Monthly Archive for May, 2005

The Python Challenge

Published
by
admin
on May 29, 2005
in Python
. 0 Comments

I’ve not spend much time blogging recently; this is because I have been puzzling through “The Python Challenge” - a sequence of 30 riddles intended to test the mettle of python developers.

Each challenge takes the form of a web-page; usually with a cryptic or hidden clue waiting to be found. If you have managed to identify the nature of the puzzle, the solution normally requires the player to write a short python script in order to discover the next password; These puzzles are devised in such a way to force the player to investigate rarely used python modules, or consider new ways of using the familiar ones.

For example, one puzzle has the player writing a script to extract a hidden message from something vaguely resembling a barcode hidden in an image; Having recognised that the image contains a coded message, the player must find a tool that will allow the message to be extracted, and if you are lucky, that contains a cryptic clue that will lead you on to the next puzzle.

The delight of the Python Challenge is the variety of techniques a developer must acquire in order to complete the sequence. Just like the real world, programming skill alone will not give you the solution; one must first recognise the problem and devise a strategy. Writing the program is usually the smallest part of each challenge – investigating the problem and ruling-out the various blind-alleys forms the bulk of it.

I’m on puzzle 10 out of 30, so you can expect me to stay quiet for the next week or so.

Review: PalmOne Treo 650 from Orange

Published
by
admin
on May 25, 2005
in Gadget Reviews
. 9 Comments

Until very recently I would have been willing state publicly that all “smart phones” are stupid. While gaget industries have been able to make perfectly functional personal organizers, and sleek mobile phones, the combination of of these concepts is usually less than the sum of it’s parts.

Palm Treo 60
PocketTunes running on my Treo 650. This application gives the device capabilities similar to an iPod mini. With the 1GB SD card I can store and play plenty of Ogg-Vorbis tracks.

I’ve been fooled into parting with cash for the latest upgrade; my crisp pounds exchanged for flaky plastic: I’ve grown so jaded with the category that I had the lowest expectations when I placed an order for the new PalmOne Treo 650 from Orange. It turns out that I was wrong to be so glum – the new Treo is one of the niftiest gadgets I’ve owned in a long time.

The major selling point of the Treo series is it’s use of Palm OS. Most smart phones these days run Microsoft’s bloated “Windows Mobile Edition” or the rather annoying Symbian family of operating system.

Palm OS, one of the oldest mobile operating systems was originally designed to run on 3Com’s range of Palm-Pilot organizers; tiny machines which could run for days on a pair of AAA batteries. The reason Palm were able to do this was that they take a stripped down approach to computing; While palm apps tend to have fewer features than their Windows equivalents the minimalist approach seems more suitable for tiny devices.

Returning to Palm OS felt very comfortable; my last Palm device was the Palm 3c, which I destroyed by dropping in a puddle almost five years ago.

While the Palm OS is superficially as minimalist as ever, there are a lot more bells and whistles included in the latest version of the software: It’s now a fully multitasking system with impressive multimedia capabilities and support for high-resolution screens. Most importantly, it worked perfectly with the Kpilot, my preferred Linux-based synchronization tool. Being able to synch with my Linux Desktop is a big win gain.

The biggest change is the addition of the thumb-board in place of the graffiti area. The original palm-pilots had an excellent handwriting recognition system which was very easy to learn. I guess the success of the Blackberry proved that busy executives prefer thumb-boards and are unwilling to learn how to use a stylus. While I miss graffiti, I have found the thumb-board very easy to adapt to.

My Treo came with a suite of standard Internet tools; Oddly enough, their icons have been made slightly orangy – and put into a category called ‘Orange’, a feeble attempt by my phone company to brand the Internet. This was easily defeated by renaming the category which allowed me to debrand my palmtop.

The tools include web-browser called ‘Blazer’ which does a very good job of rendering most pages. I was able to visit my favorite sites and read them without difficulty.

