Saturday - Biomedical Discoveries and the Ageless Generation with Alex Zhavoronkov

Today I attended the first lecture organised by the London Futurists since the end of the summer break. This was a good, if long, presentation by Alex Zhavoronkov whose speciality is the biochemistry of ageing. He's written a book and the presentation was a overview of the subject.

Alex explained that the main problem with an ageing population, i.e. one where the average age is increasing because everyone is living longer, is that old age brings with it infirmity and loss of function. This presents a major challenge to governments, economics and society, but one which might have a solution, or set of solutions, in the form of advanced treatments which enable people to be more functional for longer. He explained the problems that medicine has in making treatments available, citing up to forty years in some cases, but that given this, the next twenty years or so will see some truly remarkable advances, such as stem cell treatments and RNAi.

The presentation also touched on the impact this has on society and he proposed an increase in the retirement age as mandatory. This is where he drew the most comments from the audience. One pointed out that at the moment it difficult to find jobs for young people, much less the old, no matter how capable. It also occurred to me that retirement would become the preserve of the rich, the poor being obliged to work longer, but he had a point. If you live to eighty, forty of those, the first twenty and the last twenty, are unproductive and you are living off other people, your parents in the former and everyone else (directly or indirectly) in the latter. If you can extend, for everyone, that middle forty by even ten years, it would ease the strain on the economy of a country considerably. Alex even went on to say that not dealing with it could cause total economic collapse in some countries.

Overall, despite the length, it was a very good presentation by Alex, and very entertaining.

Update: The Futurists have a new web site, here.

New Lego - Minifigs Series 11

I didn't finish series 10 in the end, but series 11 is out. I've got a Yeti, a climber, a gingerbread man and a German lady with a pretzel:

No, I don't get it either, but at least everyone seems happy enough, and the Yeti has an ice lolly, which is nice.

Text to Hex

49 20 66 6F 75 6E 64 20 74 68 69 73 20 72 61 74 68 65 72 20 6E 61 74 74 79 20 77 65 62 20 73 69 74 65 2C 20 76 69 61 20 42 6F 69 6E 67 20 42 6F 69 6E 67 2C 20 74 68 61 74 20 63 6F 6E 76 65 72 74 73 20 62 69 6E 61 72 79 20 69 6E 74 6F 20 74 65 78 74 20 61 6E 64 20 76 69 73 2D 76 65 72 73 61 2E 20 54 68 69 73 20 69 73 20 74 68 65 20 72 65 73 75 6C 74 20 69 6E 20 68 65 78 2C 20 77 68 69 63 68 20 49 20 74 68 6F 75 67 68 74 20 77 6F 75 6C 64 20 62 65 20 62 65 74 74 65 72 2E

Oxfam Sunday, Monday & Tuesday

I did a marathon at the shop over the last few days, doing a shift on Sunday, a double "Sunday" shift on Monday and another this afternoon, about 11 hours, all told. I must admit, I am a bit jaded. If you're tired of Chelmsford, go home!

I did find a CD of some Cajun music today which lightened the mood a little:

Cajun, despite seeming to be a dance music, has a lot of blues elements, understandable given the proximity to the Mississipi, so there's a lot of songs about levee breaking.

While upstairs today, I got talking to our Classical Music expert, also called Dave. I asked him what the score was, and he said that although the bulk of it was £5 or thereabouts, he'd found one or two LP's which were worth about £800! People must still collect this stuff.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows

The sequel to the first Sherlock Holmes movie, I watched this through my LoveFilm subscription. Sherlock Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Dr. Watson (Jude Law) face Professor Moriarty (Jared Harris) in a race to prevent a European War.

Someone's seen Jared Harris as David Robert Jones in Fringe as he's an excellent Moriarty, and more than a match for Downey. The latter's portrayal of Holmes is a little less forgivable this time around and he's clearly struggling to maintain the accent, not to mention the unbelievably bad disguises. Jude Law does a fine turn as Watson and the plot is serviceable enough, with scenes evoking the World War to come. It's a decent pizza movie, fun and certainly action-packed, but a bit of a diminishing return.

