David's Blog

I need a new word! So here is aptoblique

2012-01-21T11:11:00.002Z

In boardgames the phrase horizontally or vertically but not diagonally crops up frequently. As in "these pieces can move" or the "squares are connected. ", so I've taken the latin for connected asnd sideways aptus and oblique, portmanteau'd them and shortened them to aptoblique. So if two pieces can move aptobliquely they can move horizontally or vertically but not diagonally.

Has My PC A Virus?

2011-11-18T17:14:00.004Z

I've seen this before (the Spooler servive has eaten 2 1/4GB of ram) and it's easily fixed by switching to Services tab and stopping then starting Spooler.

This only happens after I've printed something a few hours earlier. I'm running Microsoft Security Essentials and it's uptodate.

On the other hand it may be just a faulty driver for Windows 7 for my HP Laserjet 1018 with a pernicious time bomb memory leak. If you do know, please tell!

Out with the old

2011-11-18T17:04:00.004Z

So it's bye bye to Portent.org, my five year old blog on interesting things. I'm not sure what will happen as I've sold it, the domain name and the twitter hashtag.

New in is fiction writing, an experimental fiction writing site for me to play and practise and gratis which is about free things. Software currently but this will probably change.

First Page Result on Google in 5 Days!

2010-11-10T06:59:00.006Z

This is a genuine screen shot of the first page of results showing it in 2nd place.

Out of curiosity I searched for the phrase writers q & a on Google.com yesterday. (Tuesday November 10th 2010). This is the writers.im domain I had registered on Friday 5th November 2010 and setup Q2A over the weekend. Depending on which PC or iPhone I look on, it ranges from 1st to 9th (i.e. on the first page) out of 17 million.

Try it yourself- search on Google (or just click writers q and a).

Of course realistically it doesn't matter where it comes in search results if those results aren't what people are searching for. For instance if I search Google for writers then http://writers.im does not appear in the first ten pages. I wasn't expecting it to. I was just amazed that a new domain/website could get a very high search result in 5 days especially for a .im domain.

Writers.im - Any questions?

2010-11-06T19:11:00.005Z

Continuing in a very creative mood, I've today setup Writers Q & A, a website for people to post questions and answers on writing and writers. The intention is to have something similar to the programmers Q & A website stackoverflow.com, but for writers.

Although I'm a part time technical writer on About.com, I've dabbled with fiction (and sci-fi) writing over the years and really want to develop it more; it's an itch i have to scratch but it's in my metaphorical back where I can't reach it. Writers.im is a small step towards that goal. I figure if I give a little I get a little! So it's completely free, no ads. It's an experiment which if it fails costs me very little.

I'm a bit Tied Up

2010-08-14T09:24:00.003+01:00

Thanks to ShoeString Laces Ltd for a very fast turnround. I ordered two pairs of shoelaces on Thursday and they arrived today. If you need shoelaces, I recommended them. From a happy customer!

I write like Cory Doctorow

2010-08-03T22:48:00.005+01:00

That is according to iwl.me. A free site, it let's you paste or type in a block of text and then analyses it to see whose writing style it closest resembles. I tried it twice, posting two different longish blocks from this blog. The first time I was like er Dan Brown ( I wish, Kerching!) The second time I got Cory Doctorow, a slightly less well known Sci-Fi author who is a nice guy; he has replied to some of my emails in the past. Oddly enough he didn't send me any money but that's likely because I didn't ask.

Who knows, he says "Tonight Mathew I could be Chekhov" if I adopt a new writing style. Or donning my programming hat, I could be Markov Chain whose elegant if idiotic and meaningless phrases have helped spammers bypass a million filters.

I write like
Cory Doctorow

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

iPhone 3G Battery Weirdness

2010-07-25T09:42:00.003+01:00

Before getting an iPhone 4 I upgraded my 3G to IOS 4 and used it for several weeks and noticed that sometimes when charging it, the battery indicator didn't update, even after a couple of hours or all night. This seems to happen when charging from the mains.

It's either a bug with the IOS 4 software particular to 3G or there's something not right between chargers.

How to Correct the Indicator
(1) Reset the iPhone. i.e. hold both buttons down until the "slide to power off" swipe appears and then switch it off and restart.

or

(2) Plug it into a Computer with iTunes and charge it.

New Software and Books

2010-07-24T10:58:00.004+01:00

A big day for new software. I'm now running Office 2010 at home and in conjunction with a paid subscription iPhone/iPad App ($15 a year) called MobileNoter I can now synchonise Office 2010 OneNote notes with my iPhone/iPad. This looks very well done, it all worked smoothly (apart from the Wifi Access- I'm not sure why as my Windows Forewall is open and the iPhone picked up the Pc's name and the Bonjour service is running) but currently it won't synch over Wifi. It's not that important as it syncs over the Cloud service.

Apple still I think have a problem in recognising that people do want to do some work on the iPhone/iPad and that the methods for copying stuff to PCs/Macs in a word suck mega bigtime. Unless you have DropBox, you need to send emails or sync via iTunes. So other solutions like MobileNoter have stepped in but they shouldn't have to really...

Also my friends at Packt Publishing are sending me "Flash 10 Multiplayer Game Essentials" to review so that will appear on David Bolton in a week or two. As it's Flash, I couldn't really review it on my About C,C++ and C# column. Creating multi-player games is my current non-work interest (and writing for About)

ID Cards- Why Do We Need them?

2009-07-11T13:32:00.004+01:00

I saw an article on the Home Office website about why we need them, the truth is we don't (or the National Identity Register either) so I wrote an article about Why we need ID cards - We don't. The idea is to try and knock the Home Office article off the top spot for the phrase why do we need id cards. Feel free to link to my article, if you do please include that phrase in the link.

This is the linking html you can use.

<a href="http://dhbolton.com/articles/why-we-need-id-cards.html" title="Link to Why we Ned ID cards - we don't">Why we need ID cards</a>

When in April 2009?

2009-05-02T09:14:00.003+01:00

I really like the Multiflex web templates designed by Pastor Gerhardt on http://www.1234.info/. I used one on the online property auction site http://getset2move.com, but looking at 1-2-3-4.info, I think they are a trifle optimistic about the date! (Highlighted in the red box April 31, 2009).

Much Better Spirit of Christmas!

2008-12-24T16:56:00.003Z

Coming home on the Central Line today around 2.00 pm and this nice bloke was giving away Quality Street sweets on the tube. No catch, no charge, just a gesture of good will at Christmas.

I had a sweet and took his photo. Sir I salute you! Merry Christmas!

English- as she is Bespoken!

2008-12-20T09:46:00.005Z

This at least made me chuckle, also in Canary Wharf. (Hey I work there!). The sentence in capitals on the white banner. "Allegra will be signing books bespokely"! She looks quite cute but I bet she is bespoken for...

Spirit of Christmas - Canary Wharf

2008-12-20T09:41:00.002Z

This photo- taken of a Christmas tree* in the Canary wharf says everything you need to know about the UK in the 21st century. Bah Humbug!

*Every Christmas tree and hanging decorations in Canary Wharf has one of these. Nice eh, the bastardisation of a bauble with a CCTV message!

Sat here in a pub

2008-08-21T18:53:00.002+01:00

Out tonight having a drink.

Mispellings in TV Adverts

2008-05-25T14:55:00.006+01:00

With a product name like Cillit Bang, (Silly Name!) I suppose it was to be expected but I saw an Ad today on Sky One (about 14:10 pm GMT+1) with a big bad spelling mistake. I wasn't even paying much attention but as it flashed past something must have registered so I rewound and paused it.. et voila.

The top photo was the full screen advert (as seen on a Sky+ Box) and the bottom is an expanded version of the bottom right part of the screen. "Stainless Steal!". Er chaps, you mean "Stainless Steel"?

Argos screw up a purchase reservation!

2007-12-30T16:39:00.000Z

Yesterday my wife reserved three items on their website, to be collected within 48 hours from one of their stores in East London. She received an email confirming that the three items were reserved and would be held until the end of tomorrow.

Today we traipsed down to pick them up. 3.00 o'clock at Argos on a holiday Sunday- almost an entire outer circle of hell to itself. It took 5 minutes sat in the car park just to get a parking spot.

