Strange Programming Languages: RPG II

Opinions differ on the best programming language. Opinions also differ on the strangest programming language. I am going to offer my own humble opinion on this.

I want to talk about two contenders: RPG II and LISP. In this posting I will deal with the former.

RPGII was the first language that other people paid me to program in (well, more or less). “RPG” was an acronym for “Report Program Generator”.

It is an extraordinary language in a number of respects:

• It has its own “cycle” where it will read a record, perform some computations, and then output something. The input could be from a file or from a screen which has been displayed on the workstation. The output could be to a file, the screen, or to the printer. The cycle just kept repeating over and over until all of the available records had been processed.
• It used “indicators”. This was a set of Boolean values which could be set, cleared, and tested. So when a record with a “A” in column 1 was read from an input file, you could specify that indicator 10 should be turned on. Then you could have computations that were only executed when indicator 10 was on, and output that was only written when it was on also.
• Code had to be put into the right columns in order to be valid: the columns were significant. For example, the operation code for a calculation had to start in column 28. In order to read a printout of a program, a developer would use a “template” which would show the purpose of each of the columns.

There were 99 ordinary indicators (01-99) which could be used as needed.

There were also special indicators such as:
1P – which was only on during the first output cycle (“1st page”)
LR – which was only on for the “last record”
MR – was put on when there were “matching records” in two input files (when reading customer and transaction records from two different files, for example).

Once, when I had just started as a programmer in an insurance company, an auditor approached me looking to see a sample RPG program as he had been told by one of my colleagues that RPG was “self-documenting”. I told him that I had just joined the company and it would be better for him to ask someone else and off he went. What I did not tell him was this: RPG II was probably the further thing from a self-documenting language that there ever was! Here are a few reasons:

• To read the code at all, you needed to understand the built-in cycle and what F specs, I specs, C specs etc. were all about
• To read a code printout, you needed an “RPG Debugging Template”. You could line this up with the code and it would allow you to recognise the columns (I can’t believe that (a) I don’t have one of these and (b) I can’t find a picture of one on the web!)
• All of the operation codes were limited to 5 characters. So there were operations such as “Z-ADD”, “LOKUP”, “SETOF” and (my personal favourite) “XFOOT”.
• Field names were generally limited to 6 characters (contrast this with current best practice for Java!)

In some ways (although it was a MUCH higher-level language) reading RPG code was a little like reading Assembler. But people writing Assembler code tended to write a lot more comments!

To see a sample of RPG II code, take a look here.

In conclusion, although it may not seem like it from what I have said above, I was a big fan of RPG. It was quirky and obscure, but you could get a lot done with a very small amount of code. The build-in cycle did so much of the work for you. And although I understand that flavours of RPG are still in use today, one this is for sure: we will never see the emergence of another programming language like it!

Best Christmas book ever: The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey

The best Christmas book ever written is The Christmas Miracle of Jonathan Toomey.

The book was written by Susan Wojciechowski and illustrated by P.J. Lynch. It was first published in 1996.

For a number of years now I have read it to my kids every Christmas. And every time I have had to pause as inevitably something would cause my eyes to water for some unknown reason.

The story is beautifully written and very moving.

This year my daughter Ruth (9) read it aloud instead and again there must have been dust particles in the air because I found myself having to wipe my eyes again.

I cannot recommend it highly enough.

In preparing this posting, I discovered that:

• Susan Wojciechowski has a website 
• P. J. Lynch is actually Patrick James Lynch and he is Irish, born in Belfast and, according to his website, currently living in Dublin.
• The book was made into a movie in 2007. It stars Tom Berenger and Joely Richardson. I see that our own Saoirse Ronan also has a role in the movie. It currently has a rating of 6.6 on IMDB. The movie is available here. Might be worth taking a look.

So many more Irish connections than I was expecting.

Data, Information and Knowledge

As a result of a project I am doing in work, and some study I am doing for college, I have been thinking about the distinction between data, information and knowledge. I have come up with an example which helps to distinguish them for me and I would like to share it.

Data is the lowest level of these three concepts. Data consists of simple “facts and figures”. For the purpose of this example, the following is a piece of data: 914 baby boys who were born in Ireland in 2010 were given the name Jack. While this fact might (or might not!) be interesting, it is not very informative.

Aside: Intellectually I know that data is the plural of datum. This means that you should use phrases such as “the data tell us”, “the data indicate” and “the data are”. Many phrases such as “entering the data” and “validating the data” are unaffected by this distinction. But I myself find it must more natural to write “once the data has been validated” rather than the correct version of “once the data have been validated”. But maybe that’s just me!

The next level up is Information. Information is gleaned from data by asking questions of it.

Aside: I am reminded of the part of the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books where a supercomputer (“Deep Thought”) is built to answer “the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything”. The answer turns out (after 7.5 million years of computation) to be 42 and then the people have to build an even bigger supercomputer to discover the question. So they were looking for knowledge (ultimate knowledge in fact) and they end up with a datum!

In the case of boys’ names, you might want to know where Jack ranked in terms of popularity during 2010 (particularly if you wished to avoid using one of the most popular names). The answer to this question is that Jack ranked number one in terms of popularity. A supplemental question might reveal that the second most popular name (Sean) has 812 occurrences. This is over 100 less which indicates that Jack is the overwhelming favourite. This information would be a red flag for parents who didn’t want to send their son to school with 2, 3 or 4 other Jacks.

So in our example data has fed into information. But does knowing this information equate with having knowledge? I would argue that this is not knowledge because the value of this piece of information decays over time. The information will be less relevant with each passing year. In 5 or 6 years’ time this information (about 2010) may have very little value to people selecting names.
Knowledge is the level above information because it has a much longer shelf-life. Rather than facts and figures, it concerns itself with truth and understanding.

Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner wrote an entertaining and thought-provoking book called Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything in which they try to extract knowledge from data by asking questions of it (or should I say “them”!).

