sea nerd blog
spring twenty fourteen

eBay

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Emailing me
to tell me
to change my password.

Logging in
to find they want to charge me
£15
because I haven’t used them
for 3 years.

Not allowing me
to delete the account
because I haven’t paid the bill
for not using them.

Allowing hackers
to steal
personal information,
everything a hacker needs
for identify theft.

Preventing me
deleting my information
so I can prevent hackers
taking advantage of their failures
again
without paying them money
for not using them
because they’re useless.

No wonder they’re under investigation.

29.5.14


In Our Time

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One advantage of returning to work is being able to catch up on BBC Radio 4’s In Our Time on my commute. This is the podcast of the radio show, ‘a discussion of ideas’, where people who know a particular academic subject very well indeed introduce it to the radio audience without presuming the listeners are idiots. Recent episodes have included Social Darwinism, Chivalvery, early Chinese history, and Catastrophism. In other words, the subjects are hugely ecletic, covering all human knowledge. The show is very informative, a great listen.

29.5.14


Racists win English euro election

It seems the English and the French are doing their best to outdo each others’ disgusting politics. In France, the we–are–not–racists–but–arabs–are–horrible Front Nationale got the most votes and seats. In England, the we–are–not–racists–but–eastern–europeans–are–horrible UKIP got the most votes and seats.

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Look at the English vote on the surface, and it appears that 10% of the vote transferred from the Liberal Democrats to the fascists. This makes no real political sense. However, look a bit deeper, and you’ll realise that, actually, the fascists consolidated the euro–septic vote from the previous election. The nazi BNP lost almost all the 5% vote they got the last time around, as did a number of other smaller euro–septic parties, giving them 8%. The Tories lost 4%. Labour gained more than the Lib Dems and Greens combined lost.

This headline English result is as shameful as the French. It says the majority of the English are racist. But, in that respect, this result isn’t that different than the last time around, the UKIP have simply consolidated the previous poll. The English are as racist as before, they’ve merely made it obvious.

Well, not quite: my only real consolation is that a mere 35% of the English voted, the majority clearly not bothering. It’s a generalism that when most people vote, the extremist fade, so I suspect that if the turnout had been respectable, the fascists wouldn’t have won. That’s why the result reflects, again, a failure of the political class.

26.5.14


4826–5

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Hey, my project to install Open BSD on my 64M Soekris 4826s is progressing well. They’re running, at least enough to see how they behave when left alone for a few days. There’s one atop this tower of hanoi, under test.

Each of these machines runs Open BSD 5.5, although I’ve built a honey—I’ve—shrunk—the—kids version using flashboot for the 4826. I couldn’t use the standard flashboot, but then that distribution is clearly intended for play anyway.

My modifications to flashboot are still under test, and so my version is of even more hugely dubious use than normal. All the same, I can understand why people might want to play too, so my half–built, rickety version can be downloaded here. There is no warranty of any kind whatsoever, etc., use at your own risk, etc.. While I’m here, let me take the opportunity to thank the guys who created and worked on flashboot, and, of course, Open BSD.

Now, ok, so far they’re only running NTP (time) and domain daemons. But once they’ve proven their worth, and I’ve proven to myself that I’ve not broken too much, then I’ll add other daemons. My goal is the OpenBSD version of LDAP.

My use of coffee capsules as separators isn’t really acceptable. I need to sort that out. Never mind the instability, using them there means I can’t drink the coffee!

Download my version of flashboot for the 64M Soekris 4826.

18.5.14


the postal donkey

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For reasons I’ve not really sussed, post that sent hundreds of kilometres across France takes days, but post from the same place that has to go an extra twenty kilometres into Luxembourg takes weeks. I’ve seen three days versus three weeks for the same product, from the same source, sent at the same time.

I think packets for Luxemnbourg are sent by TGV to the border, where they’re transferred to high speed donkey. I believe, unfortunately, the donkey’s getting old and lame. It certainly won some medals for speed in its youth, when it outpaced a fence, but it’s not been the same since it was wounded at Waterloo. That’s not the battle, I hasten to add, but the London train station. A ‘jocular’ fireman burnt a hole in its coat by throwing hot coals over the poor animal.

