Dan Fogelberg - Same Old Lang Syne

I heard "Same Old Lang Syne"on the radio this morning. I guess I should have expected it - it being New Year's Eve and all.

I mentioned it in a previous posting as being the best "story song" ever. It is a fabulous song.

You can find the following information about the song on Dan's website:

• It's based on a real event
• It took him over a year to write the song
• The melody has references to Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture". 

 Last time I mentioned it, I included a link to a live performance on YouTube. Here is a different live performance:

The Secret to Beating Procrastination

I have mentioned TED talks a number of times previously. I think the TED videos are a fabulous resource (imagine getting a series of experts to talk enthusiastically about their field of expertise). One of my New Year's Resolutions is going to be to watch more TED talks.

I happened to watch a few of them last night. And one of them struck me particularly.

Mel Robbins talked about the secret to getting the things you want in this talk.

Now she didn't talk about the Law of Attraction, or visualisation, or "intelligent dumbing down", "positive affirmation", or "mindfulness", or "neuro-linguistic programming".

She said the secret it simple. It is two words: "Force Yourself".

When I heard it, it was as if I had finally heard the answer to a question I had been asking for years. There is no secret. There is no magic. There are no easy answers. You need to become your own parent.

I read David Allen's "Getting Things Done" years ago. I was hopeful that it would contain the key for me. And it certainly told me how to maintain a list of things to get done. So I became really good at getting things onto my list. But it didn't really help me with getting things (particularly unpleasant things) off my list.

Now, to be frank, I didn't like Mel's presentation style. And I didn't think I would enjoy or get anything from the video. But I was wrong. If, like me, her approach rubs you the wrong way, then (if procrastination is a problem for you) I would encourage you to persevere and watch the whole video. It was the most worthwhile 22 minutes I have spent on the web in some time!


I would like to be able to say, at this point in my posting, that seeing Mel's video has changed my life. But it has only been a few hours to be honest. So I'll have to revisit this in a future posting. But I can say that the evidence of the first few hours has been very positive.

Here is a slide from her deck which sums up the whole message:

Christmas Shoes

I'm sure I would never have heard the song "Christmas Shoes" were it not for Christmas FM.

And even there, people are understandably reluctant to play it!

However it is a guilty pleasure.

Here's a link to a YouTube video where I won't add insult to injury by making you watch the video where people act out the song. In this version you can see "NewSong" performing the song, although there are clips from the movie of the same name starring Rob Lowe.

And here's evidence that I heard the song on Christmas FM earlier this evening:

Christmas FM

I can't believe I am only blogging about this now!

Every year we listed to Christmas FM (or "XMAS FM" as it appears on the car radio) and every year I blog about it.

This year we were listening to the test transmission before it even started transmitting officially!

And last week I had occasion to travel to Killarney and Cork so I was able to listen to the channel:

• In and near Dublin
• Near Limerick
• Near Cork

The charity this year is Age Action.

Well done as always to all involved.

Peter's Flexible RenAmiNg Kit (PFrank)

If you ever need to rename lots of files in Windows, then an ideal tool for the job is PFrank(the "Peter" in the name is not me, by the way).

You can get more information and download here.

It has tons of useful features including:

• Support for regular expressions
• The ability to preview changes before you perform them

And it's completely free.

I used it once when I was preparing to upload lots of files into SharePoint (to make sure that any characters which are not allowed were handled in advance)

Invaluable.

House M.D.

I have mentioned Hugh Laurie in previous posts. I have also mentioned the House TV show.

I can't believe that the final episode of House aired in May 2012 and I never blogged about the episode or the series.

The final episode, to be frank, was disappointing. The main problem I had with it was that there was no Cuddy. Obviously there was a falling out between Lisa Edelstein and the the production team and they couldn't find a way to reconcile it, even for the final episode. That was a shame. It definitely devalued the last episode.

The series had some great moments, and some great episodes.

The best episode by far IMHO was "Three Stories".  IMDB ratings put it in 5th place.

According to IMDB the best episodes are the consecutive "House's Head" and "Wilson's Heart".

I just watched these 3 episodes on Netflix. They are all very, very good.

I was bound to like House, of course. Firstly I am a huge Hugh Laurie fan. And secondly, the character of House is based my all-time favourite fictional creation: Sherlock Holmes. What a winning combination.

Here's a picture of the 2 boys from the final episode, just before they ride off into the sunset:

Tranquil Surrounds

I heard an advert on the radio recently where they were plugging somewhere to stay and they praised the "tranquil surrounds".

I'm sure they meant the "tranquil surroundings".

A definition of the noun "surround" is "a thing that forms a border or edging around an object".

A fireplace has surrounds. Some places to stay have tranquil surroundings.

Genuinity

I heard someone use the word "genuinity" on the radio the other day. I'm not sure if it was an advert or a politician speaking.

In any event, there is no such word. If you need a word for this concept here are two which will fill the bill: genuineness, authenticity.

No need to make up a new one!

Luc Besson's "Lucy"

A movie written and directed by Luc Besson, starring Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman, and Min-sik Choi (from Oldboy, how could that not be great?

I don't know. But it's not.

It's a good idea, and it starts out well, but it just gets worse and worse as it goes along.

There are some fun moments (when Lucy is driving through Paris, for example) but they are few and far between.

Without wanting to spoil the story, there are parallels with "Limitless". But this is not nearly as good a movie. For one thing, when Bradley Cooper is enhanced in his movie, he is smart and charming. When Lucy is enhanced, she is cold, robotic and uninteresting.

I think there is supposed to be some kind of message in the movie. It finishes up with the line "Life was given to us a billion years ago, now you know what to do with it". To be honest, I have no idea!

In addition to Limitless, the movie also reminded me of 1963 movie "The Man with  the X-Ray Eyes" and 1960 movie "The Time Machine", 1968 movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", 1979 movie "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" and "The Matrix" movies.

IMDB scores it 6.5. Rotten Tomatoes scores it 66%. They're both being generous, IMHO.

Here's a still of Lucy just after she begins her transformation:

Last Kung Fu Monk

I would struggle to name my favourite movie of all time (I must have a go at tackling that in my blog soon).

But, thanks to a movie I watched part of the other night, I have no problem naming the worst movie I have ever seen.

