Monthly Archives: January 2007

Rush hour blues …

Posted on by

Had a great day today. Alan visited our offices and Talis and met many of my colleagues, he gave a couple of talks to the group during the course of the day which were both very well received. His energy never seizes to amaze me, in fact it can be quite infectious. His talks brought back a lot of great memories of the time we all worked together at aQtive.

After work today Amanda and I met up with some of her friends and went to watch Rush Hour Blues at the Symphony Hall in town. We caught the tail end of the show but it was very good. There’s another one next week which starts at 18:15pm which were really looking forward to watching. After the show we all ended up at Weatherspoons again and spent ages sitting around a table putting the world to rights, it was a really pleasant evening!

life is good again …

Posted on by

Back to normal … spent the evening strumming my guitar and playing my flute had an early night woke up feeling like my normal self … Sun was out this morning, was listening to Sam Cooke’s Its a wonderful world on the bus, and as I walked into the office Green Day’s American Idiot was blaring through my iPod headphones! Apparantly my taste in music is … eclectic!

the perfect evening … almost

Posted on by

Had a great evening last night. Met up with Amanda from work at Baccus, spent a couple of hours chatting waiting for her housemate Agnes and some friends to meet up with us so we could go to the Jam House to listen to some live Jazz music. Agnes arrived around 8ish and we met up with her friends at Weatherspoons where we had a quick bite to eat and trundled off to the Jam House.

It’s the first time I’ve been there and its a really nice place. Great atmosphere, great people and some really great live music! The band that was playing last night was really good, I wish I could tell you their name but I can’t remember it.

We all left around midnight, and it was actually snowing! Which was quite nice. ,Amanda, me and Agnes walked back towards the city centre and said our goodbyes near the library and I headed towards new street looking for a cab. Had been a wonderful evening up and until this point.

I wondered down New Street and decided to take one of the side streets down towards one of the taxi ranks under the Pallasades. It was at this point a guy in a hoodie walked towards me and asked me for the time. Now here’s a few tips for the uninitiated.

First off when a guy in a hoodie walks up to you in the middle of the night wanting to know the time DO NOT look down at your watch, because that’s when he’ll more thank likely attack you. It’s the oldest trick in the book. Simply tell him you dont know and try to move on. But maintain eye contact at all times. Don’t ever look away. If you can run away do it, unfortunately if your unsure of your footing (snow/ice) then running is probably a bad idea if you slip and fall then he’ll be standing over you and your going to get hurt. If he blocks your path then you need to make sure you remain calm and don’t panic.

If his hands are concealed inside his hoodie, theres always a risk that he might be armed. Statistically in this country he’s more likely to be carrying a knife than a gun – or he could just be bluffing. However it’s important for your own safety that you give yourself a few options.

Firstly cross your arms ( dont fold your arms ) just cross them over your stomach and chest. To a neutral observer this is a very non agressive stance. But it serves two purposes:

Firstly with your arms crossing your stomach and chest your protecting the two most likely targets should he have a knife. Trust me on this getting slashed across the arm or hand is far more preferable than the stomach, chest or throat. Also in this stance with your arms at your front your in a natural position to deflect, block and attack if need be.

Now whilst its ok for nations to pre-emptively strike other nations due to some President or Prime Minister’s wet dream, the society we live in does not afford individuals the same luxury. Self defence is only self defence if your actually attacked, you cannot be the instigator, because its a lot harder to prove.

Now if the guy walks away great, but if like this asshole last night he doesn’t and proceeds to attack you – always remember the shortest distance between you and your assailant is a straight line. For his hand to come out of the pocket of his hoodie and towards you it has to travel in an arc. At that point you step in and knee him in the groin. If you miss the groin or catch him in the stomach he’ll double over at which point place your right hand behind his head forcing it down as you bring your left knee up. When his face meets your knee you’ll either here a crunching sound which is his nose breaking or theres a good chance your knee will strike him in the mouth in which case he’ll be counting his teeth for a while.

