rob.rho.org.uk

Aim High

2012-03-05T21:35:46+00:00

In the light of the Raspberry Pi project’s attempt to reintroduce kids to the idea that a computer is something you program, I thought I’d share with you something from my own childhood. Specifically, a book:

Unlike more modern children’s books, it doesn’t state a target age, but I believe it’s aimed at junior school children¹. As you can see, it’s illustrated by with lots of little cartoon robots acting out the various operations that occur in a computer. And it teaches you machine code.

I can imagine some readers reaching for their pedantic hats. “This man is a fool,” they’re thinking, “who clearly doesn’t know what ‘machine code’ is. He obviously means ‘assembly language’.”

Au contraire².

You see, in the mid-eighties, computers weren’t quite so impressively specced as they are today. Unless you had the Rolls Royce of home computers, the BBC Micro³, you wouldn’t have had the luxury of an assembler. You had a BASIC interpreter, and you considered yourself lucky. The book provides a listing for you to type in. This isn’t an assembler, of course: it’s just a program that allows you to type in bytes, in hex, to be poked into consecutive locations in memory. Once you’ve learnt hex on page 11, of course.

In 48 uncrowded, extensively illustrated pages, it goes from explaining things like binary and the difference between RAM and ROM, through addressing modes and registers, to writing real (if simple) machine code programs. In two different architectures, on half a dozen mutually incompatible computers. This is an impressive scope for such a slim book, made even more ambitious when you consider it’s aimed at children.

The important message is that this level of depth doesn’t scare kids off; instead, they lap it up (some of them, at least). By all means provide simpler material for those without the time, inclination or ability to tackle the complicated stuff. Just make sure you provide something challenging to keep the interest of those who can.

I think I picked up this copy at a library sale when I was ten or eleven, but I could be out a year or two either side.↩
A fool, no. Pretentious, possibly.↩
Or it’s younger sibling, the Acorn Electron, which was a cheaper, cut-down version for those who weren’t rich enough to afford a BBC Micro, but weren’t cool enough to own a Spectrum. Guess what I had. (Actually, it was a fantastic machine that managed to get the vast majority of the features of the Beeb into a more affordable package for the home market.)↩

Raspberry Pi Launched

2012-02-29T14:54:39+00:00

Today saw the official launch of the Raspberry Pi low-cost computer. Although there have been a couple of hiccups due to the distributors not expecting the phenomenal levels of demand¹, it’s still a big day for the project, and a testament to the months and years of the hard (and unpaid) work of everyone at the Raspberry Pi Foundation².

However, it’s worth remembering that the project is not about cheap computers for hobbyists (although that’s a useful side-effect); it’s about giving kids the tools with which to learn to program. To that end, here’s a video from the BBC’s Rory Cellan-Jones (who has also written a great article about the launch):

Personally, I don’t think these teething troubles are a big deal, given the level of interest in such a small organisation. What has irked me somewhat is the level of vitriol directed at the Foundation. This has ranged from the merely thoughtless to the utterly vile, with occasional racist and homophobic language tossed in for good measure. It smacks of both a lack of respect and a sense of entitlement that would be comical of they weren’t so deeply unpleasant. Liz has been handling this with more patience and good grace than I think I would have been able to muster in the circumstances.↩
I don’t have any formal connection to the Foundation myself; I’m just an enthusiastic supporter.↩

Of Gardens and Sandboxes

2011-11-04T18:34:00+00:00

Yesterday, Matthew Bloch, MD of Bytemark Hosting¹, tweeted:

next stop: no installations on your own computer from outside the walled garden. A free desktop is much more important.

He was referring to Apple’s announcement that they’ll soon be requiring all apps sold via the Mac App Store to implement sandboxing. Broadly speaking, this strictly limits what an individual app could do once installed - for example, it can’t access files outside it’s own area without going through the standard save and restore dialogs. Mac OS X’s younger sibling, iOS, has had even stricter sandboxing in place since it first allowed third-party applications. It also has another property, namely that the App Store is the only way to install applications under iOS. Matthew’s worry is that Apple’s adoption of one iOS policy (sandboxing) on the Mac suggests that they’re likely to adopt another, and forbid installation of non-App Store apps.

Personally, I think the two are separate issues. Sandboxing is a sensible policy in its own right. It’s a key component of the success of the iOS App Store - the fact that you don’t need to worry about the developer’s incompetence or malice before downloading that 69p impulse buy. Relatively few applications actually need to do things that sandboxing prevents, like alter system settings. For the rest, sandboxing allows the ease-of-use and convenience that iOS users have grown used to.

It’s not like sandboxing is even a new idea. Not only did Java applets (remember those?) give it a go in the late 90s, but Mac OS X’s own version has a lineage stretching back to chroot jails, introduced to Unix in 1979. The idea that every program a user runs has to be able to do anything that that user is not an absolute, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with a user choosing to restrict the facilities available to specific programs. All modern systems do this to an extent, by restricting root privileges to programs explicitly granted them. Sandboxing could be thought of as simply a more fine-grained version of the same idea.

Restricting installation to only the official App Store, on the other hand, represents a significant break from the current status quo. At present, if I want to install a random piece of software from some shady corner of the internet on my Mac, I am free to do so, and live with the consequences. Channelling all installations through the App Store (and Apple’s somewhat mercurial review process) doesn’t give me this option. For many users, who just want to get work done, and don’t want to worry about maintaining their computer, this might be a reasonable trade-off, but for others (such as myself), it is not. However, it’s important to remember that this isn’t an all-or-nothing distinction. For example, I’d want Galcon Fusion to be sandboxed, but still build Emacs myself. If I lose the option of installing arbitrary software, though, the range of things I could do on Mac OS as opposed to another system would be severely curtailed. I don’t think there’s much risk of this happening, for two reasons.

Firstly, the people that such a move would alienate - developers, designers, and those who see themselves as power users - are the sort of people who are willing to pay a premium for high-end hardware. Whilst not as numerous as general consumers, this group must still be a significant source of profit for Apple, and so they’d need a good reason to abandon them. Furthermore, many of these users are the very people who keep the App Store stocked with high-quality products. Driving them away would, in my opinion, be a significant own goal.

Secondly, and more importantly, why do they need to? Apple already sell a walled-garden OS for people who want it, and the devices that use it sell pretty much as fast as Apple can manufacture them. They don’t need to sneak a walled garden in via the back door, because they’ve already kicked down the front. My expectation is that Mac OS will be increasingly seen as a “Pro” platform, and iOS as the way for general consumers. This is arguably no bad thing, as it allows people to use computers for what they actually want to do without having to worry about servicing and maintaining them (I touched on this in a previous post). As John Gruber points out the Mac/iOS division allows Apple to cater for those of us who want the flexibility offered by a general purpose system, whilst not burdening everyone with the attendant complexity. And if at some point they choose to stop catering for us, there are plenty of others who will.

Update: Mathew has responded on his blog. He makes some interesting points. Most importantly, he points out that Apple already charges developers $99 per year. Root access could be restricted to these developers (and anyone who paid the fee could join them), whilst not providing it for regular users. The latter would effectively be handing over both the hassle and the control of auditing the software on their machine to Apple, a bargain that many people would consider reasonable (and one that most people already make with, for example, their email).

The fallout for developers would be that they could no longer rely on end users being able to install software themselves, and therefore everything would have to go through the App Store, with Apple taking their 30% cut. For many small developers, this again is a good bargain - the simplicity of the App Store, plus the trust user’s have in it, are worth Apple’s cut (and the small but non-zero risk of running into problems with the review process). However, as Matthew points out, big developers such as Adobe and Microsoft are less likely to be happy, and could go as far as abandoning the platform.

That’s a key reason I don’t think that Apple are likely to go down this route. Over the last decade, Mac OS X has gone from having the scantest selection of third-party software to having arguably the best. Part of this has come from the kinds of small commercial developers that are a natural fit to the App Store, but it also comes from big-name applications like Office and Creative Suite. Losing these applications would be a significant blow to the platform, and I’d be surprised if the additional App Store revenue would make up for it. Indeed, it’s not at all clear that there would be any additional revenue, given that the change would result in users leaving a Mac OS that no longer met their needs.

More importantly, the end result of this game makes no sense. Why would Apple turn Mac OS into another iOS, when they already have iOS? If people are choosing between a hassle-free/locked-down device (depending on your perspective) and a more flexible/fragile one, why would Apple not want a product on both sides? The only reason would be that one side doesn’t make enough money to justify pursuing. I don’t think that’s the case, but if and when it is, I wouldn’t expect them to turn Mac OS into iOS. They’ll just stop selling it.

In conclusion, I don’t expect Apple to remove the ability to install arbitrary applications from Mac OS in the foreseeable future, not through any moral compunction or fear, but simply because I don’t think it would increase their profits in the long term. I could be wrong about this; Apple clearly know their business better than I do. We’ll see.

