. Another influence to keep me watching it is that I've already expended energy on it and I don't want to think that was a waste so I keep watching. Still another is telling me that I should like it because... well, it's Galactica. And another is telling me it's Sci-fi so I should at least give it a go.

The problem is that it's not Sci-fi. On earth there's a massive disaster (let's say an organisation releases a biological toxin that kills people) and most of the population is wiped out. All that's left are those few people who band together to try to survive and find somewhere say to live. Thwarting them is a group that caused the disaster and who is trying to kill off the last remaining people. And in the 'good guys' there are a few people who we know are really 'bad guys'. It's just... it's not got a hook. There's this whole big deal about the cylons looking like people... well, that's no different to 'people' looking like 'people'. There's the weaponry being so utterly pathetic compared to the seeming advancement of the people that it might as well be set in the modern day. There's the whole Baltar-being-insane-or-being-a-cylon-or--oh-who-gives-a-damn pointless story.

At this point I want to attack the original series. The weaponry was sucky there too, but it was sucky in a way that didn't even try to pander with the whole 'they've got nukes' thing.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it feels like a bunch of persecuted 'right' people being attacked by an unjustified people and focuses more on their troubles than on the fact that they should be running for their lives. What I'm trying not to say is that it's a series for a bunch of restless Americans who are trying to make it seem real by giving issues that can be identified from a current standpoint - hey, look there could be a terrorist amongst us; they could inflict any form of damage any time; and they can be cleverer than we are.

Ok, I know as I'm writing it that it's not a good argument, but even discounting that, the remainder of the series shows little in the way of redeeming features for my continuing to watch it.

I don't jump to critique StarGate, or the Star Trek series' (ok, I do critique Star Trek, but not to this extent). Why not ? After all, StarGate is based more easily in the 'modern' world, and Star Trek series' are intended to be part of the development of the world, so both should be open to more critique. Maybe it's because they don't try to make themselves fit to expectations (Star Trek less so). Andromeda is Star Trek far advanced and I wouldn't even consider critiquing it because it's not meant to be taken as 'seriously' as the others - it's not worth the effort in criticising because it's just fun.

I think that with Galactica I feel I ought to critique it because it's got more expectation behind it and a much more fond feeling about the original version.

And so, after bitching about it for a screenful (again!), can I really bring myself to watch the next episode ? I'm not sure. I may read the summary of what the episode is and see whether I think it's worth it. And if it isn't, I won't bother. Obviously.

Fortunately, bleb has a week's worth of listings available, so Monday's episode is listed...

"Baltar is dumbfounded when Number Six appears on the ship posing as someone else, but his surprise turns to distress when she accuses him of being the traitor."

I'd like to say that I'm torn between wanting to know how Baltar gets out of such a predicament and not giving a damn because it's the whole Baltar story-line that I couldn't give a damn about now. Except I can't say that because when I read it I just thought "well that's it then, I'm not going to watch that". And I'm not all that sad.

Of course, when it gets to Thursday next week I may change my mind and watch it anyhow. I do expect to come away thinking that I've wasted an hour, if I do.

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26 Nov 2004 (Friday) 

I 'discovered' SongMeanings today. When I say 'discovered', I mean that I finally decided to pay some attention to it rather than just using it for lyrics when I needed to remember them. So I signed up for an 'account' and I've left one comment so far - for 'To Myself I turned'. It's a wonderful, introverted track and is so 'me' .

It seemed odd to me that my view on the track differs slightly from the other commentators at the site. I think really, though, that I'm taking it in a slightly different way because I treat the whole 'In a reverie' album as a single continuous theme and progression in time. It works as a concept like that, so it feels comfortable that I should treat it that way. Anyhow, I tried to place it in context with the preceeding and following tracks, which doesn't help me much because it actually highlighted a possible reading that I hadn't considered. Anyhow, I have an account and I might even do some other postings if I remember or can be bothered.

