January 2004 Archives

I remembered to check my site statistics tonight, and as usual they make amusingly incomprehensible reading. Quernstone.com served 63,264 pages last year, with a startlingly linear growth; Jan 2004 alone was almost 10,000 page requests. These look like big numbers, but in the grand scheme of things really aren't.

The referrer and search reports are particularly bizarre. 5% of my readership is the Google crawler robot; another 5-10% is comprised of altavista, inktomi, and others. Lots of people arrive here while looking for bicycle reviews (indeed, so did my chum Derek, which surprised the hell out of both of us). But the most popular inbound search is 'Eddie Mair.' So I checked - and sure enough, there I am in positions five and 6 in the Google search. Right above his agent, for heaven's sake!

There's a clear conclusion: the way to secure a huge online readership is to start an Eddie Mair fan club. It should exist anyway.

Via everywhere, this. Hah!

Of course, while I was writing that last post, Greg Dyke resigned.

Cripes. The Government vs. The BBC in open warfare: not a battle I want to see. Blair may yet snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Interesting problem, one's response to the report of The Hutton Inquiry. Personally, I have much to thank it for, since there's a situation in the office with a rather similar root problem. No, I'm not talking about the death of a senior civil servant, nor the (evident lack of) WMD and their use as a pretext to war. I refer to the problem of terminology. Specifically, the word 'proof.'

It strikes me that Hutton's problem is that he's a law lord: his entire career has been immersed in very strict definitions of 'truth' - specifically, 'beyond reasonable doubt' and 'in the balance of probability,' and their legal use. But investigative reporting does not share the same definitions; the nature of 'truth' is indeed malleable, insofar as the precise interpretation of the phrase changes. In law, truth is established through evidence, and in the absence of evidence speculation holds no sway. But to a journalist the world need not be so black and white. Faced with a huge story and the same evidence Gilligan had, I think most journalists would publish. Gilligan was sloppy about it, which is where it gets gnarly - though how Hutton's remit covered interpretations of journalistic practice, I've no idea - but the decision to publish itself seems to me perfectly reasonable and respectable.

Hutton appears to be suggesting that Gilligan should not have published without far more significant evidence. That's a lawyer's interpretation of Gilligan's role, and it's simply not correct. Gilligan reported (badly...) rumours, atmosphere, a general air of lacking support. These are the sorts of things with which a judge should not have to deal. Was it in the public interest to run the story? Hell, yes. Even - and here's the nub that Hutton is not equipped to understand - even if the story subsequently turned out to be untrue. Surely you have to allow for that sort of error if you believe in a free press? And if you don't, what the hell are you doing as a law lord?

Now, my own definition of 'proof' is different again, since I was trained as a hard scientist. Actually, 'proof' is a somewhat alien concept for me, as is 'truth.' I'm happy to evaluate the validity of an hypothesis, based on available evidence - but that shouldn't lead me to take a view on 'the truth.' And 'proved' is right out: I can demonstrate that a proposition is incorrect, but proving that it's right is, usually, not possible. A little philosophy is a dangerous thing. As is a little statistics: I'm equally happy with numerical evidence, but that's still different to a civil court's 'balance of probabilities.'

At work, we've been involved with a new children's series being made by another company, and I've been struggling to work out why it rings so many alarm bells. Thanks to Hutton, I've realised that it's down to the surprsingly ill-defined notions of 'proof' and 'the truth'.

The new show sets out to prove or disprove postulates. The worry is that most of the time it may do no such thing - it might demonstrate their plausibility/validity or lack thereof, but will there be hard proof by any scientific or legal interpretation? Colloquially, however, there quite likely will be 'proof'. Is that enough?

The series could well be an absolute hoot, and kids might love it. That may be enough to classify it as a raging success, but I worry I might be cringing. One of our stated aims is 'to touch children's lives, for the rest of their lives.' OK, so another of our stated aims is to get as many of the blighters watching as possible so we can sell advertising space and recoup the cost of the show, but the former still stands: we do have a public service remit (yes, ITV does - yes, we pay a fortune in broadcasting license fees for this honour - no, that's ITV paying, not you, we don't get a penny of the TV license fee). We're not here to educate per se, but we are charged with doing the right thing by our viewers.

