30 Nov 2005 (Wednesday) 

"Oh, that's a whole lot of gas" says I as I get out of the shower. The gas cylinder downstairs has clearly gone soon after I turned it on and whilst I was in the shower it was piping gas out into the house. So I run downstairs to turn it off. Sensible, yes ? Only on the way I flip the staircase light on, realising as I do it quite how stupid that was. In any case, I'm here to write about it, so there was no huge explosion. No fireball racing up the stairs to swallow me, and no fiery death in the middle of a burning house. Ha. You'll just have to try harder.

As the amount of gas wasn't enough to keep the fire burning, I guess there can't have been that much around - after all, the pilot light on the fire was still lit and that's a little bit more obviously a flame than a tiny spark from a switch. In any case, I've got the windows open to get rid of the smell. Which is ironic as the reason I turned the fire on was that it was so freakin' cold in here. Oh well.

gerph returns with out of date ham, BacOs and hot chocolate Does life get any better ? [ Does life get any better?; Me ]

Yeah, there's sarcasm there.

I have a headache that hasn't gone away all day. And I'm not going to get a chance to write anything useful tonight because Julian found a rather cool puzzle thing, like the osymyso thing, which we (the talker group) have been doing for the past hour and a half. To be fair Ian and Chris got many of them. Jogu got a few before he (sensibly) went off to bed.

And the loneliness that creeps inside my heart, Is crushed for a while. [ Please, from The Spirit Of Autumn Past, by Mostly Autumn ]

I have an oh-my-god-my-headache. I'm trying to watch an episode of Friends - having not watched any for many months I thought I'd try it. Probably not the best of things to watch as I chose an episode from series 10. 'The One Where Joey Speaks French' is in fact a really awful episode, except for the whole Ross and Rachel section.

Oh my head.

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29 Nov 2005 (Tuesday) 

Oh, I'm annoyed today. I think that's partly down to having taken a small lump out of my little finger by being careless. Partly down to having written something that's complete crap last night and knowing I'll have to rewrite it. But mostly it's down to just being me. Sometimes I think I look for things just to justify being annoyed, or at least feeling bad.

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28 Nov 2005 (Monday) 

Nothing to report today. Ended up spending the whole day converting a BASIC assembler thing to objasm. Tedious in the extreme. And it's bloody assembler, again.

And then to relax after than for an hour or so I went and worked on my own project... doing more bits in the assembler.

I think I'm annoyed this evening, though. Possibly at me. Possibly 'cos it's 1am and I said I'd turn the computer off at midnight 30. Oh well. I'm hungry too. I'm not sure what I want to eat.

We have loads of ham that needs using up before it goes out of date, so I've made myself a ham-and-BacOs roll. This consists of taking a slice of ham (or two if it's very thin), sprinkling BacOs on it, and then rolling it up into a tube. It's yummy. Yes, it's a little bit student-like. I'm not a huge fan of sliced bread sandwiches. Ok, let's face it, I'd rather not bother with the bread - which is what I do. The thing about BacOs, though, is that whilst they're yummy and crunchy, they do tend to leave my mouth feeling a little bit raw. I think that's just my wussy mouth that isn't tough like it should be. I came to the conclusion that it's probably not anything I'm allergic to, 'cos I'd react worse to it than just having a raw-feeling mouth. So it's probably just the wuss thing.

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27 Nov 2005 (Sunday) 

I'm listening to Heather Nova's 'South' today, because I hadn't and I was wondering what it was like. And the first two tracks didn't seem quite right to me. I'm not sure why. But I knew that track for was 'Like Lovers Do', which I know and feels very right for her. But then 'Virus Of The Mind' started and I'm saying to myself "what?!" and it's just very different... and then I'm bouncing along to it and it's really fun. And it reminds me of Sheryl Crow, and Suzanne Vega. It's just so fun...

Well, I went to this party thing last night A lot of people I hadn't seen in a long time And they wanted to know about my life, But making me feel like it wasn't quite right Like where's your kids and where's your car? I said I don't have either, but I have a guitar And I ended up feeling like I was a freak So I found some wine and something to eat And I talked to the dog to pass the time Told myself I'm doing fine. [ Virus Of The Mind, from South, by Heather Nova ]

Much code writing today, most of which is far more complex than my head can cope with. It's that feeling you get when you know that what you're doing is well within your capabilities, but it's lots of little stages that are really quite taxing on knowing where you're going. Each little bit is fine and possible, but the whole seems taunting. Maybe I haven't got the words right. Oh well.

Mum SMS'd me this morning at about 8am to tell me it was snowing. As nobody ever sends me SMSs, I was immediately awake and panicing over it. And then it turned out that it was just snow. So back to sleep for a little bit. This is after Dad's alarm had woken me at whatever hour it's been set for. It's off now and shouldn't bother me.

I'm running short of nails which is a fair indication that I'm hungry. I've had two meals today. I don't know what my body's complaining about. I said I'd do something today for myself, but haven't yet. It's a little bit frustrating that I've been so distracted with code. On the other hand, I did find time to watch Arrested Development, so I shouldn't really complain.

And I spoke to Ju briefly today as well, which was quite nice. Time for cereal and sleep I think. No... Time for cereal and then writing something. Oh, that's why I've not got so much done today. I rang Chris. And then someone else rang. And then Andrew rang. And then Julian rang. And then Dad rang. So whilst lots has been done, it's eaten into my secondary project time. Bah.

Hmm, just closing the windows I've had left open, I've noticed that ctags source that I ported this afternoon. So that, too, ate into time I should have used more usefully. The days just seem to fly by.

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26 Nov 2005 (Saturday) 

There were a couple of notes I left myself yesterday which I meant to comment on; one was 'Single tables' which is a phrase that entered my head whilst I was making tea yesterday. I was sure it appeared in more things, but the only thing I can find it in is 'Blind Curve, b) Passing Strangers' from 'Misplaced Childhood'. The reason it sprang to mind was that I was thinking about how lonely it must be to be going out on your own. Which I don't do, obviously, as I don't go out. But I would be lonely if I did.

The second one is an odd one because I can't seem to find the right thing that it comes from. "You know there's nothing I can do about it"... Oh... I know that... Got it... "You Keep Me Hangin' On", by Kim Wilde; the lyrics here had 'agaaaiin' so it didn't get found in a search. However, the background line 'You know there's nothing I can do about it' doesn't seem to appear at all in these lyrics.

A search for 'seeing you only breaks my heart again nothing do about it' in Google throws up 'Memorable Quotes from The Princes Bride' as the top result. Which may not be what I was looking for, but it's always a good page to see .

You know, I think I knew that it was originally by the Supremes. I didn't know that I had a copy by 'The Nice' as well. It's a bit different. The Supremes version isn't really for me. I think maybe it's just that growing up with one of them means that that's the one I prefer. Ah well.

No, I can't make a bomb. I am not Homer Simpson. [ Nuclear physicist; Julian ]

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25 Nov 2005 (Friday) 

I've got about 5 emails in my inbox from myself to remind me of things 'To Do' now. I think one of them is fully dealt with, but this is the first time in ages that they've piled up. Mostly because looking at other, unrelated, things has highlighted a number of little itsy bitsy bugs to find elsewhere.

