Frightful Bish

What’s the deal with "glossy" screens making a comeback? It seems like only ten or fifteen years ago we were welcoming anti-glare coated screens with open arms because you could see something on the display other than a reflection of your shirtfront shining back at you. (Hoorah for optical brighteners!)

And does anyone else remember all the fluorescent light fittings in offices changing to those downlighter things so that screens didn’t reflect all the tubes?

Well it was all for naught, because I popped into my local computer retail store the other day to find all the "premium" laptops equipped with highly polished displays. Not only that, but Apple and Dell (see links above) are at it too. Tsk, tsk. Must be the fashion I suppose.

I wonder if it’s time to dig out those old bell-bottom flares yet?

Upgraded one of the test systems at the university to SITS:Vision version 8.1.0 last week. New Uniface (9.0) and everything. It seems ages since we had a look and feel update and this release certainly has a nice fresh appearance about it, especially the tree-style menu (which no-one but me uses here it seems). Favourites and everything, Windows-y toolbar buttons. We won’t know ourselves!

There were one or two gaps in the upgrade documentation - must report those - where it fails to convey which version of Uniface needs to be running where, and when, during the upgrade, and I still have one outstanding call  about the server info facility not being able to find some basic Unix commands like “id” and “uname”, but on the whole it was a lot less painful that the last Uniface upgrade, so progress is certainly being made.

Come on you SITS/Tribal folks. We’re liking what you do.

I am pleased to report that the planetarium visit was really very good. If I were to be at all wise after the event I would say I would say that I would have preferred to see more action from the star projector itself, but hey, we did go to a presentation on moons so there were a lot of “slide” projections of moon pictures, albeit on the inside of the dome. BishWife went to sleep.

The presenter was very good though. Talked for a whole hour on his subject without any appreciable ummig and erring or, given how dark it was, referring much to any notes. There was an interesting edict given at the beginning of the session for children to take off any shoes containing flashing LEDs. Apparently it is so dark in the dome that the light quite spoils the show!

Anyway it’s an interesting setup once you’ve found your way there by some very dubious roads. Based in what looks like an old barn, apart from the dome itself the attractions feature a waxworks of Sir Patrick Moore on loan from Madame Tussuad’s in London, several old telescopes, a cabinet full of meteorites, a model of the solar system of course, and a plethora of cosmic posters. Upstairs, there’s a library and computer suite where various astronomical and satellite programs run for the edification of visitors.

But most impressive of course is the projector itself: a huge black structure resembling nothing so much as a giant ant, bristling with lenses and attachments of unknown purpose, which swivels, tilts and revolves in various configurations to project an entire night sky on the inside of the dome. Really very convincing when the lights are out. The seats appear to be recycled from aircraft, in blocks of three, arranged in three concentric circular rows. Quite comfy. Did I mention BishWife went to sleep?

By fantastic coincidence there was also the most amazing sliver of new moon hanging in the sky in front of us on the drive over, a bit like this picture from stargazing.net. I can hardly recall seeing such a teeny, tiny slice. What BishBro4 might have called in his youth a “toenail moon”. Quite so.

So yes, do go, but go on a night when the star projector is operating. I suspect you will not be disappointed.

PS. No evidence of a G8 summit taking place on any of the moons in our solar system I’m sorry to say.

BishWife and I both had birthdays last week. It’s jolly convenient having them so close together as it’s virtually impossible for us to forget each other’s.

My thanks of course go to those who gave cards and pressies to mark the occasion, and those who were able to pay a visit to Bish Towers and share a spot of lunch. I took the day of BishWife’s birthday off, and we spent the day in town mooching around eating and drinking before it was time to pick up the MiniBishes from school. Bless them, I do think they enjoy our birthdays even more than we do!

My main present this year is a trip (with the family, natch) to the local planetarium. Yes, we have one. As I write this I am willing an Oracle upgrade to finish in double-quick time so that I can leave and rush off to get home in time to eat before we go. Apparently the presentation will be about moons of the solar system - sounds intriguing.

More to follow after the event.

Come on, come on, upgrade your Java Packages, darn you!

Here’s something I never knew existed: fore-edge painting. I stumbled across this in the local library recently, where they had a display of such works by an artist called Martin Frost.

I’ll attempt a description.

• Take a fat paperback book.
• Hold it face up (closed) with the spine in your left hand and the opening edge in your right.
• Fold the spine down and under until it faces the floor.
• Note that the pages on the opening edge have fanned out so that a tiny sliver of each is exposed, creating a largish surface.
• Fore-edge painting involves painting a picture on that surface.
• When you shut the book the picture disappears.

Aha, you say, but won’t you see a painty mess on the closed edges? Well yes, you would, but if you then gild the edge the painty mess disappears leaving just a shiny gold face. It’s fantastic!

A picture paints a thousand words and video paints several pictures a second, so check out the examples on Martin’s web site. It’s even more amazing when another picture is painted on the other side of the pages so you have two hidden paintings in one book. How very clever.

Even more surprising is that when I rushed home and explained this discovery to BishWife, she said “Oh yes, Martin Frost. I remember him explaining to me what he did once.” Turns out they are acquainted through her Morris dancing activities. Small world.

It would be easy to become insecure faced with the tide of penis enlargement and erectile dysfunction remedies that flood into my inbox every day despite the attempts of spam filters to keep them at bay. I just have to keep reminding myself that spammers simply acquire lists of email addresses from random sources, and that their campaigns are not carefully targeted.