Anyway they screwed up. So much for three items reserved. They only had two. The other was 'Out of Stock' according to their staff. So here we have a no doubt expensive stock/booking system which gets it wrong.

Presumably at some point the branches stock figures were matched against reservations and the system should have realised that a reserved item would be out of stock? So why no notification, apology or anything?

I tried their phone line support. Getting through to a human was an achievement, however she might as well have not been there. Full marks to her for passing me to another number where the staff had long finished for the day. But a waste of my time (on an 0870 number- gee thanks Argos).

So I have used their online email system to send an email that should glow white hot with ire (polite, no bad language but firm). Watch this space... I wonder if anyone in Argos land ever checks the web for good/bad customer feedback?

I made top ten for C++ Programming on Google!

2007-10-26T08:45:00.000+01:00

Writing for About.com (see previous post) isn't done just for love; they do pay and that depends upon how many people visit the site. Which means I have to write stuff that people want to read and also apply a bit of SEO magic to make sure it's found for what people are actually searching for.

Well my C++ column (including C and C#) is now at #9 on the first page of google for c++ programming. Getting to #1 position will be a lot lot harder. In fact staying in the top ten won't be that easy!

Now I just have to work out how to get something that people on Digg and Reddit want to read...

Rock, Scissors and Paper Contest

2007-09-22T09:05:00.000+01:00

My other hat is writing the About C, C++ and C# website for About.com- the New York Times owned website. I'm one of their 600 guides who write for them.

One of the interesting things I've been doing there is running the Rock, Scissors and Paper (RSP) contest- it's free and open to anyone and new players can join anytime between now and Christmas. It's not the easiest to let developers use all three languages to write bots to play RSP but I managed it.

Each week, every bot in the contest plays every other bot in a 100 hand match. All wins are totalled up and that determines the ranking.

What I did was develop a C# Winforms application that uses a dll for each bot. I've done the hard bit and provided a full skeleton dll for C, C++ and C# that anyone can download and flesh out; just fill in the function bodies, the move logic goes in the GetMove() function. I wrote a C# wrapper for the C and C++ bots which wraps the dll calls in a class- it looks like this:

   public class bot
         {
      public const int botnum = 1;
      const string dll = "c:\\ongoing\\dlls\\skeleton1.dll";

      [DllImport(dll,
      CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
      public static extern string GetBotName(); // returns name of your Bot

      [DllImport(dll,
      CallingConvention = CallingConvention.Cdecl,CharSet=CharSet.Ansi)]
      public static extern char
         GetMove([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)]String S,
         [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPStr)]String S2); // return move

.. others trimmed for shortness
      }

Note the marshalling attributes - the dlls use cdecl, it's ansi chars (8 bit as C# uses Unicode) and the strings are passed as lpstr. A string in C is just an array of 8 bit chars.

This function GetMove passes in the previous hands (in this match against one bot) so you can see what your bot played and what the opponent played. After each week I publish the results and a file containing all bots moves- eg this was the match between bot 1 and 5. 1 won 29 times, 5 won 33. Below this are the strings which I've trimmed to fit this.

1 v 5 29 33
1 SSSRSSSRSRRRSSRSRRRRRRRRR.....PPSPSRSS
5 PSSPRRSPSSPPRSPSSSPSSSSPP.....SSSRSSRP

You can see the full file this came from: Week 6 results It's just a text file, generated by the application.

So if you fancy entering- remember it's free just follow this link:
Rock, Scissors and Paper Contest

Hard Disk Woes

2007-08-10T07:10:00.000+01:00

Over the years I must have bought maybe 15 hard disks of increasing capacity. Most have been very reliable (I did drop one in 1999 which slowly deteriorated over a 6 month period with increasing numbers of bad sectors). But two I have bought recently have acquired bad sectors in a short period of time.

One is an external 160 GB 2.5" disk. I bought this from Freecom whose disk enclosures are excellent- internally it was a Samsung disk. The first problem was my own stupidity. I left the cable plugged in to the enclosure USB socket (it was a micro USB) while it was moved and it snapped the socket off the interface motherboard. It was very tiny- 5 pins so couldn't be soldered back on.

I found an Irish firm Nexxons selling cheap 2.5" enclosures on Ebay and transplanted the disk from the elegant Freecom case (invalidating the Freecom warranty of course) into one of those. Freecom would have replaced the entire thing but I would have lost some recently unbacked up data. Their technical support are excellent but they told me they send the damaged stuff off to Germny so you have no chance of recovering data.

Three months later. I plug the disk in one day and Windows decides to ignore the disk! I always format them NTFS. Anyway, the NTFS structure had got corrupted and doing a chkdsk /f tidied things up. A useful tip- you know when you try to do check a disk for errors from Windows properties tools with the Automatically fix file system errors box ticked and it won't do it cos the disk is busy (and offers to do it on your next boot). Drop to dos, (start, run enter cmd and press enter). Then type in chkdsk e: /f (if e: is your drive). This will close processes down if it can and do it immediately.

So I did that and d'oh 4K bad sectors. But it worked so i backed stuff up, bought a 500Gb brick (Lacie) from Dabs and copied stuff onto that. A week later, same problem with the 160GB. Now it was 8K bad sectors. In fact it was worse because I used a spare PC and left it trying to access my disk which took it 30 mins. I checked out Samsung- 36 month warranty on hard disks, and mine was oh 6 months old. All UK Samsung disk returns are done by http://www.rexo.co.uk/ who have a pretty good returns website. One week after sending the faulty disk off, a brand new one came back. Kudos to Rexo for excellent service (and likewise to Freecom).

But the saga isn't over yet. Somehow I'd managed to buy the biometric 500GB drive not just an ordinary disk. It has a pretty good fingerprint reader, though it is very fussy about positioning fingers. It usually takes three or four attempts before it works but it is reliable enough to trust. I don't need this level of security though.

So the other day I was copying some files onto the replacement 160GB from the 500GB when... bad block! Chkdsk didn't find any bad sectors but the file was still uncopyable and the folder it was in could not be deleted. I got everything else off and did a full 4 hour format. 4K bad sectors. This on a disk that I'd bought just ten days earlier and had definitely not dropped...Dabs have a very good returns system so it's now waiting to be collected. I suspect Dabs might have trouble testing the drive as they don't have my fingers!

4Kb out of 500 GB is minuscule but hard disks are generally so reliable that it indicates some kind of fault which will only get worse. Once you get a dodgy sector, seriously think about replacing the disk or you risk losing it and everything on it.

20 MPH Zone Madness - Congestion Charge Tactics?

2007-07-13T21:38:00.000+01:00

Waltham Forest Council have been bribed by Transport For London to induce vehicular atherosclerosis in the transport system in East London and they are now targetting my area. My suspicions are that by sealing off side streets, adding 20 MPH zones and putting speedbumps everywhere they force traffic onto the main roads and congest them. All this is done in the name of stopping speeding and making the place safer. It's a regular speedtrack.

On my road we get the odd loony who does 60 or 70 at 2.00 am in the morning - this where the road is barely wide enough for two cars to pass without exchanging fluids. One bloke lost control and clipped 4 cars before crunching to a halt. That was about 4 years ago. The main speeding that happens round here is on the main road at 5.00 am in the morning. I see cars doing 50-60 MPH. It won't stop that happening.

Then of course TFL will claim (this is my belief- no proof) that because traffic is slow on the main road the area (East London) needs a Congestion Charge - you can see this was decided a few years ago.

So what good do speedbumps do? None except force cars to slow down. They are however very bad for the environment with increased noise and air pollution and vibration shock. See for yourself. Barnet reduced accidents in the year after it removed their speedbumps.

The fact is that speedbumps appear to cost lives- up to 500 in London. I quote this from Paul Smith, a retired engineer who campaigns to improve road safety on his website SafeSpeed. It's a Word Doc.

"In London in 1981, 274 pedestrians died in road accidents. By 2002 the annual toll had dropped to 107. This covers the main period of hump introduction in the London area. Even if we assume that the entire benefit of 167 lives was due to road humps (and clearly there are other factors) the 500 lives lost annually in ambulances claimed by the London Ambulance Service is three times greater. "

So speedbumps do not save lives- they cost them by slowing down emergency services by approximately 10 seconds per bump. Those seconds make all the difference.