Who are, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, highly recommended if you’re in the market for hosting.↩

Ritchie and McCarthy

2011-11-01T21:18:41+00:00

In the past two weeks, there has - justifiably - been a lot of coverage of the death of Steve Jobs. However, two other computing pioneers have also died during that time. Dennis Ritchie and John McCarthy were not the household names in the same way, but their contribution was arguably more fundamental. Whilst Job’s work made modern computing accessible, Ritchie’s and McCarthy’s made it possible. They created, respectively, C and Lisp, which are essentially the Greek and Latin of programming¹.

In a field which values the new over the old to an almost pathological extent, these two languages have lasted for decades. If someone embarking on a new software project tomorrow using, say, PL/I, it would seem like an obtuse exercise in nostalgia. Use C, on the other hand, and nobody would raise an eyebrow. Lisp’s influence is less obvious, but arguably more profound. Whilst you can still use it in unadulterated form, relatively few people do. However, the popular dynamic languages that all the cool kids are using - Python, Ruby, JavaScript - are essentially Lisp in new clothes².

The origins of the two languages are instructively different. C was created to solve an immediate practical problem - writing Unix in a portable way. Moreover, it was targeting relatively modest hardware, the PDP-11³. It therefore lacks some of the bells and whistles that, even in 1973, “real” languages were thought to need. However, instead of limiting its scope, this resulted in an elegant simplicity that has seen it adapt to four decades of hardware improvements whilst many “real” languages have fallen by the wayside.

In contrast, Lisp wasn’t intended to be a language to solve a particular practical problem. It wasn’t intended to be a programming language at all. McCarthy had written a paper outlining a theoretical system for formally describing algorithms. Fortuitously, he didn’t make the “theoretical” part clear to one of his grad students, who promptly went off and implemented it on the department’s computer, creating the first Lisp interpreter⁴. What had started as a mathematical model of programs turned out to be an amazingly flexible and powerful way to actually write them.

What both languages have in common is that they each have a small, conceptually coherent core. Because it’s small and coherent, the programmer is able to internalise the basic concepts of the langauge. This done, they’re free to concentrate on the task at hand, rather than the details of the language. This is also why they’ve lasted so long - simple, clear ideas date far less quickly than specific technologies.

You might wonder why, in an post about two men who have recently died, I’ve not said much about their lives. The reason is simple; I didn’t know them, and so I’ll leave the biography to those who did. Like millions of other people, though, I do know their work. Both have had an enormous impact on a field that touches the lives of almost everyone, and will continue to do so for a long time to come.

Which makes Scheme, of course, Church Latin.↩
Smug Lisp Weenies, as they are known, would claim that these more modern languages are merely partial, cargo-cult facsimilies of the real thing. There’s something in this, but they also succeed in ways that Lisp doesn’t. That’s a subject for a different day.↩
Not, as I said in the original version of this post, a PDP-7; porting the nascent operating system from the PDP-7 to the PDP-11 was one factor that led to the development of C.↩
Wikipedia’s Lisp page cite’s the following from Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham. Unfortunately, I don’t have my copy to hand to find the original source.

McCarthy said: “Steve Russell said, look, why don’t I program this eval…, and I said to him, ho, ho, you’re confusing theory with practice, this eval is intended for reading, not for computing. But he went ahead and did it. That is, he compiled the eval in my paper into IBM 703 machine code, fixing bug, and then advertised this as a Lisp interpreter, which it certainly was. So at that point Lisp had essentially the form that it has today…”

↩

VNC on the Raspberry Pi

2011-10-12T07:59:02+01:00

Here’s a quick demo I’ve put together, showing the RaspPi running as a VNC client:

The setup is a slightly unusual one; instead of the client connecting to the server, it runs in listen mode, and the server initiates the connection. This allows the RaspPi to be used as a kind of shared, network display. The software on the RaspPi end is TightVNC, which is available in the Debiam ARM repository. On the server side, I used Vine Server, as the built-in server on Lion doesn’t support reverse connections (if you want to use the normal client/server arrangement, the built-in server is fine).

The reason that VNC supports this back-to-front arrangement is interesting in itself. ORL (later AT&T Labs Cambridge), the birthplace of VNC, also took a significant interest in location-aware computing, firstly with the Active Badge, which could track users to the granularity of a room, and then with the Active Bat, which could do so within a few centimetres. I worked at the lab for a year before starting my PhD (which they sponsored), in the project exploring the sort of applications you could build with this sort of technology.

One of the simplest and most effective was display teleporting. If you wanted to show someone your screen, you just held your Bat (or, in earlier versions, your Badge) against their monitor and pushed a button. Hey presto, via the magic of VNC reverse connection, there it was. Even though this application hasn’t exactly become ubiquitous, the reverse connection mode that was added to VNC to support it has remained a standard and useful feature. The location-aware technology lives on as well.

Mmmm... Pie...

2011-09-15T19:08:39+01:00

I’ve been lucky enough to get my hands on one of the Raspberry Pi alpha boards. I have various plans for things to try with it, but I thought I’d post some initial thoughts about the experience of using the board, and the project as a whole.

If you’ve not heard the name before, it’s a charity that aims to “promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing”. To this end, they’re developing a $25 computer. Not a toy, or a working model, but a real computer that’s cheap enough to give to kids without worrying about them breaking it. This isn’t just pie in the sky¹, either: they’ve already produced two generations of prototype hardware, and should be on course to have the final version in production, at the target price², before the end of the year.

The board, pictured below, has at it’s heart a Broadcom system-on-a-chip based around an ARM CPU, with 128MB or 256MB of RAM stacked on top. There’s very little else on the board - the slightly more expensive version has a single-chip USB hub and Ethernet adapter, but that’s pretty much it. This simplicity is how they’ve managed to hit the ambitious price point.

This kind of SoC is more often found in set-top boxes and the like, so it has reasonably good graphics and sound. It really is a complete system - you just plug a keyboard into the USB port, a TV (or monitor) into the HDMI, and you’re away.

On first booting the board, I was taken back. Not to primary school and the BBC Micro, but to my first exposure to Linux at University. The disk image I have boots to a console, and I found myself dredging up knowledge of things like runlevels and virtual consoles that I hadn’t used for years. My soft hands suitably re-calloused, I proceeded to poke around, install various packages (including, I admit, X Windows and LXDE), and generally having a play. The current OS image is based on Debian, and so hundreds of packages are only an apt-get away. The list isn’t as comprehensive as it is for x86, but there are still plenty of interesting packages (such as TightVNC) to install.

The thing that struck me as I used the Raspberry Pi was how familiar everything is. This isn’t some kind of esoteric embedded system, but a real computer, with a real OS, and standard languages and compilers right there, running on the board itself. Granted, it’ll never challenge the latest MacBook Pro in terms of raw horsepower, but for the intended use - programming education - it’s more than enough.

You could, of course, stick Firefox on the device, and get a dirt-cheap, tiny, low-power client for the web. There are also myriad things that become feasible when you can get a computer for the sort of money that Curry’s would charge for an HDMI cable not too long ago - smart screens, tiny servers, automation, and many others. You could even stick LibreOffice on it and equip a school computer lab for a fraction of the price today. However, doing so would miss the point.

The project stems in large part from the observation that fewer of the eighteen-year-olds arriving at Cambridge to read Computer Science had a good grasp off how computers actually work³. This is not, of course, to say that they’re any less bright, but just that their exposure to computers has been markedly different from that of those of use who grew up in the eighties (or even the nineties).

There are numerous factors behind this change, but a big one is the rise of the family computer. This is a device that has a myriad of uses - banking, shopping, gaming, watching TV - which means that parents are a lot less inclined to let an inquisitive seven-year-old poke around in it’s innards. A Commodore 64 or Acorn Electron, by contrast, was useful for… pretty much nothing, out of the box. Even getting a game to load involved reading the manual and getting some mysterious incantation just right.

This initial uselessness is not only part of the charm of early home computers, but also a key to their educational value. To make them do anything of interest, you had to program them at least a little, and this gave curiosity a way in. Even copy-typing listings from a magazine⁴ gives you the idea that, far from being some kind of magic, this box is something that could be understood if you put your mind to it.

Modern computers are increasingly black boxes, with a big implied or explicit “no user serviceable parts inside” notice discouraging people from wondering how they work. This is appropriate for tools that are increasingly central to our lives⁵, but raises the question of where the next generation of programmers and hardware engineers is going to come from. By providing a cheap, open machine that kids can tinker with to their heart’s content, Raspberry Pi are providing an answer. It’s not the complete solution, but it’s a big part of it. What they need now are software and ideas, and if you’re a programmer of teacher (or both) that’s something you can help with. You can also help by buying one of the final boards under their buy one, give one scheme. I’ll certainly be getting one or two.