In relation to baby names, they conclude that the evidence indicates that names move through the population from a higher socioeconomic level to a lower level. They further concluded that when a particular name has been widely adopted then the "high-end parents begin to abandon it," and the whole process starts again with a new crop of names.

You can read the opening of this chapter online on their website here.

Another interesting piece of nascent knowledge in relation to baby names is described on their website. This is that the rate at which a name gains popularity will be mirrored by the rate at which it loses it. You can read it here.

Postscript

Douglas Adams was a genius and the Hitchhiker books are hilarious, full of fun and invention.
But my favourite single quote from Adam is this:

I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.

Early Computer Systems

My first job was as a “Computer Operator” in a long-gone company called “Computime” in Dublin.

Computime was a “Computer Bureau”: a company with a computer on whom other companies who could not afford a computer would depend for applications like invoicing, debtors, creditors, payroll, etc.

It’s hard to believe in these days of ubiquitous computing that there was a time when successful businesses did not have a computer of their own!

Anyway, when I joined in 1979 they had the following equipment in the computer room:

• An IBM System/3
• An IBM 1403 line printer
• An IBM 3741 diskette reader

I'm pretty sure the System/3 had 4K of memory. Not very impressive when my Apple ][ at home had 16K. But the 1403 printing at full speed was a far cry from the Epson dot matrix printer I had at home!

This picture shows an operator (who doesn’t look as any of us did!) changing a removable disk on a System/3:

The “data prep” staff worked in the next room performing key-to-disk operations using a number of IBM 3742 workstations. Here are pictures of the 3741 and 3742:

Simple, happy days.

Some day I must remember to blog about the day one of the operators pulled the “Emergency Pull” switch on the System/3! Heaven only knows why a computer would have such a switch! Perhaps the designers were thinking ahead to the day when one of their creations would become “self-aware”!

Best Christmas Songs: Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy, Fairytale of New York, White Christmas

So Christmas is well on the way.

As I make this posting, I am listening to the best 3 Christmas songs of all time on Grooveshark.

They are (this is the order I am playing them and also my order of preference):

1) Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy - Bing Crosby and David Bowie
2) Fairytale of New York - The Pogues
3) White Christmas - Bing Crosby

Wikipedia has the following to save about songs 1 and 3 above:

Peace on Earth/Little Drummer Boy

Crosby's last TV appearance was a Christmas special filmed in London in September 1977 and aired just weeks after his death. It was on this special that Crosby recorded a duet of "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Peace on Earth" with the flamboyant rock star David Bowie. It was rush-released as a single 45-rpm record, and has since become a staple of holiday radio, and the final popular hit of Crosby's career. At the end of the century, TV Guide listed the Crosby-Bowie duet as one of the 25 most memorable musical moments of 20th-century television.

White Christmas

The song remains the best-selling single of all time. According to Guinness World Records, Crosby's recording of "White Christmas" has "sold over 100 million copies around the world, with at least 50 million sales as singles."

I wish it was OK listen to Christmas music all year round!

I guess if it was then this station wouldn't just be broadcasting during December:
http://christmasfm.ie/

How time flies...

I can't believe it has been over a month since I posted to my blog!

My only excuse is that I had 3 assignments to do for college over the last few weeks and they took up all of my free time, my energy, and my creative juices!

But they're submitted now and I'm back and bursting with ideas!

What makes a good programmer? (software developer)

The CEO of one of my former employers was interviewed on the radio recently and made a statement about programmers with which I fundamentally disagree. He stated that mathematics is “absolutely essential” for a programmer. Later in the interview they returned to the subject and he agreed with the suggestion that it should have “double points” for the leaving cert.

I have been working in software development for over 30 years and I have never found a significant use for the mathematics I learned in secondary school or in university.

He may have meant that that the people who are good at maths would also be good at programming (although this is not what he was saying). Even in this I would disagree. I was discussing this with one of the best developers I know and he said “he should take a look at my leaving cert maths results”.

I remember the MD of my first employer (there were no CEOs in those days) telling me that he believed that the best developers were the ones who had worked with punched cards. He believed that being able to see and touch the data gave the developer a more visceral understanding of it. He believed that seeing a card sorter in action gave the developer a deeper understanding than just being able to say “order by region, country, city”.

I disagree with him also.

The thing that makes is good developer is the ability to visualise how the code will run: effectively to have your own emulator in your head. You can hold a picture of the code in your head and step through it in your mind so that you can compare what you were trying to achieve with what is actually going to happen. The skill is to be able to juggle lots of “what if” ideas in your head at one time. It requires and orderly mind and intense powers of concentration. It requires the ability to constantly challenge assumptions. It appeals to problem solvers.

And because this ability to “imagine” the code is so critical, I don’t think we need to see physical cards holding data and you don’t need to see them being sorted by a machine.

The most experienced and skilled developers will sometimes be dissatisfied with a piece of code because it doesn’t feel right or because they judge it to be insufficiently elegant. This desire for elegance sets the best developers apart and can apply to everything from a single method to the architecture of an entire solution. There is a point at which programming is much closer to an art than a science.

Adam Ant

Happened to catch Adam Ant on The Late Late Show last weekend and decided to watch (being a huge fan of 80s music).

He and his band performed "Stand and Deliver", a hit for him in 1981.

I have to admit that I was disappointed to see him wearing a costume and make-up not dissimilar in my eyes to what he would have worn then. And basically performing what seemed to be to be the same routine. I would have imagined that he would have grown as a performer in the intervening 30 years. Or at least outgrown the gimmicks that he used at that time (I have no problems at all with using gimmicks when you're trying to become established).

Of course, this is a little naive of me. It is much more likely that he has outgrown them but he is "giving the public what they want".

Then Ryan Tubridy had the audacity to open the interview with: "Do you still get a kick out of performing that song?". No really - he did.

Adam paused for a moment (looking at the ground for inspiration while trying to control his gag reflex, I imagine) before coming up with: "Always yeah. Just trying to get them right really". Well done Adam.

