28 Jun 2006 (Wednesday) 

It's 3:30. The decision last week to stop doing stuff at midnight has been met with an astounding lack of any sort of obeyance. I'm not sure if that's even an English sentence, but I'm not going to let it bother me. And my continued intention to write some Words ("Words") (yeah, I'm playing at David Chess - incidentally, he's got a little magic box on his log that people feed stuff to and he's published some of the recorded bits... he has the best readers) hasn't seen fruition yet. I thought I had some today but they evaporated before I could do anything about them.

Anyhow, it's far later than I wanted, and I've got to return to debugging some code which appears to work once and on the second run fails inexplicably, and which I've become increasingly frustrated at tonight. Clearly I'm doing something wrong, but the diagnostics from the 'working' and the 'failing' versions are identical. Which implies that I'm doing something unexpectedly wrong. Grr.

Grendel's at the vets tomorrow for an x-ray. I hope he's going to be ok. I know he's been very annoyed this evening 'cos he can't eat.

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27 Jun 2006 (Tuesday) 

After I posted Angela's roof thing yesterday, a friend mentioned that they'd just seen the appeal in town. Spooky ? Well...

The thing is that I don't believe that coincidences just happen. Just the chance of them happening - like that sort of thing - is just so low that unless someone gives things a nudge it shouldn't happen. And yet, based on much much evidence, they do. And on same evidence, the coincidences are not being nudged by people. So... what am I to think ? If I don't believe that such coincidences 'just happen', and I know that people didn't nudge them into happening, then what's that mean ? That something other than 'people' nudged them into happening ? Is that what you'd call a god ? Or should I go the other way and just say "hey, it's a coincidence..."

I don't like letting go of that belief. Really, I don't, because... well, it's like a fundamental thing that says that unlikely things don't happen and that's what coincidences are. And yes, I know there's a whole lot more to it, but if the alternatives are that I believe in some higher power, or I disbelieve statistics, it seems that it's a pretty big choice and not one that I can decide on. Not that I'm all that good on decisions anyhow.

Very odd though.

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26 Jun 2006 (Monday) 

Actually, this is not so much a diary entry as a chance to do a little bit of good through the fact that this is published. Don't like using the diary to publicise things, or as a place where I ask anything of the people (if any) who read this, but what the hell...

Angela Rayner, a friend from years ago (and sister to Helen, who I've sadly not spoken to in ages) is going to be sleeping up on the roof of a church in order to raise money to have it fixed. Presumably it is just leaking and not actually unsafe to be up there . Now I say that, of course, if anything happens to them then I'll feel awful... Anyhow... She's trying to raise money and she'd like donations for this. If you, whatever strange entity you happen to be that is reading this, feel that you want to support the cause, there's a nice little way to give some money.

So there you go. Not often that I ask much, but I at least that you have a look.

Hi Howard! We've heard so much about you... of course we didn't believe it... [ Heard so much about you...; Cherry Bombs; Howard The Duck ]

Well, yes, Howard The Duck... Hmm. Definitely comes into the category of 'so bad it's good'. Is it as fun as it was first time around ? Well, since I would have been... um... 8 when I saw it first, I think it's a fair length of time to leave between viewings. It's not bad like, say, 'He man' was bad. It's certainly fun. And it's got Lea Thompson in, which is a bonus. But an hour and a half of that because I wanted to watch it ? That's not quite believable. Oh well; I enjoyed it, so that's ok then.

This time, It's looking like another misplaced rendezvous, With you, [ Misplaced Rendezvous, from Misplaced Childhood, by Marillion ]

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25 Jun 2006 (Sunday) 

I thought I'd updated the SlimServer so that when I list the albums by artists they come out in year order, rather than alphabetic. I've done it, but there's some problems with the SQL request it generates being invalid - because it generates a ORDER BY on a column which isn't in the result set, we end up with results that aren't sorted properly. I've stuck in a nasty fix for now, but it's now ideal. Oh well.