18.5.14


the flexibility of reflection

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My photography is full of reflection. These shots fascinate me, the way the real world contains very unreal images. Of course, them being supposédly unreal is really just a reflection of our poor understanding of what is real.

The thing is, though, reflection shots are actually immensely flexible. With time and patience you can get almost anything you want. I’m willing to bet that if you sat on the bank of a Dutch canal, in good light, with a reflection of a metallic window frame lined up, and took a shot a second for a few hours, you could find any simple outline you wanted in the resultant mass of photos. This technique offers a way around the great restriction on photography, that if it ain’t there you can’t shoot it.

There’s a different kind of great flexibility on reflection shots among modernist forests, such as La Défense. If you zoom in to a reflection in a window a great distance away, maybe as much as a kilometre, and just move, no more than a twitch, that image changes markédly. The change is much greater than the corresponding miniscule change in perspective on the building itself. This shows me what a vast range of images are available for photography for those with time, patience, and twitch.

I wish I had that time to make those explorations.

17.5.14


modernist porn

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Have I accidentally created some modernist porn?

If it wasn’t for the debris from la guerre des Post–It, maybe this image would just be one of a number with a similar structure. But, for me, the heart warps the distorted tower into something rather a lot more personal and rather a lot more biological. The surrounding sky suffers the same fate (that’s deliberately horrid).

Perhaps it’s all in my mind. After all, what else is pareidolia? But I didn’t expect modernist porn. Maybe all this does is show off my youthful innocence.

Trouble is, this image really does have some gorgeous colours. I don’t want to ignore it. I think I’ll just post it and let other people shape their own opinion.

17.5.14


google versus privacy

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Is google trying to associate a desire for privacy with criminality?

There was a recent court case where google were required to remove some results to conform with a new european privacy law, the right to be forgotten. Since then there have been a lot of stories appearing from somewhere about how people with criminal histories are trying to have similar action taken to erase reference to those stories.

Who knows what requests google have received? Why, google, of course. Who can leak the information that google have received? Why, google, of course. So who is leaking the information? It’s got to be google.

Google have said the court decision about maintaining the right to privacy is “disappointing”. They didn’t want that result. They disagree with it.

It’s strange, isn’t it, how all the stories that have leaked are about criminals and other bad elements, as though the only people who want privacy are evil.

The choice of stories leaked show google is trying to associate a desire for privacy with criminality. This is from a company that says it tries to “do no evil”. This is quite disgusting, indeed, monumental, hypocrisy on their part.

16.5.14


4826–4

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I’m continuing my project to install a version of OpenBSD onto my Soekris 4826s. I’ve updated flashboot to use OpenBSD 5.5, without apparent problem. Both 4826s boot into 5.5 as they did with 5.4; that seems to work.

My goal at the moment remains the construction of a working installation. I’m still in the tidying up phase. I’ve sorted passwords, I’m now working to reduce the size of the ramdisk from 48M so there’s enough room for OpenBSD itself to perform: my 4826s only have 64M of RAM. Trouble is, that build was borked. I’m rebuilding everything from beginning to ensure I haven’t done something silly (probable), which gives me a few minutes to write this ….

One habit I have to break is treating the operating system as a black box. 25 years of Windows development has done this to me. Under Windows, I can’t sneak into the operating system source code to see what’s going on underneath the hood, so I don’t try to do so. With OpenBSD, of course, all the source code is published, so I could go there—but I don’t. This is silly; it’d be much easier to solve a problem if I checked how the operating system actually behaved, rather than depending on the (excellent) documentation. The documentation isn’t wrong, incidentally, it just doesn’t go to the detail of the source code.

12.5.14


closer

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I finish replaying Deus Ex, then come across this news item.

11.5.14


Deus Ex Human Revolution: Director’s Cut (again)

A few minutes ago, I completed Deus Ex the third. It feels as though a girlfriend has just walked out of my life. I am reacting.

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Interesting. The game clearly has emotional power. Ok, so I knew this when I was playing it, as this earlier review shows. It has its faults: indeed, I stand by my criticism in that review of the damn boss fights. Still, I got through them, despite the boring restart–and–solve–the–same–puzzle–yet–another–bloody–time damned design. Admittedly, the final fight was a doddle; not sure why it was there. Not that it matters.

