Harper

I've been watching one of my favourite films, Harper, starring Paul Newman:

It's a film noir, made in 1966, based on the novel The Moving Target by Ross Macdonald. Lew Harper is called in to find a missing millionaire who no one seems to care to be found.

A Testing Sister

I asked my sister to test a web page I was doing for college and she found a weird bug almost straight away. What should look like this:

Ends up looking like this:

The difference is IE. When I tested it in IE9 at home it rendered fine, but when I switched the rendering engine in Firefox to the IE one I got the same effect. This is set by default to render in IE7, thus the weird effect.

I did some digging and it turns out that you can tell the rendering engine to use the IE9 explicitly, or as good as it can, otherwise it will just use the default. To do this you put this tag in the head of your page:

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=9"/>

So if you want to make sure your code works, get your sister to test it.

Coda: To help her take screenshots, I found this little site which just gives you the instructions.

http://take-a-screenshot.org/

Skyfall - Bringing the House Down

Well, I had to go and see it.

Not bad. They clearly pulled out all the stops to make it work, plus they got Sam Mendes to direct and he's done a good job. There is a line in one of Le Carre's books where George Smiley says that espionage requires a certain gentleness, and that's what I think was missing from the previous two films, a lightness of touch. They have to be fun, and this one was. There were exotic locations (the Macao Casino scenes looked beautiful), plus Bond movies have a little surreality, as shown by using the abandoned island Hashima as the villians' lair.

There were also spectacular stunts which worked well, and a final showdown that showed that Mendes understands Bond movies.

There are criticisms, though. Any system administrator who allows a dodgy laptop to be attached to his network gets what he deserves and I wouldn't trust Q to work at PC World, much less MI6. The plot was a little obvious in that respect. Bérénice Lim Marlohe was good eye candy but under-used as the Femme Fatale/Bond Girl. Javier Bardem was good as the villain, but creepy rather than menacing, but I still think they need a really good henchman. Mark Strong would be good for that, or Arnold Vosloo. Yeah, Arnold would be great.

As for Craig as Bond, to paraphrase what Morpheus says to Neo in The Matrix, "Don't try to be James Bond; Be James Bond!" and I think he might be getting there, but it will be a lot longer road than everyone says. Not yet. Not bad, though.

And I rather liked the yatch. Nice. It's called the Regina and it's a snip at $14,000,000.

Nah, I'll leave it for this year, what with Christmas coming up...

Saturday - People in the Golden Age of Technology

Today I went to another lecture hosted by the London Futurists that was an extension of the one given by Stephen Aguilar-Millan, which I blogged about a while back. This was given by a bearded, soft-spoken Australian, Nick Price.

The emphasis of the talk was on the values of future leaders of society and what their general outlook will be, based on the generational model of American history put forward by William Strauss and Neil Howe and combining this with Clare Graves (a man, not a woman) extension of Maslows hierarchy of needs and the Spiral Dynamics of Don Beck and Chris Cowan. The presentation concluded by saying that future leaders would be much more community oriented, "caring heroes of the 21^st century", interested in "personal and expressive" technologies.

It was a rather slow talk, streched in a way by the Q&A sessions to extend the talk out to two hours. One of the anecdotes was that in one city they found that there was a rise in public transport because technology had caused people to socialise more and that was preferable to travelling on their own by car. Another thing was that the model has problems in factoring in life extension: what happens if the Generation X-ers (me!!) instead of retiring gracefully, continue in middle-age?

There was also a question about the (lack of) success of Silicon Roundabout (Shoreditch/Old Street) in London, prompted by this article. The view is that Britain has a risk-averse culture which frowns on failure rather than accepting it as part of learning to do business, but the report referred to in the article ranks us 7^th, behind only the U.S cities, and top of the European cities.

Cyber Monday

This weekend is known as Black Friday weekend over in the States (it's when a lot of retailers who've been going slowly into the red all year start making money in the run up to Christmas and go into the black), which means they usually have sales on. This includes eBook publishers, notably InformIT(Pearsons), who publish the K and R Book (The C Programming Language) and Effective Java by Joshua Bloch:

http://www.informit.com/promotions/promotion.aspx?promo=139061

O'Reilly's, which do Microsoft as well (they're calling it "Cyber Monday"):

http://shop.oreilly.com/category/deals/cyber-monday.do

And Pragmatic:

http://pragprog.com/news/black-friday-cyber-monday-40-off-sale

And Apress also have a similar deal on Monday:

http://www.apress.com/

Bonds Coffee Shop

I wouldn't normally plug a business, but with all the stuff over Starbucks and the offshore tax thing, I thought I'd give a mention to the independant coffee shop Bonds in Chelmsford. It's located in Bond street (no kidding) not far from the river and jolly nice it is too. You even get a free biscuit with your coffee!