Minions!

I was walking through Southend the other day, when I spotted these in a shop in the Victoria Centre:

The shop is called The Teddy Station and it's on the upper floor. They do all kinds of themed soft toys, as you can see, and the quality seems reasonable enough.

Cowboys and Aliens

I finally managed to watch this through my LoveFilm subscription. A man (Daniel Craig) awakes in the desert not knowing who he is or how he comes to be there, but he has a mysterious bracelet on his arm.

Mix a western with an alien invasion and this is the result. A film based on the comic book of the same name, it's surprisingly good. The two genre's are blended with skill by the director and cast is top notch, Craig putting his Bond experience to good use, Harrison Ford playing the western role Indiana Jones was always meant to be, and with a fine supporting cast including Sam Rockwell. Recommended.

Wednesday - Lambdas: Myths and Mistakes

This evening I went to see the presentation by Richard Warburton at Skills Matter regarding the new functional features of Java 8, about which I mentioned previously.

A few words of explanation for those not familiar with the terminology.

The JSR mentioned is a Java Specification Request, which is what you create when you have a suggestion for how you want Java to change in the future. These are submitted as part of the Java Community Process, set up by Sun when they realised they had something big on their hands releasing Java. In theory it allows everyone to have a voice, but in practise it's mostly those with very extensive knowledge of the language (such as Richard), although the Adopt-a-JSR he talks about is a move to allow the average code-cutter their ten-penn'th, as well as field testing the resulting change. The JCP has been criticised for slowing down changes to Java which might make it more competitive: Microsoft just releases their software to beta without any real consultation, while Google just seems to keep everything in permanent beta, killing it off when they get tired of it.

The "lazy" and "eager" he talks about are functional concepts that are easier to grasp by watching them in action rather than talking about them, but the nearest non-programming equivalent would be the just-in-time of logistics and manufacturing (a part is ordered to arrive just in time to be used, thus eliminating the need to store it and the resulting cost of doing so). The lazy algorithm is executed when it's needed, whereas the eager one is executed completely. This is why there's a problem when the different algorithms are mixed and why the lazy ones play havoc with profilers (software that tries to work out how efficient your code is, amongst other things).

Richard was quite eloquent, highlighting the changes and giving examples of the way in which they should be used, but it became clear that Java 8 is not the radical change that everyone thought it might be. The functional features, like interfaces and generics before them, look like they've been added onto the existing features and even create conflicts with them (the "streams" and collections Richard talks about).

While it's looking as if they are not going to be usurping Scala and Clojure any time soon, the new features look very Scala-like, which does look a little ominous for the latter. Mind you, they also look a little Erlang-like as well, so make of that what you will.

Bizzare aside: While on the way home on the train, I sat opposite the reddest man I have ever seen. It reminded me of this.

Oxfam Monday & Tuesday - Till Trouble

Pulling two shifts at the shop, I had a problem with the credit card machine. It kept beeping at me and when I looked it said that it couldn't connect to the PIN pad. I wiggled the connection (this was upstairs on the Tuesday afternoon, so it was quiet), but it then asked me for a function code (??). I had a few words with Mark and he came up and looked through the little manual that came with it. He fiddled for a while, shrugged, and went underneath the till to find the plug to do the hard re-boot. I told him it reminded me of the running joke in the IT Crowd:

While on the top deck, I found a Luaka Bop sampler with this rather groovy sound:

Rock on!!

Sunday Games Club - Chocolate Trader and Good Juju

Up to Victoria for another playtest meeting at The Jugged Hare. After a rather nice (if pricey) bubble and squeak, we had a go at Chocolate Trader from Laurence Davies.

I don't have much experience of pure trading games, mostly ones that have trading as part of the game, usually to manage resources in an open market (as in my old favourite Supremacy: the market indicators are at the top, with the bull and bear).

