The Lair

I watched the much anticipated Human Footprint on Channel 4 last night. Although watching TV might not sound like much of a sacrifice, I did give up the Catherine Tate Show and Roman’s Empire (and even Graham Norton!) so there was a nontrivial amount of interest there.

In summary, it was the average number of things we (and I get the impression that this meant Britons, since some of the statistics explicitly made mention of the demographic) do in our lifetimes. The average number of times people have sex (4000 odd, which seemed low. Even more so considering how marriage rates are plummetting). The average volume of tears shed in our lifetime (120 liters? Really?). The average number of words spoken in our lifetime (123 million? Hmm.) and so on.

All accompanied by some wonderful imagery - the number of apples we eat in our lifetime was illustrated by a gigantic apple made up of … apples. In a slightly more squeamish twist (not if you chuckle at toilet humour), the loo roll use and crap we emit illustration was as graphic. The number of times people have sex was illustrated by condoms hanging from a tree and so on. It was faux art, I suppose - but my inner Philistine can’t tell the difference anyway so I found it all rather cool.

One thought did occur to me though - and it’s a thought that I’ve been pondering (in a different context) for a couple of days. Everything was expressed as averages - presumably an estimated arithmetic mean. As interesting, although perhaps significantly more difficult to gather, I would have liked to see the median in there too.

There is a simple reason for this desire. It is in fact explained in the median link above - but I recently saw a more entertaining explanation which I intend to reproduce via paraphrase (can’t remember where I saw it though).

Imagine that Bill Gates walked into a bar full of penniless, jobless, hobos. Suddenly the average (arithmetic mean) earnings of every person in the bar jumps into the giddy millions - but this does not represent “a real number”. The median calculates the probability distribution instead - so the influx of one high number does not skew all the remaining low numbers in the distribution.

The arithmetic mean would have one believe that the earnings potential of everyone in the bar jumps into the millions when Bill Gates (an outlying anomaly) walks into bar. The median provides a more realistic picture. Knowing as much as I do about statistics, I would guesstimate (ha!) that calculating the median based on a small sample size is much harder though.

And in a brief and unrelated footnote, Twitter has an awesome easy-to-use API (I wrote a PHP messaging API for Ach in literally half an hour) - but no means of keeping contacts private. Jaiku has a horrible API in comparison, but they do offer privacy for contacts. In other words, neither of the two services provides me with exactly what I need for my next step in wurld dominayshun. Curses! The Loverlord is not happy.

Yes, grammarians, that missing apostrophe is intentional. Sue me. Don’t come here looking for good quality humour, I aim for ultra cheap and irritatingly frequent instead of occasional and classy.

Recently switched back to Pidgin (IM not confused with Gaim, honest) and I’ve discovered it’s not so bad after all. This is because my expectations are based on the not-updated-in-3-years-or-more Trillian, which makes me pretty easy to please. Randomly: use Gtk+ themes on Windows. They make Gaim look tons better. Almost not-ugly. I may have plugged the themes before, but it’s worth another reminder. The themes have made me almost-forget my cringing uglier-than-rhino-ass reaction to the Gaim UI…

Also had an almost-migration (yay for randomly and inappropriately hyphenating-words) from Twitter to Jaiku - only to discover that Jaiku doesn’t support IM notifications. A brief moment of panic - a reasonably well configured IM client, like an email client and newreader, can helps carve up the whole information overload into bite sized chunks. Fortunately, I discovered the intriguing Anothr - which promises to send RSS feeds as notifications to an IM client.

The whole idea is so simple that I wonder why people haven’t thought of it before - there is a cutesy syntax for adding, querying and removing feeds. In some ways, this reminds of an AIM bot I wrote ages ago (thanks to Net::AIM, I actually did very little of the actual code) for monitoring servers. Except this is for feeds, works on across multiple mediums and is probably less buggy than my concoction, but whatever.

I still like the Twitter API better though. But in the face of overwhelming peer pressure (or not), I have caved and become a jaikunaut. I mean, hey - facebook, last.fm, flickr, twitter, jaiku. How many accounts can one have before it all becomes too much? Oh, by the way - I need one of these too.

Shock discovery, Firefox can consume a lot of CPU, even when not doing very much. Mine was being a touch greedy and worse, the entire machine would judder to a halt at times for no apparent reason so enough was enough.

So, installed NoScript. And it all went away. The only major irritant is having to whitelist so many sites and allow them to execute JavaScript again but at least I have my machine back to normal. And Firefox even leaks less memory now which is a definite bonus.

And yes, more cricket… Bob Woolmer killed by snake venom? Honestly, these professional hitmen these days have no class. What happened to snipers from rooftops or a silenced pistol? It’s all taken a very regrettable and eastern mystic turn - perhaps an indication that nobody involved in the investigation has a clue. The words flashlight, ass, map, directions and both hands come to mind.

Then again, this story about the snake toxin was revealed by the Daily Mail. *curls lip in disdain*. There could be a story about aliens killing Woolmer tomorrow, for all we know. More interestingly, the Woolmer story has gotten less and less attention as the tournament progressed.