"Last Kung Fu Monk", as you would guess from the title, is a martial arts movie. And obviously lots of martial arts movies aren't very good. But LKFM lowers the bar to a whole new level.

Not only are the acting, directing, and story awful, but the martial arts are not nearly good enough to save the movie.

And I have to make special mention of the editing. I have never seen anything like it before! People going to film school should be made to watch parts of this movie to see what not to do. It's unbelievable.

IMDB scores it 4.1.Rotten Tomatoes scores it 36%. They are both being kind.

In addition to everything else which is wrong with this movie, I can't accept that a Shaolin Monk could be completely inept at everything except martial arts. How is that possible!

Here's a shot from the movie where our "hero" takes on two girls!

Jools Holland

On Saturday morning my wife informed me that we have been offered 2 tickets for "Jools Holland & His Rhythm And Blues Orchestra Tour" in the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre.

Now I like and admire Jools Holland from seeing him on TV, but I didn't associate Rhythm And Blues with being my type of music.

How wrong I was! We had a fantastic night. Jools Holland was excellent. His "orchestra" was excellent. His singers were excellent. The music was outstanding.

As well as being a superb pianist, Jools is not a half bad singer!

High point of the night were the performance by Ruby Turner. Here's a sample of Jools and Ruby (and a cast of thousands) blasting out a song:

Only 5

Oscar Pistorius was sentenced to 5 years in prison today for the killing of Reeva Steenkamp.

Apparently, within minutes of the judge’s decision, “Only 5” was trending on Twitter in South Africa. I think that is a pretty appropriate assessment of the sentence.

It seems however that Reeva's parents are satisfied with the verdict.

Here is a picture of Oscar being led away after the verdict:

GTasks

I have always relied heavily on having a "to do list".

Since reading Dave Allen's "Getting Things Done", my reliance has been even heavier (Dave emphasises the importance of having a complete list in order to reduce stress and have a "mind like water" - please read the book for a clearer explanation!)

In the past have had my list on paper, or in Excel. Now I used GTasks on my Android phone.

GTasks does almost everything I could want and it also synchronises with Google Tasks so that I can access my list from GMail if I wish to do so.

GTasks support multiple lists and it is easy to switch between them (and to move items between them). So you have have separate lists for work, home, college, etc. You can also have "someday" or "maybe" lists for things that you may do some day.

And obviously I have a (long) list for things that I want to blog about (I'll be able to check one of these off in a few minutes!)

The two things I wish it had are:

1. The ability to tag tasks as being for "today". I do this at present my moving them to a "Today" list. But then I lose the original list. So really a task might be "home" and also "today".
2. The ability to tag a task as being started. I remember doing a Time Management course years ago and learning about the Japanese Daruma doll. The idea was that you would paint in one eye on the doll when you start a task and then only paint in the second eye when you finish it. So seeing one eye painted reminded you that the goal had not yet been accomplished

You can find the app on the Android store.

Dab Hand

I was at a meeting on Friday where someone used the expression "dab hand" (meaning to be an expert) a number of times.

I noted it because there is something informal (and which I find attractive) in using this expression in business meeting.

So saying that someone is "a dab hand at Excel" is somehow more interesting and colourful IMHO than saying that he/she has achieved a high level of proficiency with the product.

What I still miss from Lotus 1-2-3

I use Microsoft Excel practically every day. It's running right now on this machine as I write this posting.

But there are a couple of things that I miss from Lotus 1-2-3 right to this day.

Slash Commands

The first is the ability to use slash commands. With 1-2-3 all commands were initiated by pressing the slash key. "/FO", for example, was used for File Open.

The great things about this was that 1-2-3 was designed to be used with a keyboard rather than a mouse. Originally this was because 1-2-3 was a DOS application rather than a Windows application. But the combination of the slash commands and the matrix of cells which could be navigated using cursor keys meant that using the keyboard was fast. Much faster than using a mouse.

The benefit of Excel (based on Windows and the mouse) is that it is easier to learn. But it is slow.

1-2-3 was used by power users. Power users were easily able to learn the slash commands. But as everyone migrated from 1-2-3 to Excel that speed was lost for power users.

Deleting Rows

The second thing I still miss was that in 1-2-3 you could define a source (input) table, a target (output) table, and a criteria table and you could, for example, copy all rows from the source table to the target table which met the criteria. And the target table did not need to have all of the columns from the source table. All very useful and powerful. Now Excel does have some of those capabilities (filter and advanced filter). But what was even more powerful and is missing from Excel was that you could delete the rows from the source table which met the criteria in the criteria table. "/ Data Query Delete". Genius!

Farewell Lotus 1-2-3

I worked in Lotus Development in Dublin between 1989 and 1993. When I joined the company, the most important product by far was Lotus 1-2-3. When I left it would be possible to argue that the most important product was Lotus Notes (in 1995 IBM acquired Lotus primarily to get its hands on Lotus Notes).

A few days ago (on 30th September to be exact) the end of an era came when IBM discontinued support for Lotus 1-2-3. See the image below for the announcement from the IBM website.

1-2-3 was released originally in 1983. So it was a supported software product for over 30 years. Not a bad record!

I worked in the "Advanced Support Group" when I was in Lotus and was there at the time we launched "Release 3.0". As I recall, there were two fairly serious issues with this release:

• It needed a lot of memory. This meant that it needed "extended" or "expanded" memory. These were new requirements for the market and caused lots of confusion.
• There was a problem at one stage in relation to specific calculations returning the wrong results. The passage of time has dimmed my recollection of this, but it may have been related to problems with the Pentium processor, or a floating-point coprocessor. But it certainly was alarming at the time.

The other problem with Release 3 was that it didn't have on-screen WYSIWYG capabilities (while the Release 2 product had the Allways add-in). This was fixed in Release 3.1 but by then there had been so much loss of momentum for 1-2-3 that it was difficult to recover.

In the end, of course, Excel went on to dominate the spreadsheet market and products like 1-2-3,  Borland's Quattro even Microsoft's own Multiplan joined VisiCalc in the software history books.

Oscar Pistorius sentence

My last blog post was about the sentencing of the two men convicted of illegal lending in relation to Anglo Irish Bank.