In my book, that means being positively Victorian about setting a good example. We can be subtle about it, we needn't draw attention to it, but we still have to be rigorous. I think the makers of this new series do understand that, on some level, and I'm hopeful that the series will be both a heap of fun and adequately thorough. But it's worth reminding ourselves of the consequences of our being wrong. Overdramatic as it may sound, we risk missing the opportunity of exposing a generation of children to a higher standard of thinking. As a result, some will end up as sloppy as the rest of us.

Hutton's sloppy thinking seriously threatens the BBC, and investigative journalism in general. I wonder what he watched as a kid?

A new form of matter, huh? Typical, you wait for ages, then... actually, come to think of it, Bose-Einstein Condensates were a while back.

This is interesting stuff, a sort of 'best of both' of a BEC and a Cooper Pair. As I recall (and it's been a decade, so cut me some slack here...), a BEC is akin to superfluid helium, where mass numbers of particles occupy the same quantum state thanks to their not being subject to Pauli exclusion. In superfluid helium, this results in interesting properties like zero viscosity. Cooper Pairs I only touched on (but hey, at the time, the course was the only undergrad superconductors course in the UK...): surprisingly long-range 'pairing' of fermions (electrons; subject to Pauli exclusion - ie. not able to occupy the same quantum state) to form sort-of surrogate bosons, which can then all behave in a Bose-Einstein sort of stylee. The analogy being that 'Cooper Pairs' lead to zero electrical resistance just as condensed bosons lead to zero viscosity.

If memory serves, in 1994 it wasn't quite clear that the analogy had any validity, but it was a nice idea. It looks, from this brief report, that it might: I'm certainly gobsmacked that atoms (nuclei?) can behave in a Cooper Pair-like manner, whatever temperature they're at.

It's also worth noting that this is already being misreported. I first saw mention on Slashdot, who's submittor has taken two disconnected parts of the release and conflated them to report that the scientists predict "'room-temperature solid" superconductors.' Not in the Yahoo story, they don't. It's a reasonable extension, but it's not what the report actually says.

Evil sod that I am, I thoroughly enjoy putting wannabe-presenters through the mill in auditions. Happily, today's likely lot were pretty good; certainly, nobody shamed themselves. A couple we'll be frank with, but one or two were genuinely excellent.

It was an interesting exercise - we're feeling our way to a new art show that's both radical and (like most of my ideas at the moment) downright bleedin' obvious, and the day was terrifically useful in convincing us that we might just be on to something. It's certainly a reminder that the arrogance of television is all-pervasive, and waiting for people to come to us is plain silly. We have to get out there and find the next generation of talent. The BBC expend huge effort in doing just that: we, on the other hand, sit around agonising over how much better-staffed they are. Pfah!

Meanwhile: James Bachman's first play with GarageBand is running merrily in iTunes at the moment. James - you should send that to David Holmes for the Ocean's 12 soundtrack.

It's a measure of Chairman Jobs' Reality Distortion Field that, despite my having no musical talent whatsoever, I desperately want to get my hands on this software.

Terrifc film. Yeah, sure, so the portrayal of Japan and its people is two-dimensional - give it up, that's not what the film's about. Tokyo is a shorthand, a way of nudging at that dissonance we all feel at times. Alienation brings it into focus; the film could have been made in Berlin, or Rome, or Reykjavik. Or Glasgow, for that matter.

Bill Murray is stonkingly good, Scarlett Johanssen doesn't have a whole heap to do except smile wanly while wearing knickers, but that's harder than one suspects, no? And Tokyo looks enticingly exciting, in the right sort of arm's-length style. Plot mavens may notice that fairly exactly nothing happens, but it happens with such glorious style and surety, I was delighted to let the detail and photography infuse.

And the closing music is an old Jesus and Mary Chain track, for heaven's sake! How perfect can it get? Mum, Dad - I'll set you up with the DVD in due course, don't you worry.

Now... where's my copy of Darklands gone?