Note: Single tables
Note: Only break my heart again

The above are two notes I left myself to comment on whilst I was eating lunch, but it's now 4am and I need to sleep; oh well.

My left wrist is killing me when I bend it certain ways. I think that's just because I've had a good couple of days writing real (although possibly not useful) code.

I did clear out all the emailed 'ToDo' notes I'd left myself which were completely dealt with. 7 gone. Still quite a few left, some from some time back - so clearly my recollection of '5' earlier was way out.

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24 Nov 2005 (Thursday) 

Well that makes a whole lot of no sense... [ What's going on ?; Me ]

Which, now I read it back about 11 hours later, made me think for a moment about what I was talking about. But only for a second... because I'm still trying to debug the same damned odd behaviour. A chunk of code is just being called at odd times. Gah!

Close your eyes and give me your hand, darling [ Eternal Flame, from The Best Of, by The Bangles ]

Only you have to sing 'darling' with a laugh and a little flick of your head. Otherwise it's Just Not Right. Yeah, I'd so forgotten about that.

I was going to write one of those random emails tonight, but I think I'm just a little too tired for it. My eyes are just failing, which is usually a sign that it's far too late for random emails. It'd end up far too surreal. Or I might actually say what I mean. Neither of which tends to go down all that well.

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23 Nov 2005 (Wednesday) 

I woke up this morning, thinking how soft the bed was. Not that it's normally not soft, but it just seemed especially nice this morning.

So here's a normal day for me. It's not that interesting, but here goes... Alarm goes off, music plays. Wakes me up and a doze for a bit, usually trying to work out if I'm going to get any email today from Caroline, or if I'll send any. Music goes off after half an hour and we get up and have a shower. Going for a shower means walking downstairs and calling the cats for something to eat. Why ? Because if you don't then you find that when you get out of the shower you've got them waiting for you and generally you're not in a mood to feed them then. And they won't stop pestering.

Actually having a shower involves much pacing back and forth in the shower (which is hard as there's not a lot of room), going over the same things that I went over the previous day, and the previous months, and getting annoyed at myself for doing so. Get out of shower, dry off; more pacing and some of the same thoughts interspersed with 'what am I doing today?' (which sometimes invokes the 'what am I doing in general?' which we immediately ignore). So we settle down, and look at the mail that's arrived in the few hours that we've been asleep. The music from the previous night will have started up and it's not always suitable, so either it gets left or we have to go hunting for something we feel in the mood for. Some day I might try correlating music that I listen to with the time of day, but it's not all that likely to be helpful.

In any case, there's no mail. Well, there's 'at job' reports, and always a few emails that I've just sent to myself whilst I was in bed to remind myself to do things, or what I was working on - which I can then look at and select the most interesting, or practical thing to work on. If I'm annoyed, it'll usually be the simplest thing (like changing names of things, or writing a few words of documentation), and if I'm frustrated at something it'll be the hardest thing - just to show that I can (usually I can, but get distracted so things don't get finished, but if it's not 'important' then it doesn't matter - it'll get done when it is important).

Occasionally, there's a reply to something work related, which usually gets replied to immediately unless it needs more consideration. Rarely - and not for ages - I get an email from friends (Caroline, Angela, Helen, Claire [though less rarely, 'cos we keep in touch well now]) that I want to hear from but who almost never reply to me when I'm spouting random cack. Hmm. They're all girls. I think that says something - probably just that I'm sad.

Moving away mailing lists that haven't been otherwise filtered (Rendezvous is the only one that springs to mind) and deleting spam takes only a few seconds - it's not annoying enough to filter, but it's regular.

Anyhow, there's the Atom mailing list (which, oddly, is filtered - it was massively more active so I set it up to be automatic) checks - which hasn't had much recently - and then usenet, which is usually skimmed, csa.(announce|networking|programmer), alt.music.lyrics, and netscape.public.mozilla.jseng - they really don't take much time. Usually the csa.* groups are spouting crap, so I try not to get worked up . Really there hasn't been anything 'of interest' in there for so long.

(returns from town) Well, I can't be bothered to write any more of that cack. Like anyone - or even I - cares.

How many times do I have to try to tell you That I'm sorry for the things I've done [ Why, from Diva, by Annie Lennox ]

Just lyric from that track came to me last night and I had to go looking for it.

Dad's given me his opinion of Archive's 'Noise' - "Not as good as 'You All Look The Same To Me'; it's like two different bands". Which is pretty much the way I felt about it. I can come back to 'You All Look The Same To Me' again and again (no pun intended).

ETOOLATE. Bah, took me ages to get my code working tonight. Not helped by being rung up at about 4-ish to be asked to look at something else that took a few hours. I could have been in bed already. Oh well.

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22 Nov 2005 (Tuesday) 

Maria says she's dying; Through the door I hear her crying - Why? I don't know [ Round Here, from August And Everything After, by Counting Crows ]

Similar to the 'Building A Mystery' comment earlier - gawd, that was last month - when I said that I rather liked the idea of 'looking out of the window without shadow getting in the way', is one of the lines from Round Here. I just love the whole image that's conjured up by ...

She walks along the edge of where the ocean meets the land Just like she's walking on a wire in the circus [ Round Here, from August And Everything After, by Counting Crows ]

Actually, it's kind of strange with regard to how I think of the track; whilst I can place the whole track in San Francisco, it takes a little more effort - it's usually seen from looking obliquely at a house half way up a hill. However, it's easier to imagine it as being set outside the guest house from 'Groundhog Day'. Don't ask me why. I just get the feeling that that's the sort of place that the singer and Maria would be living; I can very easily place her arriving there at the dead of night, with the lights shining out over the front garden.

Interesting; neither of those sorts of images are in the video for Round Here. I wonder how I came to them. Ok, actually I know where I got the 'Groundhog Day' one from, but the other is more interesting. Reading around, as well, Maria is just a reflection of the singer. Which, if Adam says that's what he meant I can't deny, but it's not something that'll sit well in my head having made a nice little home for it already. I guess I'm very much in the 'if the lyrics mean that to you then who cares that that's not what the author meant'. Which means I shouldn't get wound up at the people who get the meaning just plain wrong ('cos obviously they're not 'wrong', but have a different opinion).

Are you happy when you're sleeping? Does he keep you safe and warm? Does he tell you when you're sorry? Does he tell you when you're wrong? I've been watching you for hours It's been years since we were born We were perfect when we started I've been wondering where we've gone [ A Murder Of One, from August And Everything After, by Counting Crows ]

My head hurts from trying to think around a complex SVC problem. It's not really that complex, but it just involves a little bit of juggling of a few things. I'm pretty sure I've got about 60% of the code lying around in another component I wrote a couple of years back, so it's probably not all that hard to do. Actually, a lot of the things that I thought 'really hard' are just 'tedious' these days - not 'trivial', but they just mean taking the time to think about and then doing. I think back to one of the things that Chris tried doing at uni and I remember thinking at the time, "He's mad!". He didn't manage, but he got a good way through before hitting a wall. I think the 'wall' in question was an assignment due in about 6 hours time, though...

Anyhow, food and then bed.

