So it's coming up to New Year, I've finally moved on from London and starting life elsewhere and it feels good. Feeling deeply positive and happier than for many months now. Anxiety gone replaced only with an open heart and an open mind. Am re-reading Douglas Coupland's book JPod which is geek fiction and frankly a must-read for any computer nerd, in it the characters write an eBay entry to sell themselves. In this spirit and looking forward to the future and the loves and laughs it may hold, I include my offering below.
Narg Boy Toy! VGC, energetic, fun, loyal and adventurous
Item number: 0011001110
Starting bid: $1.00
Buy it now price: $1,000,000.00
Current bid: $13.00
Start time: April 13th 1976 10:30
End time: 29 years, 5 days, 11 months 10 hours 4 minutes and 32 seconds (approx)
Ships to: Anywhere overseas
History: 5 bids
High bidder: theskank56 (12)
Seller: narg
Item specifics:
Condition - used (but good for its age)
Description:
You have the amazing oppertunity to purchase your own boy toy! Standard features include...
- workable head, legs and feet (one ankle slightly limited movement due to avoidable accident a few years ago)
- several scars (including many from maintenance surgery and rough use by previous owners)
- adventurous spirit
- ability to mould body according to diet and exercise in accordance with new owners taste
- fun, kind, energetic and loyal
- comes with multilingual plug-in adapter
- one previous long-term owner, several short term leases
- good cook and will happily provide funding for cleaner
This is a fantastic oppertunity - don't miss out! Bid on the Narg toy today and you too could get a companion for life who will love unconditionally and will smile and laugh with you.
BUY IT NOW!
Feel free to email/post your own adverts!
Take care everyone out there in the internet ether. I wish you all reach your dreams in 2007.
Sunday 31 December 2006
Saturday 30 December 2006
First few days in New Zealand.
This place rocks. Totally. It's beautiful - like a warm Scotland with more hills and more diverse flora and fauna. The place we are staying is staggeringly cool. Acres of land, swimming pool, sauna, jacuzzi, massive house - it's trippy. There's just friends and family here and you could walk around the forest surrounding the house for a long time without seeing anything. Nearly got my cock caught in a possum trap in the woods trying to figure out how it worked. Never mind tho eh, no harm no foul.
Been down the beach at the Mount a fair bit doing some surfing and general idling and partying. It's great meeting the extended family here - cold beer is offered upon entering any residence regardless of the time of day or day of the week. It's required because it's so damn hot too. Wearing factor 50 at the moment, sitting in front of a monitor for the past 4 years getting pasty white termite skin is definately not good build-up to deep tanning. Still, bought a new cowboy hat so fitting right in with the locals.
Feeling total peace, for those who have never been to New Zealand before, I'd really recommend it. It's the most beautiful place with the most generous people. The beaches are pure white sand and an atmosphere that makes you relax just breathing in the oxygen-rich sea air. There's gentle talk of a Narg family outpost here, maybe with a bit of land/small farm thingy so it looks like the boy Narg may well need his new cowboy hat for rounding up the sheep in future.
Yee-har!
Been down the beach at the Mount a fair bit doing some surfing and general idling and partying. It's great meeting the extended family here - cold beer is offered upon entering any residence regardless of the time of day or day of the week. It's required because it's so damn hot too. Wearing factor 50 at the moment, sitting in front of a monitor for the past 4 years getting pasty white termite skin is definately not good build-up to deep tanning. Still, bought a new cowboy hat so fitting right in with the locals.
Feeling total peace, for those who have never been to New Zealand before, I'd really recommend it. It's the most beautiful place with the most generous people. The beaches are pure white sand and an atmosphere that makes you relax just breathing in the oxygen-rich sea air. There's gentle talk of a Narg family outpost here, maybe with a bit of land/small farm thingy so it looks like the boy Narg may well need his new cowboy hat for rounding up the sheep in future.
Yee-har!
Flying to Auckland
Backdated to 24th December
This totally rules. Flown Manchester --> Singapore then Singapore --> Auckland. Just spent 24 hours on a plane playing Super Mario Bros, who wants to be a millionaire, watching videos and being served bloody mary's by staggeringly attractive stewardesses whilst sitting in an arm chair. Talk about heaven. Only problem was that I spent 8 hours getting to level 16 on Super Mario Bros then changed planes in Singapore. Fuckers. Still, undaunted carried on and then spent a further 5 hours getting back to the same place in the game on the new plane. Yeah baby, 1-0 to the Narg for having too much time on his hands!
Stayed over in Ackland for the night, driving to Mount Maunganui tomorrow. Weather is awesome. Fried lizard on the menu is a little weird though.
This totally rules. Flown Manchester --> Singapore then Singapore --> Auckland. Just spent 24 hours on a plane playing Super Mario Bros, who wants to be a millionaire, watching videos and being served bloody mary's by staggeringly attractive stewardesses whilst sitting in an arm chair. Talk about heaven. Only problem was that I spent 8 hours getting to level 16 on Super Mario Bros then changed planes in Singapore. Fuckers. Still, undaunted carried on and then spent a further 5 hours getting back to the same place in the game on the new plane. Yeah baby, 1-0 to the Narg for having too much time on his hands!
Stayed over in Ackland for the night, driving to Mount Maunganui tomorrow. Weather is awesome. Fried lizard on the menu is a little weird though.
Friday 22 December 2006
Packing
Packing today ready to fly tomorrow. It really sucks to choose what not to take. I'm contemplating just travelling across there with a wallet and a smile and just buying stuff appropriate whatever day it is then giving the previous day's clothes to charity. Funky idea.
Flying Singapore Airlines and heard you get the old tv screen in the back of headrest of the chair in front. Sweet. If I could get a few smokey treats on the go and watch Blazing Saddles, Get Shorty, Star Wars, etc going across Asia and the Pacific Ocean - well it would be a bit like flying in the comfort of my own living room.
Only a short post today. Bit busy. Will try and post again later =)
Flying Singapore Airlines and heard you get the old tv screen in the back of headrest of the chair in front. Sweet. If I could get a few smokey treats on the go and watch Blazing Saddles, Get Shorty, Star Wars, etc going across Asia and the Pacific Ocean - well it would be a bit like flying in the comfort of my own living room.
Only a short post today. Bit busy. Will try and post again later =)
Wednesday 20 December 2006
"Home James, and don't spare the horses"
Spent the first day back in Lancashire. It's been beautiful - a clear blue summer's day next to the sea. Have met up with old friends, played a few games of snooker at the Lytham Yacht Club, been out for dinner, had a few drinks and generally done a few pre-crimbo jobs.
It's mint up here, all that clear blue sky and healthy air. Even saw a fucking London black cab driving down the road. Had an automatic reflex to hail it and tell the driver to "go past a cash machine and a favoured take-away". Thank Christ I didn't because up here a take-away is generally some form of raw vegetable stolen from a field and the cash machine - well let's just say that it involves removing bartering material from a cow's arse manually. Lovely.
Going to see the titular head of the family tomorrow. Grandma. Everyone else of that generation has kicked the bucket and frankly she's a frightening woman. She still scary as hell now and I'm 30. I'm not being a beaver - she's got eyes like superman and tongue that leaves scars if she hears anything out of line. I bought her a "black mamba double-headed love length" for her christmas present. A change to something more useful is probably in order to reduce the potential for getting Narg's botty whipped.
It's mint up here, all that clear blue sky and healthy air. Even saw a fucking London black cab driving down the road. Had an automatic reflex to hail it and tell the driver to "go past a cash machine and a favoured take-away". Thank Christ I didn't because up here a take-away is generally some form of raw vegetable stolen from a field and the cash machine - well let's just say that it involves removing bartering material from a cow's arse manually. Lovely.
Going to see the titular head of the family tomorrow. Grandma. Everyone else of that generation has kicked the bucket and frankly she's a frightening woman. She still scary as hell now and I'm 30. I'm not being a beaver - she's got eyes like superman and tongue that leaves scars if she hears anything out of line. I bought her a "black mamba double-headed love length" for her christmas present. A change to something more useful is probably in order to reduce the potential for getting Narg's botty whipped.
Tuesday 19 December 2006
How much crap?
I'm nearly done moving my stuff out of my flat, and it's struck me that there's SO much total crap that I've bought over the years. An amazing amount of seriously shite t-shirts, books, clothes, games, toys and paperwork. But being the true geek, made up an algorithm in my head based on the frequency of use, the age of the object and the potential future usefulness in order to find out what to throw away.
This made it easy for items such as the "Party Like Pacman" tshirt below - never worn, pretty old, never going to wear it in my life time. Answer - charity shop to start some 12 yr old on their new potential lifestyle.
But what about the shocking tanks? Very cool, used pretty often, a bugger to try and convince customs that they're only a weapon when in the wrong hands, and the likelihood of using them in the future in the snow (with all it's conductive properties) relatively slim. Answer - sod it, give them to one of the kids next door after singing the little beggar's fingers in a demonstration.
All in all, it's going pretty well though. Threw out a load of suits - very therapeutic and not just a little symbolic - as well as turfing out old programming manuals for recycling and organising the paperwork accordingly (it's been filed carefully in date order in the bin). Successful day, just need to get enough contact lenses to last for several months then we're rocking.
Timescales are:
Fly to NZ on Saturday morning.
Fly around the southern hemisphere a bit.
Fly back from Singapore (leaving some members of the party there who haven't quite finished drinking) 17th January.
Fly out to Geneva Friday 19th January and head to Chamonix.
Bliss.
To all the ex-workmates who are reading this. Thanks very much. It was a hugely positive experience working with all of you. Special note to Andy who I still believe is the best problem solver I've ever come across and acted with such dignity when things were't quite so peachy. Also thanks to Kuntesh, Badjon, Duff, Chris, Bobby, Swaps, Jonny, JQ, iPatch and all the others who still make me smile thinking about them. Take it easy y'all. See you in the next life =)
This made it easy for items such as the "Party Like Pacman" tshirt below - never worn, pretty old, never going to wear it in my life time. Answer - charity shop to start some 12 yr old on their new potential lifestyle.
But what about the shocking tanks? Very cool, used pretty often, a bugger to try and convince customs that they're only a weapon when in the wrong hands, and the likelihood of using them in the future in the snow (with all it's conductive properties) relatively slim. Answer - sod it, give them to one of the kids next door after singing the little beggar's fingers in a demonstration.
