Rhetoric

Syrian president Predicts an earthquake. Hmmmmmm

Maybe Mr al-Assad should remember Iraq's leader being hanged after the "Mother of all battles" or Muammar Gadaffi being "sodimised with a knife or a pole" before being shot in the head by a disgruntled citizen.
Despotic north african leaders seem to have a miserable record when it comes to their survivability after spouting warlike rhetoric.

The old saying that discretion is the better part of valour may be even more applicable in these interesting days.

Al-Assad... SHUT YOUR GOB AND GIVE UP!!!


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Sir Jimmy Saville

Respect.


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How odd that reviewing my blog I find this post. He fooled so many...

Gesture user interfaces

Many people "speak" with their hands using gesture to reinforce the context of what they are actually saying. Recent innovations such as the Kinect system from Microsoft could enable these gestures to be parsed and to provide user input. Generally, such gestures are subtle inputs which are directed at the peripheral vision of the observer, the listener in the conversation.

Recent moves toward more overt gestural input, such as drawing shapes in thin air or waving one's arms about in "Minority Report" style ate interesting in principle but will undoubtedly present problems for users with regard to repetitive strain injuries sustained from attempting to make precise control movements in a 3d input space.

I recently fitted a light in an awkward place and the strain of trying to do up small screws while reaching in front of me into a restricted space was considerable. This would effectively be the kind of input that a CAD operator might have to repeat while creating a precision drawing for some physical object in a 3d design space.

I think that gesture input will be most useful when used to reinforce the nuance of verbal commands, somewhat similar a to our own innate gesture recognition systems we use as humans every day.


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Hallo Norge.

Du representerer den nest hyppigste besøkende til bloggen min. Enda mer enn Amerika. Fortell meg hvorfor, la meg komme kommentarer.

Hello New-Zealand!

My blog stats are surprising because you guys seem to be the most avid readers of my external monologue. I'd love to know if its because my ideas appeal to your cultural senses or if you have a particularly high interest in the sort of technical posts I make or if you read my posts with that irresistable sense of horror, like someone who privately watches awfully embarrasing soaps or ABBA concerts behind closed doors.

I will admit that I am very much interested in the idea of coming to the antipodes to live and to work. I'm finding the northern hemisphere a bit strange at the moment. I have relatives in Australia and they all rave on about how wonderful life is down there. I know also that Australia is not New Zealand, don't think I'd confuse the two. Anyway, my Australian audience is way down my list of readers.

Please feel free to leave me a comment or two. Except that is if there's just one sad Kiwi stalking me by reading my blog hundreds of times a day...

Science is sexy again!

I can fully see why science program's with stuffy old professor types or middle aged spinsters were not high on the viewing lists. Hienz Wulf, Robert Winston; you can take 'em or leave 'em.

The latter day gurus however are a different proposition. My wife and teenage daughter will sit for hours apparently engrossed in a science program presented by Brian Cox and both my sons and I greatly appreciate a good education by the likes of Alice Roberts or Kate Humble.

I'm amazed that the concept took so long to take off..

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Shutting down a Metro app

Metro apps take up the whole screen. The ones in the examples have no menu and no way to shut them down. If they play stupid distracting music, they continue to play stupid distracting music even when they are in background mode. This makes the UI incredibly frustrating to use.

Why not respond to the Escape key?

If you need to close down a Metro app, for the moment you need to use the Alt-F4 key combination which, I must admit, I haven't used in about ten years!

I can see this being a long and painful road.

Case in point...

Look at this example of an application using the Metro UI:

There is no discernible indication that the "Pick feeds" text is actually active and invokes an action. The link actually brings up a set of podcast feeds but floating the mouse over what seems to be a title has the effect of an almost indistinguishable darkening of the colour. I suppose in reality that the choice of float-over colour was one made by the application designer but when moving to a totally new user interface model, there should be a rather more noticeable change.

I'm all for subtlety but there is a limit below which subtle becomes obtuse.

Metro has me gnashing my teeth

The developer preview of Windows 8 includes the Metro interface that mimics the touchscreen interface of the Windows Phone 7. I'm actually very pleased with Metro on my Samsung Omnia 7 phone and I actually prefer it as an interface to that of the iPhone however, the desktop equivalent seems to be absolutely horrible to use in a desktop environment.
The way that apps take over the screen is touted as a wonderful feature that enables one to give the app full concentration but when said app has no obvious escape route, the multitasking habits of the seasoned desktop user demand a little less insistence from the application and a wee bit more compliance. I have a touchscreen PC in my kitchen upon which I am tempted to install 8 and gather feedback from the all encompassing demographic of my very diverse family who will test it to death in every mode of utilization.


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My new desktop...

Windows 8 / Metro developer Preview

A bit of a radical change just to get Flash working but hey-ho...

Windows 8 Developer Preview

I haven't even booted it up yet and I am already annoyed. Why?

"Getting devices ready 56%" Getting devices ready????? Where the hell did you go to school?

They say first impressions count. I am in a continuing downward spiral of despair.