Palm also provide an excellent email program called Versamail which supports POP3 and IMAP with SSL. A nifty feature of this program is that it includes standard configurations for the 50 biggest ISPs, meaning that setting up an email account requires little more than typing in a login and password.

When the machine was launched, palm gurus complained that the machine was less efficient than previous generations at managing memory; apparently the new filing system takes a less granular approach to storage and has a tendency to waste a few kilobytes if a database or resource partially occupies a page of system memory.

Having not used a Palm OS machine in five years, I cannot say I noticed a memory shortage. Just in case I also bought a 1GM SD RAM card which provides storage for documents and MP3/Ogg files. With the supplied headset, I can use my Palm somewhat like an iPod mini.

Minor quibbles aside, this is a good machine. It feels solidly built and is very easy to use. I expect that Palm will win back a group of users like myself who have defected to Sony and Nokia products in the absence of a credible Palm OS based alternative.

The Jedi Song

Published
by
Dan
on May 21, 2005
in Strange
. 123 Comments

The Jedi Song is an animation which features everything: winged monkeys, Jar-Jar’s death, eggs on swings, and the full text of an undiscovered Shakespeare play.
Alright… not that last one.

Darth Vader waits to jump out on an unsuspecting Luke...

The video was made for a song originally strummed by my good friend Mark Huckerby one Saturday morning in Wandsworth circa 1998. I had come up from Cowfold to do a student radio show together with Mark, Nick Ostler, Catherine Chew, Paul Lewis and Salim Fadhley. We made the song into a short sketch involving a drunk Obi-Wan Kenobi trying to use his powers to get a free Shepherd’s Pie.

A while later (about five years later) the very talented Rob Stangroom rearranged the song into the current version. He played all the instruments and sung along with Nick and Mark. I can’t remember why I wasn’t there… they gave me very specific directions which led me to a dark thicket where I was assaulted by three men in balaclavas.

Anyway I swore one day to animate to the song and with only five days to spare before the new film came out, and with a new job and moving house to contend with, I begun the Herculean task. It’s a bit rushed in places, and there are some places where I would have liked to animate instead of having still images. Hey-ho, maybe one day.

UPDATE: If you are having difficulties playing the movie please try updating your software before asking for help here. If you use Windows we suggest that you view the web-page using Mozilla Firefox. If you want to play the MP3 file, we suggest downloading Apple iTunes - It’s free. If you use a Mac, then things should work fine in Safari or Mozilla Firefox. We suggest that you do not use Internet Explorer. As with Windows, iTunes is completely free and has no problem playing the MP3 file.

An oddity in Highgate Woods

Published
by
admin
on May 20, 2005
in Interesting and Photos
. 7 Comments

As I walked home through Highgate Woods today I noticed an tiny green caterpillar dangling from a long ‘thread’. It’s tiny green body was suspended at approximately head hight. It seems so odd that a bright green creature might have evolved a behavior that causes it to suspend itself so visibly in mid air.

I tried to take a photo of it, however it was swaying too briskly, even in the calm of the woods. In the end, the best I could do was a slightly blurred shot which I achieved by steading the thread with my finger.

Oddity
This cluster of debris hangs a few metres below the canopy of the woods.

Later as I continued on my way I noticed another collection of hanging oddities; random looking collections of some kind of plant life. Had a similar caterpillar created this as a lodge in which to pupate? If indeed another creature of the same species did this, how did such a small creature manage to suspend such a large quantity of bracken?

In the high resolution version of this photo it is just about possible to see that the parts of this structure are bound together with shorter lengths of thread.

Oddity
A tiny grub hanging from a single silken thread. Could this be the culprit?

Stop stealing my thoughts! My three-point plan to Information Freedom

Published
by
Sal
on May 16, 2005
in General
. 0 Comments

Thought thieves… they sound like baddies from a 2nd rate science fiction film, but according to Microsoft they exist, and they are out to spoil the fun for us creative types. Of course, many news sources have already pointed out the Microsoft, more than any other company have a reputation for ripping off other people’s ideas and passing them of as their own.