Seeing as it's Friday, here's some parkour.

Have a nice weekend.

Oxfam Tuesday

Not much doing at Oxfam today. I'd turned up on spec as Mark wasn't sure if Francis was turning up or not (she hadn't said one way or another). She did and I only spent a few hours there, departing before Mark could rope me into doing the dreaded Gift Aid. There was the usual banter between me, Mark and John. Mark was trying to find a book for a customer, "Thousand Splendid Suns", by Khalid Hosseini, and we kept coming up for things to say to the customer to make them buy something else.

"God wants you to buy this book! He told me in a vision last night"

"Your wife phoned us: she's changed her mind and she wants this one instead." ("But I'm not married")

"We have last years Booker Prize winner, if that's any good." (They wanted "Wolf Hall", by Hilary Mantel, when Mark couldn't find "Thousand Splendid Suns")

We were being very silly.

Big Bang Theory and Talisman

I've been watching the odd episode of Big Bang Theory as they are running repeats on E4 (it's either that or Hollyoaks: I'm waiting for the news). Tonight there was an episode called "The Spaghetti Catalyst" and the guys in the flat are playing Talisman! It's even second edition, which is at least ten years old.

Cool!

Son of C Test Redux

Yesterday, the tutor of the C course went through the questions with us, as they were a little harder than last time. One of them was really tricky (and I didn't get it!):

1 2 3 4 5

#define MAX_COUNT 20 int counter; for(counter = 0; counter < MAX_COUNT; counter++);   printf("The value of the counter is %d\n", counter);

What's the output? (Answer in the comments)

Saturday - The Wedding of the Year

Yesterday was the day Keith and Toni got married and became Mr and Mrs Glitz. It was in the form of a medieval Handfasting, which I was curious to know what it was going to be like. Rather interactive, as it it turned out. The congregation weren't just passive witnesses but active participants, wishing the bride and groom well individually, which was lovely.

Afterwards, there was a slap-up feed, a banquet, with Keith and Toni as King and Queen, dressed royally for the occasion: 

There was even a court jester to sing songs and tell bad jokes:

Unfortunately, I got a migraine half-way through the ceremony and managed to hang on through the meal, but had to retire early, leaving the happy couple to dance the night away.

Son of C Test Part 2 - Caught By The Fuzz

I got a message from the tutor last night asking us to turn up early for the test this morning. The police and college security were going to do an airport-style security check and there might be a few delays as a result. It was all efficiently handled by the local (Metropolitan) Police. There was a stabbing at the college a few years back and the check is done every year. Looking for drugs as well, which they may have had more success with, by all accounts.

Coincidentally, we get to vote for the PCC today, as I blogged earlier, all of which gives me the excuse to show this:

Sorted!

The test itself was tougher than last time and I guessed at one question: How do you read in two variables using one scanf statement? Afterwards, I asked one of the other guys, Richard, who had the same answer and just tried it out on the compiler, and we got it right!

Update: I got 39... out of 45, 87%! Nice one!

Oxfam Tuesday - Zep and Arabesque

It was a quiet day at the shop, with only a few sales in music, but one of them was for £80 and another for £60 so not bad taken all round.

I listened to some Led Zeppelin. This month, probably timed to coincide with Christmas, the video of the concert they did at O2 a few years back has been released.

Yeah, 'suppose. Just looks a bit silly. Sabs have matured better, I think. Here's what Zep were like in the beginning.

Not a bad little rock and blues band.

I also had a listen to Arabianights (all one word), kind of an Arabesque dance album. One of the tracks was this:

Lebanese, apparently, but, like most club music, it just seems like you're listening to the same track over and over. Still, a change is as good as a rest, and, of course, the picture on the front cover had no influence on me at all.

Down tiger!