So from now on, as far as I am concerned TFL are to be called "Congest for London".

2007-07-13T21:31:00.000+01:00

After several months with Pivotlog as my blogging software, I defected to WordPress. My hands were a bit tied because the people who provide the shared server were complaining that it was running excessively high CPU figures- around 52%. So three hours with WordPress then I found the import from Pivotlog addin and it was a very smooth transition.

Pivotlog was possibly always going to be a potential time bomb because it used flat files whereas Wordpress uses MySQL.

Programming contests

2007-06-07T07:15:00.000+01:00

I write for About.com on C, C++ and C# programming and have been running a Programming Challenge.

You find lots of these challenges and contests on the web so I collected a list of ten that seem to be live and put them in a article Ten Programming Contests. One thing I've noticed is just how many Chinese and Eastern European developers are entering these. Maybe it's a cultural thing or maybe this is where the future lies. If I do a Google Trends search for C++/C#, these are then top ten countries in order using google.

India, Pakistan, South Africa, Israel, Singapore, Viet Nam, Ukraine, Russia, Czech Republic, Denmark.

Of course maybe the richer countries like the USA, Canada, UK, France, Germany can afford the manuals and have less need to search... but interesting.

London Underground does Goatse!

2007-04-13T08:46:00.000+01:00

A goatse is a rude thing indeed. I am not going to tell you what it is but if you look on Wikipedia, you'll find out. Anyway I spotted one the other day on Leyton tube!

A Lesson in Hypocrisy from Waltham Forest!

2007-04-13T08:35:00.000+01:00

Waltham Forest in London employs CCTV both fixed and mounted in Smart cars to catch motorists parking where they shouldn't.

As they say here "Motorists who endanger lives and cause congestion by ignoring traffic signs and markings are now being penalised in Waltham Forest. The only people who will be penalised are those who drive illegally, with no regard for their own safety that of other road users or pedestrians."

So what did I see the other day but one of their CCTV smart cars parked on double yellow lines. The actual location is here

The car was parked BTW. I had time to get my phone camera out, unlock it, select the camera and take a couple of shots.

So will the registered owner of vehicle KV56 RVU get a £100 parking fine? Don't hold your breath!

PHP - GRRR!

2007-02-25T21:58:00.000Z

I do a fair bit of PHP development. This weekend though has seen me tearing my hair out over well, I'm not sure if it's PHP, Apache or what. I use the pivotlog.net blog software for the portent and mensan blogs.

One of the nice things about pivot is that you can install a new one or upgrade by using a script called pivot-setup.php - BUT it was creating files and folders with user and group (on a Linux webserver) with user nobody- the same user that the Apache webserver runs under. FTP, and even Cpanel on the box could NOT make any impact on these files etc. I had to put a support ticket in to have their user/group changed- no the php functions to do this were not allowed on the server. (chown() and chgrp()).

Anyway to cut a long story short, it turns out it is php related. Under php4, on this server, files were created as I said user nobody. But if I set the default php to be 5 (you have to add this line into .htaccesS)

AddType application/x-httpd-php5 .php5 .php .htm .html

then php creates files with the same user as the domain owner. (It's a rented virtual server from Aventure.com). So ftp and cpanel work fine with those files and folders.

That addtype also has .htm and .html files processed for php.

Oh - The Irony!!! Brainbench Java Test

2007-02-18T17:24:00.000Z

I was having a nosy at the Brainbench.com website today and on the learn link for Java, when you click it, this appears. Its a stack dump from a Java Exception. Brainbench of course provide testing for developers and others...!

Sky + Interesting New episode of 24!

2007-02-17T09:35:00.000Z

This was not photoshopped in any way, except the edges trimmed off. I record both 24 and Battlestar Galactica on the Sky+ box and the Sky guide made a mistake or it got a bit confused!

An apalling scheme

2007-02-14T07:12:00.000Z

Today I got an invitation to join ringo.com, a photo and video sharing network. A friend had uploaded some photos. So I thought why not- I get to the second screen and it asks not only for my hotmail email address but the password. WTF!

Now I don't know ringo from anybody-but nobody gets my hotmail password. Their idea is obviously to pick up all your friends email addresses from the contact list and invite them to join. Oh very neat- like we haven't got enough spammers in the world already without me helping a site grow off this.

I don't know ringo so why on earth should I trust them with this? This is an incredibly stupid policy. Their privacy policy is not exactly truthful either "The minimum information we require for a membership on Ringo is full name, date of birth, username, password and verified email address. ". Password? Yes, fine for the site, not for my hotmail account! Oh sure I could sign up and get a free email account but why should I? As you can see from the screen shot, its not optional either. no password, no signup. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Just avoid them.

Final thought. Does hotmail know about this? I can't imagine they'd be too happy with members supplying their hotmail login credentials to another site.

Fighting Spam Scams- repugn.com

2007-02-12T13:19:00.000Z

This one is mine. I have a few domains which feed into my main account and the number of Pump and Dump scam emails promoting xxx stock - well enough is enough. So repugn will name and shame every company that is being promoted.

I'm keeping a copy of every email I receive so I can show that its not being vindictive or attacking any particular company. I've nothing against these companies- the scammers have bought lots of their stock and are just trying to inflate the price by inducing others to invest in them and then dump the stock after it moves a bit- scammers make money and other investors lose it.

Portent's Been Found!

2007-01-29T07:39:00.000Z

I checked my Google analytics today for portent.org and noticed this interesting blip! You can see from the pie chart where this is coming from. So welcome to anyone who stumbled upon my site.

Snow in London

2007-01-24T07:40:00.000Z

A very cold morning, and the pavements are skiddy and treacherous being covered in snow.

This is the view at the far end of platform for those going west, looking back towards the main station. It's only about an inch of snow and nice to see but having skidded and slid on my way to work, the novelty has definitely worn off!

I also took a photo of my snow writing. You can see it here on Portent.

The plot thickens....Hubris?

2007-01-11T13:17:00.000Z

Well, portent.org finally escaped from the Google sandbox with a reasonable PR of 4. That took 5 months. Personality-tests.eu though got hacked and taken down by the hosting company. After zapping the blog (which is where the emails originated), it's back up with just one lost day. It was running an older version of Pivot so hopefully it was a problem in that version and not a "feature" of Pivot.

Clearly I had tempted fate by writing a review of Pivot a few days ago and for my hubris got a metaphorical slap. That also happened to me in 1995 when I was doing a bit of part time private hire driving in Blackpool for C-Cabs. After doing it for two years, I said to a driver one night "How lucky I was that no one had ever been sick in my car.". Within a fortnight it happened four times- with four different passengers at different times. Unbelievable but true. Not an urban legend or apocryphal tale - it really happened to me. It does really make you wonder sometimes...

Google Dancing.. Music Stopped?

2007-01-03T12:08:00.000Z

A Google Dance is the term for when Google updates all of it search centres. It can take a few days and during that time, search results, and Google Page Rank can go hither and thither.

One of my websites personality tests had had a Google Page Rank of 5 until a week or two ago when it vanished. At the same time, my C, C++ and C# topic had dropped from 7 to 6. I held my breath (best advice under such circumstances- figuratively I mean, not physically!) and lo and behold, they're back today.

My New Book

2007-01-01T11:32:00.000Z

Having become an SEO expert, I decided I had to give some of my knowledge back to the world- so what better way to show it off than by writing a book about everything I've discovered in Blogger, including some stuff that no one knows about.

Google bought Blogger and they tied in the two in so many ways that only now are we beginning to discover them.

If you use some of the secret codes (all documented in the book), google recognises them and boosts the popularity of the page without altering the PR.

Follow this link or click the book cover to find out more. Enjoy!

Passed My Three Month About.com Review!

2007-01-01T10:32:00.000Z

I joined About.com a few months back as one of their 600 guides writing about C,C++ and C#- see an earlier entry. This involved passing prep, preparing a launch website then going live and building up the content. Then there came the three month review. I've passed that and now working on the site.