Oh, nice email from Adrian today, too. Which goes to show that if you're calm and sensible and treat people right, they respond nicely. Don't go off shouting at people. Even if they annoy you by people wrong. Unlike lyrics, when it comes to RISC OS, I'm Right. Usually. Last night I was considering conversations (as you know that I do all the time... la-la-la... those voices in my head...) and ended up calling myself 'an arrogant megalomaniac'. Which is probably quite fair really. As it's me doing the telling, I think I can probably say it with a little justification. It's hard when you're trying to work out what people will say about the things that you might do, and whether you should bother doing them in the first place because it'll be badly received. On the other hand, just doing stuff and not telling anyone helps muchly. As does reading manuals properly and not reading things that aren't in them.

All of which doesn't get me to bed. And I was hoping to watch an episode of Angel before I slept. I've not seen any tellying since Sunday. Bah.

Oh... how many things have I got on my mind to write about...

Firstly, I watched Angel 'Destiny' - I so did not see that coming. I think I actually callled out their name at the end, 'cos I was so surprised.

I was getting annoyed at moving the laptop back to bed and the way the network cable gets tied up. I thought to myself "wouldn't it be cool if I had a way to get rid of this cable... like the wireless card I bought for that purpose..."

Wired network's great for transferring those large files around, but if all I'm doing is using xterm and HTTP, it's probably not worth it.

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21 Nov 2005 (Monday) 

I don't like writing assembler. Well, that's not true. Or kind of not true. I don't like assembler when it's astoundingly complex and nasty. But when it's simple and understandable I don't mind it. Of course, the times when the assembler is simple and understandable are usually those very same times that you shouldn't be writing it, but still, I like those times.

Chris Williams asked me about the multi-tasking errors I did some time ago, yesterday. The code in there isn't actually that hard. Really, it's not. The principle is simple. Watch for an error being reported by sitting on the SWI vector. When you see one, take over from the user mode task (we assume that this is a user mode task, but if it isn't we're running in our own stack anyhow, so it's safe) with our own stack and stuff, create windows and run our own rudimentary poll loop until the user clicks on a button, then we destroy the window and return back to the task itself with the right answer.

Obviously doing this as a patch is a world easier than doing it within the Wimp itself. Mainly because there's a whole slew of issues there that I've not mentioned and ignored (even though I knew of them) in the original implementation. Why ignore problems when you know they'll happen ? Because it's a patch. That's what you get. Clearly there are different degrees of patches, but there are loads of little things that can go wrong which if you're not aware of them you can break.

But anyhow, my ramble was about assembler. That assembler is prety simple, because you just look at what you want to do and... then you do it. Other bits of assembler (and I suppose, code in general) are a little bit more complicated. Not because you can't see what you want to do, but because it's just hard to know the effects of those things - with the patch, as I said, you don't care about the side effects, so it's pretty easy.

DummyDynamicAreas is laughable in its disregard for error conditions. Out of memory ? Someone else messing with the RAM disc ? Being called under interrupts ? Ha! You'll be lucky if the system tells you there's a problem, never mind getting control back. And DDA really did do a pretty simple job, too. I was just very, very lazy about the error handling. If I got a JPEG plotted at the end and the machine kept running, I was happy. Of course, Niall's solution of 'replace the DA calls with RMA calls' was clearly a much superior answer to the problem. I felt very dim that I'd not thought of it. "Hey, look a nut... I can try out this sledge-hammer I've got"

And the dream says I want you And the dream is gone So she stays up night on end Well at least there is a dream left [ When I See You Again, from Tango In The Night, by Fleetwood Mac ]

You know how you do the 'la-la-la-can't hear you' talking over someone when they're telling you something you don't want to hear ? Well, is it odd to do that to talk over the top of the voice in your own head ?

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20 Nov 2005 (Sunday) 

Looking for something unrelated earlier today, I found the initial implementation of round action buttons and groups. Whilst it doesn't work on a modern OS, I've got a screenshot of it running. It's a little bit dodgy. But it was the first attempts at that. The dates indicate that it was abandoned at 4:50 on 13 November 1998.

Dad's told me - I hadn't noticed - that there's a Manfred Man cover version of 'Nothing Ever Happens'. I'm pretty sure I prefer the original.

You hate yourself But rate yourself As a number one [ Wannabe, from Eurotrash, by Zeromancer ]

You guys are hardcore, playing with your hardware and stuff. Me, I'm debugging things with JavaScript. [ Hardcore hackers; Me ]

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19 Nov 2005 (Saturday) 

Is it wrong to come back to the same tracks again and again and feel the same way about them ? Does that mean that you're not moving on in your tastes, or is that the track is just 'right' for you ?

Don't answer me with the same old questions Don't patronise with those tired old solutions I've heard these before, I've been here before [ Solomon, from Songs From The Lions Cage, by Arena ]

Ooh, 'lions' should have an apostrophe. Only I'm not sure where. Ah. It's got to be after the 's', because it's a cage for a multitude of lions. Or is it ? The cage doesn't belong to the Lions. It's not a possession. If anything, the Lions are the possession of the Cage. Which would mean that the 'Lions' is actually being used to clarify the particular Cage in use. Because it's a Cage that holds Lions. So, I guess I'm wrong that it needs an apostrophe, because of that. There's probably a fancy name for that - in my mind the 'Lions' is just qualifying which 'Cage' is being referrred to, with the whole 'Lions Cage' being a single noun.

I think that's the right sense anyhow. Thinking a little more, I'm not sure how that works if the lion was called 'Sheila'. Because you'd still be talking about a specific cage, but not about a plural, so it would be 'Sheila's cage'. And if that's using the "'s" to indicate possession then why shouldn't the "Lions" be "Lions'" to indicate that it's a possession of multple lions. And it similarly confuses me on the issue of when the "'s" possession thing applies, because it's not a possession here. Gah.

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18 Nov 2005 (Friday) 

Looks like the RSS summary was still wrong when it came to 'pre'-formatted text. The code sections the day before last came out as being separate paragraphs per newline instead of a single paragraph. So the day claimed to have 15 paragraphs. It's now down to 12 which is better.

I know it's easier to walk away than look it in the eye But I had given all I could take And now I've only habits left to break Tonight I'll still be lying here Surrounded in all the light [ Surrounded, from Images And Words, by Dream Theater ]

Someone gave me interesting links today, and whilst I'm not in the habit of just putting links here; the paper creations certainly deserves a mention for the 'wow' factor. I try to avoid superlatives because it allows me some space to expand in to when I find something genuinely worthy. I think that's an appropriate use. And a 'slightly less wow, but not by much' link for Darth Vader in Butter.

We return to our regular scheduled diary now.

Somewhere in the night inside my dreams you burn so bright and I'm with you there and everything's alright Somewhere in the night before the darkness turns to light let me love you there, somewhere in the night. Second chances I won't get, Wouldn't dare to hope and yet, everywhere I turn I see your silhouette Been so long, but I never will forget. [ Somewhere In The Night, by Sam Beckett ]

I watched 'Piano man' (Quantum Leap) today. It's such a wonderful episode, partly because it's Quantum Leap, but mostly because Somewhere In The Night is in it. It grabbed my back then, and it still does. It was very strange to watch and be able to sing along to a track that I've only seen a couple of times and just know by heart now.