After that rocky start, he gave quite a good interview covering disparate topics including his stalker, his conviction in the Old Bailey, and his struggle with bipolar disorder. He also told an interesting story involving his mother and Paul McCartney.

Limitless

Watched the movie Limitless starring Bradley Cooper the other day.

Really enjoyed it.

But as well as being enjoyable, I found it thought provoking.

Firstly it is interesting to try to imagine what the impact will be when we have a pill that will make us more intelligent, or more charismatic, or something similar. Will it become widely available? Will it be expensive? What will happen to people who can’t afford it?

Sport is already blighted by performance-enhancing drugs. The reaction is to have mandatory testing and to penalise those who are caught using. Could something similar be applied? Will people be tested for performance-enhancing drugs when taking a test, during a job interview, appearing on a quiz show?

Secondly it makes you wonder how your own life would be affected if you could improve your own performance. I’m not talking here about using the other 90% of your brain (the theory that we only use a small proportion of our brains is a myth apparently). But I am talking about improving our focus, or our attitude, or simply trying harder.

We may not be able to use more of our brains at any one time. But we could use our brains more often! So we could trade time spent in front of the TV, or surfing the web, for time spend in a more productive pursuit.

Bill Cullen (Irish entrepreneur and motivational speaker/writer) in his book Golden Apples (subtitled “Six Simple Steps to Success”) does not extoll the virtues of searching for a performance-enhancing drug. But he does recommend (among many other things) that people cut the time they spend sleeping down to 6 hours a night (he says that he only needs 5 hours of sleep himself). And you then divert the extra time into being successful. He suggests that this can be done by taking 2 minutes off your alarm clock every week over a period of 2 years.

I must give that a try.

Irish Euphemisms

We Irish have a fantastic facility with language. We have produced some of the best writers, poets and playwrights to work in the English language: Yeats, Joyce, Beckett, Swift, Wilde, Heaney to name but a few.

And one of the things that may have helped us through tough times was the use of euphemisms. World War II was “the emergency” for us. The conflict in the North of Ireland that cost over 3400 lives was “the troubles”.

At the moment we are going through an awful time. Lots of people have lost their jobs. We have surrendered our sovereignty to foreign banks. People are struggling. Some are losing hope.

I find myself wondering if a suitable name would help to rob this thing of some of its power.

We had our “Celtic Tiger” (which in hindsight we should have called the “unsustainable Celtic bubble powered by greed and stupidity” or “Celtic con perpetrated by the few on the many”).

So what could we call the current difficulty?

Politicians are already offering some euphemistic words. The “recession” has been called a “downturn”. They refer to our “current difficulties”. They talk about the IMF “coming to our aid”.

If the bubble was a “tiger” then what animal provides a good metaphor for the current situation?

One possibility that springs to mind is the hyena. Wherever there is a tiger making a kill, there is a pack of hyenas waiting to feed on the left-overs. The problem with the analogy is that (a) hyenas operate in packs and (b) hyenas can make a kill too if the circumstances are right.

Another possibility is the pig. We have already been lumped in with Portugal, Italy, Spain and Greece to be the PIGS. Pigs have a reputation (unjustified their fans would say) for eating anything and liking dirty environments.

Primarily because of the negative connotations, I don’t think either of these animals fits our requirements for a euphemism.

The animal I have chosen is the bear. The bear analogy works on two levels:

• Bears hibernate. I have decided to view the current situation as being analogous to hibernation. We will come out of it, but for now we need to conserve our energy and wait for the Spring.
• The term bear is used in relation to the stock market to describe poor economics circumstances, falling stock prices, and general pessimism.

So we’re experiencing the “Celtic Bear” at the moment. But keep the faith: it won’t last forever!

Dreams

Really enjoyed this recording of a talk by Judymay Murphy at a previous TEDx in Tallaght.

While the topic of the presentation is ostensibly related to "failure" it is in fact mostly about the power of dreams.

I'm pretty sure she doesn't mention the "Law of Attraction" during her talk but, from my understanding of it, that is the backdrop.

I am not sure that I believe completely in the Law of Attraction but I do believe that it is difficult to arrive somewhere nice without planning your route or at least having an idea where you're going.

A lot of people have understandable difficulty in believing that visualising good things and being positive and open will make good things happen. But strangely it is much easier to accept that visualising bad things and having a poor attitude is likely to invite bad things into your like. Strange isn't it?

Trevanian Movie

I heard some news today which brought back the excitement I felt when I heard that there was to be a new book based upon the incomparable Shibimi by Trevanian.

Apparently Warner Bros. have acquired the rights to make Don Winslow's Satori (based upon Shibumi) into a movie. And they are in talks with Leonardo DiCaprio to star as Nicolai Hel. And there may be a series of movies (Nicolai Hel as the new Jason Bourne).

This is very exciting news: Nicolai Hel finally appearing on the big screen in a big budget blockbuster!

I hope and trust that Trevanian will get the credit he deserves for the creation of these fantastic characters and the basic plot into which Winslow weaved his story.

And I presume that if there is a series of movies then some of the other plots from Shibumi will be incorporated. And if the screenwriters are cognisant of this, then they should ensure that they iron out some of the mistakes in characterisation which Winslow made. Where there are differences, they should be sure to use Trevanian's Hel rather than Winslow's.

If this project comes to fruition, it will be the first Trevanian movie since "The Eiger Sanction" (1975) starring Clint Eastwood. Note: IMDB tells us that a movie entitled "Hot Night in the City" (based on the Trevanian short stories of the same name) was made in 2004. I am overlooking this as I have never seen the movie and have never managed to find out anything else about it.

Here are a few links:

Will Leonardo DiCaprio accept Don Winslow's Satori mission?

Warner Bros Acquires Post-WWII Don Winslow Novel ‘Satori’ For Leonardo DiCaprio

Methinks we doth protest too little

Why do Irish people never protest about anything?

OK some lobby groups do manage to protest every now and then. The farmers and the taxi drivers spring to mind. But what about the rest of us?