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22 Jun 2006 (Thursday) 

Here's my heart, feel the power Look at me, I'm a flower [ Without A Woman, from Zucchero And Co, by Zucchero ]

I think it's quite a cute line, but more so, the way that it's sung is quite open and fun.

Someone asked of the diary today what I was working on that I keep referring to. Just work. Stuff that pays me. I'm intentionally non-specific sometimes because I don't want people to know exactly what I'm doing, etc. As it goes, work is not really important to me. "It's just a job I do". Over the past few days I've been in another of those "oh good god, why am I having anything to do with computers" moods. It's difficult to find many redeeming features out of the current climate in the computing world. Or at least that's how it seems.

I've just been reading back one of the stories I wrote before Christmas. It's not too bad. Made me laugh and with a few corrections might be presentable. I've got another 4 to write at least, but that one seems ok.

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21 Jun 2006 (Wednesday) 

Someone mentioned about a cunning method of reversing the bits in a byte using a number of multiplies and binary operations. Quite cunning, but it got me thinking whether the multiplies and ops would be faster than the brute force TST, ORR method. Dunno. Not really caring all that much, but I did think of a way to reduce that method from 16 instructions to 12 by swapping bits if they differ.

On discovering that the laptop is on battery power, the first thing to check is whether the power lead is connected. This should certainly be before removing the battery.

It seems that flex versions after 2.5.29 absolutely require m4 to be available. That's a bit of a pain. Oh well.

Opera 9's now out of Beta. It claims that 'all your settings will be retained'. What's the betting it lies. No, it seems ok, apart from the evil ctrl-N being 'new window'. Fortunately that's easy to fix.

Oh. Very cute feature in Opera is that of blocking images from specified sites. Which is handy for getting rid of stupid adverts, but better than that (because I don't see many adverts anyhow) it can be used to get rid of the bloody stupid signature images that everyone sticks on their last.fm postings.

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20 Jun 2006 (Tuesday) 

And the lord spake his commandment, lest his people not understand the grave implications: "Thou shalt not write to struct hostents thou hast been returned by thy resolver." And the lord did add "but you wouldn't do that, would you ?"

Today I've been playing with LibPCap and TCPDump. Which has been quite fun and... well, a change from other things recently. Although, in the process I seem to have broken flex, which is more than a little annoying as it was working fine, I rebuilt it with a couple of fixes and now it's not even slightly working fine. I'll fix it tomorrow when I'm less dazed.

Doing other things has kind of taken my mind off the things that were bothering me, and I'm really tired now so I'm thinking I'll try to sleep.

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19 Jun 2006 (Monday) 

Today's just been nasty. Lots of things that leave me just wondering what I'm doing. Couple of bug fixes, that's all. Right now I don't really want to write much.

I'm not even sure what I want to listen to right now.

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18 Jun 2006 (Sunday) 

I've had to come away from Sports Night. Jeremy's just told Natalie (his ex-girlfriend) that Jenny (his current girlfriend) is a choreo-animator, and I just couldn't watch the results...

A name cropped up in the searches that hit my site which I haven't seen in a long time... 'kozzey'. Very strange...

Whenever I have some words to say, I seem to lose them before I get to a terminal to say thing to. Is that really the case ? Or, as I'm starting to think, is it that the act of being at the computer makes me lose those words. And why did I just change the word 'believe' to 'think'. 'Believe' would have been perfectly good, but no, I have to go change it...

In any case, the only bit of my words that actually seem to be in a row in my head now are 'every particle of my being is telling me that...' and after that it trails off into feelings and thoughts that I just can't seem to get real words from. Maybe I'll just write those things tomorrow. You know, I could justify just taking a day to not work and trying to just get those words into focus... only I won't because that's not me...

What else has today offered us... well, I made dad a card. We watched Doctor Who. I think that's about it. Except for the putting off of writing the words. I think... I've started too many sentences with 'I think', particularly when I'm not sure what I think. But it's quite possible that I've managed to talk more about not saying things than I've said anything. Partly because I don't know what it is that I'm wanting to say.

