Battle Rat

How cool is this... Apparently a neural net has been built and trained to fly a fighter jet simulator. Fairly impressive in itself but in this case, the neural net is a living one, grown from rat brain cells. What next? Hamster tanks? The story is on The Register

Pear Shaped

The Lady Gray wine has been a bit crap on the fermentation front for some time, so I finally asserted myself and made a starter with some fruitjuice and fresh yeast, racked off the wine and added the ready-fermenting yeast. It's not exactly bursting out of the jar, but at least now we are starting to see some movement.

Over the weekend I also started a new brew, using tinned prunes and pears, which yields a nice, dark, rich smelling must. It's fermenting away in the bucket for now, so we'll see how that turns out...

For the Love of Quinn

The last few days have seen the explosion of a story about Home Secretary David Blunkett allegedly abusing his position on numerous counts from giving train tickets (at the taxpayers' expense) to his mistress to (and this is the potential showstopper) accelerating an application for a permanent visa. "Independent" investigations are under way.

The whole situation is summed up quite nicely in a Register article from yesterday.

It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Many Happy Returns

Over the weekend <3 and myself took a trip to Pembrokeshire, having been invited to an Arthurian banquet (with a middle-eastern theme bolted on) by an old friend. With some slight trepidation we made the drive across country on the Friday, which gave us most of Saturday in which to act as tourists before the banquet began.

Our tourism exploits basically involved a trip to St. David's, where a small town plays host to a mighty mediaeval cathedral and a partially ruined C14th bishop's palace. We also found an "Xmas Fayre", where fudge and alpaca wool scarves were sold and <3 was introduced to the charms of cawl (Welsh lamb and veg soup).

The banquet was 12 courses of awesome food from "Moorish Venison" to baklava, accompanied by a fantastically friendly welcome which wiped out any last traces of trepidation about our leap into the unknown.

Now there is talk of a Middle Earth banquet (spit roast hobbit, anyone?) in a few months' time. We're looking forward to it...

Fires and Faith

In a slightly surreal passage of our lives, <3 and I spent the evening of Hallowe'en at an Irish funeral. Tragically, the sister of a school friend of <3's died of cancer aged somewhere in her 30's, and as we were in the right country at the time, showing our support seemed the right thing to do.

The general form for Irish funerals is in two main parts: the funeral mass and burial and, generally the evening beforehand, the removal (which is what we attended). Both are usually public events and announced in the newspapers.

We arrived at the funeral home for the removal, which is basically the ritual of moving the body to the church in preparation for the burial. Before this takes place there is a recital of the Rosary (several times) and an opportunity for sympathisers to shake the hands of the bereaved family, which felt rather strange when only one member of the family had ever met me before.

From the funeral home was a procession behind the hearse for some 20 minutes, after which everyone got into cars in order to make faster progress to the church. This reinforced my view of the chimerical nature of Irish culture: devout prayer and Catholic observances, in the middle of which was a drive through the suburbs of a medium-sized town where every second street marked Hallowe'en/Samhain with raging pyres and illegal fireworks.

At the church was a short service to mark the end of this stage of the journey. One of my biggest beefs with high church in general, and Roman Catholicism in particular, is the fundamental obsession with sin and how we are all unworthy. It all seems too hung up on the bad things to realise how great life can be. Strangely, it was in this short service, marking as it was the sad and premature end of a life, that I saw more hope and optimism than I have seen in a long time. Sure, it all relies on the dogmatic "Believe in me and even though you die, you will live on", but for some reason it felt right.

Now if only people could learn to celebrate and treasure life while it is still there, perhaps we would live in a happier world.

Lady Gray and the Great Garage Clear-Out

We had a productive weekend, sorting out assorted domestic chores like mowing the lawn, trimming the hedge and clearing a load of junk out of the garage -- to be rewarded by finding a pair of unopened wedding presents. To be fair, these presents arrived late amongst a pile of stuff brought over from Ireland by the inlaws a few months back, and which we just hadn't got around to sorting through. A nice surprise there.

