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Wells Fargo, all is forgiven...

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2009-07-09T18:04:36-07:00

So, I get home after a long day’s work. Read the mail, and there it is, a letter (in the posh-looking envelopes that mean ‘bad news’) from Wells Fargo. I have a ‘toys’ account at Wells Fargo, I put $200 in it each month, and I can spend from it as I want. In this case, I’d purchased $9.99 worth of music from iTunes...

So, because that took the balance to a negative amount, Wells Fargo decided to allow the purchase (why?) and then debit my account by $35. Thirty-freaking-five dollars to send a form letter. An automated form letter that cost them the price of a stamp. It’s worse than that... there’s a $5/day fee as long as it stays overdrawn, it took 3 days for the letter to get to me, and it’ll take 3 days for funds to get there from my ‘real’ account. That’s another $30...

Well, I’ve had enough of it. I’ve had enough of being charged stupid amounts of money (almost 10x the amount I actually went over-drawn in fact) - I’d far rather the invoice just went unpaid. I’m far more likely to actually do something about an unpaid bill, after all...

So, with Wells Fargo having pissed me off once too often, what recourse do I have ? Well, it turns out I have my mortgage with Wells Fargo - with about $1,000,000 left to pay off in interest over the years. That money will now be going elsewhere.

Well done, Wells Fargo. Having ripped me off to the tune of $65, I’m now going to take over a million dollars away from you. Good piece of business, that...

update (13th August) :
Having just checked my bank account, it seems someone paid attention to my letter, and the various charges (they’d added up to $165 by this time) have been refunded back into my account. Well done Wells Fargo. Thanks for listening. I guess you get to keep my mortgage cash after all...

The iphone and open-source (take 2)

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2008-07-25T07:38:08-07:00

I'm really getting tired of this...

Over at Aristotle Pagaltzis' blog he takes John Gruber to task for not understanding the GPL. Unfortunately it's Aristotle who has his argument confused.

As mentioned before all you have to do is distribute the source code. I've looked in the developer agreement, and there's nothing about what you have to do with the source code - it's all to do with the "Application" (a defined technical term that does not include the source code). A simple analogy to bread and flour ought to be sufficient to show that the source code is separate from the application itself...

So, here's what you do to fully and freely distribute open-source code.

Set up a website or get a project on one of the many project-hosting sites
Place a tarball of your source code on that site and link to it so people can download it
That's it

Now the person wanting to download and play with your source-code can do so to their hearts content. If they want to run it, they can (free of any payment to Apple) do so in the simulator contained within the SDK that anyone can download from Apple's site.

If they want to run it on the phone itself, they'll need to pay (once) $99 to Apple to obtain the right-to-licence certificate-generation option. Now they can generate an ad-hoc certificate (as I mentioned in the previous post) and load the program they've just downloaded onto their own phone.

So, to go over the freedoms that this gives you, in Aristotle's own terms:

The freedom to run the program for any purpose (freedom 0) check
The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your own needs (freedom 1) check
The freedom to redistribute copies to help your neighbour (freedom 2) check
The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3) check

... looks as though John Gruber understands freedom better than Aristotle does...

The iphone and open-source

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2008-07-18T12:23:54-07:00

The FSF have just gone on a bit of a rant about how locked-up and closed-source the iphone is, which caused a fair amount of commentary and meta-commentary, but the problem is that the basic tenet of the FSF's screed is just not true. The very first point they "make" is:

"iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't be on everyone's phones."

Now I have recently got my personal iphone development environment set up. I downloaded the 'accelerometer' example source as a DMG from Apple (this app graphs the accelerometer in real-time) - there's nothing special about this source code, I just wanted something a *little* more complex than 'hello world'. Any other source-code distribution would have illustrated my point just as well.

So, I went through the various certificate-signing things, and created development, distribution, and ad-hoc certificates. I compiled the code and dragged my ad-hoc certificate and the application onto itunes, then synced with my phone.

The result is that I have some-random-program (in this case the accelerometer app) whose source-code I downloaded from the internet installed and running on my iphone. I did without jailbreaking, or doing anything non-official according to Apple. I need the ad-hoc certificate at *compile-time*, which authorises my iPhone to be able to run the app, but if you're distributing open-source code, that's just fine and peachy - any recipient will want to compile it themselves anyway.

So, here's the choices if you want to code open-source stuff:

Generate an ad-hoc certificate for a set of phones (max 100) and deliver the certificate along with the app (binary and source). You can distribute binaries like this for an identified set of phones.
Distribute your source code. Developers can compile their own version of the app and install onto their own phone using their own ad-hoc certificates
Distribute the source-code on your website as above, and the binary via the app-store (for free).

The *only* barrier to #2, #3 is the cost of the developer program, ($99) which isn't much of a barrier. If $99 is truly out of your reach, you probably ought not be fixating on luxury items like the iphone - and in any case you can still download, compile, and run the code in the simulator. This is open-source in every aspect, and my respect for the FSF has gone down as a result of their campaign. It reminds me of Greenpeace, who don't really give a damn about whether Apple *are* green, they only care funding themselves and Apple are a high-profile target name.

Networked SQLite

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2008-06-18T19:09:11-07:00

I've been playing around with SQLite for some time now, and one of the things I thought I'd try out was a client-server version of the database - so here it is. It's a pretty basic implementation, but there was some chatter on the sqlite mailing list, so I thought I'd package it up and release it.

I originally wrote a lot of this in Objective C, with proper classes and methods. In an attempt to make it a bit more portable for those who haven't seen the light, I stepped down to using Foundation and plain-old-C, well apart from the demo client code anyway. ObjC is *so* much nicer than C I had to use it there :) You can get FoundationLite from Apple's website, and that should be all you need to compile against this source-code.

This is an earlier version of the code I used in a work project, so it has less functionality than the one I have at work, but I may start to fold some of that back in. I guess, as long as I re-implement rather than copy, I'm probably ok. Work are using a whole slew of my code anyway, so I reckon we're even on that score :)

The source is freeware - do with it as you please. If you'd like to credit me somewhere, I certainly wouldn't say no, but that's not necessary.

Run the server with 'sqld -I' to initalise a database in /opt/db, then do 'sqlc -u root -p sqld -d sqld' to connect to the server from a different terminal (there's -h server-hostname as well, if you want to connect via TCP). There's an auth table (initially set up as user=root, password=sqld, database=sqld) and a 'create database' pseudo-command to create new databases (which are just files in the install-dir (/opt/db by default).

This version doesn't have 'show tables', 'desc tablename' etc. The authorisation stuff does work, or at least it should. It doesn't have the change-management feature either (where different connections are notified asynchronously that cols X,Y,Z have changed in rows A,B,C in table T. I'll probably get around to putting those things back in. I think I had server-side plugins working as well - so pseudo-commands could be implemented ung loadable plugins.

It's all based around a simple packet-library concept which abstracts the network-transport. It looks a bit ugly in plain-old-C, but it does work reasonably well. Example packet dump from the server which corresponds to a client-connection trying to authenticate against the server (the three fields are 'username', 'password' and 'database')...

Zune humour

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-10-29T21:02:27-07:00

So, it never occurred to me to rotate the Zune logo, but then I read 'roughlyDrafted.com' and just had to laugh. I'll let y'all decide for yourself what it spells...

I can't see Apple ever making this sort of mistake. What with the colour brown, this fiasco, I think we're getting a clear idea of how MS thinks of the Zune, and it's not pretty...

Screw Comcast

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-10-20T12:15:49-07:00

That's actually been the name of my airport network at home for quite some time now. It's finally become an action as well.

The last straw in the litany of failure that is my Comcast internet connection is their unilateral attack on network neutrality. Comcast are interfering with the broadcast of packets between users on the network, if either the source or destination is within their domain. Worse, they're doing it in a particularly vile manner - effectively they're using a computer-hacker attack called the 'man-in-the-middle' attack. When they decide you're using too much bandwidth, they (sitting in the middle of the communication link) fake a packet to *both* of the communicating computers, this packet is an 'RST' packet, or 'reset' packet. What this does is tell the computer that receives it that the *other* computer has dropped the connection. So both computers think something is wrong with the other end, and the communication is terminated. This is pure unadulterated evil.