I was therefore at a disadvantage and tried to figure out the surprisingly complex and sophisticated rules. The first hurdle was the turn sequence. In each turn the first played picked which phase of the game in which they go would first. There are five phases to the game: Purchase, Production, Market, Innovation and Advertising. In a trading game, as in reality, you make a profit by buying low and selling high, this translating here into the Purchasing and Market phases. Purchasing was actually buying the resources to make the chocolate (milk, cocoa, sugar) and the overhead in production aggregated together into one price. The Market was when you sold the produced chocolate. You bought in one market and sold in another, which took a little getting used to. What governed the price you bought and sold at was also a bit perplexing: when you sold on the selling market, the price went down but there didn't seem to be a mechanism for bringing it back up again. This turned out to be Advertising, which generated demand and thus increased the price (you could "buy" the chocolate at a fixed price per unit). The price in the buying market was a table that depended on what kind of chocolate you wanted to make and increased in price with each purchase. This table then changed each turn to represent Fortuna. Innovation was a way of changing the chocolate-making machine to make more or different (more expensive) chocolate. This was done using an auctioning system, another market essentially.

It was quite a good game once you got used to the complexity, but might be easily dominated by someone who figured out an effective strategy and had luck on his side. Laurence was trying to aim the game at the family market, but it seemed too complicated for anyone who hasn't got good maths. Male gamers might not take it seriously because of the subject matter, plus there are more complex games like Power Grid, but female gamers might like it. Beer Trader might be more amenable to the men.

The second game was Good Juju, a voodoo based card game from Ben Neumann. At least that was the working title, as this was the first time it had been played:

Despite the lack of polish, it was quite a good game. Depending on the instructions on the Charge cards, you put a number of "bad" juju beads into a bag. At the end of the round, whoever had the largest number of beads won the round and got a Totem card. If he gets the art right (and he said he had an illustrator) it'll be quite something, although I thought afterwards the idea of an infinite reservoir of bad juju was a bit gloomy.

Space Hulk!!

Way back when, Games Workshop (current share price GAW:LSE, 776 GBX) produced a little game based on it's established Warhammer 40,000 range called Space Hulk. It was Aliens (as in the film), with Imperial Space Marines taking the place of U.S. Colonial Marines and genestealers taking the place of, er, aliens. The game was simple enough, and difficult enough, to be a challenge for a weekday evening's entertainment over beer and snacks.

It had a few extensions, and a few rule additions published in White Dwarf, GW's monthly magazine, a second edition and then quietly disappeared. Anyway, about two or three years ago a third edition came out, quite unexpectedly and to little fanfare from GW. It was very professionally done, with nice plastic models (these have been painted very well):

Anyhoo, I'm a fan. When the first game came out, I started collecting more of the models from the original line and painting them up, and then I got the third edition when it came out. I've even got the card game from Fantasy Flight:

Now there's a video game that copies the board game very well, and jolly good it is too.

It's turn based and the interface is very simple, like the board game, just point and click. (Here's a screen shot I made using the Steam interface: very handy!)

Notice the log window on the right which details the dice rolls. Lovely!

I've even been busy and made an icon for the desktop shortcut as they don't provide one yet (it's on Dropbox here).

Now it's obviously not everyone's cup of tea, but if you are a W40K fan and loved the original board game, as I did, I recommend it.

Cheap Tuesday - The Wolverine

Taking advantage of cheap Tuesday at the Empire on the BasVegas Strip, I went to see The Wolverine in 3D. Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) journeys to Japan to see a man whose life he once saved and who wants to repay him.

Jackman gets to emote a bit, but it's basically lots of fights in Japan and you can't get more Japan than having a fight with a bunch of Yakuza on a Shinkansen going 300 kph through Tokyo. He's ably supported by the Japanese cast, especially Rila Fukushima as Logan's precognitive, sword-wielding, self-appointed yojimbo.

It's best not to think too much about the plot or characterisation, but just to let the style of the film wash over you, especially those who like Manga, Anime, or just Japan for that matter. A reasonable pizza film.

