Archive for ‘Uncategorized’

57 results.

SM Pro Nano Patch

by admin on February 11, 2012 at 4:57 pm

I thought I would give a quick review of a great little device I’ve been using for the last few months.

If you have a pair of powered monitor or reference speakers which you love dearly, it can be hard to accept sound from any sources of lower quality. That includes radios, televisions, and computers. With a pair of great speakers on the shelf, why should I ever listen to a tinny, lifeless sound again?

The answer is of course, because it can be a pain in the ass to get everything talking to each other, and because most reference speakers don’t have a volume control. Scrabbling about with wire is an activity which far too much of my life has been devoted to, to date (between mic’ing up drum kits and an electronics degree), and I’d rather not extend every time I attempt to play a CD or watch the television.

Step up the SM Pro Nano Patch, which has turned out to be the cure for all my ills in this regard. Yes, it is just a variable resistor (the volume knob), a switch (the mute button) and a bunch of connectors, and yes, it does cost forty whole pounds. So why is it good? Balanced inputs and outputs, for a start, allow preservation of high quality input sources through to the output. Before this device, I had to plug everything through my sound card (which is a massive PITA) in order to maintain a good signal chain. Secondly, whilst it has no mixing ability, it has two inputs, which means that it is convenient for plugging into the laptop or iPod to listen to music as required, and can stay plugged in to the television and Playstation full time.

It is a solid piece of kit, that feels nice and provides just enough functionality.

Product website at Digital Village

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December in the blogosphere

by admin on December 20, 2011 at 9:49 pm

It’s December so it’s nearly the end of the year, which means the ‘blogosphere’ goes into madness about how it’s time to reflect and change and improve and stop procrastinating and just ‘do’ things. Well I’m pretty sure I’ve done that before in various guises, mmm.. every year since I was 15 and has it ever made a difference?

In 2009 I said: “My ‘New Years Resolution’ is going to be to spend as much time as possible doing the things I really want to do.” Out of context it sounds fucking stupid, but I know what I meant, it’s more of a life motto not to waste my time doing pointless activities like making the bed and waiting for hot drinks to cool down before they are usable. It seems a hell of a long time since I wrote that though. I haven’t written an awful lot this year, my mind has been on other things, like moving cities and jobs.

So blah blah, next year will be better, I’ll ‘just do things’ because priorities are bad thing (!?), I’ll waste less time so I can do more of my favourite things, and also be ready to jump at all the new opportunities that come along.

Nah. I’ll probably get up around 7am every day, go to work, each lunch from a nearby deli at my desk, talk to a limited group of peers about self reinforcing ideas, wait until my boss leaves before thinking about going to the gym, decide against it, curse everyone using a phone on the bus, get home and waste my evening on I don’t even fucking know what. Then I’ll spend the whole weekend recovering from a hangover, making up for the fact that I didn’t eat a hot meal all week, cleaning the mess I left each night because “I don’t have time to sort it now”, and trying to remember what the actual point of any of the last 7 days were.

I sound bitter and twisted, and after a few months in the capital I have absolutely no right to be whatsoever! Actually I’m not- that was my anti-resolution, and I think that maybe this year focusing on things I don’t want to do may be better than writing “stop thinking, start doing” on tiny scraps of paper and sending them to yourself. (http://tinyurl.com/cyvalo5)

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Hyperbole

by admin on December 12, 2011 at 9:53 pm

I saw a really annoying sentence in a software management book earlier. It read something along the lines of “In all but a few cases, there wasn’t a single delay that was caused by technological factors”. WHY DO PEOPLE WRITE LIKE THIS?

Surely it should just be “few cases were affected by delays due to technical errors”. OK, I concede that there is a modicum of additional information about the distribution of technological delay across cases in the original sentence, but that really wasn’t the point.

When I’m reading text quickly, I’m not neccessarily going to read every single word (which is what I imagine most people do with a book on software management, otherwise God help them), so why make it unneccesarily difficult to decipher with the stupid hyperbole?! (The answer is, I suppose, because the author wants us to buy into their theory)

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10 things I’m sorry about and regret doing at the work black tie christmas do 2011

by admin on December 10, 2011 at 6:50 pm

1. phone hacking
2. telling a girl she that her ‘costume’ looked like it was made of tinsel
3. telling a girl her dress was two years out of date
4. trying to lift two men simultaneously whilst they were embracing and causing a pile on
5. somehow acquiring an additional bow tie and overcoat
6. pretending to kiss a girl who arrived with, but was explicitly not the date of a colleague
7. engaging in dinner conversation about herpes and HIV for approximately 35 minutes
8. spilling vodka cranberry on a vintage clutch handbag and not telling its owner
9. not wearing a pocket square despite having declared the rules of pocket square enagagement to my colleagues weeks previously
10. switching the place cards at the table