Having said that, I don’t get significant amounts of spam about breast enlargement, which means one of two things.:

1. The mailing lists are presumed from their source to be predominantly male oriented. Rightly or wrongly, if they are from a technical bulletin board, for example, they might be thought to be composed mostly of men.
2. There is no room for snake-oil around breast enlargement any more. When you can open any newspaper, phone directory  or magazine and find expensive adverts for surgical procedures, why would you prefer to trust an unsolicited email that tells you a herbal pill is the thing for you?

I much prefer to believe the second option. The spammer blasts out as many messages as possible in the hope that some will reach those unfortunate charlies who think that if penis enlargement were really possible by taking a pill it wouldn’t make the front page of every tabloid newspaper and be the talk of the western world. That’s right Charlie, there really is a successful tablet but nobody’s talking about it except spammers.

Anyway it’s amusing to see just how many ways there are of saying the same thing. I’m ashamed to have spent as much time thinking about this as I already have, but if I weren’t it would be entertaining to see all the subject lines collected into a list. I’m sure someone’s already done it.

And if you’re female and thinking of commenting “Ha, now you men know what us women have been facing over our body image since time immemorial!”, then go ahead. You’re probably right.

And if you’re either gender and thinking “No smoke without fire!”, then kindly keep your smutty thoughts to yourself.

Seems like forever that I’ve been working on a web-based task for the university to allow students to reply online to Awards Ceremony invitations. The fly in the ointment (or sand in the Vaseline if you prefer) was that the university charges guests of students to attend. We hold the ceremony off-campus as we don’t have anywhere large enough, and hence have to cover the (enormous) cost of the venue.

It was a long and painful wait while the university signed up with a payment service provider, and then a real slog to work out how to integrate that with our student records software, which manages the ceremony invitations and replies. This is the first time we’ve attempted to create a task that calls out to another web site and then accepts a call back to complete the task once payment has been made. Also there were other ups and downs as we tried to decide how these students, who have left and therefore had their accounts disabled, could be permitted to access the web site to carry out the task, and what the ramifications might be on other services. On top of that we’ve had to learn a lot about browser security issues to try and maintain a trusted connection (showing a padlock icon) through three different sites so that users feel safe entering their card details. A big hat tip to all m’colleagues who have helped this to what I hope will be a successful conclusion.

To cut a long story short, today we finally signed it off into the Live system and it will open next week for a pilot on the February ceremonies. I’m sure we’ll find a few things we’ve missed, but we’ve done a pretty good job of thinking it out I believe. Now I have to document the beast of course, and then I can finally get on with some of the other jobs that have been demanding time but got pushed to the periphery during the Big Push. Kitkats all round I think!

Of course that’s not quite the end of it either. We’ll be doing it all slightly differently for the summer ceremonies and we’ve got to find ways round a couple of compromises we’ve had to make for the pilot. It all makes work for the working man to do.

Arguably, one of the problems of getting older is that there’s less new stuff to amaze and delight the mind. I’ve just added a new hero to my heroes page, in the person of Professor Edward Tufte, a man who talks an awful lot of sense about statistical displays, of all things.

I know what you’re thinking: what could be less interesting than statistical displays, right? Well give the man a chance, and have a look at his first book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. In particular, look at the astonishing graphic by Joseph Minard of Napoleon’s 1812 Russian Campaign, which Prof. Tufte holds up as probably the best statistical graphic ever drawn. It makes the blood run cold to look at it. He has several more examples of staggeringly clever displays too, and some horrors from the other end of the scale. Really thought-provoking stuff which has definitely affected the way I layout and think about information.

I mention Prof. Tufte as someone who, through his book found by chance in the library, introduced me to a world that I didn’t really know existed. And that quite recently, giving the lie to my opening statement. Whatever.

Harking back a little, hearing for the first time O Superman by Laurie Anderson was a similar eye-opening, mind-broadening experience. Back in 1981 I would have attained the tender age of seventeen, so I’d heard a fair bit of music, but this was from another planet! And it has endured. Big Science survived my CD collection purge of a few years back, and playing it again tonight whilst contemplating this post (they’re not just thrown together you know), I wondered if actually I should already change my Inheritance Track choice and pass O Superman on to the MiniBishes as a track that shook the mind of Bish in his formative years.

Vive la difference. I wonder what new, unimagined worlds of interest lie ahead?

I followed a schoolgirl through the automatic ticket barriers at the station this morning. She fed her ticket into the machine only to be presented with the inscrutable illuminated message “Seek assistance child”. She probably didn’t appreciate its deep significance as she was hurrying for a bus and it meant she had to go and beg the gate attendant to let her out, but it was not wasted on me.

I wonder if perhaps they could load the barriers with other fortune cookie-style messages? Does anyone remember the old Unix fortune program that could be invoked to give a pithy saying at login each day? I remember:

“Better hope you get what you want before you stop wanting it.”

“Never eat yellow snow”.

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds.”

“Never lay leapfrog with a unicorn.”

And so ad infinitum. Surely it would be rather fun to have one of those pop up in front of each commuter for them to consider on the walk to the office?

Also reminds me of a work colleague of mine from times past who collected the advice from food and drug packets, thinking that several of them were good maxims to live by:

“Keep out of the reach of children.”

“Keep out of direct sunlight.”

“Do not mix with detergents.”

“Shake well.”

As yes, there is much to ponder here, grasshopper.

Apparently British scientists are recommending that we (Britain) send men (or possibly women) to the moon. It seems that after the initial excitement of getting there, everyone kind of gave up because it was, er, rather dull there. No atmosphere.

I’ve an idea. Why don’t we save up and hold the next G8 summit on the moon? These people are, after all, making some pretty big decisions about the future of our planet for us. What better than to do that from a place where you can actually see the whole planet and its place in the universe? Tell me that won’t make a difference to their perspective.