But, apart from this boo–boo, everything else worked. Most of the game was carefully balanced to present an atmospheric, well–plotted cyberpunk future. It’s plausible, too: if you’ve read my CV, you’ll know I’ve worked on devices that enhance the human body. I see no technical reason why the integration of technology and biology can’t continue.

I want to comment on the emotional power of a game. It was part of my life for a few weeks. Off–game, I wanted to get back in–game: it is addictive. I hadn’t realised how much it had grabbed me until I had chosen one of the four endings, and the game vamooshed.

The choices: meh. The voice–over afterwards: dismal. Of all times a game needed poetry, & and I got clunky, error–prone prose. That was schoolboy stuff, a missed opportunity.

I chose the corporate ending. It was that or the regulation and black market ending. I was never going for luddite or suicide, the other two choices. Why the corporate? The game did its work on the emotional front; it gave me loyalty to my in–game CEO!

So, ciao, Deus Ex Human Revolution Director’s Cut, until the next time. You were a good game. I hope you’re not crying on the train home. Watch the rain in the train window make the street lights glitter.

8.5.14


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books

I’ve taken to listening to books.

It makes a commute less of a waste of time, and a good performance brings out details I wouldn’t notice had I read.

For me, though, recordings work much better with fiction than non–fiction.

7.5.14


after konscht am gronn

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Well, that could have been a lot worse. I didn’t sell that much, but I did cover the cost of the space and the beer at the meetup afterwards.

I’d decided to do the minimum necessary, to see how things went. I like the result; in particular some of the comments I received. So I’m going to significantly improve the presentation of my work for next month.

You’ll see from these photos that I simply laid everything flat, and put the photos in small albums for people to browse. Neither was a good presentation. Neither was obvious, neither drew the passing eye. People had to investigate to gather my photographic style. That’s not good enough.

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The poetry had another problem. English is not a native language here, although many people speak it. Few people were interested in English language poetry. The guy selling German poetry on the next stall along did a lot better than me. His stall was similar to mine, both in layout and content, so his success wasn’t down to presentation. The difference was German is one of the local mother–tongues. I’m going to reduce my emphasis on poetry. I’m still going to present it, it’s far too good to hide, but the photography will dominate.

I tried displaying the chapbooks so people could easily browse them, but that simply didn’t work. It made them look manky. I need to find a way to display the books so they look good.

So for the June Konscht am Gronn, I'm going to:
— Mount a selection of photographs;
— Find a way to display photographs vertically;
— Expand photo space, reduce poetry space;
— Get some cloth to cover the supplied table;
— Find a way to display books vertically well.

I’m considering getting a portable gazebo. Some people here use them. They offer a solution to the risk of the rain. They allow images to be displayed vertically. However, I’m probably not going to get one for the next event, unless the weather forecast is horrid.

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I had a good chat with a number of people in the meetup afterwards. There’s scope for creating a new incomers’ arts community. That should help things develop, and create a base audience for my (and their) work.

Overall, a positive experience.

5.5.14


before konscht am gronn

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It’s this morning. It’s starting in ten minutes. Eeek.

4.5.14


Cokin Prism

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Whilst I was in Lier, I took a couple of experimental shots with my new second–hand Cokin P219 Prism (the linked page is in Russian, but at least it isn’t trying to sell me something it no longer stocks, and, anyway, there are some pretty pictures).

I’ve a long way to go to explore the full potential of this device, but you can see from this photo that it does have something to offer. The guy in the middle was pure chance, but he shows me something to exploring deliberately.

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I very much want to try the filter in many different light conditions to see what comes out the other side.

I had another Prism many years ago, as you can see, but lost it because the English legal system is corrupt (it’s one of the reasons I left the country).

2.5.14


Apple Xcode

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It’s noticeably quicker, in Apple Xcode, to find and replace things by hand than by using the Find and Replace command, when there are lots of things to replace, one per file.

Unlike Visual Studio, Xcode has no Find and Replace in Files command. There is a Find and Replace in Workspace, but workspace mode is a chocolate teapot. Just as Apple OS X Server convinces me Apple doesn’t use OS X Server to run their corporate network (it’s simply too brittle), so workspace mode convinces me Apple Developers don’t use Xcode internally (you can’t view more than one file at a time).