Now I'm not a huge user of P2P (which is where the news broke). I *do* however use iChat to keep in touch with my family across the Atlantic. It's a cool video-conferencing system built into all macs, and since my family all have macs, it works well. Since there's several thousand miles between us, it's one of the few ways we can 'see' each other without major travel.

Until a few months ago, iChat worked great. Now, I get less than a minute of great picture, and then everything breaks up! I was putting it down to transatlantic bandwidth issues, but then I tried it from work, and (lo and behold), there's no problem, looking around the net, it seems I'm not alone. This *did* annoy me. I doubt I use even 1% of the bandwidth I pay Comcast for, and when I do want to use some, they have a specific policy preventing me from doing so. It seems I'm allowed to pay Comcast for their services, just not to actually *use* those services ever.

I currently pay Comcast the princely sum of $185-$200 per month for both TV and internet, I've just ordered Dish Network, and will be cancelling all the Comcast services as soon as Dish and an alternate internet are installed. Dish ($84/month) will be here on Saturday :) The only real problem was which internet service to go for. I currently have a co-located server in Fremont (serving this very web-page). I pay $245/month for a dedicated 10 Mbit/7U service (which is actually a good deal). I never use the 10MBit/s though, I max out at ~1Mbit, and 95% of the time it's down at a few tens of Kbit/s. So, although I'm very happy with the service, that's a waste of money too. So far, we're up to $430/month to reassign...

So, I was looking around, and found Sonic.net's T1-alike. Basically this is 2+ ADSL lines bonded together to provide 1.5MBit/sec dedicated bandwidth in both directions. Together with a managed Cisco router, it costs $299/month. Even if this doesn't pan out, there are plenty (covad.com, garlic.com, core.com, speakeasy.com ...) for around $350/month. Even paying the extra $50, I'm still paying less than the Co-Lo/Comcast Combo, and getting the servers installed in the garage makes maintenance a bit easier than driving down to Fremont...

So, the wheels are in motion. Screw Comcast. You just lost another $200/month...

I want an upgrade to XP

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-08-28T21:57:36-07:00

I wanted to run some FPGA simulations, and some of the software (specifically the FPGA simulator environment) runs better on Windows, rather than Linux. So, like a good citizen, I go out and buy the 'Business' version of Vista, since that's all that Microsoft will licence to us Parallels users. That costs me $300 + Tax. I expect to get something I *want* when I pay that much money for something...

So, I get it home, install it under Parallels (which seems to go smoothly). So far, not so much of a rant... Have patience (something I am fast running out of)... What is it about Windows Vista that I dislike ? Pretty much everything in fact...

Top of the list has to be this 'genuine windows advantage' debacle. Advantage to *WHO* exactly ? I had started to download / install the FPGA software. Two thirds of the way through a 1.6GB (yes, Gigabyte) download, I get a popup saying it can't tell whether the machine is a genuine Windows machine, and the download hangs.

Ok, [deep breath, these things happen, I'm new at this I probably didn't read some documentation...] Cancel the download, go to the windows site, and validate. No, that doesn't work - "come back later" it says. Fine. Get another dialogue popping up about 5 minutes later telling me Windows is about to stop working, and I should reboot. WHAT ?? [sigh] Ok, reboot. That usually fixes operating systems from these guys.

Fine, now we're ready. Ok, restart that 1.6GB download...Wait for it... Wait for it... Yep, there's the dialogue, and *boom* goes my download. Cue significant swearing. Ok, so go to the site again, this time it wants to install an Active-X control, I let it, and I now have to reboot my computer. WHAT ??? [big sigh]. Ok reboot... The first thing that happens is I get the dialogue box (hey! look on the bright side, I didn't wait for 20 minutes and get 2/3 the way through my download this time!).

So, I visit the Miscreant^WMicrosoft site again and this time it announces my installation is apparently genuine. Well thank [insert random deities] for that.

That one has to be top of the list, but how about:

That (on a 20G partition) it's had the hard-drive churning away now for over 3 hours! I'm assuming it's indexing it for search, but [insert more random deities] THREE HOURS for a mere 20 GIG ? And counting! It's making a hell of a racket in my otherwise quiet office
That by default, I can't click on a zip file to download the thing. It pushes a dialogue in my face and blanks the page. So, I get it, the security model on Window is so appalling, it can't tell the difference between a virus and a zip file, but that's still annoying.
Xilinx (in their infinite wisdom) have https:// urls with http:// elements within them. IE hates that. Every single page I went to, I had to click 'yes, I really want to be here'. How annoying is that ? And this is the *default* behaviour! Eventually I found the preference to turn it off, hidden amongst a half-million other options, all sounding pretty similar. I'm reminded of the adventure line "you're in a maze of twisty passages, all alike"...

This is just scratching the surface. I've been using XP for an evening, and already I loathe it; and I loathe it not because it's different, I loathe it because it's annoying, fiddly, exasperating, and seems to actively get in my way when I want to do something. I don't care that (for example) the menus are different - I can cope with differences in OS's, I've used well over a dozen of them over the years. I care that (a) I want to do something, (b) I make a reasonable attempt, (c) it recognises the attempt correctly, and then (z) prevents me from doing it, or at least makes it difficult. That gap in the middle is what is missing from the OS.

Computer operating systems are not supposed to be like "Adventure". That maze of twisty passages shows what a poor job the designers of the OS have done - it's simply awful. Both Linux and (to a far lesser extent) OSX have their issues, but nothing at all along the lines of how difficult Microsoft makes it to use your computer. Contrast the above with the OSX credo of "it just works", the lack of any "OSX genuine advantage" program, and perhaps we can see why 1 in 6 laptops currently being sold are Macs, even though they *don't* run all the "office" apps...

So, I want an upgrade to XP. I don't want to use this weeping pus-ridden leprous scab of an OS any longer. XP was merely awful, Vista is so much worse.

[rant over]

Microsoft and Ethics

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-06-05T22:18:36-07:00

Over at The Register there is an amazing story of Microsoft first awarding a developer 'Most Valued Professional' status for a program that extends Visual Studio (the give-away version, "VS Express"). The amazing part is that they then turn around and sue him for the same program!!!

The basic problem is that they (MS that is) were lazy - they released a "technically limited" version of the software, and just removed some of the modules they wanted to reserve for the loadsamoney version. They didn't remove the ability of other modules to interact with the removed one, but instead relied on a clause in the (still untested in court) EULA that no-one reads.

So here's their problem. A guy called Jamie figures out how (using only public interfaces) to re-enable the plugin ability of the give-away version of VS. Re-read that sentence - he uses only the public API's to do this. Any public API is fair game for a developer - it's a promise (a "contract", if you will) that the developer can use this code however (s)he sees fit...

Now, let's look at the EULA clause, and see what it is that MS are trying to argue...

"...you may use the software only as expressly permitted in this agreement. In doing so you must comply with any technical limitations in the software that only allow you to use it in certain ways... You may not work around any technical limitations in the software."

Ok, that seems fairly clear, and at first glance, MS would appear to have him cornered, game over, thanks for playing. Oh, wait, hang on - Jamie only used public API's - the ones that Microsoft publish so that developers can use them - the "supported" way to access Microsoft code. So, in fact, Jamie is not working around any limitations, he's using the officially-supported way to code-up his program.

Now, Microsoft might never have expected Jamie to use their code in the way he did, but he's not doing anything wrong by doing so - this is not "working around" limitations, this is using the provided, supported API for something that MS never intended. Here's the simple example:

Consider a function that adds 2 numbers, and returns the result. It's called 'add2Numbers'; if you pass in {2,3}, you get 5. Jamie, however uses it a little differently - he passes in {3,-2}, and gets 1. This behaviour is the same as the forbidden function 'subtract2Numbers' which only people who pay loadsamoney to Microsoft get to use.