Oxfam Sunday & Monday - Blackwater

A quiet few days in the shop, with nothing really of note happening. One of the things about working in a book shop is that you do come across something worth reading every so often. This time I came across this:

It's a kind of exposé of a company that's at the heart of a new phenomena: the privatisation of war. Mercenary companies have always been around, ever since the middle ages with the Italian condottiere, Sir John Hawkwood and the White Company.

(The Battle of San Romano, by Paolo Uccelo, in the National Gallery, shows a battle between two condottiere armies).

The modern mercenary armies really started with the decline in state armies at the end of World War 2, with the private armies started by David Stirling after he left the SAS (detailed here in Adam Curtis's excellent documentary, The Mayfair Set):

but the end of the Cold War and the "war on terror" has accelerated the process to be a multi-billion dollar business. It's an intriguing book, concentrating on Iraq, but also on other parts of the world, notably South America. In the same way that David Stirling privatised Britain's foreign policy, so Blackwater appears to be doing the same to America's.

Broken City & Glengarry Glen Ross

I received this through my LoveFilm subscription. After resigning from the N.Y.P.D. due to a shooting in suspicious circumstances, private investigator Billy Taggart (Mark Wahlberg) is asked by Mayor Hostetler (Russell Crowe) to investigate his wife's suspected adultery.

Both actors are too good to just phone in the part, but Wahlberg is outclassed by Crowe here, although the latter is somewhat miscast I think. The supporting cast is pretty top notch, especially Alona Tal as Taggarts' assistant. The thing that lets the movie down, however, is the plot, which you can see coming a mile-and-a-half away. Maybe a better scriptwriter would have introduced a few twists and turns to ramp up the tension. Not a bad movie, but an opportunity missed.

Glengarry Glen Ross I'd never seen before, despite it being over twenty years old, and I spotted it amongst the freebie's we can't sell at the shop, so I snagged it. Four salesmen (Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Ed Harris, Alan Arkin) at a real estate company and their manager (Kevin Spacey) are presented with a problem when their superior (Alec Baldwin) calls with a new monthly "incentive":

Originally this was a stage play by David Mamet, which he then wrote as a film script, but it still has that feel. It's an excuse for everyone to give 150% and they don't disappoint (even Alec Baldwin shines and he's only on for twenty minutes), but it's Jack Lemmon's film, playing a worn out desperate man looking for one last success. Highly recommended.

Thursday - A Trip Into London

Yesterday, I agreed to meet up with a pal for a swift half after he'd finished work. I took the opportunity to go to the Design Museum before we met up.

I'd been before a few years ago. The exhibition they are featuring is called "The Future Is Here" and is about the impact of new digital manufacturing, including 3D printing (yes!).

It's interesting how decentralised everything is becoming, mostly due to the Open Source movement, and there are a few micro-factories opening up, notably Assemble & Join near Waterloo. There's even a site where you can download the plans for a house, at WikiHouse, CNC it out of plywood and build it yourself. The founder of the project gave a TED talk explaining the philosophy behind the project:

It's all fascinating stuff.

There are also a couple of other exhibitions there as well, including one called "United Micro Kingdoms". It's a sort of re-imagined U.K. composed of four smaller countries, each with it's own political and social philosophy taken to extremes. While there, I noticed these books by the Sternberg Press, called the Solution Series:

This one has a list of parallel Scotlands, each weirder than the last.

I took my leave and walked up the South Bank, past Tower Bridge:

across the river at Charing Cross and then up to Covent Garden where we met up at The Salibury. We drank and chatted, eventually ending up at The Lamb and Flag:

which is a very busy pub, although we found seats inside. He has also left the firm we both worked for and has found himself a comfortable little contract, merging two systems together after a company takover. Ironically, at some point he's going to be working with the old firm, so that's going to be fun for him!

Sweeney Todd - The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

I got this from the shop last week. Sweeney Todd (Johnny Depp) returns to London to seek murderous revenge on the men, and the city, who betrayed him.