That reminds me that the sentencing of Oscar Pistorius is to resume tomorrow. Apparently the process may take more than a day.

The sentence could be anything from 15 years in gaol down to a suspended or community sentence.

We will see if the delay between the verdict and the sentence (as was the case with the two gentlemen from Anglo Irish Bank) provides an opportunity to announce a sentence on the more lenient scale of the spectrum.

Pat Whelan and William McAteer sentencing

I blogged back in early April about the fact that Pat Whelan and William McAteer (having been found guilty of giving illegal loans when Directors of Anglo Irish Bank.

I mentioned that they were to be sentenced at the end of that month. And that the possible sentence included "up to five years in prison and/or a fine of up to €30,000 per offence".

Well, in the end, Judge Martin Nolan sentenced both men to 240 hours community service.

To be kind about it, that seems a little anticlimactic. Going from the release of the tapes, to the trial, to the sentencing.

I think that is why there is a delay between the verdict of a trial and the sentencing:so that media and public interest will have dissipated before the sentence is announced.

So it continues to be the case that nobody has gone to gaol for the crimes committed by Anglo Irish Bank.

Oscar Pistorius verdict

There were 4 possible verdicts in the Oscar Pistorius trial (ignoring the minor gun charges and listing from most serious to least):

• Premeditated Murder

This would mean that Pistorius knew Reeva was in the bathroom, and had thought about killing her before grabbing the gun and pulling the trigger

• Murder

This would mean that Pistorius intended to kill whoever was behind the door but there was no 'malice aforethought'

• Culpable Homicide

This would reflect negligence on the part of Pistorius rather than malice

•  Not Guilty

The final verdict was the third of these, Culpable Homicide.

It has been reported that Reeva Steenkamp's family feel that this verdict does not represent justice. I would have a lot of sympathy with that opinion.

I suppose the judge has to work on the basis of "beyond a reasonable doubt". But if one were operating on the principle of "balance of probability" then the outcome might have been quite different. Here are two scenarios:

• In the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, Pistorius fired four shots into a locked bathroom believing that there was a burglar in the bathroom and believing (without checking) that his girlfriend was safely in bed
• In the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, Pistorius had a blazing row with his girlfriend who had locked herself in the bathroom, went and got his gun, and fired four shots through the bathroom door

I know which one sounds more credible to me. Killing a burglar who has locked himself in a room would be unusual. Killing a wife/girlfriend in a crime of passion would not be all that unusual.

I guess it is fair to say, however, that nobody but Pistorius will ever know whether it was murder or premeditated murder.

The judge will pronounce sentence on October 13th and it will be interesting to see how she handles that, and whether the family will be happy with her decision. The sentence for manslaughter and firearms could be up to 15 years in prison.

Oscar Pistorius verdict

I'm looking forward to hearing the verdict in the Oscar Pistorius trial later today or over the coming few days.

It will be interesting to see if the South African system of justice copes any better with money and celebrity than the American system of trial by jury. I'm thinking, of course, of the O.J. Simpson trial.

Speech to Text

For my degree course, I had to transcribe a large number of interviews.

I didn't fancy all of that typing. So I decided to explore speech-to-text technology.

I had tried it before when I had a tablet PC with Windows XP. But the capability was quite limited.

I did some testing with Windows Speech Recognition (on Windows 7) but again the capability was quite poor.

So I bought "Dragon Naturally Speaking" and an inexpensive headset.

I bought the "Premium" edition. Here's a tip: if you're thinking of buying the product then engage in an online chat with a sales person. They may be able to give you a substantial discount off the RRP.

Thus far I have only used it for transcriptions but I find it to be quite effective. Here's how I use it:

• My headset has two jacks (I purposely did not buy the USB kind. I plug the microphone into my PC and the earphones into my Android phone, where I have the recordings.
• I listen to a sentence and then pause the playback.
• I repeat the sentence and check that the program has recognised the words correctly.

The speech recognition works quite well: I can speak at a fairly natural rate, as long as I pause at the end of each sentence.

I did have to "train" the software of course, and it does learn new words so in theory the more I use it the better it will get.

I don't know if this method was faster than typing (although I suspect that it was) but it was certainly more interesting/less laborious.

So far I haven't had occasion to use it for anything else, but I must try to do so.

Some day we will all talk to our PCs/SmartPhones (until such time as we get neural interfaces!)

Here's a video advert for the new version of the product:

Giving something "short shrift"

The expression to give something "short shrift" means to give it inadequate attention.

"He gave his homework short shrift".

"Short shifting", in contrast, means changing gear in your car earlier than you would normally do so.

Two similar expressions, but completely unrelated.

Rabbits in the Castle

We were in the gardens in Malahide Castle at the weekend and I saw this rabbit and had to take a photo.

Yes: that tiny thing you can almost see in the centre of the photo is indeed a rabbit!

God gets out his hairbrush

Went to pick up Andrew from hurling practice the other day and he drew my attention to the extraordinary cloud formation which you can see below.

It's always difficult to capture these things in a photo but I had to try.

Looks as if God took a hairbrush to the clouds...

Time and Trains Wait for No Man

I have always been interested in knowing the EXACT time.

The best way to achieve this was to check the time against a source that was using an atomic clock. The classic way to do this was to access a site such as:
http://time.gov/HTML5/

I just noticed a handy new site which shows the current time and how far out your computer's time is:
http://time.is/

This site reported that my own computer was within a second of the right time. That's because it is configured to set its time periodically from the following site:
time.nist.gov

This automatic setting of time is based on the "Network Time Protocol" (NTP). Many corporate networks are configured these days to "push" the correct time to servers and workstations.

For many years now I have been travelling to/from work by train. This has made me dependent on knowing the EXACT time while on the go.

A number of years ago I tacked this problem by buying myself a watch which always shows the correct time: a Casio Wave Ceptor watch.

These watches synchronise themselves once a day with a radio signal which sends the correct time based on an atomic clock. Here is Ireland the closest transmitter is the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington near London.

As well as having the correct time all of the time, my watch also adjusts to/from summer time automatically.

Nowadays people tend to look to their smartphones for the current time. And the phones can be configured to pick up "network time". But I tend to still look to my watch for the exact time. And I noticed during the week that my phone was not displaying the correct time even though network synchronisation is enabled.