And heaven knows we have a lot to protest about. The government, developers, bankers and regulators have brought the country to the brink of ruin. Unemployment (which ran between 3.6% and 5% between 2000 and 2007) has now rocketed to 14.6%. Our country is now run by a troika of the EU, IMF and ECB. It’s hard to believe that we are being rescued by bankers from problems caused by bankers!

In February 2009 an unnamed man threw eggs at the AIB Bank in Cork. I thought this was the kind of thing that could catch on: a non-violent way of sending a message to the bankers. But no. It was a one-off.

There was also a march in February 2009 but that was targeted specifically at the public sector pension levy.

In September 2010, Joe McNamara drove a cement truck with “Toxic Bank Anglo” drove into the gates of Leinster House and disabled it so that it took some time to remove. A sign on the back of the truck said “all politicians should be sacked”. He was subsequently cleared in court of criminal damage and dangerous driving charges.

There was another large march in Dublin in November 2010.

In February 2011 the Irish people came as close as we have to making a large-scale protest about what has been done to us. In line with Joe McNamara’s advice the government party was reduced from 71 seats to 20 and those 20 were sent to the opposition benches.

The “Occupy Wall Street” movement has resulted in “Occupy Dame Street” which, while I think it is welcome, only involves a small number of people.

Contrast our lack of protest about our economic crisis with places such as Iceland, Spain, Italy, and Greece.
 
So why do not protest?

Is it our natural sunny optimism? Our belief that there is little point in protesting when everything will work out fine in the end?!

Or is it our long history of being oppressed, and our belief that bad things will happen to us no matter what we do. I suspect this is a more likely explanation.

I just wish there was some way that we could make our anger and indignation known and take back some control over our own destinies.

Whither Nokia?

If you owned a mobile phone back in the last 90s or early 00s, then chance are you had a Nokia 3210, 5110, 6110, 6310, or similar. Nokia were the dominant force in the market in those days.

Not so now. Its market share was recently estimated at 23%.

Why?

IMHO, Nokia believed that they had reached the point where they could dictate to the market. Consumers would follow wherever they lead. The first chink I saw in their armour was the introduction of the Communicator series with the GEOS and then Symbian OS. To me, this would the first sign that consumers would not automatically follow.

Then Apple came out with iPhone and turned the market on its head. Google released Android and there were two horses in the race. Symbian just could not compete.

So what did Nokia do? They dropped Symbian (good decision) and got into bed with Microsoft (not so good). So now we have a partnership between a company that makes phones that nobody wants and a company that has a mobile OS that nobody wants!!

Nothing good can come of this. But don’t take my word for this. Let’s take a look at the Nokia share price to see what the “wisdom of crowds” tells us.

In February the share price hit $11.75 just before a sharp decline as the Nokia/Microsoft alliance was announced. In August the price hit a low of $4.82. It has recovered a little and now stands at $7.18.

A few days ago Nokia released its first Smartphones using the Windows OS. I guess we will have to wait a little while to see response of the consumers and investors. But I am not optimistic.

Irish Presidential Election

Although the counting continues, it seems that Michael D. Higgins will soon be announced as the winner of the Irish presidential election.

I’m delighted about that: I gave him my own vote yesterday. I think he was by far the most presidential of the candidates. Also, he was the only one who didn’t seem to have any skeletons in his closet.

I must say that Mary McAleese is a very hard act to follow. She was terrific president and accomplished a great deal during her two terms (the visit of the British monarch being the crowning achievement, if you’ll excuse the pun). And indeed her predecessor, Mary Robinson, also did a fantastic job. As I looked at the list of candidates in the polling booth yesterday, I wasn’t sure than anyone there would be able to follow their lead. But perhaps Michael will prove me wrong.
From the very beginning there were three candidates that I did not want to win.

The first of these was Mary Davis. Firstly, we could not have three Marys in a row occupying the highest position in the land! Secondly before I knew anything else about her (other than her name) I knew that she saw nothing wrong in photoshopping her election posters. What put the “tin hat” on it for me was discovering that Fianna Fáil had appointed her to enough boards to have her labelled the “Quango Queen”.

The second was Seán Gallagher. I have no interest in seeing a minor celebrity from a reality TV show being turned in the president. He is too young and has achieved too little. And he was always associated too closely with Fianna Fáil and the Celtic Tiger for my liking. And that was before his spectacular fall from grace of earlier in the week (the “envelope” incident on The Frontline programme).

And the third was Dana Rosemary Scallon. Dana’s strong religious and conservative views would not be to my liking and this would be sufficient on its own to ensure that I would not want her as president. And then there were skeletons that were rattling around in her closet. In her case the “tin hat” for me was her implication that her tyre blowing out was some kind of assassination attempt. Unbridled paranoia. Not presidential material, I’m afraid.

Before I finish up I want to say one more thing about Seán Gallagher. Analysts say that he was winning on Sunday and lost on Thursday because of what happened on The Frontline on Monday. And that was the major factor, of course. But I don’t think we should underestimate the difference between responding to a poll and actually standing in a polling both preparing to cast a vote in a presidential election. When I stood in the polling booth looking at the pictures of the candidates I was asking myself which of them I would be proud to see as president of this country. And it was obvious to me (as it would have been to others I imagine) that Seán was not that person.

Best Albums Ever: The Lexicon of Love (ABC) and Purple Rain (Prince)

The best albums I have ever come across were:

The Lexicon of Love – ABC - 1982
Purple Rain – Prince – 1984

The former contained a string of hits such as "Tears Are Not Enough”, "All of My Heart", "Poison Arrow", and "The Look of Love”. It was produced by the incomparable Trevor Horn. I bought the “LP” originally and then the “1996 digitally re-mastered edition” on CD (which included the brilliant “The Look of Love (U.S. Special Remix - Edit)”). I note that there was a 2 disc “2004 deluxe edition” as well.

