Arcoarena

Data-Structures

Hmmm. I think I’ve realised that I could have used a much more simple data-structure for my project and saved myself a lot of effort. Doh!

Oh well, at the moment I can’t complain. It all seems to be going ok. (famous last words)

Summer Ball Pics

Some of the better pictures I took are online at http://www.arcoarena.co.uk/gallery/summerball04.

Chain Reaction

Judging by Mr Haselip’s article (Felix issue 1295) on the subject of Nuclear power it is obvious that Felix is not necessarily the place for balanced debate (certainly not from one article).

I actually live near the Sellafield site and have done since I was born. I do not glow, and I haven’t got extra limbs, eyes or anything else for that matter! What I can say is that the area around Cumbria is less radioactive than parts of Cornwall (due to geological reasons, the whole lack of radioactive gas seeping up through the ground helps) and much of the spiel emanating from Greenpeace is at the very least sparing with the facts and at worst misleading.I am not trying to argue for or against nuclear power - other people can do that but it is worth pointing out that matters aren’t quite as black and white as Mr Halelip implies. Nuclear power is not the big bad evil guy with wind power being perfect.

Wind power cannot fulfill the same needs as nuclear power can in terms of reliability of supply and sheer size. Also if nuclear power isn’t as cheap as people make out neither is Wind power. The firms that build the off-shore wind-farms near Denmark themselves admit that it wouldn’t be worth it without Government subsidy. Also if public opinion ‘generally oppose[s]’ nuclear power I think people would be surprised how much consternation was caused by plans for an off-shore wind-farm in the Solway Firth, an area so close to Sellafield you’d think (or at-least if you believe the implications of Mr Haselip’s article) the residents would be so opposed to the big bad evil plant that they would welcome with loving arms Green Power.
Oddly enough the world isn’t quite so straight forward. Maybe the talk by Dr Ion. (how appropriate) was a little one sided as is an article totally denouncing nuclear power as evil.

Food for thought

Progress at last!!!

As the Opera House Ghost would say

Ahahahahahahahah!!!!

I’ve actually made some progress. My program will now read in an FSM (really must re-write the read in function so that it isn’t a fixed file name), do one or two really minor things to it (guess what my next task is) and then write it out in a format the a graph drawing program can read, run the program and then run a viewer.

I’m chuffed. Still loads of work to go but I’m getting there. It does something now.

Technology Advancements(?)

I’ve just tried using the O2 website. It’s told me I need to upgrade my browser. This will improve my “overall experience…by allowing you to load web pages faster….”

I’m not a web guru or anything but I’m guessing not making me download those animated (and frankly quite annoying) adverts O2 has on it’s front page would achieve the same effect.

Summer Ball

Well with the Summer Ball 2004 officially over (having dropped the last bits of kits off at Surrey on Monday) I can honestly say I’m not planning to go to Guildford on that regular a basis ever again - 4 times in one week in a minibus with a bust exhaust is not quite what I had in mind - however I can’t really complain as it was hardly too arduous a task, a nice pleasant cruise down a sunny road (attempting to hear the radio over the roar of the exhaust).

I might write some more later and I might put some pictures in my shiny new gallery (I’m not liking to it as I’m moving it at some point in the near future).

All I can say is SET Lighting and Sound are fairly poo. - Again more on this later (maybe)…..

Back to project work and the confusing world of SML and type mis-matches. Oh Joy

Ken brands 4×4 drivers ‘idiotic’

Ken brands 4×4 drivers ‘idiotic’ - Parents who drive their children to school in Jeep-style cars are branded “idiots” by London’s mayor Ken Livingstone. [BBC News]

It’s interesting that Ken has branded a large group of people living in London “idiots” immediately before an election. The comments at the bottom are even more interesting.

One person from Cornwall says that they are safe for children and that if you continue that line of thinking through you shouldn’t have high performance cars either. Well firstly 4×4 are a bit like the nuclear deterrent. Once one person has one you need one in order not to end up in very small pieces if you have an accident involving a Land-Rover. Secondly Ken would probably agree about the high performance cars as they too are unnecessary.

There were two comments that disagreed with Ken. Both of which were from the US of A. Apparently “Every man and his dog owns a 4×4″ and “there doesn’t appear to be any problems”. Well what do you expect from Yanks.