The only criticisms I would have of my own Wave Ceptor are:

• Although the time is always right, the watch hands are not. You need to adjust them manually
• The particular model I chose has a small digital display which can show the date OR the hour and minutes OR the seconds. When I buy my next one I will want to see all three at once.

I would recommend a Wave Ceptor watch to anyone who is interested in knowing the EXACT time.

Darwin Awards

This is my second posting following on from the story of the gun instructor who was killed by the 9 year old girl.

I first heard about the Darwin Awards back in the 80s.

Every year an email would circulate describing how people managed to do the most ridiculous things that resulted in their deaths. I remember some of the stories being absolutely hilarious.

The name for these awards has the following explanation:

"Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the father of evolution, the Darwin Awards commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it"

Now, of course, there's a website where you can go and see the most popular stories whenever you like.

I don't think the story of the gun instructor will make the list because I get the impression that deaths from gun accidents are just too common.

Snopes.com

My last posting on the accidental killing of a gun instructor leads me on to two other topics.

The first I will cover in this posting and is the excellent website snopes.com. You can see the entry relating to this tragic incident here.

Whenever I hear something which I think cannot be true, I check it on Snopes. And more often than not the story is identified on the site as an "urban legend".

On the site you can research fascinating stories such as these:

Escape artist Harry Houdini died from a ruptured appendix caused by his being punched in the stomach.

There are alligators in the sewers under New York

You might wake up in an ice-filled bath some day with your kidneys missing

My favourite story from the site relates to a story which I was told by a friend who assured me that it was true ("happened to a friend of a friend"). This is the story that kids are kidnapped from shops by people who alter their appearance in some way. Thanks to Snopes I know that this story is not true.

Gun Instructor Killed

On the 25th of August, a gun instructor named Charles Vacca was killed on a range in Arizona by a 9 year old girl who was using an Uzi.

She had successfully fired a single shot under his instruction when he set the weapon to automatic. She lost control of the gun and he was hit, dying a few hours later.

Obviously this is a tragedy for both families.

The surprising thing is that it was reported on radio that the owner of the range had said that there were no issues with safety at the range!

Let me repeat: a nine year old holding and firing an Uzi set on automatic!

Americans and their guns.

The photo below was taken seconds before the tragic accident.

"Friends" Reunion

Fans have been asking for years if the cast of Friends would ever reunite for a movie. Something like the cast of "Sex in the City" did.

Well I'm not sure of the exact reason but the official story is no. Obviously one or more of the key players are against it.

So we will have to settle for what we can get.

And what we have been able to get so far is:

• Jennifer Anison, Matthew Perry, Courtney Cox on Ellen (see it on YouTube here)
• Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow on Jimmy Kimmel

The latter is pretty good (they spent $80K on the set apparently!) and you can see it here:

Last Book of Asimov's Foundation Series

In December of last year I blogged that I was going to read all 15 of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels. In July I blogged that I was on book eleven.

Well it has taken some time, but I am now reading the final novel: "Forward the Foundation".

I should finish it in the coming days and I'll record some of my thoughts on the series here.

Church in Blackrock

This very attractive little church in Blackrock caught my eye as I was passing a few weeks ago. It's on Carysfort Avenue. I had to stop and take a photo.

Birmingham Airport Car Park

I took the photo below in the terminal building in Birmingham airport a few weeks ago.

In the distance you can see what looks like a pile of cars.

In reality it is the car park which seems to be build on a hill.

It looks very weird: check it out if you ever find yourself in the airport.

Sunflower

Malahide is a great place to live. We have everything here.

The other day I was going to work and I spotted this sunflower in someone's garden.

I associate sunflowers with Tuscany and I was delighted to see this fine specimen here in Ireland.

As you can see from the photo, it's a pity I didn't spot it a few days earlier. But was still a lovely surprise.

Pun-ny Business

I couldn't believe my eyes when I passed this van the other day. I had to take a photo of the unbelievable pun:

Poultry in Motion

Genius!

I had to wonder if the founder of the business chose to deliver chickens, etc. just because he/she thought of the pun first. My hat is off to him/her if so.

Software KVM Update

My last posting looked at some software which can allow you to share a mouse and keyboard across PCs. I admitted at the time that I have not tried the products.

I got home early during the week and I had to do some work on my laptop from work. My options were:

1. Work with the laptop screen/keyboard (unacceptable)
2. Switch connect my monitor/screen/keyboard
3. Try out one of the products

I chose option 3.

I tried "Input Director" first. It worked fine and I was delighted with the way you could treat three monitors as if they were connected to the same laptop.

However Input Director did not recover well when the slave laptop came back from sleep mode.

So I installed "Mouse Without Borders".

It was a little tricky at first because it wanted to connect to the second laptop by name (and I don't have DNS at home). But when I mapped the names to IP addresses within the product it worked perfectly, even when one of the laptops went to sleep.

So my vote now is for MWB.

Software KVM

Every now and then you come across an idea in computing that raises the bar in terms of what you think is possible.

A few years ago I found myself with two laptops in my home office, along with a single keyboard, HD monitor and mouse. So I went out to see if I could buy a suitable KVM switch in my local computer shops but I had no luck. In any event, my old laptop was VGA and my new one was HDMI so both could connect to the monitor at the same time already.

And then I discovered the software KVM. What a fantastic idea!

Basically you can simply move your mouse pointer from one monitor to the other (as you do with dual monitors on a single computer) and the keyboard and mouse activity are redirected to the other computer. Genius!

I never got to try it though because I ended up giving my old laptop to my eldest daughter at about that time.

Some of the free products that offer this capability are:

• Input Director
• Synergy
• Mouse without Borders

An impressive aspect of Synergy is that it is cross platform, so you could have a mix of computers running Windows, OS X and Linux.

Some of them have options to ensure that you do not transition to another system by accident. For example, you might specify that you must press a specific key to perform the transition.

And as if all of that wasn't clever enough, all of them support copy and paste between machines!

I guess the day will come when you will be able to move your mouse onto your iPad, your Smartphone, and your Smart TV is the same fashion!