All in all, it's going pretty well though. Threw out a load of suits - very therapeutic and not just a little symbolic - as well as turfing out old programming manuals for recycling and organising the paperwork accordingly (it's been filed carefully in date order in the bin). Successful day, just need to get enough contact lenses to last for several months then we're rocking.
Timescales are:
Fly to NZ on Saturday morning.
Fly around the southern hemisphere a bit.
Fly back from Singapore (leaving some members of the party there who haven't quite finished drinking) 17th January.
Fly out to Geneva Friday 19th January and head to Chamonix.
Bliss.
To all the ex-workmates who are reading this. Thanks very much. It was a hugely positive experience working with all of you. Special note to Andy who I still believe is the best problem solver I've ever come across and acted with such dignity when things were't quite so peachy. Also thanks to Kuntesh, Badjon, Duff, Chris, Bobby, Swaps, Jonny, JQ, iPatch and all the others who still make me smile thinking about them. Take it easy y'all. See you in the next life =)
Monday 18 December 2006
Date reconverter
This is the date reconversion utility that I mentioned in a previous post. It takes similar arguments to the string.toDate() extension posted being in format dmy to represent day/month/year with this one having the optional argument t to denote the time. double a character means the result will be padded (so if the month is april using m will return 4 but mm will return 04). Pretty self explanatory, but I like the slickness of it. It could be better improved to organise times being formatted before dates, maybe something to consider at a later date.
/* Convert a date into a string.
* The format argument denotes the format (including padding zeros) the
* date is returned as. d - day, m - month, y - year, t - time.
* Double characters or quad y for year) will pad/extend that number.
* Optional: argument d_l is the date delimiter, t_l is the time delimiter.
* @param (String) format
* @param (String) d_l (Optional)
* @param (String) t_l (Optional)
*/
Date.prototype.convert = function(format, d_l, t_l) {
var d_l = d_l || "/",
t_l = t_l || ":",
date = [],
pad,
d = this;
pad = function(n) {
return (n < 10) ? String("0"+ n) : n;
}
format = format.replace(/(m+)|(d+)|(y+)|(t+)/gi, function(s) {
switch(s) {
case "d": date.push(d.getDate()); break;
case "dd": date.push(pad(d.getDate())); break;
case "m": date.push(d.getMonth()); break;
case "mm": date.push(pad(d.getMonth())); break;
case "y": date.push(String(d.getFullYear()).substring(2, 4)); break;
case "yy": date.push(String(d.getFullYear()).substring(2, 4)); break;
case "yyyy": date.push(d.getFullYear()); break;
case "t": date.push(d.getHours()+ t_l + d.getMinutes()); break;
case "tt": date.push(pad(d.getHours()) + t_l + pad(d.getMinutes())); break;
}
});
return (date.length < 3)
? null : (date.length == 3)
? date.join(d_l)
: date[0]+d_l+date[1]+d_l+date[2]+" "+date[3];
}
// Usage:
var strDate = "4::13::1976 10.30";
// the previous post String extension to create a date object
var objDate = strDate.toDate("mdy");
// Use this date convert extension
var newStrDate = objDate.convert("ddmmyytt", ".", ":"); // outputs 13.04.76 10:30
/* Convert a date into a string.
* The format argument denotes the format (including padding zeros) the
* date is returned as. d - day, m - month, y - year, t - time.
* Double characters or quad y for year) will pad/extend that number.
* Optional: argument d_l is the date delimiter, t_l is the time delimiter.
* @param (String) format
* @param (String) d_l (Optional)
* @param (String) t_l (Optional)
*/
Date.prototype.convert = function(format, d_l, t_l) {
var d_l = d_l || "/",
t_l = t_l || ":",
date = [],
pad,
d = this;
pad = function(n) {
return (n < 10) ? String("0"+ n) : n;
}
format = format.replace(/(m+)|(d+)|(y+)|(t+)/gi, function(s) {
switch(s) {
case "d": date.push(d.getDate()); break;
case "dd": date.push(pad(d.getDate())); break;
case "m": date.push(d.getMonth()); break;
case "mm": date.push(pad(d.getMonth())); break;
case "y": date.push(String(d.getFullYear()).substring(2, 4)); break;
case "yy": date.push(String(d.getFullYear()).substring(2, 4)); break;
case "yyyy": date.push(d.getFullYear()); break;
case "t": date.push(d.getHours()+ t_l + d.getMinutes()); break;
case "tt": date.push(pad(d.getHours()) + t_l + pad(d.getMinutes())); break;
}
});
return (date.length < 3)
? null : (date.length == 3)
? date.join(d_l)
: date[0]+d_l+date[1]+d_l+date[2]+" "+date[3];
}
// Usage:
var strDate = "4::13::1976 10.30";
// the previous post String extension to create a date object
var objDate = strDate.toDate("mdy");
// Use this date convert extension
var newStrDate = objDate.convert("ddmmyytt", ".", ":"); // outputs 13.04.76 10:30
Done and dusted
Last day today. Going out with a few of the boys for lunch - going to miss lots of them but my mind's already on going to New Zealand for a month and then onwards to Chamonix. Already I can feel the air of the mountains in my mind and the smell of the snow in my nostrils - weirdly I've also started speaking french in my dreams and have begun developing a taste for smelly cheese. The body seems to be readying itself for the culture change. When I stop shaving my funzone and start wearing speedos to the swimming pool, I'll know that the metamorphosis is complete.
It was great to say a blanket goodbye to everyone on Friday and seal my time in London on a positive note. It reinforces the belief that fate is aiding this move to France - everything just fits perfectly and at the end of the evening at the museum when it was time to go, it seemed right to just walk out of the main entrance with no fuss and just a genuine, happy, satisfied smile.
There's one more thing I have to do before I go. A while ago my ex lent me a book, the Celestine Prophect, which I promptly managed to lose. The book means a huge amount to her and I feel bad about misplacing it so I'm going to find it online and get a copy sent to her. It's personal to her and we shared a lot of personal moments - it's not fair to take any of those away from her without her permission.
PS
I know I said I'd post up a date re-conversion function the other day, I'm going to try to do that today.
It was great to say a blanket goodbye to everyone on Friday and seal my time in London on a positive note. It reinforces the belief that fate is aiding this move to France - everything just fits perfectly and at the end of the evening at the museum when it was time to go, it seemed right to just walk out of the main entrance with no fuss and just a genuine, happy, satisfied smile.
There's one more thing I have to do before I go. A while ago my ex lent me a book, the Celestine Prophect, which I promptly managed to lose. The book means a huge amount to her and I feel bad about misplacing it so I'm going to find it online and get a copy sent to her. It's personal to her and we shared a lot of personal moments - it's not fair to take any of those away from her without her permission.
PS
I know I said I'd post up a date re-conversion function the other day, I'm going to try to do that today.
Friday 15 December 2006
After effects
Have been saying goodbye and going for Christmas drinks and birthday parties all of this week - ploughing headlong into the seasonal spirit and the joie de vivre. Tonight's festivities are to include the annual office christmas party - held at the Science Museum in South Kensington just around the corner from where I used to live. It's mint - I love the Science Museum and am really looking forward to squeezing in a go on the ice skating rink outside the Natural History Museum as well.
I have a nasty habit of turning into "naughty monkey" after a few cheeky beers however, and by far and away the biggest concern is doing something truly monumentually idiotic tonight. We're talking about things like trying to get in a rebuilt Gyspy Moth with a pair of swimming goggles Biggles-style shouting "Tally-ho! Hun at 3 o'clock!"; maybe even solving the age-old question of "will it hurt if i place my genitals on a plasma ball" (I'm thinking there might be some sort of jacob's ladder action between Captain Chopper and the high-voltage glass...); perhaps even trying to remove a tattoo with an industrial laser; "liberating" Scaramanga's gun from the James Bond exhibition; licking Stephenson's Rocket the possibilities for mischief are quite frankly astronomical - especially after hooning around at Mach 10.4 on the ice skating rink getting progressively more and more revved up. Nice. I better calm my ass down, I'm actually starting to bounce on this chair.
But I am really, genuinely excited. How many times in life do you get the chance to eat at the Science Museum surrounded by history and innovation. It seems really fitting to end my old life in London surrounded by technological artifacts, with the odd futuristic concept dotted in between, at the place where the future brings new, exciting oppertunity and the chance to create and craft something important and new that's going to push some boundries. I'd like to think that's the message whomever is crafting my fate, organising my karma, whatever you want to call it. It's a beautiful way to end life in London and look back at what's been achieved and at the same time see the challenges and adventures of the future dotted in between. Granted there will be a small amount of drink taken - but this time it's not a sad goodbye, it's a welcome to the future with open arms, an open heart and an open mind.
I have a nasty habit of turning into "naughty monkey" after a few cheeky beers however, and by far and away the biggest concern is doing something truly monumentually idiotic tonight. We're talking about things like trying to get in a rebuilt Gyspy Moth with a pair of swimming goggles Biggles-style shouting "Tally-ho! Hun at 3 o'clock!"; maybe even solving the age-old question of "will it hurt if i place my genitals on a plasma ball" (I'm thinking there might be some sort of jacob's ladder action between Captain Chopper and the high-voltage glass...); perhaps even trying to remove a tattoo with an industrial laser; "liberating" Scaramanga's gun from the James Bond exhibition; licking Stephenson's Rocket the possibilities for mischief are quite frankly astronomical - especially after hooning around at Mach 10.4 on the ice skating rink getting progressively more and more revved up. Nice. I better calm my ass down, I'm actually starting to bounce on this chair.
But I am really, genuinely excited. How many times in life do you get the chance to eat at the Science Museum surrounded by history and innovation. It seems really fitting to end my old life in London surrounded by technological artifacts, with the odd futuristic concept dotted in between, at the place where the future brings new, exciting oppertunity and the chance to create and craft something important and new that's going to push some boundries. I'd like to think that's the message whomever is crafting my fate, organising my karma, whatever you want to call it. It's a beautiful way to end life in London and look back at what's been achieved and at the same time see the challenges and adventures of the future dotted in between. Granted there will be a small amount of drink taken - but this time it's not a sad goodbye, it's a welcome to the future with open arms, an open heart and an open mind.
Wednesday 13 December 2006
I need a date!
OK, so the title of the post is catchy, but this isn't about an urgent yearning for the future Mrs Narg - actually there's always an urgent yearning for the future Mrs Narg but let's not go there. This is about converting a string to JavaScript date object.
