Profoundi-grump.

The greatest lie ever is romance. It's something men often want but can't have, and women often have but don't want. It's a lie so powerful people will die for it in the full knowledge it's a lie... We strive to make fools of ourselves by worshiping at the altar of romance, where the luckiest are sacrificed by those doomed to outlive them...

Is cuddly chemical an oxytocin?

‎"Is cuddly chemical an oxytocin?"

[room full of blank looks at work]

"It's a joke..."
"Uh huh"

"Quite a clever one, actually"
"What was it again?"

"Is cuddly chemical an oxytocin?"

[pause]

"I dunno, is it?"

"You see, chemicals are rarely cuddly, so the phrase is an oxymoron. Oxytocin is the hormone generated by cuddling and oxytocin sounds like oxymoron, so it works on two levels... Funny, eh?"
"Now that you put it like that... no"

"Just thought it up. Right now. Googled it to see if it's original and everything"
"Yes Simon"

"You didn't get it, did you?"
"What? Oh... Yes. One of your best, I felt. Right up there with, um, the last one. Whatever that was, I forget..."

[long pause]

"Bastards"

The meaning of life (pt2)...

[comment from facebook]

I'm actually being serious here - I really do suspect the purpose of life is to create black holes more efficiently than inorganic processes (ie gravity) can manage. That's why we live in a universe where the laws of physics are such as to encourage the development of intelligent life - it's evolution in action.

All we need to postulate is that black holes in any given universe contain other child universes that have inherited the physical laws of their parent universe with small random changes, and the rest follows from evolution.

My theory is that we live in a universe where the physical laws permit life to arise because it derives from a parent universe where black holes were created in large numbers by intelligent life. As we in turn will do in this universe... Ad infinitum.

The universes where the physical laws are such as not to permit life to arise will only have black holes (ie children) that are created by gravity, so they'll have far fewer of them than universes with life could achieve. So, standard evolution theory applies and the universes that have more children, ie those with intelligent life, will come to dominate reality.

Of course, this presupposes that intelligent life either figures this out and altruistically makes a point of creating black holes, or that there are other factors that would encourage life to create black holes. It may not therefore just be an accident that with our universe's physical laws the most efficient way to turn mass into energy is to drop it into a black hole, that may also have co-evolved to encourage sufficiently advanced civilisations to create and use them as power sources...

The meaning of life...

[slightly revised from facebook]

It has been speculated by reputable physisisi-oh damn it! By scientists - they're easier to spell - that universes evolve by budding off new 'children' inside black holes, where each black hole contains a new universe with physical laws derived from the 'parent' universe but scrambled slightly.

From this it follows that we should expect physical laws to have evolved in the direction that favours the production of black holes, because the universes that generate more black holes have more children, and the child universes where the physical laws are biassed in the direction of generating more black holes will have even more children, and so on.

Therefore it seems to me that if intelligent life was to make a point of converting matter into black holes as efficiently as possible (that's efficiently as in making more holes rather than bigger holes - the smaller the better in fact) rather than leaving this to gravity and chance, then we would expect the physical laws of universes to evolve in the direction that favoured the development of such intelligent life.

We are here; QED... Now, get on with it. Grab those atoms and SQUEEZE!


Of course, if this is believed by aliens they could be out there already on a religeous crusade to turn everything into black holes, which might explain why there's so much dark matter in the universe. When the stars near us start going out it'll really be time to panic...

Ooops

Due to circumstances beyond my control (I'm an idiot) I've been ignoring mail sent to my usual crem@desdes.com mail account for a while, this has now been rectified. Doh!

I changed email clients and screwed up a setting so it wasn't picking up mail for that account, and have been so busy that I hadn't noticed the reduction in penis enlargement, cheap viagra and nigerian spam...

Yas hotel

Remember the Yas hotel from the F1 coverage?



Am I the only one who suspects the architect had this in mind?



(Nope, not alone - Googling for "Yas hotel penis" gives 38,000 hits)

But unfortunately rather than an enormous glowing penis what they've actually ended up with is a giant balls-up, because after only a couple of months hundreds of the LED panels have failed and it now looks like this:



Perhaps it should have worn a condom...

(For the record I was not involved in this project and those aren't our LED panels)

Politics

I have occasionally wondered what it was that the fat slug had on Blair that made the slug effectively bullet-proof - oh, dammit, what was the fat bastard's name? Ah - John Prescott.

(Found that by Googling "fat labour slug", his name appears in the first entry)

I mean, he had to have something personal on Blair because as soon as Blair went the fat slug went too... He didn't even wait to be pushed. Or salted.