Sorry.↩
There are actually two models (with a naming scheme that might seem familiar) - the model A for $25, and the model B for $35, which adds extra RAM, Ethernet, an additional USB port. The alpha board corresponds to the model B.↩
Eben, one of the founders of the project, and I were both involved in interviewing prospective Computer Science undergraduates, for different colleges.↩
Coverdisks? Cassettes? Checksums? Luxury! When I were a lad, we had copious syntax errors, and we were glad of it…↩
This is one of the reasons I tend to buy Apple hardware these days - I’m willing to sacrifice some of the ability to upgrade and repair the kit myself for the integration and simplicity.↩

Loot or Fiddle

2011-08-20T09:30:19+01:00

I've still not quite got my head around the recent rioting. However, I can fall back on sarcasm. So, without further ado, and with a nod to the sadly defunct Brunching Shuttlecocks, I present to you 'Loot or Fiddle'. Simple decide whether the item or the quote in question relates to the 2011 rioting and looting, or the 2009 expenses scandal.

1: A case of bottled water (£3.50).

2: "My case shouldn't have been brought before the court... There are so many others who have walked free and nobody is going to say [anything] about their situation."

3: Women's clothes and shoes, nail polish, baby wipes and comics.

4: A pair of shorts

5: A £2,600 home cinema system

6: "This is copycat behaviour. There's a sense that some people don't have the kind of barriers and discipline that people in the past have been brought up with"

7: Iams Senior cat food (£3.69)

8: A "hip hop" bed (£550)

9: "This is criminality pure and simple"

10: Over £22,000 in 4 days

Give Me Inconvenience, Or Give Me Death!

2011-06-11T01:10:00+01:00

In this week’s episode of The Pod Delusion, there’s a piece contributed by my brother, entitled “Death of the Operating System”. In it, he talks about the rise of “walled garden” operating systems such as Apple’s iOS, and what this means for “general purpose” operating systems such as Mac OS X, Windows and Linux¹. Once walled gardens are the norm, he suggests, general purpose OSs will come to be viewed by many as being only useful for illegal purposes, and eventually will become illegal themselves.

One point on which I agree is that wall gardens are going to become more prevalent. In a recent article, John Gruber makes the point that the recently-announced Windows 8 is a flawed response to the iPad², as it includes the ability to run the existing Windows interface, and the applications that go with it, essentially unmodified. The iPad, on the other hand, started with a completely blank slate, with no attempt at compatibility with the pre-touchscreen world. This may, at first glance, seem like a weakness, but it is, Gruber argues, key to one of the major strengths of the platform – simplicity. He’s talking about the UI, but the point applies equally to the installation of software.

Even if you discount the configure-make-install dance that’s familiar to anyone who builds their own software on Unix-like systems, installing and updating software is a pain in the arse. Systems vary in how well they handle it - Mac OS X beats Windows, and both are in turn beaten by Debian - but even if the normal install channels work well, anyone but an expert has a hard time keeping track of exactly what’s been done. This is compounded by the tendency, permitted by the general purpose operating system, for all and sundry to roll their own installation and update infrastructures. Worse, once you’ve given permission for a piece of software to install things, it’s easy for malicious software to creep in, necessitating yet more installation and tending of security software.

Most people simply don’t want this hassle. They just want to read their email, and check their Facebooks, and go on The Google. Maybe catapult the occasional bird at a tower of pigs. A walled garden – if it’s well-tended – takes the responsibility for managing things like updates and installation, leaving the user to simply choose the applications they want from a list (if that). This brings the device closer to an information appliance, as described by Donald Norman in The Invisible Computer. With it’s over-the-air backups and syncing, iOS 5 is a significant step in this direction - it’s increasingly feasible for someone to entirely forgo owning a general purpose computer like a PC, as all their needs are fulfilled by walled garden devices.

Peter’s belief is that, when this is the norm, and owning a general purpose computer is a marginal pursuit, politicians playing to the peanut gallery will seek to ban it in the same way that they banned handguns after Dunblane. While PCs aren’t as obviously deadly as pistols, the twin modern-day bogeymen of terrorists and paedophiles might make them a convenient target when Something Must Be Done.

He draws an analogy with gun ownership in the United States, but I think this is a red herring. The second amendment isn’t in the Bill of Rights by chance; the right to bear arms is intrinsically bound up in the genesis of that country. As Sarah Palin recently pointed out (albeit in her usual ham-fisted, truthy way), the American revolution succeeded in no small part due to the fact that the citizens of the nascent republic were armed. As a result, gun ownership is seen by many Americans as a key component of liberty, and no amount of Wacoes and Columbines are going to override that.

In Britain, with no such historical context, governments have more latitude to pass whatever gun control laws they see fit. However, even after tragedies such as Dunblane, and the attendant media outcry, this hasn’t led to an outright ban on firearms. Whist you can’t buy a handgun or an assault rifle, it’s still relatively straightforward to buy and own a shotgun. The reason for this is obvious; shotguns have, to borrow a phrase from the Betamax case, substantial non-infringing uses (specifically, game hunting and pest control). Handguns, on the other hand, have essentially no other use than to injure or kill other human beings³.

General purpose operating systems clearly fall into the former category. They can be used to hack into a nuclear power station’s control system, or clandestinely distribute images of child abuse, but they can also be used to sequence genomes, or administer complex financial instruments, or develop the processor for your next phone. They’re also vital as the back end for all of the web applications and cloud services that are the bread and butter of your walled garden devices. Crucially, and unlike sports shooting with handguns, these activities make a lot of money. A hell of a lot of money. Successive governments, with their talk of creative and knowledge economies, and their laser-like focus on STEM⁴ education, recognise this, and there’s no way that they’d kill the goose that keeps laying golden eggs so that a junior minister can have a favourable news cycle.

However, there is another possibility. You need a licence to own a shotgun. What if you needed one to own a non-locked-down computer? This couldn’t happen today - too many companies rely on selling products to computer owners - but in the future, when the man on the WiFi-enabled Clapham Omnibus is satisfied with just his iPad, it’s possible. The problem with such a move is that much of the innovation in computing comes from individuals and small companies, precisely because the barriers to entry are so low. Any country that implemented such a scheme would see a dramatic chilling effect in its software sector at least. Few governments would want this, but it’s a subtle enough point that they might blunder into it by accident. Fortunately, technology companies have in recent years learnt not to be so shy and retiring when it comes to lobbying for their own interests.

It’s also worth considering that the idea of “owning a computer” needn’t be limited to buying a box and plugging it in in the spare bedroom. Even if we reach the stage where Ken Olsen’s widely-quoted⁵ utterance is true, and there is no reason for any individual to have a (general purpose) computer in their home, that doesn’t mean they disappear entirely. With ever-improving connectivity, the device that does your computing doesn’t necessarily have to be the thing you’re staring at and prodding. There are significant advantages to your general purpose computer being cossetted in a data centre somewhere, where it can have air conditioning and a backed-up power supply, and make all the noise it wants. This doesn’t necessarily meaning ceding control entirely; for example, I rent a virtual server from ByteMark⁶, over which I have free reign. I get the benefits of their fast internet connection and other infrastructure, whilst retaining control of my software, and importantly, my data.

This leads on to a potentially more troubling aspect of Apple’s recent WWDC announcements; the dominance of the cloud. It raises the question: how happy are you about giving control of your data to a single hardware company? My answer would be: slightly happier than I am about giving it to a single advertising company, but still far from ecstatic. However, that’s an issue for a whole other post.

Peter draws the distinction between “walled garden” systems, where all software must be installed through channels sanctioned by the OS vendor, and “general purpose” systems, where, once the original OS is installed, the user can install additional software as they see fit. This isn’t the terminology I would’ve chosen, but it’ll do for the discussion at hand.↩
He doesn’t really address the question of whether it’s aiming to be a response to the iPad. Microsoft’s internal fractiousness and lack of a coherent, clearly communicated vision makes this far from obvious.↩
The only non-violent use I can think of is sports shooting, but I remain to be convinced that this needs to be done with real handguns using live ammunition.↩
Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths.↩
Widely, and accurately, quoted, but generally misinterpreted. The context of the quote suggests that Olsen was talking about home automation, not personal computers. Snopes has more.↩
Highly recommended, by the way.↩

All Change. Again.

2011-04-09T09:41:00+01:00

After a bit of thought, I’ve decided to move the site away from Open Melody. I’m still a big fan of the software, and I wish the project the best of luck, but I’ve come to realise that it’s not a good fit for what I want to do. If you have several blogs, many users, and need a web interface and dynamic features like comments and trackbacks, then Melody (and it’s predecessor, Movable Type) are a good choice. However, I have a single blog, a single user, and I want to keep everything static so that any fleeting spike in traffic won’t bring the whole thing grinding to a halt. Moreover, I prefer things where I can get at them, in the file system; that way, I can use all the filters and editors and version control systems that I’m familiar with.

This last point is what crystallised the decision for me. I’ve increasingly been finding myself getting bogged down in details whilst trying to make changes to the site’s design or functionality. Melody is justifiably a complex system, as it does a lot. There are large parts of it I don’t understand. I’m sure I could learn it, but the fact that I keep fighting the tide suggests that I’d be learning things weren’t necessary for what I actually want to achieve. So, I’ve decided to move to something simpler and better suited to my needs.