Flash sucks even more!

So now this miserable crap works some of the time. If I hit a page full of flash ads, the page loads, pauses for a few moments and continues showing the flash ads just fine. If I hit youtube or some other flash video page, the vid begins to load and then the little busy icon freezes and the page dies.

I've uninstalled all of Roslyn, all but a few of my apps, reinstalled Visual Studio and the service pack, uninstalled flash N times and reinstalled it, run registry cleaners and so-on and it still dies on me.

I've been (almost?) a week now with a partially functioning PC. I might just have to wipe it.. :-(

What I really want...

is a jailbroken iPad running Windows 8 and Metro. Mwwwhahahahaaaaaaa...

Nostalgia...

ain't what it used to be.

Kick 'em when they're down.

In response to Gary Stix's article in Scientific American http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-a-genius-yes-a-role-model-for-the-rest-of-us-no-way/

I say that it's a particularly brave thing to kick a chap in the nuts when he's so dead that he can't come back and smack you in the chops! Hey Gary.. What did you do to change the world today?

Steve Jobs is very newsworthy I'm sure but the use of his name for no other reason to get your miserable article published in a respected journal isn't really kosher. If you really want to have a go at Steve, borrow your cousin's boat and row across to see him!

Flash sucks!

I'm somewhat unhappy at the moment because last week I downloaded the Roslyn CTP to my PC which installed just fine. Trouble was I was using Visual Studio to develop some objects in my prototype SigmaBinder library to do probability calculations and Bayesian network calculations for the AI class. VS continued to work but my flash player now crashes all browsers that I tried it on. I struggled for a while watching the lessons on the Mac and trying the math on the PC but it was so frustrating that I decided to uninstall VS and everything that had been installed with Roslyn to no avail. No matter what I tried Flash still continues to crash and I can't reinstall it. I don't really want to reinstall Windows now as I have a couple of programs that I need and for which I have damaged the install disk. Anyway, the upshot of the story is that I missed the deadline on the AI class homework.

AI class AARRGGHH

Just doing the Bayes network part and the test for having cancer given that you get one positive and one negative result. It seems that actually doing a correct calculation is not good enough. Had I done a sloppy calculation and got his miserable result I would have got the question right.
I think if I was paying for this course I would be unhappy at the quality of it and indignant if their question marking during the quizzes had some bearing on my future as an applicant in the workplace.

Bushisms abound in the nucular age

I am watching a program in which Marcus De Sautoy, a bona-fide mathematician, is explaining the recent findings of the OPERA experiment. This program is produced by the BBC, THE bastion of correct English that has the task of protecting the English language against erosion by colonial pollution and teenage text-speak. As I listen I shudder in absolute horror as this supposedly learned man repeatedly speaks of "nucular" physics and the "nuculus" of atoms. He has less credibility than a brain dead Vally girl! I despise him!


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Roslyn arrives

Albeit in CTP form, Roslyn, the new Microsoft "Compiler As A Service" (CAAS) system is the first step towards the realisation of ideas from the tantalising talk that Anders Hjelsberg gave at PDC in 2008. This video is of Anders' talk on the future of C#. The video is one hour and ten minutes long and just the very last ten minutes (time code 58 minutes) talks of using the compiler as a service to dynamically generate executable assemblies at runtime using the compiler as a dynamic tool.

As you know, the process of developing code can be a laborious one with iterations which require constant feedback. You also probably know that code generation isn't new and has been with us for some time but until now, the possibility of an automated, iterative and self adjusting system of code generation has been almost impossible.

For a long time, dynamic code generation and even the principle of self modifying code has been a very touchy subject amongst programmers. To some it is complete anathema while to others it has been an excruciatingly difficult yet necessary task with tools that were not well suited to the job.

Roslyn aims to bring the techniques of automated code generation into the mainstream by providing a set of services that enable that develop and feedback cycle to become part of the running application process.

The first public iteration of Roslyn is available now from the CTP servers. It runs on Visual Studio 2010 and the length of time taken to bring this to the CTP stage, almost three years after the talk Anders gave in 2008 is a testament to the difficulty of getting this right.

Self rewiring electronics.

Oh, you mean like neurons?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-15351071

If data be the food of...

Well, everything really, then eat-on.

