Still working very hard at work but I think we are making good progress. Although things are still slow I have a good feeling about current proceedings.
Finally online at home. Well I say on line – there are a string of people semaphoring each byte backwards and forwards to a man at the telephone exchange who enters the data by wiggling a switch. And if that’s not quite technically accurate its certainly how fast it goes compared to broadband. Sulk.
I mentioned my battle against spam. Well I am please to report that my spam filter (POPFile) is doing a great job. Of the 400 spam emails I have received in the last 2 weeks I have seen about 3 of them in my inbox and got 2 or 3 false positives. All of which where easy to deal with. Now that I occasionally check my spam folder to check for false positives before deletion I get to consider the spam in a calmer and more philosophical light. And I have it report it is truly depressing. If spam works the majority of it is aimed at stupid people who are tricked by emails from people they have never heard of telling them they fancy them. Or that they are sending them an important report (how many unsolicited important reports do you get?). And even after they are tricked – the need to keep their penis erect for longer or make it bigger is of interest to them. Now there clearly are people for whom these things are normal and reasonable – and that is what is depressing. Some of it though is quite bizarre – like Christian debt management. Which although it sounds like it might be how I managed my money when I was younger (just praying it would all be ok) probably isn’t.
Progress is finally being made. Amerada finally produced the goods (sort of) and with luck everything is now signed, sealed and complete. In complete contrast I phoned BT with a view to asking them about getting connected and internet access and in an almost scary and extremely efficient phone call – we should be connected by the weekend. No connections fees, no engineers, no nonsense. Most impressed.
Really into Masada and other Radical Jewish Culture stuff at the moment. I’m not really up on the ins and outs of the culture part of it but its great music – manic melodies against frantic energetic jazz that lurches and scrambles about.
waaaahhh - way too busy at work to find time to write entries and still off line at home. Can’t believe in this day and age there are civilised places without broadband.
Its been a ridiculous two or three weeks trying to get two letters from Amerada to say that the accounts we had for the last house are closed. How hard could that be? well two weeks and numerous phone calls later – I have just got one letter and along the way managed to get another spurious one saying that I was going to be paying them £77 a month (which is even by their admission a total lie). Sadly the call centre means that customer care is done by people who don’t care at all. If there isn’t a button for it in front of them there is nothing that can be done. Having seen it all from the other side as well (as in building the IT systems) it makes life easier for the companies if their interaction with the customer fits into neat organized boxes that they can plan around. Customers that don’t fit in those boxes are TROUBLE and can be safely ignored. A big rich company can afford to piss off a percentage of its customer base with little or no consequence. I guess its just a sign of the times but it doesn’t help much when you are trying to get things done.
A week or so ago a previously small issue suddenly became a big one for me. Working in a team of predominately younger developers I was increasingly finding that my working methods (code style etc.) where at odds with the prevailing trends. Now – there are two ways of looking at this. The first is that trends come and go and its best to do what’s good for the way I work. In addition I feel that the current “standards” are overly formal and weighted heavily to making sure that the inexperienced programmer (which the majority of Java devolopers working in the world are) doesn’t make mistakes rather than the experienced programmer working quickly and efficiently. On the other hand I work in a team that uses these standards and I also work in an industry where those standards are the norm. In the end I decided to give in and work in a way that suits everyone rather than just myself.
The standard way of doing things needs a fair amount of maintenance (I won’t go into the details here) and is a total pain when you do it by hand so it seemed to be time to start using an IDE. I have tried a number of Java IDE’s over the years but they seemed to be geared towards interface development rather than the more server oriented that I do. Enter Eclipse. Eclipse is the right tool. Its for working on code – its tools are geared to the sort of things you actually want to do. I am so impressed with it I am still using it even though it slows my machine to a crawl. If you write any Java you should be using this tool.
Its been a while – large quantities of work, lack of sleep and a cold have all conspired to keep me away from my website for a while. So I thought I’d pop in and make an entry in the brief breathing space that is today.
The train to work thing is turning out to be good because I get two uninterrupted 20 minute reading sessions each day. Having a small boy does tend to limit the amount of reading that can be done at home to times when I am tired so its great to have a chance to read when I am more awake. I have just been reading – The crying of lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon and Sync by Steve Strogatz. Its been a while since I read the Pynchon. He is one of those writers who manages to make writing look easy – this playful tale of one woman’s research into the strange history of a shadowy alternative postal service is full of humour, references and resonances and clever (and sometimes silly) word play. Its time to tackle Mason and Dixon when I’ve tracked down my copy I think.
I haven’t been buying many books of late but when I read the review of Sync in New Scientist recently I knew I had to buy and read it the moment it came out. Over the years non-linear systems – in the guise of Chaos Theory, Complexity Theory, small world networks etc. have gradually been becoming more and more important. Sync looks at the reasons that networks of independent oscillators – for example glow-worms or the various time keepers in the human body (sleep patterns , heart etc.) – and how they work together even though they are seemingly uncoordinated by a single conductor. Fascinating and easy to read this book gives real insight into what its like to do this kind of science as well as current progress in the field. Its up to date enough to mention the Linked book mentioned here a few months ago.
I haven’t really had anytime at all to devote to my own projects of late – I’ve written a couple of bits of poetry and built a modular patch that is going to be core of a track but that’s about it.
Some music recommendations: Core by Steve Roach - still a bit new agey but good honest to goodness synth music, The Grotto by Kirsten Hersh - this is just wonderful – Hersh is not your usual singer songwriter, her non-standard guitar tunings and off beat song structures (and indeed subjects) mean a little work is required to get into her music but it pays off big time. Intimate, disturbing and affecting. Great stuff. The cover of Tears for Fears Mad World by by Gary Jules and Michael Andrews – this is one of those rare occasions where a cover is even better than the original. Real shivers down the spine material. Salt Marie Celeste by Nurse with Wound – a slow hour long sinking of an empty ship. The music creaks and groans with the movements of the ship on a cold empty ocean. Beautiful and haunting. Nine Great Openings by The Hafler Trio. An hour long drone of subtlety and beauty. I am also just discovering Mogwai - in the same area as Sonic Youth and Godspeed You Black Emperor! what I’ve heard so far is excellent. Not sure why I haven’t got round to listening to their stuff before.