The tool I’ve chosen is Jekyll. It’s small and simple enough for me to understand completely (having to learn Ruby is an added bonus), it keeps everything in files which I can edit with Emacs and track with Git, and it has an importer that brings the posts in from Melody with a minimum of fuss. So, the site looks more or less the same, but the back end is a lot more straightforward and it should make it easier to improve things in the future.

I for one welcome our new text file overlords.

New Banner

2011-02-27T16:57:23+00:00

As you may have noticed, I’ve created a new baner for the top of the site. It’s the first to contain neither the colour yellow or the letter ρ. I put it together in LibreOffice Writer, using FontArt (their version of MS Word’s WordArt). Hardly the ideal tool for the job, but none of the image editing tools I tried allow you to expand text in both dimensions to fill an arbitrary rectangle.The font, in case you’re interested, is Monotype Baskerville (as included in Mac OS X), a typeface with a long and interesting history.

Panic On The Streets Of Espoo

2011-02-12T18:52:00+00:00

All of the recent chatter on Twitter and blogs regarding the Nokia-Microsoft partnership has tempted me to offer up my own hostage to fortune. But first, a disclaimer: I have no inside information. This is all conjecture based on public sources. Also, these opinions, like all of those on this site, are entirely my own, and not those of my employer.

Now that’s out of the way, I’ll get straight to pontificating (I’m assuming you already know the background). Plenty has already been said about whether the deal is good or bad for Nokia (it seems fairly universally agreed that it’s good for Microsoft), but I want to write about the effects outside those companies; specifically, what it will do the the smartphone landscape.

In the short term, the answer is probably nothing. It’ll take Nokia some time to bring a Windows Phone 7 handset to market. However, it seems safe to assume that they will release one at some point. Slightly less safely, let’s also assume that they don’t screw up either the implementation or the launch, and it sees a reasonable degree of success. This is where it gets interesting.

My guess is that Microsoft will be looking to use Nokia as the main way of ensuring WP7 gains traction. I say this because all of their other OEMs are not committed to the platform in the same way, because they all also make Android handsets. Why would they cede the control they have over the Android platform for the relatively restrictive (not to mention more costly) Microsoft setup, when the former has all the momentum and volume? Nokia, on the other hand, have pretty comprehensively thrown their lot in with MS, and seem to have basically given up on their home-grown efforts. As such, they’ll be even keener for WP7 to succeed than Microsoft themselves, having essentially bet the entire company.

Now that Microsoft has a captive hardware manufacturer, does it still need any others? My guess would be no. It sounds like Nokia will be getting special access, and working closely with Microsoft on the future development of the platform. I predict that, before too long, Nokia will be the only manufacturer of WP7 hardware. It’s possible that Microsoft will simply dissolve the agreements with the others - it would be a shitty move, but the PlaysForSure debacle demonstrates that they have absolutely no compunction about cutting their partners loose if they think it’s to their advantage. More likely, though, is that they simply leave of their own accord. Certainly, if I were Samsung, or HTC, or LG, I wouldn’t be putting money into any future Windows phones having heard Friday’s announcement. The only one that I can see staying of their own accord is Dell, but only because they’ve been so firmly in bed with MS for so long that it probably doesn’t even occur to them that they can take off the leather cuffs and gimp mask.

I don’t think this prediction spells doom and gloom for Nokia or Microsoft. I think Windows Phone 7 will have a better chance of gaining noticeable market share if it’s more focussed, and if the software and hardware are developed in tandem. And, perhaps surprisingly for a long-time Mac and Linux user, I do want it to succeed. I don’t want it to gain the 95%+ share that Windows had on the desktop, but I don’t think there’s much risk of that. However, it is, from what I’ve heard, a well-designed, usable platform. More importantly, I think a market with four strong players (iOS, Android, WP7, and WebOS, which HP seem to be making a good job of at the moment) will be a lot healthier for both consumers and developers than the alternative, an iOS/Android duopoly.

To round off, I’d like to make an even more long-term prediction; eventually, Microsoft will end up buying Nokia to create an in-house mobile hardware division. This would be intensely unpopular in Finnland - hence the title of this post - but given that Nokia seem to be positioning themselves as mainly a manufacturer of WP7 handsets, there would seem to be little reason for them to remain a separate entity. The one wildcard in this the non-smartphone side of the business, but that is being so ruthlessly cannibalised by no-name Asian manufacturers that I would be surprised if there’s much mileage left there. Another possibility is a split - the smartphone business goes to MS, and Nokia is left with other phones, plus their less high-profile lines (set-top boxes, network infrastructure). The gutted Nokia would be a shadow of its former self.

It’s a shame to see Symbian, the best mobile OS for a long while, and Maemo/MeeGo, a promising alternative, go the way of the dodo, but the writing has been on the wall for a while now. Elop’s burning platform memo, melodramatic as it was, wasn’t too far off the mark. What remains to be seen is if jumping into the sea results in rescue, or merely a more drawn-out death.

Unchained Melody

2010-11-07T18:31:08+00:00

I’ve just completed migrating this site from Movable Type OS to Melody 1.0 Beta. This not as big a leap as it might sound, as Melody is a community fork of Movable Type. Indeed, the whole process has been a lot smoother than my attempt to upgrade from MT 4 to MT 5 (in which I lost my theme for reasons I couldn’t fathom, and ended up restoring from backups).

I’ve been considering making the move for a while. The final push came when Six Apart, the company that created the software, was sold. I’ve no idea what the newly merged company will do with the open source version of MT, but I’m a lot more comfortable relying on (and, maybe, contributing to) a vibrant open source community. The signs are good that that’s what Melody will have.

Purple Parsnip & Celariac Soup

2010-11-04T19:25:56+00:00

During the winter, I tend to make soups to take into work for lunch. This week’s involved red cabbage (on Tori’s suggestion), and so came out this rather… interesting colour. Nevertheless, it tastes great, so here’s the recipe.

Makes 10 Portions

1kg Parsnips (around three good-sized ones)
750g Celariac
500g Red cabbage (about half a head - if you’d like the end result to look less alarming, you could substitute green or white cabbage)
200g Bacon (getting lardons will save on chopping)
Olive oil
Pepper
Rosemary
2 pints Vegetable stock

Preheat the oven to 200°C (400°F, gas mark 6). Peel the parsnips and celariac, and chop into 1cm cubes. Place in a roasting tin, drizzle with olive oil, and season with pepper and rosemary. Roast for 40 minutes, turning half-way through. Meanwhile, heat a large saucepan or casserole, and fry the bacon (chopping it into smaller pieces if necessary). Chop the cabbage, and bring to the boil in a separate pan with a little water. Make up the stock.

Once the cabbage is soft (about five minutes), remove it from the heat. When the parsnips and celariac are ready, add to the cabbage and blend using either a food processor or hand blender (in the latter case, you might need to do it in batches). Add the blended vegetables and stock to the bacon, bring to the boil, and simmer for 30-45 minutes.

Just My Type

2010-10-31T12:33:49+00:00

I’ve just finished reading Just My Type, a book about fonts by Simon Garfield. As the name suggests, it deals with a field that was for centuries esoteric, but is now commonplace: typography. Garfield takes us through the history of type, stretching from Gutenberg and Garamond all the way to Calibri and iBooks. Along the way, we get to learn about Letraset and Selectics, Eric Gill’s bizarre sexual proclivities, and the short, sad tale of Doves (don’t bother looking for it in your font menu - it’s not there).

The book is meandering and conversational, wandering from one area of interest to the next without getting bogged down in technical details. This makes it and easy and pleasant read, but occasionally causes frustration. For example, the “hot metal typesetting” is mentioned several times in the early chapters, but not explained until chapter 17, mid-way though. However, in spite of (or perhaps because of) the lack of technical details, the enthusiasm that both the author and his interviewees have for the subject shines through. It’s also a wonderful book to look at, with plentiful illustrations, and samples of the types being discussed throughout.

In short, this book isn’t going to teach you the nitty-gritty of type design, but it does offer a good introduction to the subject, and prompts you to look more closely at the fonts that pervade the environment. Definitely recommended.

No Comment

2010-10-21T08:30:34+01:00

This morning, I got an e-mail from someone who’d come across my Flattr article, and had attempted to comment on it. Unfortunately, this only served to reveal that the comment link on this site is broken. This is fallout from an upgrade I did a little while ago - I unlinked the comment scripts until I was sure everything is working, and forgot to reinstate them.

I tried to correct the problem this morning, only to hit a bug in either Movable Type or the way I’m using it - whenever a comment was added, the formatting of the main article disappeared. Hence, I’ve disabled them for the moment. In the long term, I’m thinking of migrating to Melody, so I’ll consider comments then. In the meantime, I’m still delighted to hear from you via email or Twitter.