The concept is you have a string and you just call this method with the sequence the day/month/year appear in (d, m, y respectively). This is regardless of any delimiters of your date (delimeters being the characters between the numbers) so this will work the same way for dates in formats such as: 13/04/1976, 1976-04-13, 04::13::1976
It's pretty neat, a regular expression just finds the numbers in the sequence and then uses the format (dmy, mdy, ymd or ydm) to find which number refers to what. It then has a look to see if a time has been passed. Again the delimiter splitting the hours from the the minutes is not important, but the order must be hours then minutes (ir hh:mm or h/m or hh-mm). If no time is found, then the time defaults to 00:00 on the date supplied. All this information is then used to create a standard date object and return it - if the process fails at any stage, the method returns null.
/*
Copyright (C) 2006 Martin Rudd
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*/
String.prototype.toDate = function(format) {
if(/(\d{1,4})[^\d]+(\d{1,4})[^\d]+(\d{1,4})([^$]*)/i.test(this)) {
var date;
switch(format) {
case "dmy": date = { year: RegExp.$3, month: RegExp.$2, day: RegExp.$1 };
break;
case "mdy": date = { year: RegExp.$3, month: RegExp.$1, day: RegExp.$2 };
break;
case "ymd": date = { year: RegExp.$1, month: RegExp.$2, day: RegExp.$3 };
break;
case "ydm": date = { year: RegExp.$1, month: RegExp.$3, day: RegExp.$2 };
break;
}
if(typeof date === "object") {
var time = RegExp.$4.replace(/^\s*|\s*$/g, "");
if(time.length > 0) {
if(/(\d{1,4})[^\d]+(\d{1,4})/.test(time)) {
date.hours = RegExp.$1;
date.minutes = RegExp.$2;
}
}
date.hours = (typeof date.hours != "string") ? 0 : date.hours;
date.minutes = (typeof date.minutes != "string") ? 0 : date.minutes;
return new Date(date.year, date.month, date.day, date.hours, date.minutes);
} else {
return null;
}
} else {
return null;
}
}
Feel free to have a play. Tomorrow I'll post up a method turning the JavaScript date back into a string in different formats.
The concept is you have a string and you just call this method with the sequence the day/month/year appear in (d, m, y respectively). This is regardless of any delimiters of your date (delimeters being the characters between the numbers) so this will work the same way for dates in formats such as: 13/04/1976, 1976-04-13, 04::13::1976
It's pretty neat, a regular expression just finds the numbers in the sequence and then uses the format (dmy, mdy, ymd or ydm) to find which number refers to what. It then has a look to see if a time has been passed. Again the delimiter splitting the hours from the the minutes is not important, but the order must be hours then minutes (ir hh:mm or h/m or hh-mm). If no time is found, then the time defaults to 00:00 on the date supplied. All this information is then used to create a standard date object and return it - if the process fails at any stage, the method returns null.
/*
Copyright (C) 2006 Martin Rudd
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License
as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2
of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
*/
String.prototype.toDate = function(format) {
if(/(\d{1,4})[^\d]+(\d{1,4})[^\d]+(\d{1,4})([^$]*)/i.test(this)) {
var date;
switch(format) {
case "dmy": date = { year: RegExp.$3, month: RegExp.$2, day: RegExp.$1 };
break;
case "mdy": date = { year: RegExp.$3, month: RegExp.$1, day: RegExp.$2 };
break;
case "ymd": date = { year: RegExp.$1, month: RegExp.$2, day: RegExp.$3 };
break;
case "ydm": date = { year: RegExp.$1, month: RegExp.$3, day: RegExp.$2 };
break;
}
if(typeof date === "object") {
var time = RegExp.$4.replace(/^\s*|\s*$/g, "");
if(time.length > 0) {
if(/(\d{1,4})[^\d]+(\d{1,4})/.test(time)) {
date.hours = RegExp.$1;
date.minutes = RegExp.$2;
}
}
date.hours = (typeof date.hours != "string") ? 0 : date.hours;
date.minutes = (typeof date.minutes != "string") ? 0 : date.minutes;
return new Date(date.year, date.month, date.day, date.hours, date.minutes);
} else {
return null;
}
} else {
return null;
}
}
Feel free to have a play. Tomorrow I'll post up a method turning the JavaScript date back into a string in different formats.
Tuesday 12 December 2006
Midget rental
Nearly finished up at work. All that needs to be done now is to find someone to take to the office christmas party. One of these little guys should do the trick:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54x3oW5tarM&eurl=
Of course you could just go directly to the website to order one:
http://www.rentamidget.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54x3oW5tarM&eurl=
Of course you could just go directly to the website to order one:
http://www.rentamidget.com/
Joining strings
We've all been there before - concatenating strings of html, but which way is quicker?
1) Recursive concatenation.
var html = "<html>" + "<head>" + "<title>";
2) Append to the variable.
var html = "<html>";
html += "<head>";
html += "<title>";
3) Join the array
var html = ["<html>", "<head>", "<title>"].join("");
Smart engines such as SpiderMonkey (the basis for Netscape's original JavaScript engine - leading to Netscape, Firefox, etc) would use exactly the same underlying code for examples 1 and 2 - no speed difference at all. JScript in example 2 however would look up the html variable each time and use an intermediary to store the new values before discarding the old ones. So there would be a speed differential in JScript where example 1 is quicker than example 2.
The fastest string concatenation is using option 3 - this is down to the array's internal string builder facility which allows for much faster string manipulation. Of course it's only going to make a big difference when contactenating strings over many iterations - such as creating a large html table. Over a very small number of iterations the difference is so negligable as to be inconsequential.
1) Recursive concatenation.
var html = "<html>" + "<head>" + "<title>";
2) Append to the variable.
var html = "<html>";
html += "<head>";
html += "<title>";
3) Join the array
var html = ["<html>", "<head>", "<title>"].join("");
Smart engines such as SpiderMonkey (the basis for Netscape's original JavaScript engine - leading to Netscape, Firefox, etc) would use exactly the same underlying code for examples 1 and 2 - no speed difference at all. JScript in example 2 however would look up the html variable each time and use an intermediary to store the new values before discarding the old ones. So there would be a speed differential in JScript where example 1 is quicker than example 2.
The fastest string concatenation is using option 3 - this is down to the array's internal string builder facility which allows for much faster string manipulation. Of course it's only going to make a big difference when contactenating strings over many iterations - such as creating a large html table. Over a very small number of iterations the difference is so negligable as to be inconsequential.
Monday 11 December 2006
Reality check
Things are rapidly being ticked off the checklist.
1) Organise the London flat.
2) Get somewhere to live in Chamonix.
3) Find somewhere to work in Chamonix.
4) Get some immediate work (got the contract to rebuild some pub websites).
5) Move collection of thongs, leotards and hats from London to Lancashire.
6) Store the above collection of thongs and leotards not required for the mountains.
7) Stop worrying about the white stuff (woohoo!)
8) Grab a few days before flying to New Zealand to sort out presents & family stuff.
9) Ship over a load of computer gear really cheaply through the Post Office (bonus! thought there was going to be need to hire a van and drive it out there).
10) "Unhired" Rosa, my wonderful cleaner who has kept me in clean underpants for as long as I can remember.
11) Claim back some of the £888 year oyster card. I'm sorry but LTU are fuckers - pleased that they are actually giving something back for a change.
12) Find a cheap flight out to Geneva.
Current work have agreed to let me go on the 18th December, leaving drinks getting sorted, have said goodbye to some of my friends.
Jesus, it's actually happening.
1) Organise the London flat.
2) Get somewhere to live in Chamonix.
3) Find somewhere to work in Chamonix.
4) Get some immediate work (got the contract to rebuild some pub websites).
5) Move collection of thongs, leotards and hats from London to Lancashire.
6) Store the above collection of thongs and leotards not required for the mountains.
7) Stop worrying about the white stuff (woohoo!)
8) Grab a few days before flying to New Zealand to sort out presents & family stuff.
9) Ship over a load of computer gear really cheaply through the Post Office (bonus! thought there was going to be need to hire a van and drive it out there).
10) "Unhired" Rosa, my wonderful cleaner who has kept me in clean underpants for as long as I can remember.
11) Claim back some of the £888 year oyster card. I'm sorry but LTU are fuckers - pleased that they are actually giving something back for a change.
12) Find a cheap flight out to Geneva.
Current work have agreed to let me go on the 18th December, leaving drinks getting sorted, have said goodbye to some of my friends.
Jesus, it's actually happening.
Friday 8 December 2006
Texty texty
Texty texty
Was reading Simon Willison's Weblog and he posted up about an really simple full-screen, auto-saving, free text editor called WriteRoom. It looks really nice - really classic. It's definately going on my mac at home.
Further down in the comments left was a post by a certain Steve Ballmer about a similar editor for Windows called Dark Room. I'm actually using it to write this blog post and it really is sweet. For a start it's got an opacity filter to the background so you can see what's happening on your desktop. I'm sorry but that's just like geek porn. Ironically you could actually run a movie in the background and watch it through the editor whilst working on a document. Mmmmm. Coupled with the auto-save feature that it uses means that this thing is actually making Narg breathe a little deeply and wriggle in his chair. Of course there's the small matter of the CEO of Microsoft posting comments on your blog - cause for celebration.
I'm a big fan of these small software apps that people write and release freeware or under OSS licenses - they really do push the larger tech companies with the ideas they promote. Much of the underlying architecture of really famous bits of software has been pushed by small ideas over the course of software history. Look no farther than Internet Explorer - the current most widely used web browser was actually developed primarily from the Spyglass Mosaic browser around 1995. Spyglass Mosaic actually licensed technology from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) - technology which was designed for a UNIX web browser and released under very generous licensing. This is why there's a credit to NCSA Mosaic in Internet Explorer. You can find this for yourself by going to "Help --> About Internet Explorer" in Internet Explorer itself. Very funky.
This does go to show that small teams of developers can have large impacts farther down the line. I'd like to think that at some stage I'll write a piece of software - a website, an interface or an appliation - that will have this impact. I think that would be a real sense of satisfaction. I believe in my heart that this is going to happen with the Chamonix Valley website. There are some really sound ideas coming forward and oppertunity to realise these things. Earlier this week the first nerves about moving to a foreign country were felt - the first butterflies in the stomach, but in reflection it wasn't apprehension of the unknown, but the realisation that there's the chance to do something to have a positive impact on a lot of people. Awesome. Bring it on. Feel the love baby.
