Category Archives: Asides

Morning

By Paul | Published: July 22, 2010

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The cognitive responsibility of tape

By Paul | Published: July 21, 2010

After some time, the VAX crashed. It was on a service contract, and Digital was called. Laura Creighton was not called although she was on the short list of people who were supposed to be called in case of problem. The Digital Field Service engineer came in, removed the disk from the drive, figured it was then okay to remove the tape and make the drive writeable, and proceeded to put a scratch disk into the drive and run diagnostics which wrote to that drive.

Well, diagnostics for disk drives are designed to shake up the equipment. But monkey brains are not designed to handle the electrical signals they received. You can imagine the convulsions that resulted. Two of the monkeys were stunned, and three died. The Digital engineer needed to be calmed down; he was going to call the Humane Society. This became known as the Great Dead Monkey Project, and it leads of course to the aphorism I use as my motto: You should not conduct tests while valuable monkeys are connected, so “Always mount a scratch monkey.”

http://edp.org/monkey.htm

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18 terabytes of space

By Paul | Published: July 16, 2010

“Lots of westerners came out to Afghanistan to help the Afghans become a modern democracy. [T]here is an art expert who has come to teach them about Conceptual Art. [She] starts with a group of young Afghan artists watching film of an installation in a western gallery, then she shows them Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 urinal.

She is very keen to get them to say that if anyone did what Duchamp did in today’s Afghanistan then they would be put in prison. It is interesting that the Afghans in the room, though they are polite, seem to disagree.” – From Kabul: City Number One – Part 10 by Adam Curtis

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BP loader

By Paul | Published: June 27, 2010

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Sync in progress

By Paul | Published: June 22, 2010

The sync, started 1 hour and 25 minutes earlier, finished at exactly 1am.

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Mole man

By Paul | Published: June 20, 2010

William Lyttle, digger of a network of tunnels under his house, monikered the Mole Man of Hackney and recently found dead in the temporary accommodation he was forcibly relocated to by a structurally concerned council, remained elusive when questioned about his troglodytic behaviour. Often cloaking his reasoning in humour, he offered, amongst others, the following explanations for the 100 cubic meters of earth he displaced while tunnelling 20m in every direction from his house:

  • To dig towards the local bank and rob it (only to find that when he arrived it had become a wine bar).
  • To dig a wine cellar, which then doubled in size and then doubled again.
  • To extend his basement to incorporate a leisure centre with sauna.
  • To hit the water table – the lowest you can get.
  • Home improvement.
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Economies of scale

By Paul | Published: June 10, 2010

A brief article in today’s Guardian reports that a lawyer representing the RIAA suggests LimeWire owe his client restitution for each of the 200m downloads of the software after it was found guilty earlier this year of knowingly abetting copyright infringement with its peer-to-peer service. The current precedent is to fine at $750 per infringement. That would total it at $150,000m (£104bn). The UK budget deficit last year in the midst of economic downturn was £156bn. While the self worth of the recording industry should never be underestimated, perhaps it would be better advised if it feels sufficiently harmed, to apply a coefficient of restitution.

Not to be confused, the coefficient of restitution is a fractional value representing the ratio of velocities after and before an impact, or more simply, the energy lost in a collision. An object with a COR of 1 collides elastically, while an object with a COR < 1 collides inelastically. For a COR = 0, the object effectively "stops" at the surface with which it collides, not bouncing at all. Given that peer-to-peer software also deals primarily in 0’s and 1’s and that the energy of an industry currently promoting Justin Bieber is channelled quite incorrectly having collided inelastically, it would seem that the two have more in common than it would at first appear.

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Dream

By Paul | Published: May 29, 2010

Dream: I have a tattoo and no recollection of ever having it done. It is big, across my back and probably a set of wings. I had forgotten it existed. Taking a shower I catch a glimpse of it in the mirror and remember. I recall that I remember every time I take a shower and forget immediately afterwards. I make the same promise I recall making every time: to remember not to forget.

Scene 2.

I am undressing. I am at someone else’s house and being watched as I do so. They enquire about the tattoo on my leg. It is a ring around the circumference of my thigh. I don’t remember ever forgetting this tattoo, but have no recollection of ever having it done either.

Scene 3.

Awake, curious, I search online for an interpretation. Across the top and down the right column of dreammoods.com are adverts offering to check my credit score and clear my debts.