The Death of the Split Pin

I had a problem with the cistern in one of our toilets last week. The float came off the arm and consequently the water kept flowing into the toilet (in fact the cistern started to overflow at one point but luckily I was in the house and was able to stop this before any harm was done).

As part of replacing the float, I needed to replace a split pin (the old one was so corroded that it fell apart when I tried to take it off).

I went to my two local hardware shops (Woodies and B&Q) and neither of them stocks split pins any more! I couldn't believe it!

In fact, I had to explain what a "split pin" was to the people who worked there!

So obviously times have moved on and split pins are a thing of the past.

So I'm including a photo of a split pin below so that they will not be forgotten forever!

BTW: I also used the term "ballcock" (to refer to the float) when I was talking to the people working in the shops and they didn't know that term either!

Dolls for Boys

We went into Spain (specifically San Sebastian) for a day trip when we were in the south of France on holidays this year to meet our friends Alex and Loreto.

The kids wanted to go into a sweet shop. The shop had a "movies" theme and I was blown away by the dolls which they had for sale.

Now I have never been one for dolls, but there were quite a few on sale here that I really liked!

There were quite a few of the Avengers, for example.

But the two I was most impressed with were Brandon Lee from The Crow (one of my all time favourite movies) and his father, Bruce Lee!

Here are picture of these two dolls. They are quite amazing! I didn't buy either of course. Well the price tags of €255 and €190 respectively were probably a factor in that decision!

oCam Screen Recorder

Some time ago I had a requirement to create some training videos for work. I wanted to record what I was doing on screen in tandem with a voice recording.

I guess the best known offerings in this space are Camtasia and Screencast.com.

Well I was looked for something simple and free (with no ads, watermarks, time limits, etc.) and I ended up selecting oCam from Ohsoft.

I think this is an excellent product and it worked really well for me.

It fully supports multiple monitors so I was able to record my primary screen while having the recording controls on my secondary screen.

I would highly recommend it.

BookCrossing.com

I heard about bookcrossing.com years ago from my friend Alex.

The idea, as I understand it, is that you register a book, get a unique ID from the site, write that ID on the book, release the book "into the wild", and then (if you're lucky) you get to track that book as it moves from person to person.

A a lover of books this seems like a great idea to me!

I guess this would work best with a book you bring on holiday and leave in a hotel/resort: that would give the best change of the book ending up somewhere interesting/exotic.

Anyway today I registered 11 books which I will be releasing (to my local St Vincent de Paul shop) at the weekend.

I'll post if I ever hear about them again!

ALS/MND Ice Bucket Challenge

The "Ice Bucket Challenge" has become a phenomenon here in Ireland, as in many other parts of the world. If people aren't doing it then they're talking about it or watching videos of other people doing it!

I was nominated by 2 of my kids but I declined to do it because (a) it was only my kids and (b) my wife had already declined and for me to do it now would seem unchivalrous! So I had to make a donation (most people seem to do both of course)

I have watched quite a few videos myself.

I liked Bill Gates's approach.

I thought Matt Damon was very impressive and thought provoking (as usual).

I thought Kermit the Frog's one was weird!

My least favourite was Charlie Sheen.

My favourite so far was Benedict Cumberbatch:

Trevanian Tour

I will soon be going on my summer holidays to the south of France. For me this is an opportunity to do a Trevanian tour (pilgrimage!)

Included below is a picture from Google Maps which shows the towns and villages which featured in his two Basque books ("Shibumi" and "The Summer of Katya") and which I intend to visit.

I would like to say thanks to Bjorn who explained some of these locations on this web page.

There is a page on the Trevanian website entitled "View from the château of Etchebar looking southeast". I'd like to take a look at that page now but unfortunately the site seems to be down at the moment. Hopefully it will be up again before I travel.

Trevanian's bio on IMDB indicates that he lived in Garindein so I'll need to add that to the route.

I will definitely being those two books with me on the holiday. I wonder if I'll bring my Kindle too (more Asimov books to read, don't you know).

I'll really looking forward to my tour. And I can't be accused of being a stalker if the man in question passed away back in 2005.

I'll post some pictures here when I get back.

Street Performers 2014

Every year we go to see the Street Performers in Merrion Square and every year I blog about it afterwards.

This year it was not called the "World Championships", probably because there was no competition and no voting!

As always it was a great day out. And once again the weather was kind (we went on Sunday).

The acts we saw were (in this order):

• Dan Raspyni (excellent)
• Yukinko Akira (awful)
• Dream State Circus (very good)
• Rob Roy Collins (ok)

Here's a picture of Dream State Circus, with both of them juggling flaming torches while she stands on his head (what some people will do to make a living!)

Mike Hall's Asteroids

Every few years I get some excuse to re-examine the Java source code for Asteroids by Mike Hall. This time it was preparing some Java lessons for CoderDojo.

Two things have always really impressed me about this Java app:

1. It is SUCH a good reproduction of the original game
2. The code is so nicely done

 Mike Hall has a website called brainjar.com.

As well as writing Asteroids, he also did some great work on Dynamic HTML back in the day, including:

• A really good drop-down menu system
• A really good DHTML scroller

I wonder what Mike is doing these days. The footer of his website says "(c) 1999-2014 by Mike Hall" but to be honest I don't think it has changed much since the early 2000's. And things have moved on quite a bit since then!

Anyway, I would recommend playing the game and reading the Java source code to anyone.

Incident at Twenty-Mile

I was in the St Vincent de Paul charity shop in Malahide village at the weekend, dropping off some old clothes and shoes.

I took a peek at the second-hand books (my son Andrew is looking for the Lord of the Rings books) and I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a hardback edition of "Incident at Twenty-Mile" by my favourite author, Trevanian!

Now obviously I already had the book at home (I have all of his books) but as I only had the paperback edition I decided that I had to buy it!

So the photo below shows my new acquisition beside my old one.

As I think back on it, I suspect that my first exposure to Trevanian was buying a second-hand copy of "Shibumi" in a shop in Templebar, many, many moons ago.

Anyway, this is a nice excuse for me to re-read the book (if I can take a break from my Asimov books!).

Suffice versus sufficient

I know someone who uses the following phrase: "that will be suffice".

Suffice is a verb which means "be enough or adequate".

So something cannot "be suffice". Instead it can suffice or it can be sufficient.