House of Flying Daggers

Most people go with Hero or Crouching Tiger, but I go with this as my favourite Wuxia film. Two policemen (Takeshi Kaneshiro and Andy Lau), are tasked with destroying the rebel House of Flying Daggers, using a blind dancer (the gorgeous Zhang Ziyi), but things do not go according to plan.

It's got everything: doomed romance, great photography and fantastic fight scenes. Brilliant.

Son of C Test

Yes, folks, I've got another C Test on Thursday this week, so brown trousers at the ready.

As a test for all you C/C++/C#/Java people, what's the output of the following:

int i = 12;

if (i = 13){
  printf("Does this happen or not??");
}

(Yes, I know it's a mistake, but does it still work and what happens?)

Sunday - A Trip Out

I decided today to take advantage of the excellent sunlight and took a trip down to the seashore at Shoeburyness.

As you can see, a nice bright day with not many people about, just dog walkers and the occasional jogger. One or two people were at Remembrance Day ceremonies and I could hear the strains of a brass band playing "For Those In Peril Upon The Sea", a reminder that we pride ourselves on being a maritime nation.

Another reminder was all the boats ashore in preparation for the Winter storms:

There are some rather nice apartments along the sea front, looking fashionably sun-bleached:

But you can't escape sea gulls!

I had a nice walk for an hour or so and the sea air cleared my head a little.

The Empress and The Warriors

Another day, another Wuxia film. This one's about the conflict between love and duty.

Princess Fei'er inherits the crown of Yan after her father is killed in battle. Vowing to become a warrior worthy of her father, she is wounded and goes missing after an ambush and ends up being looked after by a doctor and former warrior.

A nice film, if a little tiresome in places, and the hot-air balloon was a bit ridiculous, but Kelly Chen is beautiful (but no Maggie Cheung) and the battle scenes are impressive. There is a rather unintentionally funny bit where a General, trying to restore order, shouts "No fighting in the Sword Room!" (a bit like Dr. Strangelove). You'll have someone's eye out with that!

Run, Lola, Run

A film which relates the role of chance in life, Lola, played by Franke Potente, has to find 100,000 marks (the film was made in pre-Euro days) before mid-day. The story is told three times, a minor change happening each time resulting in a different outcome.

An original plot, plus good acting, add up to a decent film for Friday eveing viewing.

Seven Swords

I've been watching another martial arts film on LoveFilm Instants. A bit like Hero, it's in a Chinese fictional genre known as "Wuxia".

Not bad, and some incredible sword fights, but it's a little over-long at two hours plus. For the connoisseur only, I think.

2001 - Blue Danube

Waiting in the queue for the Dartford Tunnel this afternoon, I listened to The Blue Danube on the radio and it put me in mind of this:

Classic!

DIY Cola

When I was at the Maker Faire in Brighton a while back, there were some people selling Cola concentrate in small bottles:

The brand is called Cube Cola and is open source under the GPL, just like Linux or MySQL. I made some syrup with it at the weekend and the resulting drink is not bad. You can smell the lavender oil when you drink it, which is a bit unusual, but not unpleasant.

Conan The Destroyer

Occasionally, Oxfam gets some donations which we can't sell. Most go in the bin, "recycled", but DVD's that you get free with magazines we put into a shoebox and they're available to the staff. I picked out this old Schwarzenegger movie:

Yeah, it's a bit crap compared to the previous one, but it's a bit of a giggle none the less. I found this classic clip from the first movie. "Conan, What is best in life?":

Most of the original short stories and books you can download free, apparently.

Oxfam Tuesday

Went into the shop today to do an afternoon shift. Another part of Francis's anatomy had failed (nothing serious I hope: it was her knee last time), so Mark asked me to locum. Not much trade, a couple of LP's, but I got to listen to some rather nice Soul and The Flaming Lips:

Oh, and last week we made an awsome £950 on fiction, in no small part due to the comics bonanza and the window I set up. I asked John if he wanted to classify the comics as Literature to boost his figures. I said that comics needed the "gravitas" that Literature provided, but he said that Literature needed all the gravitas it could muster and none could be spared.

Hitman

I got this as part of my LoveFilm subscription. It's a movie made from the video game of the same name.

A surprisingly good pizza movie, Timothy Oliphant, who plays Marshal Raylan Givens in the TV series Justified, is Agent 47, a trained assassin working for The Organisation. Chasing him is an Interpol agent, played by Dougray Scott. Betrayed, he hooks up with an ex-girlfriend of one of his targets, played by Olga Kurylenko, who was the Bond Girl in Quantum of Solace.