If you have a bit of flair for writing and the time and commitment (you need considerable amounts of both!) have a look at Be-A-Guide, there may be a topic on which you are knowledgeable and can write.

Is it cos I is White?

2006-11-30T08:37:00.000Z

The leaflet pictured is from a local pharmacy and was posted through I guess most of the letterboxes in the street. I reckon its advertising their services but with all the languages on it..shouldn't English also have been included! (Not much use to me without!).

Also, after recent arrivals in the area (we are so... cosmopolitan) I think Lithuanian, Ukranian and Polish should also be on the leaflet as well. Mind you there should be a few more Christmas trees and lights this year!

Going Madly Undergound...

2006-11-29T09:09:00.000Z

It was nuts today. A one hour commute became two and a half. After changing at Mile End from Central to District Line, that ground to a halt due to a fire on South Kensington. I was at Embankment, so changed lines and and scooted up to Picadilly Circus where the Picadily line tube went as far as Green Park and stopped due to more problems. I then changed lines and got to Bond Street and back on the Central Line as far as Notting Hill Gate where the station was closing due to problems at Earl's Court.

A bus then took me near enough to Fulham Broadway and a one mile walk got me to work, 90 minutes later than usual to a very quiet as in no one else here office.

Data Recovery

2006-11-23T16:08:00.000Z

My day off, to work on a project when I got asked to sort out a problem. A Linux system I setup with Suse a few months back on it has crashed. By the look of it a hard disk was having difficulties- it only booted intermittently- and it was manufactured in January 2006!

I wondered if something had damaged the Linux box as it was failing to boot with a Kernel Panic error. Couldn't find a bootable partition. I don't blame the hard disk manufacturers as the hard disk in this was replaced a few months ago. Dodgy controller perhaps?

So I had an unbootable disk (formatted with Reiser FS) containing very important customer data (backups! Don't ask- they do not know how lucky they were- someone there had switched off backups a few months ago!).

There are some pretty amazing open source utilities and Yareg (which is a front end to the excellent RFS Tools) let me plug the drive (which was Sata- thankfully Maplin sell a USB- SATA drive enclosure) into My XP box. I was then able to see all the folders and files and drag and drop the mysql database and website files onto my XP box. It looked like the disk, though failing had not corrupted anything.

One last trick. If you have the correct version of Mysql - you can download them from mysql.org, install, run it, set up default root admin etc then close it down. Now copy the mysql data files into the data folder and restart mysql. It's quick and dirty but it sems to work ok. Result... I could view the data. It was from a live system and the latest update date was last night. Phew=-All data rescued!

To the Bank of England last night

2006-11-17T07:42:00.000Z

Where I faced serious questioning. Sounds serious, but it was actually to take part in a fun quiz, as guest of my friend Kate (who owns Christchurch Tower

The Bank's staff were raising money for two charities- the RNLI and I think Demelza house (a childrens hospice). It was very well organised- had to be with 300+ team members in 60 teams plus a hot supper and drinks. Our team probably came about middling in the ranks, thanks in part (he says modestly) to my love of pop music.

One round had photos of people and you had to name them and whether they were dead or alive. We clearly jinxed Milton Friedman who was on the photos and was supposed to be still alive. He though had different plans and kicked the bucket yesterday.

It was a great event and good fun. We'd have scored higher if I knew more flags of the world... d'oh!

Christian Aid Techy Shoots Himself in Foot

2006-11-08T21:51:00.000Z

On the BBC, a report why Christian Aid charity are still using Closed Source (Windows) rather than Open Source. I've nothing against Windows- horses for courses mind. But it's the reason that the techy guy gave!

...But Steven Buckley, who runs Christian Aid's common knowledge programme, prefers to buy software from the likes of Microsoft. Is this not odd for a charity?

and

He also explained that what is seen as one of the advantages of open-source - that the core code can be examined by anyone - could actually work against the charity.

"We are a funding organisation that ships £90m around the world - the last thing you want to do is open up your systems to anybody to have a look at to deal with bugs," he said.

Except guess what the Christian Aid website runs on? It runs on Linux... D'oh!

A 2 CD Classical Collection for £1. What's wrong with it?

2006-11-06T07:31:00.000Z

While browsing through a Pound Shop in Romford yesterday, I found a "Classical Greats" Double CD. Heck for £1, if it's no good then it is not exactly a great loss.

But I never thought why it was that price until I looked at the case and ahah! This is genuinely as I found it- no photoshopping of the scanned image except to highlight it with a red box drawn round the affected area. It's from the external cardboard CD box. The inlay for CD 1 is correct on the inside but on the back has the same mistake. The 3rd track is actually by Bizet who appears to have been deleted so all the following names are out by one except for the last.

I reckon the perpetrator knew that "Ride of the Valkyries" was by Wagner and adjusted it, but weirdly added Debussy in to fill the gap. There are NO Debussy tracks on either CD (D'oh!) . He clearly forgot the idiom "When you reach the bottom- stop digging!"

So with a batch of dodgy CD inlays the publsihers could hardly flog this full at full price (I think it was a budget range anyway) and it would have cost too much to reprint so they sold them off cheap to the "Remainder market" or wherever Pound shops buy their stuff from.

Synchronicity or...?

2006-11-03T07:14:00.000Z

Last week I published an article on Averting Global Warming suggesting using a shield in geostationary orbit to diminish the amount of sunlight reaching the earth.

Today I noticed that the Science Magazine website published a similar idea but using the Lagrange Point (L1) which is a point where the gravitational attraction from the Earth and Sun is equal. You can see the 5 Lagrange Points in this image, borrowed from Wikipedia (Thanks chaps- I'll return it when I've finished with it).

Great minds as they say! ("Think Alike"). I think my idea is better though for the following reasons:

Cost. Cheaper to chuck something into a geostationary orbit.

Cost 2. Material. Don't need a ring of material stretching several hundred million miles

Safety. Get the Lagrange ring wrong and the earth might cool too much.

The latest Meme - Six Words

2006-10-28T07:17:00.000+01:00

Who needs Haikus! Can you tell a story in just six words? Wired magazine picked up on this and published a big list. There are some crackers- mainly from writers- who else could write a story so succintly in just six words?

The best theemes derive from "what if" fantasy,

Here are my favourites from the Wired list.

Osama’s time machine: President Gore concerned.
- Charles Stross

He read his obituary with confusion.
- Steven Meretzky

Leia: "Baby's yours." Luke: "Bad news…"
- Steven Meretzky

And a few of my own...

Snipped the green wire. Still ticking!
- David Bolton

Time Machine Invented. Time Machine Invented...
- David Bolton

Life found on Mars. Bowie sues.
- David Bolton

Name that tune. Do a Deer.
- David Bolton

Are you "'Aving a Laugh"?

2006-10-25T12:32:00.000+01:00

To quote Andy Millman (Ricky Gervaise's character in the second series of Extras). I posted an article on my main website - a DIY EMP generator. It's purely speculative on how one might do such a thing, and possibly a very silly thing to write about.

EMP is a phenomena associated with Fusion (and I think Fission) weapons that generates a very high voltage (potential difference) and current in a very short space (in a very short time). It was only declassified a few years ago- Wikipedia has more than you ever need to know on the subject. Anything electronic would have a very rough time of it - like being hit by lightning.

Makes a bit of a change from Water rockets!

PC Scare!

2006-10-20T11:25:00.000+01:00

It's everyone's dread that their computer will crash and they'll lose everything important. For us developers it is even worse. Weeks or months of work could be lost. Of course everyone takes backups (yeah right!) but crashes happen at odd times, perhaps after a weeks solid work just as you were about to backup. Murphy's Law.

I turned my pc on the other day. Beep. "No bootable media" it said. It was the instant adrenalin rush, like the type of panic you get when your wallet isn't where it's supposed to be. The masive sinking feling in the pit of the stomach. Disbelief. "No it can't be happening to me" followed by some rude swear words.

I have a raid 0 setup. Two 256 GB drives making a 500 GB. The bios said that it wasn't working. Duh! Unplugged and off with the side of the case. Quick peek in with a torch. Ah, loose power connector. I've no idea why but one of the two SATA disk power connectors had come away from the drive. I pushed it back in. Power up. Beep "No bootable media". Bugger!