And er. not entirely out of place - SuicideFood. Vegetarians need not apply.

I may have mentioned this before but it’s worth a repeat - actually, no - nothing is worth a repeat but I can’t be bothered searching to see if I’ve said it before, so there. The peccavi pun. Punnery in a furrin langwidge. Those be the best sort.

But in other, mostly mundane news - I have caved and gotten myself a real (for certain values of reality) Facebook account. I’ve already discovered a slightly closer degree of separation to folk than I feel really comfortable with and the same basic problem with all social networking sites resurfaces. Umm, specifically - WTF does one actually do on Facebook? Ok, stalking random folk - I get that. Ogling pictures uploaded by people with a tenuous grasp of the concept privacy settings - I get that too. But thereafter? Um. Don’t geddit.

I’m trying out a new writing schedule which means I’m not online much. It also means that my score on Desktop TD keeps improving but my wordcount isn’t climbing as fast. Regrettable state of affairs, that. And thus - in lieu of real content (No one really wants to hear my ramblings on linguistics, do they?), a few links will have to do, I’m afraid.

GMail Greasemonkey scripts - compiled into one extension. Clearly, if you spend your time hanging about del.icio or digg or some place like that, you’re probably cursing me already for perpetuating this link. Awww. Anyway, some of the scripts are irritating, others less so. Can’t really say I use Gmail features enough to justify installation, but what the heck.

And in one of the most surreal pieces of lunacy yet, head for Australia and be settled in America instead. No, really. This is supposed to be a deterrent, apparently.

So I was watching Neneh and Andi last night (100 clove garlic chicken looked yum, by the way) and I heard a reference to “chicken fat pills” and their positive effect in uh… increasing the size of various parts of the butty. And I don’t mean chicken breast or the irrepressible chickenbutt either.

So, I set about uncovering the facts behind this chicken fat pill. Not err.. for myself, you understand. Manbewbs not being the most attractive of things and being positively hideous on someone of my skinny proportions. Purely out of scientific interests, yeah. And I discovered this link from well nigh 7 years ago.

Chicken fat pills. Ick. And you thought the cod liver oil capsule that your mother guilted you into taking (or was that just me? maybe) was bad.

And apropos of nothing, some Gootubey goodness.

And in other news, I have unearthed pictures of a Fools Gold Loaf. Damn, but that looks mighty foine. Deadly though. My arteries are constricting in sympathy even before the first bite is savoured… but still fine. And obviously enough, I look forward to making my own version - only with chillie paste and possibly sliced habanero peppers in place of the grape jelly.

And I couldn’t resist taking a dab at this.

So Charles Simonyi is in space. Old news, I know. It took me till today to realize that the person in orbit right now isn’t Charles Petzold. Somehow I managed to mix up the two based on the fact that they’re both connected with Microsoft and named Charles. Silly.

This is a pity because I was about to write fondly of the two editions of “Programming Windows” which are Petzold’s enduring legacy to programming and still occupy shelf space on my programming bookcase. Authoritative, dense and probably not for the faint of heart. None of the MFC junk in the earlier editions, it was all C. I haven’t programmed seriously for Windows since … oh, before Windows 2000 was released but they’re still useful for the occasional API reference. Long since superseded by other books on the shelf though.

But no, this isn’t Petzold in orbit. Wrong Charles. Instead, Simonyi the space tourist invented Hungarian notation. Charles Petzold (the other Charles) made it popular by using the notation extensively in his books.

I can’t remember how many times I’ve muttered that the guy who invented this piece of crap (meaning, Hungarian notation) had his head in the clouds. Now it seems that I was being prophetic. I was also wrong.

According to Joel Spolsky, Simonyi invented Apps Hungarian - a concept with which I agree and still use in other languages. Apps Hungarian notation uses mnemonics to indicate the semantics of a variable. That is to say, the intent. Systems Hungarian on the other hand, uses mnemonics to indicate the type. I hate Systems Hungarian with a passion. Guess which form of Hungarian notation is more prevalent in industry? Yeah. Not the good sort.

Charles, noooo! Get outta my head, Charles!.

There is a proposal underway for a Blogger Code of Conduct. No, really. Someone actually wants to do this. The phrasing in that code of conduct is camp enough to have come from a local blogging celeb or the astroturfing commune.

The highlowlights:
We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog: Responsibility for my own words on this blog? Fine. Responsibility for comments? Oh hell no. I may or may not endorse every comment on this blog (I’ve disagreed with a few people via comments on their blog and I’d extend someone the same courtesy here), but responsibility? No. Just no way. I have enough trouble being responsible for my own words and actions, never mind what someone else might choose to type in here.

There is a beautiful definition of unacceptable content there which annoys me more. For example, “knowingly false”. WTF? Blog authors need to become mind readers? Maybe we need a lie detector now.

And there is also the escape chute which says we reserve the right to change these standards at any time. Then why bother? I police (for want of a better word) my blog in my own way. Perhaps I already apply these standards. Why do I need a code of conduct and a badge in that case?