In either event he wont be getting up in a hurry. Once he’s on the ground you need to step away. To strike him when he’s down doesn’t constitute self defence.

At this point you have two choices.

1) The civic minded amongst us will call the police report the incident wait for them to arrive arrest him and you, take you back to a station where you spend most of the night explaining how you weren’t the aggressor … whilst he’s trying to convince them you were. But the wonders of modern technology and CCTV in this country means if it happened in a town centre they’ll be able to corroborate your story relatively quickly … so as long as your honest you’ll be fine. By the way CCTV doesn’t prevent crime, it just helps the police prove a crime happened.
2) You leave the bastard lying there and go home, to a warm bed and get some sleep.

Now I know which of the two I choose to do last night, and which one I wish I had done, because I might actually have managed to get some sleep instead of being up all night. But to their credit the local constabulary are very thorough. So all’s well that end’s well. Or it would be if I wasn’t still pissed off.

Anyway I needed to blow off some steam … I think I need some coffee and to loose myself in some coding …

guilty until proven innocent …

Posted on by

Was catching up on news, when I came across a story that really troubles me. I was shocked to learn that during a radio interview the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Detainee Affairs, Charles “Cully” Stimson, stated that US Companies should boycott law firms that represent any of the detainees currently held in Guantanamo Bay, to quote him:

I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, those CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms

Stimson’s remarks deserve condemnation. Neal Sonnett the President of the American Judicature Society, a non-partisan group of judges and lawyers described Stimsons words as “shameful and irresponsible” he actually went on to say that what Stimson words were a “blatant attempt to intimidate lawyers and their firms who are rendering important public service in upholding the rule of law and our democratic ideals”.

Stimson is no stranger to controversy, he infamously stated last October that more than 300 prisoners currently detained at Guantanamo Bay could remain there under US Military detention for the rest of their lives. These are men who have never been tried or legally charged with a crime. Stimson discounted international outrage over the detentions as “small little protests around the world” that were inflated by liberal news agencies. It’s a fact that FBI Agents have documented more than two dozen incidents of mistreatment at Guantanamo – in fact in a December court ruling a federal judge in Washington decried the plight of “some of the unfortunate petitioners who have been detained for many years in terrible conditions at Guantanamo Bay”. Whenever I think of Guantanamo Bay I always recall the following words written by Dostoevsky :

“The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by entering its prisons”

The US government tells us that these men are guilty but won’t tell us why, and seemingly isnt willing to let these men be tried in civil courts in front of the world, legally. It’s shocking, though not surprising, that the man they have chosen to oversee detainee policy in Guantanamo would want to encourage legal firms’ corporate clients to pressure them not to defend these men. I would hazard a guess that most of us living in the US or the UK understand that legal representation of the accused is one of the core principles of any democracy – that your innocent until proven guilty. Professor Charles Fried of Harvard Law School recently rebuked Stimson:

It is the pride of a nation built on the rule of law that it affords to every man a zealous advocate to defend his rights in court, and of a liberal profession in such a nation that not only is the representation of the dishonorable honorable (and any lawyer is free to represent any person he chooses), but that it is the duty of the profession to make sure that every man has that representation.

The Pentagon has disavowed Stimson’s remarks, and the controversy surrounding his words resulted in him issuing an apology through the Washington Post. Yet the fact that he hasn’t been sacked speaks volumes about this administration and its conduct.

I remember how different the world around me felt immediately after 9/11. I’m sure It affected everyone. As uncertain a time as it was and as frightening nothing frightened me more than the first time I heard the phrase “The Patriot Act“. It was a piece of legislation signed into law by George Bush that expanded the authority of American law enforcement for the stated purpose of fighting terrorism even though it meant erroding a few civil liberties.

At the time it troubled me greatly that commentators and critics of this bill were branded unpatriotic, or branded as helping the terrorists. Six years on it would appear that the administration is still playing the same card, only now its turning its attention to the lawyers and others in the legal profession trying to provide these individuals with a defence they are entitled to under democratic law.