My first raid pc. Well nothing to lose- I clicked rebuild raid array. It worked, it recognised the array. Booted. Beep "No bootable media". Hmm. Back to the BIOS. I have a 3rd drive in there, an IDE and the BIOS had removed the raid from the first boot drive position. Restated it, rebooted and held my breath... Yeah Windows starting up.... Phewww. And nothing lost, corrupted or missing.

The next couple of hours were spent backing up the stuff I'd forgotten about. But I'm only backing up to to external drives which could themselvces fail. So I looked at various online backup systems and tried the free 2Gb storage of Mozy (the link includes a reference link, if you sign up via it I get a little bit free extra storage). Considering the time and effort that restoring takes this seems pretty good. It also runs in the background when the cpu isn't busy . I'll have to leave my PC on overnight for a couple of nights as it now has 14GB to send. But for about £30 a year I get 30 GB of backed up storage. That seems a pretty good deal to me.

I'm a Commander.

2006-09-25T19:10:00.000+01:00

Not quite sure I should admit to getting 105 on the score. It was above average so I'm happy with that!

The joys of online purchasing

2006-09-12T09:17:00.000+01:00

So I need a USB cable- a long one as I've bought a printer and my old parallel (Centronics) cable is no use. So I visit the Maplin website. Find a USB cable, add it to the checkout, go to register an account and after doing so get this helpful error message when registering.

"XML_CreateCustomer err(X1) occurred. We apologise for any inconvenience caused."

Ah bless. So- lets try live support. I enter this :

Trying to register to make a purchase.
I get this 'helpful' error!
XML_CreateCustomer err(X1) occurred. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

and get this
Microsoft OLE DB Provider for SQL Server error '80040e14'
Line 2: Incorrect syntax near 'helpful'.
/chat.asp, line 111

Looks like a SQL Injection error- the quotes round helpful aren't correctly handled. That's very dangerous, though its possibly only a chat database. If I was malicious, I could have some 'Get into Jail Real Quick' fun but I won't.

Hint to Maplin. Get your website fixed quick, and add some helpful errors!

I've Joined About.com

2006-09-08T22:35:00.000+01:00

Only part time but they are owned by the New York Times. After passing my 17 day induction, mastering the document system and then spending 8 weeks beavering away with C, C++ and C# (More C, less C++ and C# but that willchange), I'm now live at C/C++ and join the ranks of 200+ other guides there.

Turbo Pascal Rises from the Grave

2006-09-03T14:56:00.000+01:00

Well Turbo Delphi and Turbo C++ along with new boys Turbo Delphi for .Net and Turbo C#. No Turbo Java just yet but it is promised.

I bought Turbo Pascal 3.0 in 1986 for £49.95. And Turbo C in 1989. Where did all those years go? There has been a feeling that Borland lost their way since the Inprise episode in 97/98 (when Borland changed name and targetted big enterprises) and subsequently with each year a new version of Delphi/CPPBuilder and JBuilder but very expensive products. Meanwhile Microsoft was busy recruiting Borland's finest and developing C#.

So the Borland spinoff/oiffshoot named Devco releases 4 new products on Tuesday 5th September 2006 aimed at developers like myself (20 years ago!). There are free versions (aimed at Microsoft's Visual Express development systems) which seem pretty powerful according to their website but until next Tuesday we won't know.

Fingerprint children in the UK - A Major Scandal Brewing

2006-08-26T16:53:00.000+01:00

I was shocked to find out that it's reckoned 700,000 children had been fingerprinted at schoolk without informing parents or asking their consent. This may prove to be illegal but it is certainly considered a form of conditioning. All this is just for access to the school library! The risks are that schools aren't exactly secure places and that the pcs may be hacked to steal fingerprints.

Leavethemkidsalone is a website setup to highlight this cause.

Cultural Blackspot

2006-08-25T14:46:00.000+01:00

I saw this outside Earls Court, opposite the West Brompton tube entrance. Several others have been seen in London- do a search for cultural blackspot on Flickr.com.

So is it a viral campaign for a new band, part of adbusters blackspot campaign or a comment on the area? No one knows, but its interesting!

New and Amazing Stuff- Google and And

2006-08-24T08:54:00.000+01:00

This blog has been a bit lean as I'm concentrating on developing the Home Parking website (not yet live) and the New Amazing Stuff which has just had it's 50th blog entry since August 9th.

Just out of curiosity I did a google search for "new and amazing stuff" (without quotes) and found portent in 4th place out of 117 million. Google pointed out that the and was superfluous so I searched for "new amazing stuff" again without quotes. Portent was now down to 26th place and the other results were different as well.

So my conclusion. And does make a difference, and you are best to avoid having it in any phrases that you are optimising for.

Petulant Behaviour

2006-08-15T13:12:00.000+01:00

So there I am on Friday afternoon, on the bus home. Bloke in red tie is sat where he is in the photo. He has a small bag on the seat next to him which is otherwise empty. Girl in pink top moves toward seat intending to sit down. Bloke sees her, picks up the bag and with an almost perceptible snarl throws it on the floor in front of his feet. Girl sits down, looks over at me and I smile and give a "Can you believe that" wave of the head.

I guess he'd had a bad day! So I whipped out the phone and took this photo.

New Website Launched Today - Portent.org

2006-08-09T15:24:00.000+01:00

I'm a great believer in the Wisdom of Crowds (Great book by James Suriewicki BTW) and today launched portent.org a collaborative blog about new and interesting things on the web. Not unlike Boingboing.net. They have 5 high profile journalists and writers. I'd like 25 bloggers. As an encouragement, 90% of gross revenues from any advertising will be paid to portent's bloggers. The details are here.

With 32 million websites and new ones appearing every hour, theres so much new stuff waiting to be found and highlighted. Let's get started. If you want to sign up, visit the link above.

Visual Build Pro

2006-08-06T18:35:00.000+01:00

At work I've been experimenting with Visual Build Pro. Our existing build system is well let's say very backwardly compatible ... as far back as Dos so a new version control system and a new Build Manager.

The Build Manager I've been looking at is Visual Build Pro (VBP) by Kinook Software and it's very nice and at £200, very reasonably priced. I got up to speed with it very quickly and it's clear that the designers have probably used it on their own projects as everyting is well thought out. Integration with Subversion is very good.

The big work project is a mixture of Delphi and Visual C++ with a fair bit of C. Automating the Delphi bit was ok but the Visual C++ stuff has been 'fun'. Our project uses Make files, all 115 of them. VBP uses DSPs, the Visual Studio Project file. So I've had a one off manual conversion task. I did consider automating it and possibly still could but it's the old classic connundrum- can you do it manually in the time it would take do to it in code?

Darkgames.com

2006-08-01T18:43:00.000+01:00

I've had this domain for many years, intending to do something with it and recently noticed that it was picking up a fair bit of traffic. I searched on google for dark games and it's 7th or 8th out of nearly 200 million. Blimey. So I've started putting it to some use and will be moving all my game stuff onto the site.

A few years back I had an idea for a card game and the prototype fitted on the backs of two decks of playing cards. Thus was born Odds On. It's in alpha stage of development, needs testing and balancing but the idea is that as one of a number of bookies you take odds on horses (random combinations of horse + jockey) from other players.

The main game play is playing your odds cards. When all horses in a race have odds the race begins. If the horse with your odds on wins then you gain points. After a number of matches, lowest points wins. There are a few random cards etc to make it more interesting.

An Innocent Man

2006-07-28T20:06:00.000+01:00

My brother in law has gone through hell over the last 7 months, since December 2005. He's a taxidriver in Blackpool and was accused by a female passenger of touching her legs and breasts in the course of a 3 minute drive (while going round a curvy route- and with his right hand!). This happened just before Christmas and he lost nearly two weeks of work at a busy time of year. And he has had this hanging over him since then with possible loss of freedom, job (self employed), and house. He's married with a 9 year old daughter and no criminal record.

The woman was heavily intoxicated- her friends had to hold her up to get her in the car. She described my brother in law as 25-30 with brown hair. He's 40 with grey hair! She said in her statement that her boyfriend (at the destination) was waiting with door open when she arrived and witnessed her breasts being fondled. Her boyfriend said that he was in the back of the house and the first he knew she was back was when she put her key in the lock.