Read the rest of this entry »

Bangladesh do a number on the Saffers. Sorry, I shouldn’t be generalizing but the words one dimensional and bullies seem fairly accurate to describe the South Africans so I can’t say I’m altogether unhappy. Not entirely dissimilar to West Ham doing a number on Arsenal. Said it before, say it again - the Gunners play nice football and I will always be a fan but their ability to be sunk at the death by lower rated and lesser teams is … depressing and all too familiar. If it’s not Zamora, then it’s Marlon Harewood. If it’s not Harewood, it will be someone like Kevin Nolan or Anelka. Or Benni McCarthy. I could go on and name more names but this is getting worse than depressing.

Of as much importance, Pompey shocked Manyoo. You stupid Mancunian gits. This had better not cost you the title, by gawd.

Right. Sporting bile dispensed with. I’m not even sparing a thought for the Masters that I was watching this weekend because meh. Tiger lost.

The taboo quiz via Robhu.

I found it fascinating - sufficiently so to be its own post rather than a mere snippet. The incest question brought out my inner prude but I’m reasonably content with the depiction.

Your Moralising Quotient is: 0.29
Your Interference Factor is: 0.25
Your Universalising Factor is: 0.50

You know, this result highlights a disturbing trend. For once, I’d like to be something a bit more extreme than centrist. Apparently my views are utterly middle of the graph, both in politics and in morals. An unkind soul could even whisper “average” and I’d agree. I’d probably add “undecided” to that list.

I play a few games online. There is the notorious mind-crack that is Desktop TD and I also play on Battle.Net - the Blizzard Entertainment online servers.

I used to think that I’d grow out of this gaming business when I got older. I also thought I’d become more responsible, I’d have lots more money and that I’d know what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. 0 out of 4. Well, not exactly 0, but fuzzy ideas and half formed plans do not a definite course of action promote. Oh and I also thought that I’d be more active (in a sporting sense) and inexplicably, that I might actually go back to wearing contact lenses or get lasik done. Nope, none of those have happened yet either. I also thought I’d be eating healthier food. Let’s not even go there.

So, clearly - this gaming business is here to stay for a while. In the old days, I could hop across to the US West or US East servers and be guaranteed a game. I play at weird hours anyway, so hopping to servers in earlier (or later) timezones is a surefire bet to get team mates who are relatively ok. And lest anyone think my standards are high, I mean team mates who are not drunk, not high on some other possibly illegal substance, not bored out of their minds and fewer “omg my mom is gonna kill me, I gotta go” incidents. And especially not team mates who are entertaining their girlfriends while attempting to play a computer game. Or even worse, their cat. Yes, all of those have happened.

With the advent of a nifty little program called WC3Banlist, there is more geographic location based discrimination on the servers nowadays. On a US server, but have an Euro IP? kicked. On a Euro server but have a Russian IP? kicked again. There is a sound principle behind this, of course - it’s unrealistic to expect some random Anzac dude to play well on an European server - but I happen to know that my connection is decent. Unfortunately, with the IP being what it is, I am embargoed in Europe, mostly. Which is ok. Europe isn’t the best server, but there are decent players.

But then, most of the games on European servers are hosted by people who don’t necessarily speak English. Umm. yeah. Problem.

Fortunately, Germans are common in the euro battle net server. Now, other languages I can’t handle - but the terse few phrases that are required to communicate with team mates in German? That, I can do. All except for one word. Occasionally, I’d have someone use the word nap as an adjective and I’d be all confused. Nap? He is nap? What does that mean? Obviously, rather than betray my n00bishness online (a no-no), I’d keep my trap shut and play anyway.

Today, I remembered the wonderful resource that is urban dictionary. Nap, defined. The third definition. Ooooh. Right. And here I was thinking that it stood for Notorious Ass Pirate. How embarassing.

So I wanted to burn an ISO image onto a CD today. My ancient notebook can do this - only I haven’t needed to do more than backup of random files for quite some time. It runs Windows. So I tried to figure out how to burn ISO images in Windows, without requiring expensive software or messing around trying to swipe some software.

Windows can burn CDs, but ISO images? Nope.

After a few helpful suggestions and lots of muttering, I found the ISO recorder power toy which allows precisely this task.

Burnt the images, did the backup job I wanted and now I was curious. Windows really can’t burn ISO images natively? That sounds strange. So I did a bit of investigating and downloaded a real CD burning thingamajig. The first thing it asked was - would you like to burn this image onto DVD media?

And that was how I discovered that the notebook actually posesses a DVD burner - not just a CD-R/RW burner as I had thought for err. almost two years. So, for two years I moaned about not being able to burn DVDs without plugging in an external drive and it turns out I had a burner on the notebook all this time? Of course it’s now pitifully slow and quite likely not of much use. *sigh*

If anyone wants me, I’ll be in that queue over there - waiting to hand in my geek card. kthxbai.

I think the botanical name is Capsicum frutescens but I could be mistaken on this. Google isn’t being very helpful.

Feel the burn, people.

Oh and if you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you’re well out of it.