Today, I received six emails that would appear, on cursory inspection, to be carrying the MyDoom trojan (not 'virus,' surely?). All the messages were, curiously, to my How2.co.uk account, not the quernstone addresses. Nevertheless, this is the first time I've received contaminated mail during the widely-publicised outbreak, and I'm absolutely delighted. SoBig.F et al made me feel like a total outcast.

Of course, since I'm on a Mac, the 'virii' are entirely harmless. Well, I suppose I could run them in Virtual PC, just for kicks and all, but there's only so far I'm willing to go to prove a point.

I shall be playing with Furl soon. Some initial comments on the concept:

• Yes, this sort of thing should exist
• While their FAQ does mention export options, I'd still rather the back-end were under my control. I do see merit in being able to cross-reference other peoples' Furled entries, however, so I could be persuaded
• It annoys me that the greatest advance in browser technology since Mosaic has been tabbed windows, and that this sort of thing isn't already commonplace.
• iRemember is the only piece of software from Mac OS 9 that I miss; it indexed every web page I visited, so I could find it again. It worked transparently and terrifically.
• Agent Frank is also interesting, but worked rather badly last time I tried it out and now appears orphaned.

You have no idea how much I wish I'd done this. Ping-pong ball avalanche simulations. Rocking.

I've finally fulfilled a long-held ambition, and now own the contents of a cocktail cabinet. And a shaker. And some horrid little cherry things.

Last night, you see, was something of a flat-warming bash, in the form of a terribly unsophisticated cocktail party (though the margaritas were quite good at one point, thanks in part to the amusing attendance of a genuine Spaniard who knows about such things). Also, thanks to my bemusingly-faithful friends Daniel and Mary, my curtains are finally up. Hurrah!

Home, sweet home.

I know, I know, recycled MetaFilter, waste of time, etc etc. But 'Remarks by the President to the Press Pool' cracked me up, so there.

Commons Early Day Motion about iPod batteries. What?!

Notwithstanding the fact that iPod batteries do not, as a rule, pack in within 18 months (as widely, but inaccurately, claimed); neglecting to note that the out-of-warranty battery replacement cost is £79, fitted by Apple; ignoring the observation that this is, in fact, a fairly reasonable charge for one of the more expensive components; notwithstanding all of that - what the heck is this doing in the Commons? Haven't they got better things to do with their time?

At least Lindsay Hoyle (Lab, Chorley) isn't wasting valuable parliamentary endeavour checking facts, I suppose.

[Update: it's worth noting a couple of amendments (1, 2), which significantly alter the tone of the original motion.]

"It was when I caught myself researching how I could connect my iPod to my Mini Cooper that I realised I was a complete design victim."

Today, I bought a diary.

For those who don't know me - or those who are as knackered and, thus, slow-witted as myself right now - I shall take this slowly:

For the last few years, I've used a variety of digital diary-type things, including a range of desktop applications on my Mac, most recently iCal. My workplaces have usually provided Outlook, but in my humble it's quite the worst example of unusable software yet developed. How people can run their lives with it, I've simply no idea.

I've also tried using my iPod and mobile phone as diaries, and while I can get around the inability to enter data directly (Post-It notes are wonderful things), the access speed is simply rubbish. No, through it all, the master copy of what I'm doing has been in my head, and the backup of things like birthdays and anniversaries - not that I'm remotely good at doing anything about such things - is in my Newton.

Ah, the Newton again. The original handheld 'PDA,' and still - still, dammit - the best. Unfortunately, mine is heading rapidly towards its seventh birthday, and while it still works, I no longer feel entirely happy entrusting it with the running of my life. Indeed, I've not been carrying it around daily since I started cycling again.

Hence the problem. I need a calendar application. I need rapid-access. I need small size and light weight. I no longer need a contact book - my mobile phone iSyncs nicely with my Mac, which in turn syncs with my Newton and hence is now the master copy. But I do need a calendar.

So I popped into Smith's and bought a diary. It's very small, week-to-a-view, and I already hate the inability to back it up. But it might, just might, irritate me less than a Palm thingy or an Ericssony P810. And it certainly cost less.