And I'm almost convinced that I'm going to say 'and I'll be back with more words that are not at all about Caroline after this...'. Oh I did. Need sleep.

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17 Jun 2006 (Saturday) 

I have words and I mean to say them. I just don't know when I'll say them. Or if they'll come out right. But there are words; of that you can be sure. So many words.

Speaking of words I had this lovely sentence in the shower this morning. I've forgotten it. I think I've forgotten a lot of other stuff today as well and I ... I was going to say that I don't know what it was but that's kind of self-evident by it being forgotten.

I said to mum that I thought it'd be colder tonight because the curtains were blowing, like the pressure was changing a bit, so maybe a little more air movement. Only it's now roasting in here and I'm clearly wrong.

But anyhow, the words in the shower, if I can hold a train of thought for more than a single paragraph were something along the lines of "And what would I say, do you think ? Would I be angry ? sad ? frustrated ? guilty ? happy ? optimistic ? pessimistic ? confused ? The problem is that it would be all those things, all at once, in a huge mess." Which isn't quite right because it sounded a whole lot better in the shower. Of course, many things do. Just as many things you think at night seem a whole lot more sensible than they would during the day.

Only it's not the night. It's day. It's well into day. I don't mean now. Now it's very much night. Much later and it will be getting ready to seriously launch into morning, but right now it's night and it wasn't the now that I was talking about. That was something else and it was smack in the middle of what normal people call day. To use a phrase that comes up rather a lot; that's got to mean something.

I was wondering, as you do when you're watching telly, what exactly I'd do if I ever managed to finish a thought. Like, without getting distracted. I think sometimes I let myself get distracted. Not consciously, but I can see there might be reason for that. To take an example, I came away from watching the telly a little while back and had some lovely words to write - not the ones that are here, because those words made sense, where as these barely have the right grammar - and instead I went and cleaned my teeth. Now I know I forget things, even though I think I forget that at times, so did I go clean my teeth because I wanted to not write those words ? Or was it just that I was passing the bathroom and unless I do something right then I know I'll forget...

I wonder if treating me as something I have to understand, just like everything else and unless I do, I can't do anything else... I wonder if that might not be a bad thing. I think, in writing that I have my own answer.

Chris has an exam on Wednesday. And then I'm hoping he'll go and visit a friend. I don't know if she wants to see him, but I think he should. I'm not sure that he thinks he should, but ... who knows where that sentence was going. I'm sure I had some justification. But it's gone.

Too many unfinished sentences are 'you know what I want...' and they're not all angry or accusatory; most are just statements. They've become a filler; a way to express something that I guess I don't say. I think that I should try saying the end of them sometimes. Really try.

This random collection of thoughts was brought to you in association with something or other that you really don't care about. Todays letters were I and G, and the colour was blue.

Oh, and I fixed a number of very complicated bugs and added some very cute things which under normal circumstances I'd strut up and down and whitter about for an age, because they're just that neat... only they just don't seem all that important right now - so much so that I'd forgotten about them until right now.

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16 Jun 2006 (Friday) 

FreeCell game 27681 may be the simplest I've done. I'm quite tired tonight, so I'll suffice to say that I've had a quite enjoyable evening fixing documentation, and thanks to Ian it's looking pretty good now. And trying to fix a bug that someone has reported to me has meant much more defensive code added to things... which has been no help at all and the bug remains. Gah.

I found myself asking mum what the date was earlier, 'cos I'd completely forgotten it. Gah. I have things to do tomorrow that I've not been able to do because of checking this documentation. Damn, damn, damn.

I only make jokes to distract myself From the truth, from the truth. [ Distractions, from Simple Things, by Zero 7 ]

I'm quite annoyed this evening. I made some lovely changes to things to do some nice safety checks, and everything was working just fine. Then I added support for internationalisation, and everything was just fine. And then I turned off debug, and it all went to hell. I have no idea how it's managed to end up so bust, but... well, things are no longer working with debug off. And work fine with debug on. It's a mystery. Not as much as the mystery bug that I added the safety checks to try to find (but which didn't), but still a mystery. Maybe tomorrow it'll make more sense.