Flattry Might Get You Somewhere

2010-07-24T15:28:48+01:00

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a tweet that went along the lines of “Flattr sounds more like a pyramid scheme than a social network”. I’d never heard of this thing called Flattr, so I followed the link to this article. I found it interesting enough to write a mildly facetious tweet of my own, and before I knew it I’d been offered a beta invitation code by their “evangelist”. What the hell, I thought - it’s worth a tenner (or so - Flattr operates exclusively in Euros) to give it a proper try. Flattr basically works like this: content creators register “things” - articles, photo sets, videos, or anything else that can be published on the web - with the site. They then add a button, similar to the “Digg/Tweet/Like This” buttons that have been cropping up all over the place for the last couple of years, to the thing in question. Consumers then come along, and, if they like what they see, click the button to flattr (yes, it’s a verb as well) the thing. So far, so conventional.

The interesting part is what happens next. Every Flattr user allocates a certain amount of money per month for the purposes of flattry. At the end of each month, it’s divided evenly between all of the things flattr’d that month, and the money (less a cut) is added to the creator’s Flattr account (where it can be transferred to a real bank account). Basically, it’s a low-friction way to tip creators of stuff you enjoy.

In other words, it’s another micropayment system. The information superhighway is littered with the corpses of failed micropayment systems dating back to the 90s (when people still used terms like “information superhighway”). What reason is there to think that things will be different this time? Well…

Firstly, unlike many previous systems, Flattr is actually low friction. Flattring something is genuinely no more complicated than clicking a link. This is partly due to advances in things like AJAX (also known as JavaScript Actually Works Now), but mainly down to the clever way Flattr is set up. The even distribution reduces the thought process to a binary decision - there’s no need to think about how much you want to flattr a particular thing, just whether you want to flattr it or not - and the fixed monthly amount means that you don’t need to worry about accidentally overspending. The upshot is that Flattr fits in with the way you already browse the web.

Secondly, the company has a clear revenue model - the cut of contributions that I mentioned above. This is predictable, as each active user by definition pays out a fixed amount each month, a fixed proportion of which goes back to Flattr. Equally important, it scales with their costs. The more active users they have, the more servers and staff they need to keep the service running, but the more revenue they’re getting in. They’re not only providing a way for people to pay for things on the web, they’ve come up with a model where users pay to keep the service itself on the web. (The fact that paying for a service you use sounds like a radical idea is testament to the weird hall of mirrors that is the web economy.)

At this point, you may be asking yourself, “Why do I care what the business model is? I just want the site to be there.” The reason I care is that running a non-trivial site like Flattr takes money. Significant amounts of money. The most reliable way to ensure the continued existence of such a service is for it (or, more accurately, the company behind it) to turn a profit. For this, they need a revenue stream. In most cases, services are reluctant to charge users directly, as they rightly or wrongly believe that the users expect things to be free. However, they have to get the money from somewhere. When I can’t see where this is, I get nervous.

Perhaps the best example of this at the moment is facebook. It’s recently been reported that the company is at last making a reasonable profit. I am, under sufferance, a facebook user. Like everyone I know who’s signed up, I have never given them any money. So where is the profit coming from? Maybe it’s from creaming a percentage off all of the money people shell out to not play Farmville. However, there’s a more obvious answer: targeted advertising. In some cases, this can be benign, even helpful. For example, in connection with the turning-a-profit story, Channel 4 News interviewed the owner of a wedding venue who’s adverts appeared on the pages of users in the relevant area when their relationship status changed to “engaged”. However, in other cases, it feels intrusive, even oppressive.

The worrying aspect is that, from outside the company, we have absolutely no idea what they’re doing. We just know that they’re doing something to turn a profit. If you hand over a monthly subscription that covers the cost of providing you with the service in question, the company has little motivation to do anything nefarious to make extra money from you. If you get the service for free, they’re practically obliged to. Another way of looking at it is that, instead of handing over cold, hard cash, you’re handing over a wealth of personal and demographic information about yourself and your social network (in the old-fashioned sense). The value of the latter is difficult to quantify, especially if you have no idea what they’re doing with it.

So, I like Flattr as a consumer because it’s easy, and because their business model doesn’t suggest they’re going to rip me off or sell my personal data to the highest bidder. However, how does it fare as a creator? One key objection, raised by my friend Steven, is that it doesn’t require you to pay for any particular thing you consume. Steven likened this to busking; I think of it more as an honesty box. However, given that the thing being payed for is neither a physical object nor a performance, I don’t think either analogy captures the whole story.

At this stage, it’s impossible to say whether Flattr will soar to ubiquity, or collapse under the weight of spam, fraud or indifference to join the other failed attempts at the side of the road. However, it seems to me to be an interesting experiment, at the very least. Is it an appropriate payment method for everything? Clearly not - you couldn’t rely on Flattr to fund a Hollywood movie, for example. Is it a useful option amongst many? Only time will tell, but I’m happy to spend a bit of pocket money in order to find out.

Life

2010-06-08T08:31:36+01:00

I’ve been messing around with JavaScript and the new HTML5 canvas element. After a couple of random experiments, I decided that I needed a well-defined goal, and I picked Conway's Game of Life. Here’s the result:

You'll need to turn on JavaScript (and have a recent, canvas-supporting browser) to see this.

Hopefully, the interface should be relatively self-explanatory (see the Wikipedia page linked above for details of the game itself). The Save button produces a string representing the game board; to go back to a previous state, paste such a string into the box and hit Restore. The whole thing should work in recent versions of Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. It won’t work in IE, as that browser doesn’t support canvas.

Thing’s I’ve learnt in doing this:

* The interface to canvas works pretty well, and I’ve not (yet) found any major gotchas between the browsers that support it. * JavaScript is surprisingly good (and fun) language, especially if you stick to the good parts. * JavaScript performance varies noticeably between browsers; in particular, Firefox (3.6) seems slower than the others. My hunch is that the difference is in the optimisation of JavaScript’s somewhat unorthodox handling of arrays - this is something I’ll have to look into. * The game works, glacially slowly, on my iPhone 3G, but the editing (which uses onclick) doesn’t. I might fix this.

The code is up on GitHub.

Update: I’ve added this entry as my first “thing” on Flattr. Be gentle with me.

Bring Out The Gimp

2010-04-20T21:03:10+01:00

The Tories have launched a new poster campaign with such a… strong message that I felt compelled to produce my own version. Sadly, I imagine this one would also go down well at Conservative Home.

(The original image is from here - I’m assuming, given the Quatro thing, they’ll have a sense of humour about this sort of thing.)

The Photoshop Election

2010-04-14T08:04:03+01:00

Sod Mumsnet - what with MyDavidCameron.com, the Guardian’s April Fools joke and the Fire Up The Quatro back-and-forth, this is shaping up to be the Photoshop election. I might not know about biscuits, but I do know about hastily cobbled together composite images of questionable funniness. So, here are a couple of efforts based on the recent manifesto launches (actually put together in the GIMP, natch):

Weekend Project: Worksheets

2010-04-01T20:53:32+01:00

Last week, I had need to run some queries against the internal database at work. These weren’t reports that needed to be run forever more, but I wanted to keep a record of them - both the queries and the results. I ended up writing my queries into a text file, evaluating them using Emacs’ SQL mode, and pasting the results back into the file. This worked quite well, but I thought I could do better.

I’ve been wondering about worksheet-style interface, as found in, for example, the Sage open source maths system. SQL, at least if you’re running SELECT queries, is ideal for this, as each query is independent, so you don’t have to manage things like ordering and mutation. Hence, last weekend, I knocked up a rough draft of what such an interface might look like. I’ve tidied it up a little, and an posted it here. There’s still plenty to add (support for other databases, UI improvements, some semblance of security), but the basic functionality is there, and it should serve as a basis for further experiments.

NaNoWriMo 2009

2009-12-01T22:48:39+00:00

So, November is over. And, fifty-thousand and some words later, I’ve managed to do it again. In the middle of Sunday afternoon, I wrote the last words of Homeopath, a somewhat odd tale of intrigue, rage, and maybe murder. But maybe not. In any case, it’s definitely written, and it’s definitely more than 50,000 words, and so I’ve won NaNoWriMo 2009. Go me.

This year, I’m not going to post the entire thing immediately. Instead, I’m going to have a break from it for a while, then revisit and edit it in a month or two. So, no novel in this post, I’m afraid. I can, however, tell you some thing’s I’ve learnt over the last month:

Planning helps; I didn’t plan in any detail, and ended up wandering around for 25,000 words setting the scene before I got on with the plot.
Writing in the first person gives me the urge to constantly point out that I don’t necessarily share the opinions of my protagonist. Make of that what you will.
Emacs and MarkDown make for a pretty nice editing environment for prose. Isolator is also handy.

The main thing I’m intent on taking away from the experience, though, is getting back into the habit of actually doing something substantial - writing something, programming something, practising something - when I get home from work in the evening, as oppose to just collapsing in front of the TV. NaNoWriMo imposed a structure where this wasn’t an option. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to keep it up now that it’s finished.