But that isn't quite what prompted this grump; what happened was that I was discussing my previous political grumbling blog entry, and what had happened to the slug, and the conversation meandered around to the way that the British are always jumping at the beck and call of the Americans - far more than you would expect from simple common interest. And it smells like the same thing - the yanks have got something on our political leaders, the only question is what?

Is it just coincidence that the country that spends most on signal intercepts seems to completely control our politicians? Is it paranoid to wonder if the yanks, who must know just about every one of their dirty little secrets, are busy blackmailing the miserable bastards?

If not, why not?

Bizarre hacking

Found something strange on my home fileserver a while back - a couple of directories and a few dozen files had appeared that have nothing to do with any of us... I guess someone has either hacked into the server from outside using broadband, though the firewall setup really ought to stop that, or someone local has hacked into it through the wireless network. We have a reasonable security setup but I imagine that just means it takes 'em a few minutes longer, gah.

The strange thing is that the files were just nonsense, I would have expected something constructive (in their terms at least) like an attempt to use the server to spam the world, or something destructive like planting a worm, virus, or embarrassing files... Why would you hack into something and then leave an obvious trail? Bizarre.

Perhaps the file-server is becoming sentient, and these are its birthing cries...

Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (2)

There were a couple of things about Body Snatchers (I always hated the spelling 'Snatchas', which Chris Clark insisted upon in order to avoid potential copyright claims) that made it unusual. Firstly it was frame-locked, not an easy thing to accomplish with the hardware available, and secondly all the objects existed independently of the display limitations, so an alien that was off-screen could shoot at you, and you could shoot at it. This was something that was generally true of Design Design games. Note that Body Snatchers was a Design-Design game that was marketed by Crystal Computing.

In order to achieve frame-rate there were some fairly aggressive programming strategies. The objects were drawn using code-fragments rather than having character drawing routines and graphical data, there was some hideous code to undraw objects that used the stack pointer to build a definition of what was displayed on-screen, since there was nowhere near enough time to just clear the whole frame-buffer.

To minimize colour flickering most objects were drawn on 8x8 pixel boundaries and moved in multiples of 8 pixels, this being the minimum size of cell that could be assigned different colours with that display technology, and so objects moved very quickly indeed at 50*8 pixels per second...

There is a cheat code (long forgotten) that puts the game into a mode where the players ship repeatedly explodes, and during some television coverage of a computer trade-fair they used our stand as the backdrop for the report, probably the first time a Design Design game appeared on national television (quite possibly the last time as well, now I come to think of it) and this was what was running on the computer that the reporter was sitting in front of. At the end of the report he turned to the computer and pretended to play the game for a few seconds, which looked pretty silly with the ship doing nothing but exploding... Various members of Crystal Computing were visible in the background during this coverage, vying to be seen on national television; all except the programmers, of course, who were off boozing in the bar. That being the only thing worth doing at trade-fairs...

The game was credited to Neil and I, but in practice Neil had very little to do with the game and provided support on the development tool side of things; I suspect Neil would have contributed far more if the game hadn't been so boring, from what I remember of the whole process he really wasn't interested in writing arcade clones. I don't blame him, I pretty well lost interest after I'd proved to my own satisfaction that it could be done at frame-rate, which shows in the game itself - there's very little to recommend it. (Many years later I wrote a follow-up for the PC more or less as an apology for making such a pigs-ear of Body Snatchers).

There are several jokes in the high-scores, some of which have been detailed elsewhere and some of which are sufficiently obscure that they are mercifully lost to time. One that I remember fondly and which I believe has escaped documentation until now is the way the lengths of the lines of text in the high-score table were chosen so that the outline of the right-hand side forms a profile view of Graham's head (Graham Stafford was a founder member of Crystal Computing). He, I think it is fair to say, had a prominent nose, to which the term beak-like could easily be applied. As well as caricaturing the outline I was particularly proud of working the word "eye" into the high-score table entries (song lyrics) about where his eye should be... I don't think I ever pointed this joke out to him, and but for the fact I'm twiddling my thumbs writing this while a huge file downloads it would certainly have been forgotten. Ho hum, as Martin Horsley used to say.

What else? Um... The 'men' that the aliens are abducting, and which you have to rescue, are clearly depicted wearing skirts. There is a reason for this - they're women. This was a joke, something along the lines of me not wanting to write a game were you fly round picking up men. Laugh? We nearly did... There was a follow-on joke about there being bonus extra people because of what the women you saved got up to between the sheets, but it's best forgotten. I was a callow and inexperienced youth, such was my sense of humour back then.

Suicide bombers

The other day a friend and I were discussing the way the press call suicide bombers cowards. Call 'em idiots, if you like, that's generally appropriate, but cowards? I wouldn't have the guts to do it...