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15 Jun 2006 (Thursday) 

Don't think there's all that much to say about today. Apparently mum thought that her interview was pretty good, so that's quite reassuring. It's now 2am, and mum got in half an hour ago, having said she'd be home at about midnight. Only half an hour later than I guessed she'd be home. And I've finished watching the first season of Sports Night.

They say that I'm crazy, I'm out of my mind, Searching for something I'll never find. Don't call me a loser, Call me a rebel. [ Rebel, from Rebel, by John Miles ]

Oh, and I've got no nails left today, feel mildly bad over something still, and I've got this odd feeling that there's something about 'who's to say that's the right thing to do ?' which should be a question I ask myself more often...

I think my hair could do with being trimmed a little. It's looking distinctly wispy and Doc Brown-like . Bah. I remember a time when it floated in front of my eyes and annoyed the hell out of me. I guess I miss that. Bah.

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14 Jun 2006 (Wednesday) 

Somehow I've managed to end up feeling mildly bad for not replying to something. Or not doing something... Or... something... I think it's... well...

I think, sometimes, that it's probably best that I say nothing rather than something. Claire's right that I manage to say the wrong things. I sometimes know I'm doing it. Why ? Is it wrong to say things just so that there's something being said ? Oh, I've wondered about that for so long. But it's late and there's never anything useful that comes out of late night whitterings.

I do wish that rather than wondering 'what's it mean...' I could just say 'oh, that's nice'...

I noticed yesterday that I had a robot called 192.comAgent going through my site. Not particularly interesting, but my whois information is available and 192.com do name-to-address lookups so is this an extension they're doing ? You gave this person's name and relative location... here's their home address, telephone number, people they've lived with, directorships, website, email address, number of children, and the price they paid for their house... Ok, so I made up the last few, but they're all relatively easy to find. And then there's the more normal things like credit checks and CCJ checks, whic hare probably pretty easy to tie together. I'm not sure where I'm going with this line of thought, 'cos these are all things that people do already...

You should never make the mistake of thinking "yeah, I've paid for that", because it's not true. Some things you never stop paying for, however much you've paid and however long has passed.

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13 Jun 2006 (Tuesday) 

Seems like I hadn't uploaded the diary since the start of the month, and hadn't even noticed - it's only when I got an comment about an earlier entry today that I even bothered to check. Oh well. Not a huge deal.

It's just a ride, it's just a ride no need to run, no need to hide It'll take you round and round Sometimes you're up sometimes you're down [ Just A Ride, from Finally Woken, by Jem ]

Not a lot to say about today. I've been very busy finishing off this new module (and the fact that it is now a module is part of that). It's all hooked together with the rest of the system reasonably well. There's a few bugs still to be ironed out which mean that we don't actually render what we've been given, but I think the logic of the whole thing is right so it's probably just stupid little typos or something. Well, I hope so anyhow.

What else today ? Nothing much. Got a 'comment about the diary' from a couple of people, which was nice.

Watched another couple of episodes of Sports Night, too. Quite fun.

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12 Jun 2006 (Monday) 

Today, I've re-written a component from scratch that has been bugging me for a very long time. It's not complete, but it's getting closer now. There's one or two complicated things still to fix up - like interfacing it to the rest of the world rather than just being a simple stand-alone program, but it's looking pretty neat so far.

I finally got around to watching some more of Sports Night tonight. One episode stretched out into four . Very cool.

Catch a falling star, you'll go far In the pageant of the bizarre And tonight I give you my heart [ The Pageant Of The Bizarre, from The Garden, by Zero 7 ]

It's slowly growing on me is 'The Garden'. First listen really didn't grab be, but it definitely has something about it to come back to.

Well, I've just written a whole load of code to hook my new bits into the right places. I've not even thought about compiling it, and I'm bound to have missed loads of little subtleties, but it's just too hot to do anything more tonight really. I had some very cool ideas on doing something else that was quite cute earlier, but I've not really had the energy to pursue. Plus I've been working solidly on finishing this other component as well and I don't want to be too distracted.