Finally, two graphs (because graphs are traditional). This first graph shows my progress over the course of the month; basically, things went a bit pear-shaped early on, but I managed to make the time up over the subsequent weeks.

The second graph shows my daily writing rate; the red line marks 1,666 words per day, which is the average rate (more or less) than you need to keep up to make it to 50,000 within the month.

Fascinating, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Learning by experience, and how not to do it

2009-10-31T17:09:19+00:00

In 2002, I signed up for NaNoWriMo, an insane Internet pseudo-contest to write a novel in a month. I managed it, and you can see the results here (be gentle - it was written in a month, and I haven’t revisited it with an editor’s pen). For a few years, I paid it no mind, but this year I seem to be surrounded by people who’re taking up the challenge, so I’ve succumb to peer pressure and signed up again. Wish me luck.

P.S. - For anyone who has an nascent novelistic idea (or even a title), and have, say, mentioned it in the pub, then it’s not too late to sign up. You know who you are.

P.P.S. - Regarding the previous entry, the bad news is that I’ll not have a chance to work on SilverService for at least a month. The good news is that I’ve already solved the new entry problem, which was the most serious issue with the current version. If you have the OS X developer tools, you can grab the latest version from GitHub to get the fix.

SilverService and Snow Leopard

2009-09-24T09:06:34+01:00

Snow Leopard, the latest version of Mac OS X, was billed as “no new features”, but actually comes with a whole raft of minor improvements. One of these is improved handling of Services, a vastly under-rated feature inherited from NeXT. If you’re not up to speed on Services, or the improvements in Snow Leopard, this website has a good overview.

This is of particular interest to me, because it has ramifications for a piece of software I wrote a little while ago: SilverService. Specifically, I wondered if the ability to easily creates services in Automator renders SilverService obsolete. One of the areas in which I was thinking of extending the tool was the ability to create longer scripts, something which is definitely catered for well in Automator. However, the Automator approach is somewhat heavyweight, so I think there’s still value in a more focussed tool for one-liners.

With that in mind, I’ve dusted off the (now pretty ancient) source code, and got it compiling under the latest XCode. It basically works, but has at least one major interface bug (newly created services do not appear in the table until you restart the application), and one more minor problem that has been present since the start (the services only work when the application is running). I plan to look into these over the next few weeks, with the aim of producing an updated version with bug fixes but no new features. I’ve also created a SilverService repository on GitHub, if you want to have a hack yourself.

As ever, if you have any comments or suggestions about SilverService, I’d love to hear them, either via the comments below, e-mail or Twitter.

LinkSys WRT54GS DHCP Problem (Mac OS and Linux)

2009-05-03T16:22:53+01:00

On Friday, I decided had a go at fixing the occasional dropped connections I’ve been seeing between Windows machines and my LinkSys WRT54GS (v5,1) router. As part of the process, I upgraded the firmware to what I assumed was the latest version. That was a mistake. After the upgrade, the router’s DHCP server would no longer dole out an IP address to Mac OS X or Linux clients, either wired or wirelessly (Windows XP clients seem unaffected).

It turns out that the solution is to get the latest latest firmware. The Cisco/LinkSys page offers version 1.50.9 of the firmware as the most recent version for most models; this version exhibits the problem. Instead, try version 1.52.2 available here:

LinkSys WRT54GS Firmware version 1.52.2

The solution is simple, but took me a while to find. Hopefully, this entry will save time for anyone experiencing similar problems.

Marketing & Social Media - Another Way To Do It Right

2009-04-24T08:04:13+01:00

Many, many people will charge you money to shill your product on Twitter and Facebook. Many people have written many things on why this doesn’t really work, and I won’t rehash those points here. A little while ago, I came across this post describing an example of how social media can help with product marketing - basically, if your product is good, and you don’t actively prevent people sharing information about it, your customers will market it for you. (It occurs to me that you could make the same argument about The Pirate Bay, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)

In any case, yesterday I encountered another way that social media and product marketing can be mixed effectively. The sequence of events went like this:

1) I see a link on Daring Fireball to a Capo, a Mac application for playing songs in various ways (slowly, looped, and so on) so that you learn them on the guitar.

2) I tweet that it looks interesting, but I don’t really have the musical ear to take advantage of it.

3) A little while later, the developer (SuperMegaUltraGroovy) replies, encouraging me to try and learn, and pointing me at a video that might help.

There are two important points here. Firstly, it wasn’t a generic mass-mailed press release, but rather a specific reply to my post. That differentiates it from spam. Secondly, it was clearly from SuperMegaUltraGroovy - they weren’t pretending to be a neutral observer or satisfied customer. That differentiates it from shilling.

The end result is that, from relatively little effort on the part of SuperMegaUltraGroovy, I’ve come away with a very positive impression of the company, and am seriously considering buying a $39 application that I previously only had a passing interest in.

So, it seems there are ways to use Twitter and Facebook to promote your company or products without pissing people off. It also seems like a way that indie developers can differentiate themselves from bigger companies - I can’t see the latter pulling this off without it seeming contrived. We’ll see if this becomes the accepted way of doing things, or if more irritating methods prevail. Given that nobody seems to have figured out a way to make the irritating methods work yet, there’s hope.

The Wire

2009-04-10T15:55:24+01:00

I’ve finally watched the first episode of The Wire, and I get the impression that might be every bit as good as everyone says it is. One thing that is beyond doubt, though, is that it doesn’t take prisoners in terms of depth or complexity. I don’t think that this is due to the accents or slang - I’ve read in various places that this is a barrier, but I didn’t have a problem - but rather that a very rich and intricate world is thrust upon you in one go. In introducing both a large number of characters and an unfamiliar setting with little preamble or explanation, it does ask a lot of the viewer. For me, at least, this infinitely preferable to being spoon-fed.

Given the BBC’s insane 5-episodes-a-week schedule, combined with the fact that Tori isn’t keen, I’m unlikely to be able to keep up with it for very long, but I’m going to give it a try.

The Ties That Bind

2009-02-22T15:13:00+00:00

The other day, I was reading a web page, and something strange happened. Without warning, a woman in a red uniform appeared, and started pushing things about. “This is it,” I thought, ”I’ve cracked. The walls of reality are coming tumbling down.” However, it turned out that I wasn’t, in fact, going mad, but was instead experiencing something I’d been deprived of for quite a few years now; animated banner advertising.

The reason for this brief psychodrama was that I was trying out Google Chrome. My general impressions of it are almost universally positive, but I switched back to Firefox because of something I didn’t expect: lock-in, where the way a piece of software works makes it difficult or impossible to move to an alternative. Usually, lock-in is something associated with proprietary software and formats, MS Word being a typical example. Firefox and Chrome are both open source, and deal in the open standards that make up the web, so what’s going on? Firstly, being open source does not prevent lock-in. The issue at hand isn’t the program - in fact, quite the opposite. The less relevant the program is, the better. What’s important is your data, and hence the thing that makes the difference is the format in which the data is kept. In the case of a web browser, the data that it deals with day-to-day is in open, standard formats - HTML, CSS, PNG - so that shouldn’t be a problem. The lock-in comes instead from the configuration. This used to mean bookmarks, but that’s now an all-but-solved problem - pretty much every browser worth considering will happily import your bookmarks from all of the others.

The thing that eventually drove me back to Firefox, and was behind my unexpected visit from the cabin crew, was the lack of extensions. For example, I’m so used to AdBlock and NoScript that I forget that they’re there, until they suddenly aren’t. Hence, as Chrome doesn’t (yet) have either, migrating from Firefox becomes a lot less tempting, regardless of how well the young pretender does everything else (very well, for the record).

Extensions, at first sight, look like an issue of lock-in, as I can’t take the extensions I use in Firefox and run them in Chrome. However, it isn’t - it’s merely a functionality issue. For example, another extension I use a lot is Firebug, a web page development tool. As with the others, this only works in Firefox. However, in this case I don’t really care, as Chrome has pretty good development tools built in. The functionality is what I’m interested in; as long as I can migrate between tools, I can use whichever meets my needs.

So, the main thing that prevented me switching wasn’t really lock-in, but rather that Chrome doesn’t yet meet my needs. However, there is a lock-in issue lurking. GreaseMonkey allows me to write user scripts that tweak web-pages in pretty much any way I like. These scripts are subject to lock-in; however long I wait, Google aren’t going to add a switch to Chrome to shuffle around Bugzilla pages to reflect my personal whim. This sort of thing blurs the line between functionality and data, but in lock-in terms is definitely on the side of data. User scripts are essentially a data format, and in fact are not exclusive to GreaseMonkey; Opera also supports them, and Chrome is working on it. When the support is there, I’ll be giving Chrome another look.

There’s a similar situation where things don’t work out quite so neatly. There’s an application that I spend most of screen-staring time in even more than a web browser; the Emacs editor. This has the problems of extensions and user scripts writ large - I’ve not only collected a vast array of extension and customised the behaviour of the editor to behave the way I like it, but have produced reams of my own elisp (Emacs Lisp) code to add substantial chunks of functionality that is unlikely to turn up in other applications any time soon. Unlike user scripts, elisp isn’t really an independent format - it’s inextricably bound up with Emacs and the way it works, which in turn consists of more than thirty years of innovation, refinement and cruft.