Geek post warning

I'm repeatedly astonished at how fragile Windows is, even XP. My CDROM drive appears to be on the fritz - it sometimes works, but usually can't be bothered to read the disc it has loaded. OK, so this is an unfortunate situation for an OS to cope with - but how does WinXP handle it?

It locks the Explorer filesystem thingy (the application I'd call 'The Finder' on a Mac); it never seems to take the hint that the (removable) filesystem has stuffed off and simply will not talk to it. I can bring up the Task Manager and attempt to kill the 'Not Responding' Application (disconcertingly called 'My Computer'). That presents a handy dialogue box offering to send a report to Microsoft about the problem, but will not actually kill the process! 'Shut Down -> Restart' causes an endless lock during 'Logging out': so far as I can tell, my only option here is to hit the big red switch. Ugh!

Then there's the entirely random manner in which the beast offers up its 'shares' on my LAN... or doesn't, usually, whatever the (buried, arcane) dialogue boxes say. Not to mention the fact that no amount of persuasion will coerce it into firewalling the Ethernet connection, which as the only active network port is the only one I care about. I suspect it'd be happier if it wasn't confused by the USB ADSL modem, but since that's (a.) unplugged and (b.) 'not installed' according to Windows XP (despite the tray icon and heap of other stuff), it won't let me do anything.

So... Windows bitrot. It still happens, it seems. It takes longer than in the days of Win98 - this has been about six months - but eventually even a lightly-used Windows box can render itself unusable, all on its own. Looks like I'll have to reinstall. Give me strength.

I've been merrily humming Take Me Out since new Glasgow band Franz Ferdinand appeared on Jules' BBC2 show last November, and have been dimly aware of the rave reviews in NME, and their appearance high on the 'new acts for 2004' lists from the BBC and NME. The single was out this week; this morning they were at no. 2 in the CD:UK chart. Roll on the Coca-Cola official UK chart tomorrow.

I think this is the first time I've bought a single on the week of release.

[update: 3 in the official chart. Hardly shabby.]

iMark? Something you're not telling us?

Well, that settles the argument, then.

Via Metafilter: FishBase. The ultimate online fish information site.

My life just got one step more complete.

Apple will doubtless sell a boatload of the iPod mini, despite it being only $50 cheaper than the 15Gb version - it's so darned cute. And they've ticked all but one of my 'things I'd really like iMovie to do' boxes, the most important being 'rethink the way clips are trimmed and do it better,' which will make a huge difference to the scope of project it's sane to do before falling back to Final Cut Pro. Very impressive. Then there's Xgrid, not mentioned in Jobs' presentation but the sort of thing that makes the ex-supercomputer researcher in me perk up and take notice. I'll be interested to see where that goes.

Only a few disappointments: no word on the iTunes Music Store for the world beyond the US, bah! No hardware updates beyond the (much-anticipated) Xserve G5 machines, which is a bit of a pity since I'm in the market for a laptop in the near future.

But most bitterly: Douglas Adams isn't around to play with GarageBand. Until people get their mitts on it, it's rather hard to tell, but it looks like it's around the iMovie sort of level, possibly a bit more advanced - so, complex enough to do real work with without losing approachable simplicity. Limited, sure, but Apple's genius with the iLife applications was to realise that, sometimes, if you get the balance right, 'limited' is enough.

One thing, though: what's with the neither Aqua nor Metal 'dark metallic but not quite Final Cut Pro' interface stylee? Did we really need a fourth 'standard' Mac OS X GUI? Harrumph.

[update:] Everybody's favourite shareware author, Brent Simmons, is clearly excited about GarageBand. 'I've waited 20 years for this,' he says. John Gruber, meanwhile, points out that it exemplifies exactly what Apple is all about.

[update 2:] Er... they don't call it the 'iPod mini' for nothing. Want to see it alongside an Ericsson T68i? Try here, here, and here. That's tiny.

YourParty.org (should be .org.uk, but there we are) - interesting. I've just completed their pre-launch survey, including a stream of vitriol in the 'comments' box about how appallingly-written it is. Talk about forcing people down predefined avenues... blimey.