Further reading:
Mosaic web browser
History of Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer Homepage
Was reading Simon Willison's Weblog and he posted up about an really simple full-screen, auto-saving, free text editor called WriteRoom. It looks really nice - really classic. It's definately going on my mac at home.
Further down in the comments left was a post by a certain Steve Ballmer about a similar editor for Windows called Dark Room. I'm actually using it to write this blog post and it really is sweet. For a start it's got an opacity filter to the background so you can see what's happening on your desktop. I'm sorry but that's just like geek porn. Ironically you could actually run a movie in the background and watch it through the editor whilst working on a document. Mmmmm. Coupled with the auto-save feature that it uses means that this thing is actually making Narg breathe a little deeply and wriggle in his chair. Of course there's the small matter of the CEO of Microsoft posting comments on your blog - cause for celebration.
I'm a big fan of these small software apps that people write and release freeware or under OSS licenses - they really do push the larger tech companies with the ideas they promote. Much of the underlying architecture of really famous bits of software has been pushed by small ideas over the course of software history. Look no farther than Internet Explorer - the current most widely used web browser was actually developed primarily from the Spyglass Mosaic browser around 1995. Spyglass Mosaic actually licensed technology from the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) - technology which was designed for a UNIX web browser and released under very generous licensing. This is why there's a credit to NCSA Mosaic in Internet Explorer. You can find this for yourself by going to "Help --> About Internet Explorer" in Internet Explorer itself. Very funky.
This does go to show that small teams of developers can have large impacts farther down the line. I'd like to think that at some stage I'll write a piece of software - a website, an interface or an appliation - that will have this impact. I think that would be a real sense of satisfaction. I believe in my heart that this is going to happen with the Chamonix Valley website. There are some really sound ideas coming forward and oppertunity to realise these things. Earlier this week the first nerves about moving to a foreign country were felt - the first butterflies in the stomach, but in reflection it wasn't apprehension of the unknown, but the realisation that there's the chance to do something to have a positive impact on a lot of people. Awesome. Bring it on. Feel the love baby.
Further reading:
Mosaic web browser
History of Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer Homepage
Thursday 7 December 2006
jumpcut
A while ago I got a shout from a mate of mine to have a look at jumpcut a site that enables you to upload/edit/recut and share movies. Very cool, it's also free. I came across a rather entertaining definition of jumpcut on urbandictionary.com - apparently jumpcut is a video editing term referring to a large hop in the timeline of a movie. So the site's got a natty name, it's easy to use - I created a movie a couple of months ago to try out the software.
So it all looks very funky indeed. In fact after talking to one of the lads here we came up with a fantastic idea of doing a video blog. So I'll hook this blog into that video feed and hopefully be able to pop out a 2 minute segment at the end of the day in Chamonix with a bit of amusing or at least interesting news on the events and rigours of the day. Very cool!
I like the idea of doing this for a few reasons - Chris from listingslab already has a highly amusing blog about quitting London life to live in Chamonix and I'd like something slightly different. Also there's the benefit of being able to send a more interactive environment back to friends and family so they can see any phsyical differences (suntan, black eyes, stitches, etc). A bonus is that the chamonix valley website also has been exploring video content. Plus there's the added oppertunity for elaborate practical jokes which can't be understated.
I'd recommend having a glance over at jumpcut and I'll post up on here whenever there's a video update. In the mean time, if anyone's got any ideas for a good lightweight camera for taking bursts of video then please give me a shout!
So it all looks very funky indeed. In fact after talking to one of the lads here we came up with a fantastic idea of doing a video blog. So I'll hook this blog into that video feed and hopefully be able to pop out a 2 minute segment at the end of the day in Chamonix with a bit of amusing or at least interesting news on the events and rigours of the day. Very cool!
I like the idea of doing this for a few reasons - Chris from listingslab already has a highly amusing blog about quitting London life to live in Chamonix and I'd like something slightly different. Also there's the benefit of being able to send a more interactive environment back to friends and family so they can see any phsyical differences (suntan, black eyes, stitches, etc). A bonus is that the chamonix valley website also has been exploring video content. Plus there's the added oppertunity for elaborate practical jokes which can't be understated.
I'd recommend having a glance over at jumpcut and I'll post up on here whenever there's a video update. In the mean time, if anyone's got any ideas for a good lightweight camera for taking bursts of video then please give me a shout!
Wednesday 6 December 2006
Dreamy love
Have been laid up in bed ill yesterday and today. Got man flu. Hence have been living off lucozade and dvd's - notably crappy romantic comedies. My lovely housemate procured some of the most meaningless film to gush forth from the window of knowledge and rather worryingly have enjoyed much of it. In fact, there's a few tips and tricks left in there to the wooers and wooees - limited notes below.
Observations of successful courting strategies:
Knock the person you are courting clean out.
Saw this in Hitch amongst others, it appears to be a favoured strategy generally. In fact causing some sort of physical distress seems to be a really good idea as the target will inevitably forgive and forget. I'd guess that this could be a precursor to domestic violence at some stage in the future but all the other tell-tale signs seem to get swept under the carpet. On the plus side tho, I do like sporty, adventurous girls and so counting the recovery time may well certainly lend itself to helping "weed out the minnows" when looking for Mrs Narg.
Sleep with someone else when drunk/vulnerable/drunk & vulnerable.
A little more emotionally charged than the physical aspect of above. Plus the sex is inevitably never as good with the third party. They are always cast aside at a later stage for the main characters to reunite, but it would certainly make it a more difficult decision for the hero/heroine to go back to their main partner if the third party had introduced a bucket of soapy frogs into a lively bedroom encounter. There's a lingering feeling that the potential Mrs Narg might be put off by the combination of Imperial Leather and amphibians however so this one's going to be put on the "maybe" pile.
Don't buy flowers/chocolates.
It's gonna take waaay more than that apparently. Save your money. The guy with the private jet inevitably has a girl at some point - that should speak volumes for the value of money. I'm hoping that Mrs Narg will prefer flowers over jets - preferably a wild flower on the heather highlands in the middle of Scotland to an EasyJet flight to Magaluf at least.
Be really attractive.
No seriously it helps a lot. Boy next door look seems to work very well. The investment banker in a suit is almost always the bad guy (so why do virtually all girls like men in suits?) whereas the guy in the jeans and shirt ultimately always gets the girl (and later sponsorship from Gap). However an underlying sense of style and buckets of confidence also feature into this quite heavily. There's 30% off at Gap at the moment, so Mrs Narg will be happy. Might even have a shave on our wedding day to really smarten up.
I guess that despite all the jokes and whatnot mentioned above - the only thing you can do is open up enough to someone else for them to love you for who you are. It's happened once before to me and it was all I could do to stop standing on top of everything and shouting it across the land. The most exciting, adventurous, happy, sharing, adrenaline filled, emotional trip ever. Once she fell in love with the mountains and snowboarding too, it was like the air had been filled with crystals everywhere you looked.
The unequivocal love of the mountains is one of the reasons for going to the France. Decisions become easier with less clutter and distraction (ie London), and life is much more pure both spiritually and physically. The interim stalling period to get out there is almost unbearable - waiting to be able to get stuck into programming at the foot of the Aiguille du Midi in the high clean air after a few hours riding the mountain in the early morning each day. This love for the mountains is unconditional, much like the love of the past. The chance to programme, to ride, to enjoy the mountains and to have a fulfilling life is too much to walk away from. I guess if I meet Mrs Narg out there, then the chance to follow my dream and have it merge with someone elses. Well that would just be too cool.
Observations of successful courting strategies:
Knock the person you are courting clean out.
Saw this in Hitch amongst others, it appears to be a favoured strategy generally. In fact causing some sort of physical distress seems to be a really good idea as the target will inevitably forgive and forget. I'd guess that this could be a precursor to domestic violence at some stage in the future but all the other tell-tale signs seem to get swept under the carpet. On the plus side tho, I do like sporty, adventurous girls and so counting the recovery time may well certainly lend itself to helping "weed out the minnows" when looking for Mrs Narg.
Sleep with someone else when drunk/vulnerable/drunk & vulnerable.
A little more emotionally charged than the physical aspect of above. Plus the sex is inevitably never as good with the third party. They are always cast aside at a later stage for the main characters to reunite, but it would certainly make it a more difficult decision for the hero/heroine to go back to their main partner if the third party had introduced a bucket of soapy frogs into a lively bedroom encounter. There's a lingering feeling that the potential Mrs Narg might be put off by the combination of Imperial Leather and amphibians however so this one's going to be put on the "maybe" pile.
Don't buy flowers/chocolates.
It's gonna take waaay more than that apparently. Save your money. The guy with the private jet inevitably has a girl at some point - that should speak volumes for the value of money. I'm hoping that Mrs Narg will prefer flowers over jets - preferably a wild flower on the heather highlands in the middle of Scotland to an EasyJet flight to Magaluf at least.
Be really attractive.
No seriously it helps a lot. Boy next door look seems to work very well. The investment banker in a suit is almost always the bad guy (so why do virtually all girls like men in suits?) whereas the guy in the jeans and shirt ultimately always gets the girl (and later sponsorship from Gap). However an underlying sense of style and buckets of confidence also feature into this quite heavily. There's 30% off at Gap at the moment, so Mrs Narg will be happy. Might even have a shave on our wedding day to really smarten up.
I guess that despite all the jokes and whatnot mentioned above - the only thing you can do is open up enough to someone else for them to love you for who you are. It's happened once before to me and it was all I could do to stop standing on top of everything and shouting it across the land. The most exciting, adventurous, happy, sharing, adrenaline filled, emotional trip ever. Once she fell in love with the mountains and snowboarding too, it was like the air had been filled with crystals everywhere you looked.
The unequivocal love of the mountains is one of the reasons for going to the France. Decisions become easier with less clutter and distraction (ie London), and life is much more pure both spiritually and physically. The interim stalling period to get out there is almost unbearable - waiting to be able to get stuck into programming at the foot of the Aiguille du Midi in the high clean air after a few hours riding the mountain in the early morning each day. This love for the mountains is unconditional, much like the love of the past. The chance to programme, to ride, to enjoy the mountains and to have a fulfilling life is too much to walk away from. I guess if I meet Mrs Narg out there, then the chance to follow my dream and have it merge with someone elses. Well that would just be too cool.
