I’ve just set up a Tor relay in the hope that every extra little bit of bandwidth will help the protesters in Iran preparing for today’s big rally in Enghelab Square, Tehran. If you’re technically minded and can spare some bandwidth then please consider doing the same. If you’re not technically minded and want a simple, fictionalised and very readable introduction to this kind of technology and why it matters, consider Cory Doctorow’s book Little Brother.
Archive for the ‘Personal’ Category
Just Set up a Tor Relay
Saturday, June 20th, 2009Information is Not Knowledge
Wednesday, February 4th, 2009Spent all day in meetings about the proposed ‘Bad Bank’ and kept wondering what their uniform might look like.
havent signed tonys card yet, can’t think of anything funny to put
Maybe it’s an age thing; perhaps I’ve already crossed that subtle threshold after which you become unable to understand the appeal of new fads – but I don’t understand the purpose of Twitter. The spoof tweets allegedly from the men currently crash landing the British economy are funny because of the frighteningly plausible, Pooteresque banality of their thoughts. The tweets of a nobody, however, lack such saving irony.
There’s a fine line between spontaneous and knee-jerk, between wit and bigotry, between the simple statement of fact and the simplification that distorts the truth.
We live at a time where politicians clash horns using sound bites and real policy is rarely debated, where newspapers and other media channels uncritically repeat information known to be false (“we only use ten percent of our brains”, “hair and fingernails continue to grow after death”, “house prices always go up in value”). It’s an era uniquely rich in data about the natural world and yet culturally we lack the critical facilities to evaluate this information, making us ripe pickings for every charlatan who appears on television dressed as an expert.
In such an age, do we really want our thoughts to be restricted to what can be expressed in 140 characters?
Extraordinary Customer Service from Amazon
Saturday, March 8th, 2008A DVD player I bought from amazon developed a fault.
I called them on Monday at lunchtime to report the problem.
Tuesday morning, they delivered a replacement before 8am. Tuesday evening a second courier came round to collect the faulty one and return it to amazon.
I’ve long been impressed by amazon but this time they have surpassed themselves.
Properteer
Monday, August 6th, 2007Main Entry: prof·i·teer
Pronunciation: “prä-f&-’tir
Function: noun
: one who makes what is considered an unreasonable profit especially on the sale of essential goods during times of emergency
- profiteer intransitive verb
Properteer
Main Entry: prop·er·teer
Pronunciation: “prä-p&-’tir
Function: noun
: one who drives up the prices of a limited, essential resource by treating homes as an investment
- properteer intransitive verb
Inform 7 Released
Sunday, June 4th, 2006Inform 7 has been released, a new version of the langugage used to write Infocom-style text-based adventure games (am I showing my age?). Whereas Inform 6 resembled an OO language, version 7 resembles structured English.
In place of traditional computer programming, the design is built by writing natural English-language sentences:
- Martha is a woman in the Vineyard.
- The cask is either customs sealed, liable to tax or stolen goods.
- The prevailing wind is a direction that varies.
- The Old Ice House overlooks the Garden.
- A container is bursting if the total weight of things in it is greater than its breaking strain.
Although the exams are over, I still have my project to complete so I probably won’t touch this for a few months but I’m looking forward to exploring it.
The Finals Countdown
Thursday, May 18th, 2006One week before the exams are due and the university has finally confirmed that, following a meeting with the local branch of the AUT, the exams will be going ahead as scheduled.
My revision has suffered from the uncertainty. Let’s see how much I can catch up in seven days.
Shat on by Tories, Shovelled up by Labour
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006The AUT action short of a strike continues. Exams start in eight days and we still don’t know if some or all are going to be cancelled. If they do go ahead, they may be missing questions by lecturers who are on strike even though we have told the university we do not want to sit partial exams. Revision is difficult to say the least.
The unions have taken us hostage and the university seems happy to regard our education as collateral damage. They acknowledge that exams may have to be delayed but they refuse to make that decision, reserving the right to let us know 24 hours before they are due in spite of repeated demands to give us more notice.
This is even worse for the part-time students who are taking time off work to sit exams that may not happen.
Sally Hunt is a Disgrace to Her Profession
Saturday, May 13th, 2006Sally Hunt, general secretary of the AUT, accused universities and colleges of ignoring her request to return to negotiations.
“Unless we can get them to come and negotiate with us, those poor students are in danger of not graduating,” she told BBC Radio 4’s the World Tonight.
Am I the only one who feels sick when Sally Hunt talks about “poor students” and then blames everyone else but her fellow militants? Sally, you put the gun to our heads, you are the one holding us hostage and whatever sympathy I may have had for your cause went out of the window the minute you did so. The students who do support you are suffering from the Stockholm syndrome.
Sally Hunt is refusing to ballot AUT members on the latest pay offer, unilaterally deciding that it is not enough. Final year students are having their education sacrificed for her election campaign for leadership of the combined AUT / NAFTE unions next year. She and her fellow strikers are a disgrace to their profession.
I Rain on Your Parade
Friday, May 12th, 2006Revising for finals is not being made any easier by the customers from the neighbouring pub who seem to regard a little good weather as an excuse to take the afternoon off work, get drunk and see who can shout the loudest, confusing, as idiots often do, being noisy with being witty.
The only time I don’t have to wear earplugs in my own home to concentrate is when it’s raining and since I can’t control the weather I thought I’d google for some creative common’s sound effects.
This thunderstorm may not drive the drunkards back to work but at least it helps drown out the sound of their braying, fake laughter and senseless cheering.
The Underconfidence Trap
Sunday, April 9th, 2006I’ve just spent a couple of hours trying to track down an error in some Java code I’m writing that uses generics (an area I do not know as well as I would like).
I’ve been tearing my hair out, assuming that the problem must lie in something I’ve misunderstood about the new area. The code implementing generics looked correct, but then what do I know? It’s not an area where I’m confident so I must have made some kind of idiotic, beginner’s mistake with it that I’m just not noticing. Or so I assume.
I refactored the code substantially. The bar stayed red. The same test kept breaking.
And then I found the error. A typo in the unit test itself. My code had been generating the right results all along but I had been checking the wrong thing.
When I’m confident of something and there’s an problem, I check the simplest things first. But when I’m not confident, I assume that the problem must lie in the area I don’t fully understand and dive straight into that without pause to check anything else.
I’ve fallen into this trap often enough that perhaps I should consider it a personal anti-pattern. Hopefully articulating it is the first step towards breaking it.