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6th most popular search

By Paul | Published: May 27, 2010

Typing “wikipedia” into the search box in wikipedia points to the results of a study by researchers at Carnegie-Mellon University and Palo Alto Research Center into the distribution of topics on the site. Culture and the Arts with 30% is by far the largest area of content. Thought and Philosophy with 1% is the smallest. Of the 20 most viewed articles in 2009, 5 were for websites; 5 were for people and 3 were for movies. The entry for wikipedia was the 6th most viewed.

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Soap

By Paul | Published: May 11, 2010

There is a tree near me and it is beautiful. Around this time of year it begins to distribute its seed; a dandelion like fuzz of cotton wool that tangles into clusters the size of tennis balls. They float in the air for a while and parachute to the ground carpeting the streets around my building. Looking from my window, when they drift by, the knotted seeds look like soap-suds and the ground like a puddle from an over-flowing washing machine.

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The Chandler loop

By Paul | Published: April 16, 2010
   _______
  /____   \
 //O   \ O |
 ||     \_/
/  \________
o___________o
      ^
   *head*

The Chandler loop is a form of cassette tape loop designed by David Chandler. It requires 37.2cm of tape for a 7.8 second playback – longer than the standard tape loop, but shorter than the Möbius loop. A length of tape is cut to 38.2cm with the two ends overlapping by 1cm. It is important to measure precisely because the tension of the tape affects playback. The top of the loop needs to go under one of the reels and then over, with the loop going around the other reel. Kind of like a pulley. It is not a continuous round of wise-cracks by Chandler Bing from Friends, although it could be.

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A rock is a rock

By Paul | Published: March 1, 2010

A rock is a rock. It’s also a stone, and it could be a boulder. Spell it “rokc” and it’s still a rock. But put “little” in front of it and it’s the capital of Arkansas. Which is not an ark. Unless Noah is around.

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Library of congress name authority proposal

By Paul | Published: February 24, 2010
010 ‡a n ????????
035 ‡a (UK)?????????
035 ‡a (DLC)n ????????
040 ‡a PSF ‡b eng
100 1 ‡a Flannery, Paul S.
400 1 ‡a Flannery, Paul Simon
400 1 ‡a Flannery, P S
670 ‡a Internet Ornament, 2010 (*ahem*): ‡b t.p. (Paul Flannery; front flap, London based artist)
670 ‡u www.paulflannery.co.uk ‡b (bdg.: Paul Flannery)
670 ‡u www.psflannery.tumblr.co.uk ‡b (bdg.: psflannery)
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▓▓▓▓▓▓

By Paul | Published: February 14, 2010

Now think of the implications. Of course it’s potentially embarrassing for people who conduct personal relationships or confidential business via email, but it could also be life-threatening. Suppose you’re a political activist living in an authoritarian country. You use ▓▓▓▓▓ because it’s slightly less risky than other systems. Many of your ▓▓▓▓▓ contacts are other activists, inside and outside your country. Under the ▓▓▓▓ defaults, they would suddenly be exposed to anyone who checked your ▓▓▓▓▓▓ profile.

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In the pines

By Paul | Published: January 17, 2010

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A small glossary terms (books)

By Paul | Published: January 3, 2010

A Codex is the technological advancement of a scroll. The term refers to handwritten pages in modern book format. It is comprised of separate pages bound together with a cover. The Codex was first used during the Roman Empire. A bound manuscript is considered a codex if it was created between 300 AD – 1500 AD.

Also known as bookplates. Ex Libris are labels of ownership, generally engraved or printed, pasted on the inside of books. They were first used about the middle of the 15th century. The early designs, beginning with those of Durer, contain representations of the heraldic coats of arms of the owners and are usually described as armorial.

A Rebus is a visual pun that substitutes written or visual signs to create new meanings from its common meaning. For instance, the letters C and U substitute for the words “see” and “you.” An image of a heart substitutes for the word “love.” Egyptian hieroglyphic writings and Babylonian cuneiform are examples of the first rebus writings.

Recto refers to the right side of a folded or bound 2-page spread. Odd numbered pages are recto. The first page in a book typically starts on right or the recto.

Verso refers to the left side of a folded or bound 2-page spread. It is the reverse (or verso) of the first page. Even numbered pages are verso. The term is also used to describe the book page opposite the title, where the publisher and copywrite information is printed.

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