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Airplay Dojo

by admin on June 6, 2011 at 10:53 pm

I’ve been working on Airplay SDK for Ideaworks3d for 6 months now, and it’s been a blast. I’ve learned a crazy amount about all sort of deep and dirty technical areas, and become an order of magnitude more productive using the GNU GCC toolchain, vi, python and git. My focus is better and I can work harder for longer than ever before. These things are all linked- the more I learn, the more interested I am, and the more interested I am, the less I need to eat cakes and watch DVD box sets by the carton.

On thursday I gave a 30 minute presentation to the London Python Dojo about Airplay SDK, and some work some colleagues and I did on porting python and creating some bindings. The project is hosted at https://github.com/guy127917/python-airplay. It’s kind of raw at the moment, but we have some basic stuff running, and the slow down doesn’t seem too bad for 3d stuff, so it looks promising. Some of the bindings require changes to the SDK which aren’t available to the public right now, but let me know if that is an issue and I’ll see what we can do.

The presentation went quite well I think, I guess it was more of a talk than a presentation since I didn’t take any slides. I didn’t really get through everything that I wanted to- 30 minutes absolutely flew by! So moral of the story is, though you may be able to wing it, it’s better to have some structure. The main reason I didn’t do more preparation is because I spent all my time getting a tech demo running, which only accounted for about 15 seconds of the talk. An iPad is a lot less impressive than a projector in front of a crowd!

I really appreciate having the opportunity to present though, so thanks to the Dojo and Mr Tollervey for giving me the chance. I really enjoyed it and hopefully can do something similar in the future. I actually wrote about wanting to do some talks not very long ago, so it’s nice to see a bit of progress there.

In fact, that post has reminded me why I like writing things down from time to time- it makes the whole “I was such an idiot 2 years ago, now I’m MUCH wiser” mentality more transparent and you can see it and isolate it if it is causing issues. So hopefully I will write more regularly in the future (famous last blog words).

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The Walls Are Bare

by admin on June 6, 2011 at 10:33 pm

It’s 5.25″ long, 0.50″ in diameter, weighs 3.83oz and is made out of high grade stainless steel. Available as surplus stock from an order by the CIA, the County Comm Embassy Elite pen is a fairly ridiculous specification for a pen if ever I heard one. I bought one a few months ago, out of boredom I guess. Obviously I have no need for a pen designed to survive a nuclear war, but it is a very nice object nonetheless. It is a very pleasing weight, the screw action on the lid and body grips nicely with the bite of metal on metal.

It’s nice to have objects like these in your life. Just little pieces of quality innocuously reminding you the value of doing things properly. People seem to find this in many ways- watches, cars, motorbikes, Apple *cough* products, and also less techy things- designer clothes, hand made jewellery, specialty coffee and many many more places. Having either pointless or pointlessly specified objects around is a very common thing in western civilization, and why not!

R and I have been trying to find some items to decorate the walls of our flat since we moved in, and so far we’ve come up a bit blank. We kind of agree about a few different pieces, but haven’t committed to buying anything. Personally I like the idea of having some sort of inspiring imagery on the walls, something thought provoking, or even something which just looks nice, as long as it is consistent and not a novelty. But I can’t get excited about choosing something, and I’m not sure exactly why.

I think my first reaction to buying some piece of ‘art’ to put on the wall is to think of all of the other million people who have that particular print. I guess there is very little ‘quality’ which I would like to surround myself with in a digital print.

My second reaction is that whatever you have on your wall is making a statement, and I just look at things an think, ‘well it looks nice and all, but do I really want people to look at this and just think “he likes dogs”.’ It’s like people who walk around with t-shirts which say “DRAG RACER ’78″ on. I just don’t understand why people want people to associate themselves with shit like that. Not that there is anything wrong with drag racing, but I’m pretty sure there is a stupid t-shirt to drag racer ratio in the world right now.