One of the most interesting conversations I had at Sunday’s Copyfighter’s event was this whole notion of “stealing”, in the utterly mis-named context of “Intellectual Property”:

Is it stealing to record a copy of a CD to play in the car, or to load onto a friend’s iPod? The recording industry would certainly want us to believe this. On the other hand, I would also suggest that it is theft for a customer to buy music online only to find that it becomes unplayable when I upgrade my computer or move to a different country because of DRM hidden in the music files.

Every year that media industries extend copyright protection is surely another year that the people are deprived of the public domain. So how do we combat this creeping reduction of our media rights? I propose a three point plan:

  • Civil Disobedience: Use Bittorrent, Kazaa, Grokster or whatever your file trading program is to download whatever you want. Every time you buy music in a shop or online from iTunes you are only supporting a corrupt music industry that will use the money you spend to errode your rights.
  • Lobby, make a fuss: Write to your MEP, try to get a meeting and tell them how you feel. Support your local information rights organisation, e.g. eff, ffii.
  • Make your own media: Write a blog, Make podcasts and DIY videos. Go tapedropping and make stuff thats more fun than the stuff made by the big companies. You could even try supporting your local arts radio station.

Thought Thieves

The Copyfighters Drunken Brunch

Published
by
admin
on May 16, 2005
in Politics
. 5 Comments

Visitors to Hyde park last weekend might have been surprised to see a new speaker; unexpectedly coherent compared to the rabble of god-botherers who normally illuminate Speakers’ Corner. This man has not found religion - it was all part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s European outreach programme. This American group is trying to make us Britishers aware of our rights before they are stealthily removed.

Cory Doctrow at Speakers Corner
Cory made the first speech at Speakers’ Corner.

I was lucky enough to be invited to ‘The Copyfighters Drunken Brunch‘, lead by Canadian information rights activist and Sci-Fi writer Cory Doctrow; The event began with a breakfast of sparkling wine and beigels. It was an opportunity to mingle with a collection of writers, lawyers, artists and activists. The theme of the event was how we as citizens can protect our digital rights.

During the meeting I unknowingly sat next to Dave and Lee from NTK.net, one of the longest-running humorous technology journals. One of the benefits of being “internet famous” is that you can sit amongst a room of avid readers (like myself) and still remain anonymous.

After the discussion we were all invited to try our hands as activists by standing up at Speakers’ Corner to give a short speech. Gavin (a film maker and ffii lobbyist) and I spoke on the subject of Software Patents, a rather dry sounding subject which may have far reaching consequences to independant software developers like me. It was my first time at the corner, and I was surprised how willing the audience was to hear give my ill-prepared speech. Still, once my nervous moments were over I was glad I had made the effort.

The great “PJ” diversion

Published
by
Sal
on May 15, 2005
in Computing and Interesting
. 0 Comments

Most IT “news” is not really news at all; When trade journalists are not cut’n'pasting press-releases they are writing ‘exclusives’ about products that will never exist, or will be rubbish despite the hype; At best they engage in groundless and ill-informed speculation. The IT news is filled with uncritical enthusiasm for whizzy useless products; non-stop advertorial from cover to cover.

The tech press occasionally descends into a grubby soap-opera where debate no longer focuses on the technical or business issues, but on the personalities who report on them, an opportunity that the companies on the loosing side of the SCO vs IBM debate have taken great advantage. This has been SCO Group’s luckiest break since their train-wreck of a lawsuit began.

I don’t mean to tar an entire profession with the same over-broad, sloppy and over-saturated brush; I know there are diligent journalists out there; because a few of them felt compelled to resign when Sys-Con’s Fuat Kircaali offered a very explicit defense of his publishing Maureen O’Gara’s stalking story.