At some point I'll watch 'Boogieman', too... 'cos that's very fun. But scary.

I keep inventing conversations in my head. Even still. They're not real, and they'd never happen the way they're invented. But still they come.

Woah! I think I've learnt more about you in the last 30 seconds than in the whole year my secretary has been with me. [ Open with things; Charmed ]

I think that was from Charmed. And I'm paraphrasing, because I've not actually got that episode to hand or anything.

Why do I insist on trying to guess the other person's intentions ? And to second guess. And rinse and repeat. It's not just Caroline. It's in other parts of my life.

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17 Nov 2005 (Thursday) 

For some reason Beth Orton's Daybreaker (the track) reminds me of Duran Duran. I'm not sure what about it evokes that memory, but that's what it associates with.

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16 Nov 2005 (Wednesday) 

"Storing a byte involves one pixie. He gets told what to do and he takes a short amount of time to do it." "Calling memcpy involves going down the street to talk to the contractor pixies. The boss contractor pixie will then look at how much is to be done and how to do it. He then stands there counting off whilst another pixie stores a byte every time he tells him to." "Each pixie takes around the same amount of time to do their job. Going down the street to the contractor takes a variable amount of time because depending on where you live they might be a long way away." [ Why using memcpy to store bytes is bad; Me ]

I've not mentioned this one before, I don't think. Or possibly I have, but it's a quite cool little trick if you're writing a number of generic tools to be accessed through a single controlling interface in Perl. The problem is a simple one...

You have your front end program that does a regular amount of things, and it has a number of libraries it depends on. You want to be able to configure the back end components, but you don't want to have to put the support code for that in the front end part. Let's say, you have a caching system. It needs to know where to store files and how long they're to be cached for. Your front end program doesn't care about the implementation. It just wants to call the cache to get the details. Here's my solution, and I'm sure it's been said many times before by other people but I came up with it pretty much independantly and haven't seen anything quite like it.

Each perl library that you 'require' is executed. The body is run and we can do initialisation there. What we do is we initialise a hash with details about the features we support. For example, in our cache library we do something like :

$cache_maxage = 28; # One month is a reasonable default
$switch_func{"-cacheage"} = sub { $cache_maxage = shift @ARGV };
$switch_help{"-cacheage"} = "Specify the age of items in the cache in days";

The function $switch_func{name} is expected to be called with the arguments that have been passed on the command line, and so the 'shift @ARGV' will pull out the next argument. You could also do validation and stuff here, which would be nice, but it's up to the library really.

In your main front end code you can then do something like this :

# Set any additional switches we provide for the Front End here.

# Add in all the libraries here, so that we can see their switches.
require "cache.pl";

#-- Help message (core switch function)
$switch_func{"-help"} = sub {
  print "ToolName $version (c) Justin Fletcher, 2005\n";
  print "Switches:\n";
  foreach $i (sort keys %switch_func)
  {
    printf("  %14s  %s\n", $i, $switch_help{$i});
  }
  exit(0);
};
$switch_help{"-help"} = "Display this help";
$switch_alias{"-h"} = "-help";

# Process command line arguments
while ($arg = shift @ARGV)
{
  while (defined($switch_alias{$arg}))
  { $arg = $switch_alias{$arg}; }
  if ( defined($switch_func{$arg}) )
  { $func = $switch_func{$arg};
    &$func(); }
  else
  {
    die "'$arg' not recognised\n";
  }
}

And you can be even more clever if you want. In one of my programs - the CoverFetcher - there are many different sites that we can operate on. The user specifies using the switches which site (and 'style', whether it's a cover, cddb, lyric or biography fetch) to use. This is achieved by using a very simple switch definition :

$switch_func{"-site"} =
   sub {
     $managersite = shift @ARGV;
     if (!-f "${managerstyle}s-$managersite.pl")
     {
       print "Invalid site name '$managersite' for style '$managerstyle'\n";
       $func = $switch_func{"-help"};
       &$func();
     }
     require "${managerstyle}s-$managersite.pl";
   };
$switch_help{"-site"} = "Specify the site name to fetch from";

Which means that once the site switch has been introduced by the user, they can then use any of the switches defined for that specific site. In fact, very few of the site tools actually have any additional switches, but a good example is the 'fake' site 'TSV' which requires a filename of a Tab-Separated-Values file which it processes instead of fetching from any real website.

Now I'm sure there are other things you can do with this, and I'm positive it'll have been done before, probably in a multitude of better ways. But still, I think it's really quite nice to use, and it doesn't half make the libraries more flexible to use.

Of course, you can take this same method to other languages, but only if they have a auto-executed code within them. Within C, that's not possible really. However, there is a cunning trick you can pull with linker-sets if you have a suitable version of link (or drlink), which can provide the same functionality. Consult the drlink documentation for details - I did write a reasonable description.

And from Zeromancer, I drifted into The Zombies...

Well no one told me about her, what could I do Well no one told me about her, though they all knew But it's too late to say you're sorry How would I know, why should I care Please don't bother tryin' to find her She's not there [ She's Not There, by The Zombies ]

In that way that you do, I've spent a couple of hours configuring the Alarm Clock. Well, actually the Alarm Clock was fine this morning; it's the other annoyance that I saw this morning. I noticed that whilst lying in bed it wasn't possible to control the player. Clearly that's not acceptable...

So, now we control it through the IRMan interface. So what we now have is so utterly convoluted that it's really not sensible. The Windows PC wakes up a few minutes before the alarm goes off, turns itself on and runs the SoftSqueeze client. This connects to the server (which itself woke up a little while earlier). The alarm (an at-job) then goes off and uses the web interface through wget to start playing an album (Anastacia at the moment, but probably I'll change that over the next few days - with a bit of thought it could even parse my last track and then play that first thing in the morning. Anyhow, the little creditcard sized remote I got with something else is ideal for controlling the player, so I've programmed that up in LIRC (which is far harder than it probably ought to be) and I've now got an alarm clock - albeit a massively convoluted one - that I can control by remote. I could (should) set it up to play locally on the server, rather than forcing Windows to start up and run a Java emulation of a hardware player. But then that means running the sound through other systems so that everything's mixed properly and it seems like a lot of effort (currently sound from Windows is mixed with RPC sound, which is fine, but I'd need to do Windows + Linux + RiscPC). Of course, if I didn't play MP3s on the RPC then it wouldn't be a problem, but nothing offers the kind of integrated interface that ControlAMPlayer offers over a remote connection. If I could sort that out then I'd jump on it like a shot. Of course, if the Risc PC came on at a particular time, that would be the perfect bit.

And... anyone that isn't already aware... all your absolutes should have AIF headers on them now. Come on, you've had 9 years notice that non-AIF headered files are obsolete.

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15 Nov 2005 (Tuesday) 

Well, someone at Steeles' contacted me, and things seem to be benign. So there's a possibility I might be able to sleep a little easier. On the other hand it did raise a number of important issues. Like the fact that whilst I thought I was a lot better (but was at the same time concerned that I might not be), I still immediately focused on the tiniest of things to associate with her. And that my paranoia can still run away with me massively.