I like the idea of buying something from an unknown or young artist, maybe getting something at least a little bit unique. I wouldn’t mind paying a bit for the privilige either, I guess I just need to get out and see some exhibitions or something. Also, R and I have to agree on stuff too, so it’s not like I can just go out and buy a 10 ft canvas of a melting skeleton or something (on balance, probably a positive thing…)

I probably sound super pretentious here, but actually I’m not. As with most walks of life I think everyone should surround themselves with whatever they want. Just because I walk into a room and think “if I had to wake up everyday and see that I’d probably rip my face off”, it doesn’t mean I think any less of the proprietor, except maybe in the “me-and-you-art-compatability” column, which let’s face it, isn’t that important.

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Free Thought

by admin on March 8, 2011 at 10:50 pm

Say I was looking you in the face, and I said

“None of things I am about to say have any relation to my opinions. They are just words and sentences- the meaning of them is completely arbitrary.

“You are fat. You are a liar. You smell.”

I don’t know why you would do this, maybe you think that the sound of those syllables are particularly pleasant, maybe you never get the chance to say those things to someone in a meaningful way but you were interested to find out what it would feel like to speak the words out loud anyway, maybe you are reciting the lyrics to a song. But why shouldn’t you be free to do this? The point is, the words convey a meaning on their own, regardless of the intention of the speaker (pre-disclosed or not). It would take a very strong character to ignore completely those derisions, even with the preceding sentences- a character who could ignore the nagging doubt that they were the true feelings of the speaker.

So what if you want to explore the rhythm, rhyme and role of language? What if you want to see how other people react to the simple words, meaningful to your or their life or not? For example if you want to write a book about a promiscuous man, without your girlfriend questioning your faithfulness or desires, how would you separate to her your real and fictional psyche? It is certainly not unacceptable to want to explore the world through one’s imagination, and sharing this should be encouraged, but yet you will be judged based on the fictional characters and plots you create as if they were your own desires.

In many ways the situation is entirely expected. If I wrote a book about killing in a particularly brutal way, I would expect for people to look at me a little different, presumably thinking “is he looking at that knife and salivating?”. This isn’t a good thing though, in fact I think it is a terrible thing. Just because you are thinking about and considering the idea of cheating or stealing or paedophilia, it doesn’t mean you are considering cheating or stealing or wanking off over naked children. We are capable of meta thought!

In my opinion the mind should be totally protected. No man should be judged for his thoughts, good, evil and indifferent thoughts included. Only when actions manifesting these thoughts could negatively affect other people should judgement take place. In my opinion writing, art, and music are all physical manifestations of thought, not actions, and thus should come under the same protection. I am thus opposed to censorship, though I do support content rating, and publishing channels should be free to support whatever they want.

I think there is a gap between the ideal freedom of thought, and the natural human ability to separate the meaning of words or thought from intent- “genuine” or “real” thought. That is not to say however that with consideration every one of us cannot come to fair conclusions on these matters, but I think this is one place that it is important to use this consideration rather than resort to instinctual feelings. I think that as a society we should avoid knee-jerk reactions to every day things, like what people say, and bigger things, like the Wikileaks cablegate scandal. I think we should be very careful about protecting freedom of thought and communication.

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Update

by admin on March 8, 2011 at 10:49 pm

I haven’t written anything recently- I’ve been kind of busy, recently moving to a new job and flat in London. I have had spare time, obviously, so to claim I haven’t had the ability to write anything would be a lie. However my mind has been immersed in discovering new and exciting things and I haven’t had the inclination to take time out to write for a while. I’m pretty sure that a while ago I wrote about making sure you always take time out to reflect and write stuff, so I kind of failed there, but… nevermind.

The next post is something I wrote a while ago.

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Imagination Part IV

by admin on December 28, 2010 at 10:14 am

Imagine being trapped in a room where you may not exercise or sleep. Food is provided at regular intervals, you have no possessions, and you may only write for two hours a day. Apart from a couple of hours of television and a guard checking you are still alive every five minutes you have no other stimulus.

What do you think about?

This is the current situation for Pfc Bradley Manning, alleged source of the Wikileaks cablegate fiasco. Regardless of your thoughts on the nature of his alleged crime, it is hard to see how a non violent man awaiting trial, can be held in these conditions. If the man isn’t crazy, he soon will be.

Regardless, I have been harking on, recently, about how it is good to have down time to do nothing but think freely and see what happens. What the above case points to is that clearly there is a limit to the amount of time you should spend in this state before there are negative consequences. The important question is then, I suppose, at where this balance lies- at what point is it worth saying no to doing real activities to have down time, and at what point should you get up from an inactive slump to seek some real stimulation?

