November 2002 Archives

So last night, two guys show up with our new Jeep. All a bit unceremonious. I was particularly unimpressed with the fire extinguisher dumped in the boot—a token gesture that doesn't quite match up with the "fire extinguisher and glass hammer installed in the cockpit" that I had verbally agreed with the folk in Kingsbury.

Anyway, as I handed over the keys to the loaner, I couldn't help thinking how we had 'trashed' it. It's amazing what a couple of babies, bottles of water and muddy shoes will do to a leather interior;-)

And while I'm petrol-heading, the new bike is due to arrive in a couple of weeks. All very exciting (giant tank, knobbly tyres and the enduro gearbox—funfunfun) but I am chronically let down by BMW. They are so good at raising your expectations, and sooo crap at delivering. The last time I picked the GS up from service, the handlebars were loose (could have been nasty...) and while I was sold on an integrated lease package (BMW Select, BMW Insurance etc) it turns out that to get the new machine, I have to go through the credit rating process again and that what on the surface looks like one company under one badge is just the same old re-purposed shit from dodgy old GE Capital:-(

But that said, the R1150GS-A is just the sexiest thing, so I guess I'll get my hoop-jumping shoes on again...

Well, to paraphrase the old Honda ad, you meet the nicest people at Zeldman—ever since J published my article on CSS grid layouts my mailbox has been full of friendly notes congratulating or even thanking me:-) It's nice to know that others out there are struggling with the same pressures and challenges that I am. Makes me want to write another...

So it's just coming up to midnight on Friday, I've been taking time off this evening, half an hour of storming around the Haiti gravel circuit in my Lancer Evo Tommi Makinen edition (can't seem to beat the AI driver in the last race of the series), turning off the telly and getting stuck into the final half of Pennac's La Petite Marchande de Prose which unlike his other books takes forever to get started, but has finally buried itself deep in the surreal, confusion and wonder I am used to from him.

We're off to see the family for thanksgiving diner tomorrow, bringing the carry-cot for Clem to bunk out in. Ruth, my mother, was recently in hospital with a heart murmur. She of course decided not to tell anyone up front, I indend to get as much info as possible out of her tomorrow evening.

Bless their cotton socks;-)

Dear Sir/Madam,
From Databank of World Importers, we have obtained your name and address and understand that you are experienced importers of Canned Mushrooms.

Now, if only I could work out which of my canned mushroom suppliers has sold my data...

Is due to arrive today. Which is good, always nice to have high-tech Unix geeks enjoying the benefits of superior hardware;-)

The thing I find a wee bit surprising is that Chris intends to write applescripts... shurly shome mishtake...

Yes, I was a teenager in the 70s, and yes, I was a motor racing fan growing up in France, so the Le Mans 24H race was a fairly big deal. Anyway, this might explain my feeling of joy as I came across this fan site of the porsche 917 including videos of the real machine in action (was doing some research re Aston Martin for work, lots of listening to engines-vroom).

Ok, this made my day:-) It's a proper Newton web server

No, really.

Ok, you know that sound that goes with the pentium 4 or intel or whatever, you know the one. Well, I thought aural branding was supposed to work by creating a familiar feeling, a bit like smell (ahh, I know this place, I'm happy here etc.) so I'm seeing the Intel We - can - do - what - apple - does advert for the millionth time and I can't help feeling how stupid it is to interrupt the mood-setting music (is it Moby's "We are Made Of Stars"?) to play their stupid bloody aural branding jingle&mdashand then cut straight back to the normal background track. It sounds like shit, it's disruptive—it's like trying to have sex with someone interrupting you every two seconds...

And decides to join Brigham Young University, though I haven't seen Austrian soil since new year's eve 1970 (I still remember walking through people's legs in this major apres-ski party).

Bloggers out there who struggle with <textarea>-based editing tools might want to check this out. It's a little script that converts your standard ascii into marked-up entities:-)

Oh, and on a completely unrelated point, can you say department of homeland security with a straight face? I know I can't...

Last night, Piers (Piers and Cally had come over for dinner) suggested I try this. As I seem to remember thinking it was a good idea at the time, I can only assume the wine at dinner was good...

Those readers with web-designey bent might wish to have a look at a list apart this week as <shamelessplug>your's truly has written an article about grid systems</shamelessplug> which is either the most boring topic ever, or really pretty cool...

Hi Dug

Just read your latest blog entry, and I think you're needlessly worrying. In fact, I think that the faster processors get, the better it is for perl. Especially with version 6 coming out in the next year or two (they're aiming for a minimum of twice the speed on the same operations in the worst case).

But we're getting ahead of ourselves here. Perl isn't particularly memory intensive, yes, it likes RAM but it's not the be all and end all. It depends what you're doing. All programming languages are the same in that in most cases, you're IO bound. Doesn't matter if you're coding in assembler or Visual Basic when you're waiting for data to arrive before you can start to process it. The phenomenon is language independent, especially when you're dealing with a lot of data. As perl apps, generally, are wont to do.