Now MS are upset about the use of 'add2Numbers' which does the same thing as their "loadsamoney" function 'subtract2Numbers' if you use Jamie's code, but they can't do anything about it... Except they do, of course. They first try to bully him (without telling him exactly what it is he's done wrong, mainly because he hasn't done anything wrong), and then they lawyer-up.

The use of public API makes whatever you do a supported action by the publisher of that API. Microsoft may not supply the facility that Jamie has stepped in to provide, but they most certainly do support it. If they support it, they shouldn't be able to sue when someone actually does it...

My suggestion to Jamie (and those like him) is to come over to the side of the Angels - get a Mac, run Xcode (the full version, no charge), and develop to your heart's content. Here's why:

Macs really are cool to code for. It's sort of like a mature version of VS.net
Objective C really (really!) rocks. It hits the complexity sweet-spot, and lets you easily do so much!
The community is a real one, not a fake one that bites you if you counteract some vague as-yet-undisclosed business plan.
We won't tease you (much, we're only human) for your previous life as a Windows coder.
Do something cool, and Apple tend to buy your company, not sue your ass.
If you love unix, you'll love OSX. If you loathe unix, you'll love Cocoa which shields you from it. You'll probably learn to love unix eventually though :-)
We have cookies.
There are more reasons, but you ought to find out for yourself...

Seriously. If MS put you in a spot like this, get legal advice, and point out to your lawyer that using public API in an until-then-undiscovered fashion is a good thing. At the end of the day though, the cross-hairs are centered on you - don't forget that.

Hells Bells, I'm Tony Blair née Gordon Brown

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-05-12T23:32:56-07:00

So having done the previous test (hence the 'Hells Bells' line), I'm now addicted, [sigh].

There's a site called kingdomality which purports to be a translation of the old medieval trades, occupations and crafts to the modern day. I had the link hanging around from an email about 6 months ago, but hadn't ever actually tried it. It turns out I'm the Prime Minister - maybe not so different from the previous test after all (whoops, just a little political there...)

Hmm, I wonder what the impact of having this sort of information up on the web, and associated with me, will be. I guess I'll just have to keep my job - I'm not sure I'd want to just donate this sort of information (however accurate or inaccurate it may be) to a hiring manager... They are personality profiles after all. I'm not an egotistical maniac, honest [grin]

"Your distinct personality, The Prime Minister might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. You are a strategist who pursues the most efficient and logical path toward the realization of the goal that you perceive or visualize. You will often only associate with those people who can assist you in the implementation of your plan. Inept assistants may be immediately discarded as excess baggage. To do otherwise could be seen as inefficient and illogical. On the positive side, you can be rationally idealistic and analytically ideological. You can be a bold decision maker and risk taker who can move society ahead by years instead of minutes. On the negative side, you may be unmerciful, impatient, impetuous and impulsive. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today's corporate kingdoms."

Fear me

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-05-12T23:03:08-07:00

So, I don't do these "internet test" things as a rule - but what can I say, I was bored and there wasn't anything on TV [grin]. I came across a link to a tarot-test, and clicked it, answered the (surprisingly few) questions, and it turns out that

I am The Devil

This came as a bit of a shock.

Fortunately there was some explanatory text to go along with this rather cruelly (at least IMHO) declarative judgement:

Materiality. Material Force. Material temptation; sometimes obsession. The Devil is often a great card for business success; hard work and ambition.

Perhaps the most misunderstood of all the major arcana, the Devil is not really "Satan" at all, but Pan the half-goat nature god and/or Dionysius. These are gods of pleasure and abandon, of wild behavior and unbridled desires. This is a card about ambitions; it is also synonymous with temptation and addiction. On the flip side, however, the card can be a warning to someone who is too restrained, someone who never allows themselves to get passionate or messy or wild - or ambitious. This, too, is a form of enslavement. As a person, the Devil can stand for a man of money or erotic power, aggressive, controlling, or just persuasive. This is not to say a bad man, but certainly a powerful man who is hard to resist. The important thing is to remember that any chain is freely worn. In most cases, you are enslaved only because you allow it.

I've always thought I had a way with words; I can turn a pretty sentence when I feel like, and I habitually alter my cadence and tone when making a case in a discussion/argument. In fact my closest friend often complains that I always come across as believable, even when I'm wrong. It's not something I do on purpose, it's just that I (obviously, otherwise I'd not be making the argument) think I'm right, and that belief leaks over into my presentation of my case automatically. I may not be Steve Jobs, but I think I can project a small RDF^[1] :-) 'The Devil' is a little judgemental, though [grin]

If you want to be similarly categorised, the test is over here.

[1] RDF - The 'Reality Distortion Field' attributed to Apple's CEO Steve Jobs during his keynote presentations

Do Not buy a Renault Clio

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-04-01T19:38:17-07:00
This is a public service announcement. Do not buy a Renault Clio car. Not if you value your life.

Last week, my sister was driving up the M62 in the UK. It was pouring with rain, and she was overtaking some lorries (which were on the slow inside lane) when it happened - the bonnet released at the front, flew up, smashed the windscreen, and wrecked the top of the car. Somehow my sister managed to get the car over to the hard-shoulder without further incident.

My sister is incredibly lucky to be alive. If you own a Clio, make sure you regularly (and I mean every week) check the bonnet catch - there is a design flaw, whereby it corrodes and sticks with disastrous consequences, usually when you're driving at high speed.

This isn't a one-off, in case you're wondering - there is plenty of evidence that it is endemic to the design, see

MSN car report, 30 March 2007
BBC consumer watchdog - who've had over 1000 complaints about this
Whistleblower reports - saying Renault know about the problem, but are downplaying it

There have even been Questions in parliament (at the bottom of the page under 'Renault cars'), because Renault are denying that there is a problem, saying that this is a servicing issue, not a manufacturing one.

So, here's some more details about my sister's car:

It was bought from a Renault dealer in November of last year.
The fit-and-finish wasn't deemed good-enough by the manager, so he had the service team do a full service on it before delivery.
not four months later, the bonnet flies up and nearly kills her

If a car can go from official-dealer-sanctioned sale to a death-trap in four months, and that's "just fine" by Renault, something is wrong with their definition of "just fine".

What makes it worse is that they are saying it's down to a lack of maintenance on the part of the owner. Now all of you good people who regularly (say once/month) maintain the catch on your bonnet, please stand up. What ? Really ? No-one ? Yeah, thought so. No other car on the market needs this, which makes it a design flaw, not a maintenance issue.

EVEN IF they had a point about the maintenance (which they don't), when something is so crucial to the safety of the vehicle, should that information not be in the user-manual ? Because there's no mention of this anywhere in the user-manual.

The Renault Clio (the mark II model, and the 'clio campus' which is still on-sale new) is a death-trap. Don't buy one. And don't buy anything else from a car manufacturer that treats its customers like this. There's a lot of competition in the car-market... Vote with your wallets and purses for the car that doesn't try to kill you when you're driving at speed, and most at risk.

When a company finds a serious flaw in one of their products, they'll do a cost-assessment... What is the likely cost of replacing/repairing all the affected products versus the likely cost of being sued in court. It looks as though Renault have decided they can take the legal route. Perhaps when someone (or more than one person) dies, they'll regret that stance.

I'm just glad my sister isn't dead right now. Please don't let it be you, either.

OSX disk performance

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-03-27T18:49:29-07:00
This is actually in reply to a comment on slashdot, but I couldn't format my reply properly... You used to be able to turn on
tags, and get pre-formatted text to look ok - not any longer, at least not that I can see. Oh well, loss in functionality, but it looks a lot prettier now...

So, here's the post:

In a server setting, ports must be open. OS X much-vaunted security (mostly, no ports open) is now at risk.

In a server setting, you would use a supported distribution of Linux. This includes security updates. Same as Apple.