However, I still don't believe in coincidences. When things happen together, or close by there's usually some reason. Oh well.

And I got a hug off Julian.

It has removed any reason I have to contact Caroline, though. I'm not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand, I want to keep in touch, and on the other I feel that she wants me at a distance, and of course, I don't think it's right for me to be any closer than just a mild acquaintaince anyhow. Yeah, I'd like to be friends that can talk well together, but clearly she can't talk to me if she has to pass message through Sue, so it's not just me. I know I shouldn't need a reason, but I still think I have to have a reason to contact her beyond the regular 'Hi I'm still alive' emails. Which I have sent, and will no doubt continue to send, despite getting very little back from her. Sometimes I think (well, most times) that I send something reserved and she responds (if she does) with something equally reserved, because neither of us really know where we stand - she knows that I get upset over her, and I know that she's not the person I knew. And though I think like that, I know that I have no place in her life, even if I may want that.

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14 Nov 2005 (Monday) 

Last nights dream was visiting a friend, and when it came to go home I had to go to the station, but when I got there, I couldn't actually find the platform. Strictly, I found it - it was on the other side of the building, but every time I tried to get there through the underpass I ended up in a shopping centre, and I was already late for the train. It's almost like the Norwich/London dream where I know I'm going to miss things even though I'm very nearly there at the right time.

However, that was only the first thing; and I only vaguely remember that. In the second dream, we were driving away from a party, I think - Simon, Julian and me. And for some reason I'd annoyed some people driving a yellow van, and they kept taunting me as we were driving down the road. Eventually, as we were going around one lane they made me go off the road. And then it all went black. When I woke up, I was in a hotel bar, and Julian was still unconcious beside me. The bar went out on to a patio - I probably should have said that this felt like it was France or somewhere equally different, but everyone was still English - and there was this huge view of sloping fields and then a sharp valley in the distance. And I asked one of the guys behind the bar if I could have something to eat, and we got some ham and salad - Julian had woken up, similarly confused. There were a few other people, all going about the normal things that people do in a hotel. I went outside and into the carpark, and then out of the gate on the far side, and I could see further down the sloped fields. In the distance, very small, I could see our car, sitting just before the valley dropped off. I remember thinking how lucky it was that we'd stopped there. And then I wondered how we'd got to the Hotel. I spoke to Julian and we decided that Simon must have carried us both. Everything had been paid for and we had a room upstairs. We went upstairs but couldn't find the room; every door I knocked on had someone else behind it. Someone changing a baby, a couple doing stuff, a guy asleep on the floor, and a crib with nothing in it - none of the rooms seemed to have Simon in. We went up a floor and found him there. And then it get blurry and I woke up.

And I turn the computer on this morning, and up starts 'Blind Curve'.

"What the frickin' fuck is that ?" said Gerph as he skimmed the diary.

The phone beeped at me a moment ago because it wanted feeding, and there was an SMS reply to something I apparently sent in the early hours of Sunday. And which I don't really remember much of. So I look back in the diary and there's a big ramble there about... stuff... which I don't really remember writing. I've edited it now, to remove the bits that are less sensible.

And in that vein... will the person at Steeles Solicitors please identify themselves and their reasons for being so interested in the diary before I go too insane ? Yes, I'm actually asking.

I don't mind people reading the diary, and I obviously don't care that much about the things I write about me, but my friends I care about and if it's related to them I want to know. Please?

The entry for the 12th has been edited to remove the more insane and non-sensical ramblings.

Listening to 'Zero 7', I have found, is very relaxing. It's good to just try to calm down after seeing idiots doing such stupid things you'd wonder whether they have actually used RISC OS before. However, after 'Zero 7' is 'Zeromancer' which is... not as relaxing. However, I left it running because it was there and I couldn't be bothered to get up. Surprisingly listenable if you're just doing something else. So I finally did get up and look at the tracks - I think Chris gave me it (it's usually Chris that listens to the heavier stuff) - on 'Eurotrash'. And there's a track called 'Send Me An Angel'. I know a track of that name which - I think - came from Chocky, and it's kinda cool. So I look a the lyrics and on first glance they're the same, so up it gets queued. And yes, it's the same track. And it's heavy. Closer to Industrial than to the the Synth Pop that the Real Life version has. It's quite cool. Think of Godhead's 'Eleanor Rigby'; it's that sort of different. Coo, is that one of those comparison things ?

"The Beatles' 'Eleanor Rigby' is to Godhead's 'Eleanor Rigby' as Real Life's 'Send Me An Angel' is to Zeromancer's 'Send Me An Angel'."

Ok, so I've probably offended many people by placing Real Life along side The Beatles and mixing styles quite a bit there. But I don't care; it's just a way to remember these things. I remember music far better than most things.

Zeromancer definately wouldn't be something I'd listen to normally, but it definately has an appeal. Well, the beginning of the album has; it does become a little bit samey.

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13 Nov 2005 (Sunday) 

Much time spent looking at music genres, categorisation and cack like that.

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12 Nov 2005 (Saturday) 

Because of confusion with my regular expressions, some of the forward chronology pages were not linking properly when they referred to a different year with a fragment identifier. Should be fixed now. Andrew Veitch cunningly pointed that one out.

If we ever say we'll never be together and we ended with goodbye... [ Lost Without You, from Innocent Eyes, by Delta Goodrem ]

It's a fun line, because it's got to be said quickly, and it has such similar sounds it just runs so nicely. Almost as nicely as the section from Estoy Aqui, but that does take some beating .

(Edit: 14th November 2005) What follows is a little bit edited, because it was written whilst I was very, very tired and I would prefer to restrict the diary to actual thought out sentences. Or at least those that don't show me to be a psycho .

It's 6am and my mind's fizzy. And I'm shaking and sweating and cold, and hot, and I've walked into a couple of walls so far. It's past that time of the night where you think straight, and beyond the points of inventing things that you can do. It's gone through all that, and even - it seems - past the point where the crazy things you've decided you have to do seem sensible, and they've just become a memory in the way to where we are now. We're well into that place where getting a coherent sentence (or, it seems, spelling the word coherent) takes a few goes. And memory of writing the phrase 'it seems' is clearly out of the window. Ah. Found my glasses now. See, I can still use the cursor keys to correct things. Ha. My fingers are shaking. And given that I've expended all this extra energy to turn the machine on and... oh, I've left the other one on still. Off now... but given that, you'd think I'd know what I wanted to say.

I looked at the desk a moment ago and I saw my passport. It means something. I can't remember what. There's something I meant to do. I just don't know what it is. I don't know. I don't know. I just don't know. It's... I'm thinking there's something I wanted to say. But I don't know that either. I can't sleep. If I try to sleep, I just go around and around and around on the same things, and I can't understand her. It's like trying to piece together a jigsaw but nobody's told you if there's enough pieces, or if there's even a picture there. And you have to do it, even though nobody wants you to and they've turned out the lights. And keep taking away the pieces. And You can't ask for them because that would be Just Wrong. And all you keep doing is just trying and trying and trying, and you want to stop but the pieces are all still there and they want to be put together. Or you think they want to be put together, and that's worse than knowing that they have to be together because you keep second guessing whether the pieces ever needed to be together in the first place. And all you can think of is that the jigsaw can't be finished, even if you had all the pieces and you couldn't even make them fit, because the jigsaw doesn't really want to be finished anyhow. And all I want to do is just SLEEP forever and never wake up and feel this way ever again.