My guess at an answer would be, it depends. It depends on the nature of your personality, it depends on the nature of the activities you do, it depends on the nature of the relationships you have with people. Since all of these variables shift and slide, so too the need to cast our minds away into a world of make believe.

A better question then would be how do we know when we should take more (or less) time for ourselves to reflect and relax? What are the signs which should make us take that long walk or sit cross legged by a fire? Stress? Exhaustion? Anger? Apathy? These are all negative emotions, and it seems like a good idea to me to find time *before* your mind gets to one of these states. Why live in a reactionary manner? Why not consider what you need to do to maintain a positive mental state and do it *before* it is to late.

If you were balancing a broomstick on your finger tip, as you feel the tip fall you move the base underneath where the tip is falling *to* not to its current position- you predict its path and compensate for the amount of time it will take for the system to adjust. You constantly make tiny adjustments to the position of the base based on the feedback of looking at the tip of the broomstick, and in this way it remains balanced.

I used to write a blog on BlogDrive when I was 16 or so (from which sadly I now have no surviving posts), and I read some posts back a few years ago and remember thinking “I thought that, as a novel concept, last week”. It is surprisingly easy to forget what we think and end up going in circles. Since I want to amass both knowledge and understanding about the world (omniology?), I think it is important to avoid this where possible.

How many of us can honestly say, with regard to our emotions and thoughts, that we look forward and backwards. It is very easy to live solely in the present, missing the patterns of thought which would be obvious to a third party privvy to your thoughts. Since I was 15 I have had spots on my face, and every time I get a new one I still think “when that goes away, I will look OK”, yet whenever one heals, a new one appears. It took me maybe 7 years to realise this. I think by writing down our thoughts we can observe patterns more easily, and thus adapt and change as required.

That is my justification for carping on here anyway!

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Imagination Part III

by admin on December 26, 2010 at 6:26 pm

Imagine a cube: 3 metres by 3 metres by 3 metres of empty space. Now imagine something within it. Maybe a sculpture of an ostrich made of lightbulbs, maybe a stalagmite of coloured minerals, maybe it is empty except for a layer of paint splatters on the bottom. The possibilities are infinite, there is no limit to the number of distinct things that can occupy any space. I suppose if you assume a subatomic particle (or set of particles) which is the fundamental building block of everything then you could argue that the set of things was in fact bounded (albeit at a ridiculously big number) but that is beside the point.

Given that there are a number of possibilities for filling a three dimensional space, we can map all the possible entities as points along a line (any line has an infinite number of distinct points along it). Along this line we can thus place every item in existence which we know is within the set of things which fit within a 3m cube. If we could think of a way of ordering such as set, a way of giving each item of the set a real value between 0 and 1 where items which are similar scored similarly (a plate and a bowl would be very close values, a mouse and a tennis ball serving machine less so) and drew a point on the line where items lay, we would begin to see how well our discovery and exploration of all possible objects within the 3m by 3m was going. We could see if there were swathes of space which were unoccupied, begging the question “what goes here?”.

Now if we restrict the set of items which fit into a 3m cube to be the subset where the items are functional as a knife or cutting implement, suddenly there are a lot less potential objects. Again we have a line representing all possible knives, with the ones in existence, from kukris to cutlasses to scissors and nail clippers, and knive forms which have not been designed yet.

Sometimes when I pick up an object, such as a knife, I look at it and think “why is this object as it is?”- some person has, from nowhere in particular, filled a space with a design. They could have done anything else, but they chose to design that exact object. The nowhere in particular in question from which the knife design arose, is probably the combination of a specification (“design us a table knife with a floral inset pattern”) and experience (the knowledge that table knifes are a given size and shape, require a given sharpness and must withstand dishwashers etc).

There is something amazing about bringing ideas into existence, not because you are reducing the set of undiscovered items (because you can’t subtract from infinite), but because of the question of how your mind can come up with something novel, something new that it has never experienced before. I think this is an established field of study within psychology and philosophy, but I don’t know as much about it as I would like.

One of the ways I see art is as an exploration of the set of possible things, trying to get as far away from an existing point on the line as possible. Trying to find some space on the line which scores a value far different from any other object. There is no best or worst score, only a distance from other scores. Of all the items which we have not yet discovered, some will be aesthetically pleasing and some will not, some will be functional, some will be offensive. Of course we can also use time to further increase the possibilities- things which change over time, and thus things which make sound, things which smell, things which interact with the viewer.

I find art interesting, at a basic level, just because of all the things that the artist could have created, they created a sculpture of a man made only from plastic toy guns. Why?

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