In serving Windows clients, SMB would be provided by SAMBA. The web administration of SAMBA is the same.

OS X has always performed very badly in disk access (its architecture is bad for this).

Local service can provide setup and maintainance contracts. The small shop does not a full-time guru.

To address these point-by-point

Although the OS is shipped with ports all closed, this is only one small facet of the security of an OS. This also ignores the fact that in the firewall configuration, you can specify address-groups, and configure custom rules per group. Just as with any firewall, a port doesn't have to be open to the world, just those that need access to it. Still, there's a lot more to OSX's security than a firewall...
I'm fine with the idea of using a supported Linux distribution - I'm trying to correct wrong impressions of OSX, not put down Linux - I've been running Linux since it came with a boot-disk and a root-disk, and you had to be careful about whether you had an FPU...
The web-interface is the same, but I think you get more from OSX. The integration is better (it's more similar to all the other users), and the feedback is better - realtime stats are available (as they are for pretty much everything).
This is what prompted the reply. This is just plain wrong. I downloaded, compiled and installed 'bonnie++' ...
prompt% sudo port install bonniexx
...and ran it on my Xserve. Now this isn't an X-raid (those can really fly) - this is a RAID-1 (mirrored) setup, with 2 of the slow-but-large internal 750G drives that Apple supply. Here's what I get with bonnie++ -q -s 4096 -n 128

Now before everyone looks at the 'per-char' figures and compares them to random bonnie++ results on the 'net, it's worth noting that the figure was intentionally lowered in version 1.92 of bonnie++ (it's in the Changelog, if you want to see why). For a 2-disk RAID-1 system, those are very respectable results. Certainly it doesn't "perform very badly" - note the figures in red, for block input and output...

Just for giggles, I also ran this on an XServe/XRaid combination, with two XRaid (RAID-5) units bonded into one logical disk (for a total storage of ~10TB). Here's the bonnie++ report:

Have a look at that for i/o - the disks are sustaining a GByte/second (!) I think that's actually limited by the transfer protocol (4x 2Gbit fibrechannel cables connect the xserve to the xraids, 2 to each unit). Yeah, that's really performing "very badly" [grin]

I've taken the latency figures out, because it's hard enough to understand the output from Bonnie, but they were all pretty respectable too - all in the uSec or mSec ranges...

As for requiring a "guru"... The point of OSX-server is that you don't have to be a guru to administer it. The average 'office-computer-know-it-all' ought to be able to administer the network (and probably get a pay-rise because of it), if (s)he's using OSX-server...

There are parts of OSX that could stand some improvement, mainly because of the mach-based underpinnings of the OS. fork(), thread-creation, context-switching etc. Could all happily see some gains. On the other hand, it could be that message-based underpinning that means OSX scales more meaningfully to larger numbers of cores. Oh look, what's on the horizon ?

Are you being served ?

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2007-02-03T20:57:45-08:00
So, my free-ride at the expense of Incisive Media is coming to an end - I used to host all my sites on their network (and with 100 MBit/sec access, it was pretty speedy :-), but since I've moved out of the country, they've decided to go for a more-managed hosting solution. Unfortunately, that means they'll be moving out of the co-location facility that they (and therefore I) have been in for a few years. Goodbye Level-3, it was good while it lasted...

Of course, it wasn't just a free ride, I pretty much engineered their web infrastructure

a template-driven website engine (now with over 150 sites running on it, originally specced for 5)
a comprehensive permissions system (subscribe to a magazine, or for a period, or for N views, or N free views then pay-to-view) at the heart of the template engine.
the database behind it all, tying everything together
an XML-RPC interface to the various components in the system
various feed systems (XML, FTP, SOAP) that could be generated and maintained by Incisive
a payments management solution,
back-end integration into their publishing systems,
a message-board system
a bulk-emailer with graphical (non-technical :-) reports
a jobs-indexing system for Incisive's advertisers, allowing the advertisers to control the look and feel within an incisive-provided template.
a full-text search index (I tried the MySQL one, but it was way too slow, mine can do queries over a million pages in ~1/10th of a second, orders of magnitude faster than MySQL on the same hardware)
integration of search into other components (eg: mail-merge, the editor does a search, and these form most of the body of the templated email, together with his comments intermingled in the prose)
dynamic templating, so search results can be presented differently on different sites (for example)
PHP modules, evaluated inline to provide dynamic content (this is how the different search results was done :-)
a back-end management system that presented different interfaces depending on the technical level of the user (as decided by Incisive :-)
a dynamic firewall - if the webserver didn't like its input, it could add the current IP address to the list of those blocked by the machine's firewall. Since it was machine-generated, it stored a reason why the firewalling had happened as well, which came in handy when irate businessmen 'phoned up to ask why they couldn't see the site [grin]

One of the things I'm reasonably proud of is that the system was both modular and scalable - it started off as a simple templating system, and grew, (and grew...), but because I kept providing general-case solutions to specific problems, it scaled really well - to this day you can go to (eg: risknews.net, view the source, scroll down, and see the stats for the page in a comment at the bottom :-)

The measure of a man

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-07-07T17:05:07-07:00
The cowardly attack (let's face it, any terrorist attack is that of cowards) on London this morning merits mention, I think.

The terrorist announcement mentioned the Brits being in fear from North to South, East to West. Whereas that may have described some countries' reactions, it didn't come close to ours. Let's just look at some of the reaction...

There was an interview of a woman who was on one of the bombed trains, 2 carriages down. She was calm and concise in how she described the events. She was confident that they would be caught. She said others around had a similar disposition.

The Mayor of London released what I thought was a pretty good statement. Let me just pick out the part he addressed to the cowards:

Finally, I wish to speak directly to those who came to London today to take life.

I know that you personally do not fear giving up your own life in order to take others - that is why you are so dangerous. But I know you fear that you may fail in your long-term objective to destroy our free society and I can show you why you will fail.

In the days that follow look at our airports, look at our sea ports and look at our railway stations and, even after your cowardly attack, you will see that people from the rest of Britain, people from around the world will arrive in London to become Londoners and to fulfil their dreams and achieve their potential.

They choose to come to London, as so many have come before because they come to be free, they come to live the life they choose, they come to be able to be themselves. They flee you because you tell them how they should live. They don't want that and nothing you do, however many of us you kill, will stop that flight to our city where freedom is strong and where people can live in harmony with one another. Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail.

And finally, a piece I found on a football forum:

No-one in Britain has over-reacted, it's not in our nature to do so. There'll be many dark, scared days ahead for everyone who lives or works in London or any of the major cities in the UK, and there will be overwhelming feelings of sympathy for those who have lost friends, family or loved ones in these cowardly attacks today.

But it won't change anything. There will be no sudden feelings of "these people have a genuine issue", no hands of friendship offered, no olive branches extended. There will be no immediate "Let's invade " or severing of diplomatic links with any countries. There will simply be a very thorough, in depth, but quiet investigation.

And when we find out who did this they will pay.

Rest in peace those thirty people who died today. Their lives have meant nothing to their killers, but their deaths have brought tragedy to those who loved them.

From those who were attacked, to those in power, to the common man, the theme is the same: complete disdain for the cowards; controlled anger that will focus the effort to find them; and an unshakeable determination that above all, the cowards must not win.

What does that mean ? It means that life will go on, and that (apart from the personal tragedy of the victims families) nothing will change. There's no magic bullet for terrorism, but ignoring the effects of the cowards actions whilst seeking them out and (I suspect) simply eliminating them, quietly, would appear to be the best option.

I'm actually in two minds about that last sentence. There is a lot of good PR to be had from publically arresting, trying, convicting, and treating a terrorist like any other murderer. The IRA members jailed in the H blocks long tried to argue they were political prisoners rather than murderous cowards...

On the other hand it could create a martyr. The other option is simply to quietly kill the coward and claim (perhaps even accurately) that there was no other way, if it ever got out to the public. I can't imagine many things more terrifying to a terrorist than to have colleagues just turning up dead. "Am I next ?" is a real problem for a coward...