In theory, you could implement an elisp interpreter in another editor, but if you did one good enough to be useful, then you wouldn’t have a distinct editor any more - you’d just have another version of Emacs. If I ever move to truly different editor, I’ll have to rewrite my custom extensions from scratch, which would be a significant amount of effort. It’s usually easier to extend Emacs to include whatever features I want from the competitor, using yet more elisp. Now that’s lock-in.

Happy Birthday

2009-01-24T18:55:43+00:00

This is a Mac SE that I acquired at a Computer Preservation Society give-away a few years back. The 20MB (yes, 20 Megabyte) hard drive is a bit temperamental, but after leaving it next to a radiator for a while I managed to get it to boot on the fifth or sixth attempt. The application shown is, of course, HyperCard.

Fooled and Poked By Random Liars

2009-01-03T12:10:17+00:00

In 2008, the Invisible Hand was caught in the Invisible Till, and markets around the globe crashed in one of those freak, once-in-a-million-centuries events that happens every four or five years. As such, it seemed like a good time to improve my woefully limited knowledge of finance, if only to learn what used to be in that big, smoking crater. To this end, I borrowed a couple of books written by prominent nay-sayers in the field. The first is Liar’s Poker, by Michael Lewis. This is an account of his time at Wall Street trading firm Saloman Brothers during the 1980’s. While mostly autobiographical, it contains a large chunk (around a third) dealing with the emerging mortgage securities market. This doesn’t have the same immediacy as the personal recollections, but the subject matter is particular interesting given the origins of the current, ahem, hiccup.

In fact, the main thing that strikes you reading Liar’s Poker is that, even though it was written twenty years ago, it feels as if it (or something very like it) could have been written today. Lewis himself more or less says as much in a recent article. It’s both worrying and very entertaining, in a schadenfreudery kind of way, but you do need to bear in mind that it was written by one of the winners, someone who got out mostly intact. It needs to be read with a huge heaping of salt, and an understanding of survivorship bias. This leads us onto the next book.

Fooled by Randomness, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, bears the subtitle “The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and the Markets”. It’s a kind of precursor to the author’s better-known “The Black Swan” (which is waiting for me on my shelf). It covers probability, and people’s general inability to cope with it both intellectually and emotionally. Appropriately enough, given this this subject matter, it manages to be both pleasantly personal and reasonably rigorous, though I get the impression that the author would disavow any claim to the latter.

Much of the technical ground (survivorship bias, sampling, conditional probabilities, reptilian brain) covered seemed familiar, though I couldn’t put my finger on where I’d picked it up. Nevertheless, the presentation is engaging, and a worthwhile overview and refresher. More interesting is the context in which Taleb puts these ideas. His twin causes seem to be scepticism, and an acceptance of human irrationality (especially your own). This raises it above the field of cosy, anecdote-based paperbacks that seem to be required reading for politicians these days. However, possibly I’m exhibiting an emotional response to just having invested time in reading the book. You never know.

Death by typing

2008-11-23T14:07:18+00:00

When I first published the previous entry, I’d mistyped the quote in the title as “You Killed Anne L. Retentive With A Type?” I corrected this, but then an alternative script for the comic in question popped into my head. “Hang on,”, I thought, “hasn’t Dilbert just grown all sorts of groovy, funky Web 2.0 shenanigans that allow you do do those ‘mash up’ things the kids are talking about these days?” (Free tip: if you want to read Dilbert without all of the extraneous bells and whistles, try http://dilbert.com/fast/.)

It turns out that you can produce modified versions of comics, but only in fairly limited ways. However, I do still have the GIMP:

(Original strip at Dilbert.com)

AppJet, or "You killed Anne L. Retentive with a typo?"

2008-11-20T20:52:47+00:00

Tori and Ellie both warned me off it, which pretty much ensured that I would end up read Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie. I’ve not found it nearly as heavy going as predicted, but I did notice a couple of, well, idiosyncrasies that grate after a while. And I don’t like grating. Fortunately, at the pub on Sunday, we came up with a solution.

Even more fortuitously, an interesting way to implement said solution drifted across my radar a few days later. AppJet are a start-up that produce a really rather good web application platform. They’ve recently come to wider attention with their real-time collaborative editor EtherPad, but I thought I’d start with something more modest. So, without further ado:

The Comma Appeal

Read on for my thoughts on the AppJet platform itself. In short, it seems brilliant. I’ve only had limited experience with it so far, but even after a brief exposure it’s clear they’ve got a lot right. First off, it’s an online application, but you can start using it instantly - no sign-up, no e-mail back-and-forth, just click on the “create an app” link and start coding.

The coding itself is in JavaScript, a language that after a long time in the wilderness is now back in favour. This gives the whole thing the same sort of feel as client-side JavaScript, but augmented with a bunch of libraries to allow access to server-side features. So far, so familiar - there are a number of frameworks, platforms and doohickeys that provide similar facilities. Where AppJet shines, though, is the web-based IDE. The basic setup splits the window in half; the left hand side contains your JavaScript (and HTML and CSS) code, and the right hand side is a preview of the app in development. Whenever you want to see the fruits of your labour, hit the reload button and the preview is updated to reflect your changes.

This isn’t, on the face of it, and earth-shattering idea, but it leads to an incredibly fluid development process. Combine this with the easy creation and distribution tools, and the claims that it’s “the easiest way to program, host, and share your own web app” start to look fairly close to the truth. Even better, the back end is available for download, so you can run it on your own server and avoid putting your application and data at the mercy of the cloud if you want.

So, a very positive first look overall. However, it is only a first look, so maybe the early promise won’t pan out when you try and use it to build something more substantial. That certainly seems to have happened with EtherPad - apparently, they had to make substantial upgrades to the platform in order to get it working as well as they wanted (these changes are due to be released soon). Either way, I’ll definitely be keeping an eye on the platform to see what happens.

Oh, and Anne L. Retentive? Well…

Once

2008-11-15T13:36:45+00:00

”Once”, which I saw last night on DVD, is a musical. I’m probably as fond of musicals as any straight man is allowed to admit to being in polite company, but I recognise the problems of the form. Chief amongst these is the violence done to suspension of disbelief when people burst into song for no apparent reason. This just isn’t a normal reaction to, say, unwanted pregnancy, hanging, or Nazis. Passers-by spontaneously springing into oddly well-choreographed dance doesn’t help matters.

Once dodges this particular bullet by framing the songs in a story whose protagonists, being musicians, actually have plausible context for song-bursting-into. Films like The Blues Brothers and The Commitments have pulled this trick before, but here it is taken further, as the characters are singing about their situation in the manner of a traditional musical, but always in a way that doesn’t rip you out of the narrative. Even when the nameless female lead is wandering down the street in her pyjamas and in song, it’s done in such a way that you could almost, almost believe it might actually happen. Not quite, though - it is, after all, still a little bit of a fantasy.

The film as a whole is enjoyable, touching, and on a small, intimate scale. It feels more like a long TV drama than a feature film. As such, even though I’m not sure it would seem right on the big screen, it works very well on DVD. And very few bystanders dance at all.

Bread

2008-11-10T18:58:27+00:00

Tori and I have bread machine and, contrary to the stereotype, we actually use it on a regular basis. Several people have asked for the recipe we use, so I thought I’d put it somewhere that Google could find it.

2 teaspoons sugar
1 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons (30ml) olive oil
300ml water
300g strong white flour
200g strong wholemeal or granary flour
7g (1 sachet) yeast
2-3 dessert spoons of seeds (optional)

We get fairly consistent results on the wholemeal (4 hour) programme, or, if you preheat (but don’t boil) the water, the rapid (2 hour) programme. That said, different machines do slightly different things, so experiment. As far as seeds go, we’ve used sunflower, poppy, flax, linseed and alfalfa - they’re all good, so you can mix in a few different types.

Enjoy.

Hiatus (and return)

2008-11-09T17:21:02+00:00

When I started the new-look blog, I was aiming to update at least once per week. A cursory glance at the timeline will tell you that, for the last few weeks, I haven’t managed it. I do have an excuse, however - the hard drive in my laptop died a sudden and inexplicable death. I’ve actually been quite lucky in this respect - in the twelve or so years that I’ve had a computer with a hard drive, I’ve only had one other fail on me, which I believe works out at well below the failure rate you’d expect for consumer hard disks - but it’s still a bit inconvenient. While I do have other devices that I could in theory use, you really need a proper, decent-sized keyboard if you’re composing text of any length. That eliminates everything but the desktop PC, which would’ve meant sequestering myself away upstairs instead of being sat on the sofa, still connected to other people. Well, at least it gave me a chance to read more, and get marginally less bad at the guitar.