There is now also yet another batch of wine on its way -- made with Lady Gray tea and a pile of raisins (which apparently improves the end result almost as much as adding grape concentrate). This is currently going through first-stage fermentation in a bucket, which makes for great fun as a loud "THUD!" is periodically heard from upstairs when the lid blows its seal under the pressure of CO2.

It's a Tech's Life...

From a support request today...

The colour laser printer ... has developed a fault. It has said that it is low on black toner for some time, but yesterday it said that it was out of black toner and would not print at all. There is no sign of it being short of toner. I switched it off and back on again. It worked fine, even though it was complaining about being low on toner. This morning it stopped again, complaining of the same thing. After switching off and on again, it is again working, and there is no sign of there being any problem with the print quality. I think it is inevitable that this problem will recur soon.

Indeed. The solution? Replace the toner.

Walk Of Shame

This weekend was the second Cardiff "Bootie Camp", an informal spin-off from STACK UK's annual Boot Camp for aspiring sports kite flyers. I'm not aspiring to compete any time soon, but what little team/pair flying I have done, I have enjoyed greatly, so I persuaded I'll Wager to come along as my partner, and much fun was had -- particularly working on a kite ballet routine to Toccata by Sky, and the "stick precision" competition held due to the fact that the weather conditions were not good enough to fly in at the time.

An excellent weekend marred only by the loss of an item that meant a lot to me. It's more-or-less replaceable, but that particular one was treasured. Nuts.

Of Examinations and Fermentations

Quite a lot to report now...

1. My rosehip wine is now happily bubbling away in a demijohn. It was a pig to strain the fruit pulp from the must, and still a little got through, but it's settling OK and is showing the first signs of thinking about clearing.
2. On an unrelated matter, I had my OU exam this morning. It was a tough exam, with some of the questions on concurrency and OO design finding fuzzy points in my knowledge. I think I did OK, but I'm not confident I hit my target grade. It's possible though. As celebration after the exam I got back to a bit more winemaking...
3. The mead has been clearing and had developed a thick sediment, so I racked it off into a new jar, taking the opportunity to have a taste (not bad!) and try out my new hydrometer. The gravity I measured was pretty much bang on 1000, meaning the majority of the sugar is now alcohol. There's still some more fermentation to go – this is going to be a nice, dry mead, and should be worth drinking by Christmas.
4. I now have a gallon of Ribena wine on the go too (yes, Ribena – why not?). This looks like it should turn out to be a sweet (possibly too sweet -- next time use less sugar!) pink wine. Nice and different to the others I'm making up.
5. PS. Knock me down with a bubble, I got 93% in that last assignment. Just born lucky, I guess.

Assignment: Improbable

So yesterday evening I submitted my final assignment for this year's OU course, M301 Software Systems and Their Development. This course has a rep for being wrought from pure evil, which is not entirely unmerited, and this last assignment fit this profile perfectly. This was probably the most wide-ranging of the year's six assignments, covering cryptography, security, project management, ethics, and various aspects of the use of Java and UML, which made it tough enough, but there were quite a few flaws in the way the questions were worded, which made for some real ambiguities.

Anyway, it's finished and submitted on time, and to keep my grade average up all I need to score is 60% -- fingers crossed. Now it's time to start preparing for the exam, which is in a little over two weeks' time.

Rosehips

So I'd been eyeing up all those rose bushes near our house and watching these big, fat rosehips ripening nicely, and planning the next batch of wine, when some sod went and trimmed all the bushes, leaving naff-all fruit behind.

Luckily, after an hour's wander a little further afield, I'd got myself a bag of hips, only to realise that we were nearly out of sugar. D'oh!

Anyway, last night, after aquiring some more sugar, <3 and I chopped up our kilo of rosehips, stuck them in a bucket with sugar and boiling water, and stirred. The mix is currently being munched on by a dose of pectinol (hopefully breaking down the fruit and destroying pectin that could leave the end product cloudy), so this evening the yeast can go in for a couple of weeks of fermenting in the bucket.