Simon

Address-space monitoring

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-12-17T23:04:56-08:00
I've recently been trying to understand the memory-allocation policy that OSX uses. I was getting 'vm_allocate failure' messages on the console, for one of my apps which is generally not a good thing. The app in question uses a *lot* of memory temporarily, over and over again. It can allocate and free large chunks of memory (say 100 to 200 MBytes at a time) depending on what the user is doing. "top" was telling me I was using about 1GB of RAM in the steady-state, and with 4GB in the machine, I wanted to know why I couldn't allocate another 200MB.

It turns out that I was suffering from memory-fragmentation. Even a relatively small request (anything more than a single page) will allocate from the set of 'large' memory regions for the application in its address space. The pairing of genuinely large allocations (the above mentioned 100-200 chunks) and smaller allocations meant that memory-regions weren't being freed back to the OS, even though I had called 'free' on the large chunk of RAM. As far as the OS was concerned, I'd freed my memory just fine, but the VM system still had me using the region because there were other allocations within that region.

This is counter-intuitive (but completely obvious when you think about it :-). Only memory-regions that are completely empty (ie: all allocated pages within the region have been freed) will be returned to the OS. Until that time, even though the OS will tell you that memory is available, it really isn't, until the memory-region in which that memory was allocated is completely empty.

I wrote a small tool to display the output of 'vmstat' (because I found it hard to visualise). If anyone wants it, I've made it available as a DMG containing the source project. You can specify the program to monitor, and either take snapshots or periodically sample it. The entire 4GB of address-space is shown as 1 page per pixel (so 1024x1024 pixels) starting in the lower left corner. Clicking or dragging the mouse over allocated pixels will give more details on the allocation.

Perhaps it'll be useful to someone else :-)

Heisted to Rapidweaver

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-12-17T21:42:16-08:00
So, I've moved the blog over to RapidWeaver. Up until this point I've been using iWeb, but I was never really that happy with iWeb - it's a bit too limited for me.

I had actually been developing a web-creation system (and maybe I'll carry on) called 'Kaligraphy'. The idea was to take iWeb and make it more powerful, to make an application that was very integrated with a PHP engine on the web-server. The OSX-side was going to be just a layout-creation tool, with the text being flowed via a content-management system written in PHP.

I've written a content-management system before ... I wrote the one powering Incisive Media's websites, at last count there were over a hundred thousand webpages being served from that system. I wrote a full-text indexing system to run over it that was an order of magnitude faster than the MySQL built-in text-index. I wrote a mass-mailing engine (*) that could key off that search-engine to produce dynamic results and send a million or so emails per day with full read/response tracking. I wrote modules that allowed subscriptions by product, by page-count, by time, etc. What I am trying to say is that I have some experience in dynamic websites... I was hoping to bring that experience to bear while creating a graphical front-end on the Mac rather than the form-based front-end that we have right now.

To bring this post (kicking and screaming) back on topic - I've moved to RapidWeaver mainly because I have another 'big' project underway , and the fact that it has a plugin architecture. That ought to give me sufficient flexibility for what I want to do, without having to write a complete application to do it. The new idea is fantastic - even revolutionary :-) so I can't see myself finishing Kaligraphy in preference... So much to do, so little time...

I was considering going with SandVox, but with the 'MacHeist' offer available, I thought I'd try RapidWeaver instead. I've seen the pro's and cons argued back and forth (and to be honest, I'm not sure I'd have gone with the offer if I was a developer of one of the products), but from an end-user's perspective, I think it's a good-enough deal to go for. Personally it was the website-layout tool and one of the games (enigmo2) that made it worthwhile. I guess everyone will be different...

I guess the other point is that some poor deluded folk have actually subscribed to the RSS feed on here, and they're going to need to resubscribe to the new feed if they want to keep up-to-date.

(*) Incisive are good-guys - you only get mailed if you've genuinely signed up for something, and every mail contains a link that will actually unsubscribe you, rather than add your email to a "verified" list as some people do.

Water, water, everywhere

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-12-06T22:14:26-08:00
The next big stage of “project House” is now underway :-)

The image to the right is one of the reasons I bought this house in the first place - it has a huge back yard. Behind the garage, there’s this area the previous tenants used as a play-area for their kids, but from the get-go, this was marked down as where the swimming pool was going to go :-)

Basically I’m after what is known as a ‘lap pool’ in the US - long and thin. There’s a perimeter limit of 120’ after which you start paying extortionate amounts of cash, so it’s going to be 50’ by 10’.

So, on Monday the final measurements were taken, and they promised to be back on Wednesday to start digging. I had to take a half-day off work on both days, just to be there and give final approvals etc.

The digging crew turned up on Wednesday (6th Dec), and you can see what they’d managed to do by the end of the day. This photo (left) is actually from early on Thursday morning before I left for work - it’s too dark to snap photos at the end of the day. They’d cleared all the concrete slabs, and started on the main earth-removal for the pool.

Unfortunately they had to rip out the sprinkler-system control-wires (so that’ll have to be re-laid) and the internet-connection to the garage went along the same pipe conduit, so that’s gone too. I’ll have to get both of these reinstalled when the concrete gets laid.

I’ve also lost a fair amount of sod due to the heavy machinery they use while excavating, but I expected that.

By the end of Thursday (7th Dec), the pool was excavated properly, (photos immediately above) and it was really obvious what it was going to look like when it was all finished. They’s also dug out the hot-tub hole, which is not connected (again, for perimeter-reasons) but is only 2’ away from the deep-end. I’m looking forward to that :-) The pool ranges from 3.5’ deep at the shallow-end, to 6.5’ deep at the deep-end on a gradual slope.

The next thing that’s supposed to happen is for the lattice-work of iron supports to be installed. I was hoping that would be done on Friday, but they didn’t come. It started raining towards the end of Friday (and has continued throughout the weekend!) so perhaps that’s why. Regardless, I’ll be keeping this up-to-date online as things happen ...?

Can’t wait for it to be finished. The estimate is for late Jan, early Feb... :-)

So, it’s now the end of the week (15th Dec). The plumbers came on Monday 11th, and put in all the drains and piping, There’s a load of pipes sticking out - it looks as though they’re far too far out, but I’m guessing that’s just a safety margin. I think they’ll be trimmed once the gunite has been sprayed on.

The next day (12th Dec), the steel rebar work was done - you can see the mesh of steel that’ll supply structural strength to the concrete. This was milestone 1, so I had to cough up 25% of the cost at this point. It was time for the first county inspection as well - I’m assuming that went ok, I’ve not heard aything different...

I’ve got the cement contractor coming on Monday, to talk about the gunite process...

Monday came and went, but on Tuesday (20th Dec), the gunite crew turned up and started work on padding out the raw steel layout you can see in the above photos into a more-real swimming-pool and hot-tub structure.

This took them about 7 hours, starting at ~7:00am and finishing at ~2:00, at which point they left to do another pool... Take a look at the below photos to see what it looked like when they were making the walls, and a close-up on the tub - it's hard to get scale on the hot-tub, but from outer-wall to outer-wall there is 8' across :-)

The next things to happen were the coping being put on, the gas and electricity being installed, and the solar-power heating system being installed on the roof of the house... No real photos to show here - I'll post some up when the concrete is being laid...

So, now (Feb 5th) the coping has been laid down, the electric has been installed to the deck next to the pool, and the hardcore has been laid where the cement is going to go, with the rebar being placed, ready for the pour. We had the inspector out today, and she passed the pool ready for the pour - hopefully on Friday :-)

You can see lots of white pipes sticking up out of the hardcore - these are mainly drainage pipes (because there's a lot of cement coverage here), and you can just see (next to the fence) an extra drain I asked them to put in - in case I decide to put a shower out here to save traipsing into the house all the time...