(Edit: 14th November 2005) At this point, the entry becomes impossible to follow and it seems like spelling went out of the window. So I've removed it.

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11 Nov 2005 (Friday) 

Woke up today to the alarm, which was nice. It actually does work if you do the things that are necessary to make it work (!). But still managed to wake up with 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart' in my head, even though that's not what was on the alarm. And as soon as I could actually focus on the real world, that terror from last night returned to me.

Argh.

But all I do is hurt you. [ Beyond You, from Afraid Of Sunlight, by Marillion ]

All we ever seem to do is talk. [ Talk; Someone ]

Cool spoken lyric sections ?

"I thought you loved me but it seems you don't care." "I care enough to know I can never love you." [ Poison Arrow, from The Lexicon Of Love, by ABC ]

Although the ABC spoken quote is trumped by the later spoken section in "The Look Of Love (Part 1)"...

And all my friends just might ask me They say, "Martin, maybe one day you'll find true love" And I say, "Maybe. There must be a solution to The one thing, the one thing we can't find" [ The Look Of Love (Part One), from The Lexicon Of Love, by ABC ]

I'm still quite partial to the middle section in Fish's "The Perception Of Johnny Punter" (although the Brother 52 section is interesting, it's not quite so insightful), even though it's huge...

Some days you just wake up and you don't have any real sense of direction, you just can't find the will to get up and go through with it all - your next allotted 24 hour slice of destiny. There's just a bad vibe and rather than a world of opportunities; it's full of threats and just too many negative variables. I'd noticed these houses way up in the hills, And I tried to imagine what it would have been like living up there; Isolated from the world, Everynight watching the fires crawl slowly down the valley, And knowing that one night it was gonna be your turn for the visit. I tried to imagine what it would have been like, Hiding in a cellar with your family and the fear Hoping that when they do come, When the dogs don't bark, And the silence is around you, You hope that they burn the whole house around your ears, and they don't discover you hiding in the cellar, because you've got nowhere to go And you know that one day... That something's gonna happen There's one day, just one day. [ The Perception Of Johnny Punter, from Sunsets On Empire, by Fish ]

Which is still a very upsetting section - which kinda makes me wonder if it deserves to be placed near to the little ABC spoken sections. Still, it's a spoken bit. And having quoted that, I'm sort of stuck for any more worthwhile spoken sections.

"And I am not frightened of dying. Any time will do, I don't mind. Why should I be frightened of dying? There's no reason for it. You've gotta go sometime." [ The Great Gig In The Sky, from Dark Side Of The Moon, by Pink Floyd ]

Which is suitably thoughtful to fit, I think.

I actually can't think of many more that are worthy, to be honest. I'm sure there are some. Golly, can you believe those are the first quotes fom The Lexicon Of Love and Dark Side of The Moon ? Well, maybe you can, but it seems odd. Suggestions to the usual place. No rap, ta.

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10 Nov 2005 (Thursday) 

Oh! 'day dreaming'! that's the phrase for the 'idle way you think when your mind isn't quite on the ball'!

Whilst trying to make lunch, the name 'Fantomé' sprung into my head, bringing to mind a 'pet', or possibly friendly ghost in something or other. The only problem is that I don't remember what the something or other is, and it's annoying me. I'm pretty sure it was an incidental thing, too.

Watched Joey episode 7 today. Sometimes it's reasonable. Other days, like this one, it's just poor. I don't mind seeing the same jokes sometimes, because there are only so many things out there that you can do, but re-using both the 'joey's too stupid to know cards' (q.v. Chandler trying to give Joey money to help him get by when he moves in with Monica) and 'this is huge' (q.v. Ross and Rachel kissing, stealing Monica's thunder), really seems quite bad.

Bah, that 'Fantomé' thing hit me a moment ago, but now it's gone. Buffy, maybe ? Or something similar. I have this strange thought that it's related to Cordelia. Gawd knows. I have this recollection of a woman finding 'something' and saying something like "I'm going to call him Fantomé". Weird.

Now that's very interesting. [ Interesting; Jack Sparrow; Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl ]

Pirates was on a night or two back, which is one reason why it's in my head, but it seems that my 'solved puzzle' just became more of a puzzle.

Not only is it interesting, but it's terrifying because it means I Might Have Screwed Up. I'm not sure that this eases my mind at all. So instead of sleeping better tonight, maybe it'll be worse.

Which reminds me. My alarm didn't go off this morning. Annoying.

SongMeanings is currently Having Problems it seems. All pages are returning 'Forbidden'.

Oh, I've just worked out why I'm not feeling so good - I've not had anything to eat other than lunch. That's what being so confused and stressed does to you, I suppose.

I got something to say you know but nothing comes Yes I know what you think of me, you never shut up [ Silent All These Years, from Little Earthquakes, by Tori Amos ]

I had always taken that line as being a critique, but never that it might be the other way until now. I don't know what made me think about it differently, but struck me as different just then whilst I was listening to it. Which is why I was trying to use SongMeanings - just to check that I'm not alone. Sometimes people on there have No Clue. Other times, they're over analysing things, and others they're 'right'... It's hardly canon, but it's a reasonable idea - sometimes they refer back to concerts and people's sites, which helps. It also helps that most lyrics are there to be interpreted, and if the interpretation is different to the original intention, then that's just something else. But 'Every Breath You Take' is still not a romantic track.

Andrew dropped me some lovely comments about the tenses earlier, which just reminds me both how interesting language is and how poor I am at it.

I just love the horns on Winter. Well, the whole track is just wonderfully orchestrated. It's been quoted many times, but I don't care; I love it!

Hair is gray and the fire is burning So many dreams on the shelf You say "I wanted you to be proud" I always wanted that myself [ Winter, from Little Earthquakes, by Tori Amos ]

Seems like such a long day today, but then I look at the clock and thing "hmm, about 11 hours ago I had lunch... maybe I should play hunt the Lasagne, rather than hunt the Paracetemol ?"

Late at night Things I thought I'd put behind me Haunt my mind [ Stand My Ground, from The Silent Force, by Within Temptation ]

Jumpy music styles tonight - Zero 7, Royksopp, Tori Amos, Beth Orton, and now Within Temptation. I wanted something a bit heavier, so I moved to Within Temptation. It's odd, though, because it's not really that heavy. I might just need to play it a little louder.

Actually, I feel kind of like Toby Ziegler at the moment. Only I'm hoping that I'll stop throwing the ball around very soon.

SongMeanings appears to be back up again. Yay.

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9 Nov 2005 (Wednesday) 

I met the little girl from my dream yesterday, as well (I had just forgotten to mention it). She was visiting with her parents who were having a cake organised by Mum. With the exception of the mark on her face, she was the absolute spitting image of the girl I had in my dream. Maybe I'm just seeing an association where there is none.

A random poem I wrote to sort of fill out a random email...