Thursday 30 November 2006
Green software
This is a brilliant piece of software designed to make your computer use less power. Download it and run it people - it's your duty!
http://www.localcooling.com/
http://www.localcooling.com/
Come together
It always appeared that totally changing one's life was going to be one of the hardest things to do. There would be the enormous doubt, the fear of the unknown, the constant questioning of the choice, the nerves about the imminent financial state, the worry of the excessive chafing of the leotard to the nether regions in the new job, etc. However it's been amazingly simple. It helps enormously to have supportive friends and family to allay those doubts, and to each and every one who has helped - thankyou. However not many of these negative values have really surfaced, probably due to the real morale boosting and positive mindset of these influencial people.
For anyone who's thinking about chucking it all in and going to fulfil a lifelong dream - don't delay - get stuck into changing your life. It's the most euphoric feeling. Every emotion runs through your body sending pins and needles of pleasure and happiness through every finger and toe in your body. Every muscle and memory seems to gear towards solidifying the past encouraging you to settle any personal differences - the feeling that this may be the last time to be able to say protracted goodbyes to those who have helped shape your life, the ability to see through any past indiscretions to come together and truly accept who you are. It's the most incredible therapeutic, cathartic feeling. Of course you want all of the goodbyes to seal in the story of the journey so far, but they must be fully sealed without leaving any gaps to lose anything through.
Life's a totally personal experience, no one can ever tell you how you feel or force you to think in a certain way, but everyone has influence over others in their close circle of friends. To be able to clean the dust away from the relationships with your friends and admire them for who they are is wonderful. To be able to hold someone with the greatest respect after knowing them for many years having seen the decisions they have made and the way they have handled themselves when the going got tough - that's a personal quality that I will always admire in those around me, and constantly aspire to.
So take a look at your friends - repeat in your mind why you like to talk to them, why you enjoy spending time with them, why they make you laugh, why they make you think, what you'd miss if they went from your life, but most of all why you respect them. Then sit down and tell them one thing that you thought of. Everyone needs a morale boost sometimes, and if that boost comes from a close friend they might just buy you a drink and argue about whether Roadrunner was better than Tom and Jerry.
For anyone who's thinking about chucking it all in and going to fulfil a lifelong dream - don't delay - get stuck into changing your life. It's the most euphoric feeling. Every emotion runs through your body sending pins and needles of pleasure and happiness through every finger and toe in your body. Every muscle and memory seems to gear towards solidifying the past encouraging you to settle any personal differences - the feeling that this may be the last time to be able to say protracted goodbyes to those who have helped shape your life, the ability to see through any past indiscretions to come together and truly accept who you are. It's the most incredible therapeutic, cathartic feeling. Of course you want all of the goodbyes to seal in the story of the journey so far, but they must be fully sealed without leaving any gaps to lose anything through.
Life's a totally personal experience, no one can ever tell you how you feel or force you to think in a certain way, but everyone has influence over others in their close circle of friends. To be able to clean the dust away from the relationships with your friends and admire them for who they are is wonderful. To be able to hold someone with the greatest respect after knowing them for many years having seen the decisions they have made and the way they have handled themselves when the going got tough - that's a personal quality that I will always admire in those around me, and constantly aspire to.
So take a look at your friends - repeat in your mind why you like to talk to them, why you enjoy spending time with them, why they make you laugh, why they make you think, what you'd miss if they went from your life, but most of all why you respect them. Then sit down and tell them one thing that you thought of. Everyone needs a morale boost sometimes, and if that boost comes from a close friend they might just buy you a drink and argue about whether Roadrunner was better than Tom and Jerry.
Monday 27 November 2006
A cage for the monkey
Spoke to the lovely Steph at Planet Subzero about getting somewhere sorted to live in Chamonix. Lo and behold, am all set up! Perfect.
Everything's coming together nicely and picking up pace at a good rate with more ideas for work coming into the pipeline and being discussed. Will book flight this week and start dusting off my thermal thong and the rest of the boarding gear.
For those who aren't sure where Chamonix is, here's a link to the French Google maps listing.
Everything's coming together nicely and picking up pace at a good rate with more ideas for work coming into the pipeline and being discussed. Will book flight this week and start dusting off my thermal thong and the rest of the boarding gear.
For those who aren't sure where Chamonix is, here's a link to the French Google maps listing.
The Changingman
Written Friday 24th November
Decided to head home to the country to see my folks and take part in the Lytham Yacht Club annual dinner. It's a pretty traditional affair - dinner jackets, speeches, port and the like. It's pretty crusty too. Junior members are those under 30 and the president of the club is in his 90's. As I said - traditional! The funny thing is not one of the (all-male) members actually owns a boat/yacht/ship - it's purely social.
Another reason for coming up to the dinner is to take a break from the big smoke. I've been in London for a several years now, working for a capital management company and then for a financial betting company. A radical change in life is due. So yesterday the formal resignation went in and it became time to start shaping the future of the boy Narg.
Today I find myself on a Virgin train piling through central England heading from Euston to Preston listening to Nina Simone's greatest hits flowing through the headphones from my iPod with the same subtle, blended, sinuous feel of looking out of the window watching the scenery roll past. It truly does feel like the beginning of an adventure - one that potentially could shape life for many years to come.
I've decided to move out to Chamonix - the town that sits in the valley at the bottom of Mont Blanc in France. It's a mecca for skiiers and snowboarders due to the high, steep peaks, as well as being one of the best places in Europe to go climbing for the same reason. Timings look like to move out there mid-January after spending a month in New Zealand over christmas and new year. The more cynical out there will think this is purely a ruse to go out and play in the snow for a few months, but in fact it's going to provide the oppertunity to finish writing a piece of software that's been rolling around my mind for some time now. Also there's a particularly talented friend out there who runs the Chamonix valley website - chamonix-valley.com - and we've talked a bit working on a few bits on that together in a trade for using his offices to work from.
There's a heightened sense of freedom and happiness now that's not been felt for far too long. It's too easy to get bogged down in monotony and the negative aspect of life and that's debilitating. There's too much oppertunity to make your life wholely fulfilling and happy out there. The big adventure of life is an exciting miracle of a challenge and I've always felt that if you feel like life is passing by and you aren't living to the apex of the fun, happiness, joy and peace you can have then it's time for a change. Life is beautiful - even the chapters that are difficult or you don't like provide the lows for the highs to be high. Once again, it's been easy to wake up in the morning and jump up and down on the bed with excitement about what the day will bring, the utter joy of knowing that this one day is unique and there will never be the chance to live it again. That for me is the most special feeling, to share that with someone else - especially your partner and children - has to be the great gift of life.
There is an element of sadness leaving work - there is a plethora of amazing, incredible people there. Especially one guy who stuck up for me when times were hard and I just hope one day that he'll see the loyalty and honesty he showed me was reciprocated at every oppertunity that arose - he deserved it and much more. For that and his ability to teach and share knowledge selflessly, I thank him. I wish him and the other guys all the very best. Before leaving it also feels fully right to make peace with the very few people who there was any sort of friction with. It just feels correct in order to look back at this chapter in life with a whole heart full of happiness at having those people around as influential characters.
So the main plan of action now is to move to Chamonix and:
1) Write an exciting, challenging, clever, sellable piece of software (then sell it!).
2) Settle into doing two things that I love unconditionally - programming and snowboarding.
3) Fall in love again. OK now this isn't quite so urgent, but it's definately part of the main life plan thingy so it's included here.
Related links:
Chamonix valley website
Listingslab blog
Decided to head home to the country to see my folks and take part in the Lytham Yacht Club annual dinner. It's a pretty traditional affair - dinner jackets, speeches, port and the like. It's pretty crusty too. Junior members are those under 30 and the president of the club is in his 90's. As I said - traditional! The funny thing is not one of the (all-male) members actually owns a boat/yacht/ship - it's purely social.
Another reason for coming up to the dinner is to take a break from the big smoke. I've been in London for a several years now, working for a capital management company and then for a financial betting company. A radical change in life is due. So yesterday the formal resignation went in and it became time to start shaping the future of the boy Narg.
Today I find myself on a Virgin train piling through central England heading from Euston to Preston listening to Nina Simone's greatest hits flowing through the headphones from my iPod with the same subtle, blended, sinuous feel of looking out of the window watching the scenery roll past. It truly does feel like the beginning of an adventure - one that potentially could shape life for many years to come.
I've decided to move out to Chamonix - the town that sits in the valley at the bottom of Mont Blanc in France. It's a mecca for skiiers and snowboarders due to the high, steep peaks, as well as being one of the best places in Europe to go climbing for the same reason. Timings look like to move out there mid-January after spending a month in New Zealand over christmas and new year. The more cynical out there will think this is purely a ruse to go out and play in the snow for a few months, but in fact it's going to provide the oppertunity to finish writing a piece of software that's been rolling around my mind for some time now. Also there's a particularly talented friend out there who runs the Chamonix valley website - chamonix-valley.com - and we've talked a bit working on a few bits on that together in a trade for using his offices to work from.
There's a heightened sense of freedom and happiness now that's not been felt for far too long. It's too easy to get bogged down in monotony and the negative aspect of life and that's debilitating. There's too much oppertunity to make your life wholely fulfilling and happy out there. The big adventure of life is an exciting miracle of a challenge and I've always felt that if you feel like life is passing by and you aren't living to the apex of the fun, happiness, joy and peace you can have then it's time for a change. Life is beautiful - even the chapters that are difficult or you don't like provide the lows for the highs to be high. Once again, it's been easy to wake up in the morning and jump up and down on the bed with excitement about what the day will bring, the utter joy of knowing that this one day is unique and there will never be the chance to live it again. That for me is the most special feeling, to share that with someone else - especially your partner and children - has to be the great gift of life.
There is an element of sadness leaving work - there is a plethora of amazing, incredible people there. Especially one guy who stuck up for me when times were hard and I just hope one day that he'll see the loyalty and honesty he showed me was reciprocated at every oppertunity that arose - he deserved it and much more. For that and his ability to teach and share knowledge selflessly, I thank him. I wish him and the other guys all the very best. Before leaving it also feels fully right to make peace with the very few people who there was any sort of friction with. It just feels correct in order to look back at this chapter in life with a whole heart full of happiness at having those people around as influential characters.
So the main plan of action now is to move to Chamonix and:
1) Write an exciting, challenging, clever, sellable piece of software (then sell it!).
2) Settle into doing two things that I love unconditionally - programming and snowboarding.
3) Fall in love again. OK now this isn't quite so urgent, but it's definately part of the main life plan thingy so it's included here.