I'm going for a brownish stamped-concrete look around the pool, which ought to go well with the burgundy coping. The next stage will take some time though - a couple of weeks for the concrete to cure before they come back to seal it. Waiting... Still waiting....

So, it's mid March, the concrete is down, and they've done a really nice job on the stamped finish, you can see where they've installed the pump and heater on the right-hand-side image below:

So, all that was left was to fill it with water... The larger images (click on a preview) look a lot better than these previews, there appears to be some aliasing on the previews, and running a blur-filter over the image doesn't really make it look better (different, but not better...). Anyway, first the pool from the perspective I've been using, and then from down low - that's what it looks like when you're swimming lengths...

and then the spa ... This is set to be at 102˚F when it's switched on :-) It's gorgeous :-)

If you look, you can see the 'Ray-vac' cleaning the bottom of the pool (it does this all day :-). It's strangely fascinating to watch this completely non-alive object running around at the bottom of the pool, climbing the walls, swishing its 'tail' after it. It looks really (no, really) alive...

The only thing left to do now is get the solar heating array linked up (it's on two sides of the roof of the house, the S and E slopes). This has to wait until the pump has run for a while, to get the first pass of all the gunk out of the pool (mainly gravel). The heater also needs a new gas-meter, it's a 400,000 BTU unit, and the (somewhat limited) gas supply can cause it to not start properly sometimes. That's in-progress too.

I also want to landscape the far rear of the garden, put in the shower/changing room where I had the drainage extended to, and then I can finally stop spending money on this :-) It's well worth it, though :-) It's taken about 3 months to get this far, and sometimes you wonder if it'll ever finish, but now that it is (more or less), I'm a really happy camper :-)

Apple's latest patent

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-10-28T21:20:39-07:00
There’s been a fair amount of talk over how unsuitable a bunch of touch-sensitive areas down the sides of a screen would be, to replace the traditional iPod clickwheel.

I’m not-so-sure that that’s a valid criticism - quite apart from the patent clearly showing virtual clickwheels on the main display area, it ought to be possible to use a vertical strip of touch-sensitive areas as an input mechanism

The crucial part is the “infinite length” of a circular motion - you can describe a really-rapid motion with your thumb/finger and it’s always going in the same direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise). My point is, though, that a circle is just a particular style of ellipse. Imagine squeezing an ellipse so it’s very thin and very tall - you could still run your thumb up and down that ellipse by making your thumb go in a circular motion, but having the sensors on a line.

Physicists call this the vertical component of the motion - it’s still the same, no matter how the horizontal component is changed. Try it: hold a pen in your non-favoured hand, and with your favoured hand, put your index finger at the top of the pen then move your thumb in a circle. Et voila, your thumb slides across the pen surface, and sensors there (in a line) could detect that cyclic (it’s no longer circular, but it is cyclic) motion, and do the same as a clickwheel would do.

It seems obvious once you’ve thought of it - and I wonder why no-one else has come out with anything like it before Apple filed this patent. Perhaps it’s not-so-obvious after all...

Really, do NOT call...

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-09-06T21:15:10-07:00
This is another rant. Apologies in advance....

When I signed up for the ‘Do not call’ registry, I was (mistakenly, it turns out) under the impression that it might prevent nuisance cold-callers from calling me. Oh if it were only that easy...

It seems that there are a few loopholes in the whole thing...

The politicians (obviously) have to still be able to call. I’m guessing the FTC wouldn’t have got this bill passed if the politicians couldn’t hassle “their” voters come election-time. These guys are easy meat though, no matter who calls, you just say you’re voting for the other guy because of all the sleazy things the caller’s party has done recently. The call is quickly over.

Charities still get to call you - now lest you get the wrong idea, I give ~$200/month to charity, a not-insignificant fraction of my income for the month. However, I want to *choose* who to give it to, and not be hassled by people wanting my money. The sad fact is that once you give to a few charities, a lot more of them start phoning through as well - it sometimes does feel as though you’re on a “sucker” list [sigh].

Telephone surveyors. Aaarrrgh. *Why* would I want these people to phone me ? Apart from the philosophical problem with having someone make a profit selling an aggregate of my (and others) opinions, and wasting my time to do it as well, why can’t I decide these people ought not be able to call me ?

Companies who do business with you (including any subscription-based companies) can call you up to 18-months after you last did business with them. This seems to have been , um, enlarged... because I’m getting calls from subsidiary and/or parent companies as well. This sounds like it’s reasonable, but then you realise that AT&T will call you every week. Every week. Trying to sell you something you already have. By FAR the worst offenders though are Dish Network - these guys called me every day (late in the evening and at weekends) for 3 solid weeks. It’s Dish “we’re so stupid we want to really p*ss off any potential customer” Network that you have to thank for this rant.

So, since I *pay* for this service, I ought to have control over how it’s used. I’m wondering if I could send a notice to any company that cold-calls, explaining that any further calls will be billed as consultancy at my standard rates of $1000/hour, minimum charge of 2 hours. Then send them an invoice the next time they call, and take it to court when they fail to pay. Hmmm... interesting...

Rant over.

Wherefore art thou ?

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-08-15T21:09:16-07:00
A while ago I wrote a small web-app that performed geolocation on the visitors IP address. I thought it would make a decent journal entry [grin].

The basic premise was to use humans (when they visited) to correct the DB when it was wrong, and also to use robot searches (using the sarangworld regexps) to automate searches of IP addresses. More details at http://www.hostip.info/about.html

Hostip itself started off as a "wouldn't this be cool" idea, and a first version was born. The 'individual privacy' minded will have a field-day with this, but the inspiration actually came from watching 'Enemy of the State' on a '747 flight :-) I wanted to do (in a very limited way, of course) something similar using the web. As always in projects like this, it's the data that's the hard part of the equation, not the coding...

This first version allowed people to type in new cities, and it would auto-associate with their IP address. This was (as I should have forseen) a complete disaster. The number of Martians living here on Earth is truly amazing. We apparently even play host to a couple of Alpha Centaurites; to these fine beings I say 'Welcome to Earth' in "Will Smith" fashion. (Yes, I'm a fan...)

Once it was clear that if bad data was trivial to enter, it would indeed be entered, I raised the bar a little. Now you can only choose cities that already exist (and which I have latitude and longitude for), or email me with the details of a previously-unknown city, and I'll check it out before entering it into the DB. This has made the database more useful... Needless to say, cleansing all the bad data from the DB was a monumental task. It literally took weeks, and if I'd known at the start how long it would take, I'd not have started it!

It's still possible to lie to the machine of course (and I dare say lots do, on purpose, simply because it's their principle to do so). I have in my own way tried to get around that - the DB keeps a track history of assignments to a /24 netblock (that's the smallest unit it tracks), and since you can only reassign your own IP address, as soon as 2 others on your netblock tell the truth about where you are, it will switch to the real location... It's certainly not foolproof (hell I can think of a half-dozen ways around it!) but it raises the bar...

Up until this point, hostip was a purely text-based system. Next came the map data. I got in touch with the US National Geophysical Data Center in Boulder, and asked them for the highest-resolution data they had. That turned out to be 30 arc-second elevation data for the entire planet. Wow! So I spent some time writing tools to efficiently extract the correct data and colour it nicely/correctly for the small maps I needed - this took a week or so... Just loading the data into RAM took a lot of time (eventually I remembered mmap() and things went a *lot* smoother!).

The dataset consists of a 43000x21500 image, at approximately 1km/pixel, taking ~2.6Gbytes to store. Even things like ppmtogif can't handle that much data :-( The current database size (from du -sk on the mysql db directory) is 623Mbytes. All this needed to be correlated together before the applet started to look even vaguely reasonable. It still has lots of errors (mostly where I have the decimal point wrong in latitude or longitude figures :-( but it's useful now, and I tend to get told [grin] when something is wrong...

One of the reasons I wanted to do this (apart from the obvious coolness of the idea :-) is to give something back to the people who've given me so much 'free' software over the years. Those from this nameless multitude, I salute you - I hope you get as much out of hostip as I got from your various projects/programs.