Must remember to get fan down from attic.

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11 Jun 2006 (Sunday) 

On the SlimDevices forums a few days ago there was a post from someone asking about the ways of handling multiple albums with the same name. Today, I noticed that they'd posted follow ups about using ID3v1.1 only because of 'Legacy software'. My immediate thought was... "hmm... they're using RISC OS" partly because they posted under the name 'Squirrel' and partly because... well, there's only ID3v1.1 taggers for RISC OS. Imagine my surprise (ok, not much) and amusement (actually quite a bit) when a quick check showed that it was indeed Glenn Richards, who goes by the name Squirrel.

It's too hot to be in my room at the moment, so I'm sitting in the living room, using the laptop. I've just been programming the universal remote with the controls for the squeezebox. I thought it'd be quite hard, but actually it's been pretty simple - and was made a little easier by the server software supporting a JVC DVD remote by default. All I had to do initially was tell the universal remote to be a JVC DVD remote and I had loads of buttons already programmed . Makes life much nicer.

I thought I'd try out 'Moose' to see what it's like. It's a separate program for displaying the MP3 database held on the SlimServer, and controlling it from there - effectively making the access to the server much faster. Which is quite a cute idea. It looks ok, and does seem to be able to do what it claims - albeit by requiring a copy of the SQLite database on the local system.

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10 Jun 2006 (Saturday) 

The night was dark, but the stars shone brightly. There was no sound - no music, no words. We danced and held one another close. We were just happy to be there.

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9 Jun 2006 (Friday) 

One of the main things that I have been thinking about today is how sore my shoulder is. Not in a constant way, 'cos that would be silly, but whenever I move it I am reminded that it hurts. I'm pretty sure I must have slept on it badly; it just hurts to move beyond certain positions. I'm hopeful it'll go away tomorrow.

Because my arm's been sore and so I've not felt like doing complicated things (yeah, it's not much of an excuse), I've been updating some little timing libraries. Actually, now I'm thinking about it, that was only a tiny bit of the day. Most of it was fixing a frustrating slow down that was making things 10 times slower than they ought to be. That took most of the day. The other time working that wasn't doing the timing things (although it was obviously related 'cos I was still having to time things) was in optimising a particular code path that was very slow, related to the section I'd already fixed. That's just one of those things that whilst you're looking at the code you see performance problems, you confirm that what you thought you would see really is the case, and then you jump up and down on it like a mad baboon until the performance is more acceptable. And because you're nearby already, the changes are pretty easy to make.

So that particular section is now 13 times faster than it was - which is actually very noticeable in those limited circumstances that it is used. Quite neat really.

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8 Jun 2006 (Thursday) 

Too tired for anything more than a brief entry tonight. Dreaming last night had many things in it, but one of which was moving through amphitheatres for lectures, or conferences or something, and someone stealing my bag, and someone else killing a person, only everyone thought it was me that'd killed them.

And this afternoon we had an accident when we were out driving.

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7 Jun 2006 (Wednesday) 

I've waited far too long For something I forgot was wrong I don't know all the answers [ Until I Fall Away, from New Miserable Experience, by Gin Blossoms ]

One of these days I intend to do something worthwhile.

Oh, and don't play chicken with nettles. They always win.

It's between 24 and 28 in here tonight. Too hot.

I woke up this morning from a dream where I had bugs crawling over my chest. Little tiny green bugs. And I couldn't brush them off. And all day I've been thinking that I've got bugs on my chest. Urgh.

Also today I wondered if some words need to be said. That, unless they are said, they just go around and around and around and around until they drive you mad. I think it could be said that I've been a little crazy in recent time. So would letting the words out be a good thing ? Even though there so many reasons not to ? Or - as I presume is the case - are they just words that do no good out ?

I don't know. I've got this thing with Lucy on Saturday. I'm really not bothered about going, but it seems that I am.