The mead it still fermenting along nicely, after 2 weeks.

First Winemaking Steps

A couple of months ago, a friend convinced me of the worthiness of winemaking as a hobby, recommended a book (First Steps in Winemaking by CJJ Berry) and presented me with a couple of demijohns. The book cost less than a fiver, so I bought a copy and had a read -- it does a good job of explaining the basic theory, describing the essential equipment as well as the less essential but useful kit, and has many dozens of recipes for country wines, from nettle to elderberry. More recently, I decided to give it a go and ordered some equipment, yeast, sterilising powder, and so on from the excellent Art of Brewing, and last week I started my first brew. The first effort is a mead based on a recipe in Berry's book, with 3.5 lb of honey, and my little modification: I boiled some rosemary in with the honey and water, hopefully giving it a more interesting taste. Nearly a week later, we have a steady fermentation, and it's looking good. According to the recipe this should be drinkable by Christmas, which is extremely fast for a homebrew wine. We'll see... The plan is to raid some local rose bushes for rosehips with which to make my next batch -- slightly more advanced than the mead.

No Borderline

A little while ago we received the very kind gift of a Borders gift card. Unfortunately, this was made out in US dollars and marked as valid for all US Borders stores. We live in the UK so this is not much help.

Luckily, according to the card, the credit was also valid for purchases on Borders.com, so off I surfed to choose some books from "Borders teamed with Amazon.com". All well and good -- international delivery would be a bit slower and more expensive, but no problems.

When I got to the checkout and entered my gift voucher number and credit card details, I was told (by Amazon) that my voucher code only worked with Borders purchases. OK, so I went back and reselected my purchases, making sure that they came from Borders pages rather than Amazon (difficult to tell what was what), only to get the same error at the checkout. After another try I gave up.

Visiting our nearest Borders, in Oxford, we had a chat with a customer service guy, who said that at the moment US and UK Borders shops are effectively separate companies, and that Borders.com and Amazon.com are in the process of merging, with much website confusion in the meantime.

Luckily, the in-laws are off to the US soon, so they can make use of the voucher on our behalf. Ho hum...

When Animals Fight

It's amazing what lunchtime discussions at work lead to. Bob's Animal Fights will answer that perennial question of whether a giant panda could beat a mako shark in a fight, or how killer bees would fare against a hippopotamus.

Correction

Okay, I don't know what I'm talking about. SpaceShipOne's flight on Monday was not an X Prize attempt -- it didn't have the extra two-bods-worth of ballast. Apparently there was also a systems problem that needs fixing before the X Prize runs can happen. Still, even with a systems failure, the 100km target was reached, followed by a safe landing.

The Penultimate Frontier

Today was the day that SpaceShipOne, piloted by Mike Melvill completed its first flight outside the earth's atmosphere to become the first privately funded manned spacecraft. If the feat can be repeated within a fortnight, the X Prize can be claimed. This is one of the coolest (in a geeky sort of way) things I can remember happening -- and the spacecraft and launch vehicle look amazingly cool too.

It's interesting that this project was funded largely by Paul Allen, who seems to have devoted his life to using his money in a way that so many geeks would want to -- I understand he also footed the bill for a reproduction Babbage difference engine. Kudos, Paul.

Part of Europe

Today is "Super Thursday", when we have the European elections and a number of UK regional elections (though not near us). Four areas of the UK are trialling compulsory postal voting and putting the our democratic process in the hands of a company who failed to meet any of its targets over the last year. Ho hum.

I'm torn over my vote. I sympathise primarily with the LibDems (am generally pro-Europe, electoral reform, funding of public services, etc) but am strongly considering the Green party, largely due to their position against software patents, a massive blow against innovation getting ready to be struck.