Result- 12 Jurors took 20 minutes to all decide Not Guilty. Why on earth did this come to court in the first place? Are the Crown Prosecution Service on some politically correct, 'Try them in court no matter what the evidence' waste the taxpayer's money kick? The Judge said it shouldn't have come to court. But at least it was a fair result.

No2ID in Walthamstow

2006-07-21T21:33:00.000+01:00

Last night Walthamstow Council voted 31 to 22 in favour of becoming affiliated with Mo2ID. The against votes were purely along party lines- Tories and Lib-Dems in favour of affiliation, Labour against.

As the Leyton rep (we're a very small group) I went along to snap snaps, hand out badges and leaflets etc. Plus I met and chatted with one or two councillors and watched Democracy in Action. Phew, pontificating and political! I'd never appreciated how much the major parties have on local Govt. But it was interesting to see all of the maneuvering and discussions. Not exactly my idea of a fun time though!

Microsoft Update - A Spy in every PC!

2006-07-20T06:40:00.000+01:00

My job dictates that I have to use Windows, and I also use a properly licensed copy at home. Nevertheless I think Microsdoft is getting increasingly over reaching with the information they suck out of your PC. I read the EULA for the latest Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA- We Get it ALL?) update and section 6 says this.

"6. Computer Information. This supplement uses Internet protocols to send to Microsoft computer information, such as your Windows XP product key, hard drive serial number, PC manufacturer, operating system version, Windows XP product ID, PC BIOS information, user locale setting, language version of Windows XP, validation result and whether the installation of this supplement was successful. Certain information derived from your IP address, which cannot be used to identify you, is retained in association with this computer information. "

Now I really object to some of this one several grounds.

Hard drive Number

PC Bios Information?

PC Manufacturer

I do wonder if they read the CPUID or network card MAC Address.
They also say in section 7. We may also share the aggregate data with others, such as hardware and software vendors and volume licensees to help protect their license keys. WTF? Since when is it Microsoft's job to police on behalf of licensees? Do they police GPL? I bet not!

As a developer I appreciate Microsoft when they do things like provide the free Express Editions of compilers. But this stuff just builds up resentment. So I have declined the update. We'll see what happens. I encourage you to decline the update as well. If enough people do it, Microsoft will start noticing.

Another thought. Some of the information they collect is commercially useful. If you want it, you buy it from me. Savvy?

Another Game Article Posted

2006-07-18T09:02:00.000+01:00

Casus Belli was an old Play By Mail (PBM) game I wrote in 1986. It had 1,500 players at game launch (1986) thanks to a feature in Computer & Video Games magazine. I designed Warlord at KJC Games in 1989 and that was basically Casus Belli Mk II. It is still run now. (Older than the Web!)

I always wanted to program it as a desktop game and then maybe on mobile, and the web (Flash) so to start the ball rolling, I've been writing it up on my website. The Delphi version will be given away, warts and all to open source. The C++ and C# versions will appear on the Cplus.About.com website when I have finished preparing it. (I've been accepted as the new guide!)

You can see the first three articles on the new Casus Belli at the bottom of this page on my website. Have fun.

Summer in London

2006-07-14T18:46:00.000+01:00

As the weather was unseasonally warm and windy I took a trip to Fulham Broadway to check out the latest PSP games and Border's Bookshop where I bought a book. (Perhaps I should change my name to Pooter...)

The photo is the view from the platform for trains to Wimbledon. Lurking in the distance is the Empress State Building which possesses a rotating disc section on the top floor. Tables and chairs on the disc section slowly rotate. Mind you, that bit is closed unless booked for filming. I'm sure I saw an episode of Spooks there and the front of the building featured in that fine epic of film making Fat Slags. If you want to see the building on Google Maps enter the post code SW6 1TR. Here is a photo I took looking North from the building on a not quite so sunny day.

Fairtrade Chocolate and Comic Relief

2006-07-13T11:57:00.000+01:00

I succumbed to temptation today. I can resist everything but... in the shapely form of a Dubble bar It was dubble or nothing...

Why oh why do they put the "Nutritional values" per 100g of chocolate and not the bar. It's 529C per 100g (and not the bar)? That's 212 C for the bar if you're wondering. As only 20% of the world is supposed to feel comfortable with maths, its a bit of a no brainer to add this. In fact if you look closely at the bottom line it's there but not brilliantly laid out. Sack that wrapper graphic artist- he could easily have added another column.

Oh..You're not interested in my rant and wonder what the bar tastes like? Very nice. I prefer the Divine bars they sell though... Nuts are ok but pure chocolate is soo nice.

There's a Comic Relief sticker on the wrapper so presumably all the bars have laxative in them..Oh...maybe not!

Google Search Curiosity

2006-07-11T15:41:00.000+01:00

SeoLogs.com Multiple Data Centre Rank tool is excellent and I use it now and then to see how well or badly I'm doing. I'm only an amateur seologist (and nothing to do with the company of that name) but have achieved minor successes with David Bolton and Mensa Blog.

Now the big project, Home Parking is underway and for a site that hasn't launched yet has achieved a Google Page rank of 4. But interestingly, if I run it on the SeoLog.com rank checker for the phrase Home Parking there are just two results. Number 1 (Good!) in 12 data centres or not in the top 100 on the rest! (Perhaps not so good... ). Curious!

I'd always assumed that the results were spread evenly. The Mensa blog search for instance is 3 on every data centre.

July 7th in London

2006-07-07T08:19:00.000+01:00

It's not much comfort if you are one of the dead or disabled in a terrorist attack but the odds on it happening to you are so remote, compared to being run over or involved in a car crash that it is just not worth worrying about.

I was affected last year on this date inasmuch as I travel on the tube to work and had to walk 9 miles across London to get home- a great way to see London! And the day after I was back on the tube, and it was a lot quieter than usual.

Why so unaffected by terrorism? From the age of 10 until 27 I lived in Northern Ireland- right through the "troubles", just ten miles outside Belfast in Carrickfergus. In the 70s we could hear the Belfast bomb explosions in Carrickfergus. And I spent three years at Queen's University in Belfast, living in the Halls of Residence on Malone road. A lovely city- with an innovative approach to urban regeneration. A policy implemented in part by the Innercity Regeneration Association or IRA for short...

Marks and Spender

2006-07-05T13:11:00.000+01:00

Its a curious fact that a search on the Google Adwords tool for the word charity reveals that the current top selling related phrase is Marks and Spender at £27.07 per click. I think whoever puts in their google adwords got it wrong! They have over 200 Adword phrases ranging from 4p/click to over £25. Thats an advertising budget!

Here are the top PPC M & S Keywords.

marks and spencer wedding insurance £25.42
marks and spencer co uk £24.43
marks ans spencer £22.42 <- <- More misspelling again!
marks and spencer com £21.70
www marks and spencer co uk £20.84
marks and spencer clothes £19.52
marks and spencer on line shopping £19.08
marks and spencer uk £17.73
marks and spencer online shopping £17.22
marks and spencer flowers £16.94
marks and spencer shoes £16.30
www marks and spencer £14.87

Of course I prefer the spoonerism of Sparks and Mensa... but then I would!

I blame the Web

2006-07-02T16:16:00.000+01:00

For the way life seems to be getting faster. There seems to be new versions of software coming out more often - e.g. Flash 9 is upon us. I'm learning the new stuff in C# 2005 as well as a certain Document Managememt System but more about that (I hope!) in the future.

Or it could be that I'm getting older - so maybe my brain is slowing down and consequently time appears to pass by quicker. Something that Einstein never postulated- Bolton's Corrollorary to the Special Theory- the age of the Observer affects the perceived velocity of light/time etc.

How My brain works!

2006-06-28T19:53:00.000+01:00

As I was waiting to get off the tube tonight my eyes strayed to an advert. I only glanced at it, didn't even read it. But my brain obviously picked up something because the though popped into my mind "Legoland General". Thats a bit odd I thought- some kind of game perhaps and looked back at the poster. 'Legal and General". D'oh!