The latter contained such gems as "Let's Go Crazy, "Take Me with U”, "The Beautiful Ones”, "Computer Blue", "Darling Nikki", "When Doves Cry", "I Would Die 4 U", "Baby I'm a Star", "Purple Rain". All the songs are brilliant: “Take Me with U” may be a little weaker than the others while “When Doves Cry” (one of my favourite songs of all time) and “Purple Rain” are the pick of the bunch.

I had the pleasure of seeing Price play Malahide Castle this summer. What a great night: the man is a total genius. I’ve never seen ABC live, unfortunately.

Interesting to note that both artists used single character abbreviations in their song titles: “4 Ever 2 Gether” for ABC and "I Would Die 4 U" for Prince.

I heard Prince being asked in an interview if we would take credit for starting this trend (which we now see very prominently in TXT/SMS messages). Wisely he declined to do so!

The chorus of “4 Ever 2 Gether” is a classic in this regard:
4 ever 2 gether, 4 years 2 come
4 love 2 strong, 4 us 2 part

Best Chinese Martial Arts Movie

I was trying to decide upon the best Chinese martial arts movie of all time (I will look at movies from other countries in future postings).

I thought a good approach would be to use the “wisdom of crowds” as exemplified by the rating system in IMDB.

So if I choose the best martial artist actors and directors, and then get their highest rated movie, I should have a list of the top contenders.

Here are the results (sorted by rating):

Ip Man (2008) – 8.10 - Donnie Yen
Hero (2002) – 8.00 - Jet Li, Maggie Cheung, Ziyi Zhang, Yimou Zhang
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000) – 8.00 - Michelle Yeoh, Ziyi Zhang, Woo-ping Yuen
The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978) – 7.88 - Leih Lo
Kung Fu Hustle (2004) - 7.80 - Stephen Chow
Iron Monkey (1993) – 7.7 - Woo-ping Yuen, Hark Tsui
Enter the Dragon (1973) – 7.6 - Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, Biao Yuen
A Touch of Zen (1971) – 7.6 - Sammo Hung
The Legend of Drunken Master (1994) – 7.59 Jackie Chan , Anita Mui
Drunken Master (1978) – 7.59 - Corey Yuen
Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976) - 7.47 - Yu Wang
The Prodigal Son (1981) – 7.45 - Biao Yuen


So this approach indicates that the top three Chinese martial arts movies of all time are Ip Man, Hero, and CTHD.

I have to admit that I wouldn’t really quibble with that.

Notes:

• “Enter the Dragon” was the top rated movie for a number of people as shown above but I also included their second rated movie to show something more reflective of their own work
• John Woo’s “The Killer” and Wai-keung Lau/Alan Mak’s “Infernal Affairs” came up a number of times in my searches but I rejected them as not being kung fu movies.

A* of the Day: Willie O’Dea

I never expected to be making an “A* of the day” posting in my blog, but I heard something on the radio yesterday morning that was so astounding that I have to make this inaugural posting.

The programme was “Morning Ireland” and (as I write) a recording of the programme is available here:
Podcast

The interesting part starts about 1 minute in.

The presenter (Cathal Mac Coille) introduces Willie O’Dea, Fianna Fail spokesman for “Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation” to talk about his criticism of the Government for failing to do enough to prevent the loss of 950 jobs in Aviva.

At 3:27 Cathal asked: “Can you point to any announcement of job losses when Fianna Fail were in power, which was mitigated, reduced or delayed by the intervention of any minister, or any Taoiseach from Fianna Fail”.

What a fantastic question!

Willie replied: “I’m sure there have been instances…”

Cathal asked: “You can’t point to one, can you?”

Willie replied (wait for it): “Off the top of my head, first thing in the morning, no I can’t...”

He then rallied with “I don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Irish industrial history to go right back to 1932 to instance every particular single case, and I don’t think I should be expected to either”.

Well done, Willie.

Cathal replied: “No, just asking for one” and then moved on quickly.

I guess in the heat of the moment, Willie was unable to come up with something about his dog having eaten his homework!

But full marks to Cathal for not allowing Willie to get away with this piece of hypocrisy.

The problem here is that Fianna Fail are operating under a number of illusions. The first is that they are providing a credible opposition. The second is that anyone cares a jot about anything they have to say about anything.

I have heard Micheál Martin starting to make similar criticisms of the current Government. These guys need to take a good look in the mirror, remember their roles in the decimation of our economy during the last government, keep their heads down and their mouths shut, and give thanks every day to the voters who (against all reason) put 20 of them back into the Dáil.

New DVDs

I went mad at the weekend and bought myself four (yes 4!) new DVDs.

There are:

1. Ip Man (2008) – IMDB rating 8.1
2. Ip Man 2 (2010) – IMDB rating 7.5
3. Kill Zone(2005) – IMDB rating 7.1
4. The Legend (of Fong Sai-Yuk) (1993) – IMDB rating 7.1

1-3 star Donnie Yen. 2-3 also star Sammo Hung. 4 stars Jet Li.
1-3 are directed by Yip Wai-Shun. 4 is directed by Cory Yuen.
The action director for 1-2 is Sammo Hung, for 3 is Donnie Yen, and for 4 is Cory Yuen.
All four DVDs are from Cine Asia and have lots of extras.
1-3 are 2 disc editions.
3-4 have an audio commentary by Bey Logan (I really enjoy his commentaries and this was a crucial factor in my purchasing decision).

I have already seen 1 and 2 before and I really loved them. Great performance by Donnie and great action sequences designed by Sammo. I was listening to Bey Logan last evening and he said that he had seen action in Ip Man 2 that he had never seen in a move before (he is obviously a great admirer of Sammo’s work).

I bought the four of them for €22 in Xtravision.

I have a lot of enjoyment in store over the coming days/weeks!

Early Computer Magazines

In his book "Outliers: The Story of Success", Malcolm Gladwell produces examples to back up a theory that 10,000 hours of practice are required to become proficient at a complex task. He stresses the importance of getting the opportunity to complete the 10,000 hours of practice. If you work 37.5 hours a day for 52 weeks a year then this equates to over 5 years of experience.