Surprisingly, a search on Google for "be suffice" returns over 88,000 hits. So this must be a common mistake.

Researching this did lead me to an interesting article on the relatives merits of "suffice to say, suffice it to say or it suffices to say".

Suffice it to say, this article comes down in favour of my preference of the three options.

Flammable versus Inflammable

I mentioned in a recent post that Isaac Asimov may have made some mistakes in predicting the future.

Well when I was reading one of his books I thought I had found an ACTUAL mistake!

He used to work "inflammable" in a context which clearly meant easily set alight.

So doing a little research on the web quickly reveals that these two words mean the same thing.

Apparently the two words have different (but related) origins in Latin. This is explained here.

The image below shows that this has caused some confusion in Springfield also.

So, of course, Mr Asimov was not wrong at all!

Reading The Three Investigators

I mentioned my love of "The Three Investigators" books in previous posts and how I was going to read them to/with my son.

In July 2012 I mentioned that we had finished the first book.

In November 2012 I mentioned that we had finished the first three books.

Well we are now on book 22.

We had to skip a couple that I didn't have, mind you. Here is the list:

• The Secret of Terror Castle (1964, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Stuttering Parrot (1964, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Whispering Mummy (1965, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Green Ghost (1965, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure (1966, by Robert Arthur)
• The Secret of Skeleton Island (1966, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Fiery Eye (1967, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Silver Spider (1967, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Screaming Clock (1968, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Moaning Cave (1968, by William Arden)
• The Mystery of the Talking Skull (1969, by Robert Arthur)
• The Mystery of the Laughing Shadow (1969, by William Arden)
• The Secret of the Crooked Cat (1970, by William Arden)
• The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon (1970, by Nick West)
• The Mystery of the Flaming Footprints (1971, by M. V. Carey)
• The Mystery of the Nervous Lion (1971, by Nick West)
• The Mystery of the Singing Serpent (1972, by M. V. Carey)
• The Mystery of the Shrinking House (1972, by William Arden)
• The Secret of Phantom Lake (1973, by William Arden)
• The Mystery of Monster Mountain (1973, by M. V. Carey)
• The Secret of the Haunted Mirror (1974, by M. V. Carey)
• The Mystery of the Dead Man's Riddle (1974, by William Arden)

The ones we skipped are in red. I intend to go back and infill them soon.

I am still enjoying them (and I think Andrew is too!)

Here is the cover from my edition of book 22:

Swans at Malahide Estuary

We went around Malahide Estuary today to see the swans. And there were lots of them too.

I took this photo of a small group which included a white swan, a black swan, and 3 cygnets.

They were very cute!

Asimov's Foundation Series

I mentioned in a post back in December that I was going to read the 15 books of Isaac Asimov's Foundation series.

Well I have finished 10 books and I am half way through book 11 (the last book of the original trilogy).

I am enjoying the series very much so far.

But I need to point out 3 areas where (IMHO) Asimov's vision of the future is going to prove very erroneous.

The first is the fact that lots of people smoke. Cigarettes and cigars. That can't be true. I never see anyone smoking in Star Trek or Star Wars. It seems unlikely that this will be commonplace thousands of years in the future.

The second is the delivery of messages by canister: people receive important messages delivered to them in canisters which travel through tubes. Now the canisters themselves are very high-tech apparently (they can be keyed to the recipient's DNA to prevent others from accessing the content) but the idea of messages arriving in a physical format seems crazy.

The third is in relation to the importance of microfilm in the future. Asimov mentions this in a number of his books.

So, in summary, Asimov did not see that smoking was something which would (hopefully) die out and he missed the whole area of the Internet and digital storage.

Well, of course, nobody's perfect!

No jail time for Pat Whelan and William McAteer

I wondered in my last post about the criminal convictions for Pat Whelan and William McAteer "if we will finally see someone behind bars for the criminal activities of this rogue bank".

The answer, at least for now, is no.

The judge has decided that it would be “incredibly unjust” for the two men to spend time in prison.

I see no mention of hefty fines either.

All I can see is that the judge will decide at the end of this month on whether or not community service would be appropriate.

So I don't really know what to say. Sean Fitzpatrick was found not guilty, these two men are guilty but not going to jail, David Drumm continues to hide out in the United States.

Justice is not being served.

Ireland's Eye

It's surprising to me that I have mentioned one island off the coast of Ireland (Garinish) without mentioning the two that I see on a regular basis: Lambay Island and Ireland's Eye.

We went out to Ireland's Eye on a boat from Howth a couple of years ago. Unlike Garinish, it's completely wild and desolate but it still makes a nice day trip.

We were in Howth last weekend and I took this picture of the island from the old (East) pier.

Dean Swift Road

I grew up in Dean Swift Road, in Dublin 11.

We were in the area recently and the kids asked me to drive by the house where I grew up. I took this photo of the sign at the top of the road.

Dean Swift is, of course, a reference to the Irish author Jonathan Swift who wrote Gulliver's Travels. Swift became Dean of St Patrick's Cathedral, where he was buried on his death in 1745.

I guess I should have, but I have never read Gulliver's Travels. And, to be frank, it's not on my reading list.

Billboard with amazing 3D writing

I saw this billboard in my local train station in Malahide a while ago. It is advertising the "Newstalk" radio station. I had to stop and take a photo because the the 3D effect on the headline was so good. But it is just a shadow, albeit a very well executed one.

First BASIC Program

I mentioned in a recent post that BASIC is 50 years old.

I can't remember the first BASIC program I entered into my Apple II computer when I got it but I captured the screen below on the AppleWin emulator and I'll bet this wasn't very far from it.

Back in those days the convention of using "Hello World" had not been established. So I would probably have either used "Hello" as I illustrate below or I would have just printed the current value of X.

The AppleWin emulator is available to download here.

Notes:

• As you can see below, the Apple II emulator starts in the "Monitor" language. I had to access the Redbook Reference Manual (available here) in order to remind myself how to get into Integer BASIC (it's Ctrl-B by the way). 
• You can see that there is a bug in my short 3 line program. Integer BASIC would have been much happier if I had added the following line: 40 END

Glen Campbell

I mentioned that Glen Campbell's Wichita Lineman is one of my all-time favourite songs in a previous posting.