Related links:
Chamonix valley website
Listingslab blog
Thursday 23 November 2006
Number fun
Numbers are pretty interesting things, as well as the obvious mathematical use people also attribute emotional, psychological, mythological and religious reactions to certain numbers. Everyone has numbers they like and don't like, history and superstition show that westerners perceive the number 7 as not only lucky but also there are associations with cognitive psychology whereas the chinese see the number 8 as especially fortuitous. Funky stuff. In fact numerology explores this relationship between numbers and other systems (religious, physical, living, etc). My study into this is fairly limited, but it's always been interesting playing around with numbers and I've a stack of JavaScript number object extensions that I carry around in an html file wherever I go to work.
So here they are. I can't take full credit for all of these, I've based some of them on other snippets of code I've found around the place. Notably from codingforums.com so thanks to all who have contributed. I should point out that there's not much explaning that will be done as to why they work - they've been chopped right down to the bare minimum of overhead in most cases and work beautifully, but often look complex. I may well post up another time how they work in more detail.
1) First up is a classic. Rounding a number to a specified number of decimal places. It takes an optional argument n for the number of decimal places to round to. If no argument is supplied, the number will be rounded to 2 decimal places.
Number.prototype.toDecimals = function(n) {
var n = (isNaN(n)) ? 2 : n;
var nT = Math.pow(10, n);
function pad(s) {
s = s || '.';
return (s.length > n) ? s : pad(s + '0');
}
return (isNaN(this)) ? this : (new String(Math.round(this*nT) / nT)).replace(/(\.\d*)?$/, pad);
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 9.23423;
var intRounded = intNumber.toDecimals(); // output: 9.23
var intRoundedToFourPlaces = intNumber.toDecimals(4); // output: 9.2342
2) Make an ordinal string (eg 1st, 2nd, 3rd) from a number. I use this a lot in date formatting. The argument n is just a locally declared variable, this function does not need any arguments passed to it.
Number.prototype.toOrdinal = function(n) {
return ( this + ["th","st","nd","rd"][(!(((n = this % 10) > 3) || (Math.floor(this % 100/10) == 1))) * n] );
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 13;
var intOrdinal = intNumber.toOrdinal(); // output: "13th"
3) Convert a decimal number (also known as base ten or denary number) to hexidecimal (base 16 or hex) string. Hexidecimal is the numeral system that computers use. This is very useful for html colour codes which use 3 pairs of hexidecimal values to dictate the red, green and blue mix of the colour (so #CC130F is actually - CC 13 0F).
Number.prototype.toHexidecimal = function() {
return this.toString(16).toUpperCase();
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 28;
var intHexidecimal = intNumber.toHexidecimal(); // output: "1C"
4) Convert a decimal number to binary. This is used the least out of the previous 3 number extensions, but it's included because it's elegant!
Number.prototype.toBinary = function() {
return this.toString(2);
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 13;
var intBinary = intNumber.toBinary(); // output: 1101
You can also use these by putting parentheses (round brackets) around the number and calling the method. For example (13).toBinary(); outputs 1101, (40).toOrdinal(); outputs "40th", etc.
You may well notice that the 3rd and 4th number extensions (toHexidecimal() and toBinary()) use the native JavaScript object toString() method. When used with JavaScript numbers, this toString method allows you to pass an argument called a radix. In pretty much every numeral system we use, a radix refers to the number of unique digits that the chosen numeral system can use (including 0). So in the case of toBinary() we pass a radix of 2 because there are two digits that binary can use 0 and 1. In the case of decimal there are 10 they are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and in the case of toHexidecimal() there are 16 which are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F. The letters A-F are used in hexidecimal to complete the number of unique digits for that numbering system (the decimal equivelant would be 10-15 but as all those numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) have been used previously, they need to be replaced with unique digits).
So go, have fun with the numbers, be nerdy and spread the word!
So here they are. I can't take full credit for all of these, I've based some of them on other snippets of code I've found around the place. Notably from codingforums.com so thanks to all who have contributed. I should point out that there's not much explaning that will be done as to why they work - they've been chopped right down to the bare minimum of overhead in most cases and work beautifully, but often look complex. I may well post up another time how they work in more detail.
1) First up is a classic. Rounding a number to a specified number of decimal places. It takes an optional argument n for the number of decimal places to round to. If no argument is supplied, the number will be rounded to 2 decimal places.
Number.prototype.toDecimals = function(n) {
var n = (isNaN(n)) ? 2 : n;
var nT = Math.pow(10, n);
function pad(s) {
s = s || '.';
return (s.length > n) ? s : pad(s + '0');
}
return (isNaN(this)) ? this : (new String(Math.round(this*nT) / nT)).replace(/(\.\d*)?$/, pad);
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 9.23423;
var intRounded = intNumber.toDecimals(); // output: 9.23
var intRoundedToFourPlaces = intNumber.toDecimals(4); // output: 9.2342
2) Make an ordinal string (eg 1st, 2nd, 3rd) from a number. I use this a lot in date formatting. The argument n is just a locally declared variable, this function does not need any arguments passed to it.
Number.prototype.toOrdinal = function(n) {
return ( this + ["th","st","nd","rd"][(!(((n = this % 10) > 3) || (Math.floor(this % 100/10) == 1))) * n] );
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 13;
var intOrdinal = intNumber.toOrdinal(); // output: "13th"
3) Convert a decimal number (also known as base ten or denary number) to hexidecimal (base 16 or hex) string. Hexidecimal is the numeral system that computers use. This is very useful for html colour codes which use 3 pairs of hexidecimal values to dictate the red, green and blue mix of the colour (so #CC130F is actually - CC 13 0F).
Number.prototype.toHexidecimal = function() {
return this.toString(16).toUpperCase();
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 28;
var intHexidecimal = intNumber.toHexidecimal(); // output: "1C"
4) Convert a decimal number to binary. This is used the least out of the previous 3 number extensions, but it's included because it's elegant!
Number.prototype.toBinary = function() {
return this.toString(2);
}
Usage:
var intNumber = 13;
var intBinary = intNumber.toBinary(); // output: 1101
You can also use these by putting parentheses (round brackets) around the number and calling the method. For example (13).toBinary(); outputs 1101, (40).toOrdinal(); outputs "40th", etc.
You may well notice that the 3rd and 4th number extensions (toHexidecimal() and toBinary()) use the native JavaScript object toString() method. When used with JavaScript numbers, this toString method allows you to pass an argument called a radix. In pretty much every numeral system we use, a radix refers to the number of unique digits that the chosen numeral system can use (including 0). So in the case of toBinary() we pass a radix of 2 because there are two digits that binary can use 0 and 1. In the case of decimal there are 10 they are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and in the case of toHexidecimal() there are 16 which are 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F. The letters A-F are used in hexidecimal to complete the number of unique digits for that numbering system (the decimal equivelant would be 10-15 but as all those numbers (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5) have been used previously, they need to be replaced with unique digits).
So go, have fun with the numbers, be nerdy and spread the word!
Wednesday 22 November 2006
Lies, damn lies & statistics
I was having a chat with the Big Swede today, and he told me about his house getting burgled last year. It got me thinking and one thing led to another and I tried to work out (mathematically) my chance of being burgled whilst living in London. A quick search on google provided a link to the Home Office crime statistics website. As I'm flicking throught the site I come across the sexual offence statistics page.
I'm totally shocked by what it says.
"Seven per cent of women had suffered a serious sexual assault at least once in their lifetime (including rape) since the age of 16."
7 percent. That's staggering. To put it in perspective - educationnews.org says that dyslexia affects around 2-8% of school-age youngsters. I'm always reading about the latest initiative to teach reading and literacy, but rarely do you hear about victim support. There's some sort of dirty aura around rape that cloaks and taints everything that comes into contact with it. As far as I assumed (because I don't really hear about it) that there was support available but it's not that globally expansive - local support groups and such. Happily, I'm wrong. rape counselling pulls down more results than violent porn.
Statistics? That's one out of every 14.2 women. Now I'm looking around at the lads because I have more than 14 male friends, mathematically one of them is guilty.
I'm totally shocked by what it says.
"Seven per cent of women had suffered a serious sexual assault at least once in their lifetime (including rape) since the age of 16."
7 percent. That's staggering. To put it in perspective - educationnews.org says that dyslexia affects around 2-8% of school-age youngsters. I'm always reading about the latest initiative to teach reading and literacy, but rarely do you hear about victim support. There's some sort of dirty aura around rape that cloaks and taints everything that comes into contact with it. As far as I assumed (because I don't really hear about it) that there was support available but it's not that globally expansive - local support groups and such. Happily, I'm wrong. rape counselling pulls down more results than violent porn.
Statistics? That's one out of every 14.2 women. Now I'm looking around at the lads because I have more than 14 male friends, mathematically one of them is guilty.
Tuesday 21 November 2006
More coin flip
Just found out one of my mates got some bad, bad beats last night and lost enough money to buy a house in London.
Woah!
Woah!
CSS image flickering solved in IE
There has been a problem for many years that most of us have come across developing for Internet Explorer with background images "flickering" when the cursor is hovering over them. (here's an example). This is due to to Internet Explorer checking for a new version of the background image declared in the background-image css attribute when the mouse hovers over the tag. The flicker issue may also be accompanied with the hourglass flicking on or even no image flicker, but the hourglass flickers!
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
/*@cc_on @*/
/*@if (@_jscript_version >= 4)
document.execCommand("BackgroundImageCache", false, true);
/*@end @*/
</script>
Essentially, if you include this script somewhere in your page (best towards the top) then it will resolve this problem. Banzai!
The comments with all the @ symbols are actually JScript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript) conditional commenting. In simple terms, only IE will see and execute this code. In more complex terms it means only the IE compiler will read and compile this code. This means that should you have large forks in your script - one to deal with IE and another to deal with any other browsers - you can often get large performance returns from using conditional compiling. There's a good article on javascriptkit.com about conditional compilation of JScript.
I can't take credit for this solution - MisterPixel came up with the goods looking into DHTML behaviours in IE with regards to another problem (a bit like Fleming discovering penicillin!).
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
/*@cc_on @*/
/*@if (@_jscript_version >= 4)
document.execCommand("BackgroundImageCache", false, true);
/*@end @*/
</script>
Essentially, if you include this script somewhere in your page (best towards the top) then it will resolve this problem. Banzai!