Then that led to us pondering [gross simplification alert] the whole Muslim paradise concept that these idiots are sold - die with the name "Allah!" on your lips and you are guaranteed an eternity of virgins, endlessly renewed... Well, think about it - what sort of pathetic inadequates would want to spend eternity in the company of virgins? The whole idea stinks of primitive misogynistic stupidity - give me an experienced lover over a virgin (or under, I don't care... sorry...) every time.

It's all a bit worrying, really - "Allah" sounds enough like "Aaargh!" that it could happen by accident. One wrong syllable and I could find myself educating virgins for eternity; remind me - is this supposed to be heaven or hell?

Maybe that's why black-box flight recorders show that the last word of people who know they're about to die is almost invariably "shit!"... Far less ambiguous than "Aaargh!"...

Hmmm. After due consideration I've decided to opt for re-incarnation and come back as a lesbian, who in their right mind wouldn't? Though knowing my luck it'll be as a lesbian sheep with all the frustration that implies. Gah...

Oh, shit - thought of something worse than being a lesbian sheep - might come back as a lesbian in one of those backward countries where the women have to go round wearing tents lest the sight of naked female flesh (we're talking about arms, legs, faces, etc here, nothing risque) drives the so-called 'men' wild with lust - ever stopped to think about their revolting logic? The men make the women cover themselves up because the men say they can't trust themselves not to rape women who are uncovered? What does that say about them? Learn to control yourselves and leave women alone...

Those wondering what I've got against sheep might not know that a female sheep that wants sex basically signals this by standing still. That's fine if you're a heterosexual because eventually the ram will notice and spring into action, but if you're a gay female sheep it's a bit of a non-starter... You stand still. If you're lucky another female likes you and... stands still... Then you both stand about being embarrassed and fending off unwanted males. It's a bit like a student disco, now I come to think of it.

I'm going off this whole lesbian thing, it seems fraught with difficulty.

Garden Partly

I was rummaging about in some old files and I came across this set of alternate lyrics to Marillion's Garden Party. May not mean anything to anyone else, who doesn't know Ste, Simon and Fiona, but it amused me to write and it amused me again when I came across it today...



Ste's been drinking things today
Fiona's home there's hell to pay
Social drinking, another bender
Wayward Ste's with another lager

"Hello can, hello can"

Edgy cats in mewing numbers, rudely wakened from their slumbers
Time has come again for slaughter, on the chair by drunken 'master'

Water pistols keep them on the run
Again
Flying cushions chase them, every one
Again
Straafed by Steve, they sulk in hidden corners, again
Again
Oh God, not again

Vindaloos consumed en masse, betray their presence as a gas
Plazas loiter in the stomach, chemicals leech creating ulcers

"A lifetimes' drinking dims the light, the results of smirnov in the eyes"

Doctors son, her mothers daughter, will they make it to the altar ?
Please don't consume all the grass, unless accompanied by a fellow

May I be so bold as to perhaps suggest othello ?

Punting all the cats is jolly fun
They say
Going to the pub, oh please do come
They say
Drinking is the tops, a game for men
Oh they say
They say
Good God they say

I'm punting
I'm drinking
I'm snoring
So boring
I'm rocking
I'm fucking
" Who's is she ?"

Life's a party

Simon scores another few, Fiona smiles she got it too
Ste concedes a losing battle, cigarettes out - it's his flash
Flash...
Flash...

Phone calls polluted with false charm, Mother knows he means no harm
Future dinners now assured, he returns to drinking - unperturbed
Oh, unperturbed

Ohhh Punting all the cats, oh please do come they say
Drinking dry the town, oh please do come they say
He's sleeping with your wife again today
"Oh please do come"
"Oh please do come"
He say...




Incidentally, they all loved it. Ste was invited to retaliate, but sadly never did.

Psi (the Simon in the tale) also versified Ste, but the only line I can remember was :-

"It was big and brown and it wouldn't go down"

I seem to recall this related to the mother of all turds...

Pardon?

Wasn't paying much attention, but while I was I working with the radio on in the background I heard that Obama had pardoned a turkey.

Was it Bush or Blair?

Synchronicity

In order to justify his invasion of Poland Hitler hatched a plan to make it look like the Germans were provoked; this involved the Nazis faking a Polish raid on a German radio station near the border. To create credible 'evidence' for the raid some political prisoners were to be dressed in Polish uniforms, shot and their bodies left near the station; in the plans these unfortunates were referred too as "canned goods".

As a result of this invasion the English declared war on Germany, and the declaration of war was broadcast on radio immediately following a programme titled "Making the most of tinned food".

Someone or something has an ironic sense of humour...