I happen to think the applet is (even though I wrote it myself, [grin]) one of the coolest ones I've seen so far, although that may be down to knowing just how much hard work went into making it [big grin].

Viral consequences

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-07-19T21:02:31-07:00
This is an account of something that I (and a couple of friends) did at college - I was posting on slashdot.org and it seemed good enough to go into the blog as well. I think it’s an interesting case-study of the maxim “actions have consequences”...

Waaay back in the mists of time (1988) I was a 1st-year undergrad in Physics. Together with a couple of friends, I wrote a virus, just to see if we could, and let it loose on just one of the networked machines in the year-1 lab.

I guess I should say that the virus was completely harmless, it just prepended 'Copyright (c) 1988 The Virus' to the start of directory listings. It was written for BBC micro's (the lab hadn't got onto PC's by this time, and the Acorn range had loads of ports, which physics labs like :-)

It spread like wildfire. People would come in, log into the network, and become infected because the last person to use their current computer was infected. It would then infect their account, so wherever they logged on in future would also infect the computer they were using then. A couple of hours later, and most of the lab was infected.

You have to remember that viruses in those days weren't really networked. They came on floppy disks for Atari ST's and Amiga's. I witnessed people logging onto the same computer "to see if they were infected too". Of course, the act of logging in would infect their account as well...

Unsurprisingly, "Authority" was not amused. Actually they were seriously unamused, not that they caught us. They shut down the year-1,2,3 network and disinfected all the accounts on the network server by hand. Ouch.

There were basically 3 ways the virus could be activated:

Typing any '*' command (eg: '*.' (star-dot), which gave you a directory listing. Sneaky, I thought, since the virus announced itself when you did a '*.' When you thought you'd beaten it, you'd do a '*.' to see if it was still there :-)
The events (keypress, network, disk etc.) all activated the virus if inactive, and also re-enabled the interrupts, if they had been disabled
The interrupts (NMI,VBI,..) all activated the virus if inactive, and also re-enabled the events, if they had been deactivated.

On activation, the virus would replicate itself to the current mass-storage media. This was to cause problems because we hadn't really counted on just how effective this would be. Within a few days of the virus being cleansed (and everyone settling back to normal), it suddenly made a re-appearance again, racing through the network once more within an hour or two. Someone had put the virus onto their floppy disk (by typing *. on the floppy rather than the network) and had then brought the disk back into college and re-infected the network. Oops.

If we thought authority was unamused last time, this time they held a meeting for the entire department, and calmly said the culprit when found would be expelled. Excrement and fans came to mind. Of course, they thought we'd just re-released it, but in fact it was just too successful for comfort...

Since we had "shot our bolt", owning up didn't seem like a good idea. The only solution we came up with was to write another (silent, this time :-) virus which would disable any copy of the old one, whilst hiding itself from the users. We built in a time-to-die of a couple of months, let it go, and prayed...

We had actually built in a kill-switch to the original virus, which would disable and remove it - we didn't want to be infected ourselves (at the start). Of course, it became a matter of self-preservation to be infected later on in the saga - 3 accounts unaccountably (pun intended :-) uninfected = red flag ... It wasn't too hard to destroy the original by having the new virus "press" the key combination that deleted the old one.

So, everyone was happy. Infected with the counter-virus, but happy. "Authority" thought they'd laid down the law, and been taken seriously (oh if they knew...) and we'd not been expelled. Everyone else lost their infections within a few months ...

Anyway. I've never written anything remotely like a virus since [grin]

Eat, drink, and be merry

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2005-05-25T20:55:04-07:00
... for tomorrow, you may die.

I’m riding down the Lea Bridge Road in East London - it's a nice wide carriageway with an effective third lane as the central reservation where this happened. Clear, well-lit road ahead of me, about 8:00 in the evening, approaching an area where there's a speed camera, so I was doing ~30 as usual.

There's a car in the centre bit, waiting to turn right (across my path), I see it, but I've got a clear right of way (and why was he waiting if he hadn't seen me?) so I ride on. Of course, as soon as I'm about 15 feet away, he turns right into my path. I try to swerve (almost made it too, I've got good reactions), slam on the brakes, but hit the passenger-side front of the bonnet. Ow. Lots of breaking-glass noise. Crack! as my head hits the windscreen, while my shoulders and arm hit the bonnet - I'm on my back on the bonnet, though I don't recall how. I didn't lose consciousness, it just happened so fast after the impact.

The guy gets out the car, asks me if I'm ok. I replied (somewhat strongly :-) in the negative... Some public-spirited types run over and tightly hold me down on the bonnet. I'm not trying to move in case my neck's broken but they're (really!) making sure. Matey walks over to the kerb and starts chatting with his friends(!)... he's 50-60, dressed in religious-type robes, as are lots of people around. I reckon he was looking for his friends rather than at the road - there's a mosque on the corner....

Off-duty copper is there seemingly immediately, handles everything great - moves on people who are prodding me to see if I react (!) and tells people trying to turn into the road that they'll have to find another route ("can't you just put him over there ?" !! "Bugger off - are you stupid or what?" :-) :-), telephones police, ambulance and fire-brigade (the bike's leaking petrol) who are all there in minutes. On-duty coppers turn up and start to organise things.

Not much blood around, the armoured jacket had saved my arms, and the helmet had taken the impact onto the windscreen - windscreen completely smashed - could see the impact point and indentation, lost the visor. Right hand very badly bruised - figure it got wrenched as the bike crashed into the front of the car. Right boot had come clean off (and if you ride a bike, you know how hard those damn things are to get on!) and been wedged under the car tyre (how ?). When ambulance arrived, driver originally thought pillion was under the car...

Plenty of reactions tests, personal questions (DOB,name,etc.) eventually figure out there's not much wrong with me, at least above the waist. Try to stand up. Mistake. BIG Mistake! Get stretchered into ambulance, the good lady attendent starts prodding at my legs. Right thigh, mid thigh, knee AAARRRGGGHHH! Ok, something *definitely* wrong there.

Trousers are cut off the right leg - there's an 8-inch long, 2-inch wide hole in my leg around the outside of my knee. Get acquainted with my leg bone structure. So that's what they all look like... Remember feeling completely calm about this uncommon view of my insides... Still very very little blood. Think this is odd... Later, Dr. says most of the blood vessels run on the inside of the thigh not the outside. Thanks Charles Darwin. Lady attendent apologises for squeezing wound, but I don't care, I'm still waiting to bleed to death at that point...

Get to hospital. Told I'll be in for a couple of days at least while they strip skin from one place to graft over the wound. Senior House Doctor says it looks different to usual, calls in specialist. Turns out it's a tear not a cut. Belatedly remember that trousers were not ripped after accident. Apparently this means it may just suture back together since there's little-to-no skin loss (some due to heat-loss when it tore). Turns out that the bike and car trapped my leg on impact, both pulling the same direction but on opposite sides of the knee while my knee was twisted around - result: flesh on the side of the knee ripped apart (down to the bone) under the strain, my leg just ... burst open.

Police come by, they've interviewed the driver, and want to talk to me. All very friendly, not confrontational. They take my details and account of events, then mention that the driver said my headlights weren't on. I (firmly :-) state this is, of course, not true. Copper says he went over and checked the headlight switch. It was on. Just to be clear about this, the headlights *were* on.

It's a big tear, so they want me to go under a general anaesthetic, while they brush out the wound from inside with liberal application of antiseptic. In the meantime, nurse applies the same antiseptic gingerly to wound edges. I hit the roof. Almost literally. Remember my manners (under some significant strain :-) and ask for painkillers before she goes any further. Is ok once I've taken 2 tablets the size of Gibraltar. Think they could cut my head off without complaint at that stage. have drips for antibiotics, a tetanus jab, multiple other un-named drips put in... By 2am, find a bed in a broken-limbs (can't remember the proper word - had an 'ology' in it :-) ward.