It's only dreams that brings the world to its knees It's only pain that dims the day of people out there And it can be so very clear When the dark nights draw near That there's a smile And there's a touch And it means so much Just a mother's kiss To say 'it's alright, Go to sleep, my dear'. [ Go to sleep; Me ]

It's not that good, and I'm not impressed by the two lines that rhyme in there - either rhyme a lot or not at all. And the split line lengths don't really work. But it wasn't bad for just words written in a few minutes to make a different little ending to the email.

Dream last night was about catching a train at night with Julian and the train was packed and I had a cat with me. I had Greebo being awkward on the train and wanting to stand by the window and getting soaked. A little odd.

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8 Nov 2005 (Tuesday) 

Somehow I think it shouldn't take 25 minutes to compose a three sentence email. It's hard when you pick your words so carefully because you don't want to say the wrong thing. It's a fine line I have to walk sometimes. A line, I think that I impose on myself, though. I know I said that I wouldn't do that, but there's something there that's more difficult to overcome. I get scared. And it's irrationally scared, because... well, I was going to say "it doesn't really matter that I'm misunderstood if we're friends", except that it does. And I'm already misunderstood, I think. Well, not really. It's just that my reasons for doing something are different to the apparent reasons for doing something. The outcome has been the same, but the reasons are (I think) perceived to be different to those that they actually are.

Actually, if it was frivolous, I could rattle something off quickly, but it seemed Important. After all, these diary entries are as frivolous as you can imagine and they come out quite easily. Except those times that I can't remember the words I want.

I've just tried the 'Browse years' on the SlimServer 6.2 and - as I verified and protested - the artist is not shown with the album, despite being told absolutely that it was in the 6.2 version because it was hugely demanded. I really don't like people who think they know better than me when I've got the evidence and knowledge to back up what I say. Yeah, sometimes I'm still wrong, but at least I do admit it. Usually.

Oh, I could hide 'neath the wings Of the bluebird as she sings The six o'clock alarm would never ring. [ Daydream Believer, from The Greatest Hits Of The Monkees, by The Monkees ]

Buttercup, the server here, is named after Buttercup from The Princess Bride here, and not after the Foundations track... Which I mentioned because it brings me here... Why is 'Build Me Up Buttercup' on the 'Happy Songs' album ? It's not a happy track is it ? Or have I missed something ?

Unfortunately, hearing 'Build Me Up Buttercup' makes me think of something else. I'm not sure what, but something with a group of people doing it as a piece within something bigger (no, not the Muppets again... I don't think). I thought it was something like ALF, but I'm not so sure that it fits with their style in some ways. The next thing that sprang to mind was something like '2 point 4 children', which it would fit quite well. However, I think the link is more tenuous than that - I think it's Red Dwarf's 'Tongue Tied' that's getting put into a similar slot as the 'Build Me Up Buttercup' through similar sounds.

And in checking on Amazon for 'Happy Songs' I notice that the same label (Virgin TV) have done another one, for those of us tht aren't into their happy songs - 'Sad Songs volume 1'. Think maybe there's something to be said for the sad songs when they get a 'volume 1' when happy songs don't ?

I have this vague feeling that I've already missed a friend's birthday. I knew it was 'somewhere around here', but sort of put off wishing them well because I didn't want to disturb them and stuff... and when I decided to actually wish them a happy birthday I think it was late. On the other hand, I sent Angela a birthday card 5 months late (or 7 months early, I guess) one year, so it's not actually that bad really. Except that ... oh the words - they burn... I can't get the right ones. Oh well, I'll just give up there.

On Within Temptations 'Jillian', I keep mishearing one of the lines. Rather than "I've seen kingdoms through ages, rise and fall, I've seen it all", it seems to be more like "I've seen kittens through ages..." which isn't quite as sensible.

Odd dream which the phone woke me from this morning. Something about flying out of a train window as a philanthropic pizza delivery person. That was odd, but it was actually the end of a section that I don't really remember so well. Because - for some reason - the flying needed something to do with windows to work, I managed to leave the train as it went past a building - the people that were with me were trying to help and had pointed out a building that had a lot of pretty windows that I could use, including a very pretty round stained glass window. I went there with some people and remember thinking "this is a friend's place", only there was someone else living there and I couldn't find what I was looking for. We searched around the house until the person living their - and their dogs - woke up and chased us out. Later as I was walking down the street (in that town that's a cross between Peterborough and York, in its Christmas decorations and stuff that make it so scary - actually it's only made more scary because of previous dreams of being chased through them because of some woman who was with me. It's possible that my earlier comments about there not being angry people in my dreams may again be wrong), I passed a little girl being carried by her mum and as I walking passed I put my finger out and she grabbed it. She had a funny face, and she said that she had been ill until recently and she was so happy to be here. Her mum explained that she'd had something wrong with her and the doctors didn't know if she'd survive, but she had a lot of operations and she's now well. She had a strange mark on the side of her head from where she'd had things done. And I felt so sorry for her having gone through that, but she was just so happy that it didn't matter what she'd had happen. I talked to her mum for a little bit and we began walking to see a friend - going around a large park area where people were playing football and things - and I remember thinking how hard it was with so many people around to talk properly, but it was ok because in a couple of hundred yards the football and other games stopped and there were a lot less people so we could talk more. Only I woke up before we got there. I'm not sure what exactly it was that I thought we needed to talk about, or who she was - as far as I knew she was just someone I'd met whilst walking down the street.

All in all, it was odd. If these dreams mean something then it elludes me again. It's meant to be that they're a way for the mind to order thoughts that haven't been completed through the day with random associations... only they don't seem to make much sense. I can tie one or two bits to things that happened over the last week, but the links are so vague that it doesn't help much. I don't think I'll find any real revelations in them, but it would be nice if just once in a while there would be something that was helpful, rather than disturbing or just strange.

Thinking "there's something in that strange way that I remember", I put on "Are Friends Electric?". And listening to it, it does seem that there's some of that feeling of a disconnected thought process that I have in the dreams... only then I read the lyrics and whilst there's still something of this confusion, it makes a little more sense now.

Grendel likes to sleep on my bed and he's all cute; but if I get up from the chair he looks up and says 'hello' to me (or 'I want attention' or whatever), so I go and give him a cuddle. He likes that, but if you stop and go away, he gives you such a look as if to say "aww, don't stop, I need you". Actually I've gone back to my seat and he's come and sat with me again. He can be a little demanding when he's on my lap, but he's calmed down in the last year or so.

Once in a while - usually provoked by seeing people looking for lyrics - I think to myself how cool it would be to provide direct links to the full lyrics of the tracks I cite here, on my own site. After all, I keep a local database of them which it would be simple to export from. But the problem is that I don't actually have the rights to do so. Citing small sections seems fair use to me. Actually 'fair use' has a proper definition so I shouldn't use that term unless I know the definition.

They say you learn something new every day; sometimes you just re-learn things that you'd forgotten.