In any case, I’ve now got and installed a new hard drive (at 320GB and 7200rpm, it’s substantially better than the 80GB/5400rpm one it replaces). Fortunately, I finally caved in and upgraded to OS X 10.5 a few months ago, so relatively recent Time Machine backups meant bringing everything back was a piece of cake.

Now I just need to think of something to write. Damn.

How to Lose Friends and Alienate People

2008-09-29T18:47:00+01:00

We caught another premiere at the Film Festival on Friday. Well, I say “premiere”, but the stars and red carpet all seemed to be in London a day before. And I say “caught”, but due to a slight mix-up with the time, we arrived half an hour in. On the plus side, they had author Toby Young and producer Stephen Woolley for a Q&A afterwards, and we got to find out that cinemas still have people with torches to show you to your seat.

I have to confess that the trailers didn’t fill me with confidence. However, with a reasonable cast, headed by the excellent Simon Pegg, we decided to give it a shot. I was pleasantly surprised; it’s by no means a classic, but definitely worth the price of admission. The main issue won’t be a surprise anyone who’s familiar with the book - the main character isn’t exactly what you’d call sympathetic. In fact, and it’s a little difficult to figure how to bring this up in a Q&A with the real-world counterpart sitting right there, he’s pretty much a grotesque. They’ve softened him up to allow the narrative to work as a romantic comedy, but as a result, he seems to veer wildly from loveable loser to contemptible creep. Pegg, and to a lesser extent his co-star Kirsten Dunst, save this from disaster with likeable performances, but it still sits slightly uncomfortably at times.

Than again, perhaps I’m being harsh. Maybe the first thirty minutes is pure gold.

The Understudy

2008-09-20T14:05:22+01:00

Last night we caught the UK premier of The Understudy at the Cambridge Film Festival, and - assuming it gets a more general release - I’d thoroughly recommend it. The basic story (the tag line, “Dying for stardom she finds a role to kill for”, tells you pretty much all you need to know) could have turned into a schlocky car crash if given the standard Hollywood treatment. However, even though it was filmed in New York, it’s written and directed by a British couple, which might be why its both subtle and very, very dark. The only fault I might find with it is that the plot never really surprises - however, that doesn’t particularly detract from a great film. Highly recommended.

Hellboy Gets Smart

2008-08-30T14:29:55+01:00

I was intending to start writing up films I’ve been to see, with an individual entry for each. I haven’t quite managed that, so here’s a grab bag of things I’ve seen recently. First up, Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Going to see the original when it came out a few years ago, I was expecting a fairly standard two hours of mild diversion, but nothing more. In fact, it turned out to be great - visually inventive, a good ensemble cast, and most importantly, never taking itself too seriously. Everyone involved seems to be enjoying themselves immensely, and it comes through in the finished product.

The sequel is more of the same, with a sprinkling of tight white t-shirt flashbacks and a dash of the non-Franco bits of Pan’s Labyrinth. The same sense of fun is still present, and the effects are if anything more impressive. This is possibly the only black mark against the film; the original felt small in scope, which was part of it’s charm, whereas the sequel tries for something more grandiose. As a result, it doesn’t have the same amiable feel. Still, it’s one of the most entertaining films of the year so far.

Next, Get Smart. It’s by no means a classic, but it’s worth seeing. Most heavily-promoted movies starring Steve Carrel leave me cold, and the trailers for this didn’t fill me with confidence, but I’d enough fond memories of the TV show to give it a go. I’m glad I did. Carrel is excellent as Max, the other headline names (Anne Hathaway and Dwayne Johnson) and supporting cast (notably, Masi Oka from Heroes) all acquit themselves with aplomb, and an unexpected, cantankerous bonus appears in the form of Alan Arkin as the Chief (random fact; Arkin also starred with Carrel in the superb Little Miss Sunshine). Another nice touch is that, unlike most of the regular-Joe-is-forced-to-become-field-agent genre (and it is a genre), Smart is actually competent, as well as being a bit of a buffoon. Not an easy trick to pull off, but Carrel manages it.

Finally, a random assortment of slightly less recent films. There isn’t really much to say about Wall-E - it’s Pixar, so even if it was their worst film ever, it would still beat the crap out of pretty much everything else in the box office. In any case, it isn’t their worst film by a long shot - in fact, it’s vying with Toy Story and The Incredibles for my favourite Pixar of all time. The short is one of their best, too. Hot Fuzz isn’t even slightly new, but it’s well worth digging out the DVD, as it just gets better and better every time you watch it.

Finally finally, The Prestige deserves a special mention - fantastic performances and intelligent plotting with genuinely unpredictable twists. The only slight flaw in this gem of a film is the exposition sequence at the end, complete with flashbacks to fill in the gaps. I only just figured out what was going on, dammit! Don’t take that away from me!

Sorry. I’ve calmed down now.

A problem with time

2008-08-25T09:15:07+01:00

I recently read a talk by the founder of GitHub saying that I (and everyone else) should start a side project. I’ve been thinking that I should do this for ages now, and the author made some good points that provide me with even more reasons to do so. One of thing things that he points out is that you need to allocate a chunk of your free time to working on your project. Fine; that isn’t the problem.

The problem I encountered was when I tried to implement one of his time-freeing suggestions, which was to stop reading RSS, and instead keep up with things on Twitter. This sounded like a good idea, and I’m already on Twitter, so I decided to give it a go. I started to follow John Gruber, author of the excellent Daring Fireball, and ran into the problem of the title. John lives in Philladelphia, which is on the east coast of the US (I admit I had to check this on Google Maps). This means that he’s five hours behind GMT. Given that Twitter is a more-or-less real-time service, the difference is immediately apparent. He doesn’t get up and start twittering until fairly late in the day where I am, and he carries on way past my bedtime. The upshot is that I get up and have a bunch of unread tweets, which isn’t all that different to my usual habit of reading RSS over breakfast. I’ll give it another few days, but I suspect I’ll be back on RSS before too long.

It's Alive!

2008-08-17T16:07:14+01:00

After bashing out a little HTML and CSS, and tweaking Apache config files a bit, www.rho.org.uk has a new front page, which points (amongst other places) here, so this site it now visible to the outside world. I’ve also created an archive of the previous (Blosxom-based) site on the off chance it’s of any use to anyone.

Now all I have to do is write some blog entries about something less tedious than configuring blogging software. Hmm…

New Look

2008-08-16T19:06:31+01:00

Just finished tinkering with the look of the new blog; currently, I’ve settled on the standard “Minimalist White” with a custom header background. No doubt it’ll evolve as time goes on, but I’m happy with it for now. For what it’s worth, the Movable Type Design Assistant proved very useful in trying out ideas. I was less impressed with the way MT itself kept throwing away my changes to the stylesheet when I hit “save”, but that seemed to stop once I turned of syntax highlighting. C’est la vie.

I’ve also added an initial bio page here; it’s not complete yet, but at least it’s more up-to-date than my last one.

New Site, New Software

2008-07-23T20:52:39+01:00

Anyone who’s been paying attention to http://www.rho.org.uk (which is, to a first approximation, no-one) will have noticed that I’ve not updated it for over a year and a half. The short answer is lethargy; I just didn’t get round to it. For the long answer, read on. Previously, http://www.rho.org.uk was a single site running on Blosxom. In order to get the site looking how I want it to, I’d written a number of templates. And plugins. And hacked the script a bit. It all sort of worked, I enjoyed doing it, and I even appreciated the Perl practice. However, I decided to rearrange things such that entries were organised by date as opposed to category (see Cool URIs don’t change), and that’s when the problems started.

In theory, this shouldn’t be too difficult - Blosxom is, after all, a very flexible system, and can do this sort of thing - but to sort out all the details, and to make all my plugins and templates work in the new world, isn’t a ten-minute job. The effect was that every time I felt like writing some actual content for the site, I’d pick up the computer, and think “I need to sort out the script first”. I’d prod at it listlessly for half an hour, but without enthusiasm. After all, that wasn’t what I’d picked up the computer to do. I’d lose interest, and go and do something else. Last week, instead of starting to tweak the script, I checked the public version of the site. The last entry was from eighteen months ago.

I could have knuckled down, dived in, mixed metaphors and fixed the existing setup. However, that sounds a lot like hard work. What’s more, the problems probably wouldn’t stop there - the more I go off-piste with Blosxom, the bigger a rod I create for my own back. I realised that rho.org.uk is something I do for fun, and that what I really wanted was something that worked with the minimum of fuss. I’ve tried the DIY route, and I know I can do it. That doesn’t mean I want to. I want to be writing entries, not messing with Perl and Apache.

So, I decided to start from a clean slate. I’ll keep the old site around as an archive, but I’m not bothering to port the older entries en masse. I’m also separating my blog - (http://rob.rho.org.uk) from the main website (http://www.rho.org.uk), as that gives me more flexibility for any future changes, and means I don’t need to shoehorn pages that don’t make sense (such as the one for SilverService) in to a blog structure. Software-wise, I’m using Movable Type - I’ll post more about that later.

I also promise to post more frequently. Honest.