I happened upon this nice video today which talks about his career and his Alzheimer's condition.

The part I didn't realise was this:

In 1963 alone,  Campbell performed on nearly 600 cuts for other artists. He played guitar for Frank Sinatra on "Strangers in the Nigh"; for The Monkees on "I'm a Believer"; and for The Beach Boys on many of their recordings. And when Brian Wilson took time off from the band, Campbell filled in for six months.

You can watch the piece here:

Tetris is 30 years old

The computer game Tetris was released on June 6th, 1984 and went on to be a worldwide hit on computers and consoles.

He It was developed by Alexey Pajitnov who was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow. He wrote it originally on an Elektronika 60, which was a terminal computer developed in the Soviet Union,

The genius of the game is that it is so simple. There are just 7 different shapes that fall and which you must rotate so that they form complete lines. Simple and yet compelling.

And even though the game was designed and developed 30 years ago, it is, of course, perfect for smartphones!

I found out about the anniversary because (the fantastic) Ian Dempsey mentioned it on his morning radio programme. He indicated that he has spent many hours playing it.

So 30 years on the game is still ubiquitous. A search on my new Android phone tells me that there are more than 250 matching apps. A search on scratch.mit.edu says that there are about 1,990 results!

If you would like to play Tetris (to celebrate the anniversary) then here are 2 pretty good Scratch versions:

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/2767355/
http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/2569483/

Here is a picture of the latter version:

"When Doves Cry" by Prince is 30 years old

The fabulous "When Doves Cry" was released by Prince on May 16th 1984.

The track is taken from "Purple Rain" which is one of my two favourite albums of all time.

Purple Rain the album was released on June 25th. Purple Rain the movie was released on July 27th in the USA and on August 31st here in Ireland.

I had seen a feature on Prince on some TV programme (I think it was on BBC 2) before any of this happened and I was really looking forward to the movie release. But when I first heard "Doves Cry" I was completely blown away. It truly is a work of genius.

There is some interesting background information on the album here.

BASIC is 50 years old

The BASIC programming language turned 50 on the 1st of May this year.

BASIC was first successfully used to run programs on the school’s General Electric computer system at 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964. It was invented by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. They are shown in the photo below with one of their students.

BASIC is an acronym, standing for "Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code".

You can see the manual for this first version of BASIC here.I particularly like the section on the use of "teletype typewriters"! That first version had a very limited number of commands, including the infamous GOTO!

But, in my opinion, BASIC played a critical role in the Personal Computer revolution. Every computer came with some form of BASIC. My own first computer, an Apple II, came with "Integer BASIC" in ROM (written by the genius who is Steve Wozniak) and "Applesoft BASIC" (written my Microsoft) on cassette tape. And everyone who bought a person computer entered programs in BASIC (often transcribing them from books and magazines).

Without BASIC, what would have been fuelling this desire to write programs on your own computer? COBOL? Pascal? FORTRAN? Forth? Logo? ALGOL? Lisp? It's hard to imagine. (Java, by the way, wasn't to make an appearance until many years later in 1995)

And of course Assembler would be out of the question (too complex, and no practical ability to share code across different computers).

There is a nice video on this part of computer history on the Dartmouth website here.

Anniversaries

There have been a number of significant anniversaries recently.

Three to be specific.

I intend to blog about them in the upcoming posts.

I'm going to do them in the order in which they happened, but this also reflects their order of importance.

New Phone - HTC One

I decided to replace my ageing Samsung Galaxy S2 the other day.

My kids wanted me to go for an iPhone but (given my relationship with App Inventor through CoderDojo) I was determined to stick with Android. They were completely shocked that I wasn't going for an iPhone when they heard that I could get the 4S model for "free".

I got my decision down to either a Samsung S4 or a HTC One pretty quickly. But then I found it hard to make the final selection.

In the end I did abandon Samsung though, and I bought the HTC.

I couldn't tell you exactly why I did that - I was very happy with my Samsung after all.

This may have been a factor: The card beside the Samsung said that it supported NFC. I wanted NFC because App Inventor supports it and I like the idea of experimenting with NFC tags.

The card beside the Samsung did not mention NFC. So I looked at the shops brochure. No mention of NFC at all. So I asked the staff. They has no idea, looked up their website, and still had no idea.

I went to the Samsung shop elsewhere in the shopping centre and they confirmed that the S4 does indeed have NFC. But I guess I had already started to drift towards the HTC at that stage.

The second negative for the S4 was the fact that the S5 is available. So I would be buying a model behind - which is never good news.

I'll undoubtedly revisit the topic of my new phone in upcoming posts as I get used to it.

Weather App YR.NO

I mentioned a prediction from the YR.NO app in my last post.

The prediction was fairly accurate.

I say "fairly" because there was a very small fall of rain/sleet shortly after I made the posting!

But it was pretty accurate overall.

In fact, I find YR.NO to be pretty accurate for rainfall and I have come to depend on it when deciding whether or not a coat is needed when I am heading out to work.

Dublin weather

My favourite weather app, YR.NO, tells me that there will be no rain tonight, almost none tomorrow, and then none for the next 3 days.

Let's wait and see!

It's only May of course, but I can't help remembering the 3 great days last year when I went to work in my shirtsleeves. No jacket, no coat, no umbrella. Happy days indeed!

Dublin Castle

I love Dublin Castle. I mentioned it previously in conjunction with the annual display of sand sculptures.

I was there last Friday for the Scratch Competition 2014 finals.

I was surprised to find myself in a new (to me) and lovely part of the castle. Included below is a picture I took on my phone. The place is full of surprises!

Domhnall Gleeson in Star Wars

I was delighted to hear that Domhnall Gleeson has landed a role in the new Star Wars movie.

He's a great actor, and seems like a nice guy. And he grew up here in Malahide, a 15 minute walk from where I live.

I saw him on "The Late Late Show" a few days before his casting was announced. He was on with Michael Fassbender and Lenny Abrahamson talking about "Frank". I don't know how he was able to keep from bursting out with the news!

I just hope J.J. is able to do a better job than he has with the Star Trek reboot.

Here is a shot from a reading apparently with lots of the key players (Domhnall included) present:

Shaky Camera

I mentioned shaky camera work in my last posting, so I need to mention the worst ever example, IMHO.