The keyboard sequence for Find and Replace, for one item, is sufficiently clunky to make it quicker to go select the item with the mouse, then paste. That presumes I know where to go, but I do: it’s my own code.

Microsoft’s Visual Studio shows a search and replace command in a GUI is perfectly practical. Many unix command line editors do search and replace well. I’m not sure how Apple manage to get something essential so wrong. I fear someone presumed that Apple are automatically better than anyone else, so didn’t bother to look around to see how the task is done elsewhere. It’s a pity if that’s so; it suggests the old arrogance that broke the company has not been eradicated.

1.5.14


Lier

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I wandered into Lier town centre feeling grumpy. Wow, it really got me out of my mood. It’s thoroughly Flemish, but the star building is not some over–ornate garish boast like that in Leuven. I suspect it’s because it’s too old for the fussiness; the dominant architecture, the town hall tower, is proudly marked 1369.

The centre impresses a subdued awe. It’s got all the wonderful presence of old Flemish architecture, but nothing overwhelms the rest. There’s no ego here. It broke my grump with its peaceful, balanced elegance.

30.4.14


Leuven / Louvain

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It’s one of those trips where things go wrong. I’d lost two of the planned four days to outside events, and another half day business task took all day, leaving just today for the photography. When I’d asked around for Flemish towns with canals for photography, I should have emphasised smooth waters. I didn’t.

Leuven, or Louvain, has shallow fast moving waters with occasional discarded, bent bicycles. Ok, so the light was shite, but that wouldn’t matter at night. The rough water does.

It could have been tidal, but I’m not sure. The town is overlooked by hills.

Also, to be honest, the water I saw wasn’t overlooked by anything interesting, which denies interesting reflection photography. Admittedly, I didn’t look too far.

It was as disappointing as the Liffy at Heuston.

Anyway, the result was I got no photographs in Leuven. Instead, we got on the train to Lier.

28.4.14


FFS

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I finally find a second–hand Cokin Prism filter, buy it, go try it to a get a feel how it performs—and it damn well falls off the camera onto some cobbles. It’s chipped.

I’m still going to explore it’s capabilities, and, if it’s interesting, I’ll get another. I had one two decades ago and, although I used it occasionally, it did do interesting things. I want to see how it behaves at night.

26.4.14


Deus Ex Human Revolution: Director’s Cut

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I’m presuming you’ve played computer games, know the tropes, and are aware of the Deus Ex series. In particular, I’m presuming you’ve played the original version, Deus Ex A Human Revolution.

This edition is better than the original game, but is still ruined by boss fights.

The new section, the missing link, isn’t as tightly told as the other sections, but it adds the story. I feel the rest of the game has been tidied up, too, but I can’t place my finger on the detail without going back to the original, and I’m far too lazy to do that.

The basic social setting is interesting. The idea of physical augmentation to the human body is sound; indeed, I’ve worked on something like this myself. I’m not sure about the nazi–esque corporate ethics, but have to admit the premise is plausible: human history has a few too many examples. I must add that when I worked on the real thing, no one was kidnapped and used unwillingly in fatal experiments!

Apart from error that is the bosses, the game play is good. The setting is flexible, allow many different play styles. It’s free enough to all bad players like me to get past the difficult bits through judicious use of the save button and a willingness to change tactics occasionally. Except for the crap bits, the boss fights.

I’m in “Tell me a story” mode, yet it won’t. When I read a book, and come across a crap section, I simply turn to the start of the next chapter, and continue. I’ve bypassed the crap. I can’t work out how to do the same with this game, so now I’m blocked. I’m beginning to think I might want my money back.

I see possible solutions. The obvious one, a skip this section option in the game. I'd do that in quite a few games. Another might be to find a saved games website that have the appropriate files available for download, or Steam to introduce such a service. I’d pay a couple of euros for the appropriate save files to bypass the boss fights. In the longer term, it’d be good if games companies, when they have styles entitled “tell me a story”, made the effort to understand what is involved in telling stories.

Despite all the improvements in the director’s cut, I can’t recommend it. The boss fights still bork the game.

25.4.14