Spent a rather uncomfortable night - lots of pain kicking in by this stage - they'd put me on morphine (self-administered :-) but still very hard to get to sleep - it just "felt wrong", even without the pain. Didn't help that the bed ... moved. Yep - the damn mattress was alive (I thought it was the morphine at first!). Lots of air-tubes in the mattress which alternately filled and emptied... Apparently for people who stay in hospital for lengthy periods - stops bedsores. I don't get airsick, carsick, or seasick, but I was almost bedsick....

Was operated on next day - phoned people I knew before general anesthetic (just in case...) Had to start conversation with mother with "Are you sitting down.." - never a good thing... Phoned work ("Where've you been?" .. "I have a good excuse...") - cue standard 'get better before you come back' line - nice though... Op went smoothly. When I woke up they'd bandaged my leg, so couldn't get a photo of the inside of my leg - yes it's ghoulish, but when else do you get the chance ? [grin]

Not much else to say about Hospital since it all went smoothly, and I was out of there by 8pm on the next day with a huge "compression" bandage covering most of my right leg. Family came down to London and helped me out while I could barely walk - would have to have stayed in hospital without them, and despite how smoothly it went, I prefer being at home - yay for family :-)

The next few weeks were a nightmare of trying to sort out the insurance company - the police had left the bike by the kerb, and someone had stolen it. Yep, that battered twisted remnant of a bike had been nicked. [sigh]. The problem was that the assessor had nothing to assess, and I didn’t want it to go down as a robbery because then I’d lose my no-claims bonus. Eventually we sorted it out, with the other driver’s insurance company paying for everything.

Riding a ‘bike is just about the most fun you can have on your own and still be legal, but there’s something to be said for having a steel cage all around you all the time as well. Like I said above, while I was lying on my back on the bonnet, the driver of the car wandered over to chat with his friends... I still bought another bike though :-)

Virtual insensitivity

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-04-21T20:47:08-07:00
When someone expends a great deal of effort to achieve something, and all that person gets as a response is a great deal of non-constructive criticism, it annoys me. It annoys me even when it’s not me that’s the subject of the criticism, but it really annoys me when it is.

In “real” (non-online) life, this situation very rarely arises - usually people are more polite. Online, however, is a different matter - even the mildest-mannered of souls seem to lose all social grace, the thin veneer of civilisation is seared clean, and the invective flows free. Sadly.

Why is this ? Well I think it’s down to the separation of accused and accuser - that distance (to our primitive hind-brains) implies safety from retribution. The old “actions have consequences” maxim, although intellectually understood, doesn’t have the impact required for restraint, when the accuser is feeling safe and secure.

I suppose we all need to be more people-friendly, or maybe the ‘net just has to become far *more* immersive before it can become truly social. A network (after all) describes a raft of inter-connected islands, whereas we describe social interaction in terms of groups of people. The differences between the two can be both stark and subtle.

Why am I ranting over this ? Well, I work at a fairly large computer company, and we’ve been going through hell and back to turn around a piece of software. We’ve (all) been working hard. I mean H.A.R.D to get new releases out the door to satisfy our customers. When you pour your heart and soul into a project like that, it can be hard to take that all you ever see is complaints that “it doesn’t do XXX, it’s crap”, etc. etc. (and believe me, even more etc.)

The product is actually pretty cool (in my admittedly biased opinion), and although it’s not perfect (what is ?), it’s certainly improving rapidly. I guess I’m just bitching - it’s nice to have people appreciate what you’ve done sometimes, rather than just complain that you still haven’t found the cure for world hunger...

TV or not TV, *that* is the question

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-03-03T20:30:58-08:00
I ordered a TV to go along with the new house... Not just any TV, mind. I wanted a hang-on-the-wall TV, and this being the last wild fling before mortgage-induced austerity, it behooved me to get a semi-decent one...

Those who know me will recognise the ‘semi-decent’ line... It’s along the lines of ‘tidal waves are semi-wet’, or ‘the universe is semi-big’... The result was a Panasonic TH-65PHD8UK, a 65” plasma model. I’ve just been watching HD footage on it, and it’s simply wonderful. You can’t really get the feel of it from the photo, it’s 65” on that diagonal - over 5 feet!

It wasn’t easy, of course, oh no - that would be ... easy. At first (despite having plenty of funds in my account) the bank wouldn’t authorise the payment on my debit card, and since they’re so far away (nearest branch is San Francisco), I couldn’t pop in to do a wire transfer... So I transferred money to another bank account and did a wire transfer. Ok, just frustrating...

Then I get a notification that the order is arriving on Monday 13th. So, I arrange to work at home, and wait in. The DHL man duly delivers 2 packages, neither of which are anywhere near the size of the TV. Hmmm. On the phone to the vendor - ah, that’s just the wall-support... I swear it’s sitting there laughing at me. It’s probably just the shadows and the designs on the cardboard...

So, a couple of ‘phone calls later, I’m told the TV is turning up on Friday 17th. ‘Phone up on Friday - no it’s now Tuesday. Ok, ‘phone up on Tuesday - yes we can deliver tomorrow... Another day working at home, and another delivery. Yay! This time, the TV turns up. The delivery guy wheels it into the garage. The wall-support shuts up, briefly...

Now I have to arrange for the installers. I ‘phone. They’ll “phone back”™... a week passes with me just getting the answering machine when I try to get in touch... (guffaws from the wall-support)... Finally I get through again - they’ll “phone back”™. Another day passes... I get through again ... they can come on Friday. Good. I’m getting heartily sick of the wall-support - it’s in stitches now...

So, on Friday 2 guys show up (obviously father & son). The bloke doesn’t understand the documentation for the wall-support. I explain it to him. Twice. It takes 6 hours to get the wall-support frame attached (crucifed :-) to the wall. Then they tell me they need more people to lift the TV up. They’ll be back on Sunday... The wall-support can’t laugh (it’s attached to the wall), but a “fixed grin” would be an accurate description...

On Sunday, I casually ask when they’re going to do the hidden-wiring (before or after mounting the TV on the wall-support). Blank looks... I come up with paper proof of the requirements... 5 hours (and lots of holes-in-the-wall, crawling about the attic, etc.) later, we finally have a TV mounted on the wall, and some content being fed to it from the comcast box...

So, now I can’t see that damn wall support any more :-) Thank [insert random deity] for that.

It was all worth it though :-)

Rooms with a view

simon.gornall@mac.com — 2006-02-01T19:54:33-08:00
So, all-of-a-sudden, I've gone from being a habitual rent-boy (no, not in that sense...) to a gen-yoo-ine house-owner. I've managed to trade what stock I have in the company plan for a few bits of brick and mortar (and stucco, obviously!), and an absolutely enormous debt. Despite that, I'm happy as Larry (who's generally regarded as being the happiest man at the happiest party on the annual celebration "happy-day" in happy-ville).

The whole deal was significantly easier than I expected ... Mother-dear is an estate agent (a "realtor" to you Yanks) back in Blighty and, as far as I can tell, house-sales generally tend to drag on for several months. I spent a weekend looking, had made an offer by Monday, and had bought the place 17 days later... It helps that I'd been looking on the 'net for the last 6 months, so I already had a shortlist. It helps (!) that I was, ummm, "financially constrained" as well [grin].

House prices in the Valley are high, but only roughly as high as London. The thing is that you'll get more house out here than you would in London. I used to live (rent) opposite a house that was sold the year-before-last (just before I came out to the US); the house had 3 bedrooms, no front yard, a tiny back yard, and was joined to the neighbours on both sides ("terraced"). It sold for £350,000 ( or ~$630,000). That's a lot of money for a small house with very little in the way of grounds, in a not-so-great neighbourhood on the very outskirts of London (end-of-the-line on the 'tube' rail system)...

That aside, I'm now looking forward to finding out everything about the neighbourhood - which pubs/clubs stay open late, where the best restaurants are, what my neighbours are like, etc., etc. Should be fun :-)