If you're looking to run an analysis on a tiny amount of data that'll fit into the processor cache, then yes. Perl probably wouldn't be a good option. But in those instances, it's never been a good option, and it probably never will be. Code in assembler or C if you absolutely need raw performance on a small amount of data. Code in perl if you're processing lots of data, and you'd like to minimise the amount of time you actually spend developing the application in the first place.

At the end of the day, perl is a rapid application development (RAD) tool. A custom C program will always beat a perl program running on the same hardware. It's just that 95% of all computing applications (a) don't really need that kind of raw performance and (b) you want to spend as little time as possible developing your applications - after all, time is money.

At the end of the day, if programs are waiting for data more than they are actually processing that data, then it's good news for perl as it closes the gap between itself and the "performance" languages on the same task as it gets a chance to catch up during the waiting parts. 8)

An over-simplification, I know, but that's the gist of my argument in any case!

cheers,

Chris

Have just read that ram speeds are increasing more slowly than processor, bus and disk speeds. The implication is that apps built to use ram (like Perl) will begin to loose favour.

This I find quite distressing as i like Perl (not that i can actually programme in it) or more specifically, I like what it does. So Nick and I are off to Baker and Spice to buy a delicious pie for dinner tonight.

Oh, and i just took a lovely shot of Clem in her bath, but because i have no computer, it'll have to wait a wee while before hitting the scrapbook

Just got this in the mail...

Dear Richard Nixon,
For many of us, Christmas is the only time of year when we catch up with old friends and family...

I can't remember how many sites Dicky has registered at, must be many by know;-)

Wow, a press ad and a web site and it took a good 30 minutes to figure out what it was about.

Turns out Atom40 make these really cool tables cut from blocks of sandstone. Now, all I need to know is what this has to do with an anorexic model in her pants.

Absent-mindedly pick up the Nov02 issue of wallpaper that Nicki left on my desk and start to flick...a piece about Stavanger, the town in Norway my gran came from, oh look, an interesting looking ad...it says to go to a web address...mag in left hand keyboard in right, the site pops up...yes, it's flashturbation but wow, it looks exactly the same as the print ad, mmmm.

How did we live before the internet;-)

p.s.I don't buy wallpaper, honest.

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between a 'server' and a 'workstation'? You know, you need to buy a machine and are flicking through those little Dabsdirect catalogues that seem to multiply on you doorstep and you wonder...

Anyway, apparently, the core OS is different, something about managing large amounts of file connections over a network (yawn). So after last month's lightning strike (three surge-protected workstations buggered) and this month's fabulous dying powerbook (the machine I use to post to this blog—excuses, I know...) I find myself working on our staging server:-(

And this is bad. Something you're not supposed to do. But I haven't got an alternative while I wait for the insurance to sort it out. But I have to say, this thing is running my entire design environment (Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, 1000's of fonts etc) on top of a busy file service which not only serves Quicktime Streaming video and Appleshare/Samba/nfs file services but is also serving busy web-based applications running in Apache/Perl. Or in other words, I'm sitting at a computer that actually works better than expected:-)

I've found this page helpful.

I had a discussion with my Dad when I was down in Devon a couple of weeks ago. He was questioning why I don't wear a poppy at this time of year.

As I write these words, it is 150 minutes to 11:00. I mention the time because I personally mark this moment every year. While I don't wear the little red buttonhole, I do drop coins in the many tins and boxes doing the rounds. I guess the exact date and time is important to me. Of course exact is the wrong word, as 11:00 in that restaurant car in Compiègne is most likely 10:00 at my desk in West Hampstead. For me, the date and time are important as they help me connect with the events of 1918.

The minute of silence was made institution in 1919 on the first anniversary of the signing of the armistice (for you young 'uns out there, the document officially ending the Great War was signed in a converted restaurant car in Compiègne, near Paris, France on the 1tth of November at 11 o'clock) and has continued since then. I make a point of pausing at that hour, every year, and thinking about what it all means.

Today, the (now two) minutes silence is to commemorate the fallen of both world wars, as well as all the others since then. I can't help thinking that if this continues long enough, the eleventh will almost become a commemoration of war itself. When Mary Falby, my granfather's sister-in-law (well, his cousin's wife, I think), grieved those first years, she was mourning her husband Edward who died in the Somme in 1916. The armistice was not just the end of a war, it was the end of a very specific type of war—a wake-up call to the world that our way of life had gone horribly, terribly, devastatingly wrong and that we owed it to the dead to not do it again. If Mary respected that first minute's silence, I'd like to think that it was not to commemorate the dead of the Napoleonic wars, the Hundred Years war or any other, it was to say that this time, we mourn our dead with our eyes open. In a sense, those thousands fell for a higher purpose, that their sons and grandsons not also fall.

Generations of people have been marched off to their deaths by their rulers. I try to remember that this is not some abstract heroic event, but more the consequence of politics and business. We can control politics, and we most certainly can control business. Please support the veterans with as much as you can in the collection box and please spare a thought at 11:00 (whether or not it's a Sunday)