Picture yourself at the helm of fading company; deeply mired in series of court-cases, each doomed to fail spectacularly. Your mission is to draw out the legal proceedings for long enough for your investors to flee the sinking-ship, and prevent yourself from getting dragged into court as the whole thing collapses. You’ve got a perfect plan, apart from one thing – an annoying blogger picking apart every little detail of your scheme

The last thing you want is a rabble of zealots, acquiring detailed knowledge of your business plans, studying your finances and cros-referencing every one of your public statements: You need to silence your opponent by whatever means. If you cannot destroy her arguments you can try intimidation. If she refuses to be intimidated your only (legal) choice is to try to destroy her reputation. Fortunately, this is something that the IT press are eager to help with.

Oddly enough, the interests of SCO group are mirrored by those of the professional tech journalist; These people have as much reason as corrupt businessmen to fear the rise of the “celebrity blogger”. If the public start turning to informed campaigning activists for their news, who will be left to read the 2nd hand punditry? Who will click on their flash animated advertisers? Who will be left to believe their bogus reports that prove beyond all doubt that Linux is more expensive than Windows?

The sad thing is, that this little distraction has worked; The whole world of IT punditry has become focused on a side show: an insignificant clash of personalities; Meanwhile on the main-stage the SCO vs IBM tragedy continues to unfold with less of the withering attention that so irks the SCO Group.

The Legend of Bluewater

Published
by
Sal
on May 13, 2005
in General
. 0 Comments

According to local legend, in ancient times the people of Kent once made God angry; For their many crimes (coveting oxen, fornicating in oast-houses… etc), the lord smote the land, and in his wrath created a great void. The citizens of Kent who survived were cursed with talking and looking “a bit funny”, a burden that some still bear to this day.

If you are willing to visit this land, you can still find the site of this legendary devastation near Junction 2 of the M25, between Dartford and Gravesend. The citizens of Kent have transformed this hideous crater into one of England’s largest retail parks. From destruction, they have created the perfect paradise, so perfectly adapted to the needs and desires of the modern Kentsperson.

In shocking announcement, the management of the Bluewater shopping-center announced that Hoodie tops and Baseball caps would no longer be an acceptable form of dress in their halls o’retail. The sneering british press gleefully announced that this was to keep the “chav” elements out, after all nobody likes to shop for hoodie-tops and baseball caps whilst being pestered by lads wearing hoodie-tops and baseball tops.

Gruff-faced deputy Prime Minister John Prescott describes these clothes as an “intimidating” uniform; citing an incident where he was almost assaulted by ten hooded yobbos, he has put his political might behind the ban; perhaps believing that if we remove their clothes they will be too cold to leave their dirty homes.

In my opinion, banning these garments makes as much sense as banning pointy-hats from the Vatican, and likely to be as effective. The hoodie has now been promoted to the status of an ‘outsider’ garment; the fact that Prescott dislikes it will only make it more desirable for others. I,for one, shall wear my hoodie with pride for it is the garb of a rebel.

In any case, where will this end? I doubt the loss of sale of hoodies will dent the awesome profits of Bluewater, but what if the yobbish element adapt? Hoodies are the least aspirational form of chav-wear; however one can be just as yobbish wearing football strip. Would they go so far as to ban that?

Of Zealots and Mercenaries

Published
by
Sal
on May 10, 2005
in Free Software, Interesting and voffle
. 0 Comments

It came as no surprise that Sys-Con Media, the publishers of the dimly Linux-related scandal rag have decided to let their technology industry stalker Maureen O’Gara go; at least that is what they are saying publicly.

The evidence fails to support this statement. Those of us who have the patience to wait for a response from Sys-Con’s spavined web-servers show a site that remains full of the toxic belchings of “MoG”. In any case, the unexpected anti-popularity Maureen’s “Linux Business News” website is far more effective than any DDoS attack conceived by even the most sadistic hacker.