As I write this I find myself recalling and agreeing with the words of another famous writer, Oscar Wilde, when he said that:

patriotism is the virtue of the vicious

my bamboo flute …

Posted on by

Was hoping for a quiet saturday at home but I ended up having to attend a wake in Manchester, my father wasn’t feeling too well so he asked me to attend in his place so I travelled up there with a couple of my uncles. These occasions are always quite sombre and have a way of always making me reflect on things.

Anyway we got back to my parents place in Birmingham at around 10pm this evening and I finally got to open up a huge package that arrived for me the other day … Here’s a bit of background first …

For a while now I’ve been trying to find a bamboo flute. I wanted to find a side blown Shakuhachi flute, the side-blown are actually quite unusual and purists probably wouldn’t call them true Shakuhachi. I had also played a few chinese bamboo flutes, and if I’m honest the side-blow Shakuhachi is closer to the chinese instruments than it is to the Japanese. Unfortunately they are very difficult to get a hold of in the UK (impossible actually!) and you pretty much have to order them from the far east or the US. Now I order many goods over the internet, but never an instrument. So it took me a very long time to find someone I thought could actually make one for me … that’s when I found Tom Buchanan.

I learnt of Tom Buchanan through a load of reviews of his work on eBay. He had been making bamboo woodwind instruments for over twenty years. I initially contacted him seeking advice on where I could find the instrument I was after, and I saw a picture of 61″ bamboo flute staff that he makes. It was more like a Chinese instrument than the Japanese one I was looking for but that didn’t bother me too much, I knew I could play both.

When I started conversing with Tom about the instrument two things struck me, firstly unlike many of the other merchants I had spoken to Tom wasn’t trying to plug the price of the instrument. His first question to me was “why do you want it?…is it for orchestral play or purely meditative?“. My response was “meditative”, at which point he went to great lengths to explain the different tunings for the instrument and which he felt was more appropriate. He even went as far as sending me a series of sound files highlighting the difference in the sounds and asking me to choose which I preferred.

The second thing that struck me about Tom, was his passion. He sounded like someone who loved what he did. I guess at the point I reacted purely instinctively and decided to ask Tom to make me one. Tom explained that because I was in the UK he would have to custom make the staff, to a slightly shortened length of 58″ due to some shipping limit.

For the more technical amongst you I ordered custom made 58″ Bb Pentatonic Tranverse Bamboo Flute Staff. Tom also explained to me that there was a very good chance that this might be the last flute he ever makes due to various issues. When he told me he was going to make a special one … I tried not to get too excited … largely due to the fact that I felt a little trepidation … I’d just ordered an instrument from someone I didn’t really know based on … well … an instinct. There was certainly a part of me that felt a little weird about it all.

Anyway I kept in touch with Tom and he kept me updated on his progress. I must admit I was excited when he told me he had finally shipped it to me.

So … back to this evening … when I finally opened the package this evening I was … stunned, shocked and awed … in fact I still am.

The flute is beautiful. It’s fire hardened bamboo so the first thing I noticed when I unwrapped all the protective packaging was the smell. It’s like sweet, burning, wood, like a strong incense that is really intoxicating. I’ve been playing the instrument for about an hour trying to get used to its balance. The bindings are wonderfully made and the embouchure hole is slightly larger than I’m used to, so it’s taking a little bit of getting used to. But the sound is amazing! It’s so soothing, calming, it cuts right through you ! If you want to understand what I mean Heres a link to a sound file of Tom playing one of his flutes tuned to the same spec. I will upload a file of me playing mine soon.

Anyway here’s a pic of me playing mine taken on my Nokia N73 so please forgive the quality of the image, my digital camera is at my place, so I’ll probably post some better quality pics up when I get back to my place tomorrow.


click here for larger picture

I wish I could find the words to thank Tom for what he has created for me but I don’t know how to even begin, it’s exceeded any expectation I could possibly have had. Saying Thank You seems so inadequate! I will treasure it, Tom. Thank you so very very much!