It's difficult to read anything much into the site in places, though. There are some tracks that have a reasonable degree of meaningful discussion (q.v. Counting Crows' "A Murder Of One") and there are others that deserve a meaningful discussion that have only 'this is great' (q.v Beth Orton's "Stolen Car"). Maybe it's just that the 'meaning' is so obvious that the posters see no reason to explain it. Or, like me, just pass by rather than make some comment. Maybe I will tomorrow. I can put it off.

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27 Nov 2004 (Saturday) 

I finally updated my CoverFetcher tool to fetch lyrics. It's not so hard, really, when you think about it. Covers are bigger than lyrics, fortunately, so a lyric fetch will consume less bandwidth overall. And the principle is the same, only you have to traverse an extra layer of objects in the directory structure to decide what to fetch.

Fortunately the design of CoverFetcher means that a new set of scripts for fetching from a generic batch of sites is quite easy to add. I expect I'll probably do a few sites with the lyric style of fetching so that it's not a load on any particular site. That said, I'm on dial-up - it's not like I can sap their bandwidth to a crippling level really. Well, unless they're on dial-up too. And in any case, my script's less invasive, bandwidth-wise, than 'wget -r' so it's hardly anything special when it comes to fetching things from a site.

All this said, songmeanings has now stopped accepting HTTP connections, although the machine itself is still alive - it's still pingable and accepting ssh connections, so I would imagine that they're doing some work on it.

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29 Nov 2004 (Monday) 

The phrase "Why the freakin'-fuck's that enabled ?" doesn't get uttered too often by me.

I was curious as to whether the XP DNS server responds with a HINFO record for itself. It doesn't appear to, but in looking for it, I also tried '*Host -s laptop-wire localhost' which gave me the somewhat odd answer of 'Aliases: localhost loghost wibbley'. Maybe I set 'Wibbley', but I don't think so - I wouldn't have included an 'e' in it.

So I tried to find where that 'wibbley' came from, or what I could use to configure it. I couldn't on my first few searches find anything useful at all. Eventually I remembered that 'lmhost' is used as a file to describe the LanMan hosts on the network where no name service is in use (these days, hosts defend their own names, and they're announced regularly in the absence of a central server to maintain those names), and searched for that. That gave me the 'Windows/system32/drivers/etc' directory that I don't remember seeing before. And 'Wibbley' isn't in there.

But there is a 'quotes' file. So I began to wonder if there was a QOTD ('Quote Of The Day') server on XP. It wouldn't make much sense because it's a little bit pointless and really has little reason to be part of the OS - and if it were, it wouldn't be on by default, would it ? It would be an amazingly pointless service to leave enabled. Fun, but pointless. So I try 'telnet laptop-wire qotd' and up pops a quote from George Bernard Shaw.

It is at this point that I utter the above words.

I'm looking through the Services on the system and I can't see any QOTD (or anything similar) running as a service. It's possible that I installed it without thinking by just selecting 'everything'. That was really because I can't be bothered with the 'hunt out the CD' at some later date. Obviously that's a dim thing to do because if you install it, that means you want it running - 'Simple TCP/IP services' in the Windows components list.

So it's me being dim, but still. It would be nice to actually have a configuration option for it; rather than just 'it's installed' or 'it's not'.

It appears that I've been spelling Counting Crows' "Sullivan Street" wrongly for ages. And also "Frankie Goes To Hollywood" too.

God NTL are being shite tonight. So far it's been 25 minutes and it's not yet got a connection to the net. It's 5am now and I'm probably not going to even bother thinking about it because I'm going to bed in a bit, but still it's getting back to 'never getting connected'. Remind me again why I stick with them ? Oh yeah, I'm lazy.

Damn. That said, I wanted to download the correct lyrics for 'Welcome To The Pleasuredome', so I've got to have a connection for that. Bloody annoying. Of course, I think "Shall I check in ntl.announce" to see if they've got any work planned for this morning. And then I have to laugh at myself for being so stupid. Of course there isn't any posting of maintenance. They haven't posted anything to ntl.announce which is of any use for about 2 years.

So I try freenetnames, which I haven't dialled into for ages, mostly because there's very litle point as I don't have the account for 'movspclr'. And get a connection first go and everything just works.

Apparently I've got a reasonable amount of email at the 'movspclr' account. I expect 99.9% to be spam.

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