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4 Jun 2006 (Sunday) 

I tried ordering some DVDs from SVP today (as I do when I run out). The SVP ordering page was fine, once I remembered my password. Confirming the order, though, took me to a HSBC webpage to enter my card details. Ok, I think, so I give the details, having checked that it actually does look sensible. I click the continue button and get back a HSBC page, with an embedded Barclays page for 'Verified by Visa'. So I have to enter my password for them. Into the Barclays page. That's in the HSBC page. Which I got to because I'm buying from SVP. Two distinct passwords, three different groups, and no real indication at any point of what information was being passed between the groups.

It strikes me that this merely encourages the 'oh, I'll enter the details again' attitude which is so dangerous. And, of course, if there's something wrong, who exactly is to blame ?

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3 Jun 2006 (Saturday) 

What else today ? A few bug fixes, a few little bits of new documentation and then I was fed up and decide to play with Doom for a bit, trying to make sure it's all rebuilt and works and stuff.

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2 Jun 2006 (Friday) 

Not sure what to say about today. Lots of stuff written and edited. Lots of time testing stuff to make sure it's right. And I don't feel good about myself for the day.

One of the more bizarre things that floated across my attention today was that the 'national arbitration forum' have an open mind about the existance of extraterrestrial felines. Ok, so that's a little bit of an exaggeration, but still...

Morgan Stanley complained that the domain 'mymorganstanleyplatinum.com' had been registered by someone and they wanted it back. The 'someone' in question being Baroness Penelope Cat of Nash DCB. From their findings...

Respondent maintains that it is a cat, that is, a well-known carnivorous quadruped which has long been domesticated. However, it is equally well-known that the common cat, whose scientific name is Felis domesticus, cannot speak or read or write. Thus, a common cat could not have submitted the Response (or even have registered the disputed domain name). Therefore, either Respondent is a different species of cat, such as the one that stars in the motion picture "Cat From Outer Space," or Respondent's assertion regarding its being a cat is incorrect. If Respondent is in fact a cat from outer space, then it should have so indicated in its reply, in order to avoid unnecessary perplexity by the Panel. Further, it should have explained why a cat from outer space would allow Mr. Woods to use the disputed domain name. In the absence of such an explanation, the Panel must conclude that, if Respondent is a cat from outer space, then it may have something to hide, and this is indicative of bad faith behavior. [...] The Panel finds that Respondent's assertions that it is a cat provide sufficient evidence to conclude that the Respondent registered and is using the disputed domain name in bad faith. And this despite the fact that the Panel, unlike Queen Victoria, is amused. [ Cat acting in bad faith; National Arbitration Forum ]

The full details aren't quite as amusing, but it is... odd .

Is it an all time low when I'm playing Freecell because when I can actually finish it I get a sense of achievement ?

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1 Jun 2006 (Thursday) 

Well, Half Life 2: Episode One was finally available at about 6pm today - 6pm BST, not 6pm GMT as it stated on the website. I'm guessing that someone got their timezone conversions wrong. Oh well. I've done a few bits of documentation since then, and had tea, and done little bits of documentation between loading time (which was much less than I remember) and it's not 1am. There was a big white flash and I was just thinking "what's next, we're nearly out of the City..." and that was it... "oh. That's it ?"

So... Uh, well, that's that. I'll no doubt play it through again with the commentary.

Remind me again... where's the 'genuine advantage' to me in being pestered repeatedly to upgrade Windows ? and when I do, where's the advantage in being pestered repeatedly to reboot ? and all because Microsoft want to be really sure that I'm not using a pirate version of Windows. I can see it's an advantage to them, but to me it's an irritance, and to claim it as being a 'genuine advantage' when it offers NO advantage and three different ways to be irritated (upgrade reminders, reboot reminders, and the actual need to reboot in the first place), seems - to me anyhow - to be more offensive than anything else.

Having finished HL2: E1 now, I can return to the joys of documentation. Actually I've got quite a few real things queued up that need doing - actual code changes - so I need to do them pretty soon too, so that they can be tested. Oh the pain of that.

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