Everybody Needs something but

2006-06-28T06:56:00.000+01:00

Is there any difference between a religion and a cult? Back in the good old 20th century, the future was bright and shiny with promises of hovercars, a lifestyle like the Jetsons and yet now we're here it seems we seem to have a surfeit of religion with religious nutters in the USA, Middle East and even the East end of London.

Christianity in this country seems ashamed of itself. They don't dare mention God but try and get new converts through courses on spirituality like the Alpha course or hold events like Signsevent.com which has been popping up on the tube. 18,000 people on July 2nd at Upton Park. That would be a big turnout for a West Ham match! It's only in the small print (well FAQ) that the word Christianity popus up out of the woodwork. But the adverts give it away with the F word. Faith = Irrational belief. Superstition.

I commend Richard Dawkins for his all guns blazing assault on religion. Let's Praise the man! If you haven't seen it, The root of all evil Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3.

This is a man who knows what he's talking about. Oh and while we're at it, lets free Xenu.

Programming Language Survey

2006-06-26T12:09:00.000+01:00

Every programmer in the world takes an interest in their favourite language or languages and how popular or unpopular it is. People have flame wars about the virtues of "their" programming language's strengths and weaknesses. My favourites are C++, Delphi and PHP, but I go by the "Horses for Courses" adage- use the best tool for the job.

Just recently I came across the Tiobe survey, a monthly look at the popularity of Computer Languages by results for several search engines. It makes interesting reading and its surprising just how far ahead Java is from C#. Its good to see that C++ is increasing in popularity though long term (see the charts on Tiobe's page it too is in a long term decline). I wonder how closely the survey relates to the job market. All the legacy code must have a big lag effect.

Sadly Delphi's decline appears to be terminal. Borland's decision to sell their IDE development part of the company off was the last nail in the coffin but many of the other nails there could be attributed back a few years to the Inprise episode when Borland changed name and not a little to Microsoft's staff recruitment policies which saw them pinch Anders Hejlsberg, the architect of Turbo Pascal, Delphi and C#.

I did an "Programming Language by Jobs" survey a year ago and its probably time to do another so in a few days. This is done by counting the number of job vacancies for a given language in a country and dividing by 5 to get the true number of jobs. Watch this space!

My PC is too hot!

2006-06-25T13:12:00.000+01:00

London has become a bit warm- its that time of year thhough thasnkfully there seems to be more of a breeze the last couple of night, so overall not as muggy and sticky as previos years. My new PC has just started throwing hissy fits. Machine Check Exceptions to be precise. One of those and it resets. No clue as to the exact cause- its a munfacturer's supplied box, AMD 4400 running Windows XP, SP2 plus the usual collection of stuff- firewall, Anti-virus etc etc. I even run Sys Internals Rootkit Revealer now and then. You just can't be too paranoid.

But its clean, patched and the only difference is that I added a 300Gb IDE disk just after I bought it. Its been running fine until the warmer weather. Very annoying. I used to get this with my old PC but it was hand built and was running a lot of stuff so the 12V line might have been a bit overstressed. But a box thats only 3 months old. Very annoying. How do PC owners in much warmer climes manage? Do I need air conditioning for 4 months a year?

A website that doesn't allow links to it!

2006-06-23T13:45:00.000+01:00

This is the subject of the internet mega blog boingboing.net

But its not just Podcasts. The British Metro newspaper's site has terms of use at http://www.metro.co.uk/terms (its not a link chaps honest!) says "You may not provide a link to this web site from any other web site without first obtaining Associated's prior written consent." Yet, if you search via Google or Msn you'll find them pretty easily. Want to bet that Google etc wrote asking them for permission?

So maybe we should write to all search engines that have the Metro site in their search index and ask those search engines to comply with the terms and remove the Metro's links? Wouldn't that be a great idea!

I like the Metro BTW but think they should be a bit better informed about the nature of the web and what links do for websites.

The Mensan Blog

2006-06-22T21:51:00.000+01:00

As well as this blog I look after the Mensan.eu blog. I am the main blogger but we have a few other bloggers signed up, so I remain hopeful that as the site gets better known, a few more will sign up.

I've also been promoting, marketing the site if you like and have set myself a challenge. To see how high I can take the site for these three phrases. No tricks- just making sure relevant content is added every day or two.

Mensan Blog - 1st out of 930 results (on Google)

Mensa Blog - 3rd out of 1.4 million results

Mensa - No Idea out of 9.8 Million results!

I managed the 1st place exactly 31 days after the domain was registered. No black hat methods either! All legitimate. PR BTW is 0. Webserver logs indicate 190 MB of traffic so far but thats probably me! (True story- On another site I'm working on, I mucked up a sql query- each run output between 30 and 70 megabytes. Do'h! 1.85 Gb in all.

I've extended the Mensan.eu site this week, not just with more blog entries but with a Google map of events and bloggers, bios of bloggers and a live feed from Google News on Mensa stories.

Pivot - Blogging Software I use

2006-06-21T07:10:00.000+01:00

One of the sidebar links is to the the Mensan Blog and I host this on my (reseller) server. Its handy doing it that way because I can add the type of enhancements like a google map page that just isn't possible with the likes of Blogger.

The mensan blog uses Pivot, open source blogging software. I just wanted something easy to install and Pivot is excellent. It is very nippy- possibly because it uses flat files rather than a database... though of course how well that scales remains to be seen but I think not a while. Its very easy to customise - I've added Google Analystics, a Flickr link and Technorati to it. So if you're looking for a poweful but easy to use, install and configure multiple blog system, give pivot a try.

The version of Pivot I'm using - the latest is 1.3RC2 (Release Candidate 2) which means well past Beta and almost full release. I've found (possibly) one bug with the pinging urls but that easy worked around using the 3rd party Pinging services of Pingoat.com or pingomatic But Pivot itself has proved very stable and robust.

A taste of Chocolate

2006-06-18T19:49:00.000+01:00

Chocolate is by and large a bad thing for me. I seem to be able to consume it in vast quantities. Last year I stopped eating it for a while and lost 50 lbs-though to be fair weightwatchers helped. Trouble is I love chocolate in all its shapes and forms- from Cadbury's through to Lindt.

Onm holiday recently in Keswick, I discovered 99% pure Chocolate. The normal Lindt dark chocolate is 70% and 85%. But 99%? Madness! Folly! And yet there it was as you can see. The packet had a warning that only experienced choclate lovers should try it. I laughed with disdain and tried a piece. Yeeeeuch! Well not immediately but within a few seconds. Not a terribly nasty taste, not that bitter either but almost pure cocoa butter. It was a plant type taste.

Ah well, back to 70%/85%.

The 99% didn't scan in too well compared to the 85%- Shiny lettering but it is real not photoshopped.

Installing Suse Linux

2006-06-18T18:58:00.000+01:00

I was asked to setup a brand new empty box with Linux, mysql, php, webmin. Luckily I had a copy of Suse 9.2. Now I am not a Linux expert- I can get by, know most of the commands, even how to wget stuff, make and install. But I'd forgotten just how good YAST the Suse installer really is. Getting Suse installed on an empty box took under 20 minutes- it identified everything- not bad for a Pentium 4 box, 1Gb ram.

Network configuration was a doddle and I updated several packages from the internet- well YAST did that automatically and a newer version of the Kernel is well worth a reboot. I've used Webmin before- if you are struggling with Admin of a Linux system, Webmin is just superb. Once I browsed to the downloaded rpm file, YAST took over the install and before I knew it, Webmin was up and running- it uses a web interface on localhost:10000. If you're configuring virtual sites, setting up Mysql users, etc, its very hard to beat.

Then one final test- create an index.html in the htdocs folder - yup that showed up fine and a small php file with the one line inside a php block

 phpinfo();

and that worked fine. Result! In about 2.5 hours.

Book Review Definitive Guide to Apache mod_rewrite

2006-06-17T05:54:00.000+01:00

So how many book titles have an underscore? Rich Bowen's book (DGAm) has started a new trend. Well none according to Amazon, if you search for _ but they do have it!

Published by Apress, the shortish (120 pages) hardback covers one of the most complicated and arcane subjects. mod_rewrite. This is a module for Apache web-servers that lets you do all sorts of wonderful changes to urls dynamically. Its used for instance to simplify urls, making long complex urls with parameters look like a directory structure.

mod_rewrite is a very complex module- i reckon anyone who is fully at home should be given free entry to Mensa.