Also if everyone agrees why are people driving round in 4×4s. There aren’t any comments along the lines of ‘I drive a 4×4 because…..’. Maybe because there isn’t a sensible justification for them in London.

Time Wasting

I suspect like most people I have developed quite an ability to waste time. My favourite two methods are Enigma, it’s a wierd puzzle game I found whilst testing out Knoppix. The is also another way that I’ve been wasting my time.

I’ve also done some final year project stuff and I’m about to spend most of my week doing the ball. Should be good.

My Day

As the exams draw to a close (only one more to go) my thoughts have been drawn towards my FYP as Gary would say. My final year project is in SML. As people may have guessed I believe it to be one of the worst languages in existence. I will have to battle my way through this however and I did a little more work on writing up background work. I’m going to have to write up quite a lot of research as I’ve got a horrible feeling my project is going to do very little. Ah well.

I did however relax a little yesterday and went to the extreme length of buying The Times and it is about this I want to talk. Now The Times and other newspapers shouldn’t print people’s opinions unless they are making a sensible point. The Times is particularly bad because people appear to target them in order to get their stupid/outrageous/bigoted views printed. This generally involves emphasising some stupid statement that the writer attempts to show a logical progression from a current issue to putting Badgers on Mars or something equally silly. Some papers even go as far as letting Keith Waterhouse write for them on a regular basis to spread his own brand of complete garbage across the nation

It was such a stupid statement that led me to write this. The Times is allowing people to write in to express their views of binge drinking in young people. One lady called Annabel Darrall-Rew stated that there is a ‘direct correlation between the increase in alcohol and drug use among young people and the decrease in compulsory sport in schools’. As Dr Papavasillou would like to point out it may surprise Ms Darrall-Rew that there is also a very good correlation between the birth-rate of cows in Texas and the number of flights out of JFK airport. A correlation there may be, a link is far from certain. There is also a correlation between teenage drinking and the decrease in fuel consumption of automobiles.

The main point of Ms Darrall-Rew’s argument that kids would get in at 5pm when their parents do, which is only one of the benefits. Increased health awareness, and a release for pent-up aggression (I thought that was normally the school geek that performed that function). Along with this sport would also discourage unhealthy habits such as smoking and drinking. Now this last idea is blatantly stupid. When I did the C2C (the cycle-ride from Whitehaven on the west coast to Tynemouth on the east), I got to the top of the steepest hill on the route and passed a load of cyclists having a fag the celebrate reaching the top. I think the basic argument is that the kids will be too tired to cause a hassle and the the fresh-air will do them good

Now in theory I have to admit this isn’t such a bad idea. I don’t think it would help as much as the writer thinks. I don’t think the lack of sport has anything to do with it. Possibly it’s the change in society. For one I hated sport, the idea of 2 hours of sport after school would have made my life hell. I’ve only really started climbing and running and stuff after I stopped having to do sport in school

Anyway in the traditional Times manner I’m going to state that there was barely any underage drinking and drugs before the industrial revolution. Who needs an education. Get them down the mines. It would be exercise, they couldn’t smoke for fear of explosive gases and being pissed in at the pit head wouldn’t be a good idea. That’s my solution. Failing that proper education, more to do and fewer adults setting bad role models by getting pissed/stoned and laid would be good too. The kids that were underage drinkers binging and taking illegal drugs have grown up now, and nothings changed. Nothing will either, it can’t go back, I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Change - it happens, more an increase in entropy really, society modelling the universe.

Stupid Moronic Language

That’s right kids. It’s that time again. Time to complain about one’s final year project. Now in essence there is nothing wrong with it. Except….

My project supervisor has insisted it’s written in SML (a functional programming language). It’s an ok language (pushing it a bit I know) there are better but it’s bearable. However it hasn’t got a sensible Graphical system (and I need to write a GUI). I also need to draw graphs. Normal people would use DOT (part of the Graphviz suite. Dot is very good and it has lots and lots and lots of add-ons and API (to link to programming languages) as can be seen on the downloads page. I could have chosen to write it in practically any language and it would have had an API. Except SML is too useless for that. Lesson learnt - use python.