Other Bits

According to my telephone, anyway. I wasn't aware of BT's plan to abolish December, but here it is.

Here's the link to the AVI file in case the video-embedding stuff above doesn't work properly.

I've been watching some of the clips from the recently released Tomorrow's World Archive. Predictably, the ones of particular interest to me are the computing-related items. There's a report about Europe's first home computer terminal from 1967, which the narrator informs us is connected by the telephone system to a central "brain". You can send and receive correspondence, read your bank balance and keep informed of stock prices, all for £30 per month! Further to those parallels with today, the four-year-old child uses the terminal with more confidence than some of today's adults.

Even better, though, is the "school computer" report from 1969. At 1:10 we see a group of eleven-year-olds simulating a processor adding two binary numbers - obviously the real computer was in use by another class.

But seriously, the physics teacher in charge of that school's computer project deserves a lot of credit. It's difficult to imagine school IT teachers of today allowing the children to experiment with the computer for themselves and learn how to make their own programs, letting them write games, and even tasking the pupils with fixing the computer when it develops a hardware fault. I'd expect something more like "right, nobody touch the... 'comm'... 'putter'... it's a delicate piece of electronic equipment which youngsters can't possibly hope to understand. Here, take this pen and draw a spider diagram about how IT benefits society."

Griping in the guts

Anyway. At some point in the future not disclosed by the BBC, parish records from 1539 onwards will be made available online. These include the victims of the 1665 London plague. The deaths were helpfully summarised in "bills of mortality" issued weekly. This happens to be the one from 344 years ago next week:

(Click for bigger. Clearer version here.)

Note how all different deaths are printed on their own line, from Plague: 7165, to Killed by a fall from the Belfrey at Allhallows the Great: 1. It's amusing to think of the person compiling the bill of mortality spending that week gloating to his peers "I told you! You've been making fun of me writing 'Burnt in his Bed by a Candle at St Giles Cripplegate: 0' on these things every week for the last twenty years, but this week, it's finally happened! And no, I was nowhere near St Giles Cripplegate on Wednesday evening, your honour." Unfortunately, it seems they added in the more unusual deaths only when they actually happened. Either way, when this database of parish records goes online, one of the first queries I want answered is something like the following:

select cause_of_death, count(cause_of_death) c from deaths where c < 10 group by cause_of_death order by c

In other words, give me all the causes of death that happened fewer than ten times over the entire length of time covered by the database, with the most unusual first. It'd read like one of those nethack "stupid deaths" lists, or perhaps Wikipedia's list of unusual deaths (which feels the need to point out that it isn't an exhaustive list). Someone might even manage to use SQL injection to insert bogus death records into the database - bonus points for the perfect blend of creativity and plausibility.

More carefully itemised directories of misery and death can be found here - search for "bill of mortality".

Now there's been a ban on the import and manufacture of 100W incandescent light bulbs, some people are stockpiling boxfuls of them. Apparently the new CFL bulbs aren't bright enough, and don't look pretty.

Silly, silly people.

Are you the same people who, after getting their crate of incandescent lamps home, will then proceed to install one in a light fitting, proudly proclaim "that EU ain't gonna make me use those new-fangled electrickermajiggies, what with their billionth of a glimmer loss of brightness!" and then hang a hulking great lampshade on it?

I know there's a dimmer problem. The new bulbs don't work with existing dimmer switches. This should change soon, though. Also, I would question why you need a dimmer in the first place. Surely you're either in the room (light on) or not (light off)?

Okay. Did your housebuilder helpfully install light fittings that only have enough room for bulb-shaped bulbs? Fine, stockpile away for now until the fittings get replaced. Do you suffer from a medical condition aggravated by fluorescent lights? Fair enough. Do you have a dozen different incandescent bulbs dotted around the room in out-of-the-way hard-to-see places? No excuse. It's a wonder any light even gets to where it's needed in your house. Get rid of them all. The job can quite easily be done with one decent CFL dangling from the ceiling. Perhaps if you didn't clutter up your rooms with pointless light-precluding junk you wouldn't need hundred-watt bulbs in the first place.

And barely a year after they first came into circulation.

He thought it was a clever way of beating the time limit, but he forgot about those collapsing floorboards. To make matters worse, the Grand Vizier has conjured away his AA membership card.

I could never get past the first level without it breaking down, anyway.

This b3ta post sums it up.

Sunday: Anti-EU, anti-immigration and anti-pretty-much-everyone-who-isn't-white head thug of the BNP, Nick Griffin, wins a seat in the European Parliament.

Tuesday: Group of anti-BNP protesters decide that the rule about demonstrations having to be peaceful doesn't apply to them.

I'm sure plenty of us would like to pelt the racist idiot with eggs and hit his car with placards, but all you'd be doing is giving him more publicity and more ammunition for his claims that he's being persecuted. Difficult though it is to take up a position which might be seen as defending this man, the fact is that in this case he was the one conducting a peaceful press conference, and the protesters were the ones who resorted to violence. What happened to peaceful demonstration? Leaflet campaigns? Investigative journalism? Not voting for the prat?

Anyway, Griffin used the situation to full advantage in his interview with the BBC, even going so far as to accuse the government of organising the violence, and the Home Office of instructing the police not to intervene. Of particular note is where he rebuffs suggestions that he had links with Oswald Mosley by pointing out that he was, in fact, a member of the National Front.

Oh. Well, that's all right, then...

This happened. Most of the website is gone for now, including the Daily Mail Headlineinator, Spleen Spleen Sploul, and the article comments. I'll restore stuff I've still got as and when.

"... the police are searching for these four men, spotted near a photo booth at the time of the incident."

It's that time of the decade again where I get to part with £72 for a purple book with a laminated page in it. They haven't quite got to the point where they store DNA on them yet. There's no "spit here" or "please bleed on the dotted line" or "kindly ejaculate in the space provided, ensuring you keep within the box".

Why does the Identity and Passport Service require you to send in two identical photographs, anyway? I understand there might have been a reason for that about forty years ago, when they stuck one photo on your passport with a dab of glue and kept the other one in what must have been the world's largest filing cabinet. But now they digitise them, you'd think they could just make as many copies as they liked.

Comparing with my old passport, it seems I needn't have bothered taking a new photograph if only I'd thought, back in 1999, to take a second one shortly after having received an electric shock.

I have too much change.