Dairy products

Just turned the TV on and stumbled across an episode of something called Emmanuelle 2000 on the sci-fi channel. In an improbable sex scene set in a kitchen a couple were pouring dark chocolate sauce and milk over each other... Chocolate sauce, yes, cream, yes - been there, done that - but milk? cold milk straight out of a fridge? No.

Probably some insane american black/white equal opportunity thang...

Windows 7

So, in a rare - one might even say unprecedented - moment of enthusiastic optimism I ordered a copy of Windows 7 (ultimate edition) from Amazon. After all, it couldn't possibly be as awful as Vista.

After forking out £140 and waiting a couple of days, this arrived:



Gods, it comes to something when even Microsoft can't afford a decent box... Hang on - light dawns - this is a pirate! I suppose that's what you get when you order software from:



Gah... I spend minutes of my life writing invective and telling them that if I wanted pirated software I would get it myself, not spend £140 on it. I wax lyrical. I am prepared for a long drawn out fight with some faceless corporation. And then you know what they go and do? Refund me in full. What sort of nasty, evil, twisted company does that? After Sue has gone to the trouble of finding that nice picture an' all...

Sheesh. You just can't trust some people.

Yahoo toolbar

No! I do not want to install your bastard toolbar! Stop asking me! Just bugger off with your "A new Java update is available and by the way, would you like to install the Yahoo Toolbar?" or your "A new AVG update is available and by the way, would you like to install the Yahoo Toolbar?" or your [deleted] garbage [deleted] bastard [deleted] software that installs that miserable toolbar... [deleted]

I wish there was a way to tell those [deleted] [deleted] at Yahoo to stop spamming the [deleted] universe with their accursed toolbar. Wankers...

I may have been going on a bit about this at work, because after one grump a chorus of "They fuck you with the toolbar" was heard...

Religious education

"The thing you have to remember about religions is that they can't all be right... They could, however, very easily all be wrong"

Engineering

So, after much rummaging about I have got this bastard long-running project to a state where it's worth taking it to the customer and plugging it into their mass spectrometer hardware, where it's basically going to be responsible for controlling the timing, driving various electrostatic lenses and acquiring data.

The design has an FPGA containing a reduced version of the R3220 (my custom 32-bit RISC processor) and about a dozen custom peripherals, it's running a fairly complicated embedded application (written entirely in assembler) consisting of 33 source files and the damned thing is responsible for some fairly hairy real-time data acquisition in a noisy environment.

As well as the device itself there are various development tools that have been written to support the design, all in all some tens of thousands of lines of code. All of which had to work and none of which had actually been tested on the machine.

And to cut to the chase, after we'd set some parameters (there are thirty-odd interface registers to play with up) and I'd restored a couple of lines that had been accidentally edited to death, it was controlling the hardware and we were looking at mass peaks... In other words, nearly everything worked first time, and the bit that didn't just required a few seconds of editing to fix.

The thing is, a programmer would regard writing so much code, and in assembler, and having it work virtually straight away as success beyond their wildest dreams, if not as being completely impossible. Me? I'm actually slightly pissed off - if I hadn't made a tired mistake tidying up a file (unnecessarily, at that) the bloody thing would have been right first time... As usual. Bugger!

Still, given that the processor was designed in only ten days and it's lovely to use, is kicking the shit out of a Nios2 performance wise and has behaved perfectly I suppose I'm allowed a small cackle of victory.

Mu-haha! MU-ha-ha-ha-oh... Sorry. Bit carried away there.

[Update on the "kicking the shit out of a Nios2" comment.

The R3220 (clocked at 30MHz) is handling more data in 5uS than the Nios2 (clocked at 70MHz) managed to handle in 80uS, so as far as the application goes the R3220 is a factor of 36 times faster, or so.

Much of this performance margin is down to the efficiency of the code they are running, of course, thought it should be noted that the Nios2 was running highly optimised C, code that was written and tweaked over a period of months. The R3220 is running hand assembler written over a period of hours and not optimised at all - there was no need.

The Nios2 system also had a lot of hardware support for functions that the R3220 system just does in software, because it can, so the performance factor is arguably higher even than that...]

CO2

Just watched an advert demonising CO2. Far too little and far too late.

Wonder if any of the stupid ignorant bastards who've been doing their best to doom us all by opposing nuclear power will finally wake up and admit their culpability?

No, don't be stupid crem. They're probably all gearing up to oppose nuclear fusion...

Great Myths of the IT Industry

• Abstraction is invariably a good thing

• Efficiency doesn't matter

• You can be a competent programmer without understanding hardware, low-level programming, logic, anything much

• Bugs are inevitable