For all her outspoken bravado, the surge of visitors from Slashdot and Groklaw has all but wiped out Sys-Con’s ability to serve pages. This implies that even the small proportion of the Slashdot and Groklaw audience that cares about this issue is many times greater than the entire expected audience for the whole of Sys-Con.

This is hardly surprising, as Sys-Con are a third division publisher, with a reputation for journalistic integrity somewhat below that of “DC Thompson” (the Penny-pinching publisher of the Beano). A browse of Sys-Con’s wonky archives is about as stimulating as being clubbed repeatedly in the testicles whilst being made to stare at flashing Microsoft adverts.

Maureen is not the first baddie in the SCO vs IBM dispute to be brought low by an overwhelming public response; I note with some satisfaction that Rob Enderle has not been typing out anti-Linux tracts on his Ferrari Laptop. Rob has somewhat backed-off his bullish predictions of SCO winning billions at IBM’s expense. Perhaps he has better things to do since most of his readers now realize him to be a dull ranting troll who is still bitter about getting sacked by IBM.

The grandly-named “Alexis de Toqueville Institution”, have also decided to butt-out of this argument. AdTI’s director Kenneth Brown’s rose to fame by publishing an paper which claimed to prove that Linux was an unauthorized derivative of Minix.

The most remarkable thing about this paper was that it was debunked by it’s primary source before it was even published. Since then, the extent of AdTI’s contribution to this debate has been a half-arsed list of apparent contradictions and sarcastic remarks on their scraggy, sorry excuse for a web-site.

The difference between O’Gara and Enderle / Brown is that the latter two knew when to walk away. Maureen is made of braver stuff, and she has plummeted further and with less grace; Merely deleting her words from the LBN website by no means constitutes an apology. She has irked the Linux zealots who will be after her, for as long as she provides interesting sport.

But I don’t think Maureen will be one to give up so soon; I expect that like any good villain she will return. I look forwards to her next outlandish and sinister plot. Will she resort to murder or kidnap to up the stakes in this most personal conflict? Nah, she needs to make a bigger statement:

What would be the journalistic equivalent of launching a giant space-laser? Perhaps starting to write for “Pro-Sco”: Sco’s ill-concieved attempt to counter Groklaw. I hear that it is in desperate need of some editorial input right now and I know an editor who needs a new job.

Unintentional art at the top of the Alps

Published
by
admin
on May 10, 2005
in Photos and Places
. 0 Comments

Once the site of a gas-works, the Becton Alps is perhaps London’s most inappropriately named geographical feature; For starters there is only one of ‘em and you can cycle to the top in less than five minutes. Instead of a layer of glacial permafrost, the Beckton Alps are covered with scraggy grass and litter from the bored teenagers who use it as a place to hang out and ingest skag.

The slope was opened by the “People’s Princess” (check the middle photo), and remained open from 1989 to 2001. Many of my friends used to go there, so it must have been a fun place to attract so many people. The slope closed in order to make way for a new indoor slope with the promise of all-year skiing on real snow.

The Beckton Alps
This was once a popular dry ski-slope. Today it is a derelict slag-heap overlooking a retail park.

Of course, the new ski-slope never got built. Beckton is governed by notoriously inept Newham Council. The contractors employed to build the new slope quickly found themselves in financial difficulty and the project was suspended. Allegedly, all involved feared competition from a nearby (Milton Keynes) snow-slope, after nobody from East London likes skiing or snow-boarding.

The land is still owned and mis-managed by Newham who officialy claim that the project is going ahead, but at an unspecified time in the future.

Beckton Alps
If you want to see this for yourself you will have to climb the Alps!

So it is currently a wasteland, overlooking some of London’s most dreary shopping areas, but fortunately full of unintentional art like these corroding steel piles. I have no idea if they are supposed to be holding something up, or perhaps they have been placed there by an aincient skiing tribe to ward off evil spirits.