The plot is not exactly taxing, and everyone takes the film in their stride, but the fight scenes, especially the one between four assassins in the railway repair shop, is pretty fantastic. The only really obvious flaw in the film is that a bald assassin going around with a barcode tattooed to the back of his head would be a bit conspicuous...

Robin Hood, Ironclad and Raging Phoenix

Over the weekend I managed to watch two films exploring the socio-political dynamics of late 12th - early 13th Century England and a Thai martial arts film. First up, Robin Hood:

A nice twist on the legend, and Crowe does a pretty good job, making the hero a bit grittier than previously. Mark Strong plays the villain with relish and Cate Blanchett does well as Lady Marion, although wearing a suit of armour was a bit ridiculous. Have you ever worn a chain mail shirt? It's heavy stuff!

Ironclad I've blogged about before. It's a good pizza movie, with, as expected, a lot of fettlin'. Purefoy is good and Giamatti really enjoys himself as King John, but I don't think a Templar would have given up his vows so easily. Religion was a serious thing back then. Still, although practically everyone gets killed, he gets a decent girlfriend out of it.

Raging Phoenix is a good, old fashioned, chop-socky Thai martial arts film.

Girl meets Boy; Girl helps Boy rescue long lost love from hands of criminal gang; Girl loses Boy at hands of serious martial arts villain; Girl beats living crap out of said villain (and it's a girl fight). What's not to love? The only thing that put me off a bit was the heroine's incredibly squeaky voice, but the fights are pretty good. Buy it for your Mum for Christmas!

Better Thinking Through Chemistry

Today, I went along to see Andrew Vladimirov give a talk called Hacking your Wetware, as part of the London Futurist meetup group. This was about studies into enhancing your brain using pharmaceuticals and electromagnetic fields.

It looks a bit weird and groovy, but it was all about neurochemistry and was fascinating, if a bit involved for someone with O-level Chemistry and who didn't do Biology because he didn't like the idea of cutting up frogs.

The first part of the talk concerned how the brain works and what was required to improve it. Most people know that the brain is composed of neurons, brain cells. These cells are connected together and it's these connections that form memories. The more connections, the easier they form and the quicker the electrical impulses travel down those connections, the smarter you are because the more you can remember and the quicker you can remember (and recall) it.

Andrew went through the various drug types (called Nootropics) and discussed their effectiveness, before covering genetics. He didn't get time to discuss the use of electromagnetic fields and will be discussing that in some detail in a further lecture. He also uses the drugs on himself, notably Piracetam, which he found to be quite effective, but he emphasised that the brain gets smarter by learning the way that muscles get bigger by exercising. The drugs and other techniques only make it easier to do so.

All in all, it was a very good lecture, leavened with some dry humour (he discussed the effect of amphetamines on rats, saying that it did not seem to improve their intelligence, but made them highly active, agitated and nervous. No kidding!).

Get Knotted!

I have a small pendant, which I always wear, made of Goldstone.

This is neither gold nor stone but vitrified copper dust, but I liked the colour and picked it up in a shop in Bluewater. The cord has been slowly wearing away, so I got some from Hobbycraft to replace it. The next problem was how to tie the cord.

I found this nice little web site called Animated Knots, which shows you, step-by-step, how to tie knots for almost anything. I've used a Blood Knot (which turned out to be very awkward to tie) to join the ends together,

an Alpine Butterfly to put a loop in the cord,

and a Cow Hitch to attach the pendant to the loop, as you can see in the first picture.

The Truth About Dishonesty

My subscription to the RSA stream on Youtube just popped this one through the post:

Understanding Comics

If you want to really understand comics and graphic novels, as an art form, a good book to read is Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud:

It's become something of a classic and I came across this edition while sorting through the books in the shop. It takes you through a very thorough analysis of the art form. For example,

why is it easier to relate to this:

rather than this?:

(Ugleeeee!) It's because we don't really have a good image of what we look like in our heads, just a rough sketch, as we only look at ourselves once or twice a day, whereas we are always looking at other people.

Scott McCloud also wrote a comic for Google as a guide to the Chrome browser.

I also found a complete set of Paul Chadwick's Concrete:

It's a good story drawn in a brilliant style and highly recommended especially for those new to the genre.