Historically, creating or capturing data has been a costly task because sensing, or reading or collating the information usually required expensive setup or large scale organisation or both. A network of weather stations for example is a logistical problem only available to huge rich organizations like governments. Trawling through written records of statistics was a lifetime task for not much usable data. Today however, things are really different. The sheer volume of data being generated and the ways to refer two or more seemingly disparate data sets to one another is becoming cheap and possible.
Phone privacy is a big issue today and people seem to have a fear of how data might be used against them. Recent revelations that the iPhone was collecting cell-tower positions was seen, rightly or wrongly, as an intrusion on a person's right to not expose their wherabouts.
I strongly believe however that the more data is available in all forms then the better life will become and the more the individual will be protected.
Telephones are being given more and more sensors. A temperature, pressure and humidity sensor on a large proportion of telephones would generate so much real-time data for weather prediction that the expensive networks of weather sensors we maintain today would simply not be needed and the sheer volume of data would open up huge possibilities for correlation of seemingly unrelated events with that information. Perhaps every mobile phone should be equipped with every type of sensor its possible to squeeze into the package. We could seed the environment with millions of cheap sensor packs by including them on the pages of magazines and even embed them in fast food packages.
More data would mean more anonymity, not less. Modern man needs to accept that his whereabouts are pretty much known all the time if he wants to participate in society. Those that don't wish to participate are often wierd anyway so society can probably do without them. Floods and floods of data would serve to make an individual's contribution far less interesting. Like the importance of one fish in a shoal of sardines.
As we generate more data, our lives will be affected by it to a greater and greater extent. It would be foolish to try to stop it because the benefits already far outweigh the inconvieniences.

Time travel

Might be relatively simple but would you want to go back a second in time and find yourself 240 miles above the earth or a minute and find yourself past the orbit of the moon or a million years and be floating alone in the depths of interstellar space? Time travel is probable. Calculating where you want to be when you get there is highly improbable.

AI class homework 1

I have no clue how but I got 82% correct even though I felt I had done badly. Ok, I suppose there must be a lot of 100%-ers out there but I don't feel bad about that.

AI class /again/

I hate the format of the AI class. The guy said its difficult so if you get a question wrong you can look at the explanation to the question. The dude waffles on with a complicated explanation of something or other and then the solution, which might be nice to look at and let sink in for a couple of seconds disappears at the same moment that his last pen stroke ends.
Perhaps if these guys applied some of their own intelligence principles to the presentation it'd be less frustrating and more educational and interesting!

Windows Homegroup Sharing

It's not often I get absolutely fuming mad with an application or some aspect of my IT setup but if anything is guaranteed to drive me to total flip-out mode its that ridiculous heap of steaming DUNG called Windows Homegroups.
I have a large house. It has four staircases to go up and down, there are computers in the bedrooms, in the workshops, installed in the infrastructure of the kitchen, even in the garden. The house is almost 400 square meters of floor space and the furthest computer in the network is about 50 yards away from the central hub so having one printer or one scanner is a pain. Hence we have the now tamed and subservient HP printer in the main living room, an epson inkjet in my workshop and an epson laser printer in the office.
The trouble is that one can go through all the required steps to erase and re-initialise homegroup membership on all the machines in the place and within a week there is one machine or another that can no longer access a printer or a scanner or connect to the media server. This means that to reinitialise one machine requires an almost complete reset of the whole system and so all the machines in the network.
Windows Homegroup utterly and completely SUCKS!!! In order to make it work, all the machines have to be on the same workgroup, ok, not difficult, and on a familiar network with all the clocks syncronised and then everyone within a one kilometer radius of your house has to put their left index finger in their right ear and stand on one leg in a bucket of icy water before you can print a blasted test page!
Once you comply with all this, one or other machine decides to invent a new network connection which throws the whole lot off kilter and you have to start again.
Microsoft. Get your bloody act together and sort out homegroups! This is for non-technical people to use and its too dammned complicated and unreliable.

Baelzebub.com

Check out Baelzebub.com. The Evil Search Engine. Whatever you type in it always finds the most evil or wicked results.
As the internet is made of cats and fluffy bunnies I tried those first..
Its all just good clean fun.

Dennis Ritchie

It seems like this is a bad time for groundbreaking computer pioneers. Maybe its a mark of maturity for the industry that the people that effectively invented our business and the way we use our machines are dying. Dennis Ritchie was a brilliant fellow who literally wrote the book on modern programming. I still have a copy of K&R on my bookshelves, right alongside my copy of Stroustrup's book on C++ and they are both still referenced from time to time..
As someone in his fifties, I've worked in the industry from it's infancy. I went from learning about valve radios and televisions from the context of a TV repair engineer because there were still many vacuum tube TVs in the mid 70's, to designing discrete transistor amplifiers and creating computers with 4004 and 8080 processors.
I guess that we'll see the great names of the computer industry pass away more often now. I really wonder if there are any new names that will create as much change in the future or whether the next generations of those will be like the Zuckerbergs of this world who have merely used the tools of others to create an idea that captures the imagination of a chunk of society. Ok, so he's rich but his fame is a crass celebrity style recognition of the same type as that of someone like Madonna or Lady Gaga. I don't suppose I'll have any copies of Mark Zuckerbergs books on my shelves alongside the others that have had true value for so many years.

Up!

DSL back on again! Its not fibre optic but at almost 8mbps its waaay better than it was before considering i'm out in the countryside far from the nearest DSLAM.

AI class at Stanford

I signed up for the Stanford AI class and got notification that the class has started and the first videos are available. Well, this might be so but one would have thought that a proper AI system would be able to see that there are many requests from iPad users and re-encode the video so that flash isn't required.



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Steve Jobs

I think that in the history of computing there can only be a handful that have had as much influence as Steve Jobs. I just can't think who they might be at the moment.