The comments with all the @ symbols are actually JScript (Microsoft's version of JavaScript) conditional commenting. In simple terms, only IE will see and execute this code. In more complex terms it means only the IE compiler will read and compile this code. This means that should you have large forks in your script - one to deal with IE and another to deal with any other browsers - you can often get large performance returns from using conditional compiling. There's a good article on javascriptkit.com about conditional compilation of JScript.
I can't take credit for this solution - MisterPixel came up with the goods looking into DHTML behaviours in IE with regards to another problem (a bit like Fleming discovering penicillin!).
Coin flip
I love poker. I really do, there's something about it that's slightly geeky but quite risky and that appeals greatly to a snowboarding programmer. I've learnt some of the finer points over the past few years by picking up tips and hints from the pros, from reading books, studying odds and statistical methodologies through extended mathematics and watching lots of poker on tv/online. One of the current favourites is High Stakes Poker. Basically a high stakes cash game with a minimum sit-down $100k.
Even the pros get the game wrong though, sometimes impressively to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of dollars...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyAj0ZygG80
I've got to say Negreanu takes it on the chin, but he gets several bad beats over a session and goes down about 400k. I mean really bad beats - guys all-in for 100k chasing flushes and hitting rivers. I feel sorry for him, but then again I'm not sure I would have called an all-in raise in this hand. Maybe that's why he's a pro dealing in hundreds of thousand and i'm just dealing in just the thousands.
It all made me want to play a bit, so I logged onto my pacificpoker account and had a tinkle last night and did pretty well - won a $20 buy-in tournament. But it got me thinking - if you had £400k and someone said they'd double it by correctly guessing the outcome of a coin flip. Would you take it? Possibly not - I mean £400 is a lot and would make a big difference. But what if it was £4000? Not sure about you guys but well I'd probably say yes. 4k isn't going to make much difference, 8k will enable me to live it up for a ski season. So the happy medium is somewhere between 4k and 400k.
The trouble is that every poker player will tell you, that gamble's not bad odds. You get a 50% chance at a 100% profit. Basically the maths is relatively happy. But as any poker pro will tell you, they'll bet a 51% chance every time because if they do that every time it comes up over the course of their betting lives, they will always end up that 1% up. I always think that this attitude exemplifies betting all over the world (including bookmakers/financial markets/hedge funds/etc) where the amount of money that is willing to be gambled grows exponentially as to push up the monetary value of the 1%. Every now and again obviously, this goes seriously tits up when a stock market crashes and the vast majority of investors lose a ton. But then they all seem to go back for more. Maybe in the same way Negreanu doesn't walk away from the table after such a big hit to his money in order to clear his head - I feel if it was me losing that much, I'd be crying on the floor, sucking my thumb, waiting for the woman in my life to beat the crap out of me when I got home.
How much money would you gamble on the coin flip?
P.S.
Found some amusing famous bets as well today whilst researching this post.
Even the pros get the game wrong though, sometimes impressively to the tune of many hundreds of thousands of dollars...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyAj0ZygG80
I've got to say Negreanu takes it on the chin, but he gets several bad beats over a session and goes down about 400k. I mean really bad beats - guys all-in for 100k chasing flushes and hitting rivers. I feel sorry for him, but then again I'm not sure I would have called an all-in raise in this hand. Maybe that's why he's a pro dealing in hundreds of thousand and i'm just dealing in just the thousands.
It all made me want to play a bit, so I logged onto my pacificpoker account and had a tinkle last night and did pretty well - won a $20 buy-in tournament. But it got me thinking - if you had £400k and someone said they'd double it by correctly guessing the outcome of a coin flip. Would you take it? Possibly not - I mean £400 is a lot and would make a big difference. But what if it was £4000? Not sure about you guys but well I'd probably say yes. 4k isn't going to make much difference, 8k will enable me to live it up for a ski season. So the happy medium is somewhere between 4k and 400k.
The trouble is that every poker player will tell you, that gamble's not bad odds. You get a 50% chance at a 100% profit. Basically the maths is relatively happy. But as any poker pro will tell you, they'll bet a 51% chance every time because if they do that every time it comes up over the course of their betting lives, they will always end up that 1% up. I always think that this attitude exemplifies betting all over the world (including bookmakers/financial markets/hedge funds/etc) where the amount of money that is willing to be gambled grows exponentially as to push up the monetary value of the 1%. Every now and again obviously, this goes seriously tits up when a stock market crashes and the vast majority of investors lose a ton. But then they all seem to go back for more. Maybe in the same way Negreanu doesn't walk away from the table after such a big hit to his money in order to clear his head - I feel if it was me losing that much, I'd be crying on the floor, sucking my thumb, waiting for the woman in my life to beat the crap out of me when I got home.
How much money would you gamble on the coin flip?
P.S.Found some amusing famous bets as well today whilst researching this post.
Thursday 16 November 2006
Registry hacking
Note: This is Internet Explorer only as it deals with ActiveX and modifying the system registry.
Recently I've been writing a few scripts to change values in the system registry. In actual fact, you use a few different technologies to achieve something that looks very simple. This script reads then sets the home page for Internet Explorer via the registry. However you can edit any registry value you wish to using this method.
Background
Firstly what is the registry? In simple terms, the registry is a database that stores settings and options for Windows and contains information for all the hardware, software and preferences of the PC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regedit). This script uses a combination of JScript and ActiveX in a Windows Script host environment to edit those bits of information in the registry. JScript is Microsoft's Active Scripting implementation of ECMAScript (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jscript). Basically it's their version of JavaScript, but with lots of add-on features. These "add-ons" also rather nattily work in any Windows Script Host environment - and that's been shipped by default with every version of Windows since Windows 98 or with Internet Explorer 5+. Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host. We can use this JScript to create an ActiveX control to pass information from our script into the registry. ActiveX is simply as mechanism for passing information around a Windows computer. All in all, pretty neat eh?
Here's my script:
<script type="text/jscript" language="jscript">
var objShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.shell");
/* Get the current home page */
var strRegKey = "HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Main\\Start Page";
var strCurrentHomepage = objShell.RegRead(strRegKey);
/* Set a new homepage */
objShell.RegWrite(strRegKey, "http://nargster.blogspot.com/");
</script>
Let's go through it.
The script attributes
<script type="text/jscript" language="jscript">
These are set to jscript because this script is only to work in IE it's not vital, but it's good a good habit to get into.
Create an Windows Script Host (WScript) shell object
var objShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.shell");
OK, so we're going to ask the script to create a new ActiveX object (as mentioned, this is just an information carrier) to pass information to a particular target - in this case the Windows Script Host (WScript) shell. The shell is simply interface that enables access to the inner workings of the computer - we need to create this shell object in our script to access the registry.
Accessing the registry
var strRegKey = "HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Main\\Start Page";
var strCurrentHomepage = objShell.RegRead(strRegKey);
objShell.RegWrite(strRegKey, "http://nargster.blogspot.com/");
Now we've created a shell object, we can access the properties and methods of that object. Two of its methods are called RegRead and RegWrite - they read and write the registry respectively. The example shows the arguments required for these two methods. In both we pass the registry path of the registry item we wish to edit, making sure that we replace any single backslashes \ with a double backslash \\. This is because the backslash character in JScript is special - it's an escape character. The strRegKey string is the path to the value we want to change, you can find more information about how this string is built by looking through the registry using regedit, explained below. It's easy to see how the string relates to the structure of the registry, it's like a filesystem folder path.
Regedit - the registry editor
So you want to find out what the registry looks like to browse through. I'll not kid you - it's massive. You can use regedit, the registry editor (Start Menu --> Run, then type regedit and hit enter or run regedit.exe or regedt32.exe in your Windows directory) to have a look around and adventure. The registry structure is too detailed to go into here, but Wikipedia do an excellent job of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regedit
A last word just on security
It does seem incredible that Microsoft would create a web browser that could run scripting to read and write the system registry, but that's what they've done. They've tried to correct this problem in IE7 by not allowing the creation of ActiveX controls by default - users must enable this manually (with accompanying nasty messages about potential insecurities). In other supported versions of IE (IE3 - IE6) the default behaviour is that this simply runs with an ActiveX warning message. You can get around these warnings by saving the html file with an hta extension, turning the html file into an HTML application (MSDN). This .hta file only runs locally on a machine and runs without the strict security model the browser uses - no nasty error messages!
Play around with the registry - you could potentially damage something, but stick to the simple stuff and work your way up and it should all be good. Using .hta files is good because it opens all sorts of potential for html/scripting without security restrictions, so you can make cross-domain AJAX calls - something which is not allowed in a webpage) as well as other funky HTML applications to change the settings and tailor your computer.
Windows Script Host programming reference
There's loads of methods and properties of the shell object - you're not limited to reading and writing stuff to the registry - you can set/retrieve/delete user information, network and printer settings, read and write files and much more. You can find details of this at devguru.com in their Windows Script Host reference:
http://www.devguru.com/Technologies/wsh/quickref/wsh_intro.html
Recently I've been writing a few scripts to change values in the system registry. In actual fact, you use a few different technologies to achieve something that looks very simple. This script reads then sets the home page for Internet Explorer via the registry. However you can edit any registry value you wish to using this method.
Background
Firstly what is the registry? In simple terms, the registry is a database that stores settings and options for Windows and contains information for all the hardware, software and preferences of the PC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regedit). This script uses a combination of JScript and ActiveX in a Windows Script host environment to edit those bits of information in the registry. JScript is Microsoft's Active Scripting implementation of ECMAScript (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jscript). Basically it's their version of JavaScript, but with lots of add-on features. These "add-ons" also rather nattily work in any Windows Script Host environment - and that's been shipped by default with every version of Windows since Windows 98 or with Internet Explorer 5+. Further information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Script_Host. We can use this JScript to create an ActiveX control to pass information from our script into the registry. ActiveX is simply as mechanism for passing information around a Windows computer. All in all, pretty neat eh?
Here's my script:
<script type="text/jscript" language="jscript">
var objShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.shell");
/* Get the current home page */
var strRegKey = "HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Main\\Start Page";
var strCurrentHomepage = objShell.RegRead(strRegKey);
/* Set a new homepage */
objShell.RegWrite(strRegKey, "http://nargster.blogspot.com/");
</script>
Let's go through it.
The script attributes
<script type="text/jscript" language="jscript">
These are set to jscript because this script is only to work in IE it's not vital, but it's good a good habit to get into.