Cookie Translation

<3 returned from a trip to a conference in Madrid yesterday, avoiding the delays due to the failure of a NATS computer, and bearing some delicious Spanish biscuits withe the brand Gamito. In the box came a slip of paper written in both Spanish and English, and here I am proud to reproduce, as accurately as I am able, the delightful English text...

INFORMATION TO CONSUMER You have adquired the traditional chritsmast's sweets, from Estepa (Seville), one of the typical spanish sweet. Their taste is exceptional. They are made of select natural ingredients: wheat's flour, sugar, Clyan's cinnamon, nuts, ...,. TASTING: Opress it with your hand.
Take off paper and eat it. Thank you for your election and bon appétit.

Postcards from Abu Ghraib

Strewth! The Register is reknowned for in-your-face tech journalism, a kind of Geek Tabloid, but it does stay focussed on technology, its applications, and the people involved. But now it seems their remit has been extended somewhat, as Thomas Greene delivers a vitriolic off-topic rant about US human rights abuses in Iraq.

Missing LINC

I finished Beneath a Steel Sky the other day, though I must admit to accepting a little help from my friends in the dieing scenes -- I can't believe I hadn't spotted those tongs! :o)

Biometrics in Someone Else's Words

A short column from last week's Private Eye (issue 1106), which impressed me (they don't publish online, so I've taken a liberty):

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE Ten questions for home secretary David Blunkett about his proposed new biometric identity cards.

If, as seems likely, fingerprints are the chosen biometric, how will they be read? At airports, fingerprint scanners are feasible; but what about at ferry ports and the channel tunnel? Imagine the queues if every car exiting every ferry has to disgorge its occupants who then have to queue to have their fingers read. And what about Eurostar trains?

How will a UK national biometric ID card scheme protect us against al Qaeda members travelling on, say, legitimate Algerian passports or members of the Real IRA with Irish passports? Biometric ID systems would have stopped neither the Twin Towers attacks nor the bombs in Madrid.

How will the home office establish an applicant's true identity before issuing a new, "foolproof" ID card?

If the answer to question 3) is "by showing an existing form of ID such as a passport", how will the home office avoid falling for existing bogus IDs?

Who is going to pay for this and where does the home office figure of £3.1bn come from? The answer to the first question is "you are" and to the second, "out of thin air".

Who will have access to the data stored on the card and, for that matter, what information will be stored?

What will people with no fingers do at border crossings or, if iris-scanning is used, what will people with glass eyes do?

The government has a pisspoor record on hi-tech forms of ID. Consider the ridiculous, two-part driving license. The only reason we have to have a sheet of paper as well as a card is pecause Whitehall, under previous management, was too stupid and parsimonious to do the job properly and incorporate the information on a magnetic strip. If the government finds the technology of a supermarket loyalty card daunting, what chance has it with complex and sophisticated biometric ID cards?

Will Crapita be involved?

'Boffin'

For the most part, "like what he said".

Beneath an Irish Sky

We returned from a trip to see the in-laws in Ireland yesterday. Just a short trip, long enough to unwind nicely in the countryside.

While over there I spend a while playing around on my laptop and got distracted from the more serious business of learning to program in Perl by Beneath a Steel Sky, an old graphical adventure game ported to run under Linux via SCUMM VM. This is quite an engaging little game, which I think I am approaching the end of. I worry that this endangers my credentials as someone who shies away from computer games more involved than Freecell or Shisen-Sho.

Management

Just so I could find it again, I wanted to safely stow a link to a great parody of Poe's The Raven supplied t'other day by a buddy I don't often see these days.

Patents and the Penguin

An interesting article on the tensions between open source software and patents was linked to from Slashdot today. An interesting analysis suggesting that even the allies of FOSS might eventually change their tune and brandish their patent portfolios offensively.

I think the likelihood of patent actions against members of the FOSS movement might be influenced by the outcome of the SCO fiasco which, while not based on patent issues, and based on seemingly dubious grounds, is pretty much a test for what happens when the proprietory world does battle with the free.

Swindon Kite Festival

At the Science Museum, Wroughton -- a good venue, former airfield.