Who knew making pies could be such a cut-throat business?

It's an incredibly bloodthirsty film, but a very suitable subject for both Depp, Helena Bonham-Carter and Tim Burton, who pull out all the stops. The supporting cast are excellent, although Alan Rickman doesn't get to be villainous enough. I don't usually like musicals, and it's difficult to warm to this one given the subject, but I can respect the art when it's done this well. It's amazing how well everyone sings.

Oh, a little detail. Tower Bridge was finished in 1894, about fifty years after the original story came out and twenty years after Charles Dickens died, so if you see Oliver Twist or David Copperfield with Tower Bridge in the background, as here, it's a continuity error.

Software Metrics with Nigel Runnels-Moss

This evening, I attended a presentation on Software Metrics at Skills Matter. Before I say anything about this, like our M.P.'s, I have to declare a conflict of interest, but first, there's a quote I like from Blackadder III (Amy and Amiability) where Edmund and Baldrick are discussing a suitable bride for Prince George:

Edmund:	Well, there’s Grand Duchess Sophia of Turin. We’ll never get her to marry him.
Baldrick:	Why not?
Edmund:	Because she’s met him.

I met Nigel at the Erlang meeting I attended a few months ago and he didn't create a particularly good impression. Lots of talk, but mostly other people's ideas rather than any insights of his own. Obviously, the following is coloured by my initial impression, so please take that into consideration.

A while ago, I got a book on software metrics called "Codemetrics":

The author, Jonathan Alexander, had read about the use of Sabermetrics (analysing baseball statistics) in creating baseball teams and has applied a similar method to software teams. It's an interesting theory and the book illustrates his point well.

I thought that this might be along the same lines, or maybe about software complexity measures, but it was mostly about the falability of software estimation, something that everyone knows about but can do little to remedy. Unfortunately, Nigel had no new suggestions. He quoted a lot of smart people, including Tom DeMarco whose excellent book "Peopleware" is now available in digital format, Victorian scientist Lord Kelvin and even Fred Brooks got a look-in.

Overall, the presentation was long-winded and meandering: not once was an actual software metric explained in any detail, nor mentioned to my recollection, although I didn't stay to the end. Worse, he quoted some statistics about software failures and reached a conclusion that was highly suspect: software projects above $10 million have a high failure rate, so the more expensive a project, the more likely it is to fail. This illustrates a maxim in statistics called "correlation is not causation", meaning that because two sets of statistics seem to vary in relation to each other doesn't mean they actually are connected. Failed projects cost a lot of money, but a projects' cost has nothing to do with it's likelyhood of failure.

Oxfam Sunday & Monday - St Germain & Bentley Rhythm Ace

As well as pulling a Sunday shift, I got to Monday afternoon upstairs. It was a bit arduous as I worked my way through a book bank delivery of loads of CD's that were very sub-standard. I did find the Tourist album from St. Germain, though, which I've heard good things about, just not listened to it myself:

I also found (in the Jazz section!!) an old BRA classic:

It's one of these rare albums that starts off a bit mediocre and gets better later on. Financially, we did better on Sunday than Monday. Being the first weekend after the end of the month, people will have money in their pockets, I suppose.

Who Killed The Electric Car?

This is an interesting little documentary through my LoveFilm subscription. Back in the late 1990's, California passed a state mandate saying that it was going to cut pollution and greenhouse gases by having 10% of all cars to have zero emissions by 2012. At the same time, GM were developing a high performance electric car called the EV1.

Here we see a classic case of the U.S. government, both national and local, shooting itself in the foot or, rather, allowing the big oil and car companies to do it for them. The EV1 was withdrawn (none were sold, only leased to customers) and the state mandate changed under pressure from the car companies, who could make more money from petrol and diesel powered vehicles, and the oil companies, who wanted hydrogen (supplied by themselves) as the replacement, if ever.

It's a nice little film, as much to see the corruption of politics by capital as the short-sightedness of government and big business.