Finally as I mentioned earlier Tom told me that this might be the last flute like this that he makes, consequently if you visit his eBay site you’ll notice that there aren’t any woodwind instruments listed on it at all anymore … and that saddens me greatly because I believe Tom is amazing!

I strongly urge anyone who is interested in a similar woodwind instrument to contact Tom through his eBay site and get his advice who knows if your lucky he might reconsider and make one for you!

As for me, right now, I couldn’t be happier!

Movie: Miss Potter

Posted on by

Had a tough day at work trying to get my head around RDF and Jena, but got what I wanted to do done! Felt a bit drained by the end of the day but hey its Friday so Amanda and I decided to catch a movie. We ended up watching Miss Potter. We actually laughed as we walked into the cinema to see all the chairs empty, we thought cool we can sit anywhere, but just as the film started four or five other people walked in ( no I didn’t throw popcorn at anyone … honest! )


Image source: Wikipedia

Even though I’m going to get labelled a guardian-reading-tree-hugging-liberal (or worse) by Sam, I’m gonna go ahead and admit that I really, really enjoyed the film. It was really wonderful, magical and extremely heart warming. It was tinged with a little sadness half way through but the film ended beautifully. Renee Zellweger’s performance as Beatrix Potter was excellent as was Ewan McGregor’s performance as her publisher. The location’s particularly in the Lake District and the Isle of Man were stunning. I loved the way they combined animation into many of the scenes.

I definitly recommend the movie!

Google enabled targetting of soldiers in Iraq

Posted on by

I got quite annoyed when I read this sensationalist rant against Google by written by Paul McNamara. McNamara bases much of his rant on quotes from this article over at the Telegraph. Basically he would have us believe that insurgents in Iraq are using two year old satellite photos on Google Earth to pinpoint their attacks against British bases in Basra.

Now I’m no military commander, but if your enemy can rely on two year old photos to plan attacks against you then shouldn’t alarm bells be ringing in your head about your own complacency? Am I the only one that thinks that it shouldn’t really be possible for insurgents to pinpoint attacks based on two year old pictures?

By their own admission the Military Intelligence (Oxymoron anyone?) state that:

We have never had proof that they have deliberately targeted any area of the camp using these images but presumably they are of great use to them.

I’m guessing a pair of binoculars and a current roadmap might actually be more useful to them. Unless the images were very recent they aren’t going to show the correct positions of tents, or ordinance or even buildings. I admit they might be useful in the wider context of planning to provide information about surrounding terrain but its not as though that information isn’t already available elsewhere.

McNamara’s opening salvo is hardly objective:

Sooner or later Google is going to have to start doing a better job of coming to grips with the collateral damage created by the ever-expanding array of wiz-bang applications that have made it a worldwide phenomenon.

There are always social implications for any new technology most people love Google Earth in fact there’s an entire sub-culture thats developed around people trying to identify buildings, boats, interesting bits of terrain etc. and posting what they have discovered up just visit here to see what I mean. Stating that by not censoring their service Google is somehow colluding with terrorists to kill soldiers is to my mind offensive, I’d agree with him if the images were real time or current but they aren’t. All this is, is scaremongering of the worst kind and I dont like it … in fact I find it quite distasteful.

C’mon the last time I tried to use Google Earth to look at my home there was a huge camper van parked outside it owned by one of the neighbours … but she sold it three years ago!

Anyway found this article over at The Register whilst its a tad irreverent it makes a great read, one of the individuals quoted (Brigadier Daya Ratnayake – Sri Lanka) makes an excellent point:

“In this era of technology, you have to live with the fact that almost everything is on the internet – from bomb-making instructions to assembling aircraft. So it’s something the military has to learn to live with and adapt.”