Saturday: cold, wet, not much wind. Spent much of the time huddled in a hangar between aircraft exhibits, drinking coffee and eating pancakes. Good company with a great turnout from the M4 Kites crowd.

Sunday: started cold, wet and windless, turned sunny but still windless, then finally started raining again. Managed to do some flying in the minimal breeze though. Highlights of the day were the massive rok battle (which I didn't take part in due to a broken rokakku -- now fixed) and watching Kite Kids doing synchronised cascades in their ballet routine -- wow!

Rumsfeld Responsible?

This week news broke of abuses by American troops of Iraqi prisoners, with photographs and eye-witness accounts that were initially greeted with some skepticism, but later great concern. It seems that crimes against human rights have been systematically commited in Coalition-managed prisons in Iraq. The International Committee of the Red Cross have stated that they have known about this for some time and have been expressing concerns to the USA for some time, and have also grave concerns about the actions of British forces.

Donald Rumsfeld has testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee and apologised at length for these barbaric acts and, tellingly, said that they "occurred on my watch as secretary of defense. I am accountable for them and I take full responsibility."

Full responsibility for (alleged) torture, rape, murder and other horrific acts on prisoners? I doubt Rumsfeld will be held fully accountable.

A US commentator on Radio 4's PM program today said that the acts were unconscionable, but were still nothing compared to the atrocities committed in the name of Saddam Hussain. Surely, if this war is to be justified on moral grounds (as is currently the case), the behaviour of the Coalition forces must be cleaner than clean and nobody should defend themselves by saying that "at least we're not as bad as Saddam."

And what will happen if it turns out (as is looking increasingly likely) that British forces were complicit (or even active) in the abuse of prisoners?

Aθηνα

We got back from Athens yesterday on an EasyJet flight blessed with a senior cabin crewman who clearly had ambitions as a stand up comedian and had the English speaking passengers laughing through much of the flight.

Athens itself was OK, but not really my sort of place. Hotter than I like (even at this time of year), dirty and smelly. However the archaeological sites are spectacular (fascinating to see the buildings on the Acropolis in mid-reconstruction), the food is great, and they have a nice, shiny new metro system.

We spent a day on a cruise around three nearby islands: Poros, Hydra and Aegina. A great day out, benefiting from the fact that the captain of the cruise ship was the husband of a friend of our friend, F. This meant we were invited onto the bridge and generally looked after. We even met the unofficial deputy captain, who was a guy with what the captain described as "a problem", who was convinced that he was a qualified captain and pilot. The crew had adopted him as a kind of mascot and allowed him to give orders and press the button for the horn.

Another great highlight was watching the changing of the guard at the Ministry of Silly Walks, which is actually a really nice ritual, with a lot of reverence paid to the nearby monument to the unknown soldier.

Glad to be back though. I am one of the tiny minority of people who actually like the British climate.

News this morning of three explosions in Athens. <3 exchanged SMS with F, who says that the bombs are minor and not even getting news coverage in Greece. It seems the international community is getting jittery.

Ha! Finished MOTAS last night. 13 enjoyable levels, then it just stops. Looks like the author may continue at a later date.

Off to Athens tomorrow to visit <3's friend F, who is part of the Irish diplomatic staff there. Looking forward to it.

While poking around the web for info on Greece and the Greek language, I found WikiTravel, which is an open project to produce a worldwide travel guide. An interesting project with much work left to do, but an excellent start.

Today marks the another step towards the UK's National ID Card trial, with new government plans released and 10,000 guinea pigs getting ready to have their retinas scanned. Of course, verifying somebody's identity by storing the distance between their eyes is bound to curtail terrorism...

Passed on by a friend, a link to the Mystery of Time and Space game. A cute little adventure game -- I haven't given it much of a look yet, but suspect that once Real Life gets out of the way a bit, I might have to try solving it...

Aha! My first ever blog entry.

In common with most of the rest of the blogging world, I don't actually have anything to say, so I figure that's a good start.