Maybe she's been crying over me While you're lying over her Talk of us is words in perfect tenses [ Passing Strangers, from Nomzamo, by IQ ]

... caused me to look up what 'perfect tense' was, because the names of such things often just left me completely baffled. It seems, that based on a little research that the 'present perfect tense' is used when it refers to a period that's ongoing - for example, 'I have eaten three chocolates today' (because today hasn't finished yet). There's also a future perfect tense which, if I've understood correctly, indicates that the period will terminate at some time in the future. I think 'by the end of the day I will have eaten four chocolates' is an example of that. And I think that the past perfect tense indicates that converse of the future; that the period terminated some time in the past. Or possibly that it terminated before the reference action. I'm not quite sure there. I think 'By the end of the day I had eaten 4 chocolates' is an example of that.

Anyhow, the important one, there, is the present perfect tense, which I think is the reference - the 'us' is still the ongoing.

Yay. I solved my puzzle. I should have noticed the omissions more carefully, but I wasn't paying enough attention I guess.

I have to ask myself, though, "where does it get me ?", because I'm actually not much better off with this additional information. I'm not any better off at all. It affects me not in the slightest. Maybe at some point I'll find out what's going on in this world, but it's none of my business really. All I see is a periphery, and only then because I'm paranoid about anything that relates to this. I kind of wish there was something I could do, but I think that I just need to try to stay away.

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7 Nov 2005 (Monday) 

My 'ABEX' experiment wasn't particularly successful - just searching for ABEX doesn't show up the diary at all. On the other hand, putting 'ABEX ARM' places the Diary at 16th position at this second. That's not so bad. Of course, I've got no reason to want to place an entry there, but still it's interesting to know how the diary is weighted.

Yay! Matt's suggested that 'ABEX' was the 'ARM BASIC Exit' return code mechanism. That certainly makes sense to me, given the derivation. It's just something that I'd never thought about!

I had a woman - or possibly a girl - asking if I was the Justin Fletcher who is Mr Tumble, yesterday. I thought that was quite nice. Sadly I'm not. It would be nice if I could direct people on to them, though. They do seem to have knocked me off the regular Justin Fletcher search these days. I toyed with the thought again of changing my name to Gerph, but doing so just to ensure that a search for my name gets me top on Google isn't entirely sensible, I feel.

Someone would have, if I had any friends who cared and didn't already know, asked me why the sudden interest in the last couple of days over changing the form of the diary. Partly it's because I like to tinker; partly it's because there's actually people reading these things and I might as well make it easier for them.

And from last nights reading, there's a few mistakes in the other entries that I've fixed up with doubled words, missed punctuation and capital letters missed at the start of sentences. I'm poor. Oh well. And the November diary was incorrectly labelled October - looks like I was super lazy when I did that one. I should really automate the month-change-over so that I don't have to remember that lot myself. But it only happens every 28 days so it's not like it's a huge time wasting problem. Hell, writing this entry probably took longer than a month-change-over. Ok, maybe not, but close.

Put your arms around me What you feel is what you are And what you are is beautiful [ Slide, from Dizzy Up The Girl, by The Goo Goo Dolls ]

Spent ages trying to work out how to tunnel things through to Chris' machine so that I can play things off his music server - purely because it's silly to do so. Before I realised that the SoftSqueeze client actually has the SSH tunnel support built in. So I now know how to do the tunneling manually with ssh, but it isn't necessary anyhow. Oh well.

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6 Nov 2005 (Sunday) 

After much complaining for many years, I found the source to the Perl I use. It was in the binary distribution. Um. I look stupid. But trust me, it's not as stupid as I feel. On the plus side, I can now build it. The lovely feeling that you get when you do 'amu' and out pops a binary is slightly dwarfed by the feeling you get when you do 'amu BUILD32=1' and out pops a 32bit binary. Which is the advantage of having components that don't have any assembler in them. We like them.

Anyhow, the reason for looking for it was that I'd found a 'bug' in perl which was preventing the processing of the Jan 2005 diary in the 'forward chronology' script. After investigation I found that as the entry passed over 32K long it failed to be spotted. Why ? Because Perl's regular expressions are limited to 32K it seems. In this version. The actual limitations vary, but it is noted in both the man page and the camel book. So it's not a bug.

I've re-written that section of the processor and it looks like the January 2005 month now works. The only other change that's been necessary was to 28th September 1999 because it had an 'amusing' problem at the time, and now the annotation is just annoying when it comes to the procesor. So I've just cut it out.

So all in all the forward chronology now works. Might make life easier if you have to read the diary. I'm not actually sure how to provide a switch from the regular reverse to forward chronology yet - I might stick a little link in the sidebar. But for now that link above will do.

Damn. All the horizontal dividers ended up being missed and seemed to have fallen to the bottom of the document. So I have to go through and reprocess the entire site again. Bother.

There we go. Working now.

I picked up a few of the Halloween left overs and whilst I was feeling ill from eating them (yeah, eating three mini-bars of chocolate makes me feel ill - that's why I've still got half a box of Chocolate Orange segments downstairs), I realised that I've never been Trick-Or-Treating. It's always seemed that I'd get a chance to at some point in the future. Only now... now it's not like I can. Well, I can, but I think it might be viewed badly. But I've sort of missed out on that. I've missed out on a lot of stuff by being me, and just thinking that I'd get a chance to do it later. Actually, no. That's not quite it. It's more a case of "I'll do things differently when I get to go again". Or something more like that. Only you don't get to do things again.

I was going to say that it isn't hard to contact me if you wanted, but that's obvious. Long ago - oh, around 2001 time, I think it was - I took a call whilst in the Pace building and the person ringing was surprised to get me rather than anyone else but we had a quick chat. And they'd said that they had wanted to contact me but hadn't known how to - at the time I'd mentioned that I'd only included my postal address and phone number in every piece of software I'd ever released, and regularly posted to usenet with my email address. Now, of course, it's even easier. If you wanted to contact me directly, all you would have to do was get a whois lookup on the gerph.org domain - it's public information I've released. Actually, that's not my personal phone number, but it comes to me anyhow. The only person who's... oh, no, I lie... Two people have taken me up on published phone numbers that I remember - one of the people from Arcade BBS contacted me (I think they wanted to get hold of Chris Johns actually!) at Eddington, and Angela Rayner contacted me when I was at home.

I'm looking at a BMP I've got here, and I'm thinking to myself "why is that taking a long time to process". I know that to view the BMP there's a lot of messing around that goes on - in particular it converts the image a few times on the initial load. But I was thinking it shouldn't take that long - all it's doing to moving pixels around in memory. It's not like it's actually that difficult really. And then I noticed that the BMP in question is 7.3M. Yeah, 7.3M takes a little while to process. Admittedly less time than it takes to load the thing from disc, but still a little while. It'd be nice if it cached such images, but it's one of those times when you wonder whether the 9M that will be needed for the sprite as a cache is an acceptable amount of caching (because the BMP data is 24bpp and that needs expanding to 32bpp).

In theory, of course, if SpriteExtend could take arbitrary bitstreams, it could render direct to the screen. It's really not that hard to add that. However, the testing necessary to ensure that it's actually correct under all circumstances is so astoundingly painful. Off the top of my head there would be problems with running out of registers in the register allocator due to the split input buffer (a pixel may straddle multiple words in 24bpp), and that would need to be tested in the scale up, scale down, and identity scaling c