He uses Bill Gates as an example. Bill has access to a computer terminal connection to a remote mainframe computer in 1968 when he was in the eighth grade. He says: “From that moment forward, Gates lived in the computer room”. This was an exceptional opportunity for a young boy in 1968.

When I became interested in computers, the first part of my 10,000 hours was limited to books and, more importantly, computer magazines. I started out with Electronics Today International (ETI). I thought I was going to be interested in electronics until I discovered the microprocessor! Then I began to buy specialist computer magazines (with ETI at first and then instead of it later). My favourites were Personal Computer World (PCW) and Practical Computing. I read each issue from cover to cover. I still have many issues in my attic to this day.

I learned computer languages by reading program listings (hard to believe for people discovering computers today, but magazines in those times would include long program listings – generally written in BASIC – and people would enter these programs into their own computers). So these program listings were my Rosetta Stone. And all of my programming was done on imagined computers (we would call them “virtual” computers today!). I remember going on a holiday to my cousins in Co Derry and borrowing a book from the local library there on programming in Fortran. So I was able to add the ability to read (I have purposely selected to use “read” rather than “program in”) Fortran code during that holiday.

My first access to a real computer came when I got my own Apple ][ computer in 1978. Then came the process of changing from being able to read programs, to being able to write them! I would equate this change to the difference between learning the theory of driving a car to the actuality of being behind the wheel!

Here are some links to information about the magazines I have mentioned above:
Early UK Computer Magazines
PCW Covers
Practical Computing Covers

Defeat in Wellington

Was up at 6 AM this morning (along with half of Ireland, I imagine) to see our boys take on the Welsh in the Rugby World Cup.

Final score was 22-10, but not in the way we would have wished!

I don’t think that anyone would deny that the better team (on the day) won.

They were very well organised, very strong and determined, and they took their chances.

The pattern of the game seemed to be, from the Welsh perspective:

• Defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; opportunity; score
• Defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; defend; opportunity; score

I was disappointed for Brian O’Driscoll especially. Even an inspirational leader such as he could not find a way through the Welsh defence.

I was also disappointed for Tommy Bowe. He didn’t get a chance to shine in this game as he had in previous ones.

It is important to remember, as our World Cup adventure comes to a close, that the lads did us proud. They won all 4 games at the pool stages, including that historic victory over Australia. And that particular win will live on in our memories for a long time to come.

Sometimes when a team knocks you out of a competition, you do not want them to go on to do well. A great example of this for us is France in the 2010 soccer World Cup after the disgraceful cheating by Thierry Henry. No so in this case. I think that lots of Irish people will now be behind our Celtic neighbours.

Steve Jobs

I was saddened to hear of the passing of Steve Jobs this morning.

I have been a long-time admirer of Apple and the work that Steve and his people have done there. I mentioned previously in this blog that my first computer was an Apple ][ (purchased in about ’78 I think).

At the time that computer came out it was head-and-shoulders above other similar computers. It was extendable, had a proper keyboard, hi and low res graphics, and a strong case that would support a monitor/TV. I got a lot of enjoyment out of that computer (and learned a lot too!). It is still up in my attic as I can’t bear to part with it.

The story of those early days (of the “personal computer”) is very well told in the ’99 TV movie “Pirates of Silicon Valley”. Noah Wyle does a good job portraying Steve.

I don’t know specifically about Steve’s personal contribution to the history of innovation at Apple, but I did see a documentary (The Triumph of the Nerds) where he was emphasising the importance of shaving 5 seconds off the boot-up time for the Mac. He was telling the engineers to imagine the time that would be saved by millions of users powering up their Macs at the start of the business day. This is an excellent example of (a) the importance of putting the needs of the user at the heart of decision-making and (b) showing leadership by motivating your team to achieve goals which seem to be impossible.

What I do know/believe is:

1. Apple is now (and always has been for me) a cool company making cool things
2. Steve’s name will be revered in Apple and in this industry long after other names have faded from memory.

And that is his legacy.

Favourite Websites

I am going to nominate 2 “favourite” websites, but for quite different reasons.

My favourite website (judged by the number of times I enter it into my browser’s address bar) is IMDB.COM. I’m sure I go to this site every couple of days. It is an unbelievable font of information on movies and TV shows. The site must have been used to settle SO many arguments over the years (how DID we settle arguments before the Internet arrived?!).

My favourite website (judged by the enjoyment I get from it) is grooveshark.com. I don’t know how is it possible that a website can exist where you can play any (well, almost any) song that takes your fancy in real time. More quickly that you could find a CD, or perhaps even find your iPod! So if you’re at your computer, and you want to hear something by Lady Gaga, then you’re in luck.

But if you want to hear Bing Crosby singing “Danny Boy”, or “When Irish Eyes are Smiling” or even “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (That's an Irish lullaby)” then they’re available too!

But perhaps the most interesting thing for music geeks is the number of remixes you can get. So if you want to listen to “Crazy” by Seal then you can choose from the following (and more):

• Single version (4:30)
• Album version (4:28)
• William Orbit mix (5:27)
• Live (5:19)
• Acoustic (4:02)
• Acapella mix (3:28)

And all you have to do in return is look at (or ignore!) some ads that appear on the screen.

Works for me!

Favourite Singles of Recent Years

The following is a list of some of my favourite singles of the last few years:
2007 – “Apologize” – One Republic
2007 - "Happy Ending" - Mika
2008 - "Broken Strings" – James Morrison featuring Nelly Furtado
2008 - "Viva la Vida" – Coldplay
2010 - "For the First Time" – The Script
I couldn’t tell you how many times I have listened to these songs!

