Persuasive Shopping

Went up town today. Didn't spend much, but managed to persuade number one son to buy "Kill Bill" on DVD. I only really wanted it for a photographic joke (which you can see on my Spoke site) but I might steel myself and watch it. I'm not usually that bothered about films with buckets of blood and gore, but I hate Casualty (a medical soap). I think this is because obviously unreal stuff is fine, but if it starts to look a bit likely, I'm much less keen on seeing it.

And my fence is falling down down. A couple of years ago it fell down completely and I had all the wooden posts replaced with concrete ones, except one. Now that remaining wooden one has rotted at the base (just like they always do) and one end of my fence is leaning drunkenly. Fortunately my neighbour is much better at fence management than I am, and so I've attached the wobbly fence to his post instead. Last time around he used my post, and so I think that my honour is safe on this one.

 

Project Marking Friday

Spent today marking project reports. The students have to write a big thick report for their final year project, and I have 7 or so to wade through. I quite like reading them, there is some good stuff in there.

Then home, to work on my little Smartphone program, which is playing up at the moment (or perhaps I'm trying to be too ambitious). You can read about the fun I'm having/not having on my Spoke blog.

 

Double Blogging and Rice Wine

This is all rather a strain. I'm having to have an existence twice as interesting as before so that I can fill in my blog here at the homestead, and also have something to write in "The Spoke". Fortunately I can rise to this, being a naturally interesting type of person.

Got a present from one of my students yesterday. Thanks Jie (I hope that is your first name). I gave her one of our limited edition T shirts in exchange. I try to keep something in stock for such eventualities. It is nice to be appreciated. I gave her some help with her Java and also wrote a few references for her. And now I have a bottle of sake to drink. I tried some tonight. The flavour is interesting and the effect is nicely impressive. Slept very well as a result. I'm going to try some more tomorrow....

 

Hard Disk Drives

Amazing things hard disk drives. Millions of bytes of information stored on little platters of aluminum covered with a fine coating of magnetic material. A tiny head floating a fraction of a millimeter above the surface, reading minute pulses of electricity which are then converted into data. Or something like that.

Anyhoo, today my hard disk started being less than amazing. It began on Monday, when I was surprised to find that my office machine had spontaneously rebooted without being asked. It started up OK, but today I needed something off drive F. Windows XP goes into denial, "What drive F? I don't know no drive F, never seen one guv". A quick twiddle with the hardware and drive F reappears, but in a vestigial, ghostly kind of way which means that my machine crashes every half an hour or so and makes interesting combine harvester type noises in when I access files. Ho hum. Off to stores for a new hard drive. Manage to slave the new hard drive off the old ones and so copy all the files off the failing disk and onto its replacement. Of course, I didn't need to do this because I have backups of everything - but then again you never know.

A couple of weeks back I was quite horrid to Andy when his hard disk crashed. I did the most evil, nasty thing you can do to someone in that position. I told him "Never mind, you can always recover the material from your backups......". Cue much muttering and moaning, followed by an admission that the backups were not quite as up to date as they might be....

I'm kind of careful about my backups. And I move work between my home and office machine in a way which means it would be unlikely that I'd lose more than a day or so's worth of work. People who know me say that this would not be a huge amount anyway.

The best backup story I can recall is the one about another Andy. He was very concerned about hard disk failure and so created a mirrored system. This uses two hard disks instead of one. Everything is written twice, so that if one disk fails the information can be recovered from the other one. Andy was very proud of his system, and boasted that he would never lose data. Then somebody stole his computer out of the lab......

 

Tree Surgeons

I've been pondering as to why they are called "tree surgeons" I mean, I'm sure trees are pretty complicated and need the right kind of care, but surgeons? My car is not looked after by a "car surgeon". Perhaps somewhere they have tree hospitals with casualties and cries of "Stat and Prep, we're losing a lot of sap here, it doesn't look as if this pine's going to make it...." Meanwhile, in a side ward "My willow just won't stop weeping...".

Enough already, I've figured it out. Originally they were called "woodcutters", but all that bad press with Hansel and Gretel kind of devalued the profession. So they started calling themselves "lumberjacks", but a certain M. Python devalued that even more. So now they've allied themselves with the medical profession in the hope that this will sort things out.

I wonder if I dare call myself a "software surgeon"?

 

Back to work, and then off into space

Back to work today. Had a nice long break and now it is back to the coal face. Everybody is very pleased that Hull students have done so well in the Imagine Cup. Again.

I've started toying with a new blogging thingy which looks very neat. It is called "The Spoke" and it is a kind of blog/community thing which looks like fun. I'm going to try double blogging for a while and see how it goes. You can read my spoke stuff (which can get a bit technical folks) here .

But don't worry. There will still be the same mix of stupid and profound back here at the homestead, including consideration of such questions like "Where did people pick their noses before traffic lights were invented?".

Number one son bought "Firefly" on DVD today. It is a tale of a bunch of misfits and their flight through space pursued by an evil empire and meeting up with all kinds of strange, alien races on the way. Not a bit like Blakes 7. Or Farscape. Oh no. But it is good though. It has been given a wild west feel which works surprisingly well. And they all use revolvers to settle disputes. Number one son reckons that, since a gun will kill just as effectively in 500 years time they might have stuck with them. I don't agree, I'd rather have my 1,000 shot raygun against any six shooter. In the pilot show someone made a remark about now being able to terraform any planet or moon into just how you want it, and then go and live there. If that really is the case, I'd set my sights a bit higher than the "Nevada desert" that we saw last night. But it made the fight scenes look just like a western, only with slightly better gunsights.

Of course the saddest aspect of Firefly is how it was treated by the evil empire which is the Fox TV network. After a promising start it was shuffled around the schedules and then canceled after only 14 episodes. Perhaps it was seen by the execs as some kind of payback for Joss Whedon (who created it) for the success he had with Buffy and Angel. The good news is that at least we have the episodes which were made, and there is talk of a film, but it is rather sad that something with genuine ambition and promise should be pulled after such a short run. If you get the chance to see it, I'd recommend it. We are going to have to ration them there episodes.....

 

Tennis and More Villain Spotting

While I was at Oxford in the Imagine Cup Finals I had a chance to play a new XBOX game, Top Spin Tennis. I have very fond memories of this, mainly because I managed to beat Cro at it quite comprehensively. He couldn't figure out why, and neither could I. However, when I got back to Hull I searched out a second hand copy of the game (never buy new games folks) and challenged number one son to a session, hoping that my Imagine Cup magic would work again. Of course, he trashed me in a contemptuous kind of way and then wandered off muttering that I wasn't much of a challenge. However, never one to give up (unless I really can't do something of course) I've persevered with the game. Today me and dad spent a happy hour or so trying to beat each other. We tried doubles against the computer and got walloped, but playing doubles with a computer aided genius partner was quite fun.

If you like tennis (or even if you don't) I can recommend the game. Up until now you could have counted the number of good computer tennis games on the fingers of one leg, but this one is very impressive. You really do feel in control of the player and what he does. I'm presently masterminding the progression of my tennis doppleganger up through the rankings (number 73 in the world folks) and enjoying it very much.

Then, in the evening we watched "What Lies Beneath", a scary film, on telly. And I guessed who the baddy was again! If only I was as good at this in real life......