Create an Windows Script Host (WScript) shell object
var objShell = new ActiveXObject("WScript.shell");
OK, so we're going to ask the script to create a new ActiveX object (as mentioned, this is just an information carrier) to pass information to a particular target - in this case the Windows Script Host (WScript) shell. The shell is simply interface that enables access to the inner workings of the computer - we need to create this shell object in our script to access the registry.
Accessing the registry
var strRegKey = "HKCU\\Software\\Microsoft\\Internet Explorer\\Main\\Start Page";
var strCurrentHomepage = objShell.RegRead(strRegKey);
objShell.RegWrite(strRegKey, "http://nargster.blogspot.com/");
Now we've created a shell object, we can access the properties and methods of that object. Two of its methods are called RegRead and RegWrite - they read and write the registry respectively. The example shows the arguments required for these two methods. In both we pass the registry path of the registry item we wish to edit, making sure that we replace any single backslashes \ with a double backslash \\. This is because the backslash character in JScript is special - it's an escape character. The strRegKey string is the path to the value we want to change, you can find more information about how this string is built by looking through the registry using regedit, explained below. It's easy to see how the string relates to the structure of the registry, it's like a filesystem folder path.
Regedit - the registry editor
So you want to find out what the registry looks like to browse through. I'll not kid you - it's massive. You can use regedit, the registry editor (Start Menu --> Run, then type regedit and hit enter or run regedit.exe or regedt32.exe in your Windows directory) to have a look around and adventure. The registry structure is too detailed to go into here, but Wikipedia do an excellent job of it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regedit
A last word just on security
It does seem incredible that Microsoft would create a web browser that could run scripting to read and write the system registry, but that's what they've done. They've tried to correct this problem in IE7 by not allowing the creation of ActiveX controls by default - users must enable this manually (with accompanying nasty messages about potential insecurities). In other supported versions of IE (IE3 - IE6) the default behaviour is that this simply runs with an ActiveX warning message. You can get around these warnings by saving the html file with an hta extension, turning the html file into an HTML application (MSDN). This .hta file only runs locally on a machine and runs without the strict security model the browser uses - no nasty error messages!
Play around with the registry - you could potentially damage something, but stick to the simple stuff and work your way up and it should all be good. Using .hta files is good because it opens all sorts of potential for html/scripting without security restrictions, so you can make cross-domain AJAX calls - something which is not allowed in a webpage) as well as other funky HTML applications to change the settings and tailor your computer.
Windows Script Host programming reference
There's loads of methods and properties of the shell object - you're not limited to reading and writing stuff to the registry - you can set/retrieve/delete user information, network and printer settings, read and write files and much more. You can find details of this at devguru.com in their Windows Script Host reference:
http://www.devguru.com/Technologies/wsh/quickref/wsh_intro.html
Tuesday 14 November 2006
Panda porn
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20061111/sc_nm/life_thailand_panda_dc
Someone's shot a video of pandas mating to get a captive panda "in the mood" to encourage him to breed. Couple of things. Who would shoot this video? If it's David Attenborough then someone should really address the situation. Anyone who spends that much time and effort watching animals have sex should clearly be put on some sort of register. Another thing is what's the film about? Is it like a girl panda in a nurses uniform or something? Are there like 5 boy pandas and one girl panda? Better still are there like 5 lady pandas and one man panda (one extremely happy man panda I might add).
Filth.
Someone's shot a video of pandas mating to get a captive panda "in the mood" to encourage him to breed. Couple of things. Who would shoot this video? If it's David Attenborough then someone should really address the situation. Anyone who spends that much time and effort watching animals have sex should clearly be put on some sort of register. Another thing is what's the film about? Is it like a girl panda in a nurses uniform or something? Are there like 5 boy pandas and one girl panda? Better still are there like 5 lady pandas and one man panda (one extremely happy man panda I might add).
Filth.
Garbage Collection
Thought I'd post up a bit I wrote at work discussing differences in memory handling and garbage collection in different browsers.
Background
Microsoft's implementation of ECMAScript is actually called JScript (not JavaScript), and it's behaviour with regards to garbage collection differs from the original implementation of JavaScript in SpiderMonkey (SpiderMonkey is the name for the first JavaScript engine written by Netscape, Firefox is based on this engine). It's worth noting that the JScript/JavaScript engine does not itself provide a host environment for the DOM - they are two separate structures that exist together, but can logically exist apart.
The main difference
IE uses non-generational mark and sweep garbage collection versus SpiderMonkey's generational mark and sweep garbage collection. The "mark and sweep" bit means that each object (either JScript or JavaScript) has an attribute that is set to 1 if it is to be collected and 0 if it is not. As the generational/non-generational bit of the name implies, what it means is that SpiderMonkey will find older objects first and clean them out (generational), whereas IE will do this fairly indiscrimately and just find JScript objects in memory and check to see whether to garbage collect them (non-generational). Simply put SpiderMonkey will push the objects to be collected to the bottom of the memory heap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_(programming)) and then knows to grab the bottom of the pile to free memory, whereas JScript will throw objects (relatively) randomly onto the heap and then pick through all of them individually checking to see if that object needs collecting. As you can imagine there's an impressive performance lean towards generational garbage collection.
Implications
Because of the relationship between the DOM and the JScript/JavaScript engine, stacking objects in memory becomes very important. As you can imagine, keeping less objects in memory now has real performace implication in IE - especially circular references between the engine and the DOM such as an array of nodes - an example of this problem would be memory leaking through event handlers in the DOM (http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/closures.html#clMem) - in fact this problem surfaces with any sort of large numbers of data types/objects held in memory at one time. It also should promote forced memory handling when resources can become free, rather than simply waiting for automatic garbage collection to be initiated (statements such as "myArray = myString = myNumber = null") to make sure the object has the least memory allocated to it after use and the automatic garbage collection then becomes much quicker.
Links to more info
Garbage collection: Wikipedia Garbage Collection
SpiderMonkey: Wikipedia SpiderMonkey
Garbage collection models: North Eastern University
Background
Microsoft's implementation of ECMAScript is actually called JScript (not JavaScript), and it's behaviour with regards to garbage collection differs from the original implementation of JavaScript in SpiderMonkey (SpiderMonkey is the name for the first JavaScript engine written by Netscape, Firefox is based on this engine). It's worth noting that the JScript/JavaScript engine does not itself provide a host environment for the DOM - they are two separate structures that exist together, but can logically exist apart.
The main difference
IE uses non-generational mark and sweep garbage collection versus SpiderMonkey's generational mark and sweep garbage collection. The "mark and sweep" bit means that each object (either JScript or JavaScript) has an attribute that is set to 1 if it is to be collected and 0 if it is not. As the generational/non-generational bit of the name implies, what it means is that SpiderMonkey will find older objects first and clean them out (generational), whereas IE will do this fairly indiscrimately and just find JScript objects in memory and check to see whether to garbage collect them (non-generational). Simply put SpiderMonkey will push the objects to be collected to the bottom of the memory heap (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heap_(programming)) and then knows to grab the bottom of the pile to free memory, whereas JScript will throw objects (relatively) randomly onto the heap and then pick through all of them individually checking to see if that object needs collecting. As you can imagine there's an impressive performance lean towards generational garbage collection.
Implications
Because of the relationship between the DOM and the JScript/JavaScript engine, stacking objects in memory becomes very important. As you can imagine, keeping less objects in memory now has real performace implication in IE - especially circular references between the engine and the DOM such as an array of nodes - an example of this problem would be memory leaking through event handlers in the DOM (http://www.jibbering.com/faq/faq_notes/closures.html#clMem) - in fact this problem surfaces with any sort of large numbers of data types/objects held in memory at one time. It also should promote forced memory handling when resources can become free, rather than simply waiting for automatic garbage collection to be initiated (statements such as "myArray = myString = myNumber = null") to make sure the object has the least memory allocated to it after use and the automatic garbage collection then becomes much quicker.
Links to more info
Garbage collection: Wikipedia Garbage Collection
SpiderMonkey: Wikipedia SpiderMonkey
Garbage collection models: North Eastern University
Monday 13 November 2006
Mood music update
Just saw the itunes counter that checks how many times a song's been listened to. According to the ticker Enya - Caribbean Blue has been listened to 34 times today (35 if you include the fact it's still coming through the headphones). That's bordering on some fairly serious obsessive behaviour.
Going to go to the pub for a beer, hopefully won't end up like rain man.
Going to go to the pub for a beer, hopefully won't end up like rain man.
Mood music
I was looking at a clip on youtube earlier about a german guy called The Trainrider who spent the last year of his young life trainsurfing around europe before dying of leukemia. The intro music to the clip is a piece by Enya called Caribbean Blue and it's a fairly recognisable tune. The celtic calmness got my juices going so being of focused mind immediately downloaded the whole track from alltunes.com. I love pieces of music that get you thinking, sometimes the words or the feeling they give you, but ultimately it's the mood they put you in. Spark yourself up in the morning listening to the Grease soundtrack, chill out later listening to Massive Attack, free your mind with Led Zeppelin. It's like a personal psychology experiment.
I like to think that this song by Enya is fairly sad, soulful and relaxing. In fact it almost brings a tear to my eye when I listen to it, but there's an overall sense of contemplative happiness that I get which is an interesting contrast. Everyone has a song like this they know, one that makes you sad but you don't know why - or maybe you know why it makes you sad but can't let it go.
Working the way techies do means you're surrounded by music in various formats, and there's such a range of music to listen to that you rarely just stick your entire collection on random and hit play. You pretty much stick to choosing album/artist/playlist according to your current mood. I'd love to write a program that stores the music I listen to during the day so at 6pm I can look back and see if the music I listened to affected my day greatly in any way. Or even over the week - see which days were good, which were bad and what music you listened to. I reckon there would be some interesting results.
I like to think that this song by Enya is fairly sad, soulful and relaxing. In fact it almost brings a tear to my eye when I listen to it, but there's an overall sense of contemplative happiness that I get which is an interesting contrast. Everyone has a song like this they know, one that makes you sad but you don't know why - or maybe you know why it makes you sad but can't let it go.
Working the way techies do means you're surrounded by music in various formats, and there's such a range of music to listen to that you rarely just stick your entire collection on random and hit play. You pretty much stick to choosing album/artist/playlist according to your current mood. I'd love to write a program that stores the music I listen to during the day so at 6pm I can look back and see if the music I listened to affected my day greatly in any way. Or even over the week - see which days were good, which were bad and what music you listened to. I reckon there would be some interesting results.
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