And here are some of my other favourites of recent years (which I loved but didn't listen to often enough to make the top 5):
2008 - "The Man Who Can't Be Moved" – The Script
2008 - "Breakeven" – The Script
2009 - "Halo" - Beyoncé
2010 - "Replay"- Iyaz
2010 - "Forget You" - Cee Lo Green
2010 - "Fireflies" - Owl City
2010 - "Hey, Soul Sister" - Train
2011 – “Gold Forever” - The Wanted

I guess these lists tag me as (a) a pop music fan and (b) a big fan of superb Irish band The Script!

Sporting Heroes Once Again!

In my first posting in this blog (just a week and a half ago) I mentioned some things which I thought I might blog about. I never anticipated that I would be blogging about sport! But here I am with my second entry on this topic.

Ireland had a comprehensive win over Italy this morning (36-6). Another fantastic team performance by the Irish team. My favourite individual performance was by Tommy Bowe. He:

• Scored the first try (which was incorrectly disallowed)
• Made the second (scored by “Captain Fantastic”)
• Might have scored another fabulous try later in the game but was illegally tackled close to the try line when not in possession of the ball.

 The remarkable thing about the Irish performance to date is neatly summaried by listing the winners of the four pools:
Pool A – Won by New Zealand (played 4, won 4)
Pool B – Won by England (played 4, won 4)
Pool C – Won by Ireland (played 4, won 4)
Pool D – Won by South Africa (played 4, won 4)

Which team (according to the World Rankings!) doesn’t deserve to be in this list?!

What a fantastic performance in the pool stages.

Roll on next weekend and Wales!

Unmissable TV: Downton Abbey and House

I watch too much TV. And I watch it in the worst way: flicking from channel to channel, deciding there’s nothing on, and then flicking through them again in spite of that!

So most of the time there is nothing on TV that I would really care about seeing or missing.
But, strangely, there are 2 shows on at the moment that I would HATE to miss.

One is “Downton Abbey”. This is a very enjoyable programme, now in its second series. Kudos to all of the cast and crew. I am reluctant to single anyone out because everything is so well done, but it would be difficult to ignore the contributions of Julian Fellowes (creator, writer, exec producer), Brendan Coyle (who plays Mr Bates) and Michelle Dockery (who plays Lady Mary). And, of course, I would have to mention the inimitable Maggie Smith.

The other is “House”. I have been a huge fan of Hugh Laurie since forever. I first saw him on Saturday Live in sketches with Stephen Fry. My admiration for these two was cemented in Peter's Friends, Jeeves and Wooster, and, of course, A Bit of Fry and Laurie.

For some reason I missed the start of House on TV and I didn't want to join midstream. But last Christmas my wife bought me seasons 1-5 on DVD and I was able to catch up (she also bought me Jeeves and Wooster on DVD at the same time!).

So Downton Abbey is running at present (season 2) and House will be starting up again in the States next Monday apparently (season 8!).

Happy days!

The Times They Are a-Changin'

Ireland is going through some very difficult changes at present.

The “Celtic Tiger” is well and truly dead. Unemployment is running at 14.5%. The Bank of Ireland’s chief economist, Dan McLaughlin, has predicted that Ireland’s national debt will hit €173bn by the end of the year, an average of €81,519 for every worker in the State. As a result of the bail-out we have received from the EU-IMF-ECB “troika”, it seems that our national sovereignty has been eroded.

This morning I had occasion to be in the IDA Science & Technology Park on the Snugborough Road in Blanchardstown in Dublin 15.

I worked there (in Lucent Technologies) between 1997 and 2001.

I was overwhelmed by the changes that have taken place there. And not for the better.

The Lucent building (which is very sizeable) seems to be largely abandoned. A number of the other buildings seem to be closed down. Others (judging by the number of cars in their car parks) seem to have greatly reduced workforces.

When I worked there, there were queues of cars entering and leaving the park every morning and evening. During the summer, if we went for a walk around the estate, there would be hundreds of people taking a stroll.

Not so any more.

I was struck by the changes that have taken place there over the last 10 years. And I could not help wondering what the next 10 years holds in store for other businesses, and for our whole economy.

Obviously I hope that the coming years will see a recovery and a return to more optimistic times. But I can tell you that it was difficult to be optimistic this morning in the fact of what I was seeing.

Useful utility: Wget

Wget is a handy, free, open source, multi-platform utility for fetching files from HTTP, HTTPS and FTP servers.

It supports wildcards and recursion into subfolders. It also supports the sending of username and password information where required.

It operates as a command-line utility and there are lots of optional parameters (which can be confusing to be quite honest).

In the past I have used it to invoke a function on a remote web server on a scheduled basis (if the function can be initiated using a HTTP GET or POST).

It's clever and powerful and it just works.

All the information (and links to download) are available here.

Here are some examples of usage:

# Download the title page of example.com to a file
# named "index.html".
wget http://www.example.com/

# Download the entire contents of example.com
wget -r -l 0 http://www.example.com/

Peaking too soon

In my blog yesterday, I discussed M.Night Shyamalan’s cinematic output.

But, thinking about it since then, I have concluded that the posting may really be about the challenges of achieving too much too early and then having to follow that success.

In music there is a cliché about the “difficult second album”.

I think of “To Kill a Mockingbird”, written by Harper Lee in 1960. She won a Pulitzer Prize for that novel (which I very much enjoyed) and then wrote nothing else with the exception of a few short essays. Now I am not really in a position to speculate about the reasons for this, but it is conceivable that she found it difficult to follow her initial success.

I am also reminded of an interview where George Michael said (as I recall) that he had to come to terms with the fact that he might never write anything again which is as good as the Saxophone break in Careless Whisper which he wrote when he was only 17 years old. That must be a difficult mental adjustment to make.

It must be so much easier to accept having a career where you “learn your craft” and increased experience yields better results.

Devil - M.Night Shyamalan

I watched the movie “Devil” the other day.

After “Lady in the Water” I gave myself a directive never to watch another M.Night Shyamalan movie.

And I stuck to that. I skipped “The Happening” and “The Last Airbender” completely.
 
But then “Devil” came along. Shyamalan wrote the story but he didn’t write the screenplay and he didn’t direct. Give it a go, I thought.