Have a look-see. It's a probably naïve but still fascinating idea, but if they're not going to think it through any more than that, I for one will not be involved. Bah! Market research! Bah!

See also this.

One of these days I'll get around to writing up some notes on my bike, since lots of people seem to arrive here via a Google search for 'Ridgeback Genesis review.' In the meantime - firstly, it's wonderful and I love it, and secondly, I'm slightly surprised by the new 2004 model range.

For the 2003 models, the choice was really between a Day 1 and a Day 2 - the 2 being a slightly more hardcore 'fast road' machine, with a lighter/stiffer frame and better components throughout, notably a much fancier set of wheels, but no mudguard eyes etc. I bought the 2 partly because late in the year the price dropped by a hundred quid, but really because it was available in my size. Which nothing else was.

This year, it looks a little like Ridgeback have decided they've got the brand name, so they're building down to a price. The 2 is pegged at £700: what I paid, and hence cheaper than last year's model. It gains carbon forks - probably a wise move when the competing Specialized machines all have them, though I don't find mine's alu-forked ride harsh - however, it loses the fancy triple-butted frame, which is now exclusive to the top-of-the-range Day 3. Since that model is now more expensive (using a mix of Ultegra and Dura Ace rather than 105), there's a gaping hole between the two models. The Day 3 still isn't available in a 60cm frame, either.

The Day 1, meanwhile, remains a cost-effective buy, but continues with what I'd class as marginal brakes - I wasn't impressed when I rode them, whereas the Tiagra units on mine are better than I'd thought sidepulls could be. The wheels probably play a part here.

Was it worth Ridgeback dropping the fancy triple-butted frame for the sake of keeping the price point? It's hard to say. Critically, the 2004 Day 2 has mudguard eyes, which to my (unhip) mind is a significant advantage. But I'm slightly surprised there isn't a 'Day 2.5' model, spaced between the Day 2 and Day 3, with 105/Tiagra bits on the Kinesium frame.

Perhaps Ridgeback are planning a range of drop-bar bikes? Or maybe they're not making any of the triple-butted frames this year, and are simply using up stocks from last season, limiting sales by slapping high-end kit on them? Strange.

Crivens! Vinay's blog front page usually scrolls so far you can't see the horizon; I habitually pester him to limit the number of posts rather than the number of days'-worth of posts. But now I discover that he's not posted for so many weeks, the layout's fallen apart.

Colour me worried.

An amusing reference spotted on Joi Ito's blog, with the title, "Oh no! My Tivo thinks I'm gay!" I have similar sorts of problems with Amazon, in that it can't seem to get its vast electronic brain around the combination that I (a.) have given up being a hardcore web programming geek, at least for the moment, (b.) am fascinated by graphic design, especially fairly esoteric typography, (c.) buy the novels of a few specific hard SF authors, (d.) look at a fairly wide range of history books, mostly monographs about weird things like waterwheel design, or the phlogiston theory, and (e.) buy the sort of contemporary literature that gets reviewed in the Guardian.

Don't get me wrong - Amazon's recommendations are at worst amusing, at best downright useful. But it strikes me that most of us are not a single person - or at least, should not be considered such for the purposes of profiling. Amazon, Tivo et al should be looking for instances where choices fail to fit the profile, and forking off a new persona rather than trying to integrate the two. Maybe they do, I don't know - it doesn't seem to work all that well, anyway.

Hmm. I could get rather interested in how the profiling is parameterised, come to think of it. I wonder what Amazon would make of that.

Tonight was the opening of Glasgow's newest cinema, the Tantallodeon. In other words, I had some friends round to watch a film, but we had trailers and adverts and supporting features and everything - iDVD is a seriously nifty piece of software.

The feature presentation was provided by Colin, who brought along Roman Polanski's 1974 masterpiece Chinatown. I'm surprised I've never seen it, but there we go.

A fine film; fine company; fine... well, fairly decent wine; extreme cheese on toast (with very fine truffle sauce). Oh, it's a hard life. Meanwhile, I'll be blogging more regularly again once How2 is finished, in a couple of weeks' time.