Content wise its a combination of cookbook and how-to in 12 chapters from an introduction, look at regular expressions, installation with the bulk of the book explaining the various rewrite modules and how and when to use them and not use them.

This is a book that remains on your shelf until you need it, but when you need it it is invaluable. Rating 8/10. Link to On Amazon.co.uk

CocaCola Zero

2006-06-16T06:47:00.000+01:00

Every morning I stop in the newsagents near work and buy a soft drink (sugar free of course). It's usually the Lemon and/Or Lime diet cokes but this morning I saw a new product. CocaCola Zero. It has just been launched here - according to Wikipedia. Of course not everyone is happy!

I've been here before- not New Coke (which I never tasted) but with Tab and Diet Coke. Tab was the first zero (or low) calorie drink they offered back around the late 70s (in N. Ireland). More info as ever on the ubiquitous wikipedia.

In 1981/82 diet coke came on the scene and Tab just disappeared. I think Diet Coke is too ubiquitous now to vanish. So CocaCola Zero is presumably a counter to Pepsi Max. Diet Coke was possibly a bit bitter say compared to Diet Pepsi so this addresses that by sticking with the Coke taste, just removing all the sweeteners.

So what does it taste like? Coke.

Something I've wondered about is, what does Coke taste like in other countries? That's not a silly question. Here in London, over the last few years, there has been a massive grey import market in Diet Coke, or Coke Light as it's better known.

I've drunk cans made in South Africa, Poland, Germany, probably half the countries in Europe. And the taste is definitely different. Also, a funny little quirk. All the cans were the standard 330 ml except the S. Africans which were 340 ml. You can still buy these- many small newsagents, chicken shops stock them. I guess the wholesale price is cheaper than the licensed bottlers.

Beyond Tuckerization

2006-06-15T07:35:00.000+01:00

Tuckerization is the use of a real person's name as a character name, place name, or equipment name in a story. Its also spellt tuckerisation - I suspect that us Brits anglicising it. Its not unlike a company paying an author to include their name in a piece of fiction or product placement in a film.

If you're famous like David Beckham then (forgetting about the use of celebrity names- akin to committing suicide legally and financially) then the Tuckerized name would be recognisable, but my name David Bolton- well theres loads of us out there so how do you know which it is? So I guess I won't be looking for to be tuckerised anytime soon.

Now the point about Tuckerization is that it only includes the name, not appearance or other characteristics of the named individual. Why not go the extra step and put a real person in. Hey we could call that Boltonization ( Boltonisation!) rather than the reference to John Bolton/UN.

The alien female purred as she approached David. "You may think of yourself as fat, bespectacled, asthmatic and ugly, David" she whispered, as her 4 tentacles unbuttoned his shirt. "But that is on your world and in my world you are what every ur-woman desires as their partner (and dinner)." She stepped out of her skin and ...

Me and my PSP - Mobile Cinema

2006-06-14T07:04:00.000+01:00

At home due to my son-in-law living with us, we have a very extensive DVD collection. But I never really had the time to sit and watch one more than once a week if that (and that when TV wasn't being used by anyone else). I love films though and realised that if I could get a PSP, put films on it then I could watch films during my commuting. I've been playing catchup!

It works very well. I bought the PSP Gigapack- One GB SD card, usb cable, plus headphones and a game that cost £219- probably cheaper now, plus the £15 case with screen protector from game.co.uk and a set of Creative Noise Reducing headphones from Dabs.

After much searching on the web, I found DVD Decrypter. which takes a DVD and produces a set of vob files. And PSPVideo9 here. Both are free.

So that's it. To convert a DVD and put it on a PSP, insert the DVD run DVD Decrypter. I've found the best way to do this is the re-author option. There is usually a title part which is about 4GB in size. Just copy that and let DVD Decrypter run. It takes sbout 15-20 minutes to rip the DVD and create the VOBs. The longer bit is PSP Video 9 which processes the VOBs and produces the .MP4 files (and then copies them over if you plug in your PSP).

Expect to take roughly an hour from start to finish though it depends on film size. Some DVDs have extra protection and you can use the free utility DVD43 for those. Many of the DVDs given away with the newspapers have no protection on anyway.

As for UMD- Sony's equivalent of DVD- A bit of a failure I think. Why pay more than a DVD for a poorer quality version? Depending on the film length and quality settings for PSP Video 9, you can get 1 or 2 films on a

The headphones are fantastic- especially as they cost just £25. You can pay up to £300 for really high quality ones like those that Bose sell. Without these the train background rumble frequently masks dialogue. With these its crytstal clear.

Seatbelt Football

2006-06-13T06:35:00.000+01:00

Part of my daily commute is by bus. Oh I could walk it- it's less than a mile but it doesn't cost anything extra as I have a monthly Oyster card.

Coming back at night there's sometimes a 5-10 minute wait and a lot of slow moving traffic past the bus stop at Leyton tube. So I play Seatbelt football and count the score. How many drivers wear a seatbelt, how many don't. Last friday the score reached an amzing 17:17. Yup, 1 in every 2 drivers was without a seatbelt. Yesterday it was 13:5 (thats 5 without). It amazes me that 23 years after this became compulsory (1983) so many still risk it.

I've noticed though that the drivers who flash buses out seem to be in the ranks of the unbelted. I wonder if this is because the belt wearers tend to drive faster and so are more likely to overtake than brake and flash - that old chestnut risk compensation theory.

Thoughts on the London 2012 Olympics

2006-06-09T12:06:00.000+01:00

I live in East London, Leyton to be precise, approximately one mile from the 2012 Olympic Village. It is quite a busy area traffic wise, especially when the local football team Leyton Orient are at home. (Well done getting that promotion!) I imagine there is going to be considerable disruption for locals in the next 7 years.

Today I discovered a new phrase "Ambush Marketing"- it originated in the 1996 Olympics where companies who weren't associated with the Olympics managed to get mileage out of the Olympics to help sell their products and services. This kind of upset the official sponsors and the Olympics organisers. So to head this off, LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games) have got a Royal Bill which basically gives them Carte Blanche to go after anyone using the word "London Games" or various combinations. Fines of up to £20,000. This bill wasn't without opposition. you can read LOCOG's interpretation of the law here (Warning PDF).

However things may not be quite that bad. According to Pinsent Mason's excellent web-site "Factual references to London and the Olympics will be legal and phrases such as 'Come to London in 2012' are not subject to a blanket ban, according to the Department of Culture MS." In general terms, the Act restricts the use of the words “games”, “Two Thousand and Twelve”, “2012”, and “twenty twelve” in combination with each other or in combination with words including “gold,” “silver”, “bronze”, “London” and “summer”. These restrictions will last for six-and-a-half years.

I can understand the logic behind LOCOG but I can't help feeling a bit uneasy about the approach. It extends into other areas. Coca Cola is an official sponsor so if you try to enter the stadium with a Pepsi Cola bottle they will make you throw it away. This type of thing happens increasingly these days. The organisers can't have you "Dissing the Sponsors" or "doing a Britney" (having a contract with one sponsor but being seen with a rival's product)

What LOCOG conveniently omits is that traders and local businesses who aren't "Supporting the Olympics" but who are affected by it due to proximity, disruption etc are not allowed to gain any recompense from it. Now that seems unfair. Yes some are bound to gain extra trade but they aren't allowed to advertise it.

Me and My Blog(s)

2006-06-07T07:52:00.000+01:00

I reckon that a large part of the popularity of Blogging is because it addresses a human need. To say something- its the old "Write a letter syndrome" brought into the 21st century. It didn't matter if you posted the letter or not. Writing the letter was the thing; it concentrated the mind, focussed your thoughts and the act of creating the letter was in a sense therapeutic. You got it off your chest.

So as well as the web developing and my full time job, I'm also doing three reasonably frequently updated blogs ( Mensan.Eu - a blog for mensans- interesting things about Mensa ), this blog and the Squidoo Mensa lens. My old website is at www.dhbolton.com but slowly rising from the ruins is a new look, xhtml validating site at www.davidhbolton.co.uk