The bad news is that I didn’t like it. To be more specific, the first 70 or so minutes of the movie is fine but the ending is so bad that it ruins the rest of the movie.

But I’m no critic so that’s just my own humble opinion.

Rotten Tomatoes gives it a 51% rating (43 like while 42 dislike).

IMDB gives it a 6.4 rating. And, despite my own assessment, most of the comments I read there were positive.

In relation to Shyamalan, I should elaborate a little. I LOVE “The Sixth Sense”. I own “Signs” on DVD. I went to the cinema to see “The Village”. So I was definitely a fan.

But the arc of his work has been unfortunate. Here is a list of his movies sorted by the rating on IMDB (I have removed the 2 movies where the release date predated TSS):
(8.20) - The Sixth Sense (1999)
(7.30) - Unbreakable (2000)
(6.80) - Signs (2002)
(6.50) - The Village (2004)
(6.40) - Devil (2010)
(5.80) - Stuart Little (1999)
(5.70) - Lady in the Water (2006)
(5.10) - The Happening (2008)
(4.50) - The Last Airbender (2010)

The inverse relationship between date and rating is hard to miss. The only consolation that can be taken from this list, I guess, is that Devil is a step in the right direction (actually it's almost exactly half way between his best and worst ratings).

So will I give “The Night Chronicles 2” a chance when it arrives? I’m afraid the answer is no unless there’s a huge amount of positive reaction to the movie.

Cosmac ELF

In August 1976 Popular Electronics published an article showing how to build and program a very simple single-board “computer” called the “Cosmac ELF”. The designer was Joseph Weisbecker. The article can be seen here and a very nice picture of the device can be seen here.

I put the word computer in quotes above as nobody today would recognise this device with switches for input and LEDs for output as a computer!
But I thought the device was simple and elegant, and I was extremely impressed by the small component count.

Weisbecker published three subsequent articles in the magazine extending the capabilities of the device (all available at the link displayed above). The fourth (in July 1977) added a small amount of circuitry which enabled the computer to display simple graphics on a TV. The example of the cover of the magazine showed a simple image of the Starship Enterprise (which was, of course, the perfect selection for me and people like me).

I never build/owned/used one of these devices. My first computer was an Apple ][ which was light-years more advanced having a full keyboard, using a TV as an output device, and having the ability to save/load programs on cassettes.

But I never forgot the elegant Cosmac ELF.

I was impressed again when I discovered that a gentleman by the name of Maciej Szyc published (back in September 2006) an emulator for this device and that this emulator (a) looks great and (b) was developed entirely in JavaScript! So you can try it out without having to download anything to your machine!

There are lots of other people who have put time and effort into paying tribute to the Cosmac ELF. If you want to know more then an excellent place to start is here.

I doubt if using an emulator is the same as using the actual device. And I doubt if using the device is the same as building and then using the device. But it is fun nevertheless!

Sporting Heroes

Now that I am a blogger (well, after all, this is my third post!) I can’t let the opportunity pass to comment on the fantastic sporting events of last week.

On Saturday morning, Ireland had a historic victory over Australia in the Rugby World Cup. At half time the scores were 6-6 and we thought we were still in with a shot. But we completely dominated the second half and scored an additional 9 points while Australia scored nothing. Full time score: Ireland 15 Australia 6. What a fantastic victory. There was no doubt that the better team won on the day. And Tommy Bowe came oh so close to a phenomenal try right at the end which would have provided a fitting finish. As Brian O’Driscoll said after the game: “It was the performance we knew we had in us.”

Then on Sunday came the All Ireland Senior Football Final. Dublin hadn’t won for 16 years while Kerry had been taken the Sam Maguire in 2000, 2004, 2006, 2007, and 2009. Dublin played well in the first half and finished it one point in front. Kerry were stronger in the second half and with 7 minutes remaining were in the lead with 1-10 to 0-9. I couldn’t see them doing it at that stage but they scored a goal and 2 points to Kerry’s single point to put the two sides level And in the 3rd minute of injury time, goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton scored a point from a free to leave the final score at Dublin 1-12 to Kerry’s 1-11! It is difficult to imagine a more exciting conclusion to a match and to a championship!

What a fantastic weekend for the sporting underdog!!

Best book ever: Shiumi by Trevanian

The best book I ever read was Shibumi by Trevanian. Great characters, great story, great action sequences, great philosophy. By the time I finished the book, I had a favourite author. I went on to read all of his other books and to enjoy exploring his website www.trevanian.com.

I was saddened of course when the author (Rodney William Whitaker) passed away in late 2005.

But two good things have happened recently.

The first is that Trevanian's daughter (Alexandra Whitaker) allowed another author to write a new book based on Shibumi. This book is Satori by Don Winslow. I bought the book as soon as I became aware of its existence. It was a complete joy to see Nicholai Hel back in action again! In the "Author's Note" at the end of the book, Winslow has some very nice things to say about Shibumi, Trevanian, and his approach to writing the book. He has made a few mistakes with the characterisation, IMHO, but it was as good as could be expected now that the genius who created Hel is no longer with us.

The second is that Alexandra tells us on the Trevanian website that she is going to complete his unfinished work: Street of the Four Winds. I'm not sure how long this process will take, but as a Trevanian fan is is fantastic to know that at some point in the future I will be holding a new Trevanian novel in my hands. His legacy lives on.

Welcome to my blog!

This is my first ever blog posting.

Not sure how often I'm going to blog, or what I will blog about. But I'm sure this will work itself out over time.

Why am I blogging:
1) I find the short messages in Twitter too confining
2) I don't really "get" Facebook
3) I would like to have somewhere to record things I come across. A sort of public diary, if you will.

Will there be some techie stuff in the blog? I think that's inevitable. I do make my living working in IT after all.

Will there be stuff about movies and music? I certainly think so.

Will there be stuff about my family? I imagine there will.

So, in summary, a miscellany of topics that take my interest.

So let the games (well, the blog at least) begin!