I loved "The Bourne Identity", directed by Doug Liman. He held the camera as steady as a rock while Jason Bourne (Matt Damon) was fighting, as so gave us some fantastic fight scenes.

Then along came Paul Greengrass with Supremacy and Ultimatum.

Those movies are great, don't get me wrong, but the fight scenes are rubbish. I hope nobody spent much time choreographing them, training for them, or rehearsing them because you can't see anything. Complete waste of time.

My favourite fight scene is in the American embassy. Here's a (very small, unfortunately) still from just before this kicks off:

The Raid 2 Berandal

Went to see "The Raid 2" last week.

My overwhelming thoughts were:

1) It's long! 2 hours 30 minutes. The showing started at 9 PM and by the time it was over, I had already missed my last train.

2) It's no date movie! It must be the most violent movie I have ever seen,

3) There is little connection with "The Raid".  It picks up after the first movie, sure. And Iko Uwais is still playing the character of Rama. But apart from that...

4) It's excellent. The fight scenes are amazing. The action sequences are great. The acting is first rate. It looks great.

5) It's complicated. There are still a few subtleties I don't get. And the FAQ on IMDB is blank so far.

6) It's very much an ensemble piece. I was shocked from time to time at how long it had been since Iko has been on screen.

7) There a "nods" to lots of other movies and genres. Good fun. My favourite I think was what I took to be a nog to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon just before the big prison fight.

8) I didn't like the fact that the camera seemed to be shaking much more during the fight sequences. I think Gareth Evans and the team were trying to achieve something here. Sometimes it worked, sometimes now.

9) I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

Here is a nice shot of Gareth and Iko:

Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon II: The Green Destiny

Just found out that they're making a prequel to one of the best martial arts movies of all time: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Apparently it will hit the cinemas next year.

My wife would be very excited but for the fact that there is no mention of Chow Yun-Fat!

The good news is that the following are involved (in order of my importance):

• Michelle Yeoh
• Donnie Yen
• Yuen Woo-ping

The bad news is that there is no mention of any of the following (again in my order of importance):

• Chow Yun-Fat
• Ang Lee
• Jet Li
• Zhang Ziyi
• James Schamus
• Yo-Yo Ma
• Tan Dun

I guess we will just have to wait and see.

What Page of Google Am I On?

Here's a handy tool:
http://whatpageofsearchamion.com


It will tell you where you feature on Google results.

Here is an example showing where my blog entry appears for a search with "Trevanian movie":

So I'm on page 5.

Very nice tool. Very nicely done.

No news on Trevanian

I posted two stories on Trevanian a while back and I have been checking to see if there is any update on either.

The sad news is that there is not.

There is no further update on the making of the movie based on Satori. By the time it gets made, Leonardo DiCaprio will be far too old to play Hel!

And there is no update from Alexandra Whitaker on progress with completing "Street of the Four Winds". In fact, I cannot see any sign of any recent updates on her website.

Ah well: we must be patient I suppose.

If I had one wish, though, it would be this:  I wish that Alexandra, or one of her family, would share more information about the great man. We learned a lot from "The Crazy Ladies of Pearl Street" but that only told the first part of his life story. There is so much more that we, his fans, want to know!

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

I watched the first hour of "Anchorman 2" this evening.

Now if you've already seem the movie, I know what you're wondering: why did I watch a whole hour?

To be honest I don't really know. I guess I kept on thinking: "it has to get funny soon".

But it didn't.

Needless to say, I won't be watching the second hour.

IMDB gives it a score of 6.6. I wonder why?

Normally I would put a photo here in the post. In this case I'm afraid that won't be possible.

Anglo Irish Bank: Sean FitzPatrick

I mentioned in my last post that Sean FitzPatrick was found not guilty in his first criminal trial.

I wonder if this means that he is innocent of any wrongdoing?

Let's examine some of the evidence.

Fitzpatrick was the CEO of the bank from 1986 until 2005, when he became its chairman. He was chairman until he resigned in December 2008 as details emerged of secret loans (more than €100 million!) he had taken out with the bank.

So he presided over this bank during a period of unprecedented growth. The following chart shows the growth in share price over some of this period:

 It is clear in hindsight (and was pretty clear at the time if I'm being honest) that much of this growth was due to imprudent lending practices.

Professor Patrick Honohan (an economist who was appointed Governor of the Central Bank of Ireland in September 2009) had the following to say in 2009:

"A very simple warning sign used by most regulators to identify a bank exposed to increased risk is rapid balance sheet growth. An annual real growth rate of 20% is often taken as the trigger. Each of the locally-controlled banks had at least one year in which this threshold was triggered. One of them, Anglo Irish Bank, crossed it in eight of nine years, and indeed its average annual rate of growth 1998-2007 was 36 per cent. Another, Irish Nationwide, crossed the line six out of the nine years, for an average rate of growth over the nine years of just above 20%. So this was a very obvious and public danger sign not only for these two banks, but because of the potentially destabilising effect of reckless competition on the entire sector. The rapid growth in the market share of Anglo Irish (from 3 to 18% of the total assets of the six locally-controlled institutions that subsequently received the Government guarantee) was certainly an important influence inducing the other banks to relax lending terms to avoid losing even more market share."

Professor Honohan's last sentence here is very mildly phrased: I prefer to think of Anglo as a cancer which which was affecting the Irish banking sector and the wider economy.

He was the chairman of the bank at the time (2008) when the following took place:

• The crimes of which Whelan and McAteer have just been convicted (July)
• The 6-7 billion Euro "B&B transfers" between Irish Life & Permanent and Anglo (September) which have not yet come to trial

So did he know about these things? It is interesting to note that Judge Nolan noted during the case that FitzPatrick was “the chairman of the board and not in the office every day”

It has been my experience that companies have an ethos and a culture, and that these come from the leadership. We have learned quite a bit about the culture of Anglo, especially from the infamous tapes.

If FitzPatrick did not know about any of these illegal activities, then he created the environment in which they could take place. He set the tone and the agenda. He hired the people.

It seems incredible to me that when (if?!) FitzPatrick examines his own conscience, he is unable to find anything which causes him remorse and disquiet for his future.