However what worries me the most is that doing a quick google for the search “google earth insurgents terrorists” leads me to a list of articles that regurgitate the kinds flawed views echoed by McNamara and fail to point out how woefully out of date the images are. Take this quote from Fox News’s coverage of the story:

The officer said he believes insurgents use Google Earth to identify the most vulnerable areas of bases, such as tents. The tool can get as detailed as showing specific vehicles in a desired region and has no limits to who can sign up and use it

What happened to journalistic integrity? or actually using common sense? I guess scaring the shit out of people sells newspapers a damn sight quicker than telling them the truth.

For those in any doubt here’s John Pike’s view on the issue over at GlobalSecurity.org:

“If I was going to be going through all the trouble to conduct a well-planned assault on a nuclear power plant, I’m not going to trust some Web site to do my intelligence collection, If evildoers were wanting to get imagery of say, a nuclear power plant, there’s simply so many different ways that they can do it, the fact that it’s available on an Internet Web site really doesn’t alter their attack planning requirements.”

You can also read this article written by Barry Levine which offers a more balanced view, in fact Paul I recommend that you do read it you might actually learn something useful to report back to your readers.

btw: heres Bruce Schneier’s take on it.

… "learning a new programming language is just about learning a new syntax"

Posted on by

It always grates on my nerves when I hear someone say that …because there’s a part of me that simply can’t bring myself to believe that it’s a true assertion. Rob and I discussed the point after he interviewed a candidate last week who had made this assertion, and asked me for my opinion. Ok the strength of my response does worry me a little, I’m not sure whether I’ve built a fence around this issue – that’s why I’m writing this to see if I’ve overlooked something. It’s certainly isn’t the first time I have heard this view expressed, in fact I’ve heard it a lot, and there’s a part of me that’s beginning to wonder whether there’s any validity to this assertion … so I’m hoping someone can tell me why it’s true. Me, I’m going to stick to my guns for now and try to explain why I think it’s wrong.

Here goes…

I think each language has its own philosophy, it’s reason for being different to every other language. Some languages were designed with a particular types of applications in mind for, example Fortran, which as a language was widely adopted by scientists for writing numerically intensive programs. Some languages are developed to be general purpose or universal enough to serve all purposes ( like Java for example ), whilst many languages try to be this, I don’t believe any really have.

The truth (ok as I see it ) is that there are many many programming languages out there and many more being developed. Some fall into disuse, others evolve or are extended to meet the ever changing needs of the communities that use them. Perhaps the need for this diversity arises from the diversity of contexts in which languages are used.

So I think you have to understand the contexts, and try to understand the reason why a particular programming language might be better suited for solving a problem than another, in order to do this I believe It’s important that you try to understand the philosophy behind that language. For me why is more important than how.

Yes, of course, you have to learn the syntax and the semantics of the language. But just understanding the syntax isn’t enough, you have to understand its nuisances, it’s idioms. Think of it as trying to teach a computer to speak a language. You can teach it correct grammar, but that doesn’t means the sentences it comes up with will make any sense … even though they’re grammatically correct.

As programmers we can be like that too, that’s why when we have a good understanding of a language and we move to using a different language we often fall into the trap of applying the idioms of the one to the other … or simply assume that we should be able to. A classic example of this is when a Java developer writes an object in C# and automatically starts writing public getter and setter accessor methods for each property he/she wishes to make accessible, when anyone who understands C# knows that whilst this works, C# has a completely different philosophy of how you expose Properties. It’s a crude example but I think it illustrates the point I’m trying to make, or at least I hope it does. In any case I believe the following is certainly true:

A language that doesn’t affect the way you think about programming is not worth knowing.

— Alan Perlis

Alan Perlis was the first ever recipient of the Turing Award in 1966, I often remember this quote because I recall how some of the students on my AI degree course used to complain that we had to learn way more languages than the students doing the normal Software Engineering degree. One of our Professors Aaron Sloman, used this quote to try to explain why it was important to be exposed to a wider range of languages better suited to the problems we were attempting to solve, and that this should change the way we think about programming. Anyway Perlis has written many often-quoted epigrams you can find some more here.