MSc Project - and beyond

In response to:Install issues - harder than you think

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 16:24:43 +0200

I want to join robosapien becaz i want to reaseach in robotics.
I am from Lesotho and too poorly know English, tell me right I wrote the following sentence: "You will become the master of the cheap airline ticket to south and central america too."

Waiting for a reply :P, Nydia.

In response to:A matter of style

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 21:12:07 +0200

I've found the same thing; I don't sing anywhere in the vicinity of other peoples' ears anymore, which includes Xmas Carols services that I used to warble at. Even I can't bear some of the sounds that croak or strain out from what used to be reasonably musical vocal chords. I miss the ability to sing. I sometimes risk it in the privacy of a car with just me in it!

In response to:A matter of style

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:17:09 +0200

Heh! Nope. I confine my singing to the bath these days. The voice does not improve with age.

I do miss the choir and the singing, though.

Peter

In response to:The late Helen Mary Bradley

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:39:56 +0200

Oops. Sorry about mixing up the name. Meinir is a Welsh girl's name. A bit too similar for my clumsy fingers.

Peter

In response to:The late Helen Mary Bradley

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 18:38:33 +0200

Thank you, Meinir. It's appreciated.

Peter

In response to:A matter of style

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:46:41 +0200

Erm - this is art talk really; As I watched the last night of the proms, the bit from from Cardiff, I wondered if it might have been you I saw singing with the choir on stage from sheet music?

In response to:The late Helen Mary Bradley

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:44:07 +0200

Hi Peredur,

I was scouting around your blog as I'm likely to miss things if I don't make a personal call.

First, I want to say how sorry I am to hear about mum. Mum's are special people. I was uoccupied just about that period with similar family events, with someone very like a mum. I am glad it was peaceful for your mum.

Hugs

M x

In response to:Thief of time

Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:31:14 +0200

In response to:At your service

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 09:58:08 +0200

Hi,

I fully understand that computers aren't human, it's the unpredictable human element that operates systems, codings and the technology that will always cause problems. You gave a fine example of it.

In response to:At your service

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:55:31 +0200

Oh, there will be a single standard. It's in everyone's interest. As it stands at the moment there are only about three standards for Web Services, and they are not really associated with particular companies. They are all international standards overseen by bodies such as the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

Either that, or they will co-exist for different domains.

Computers aren't human. They need agreed protocols, and we've had them for ages - IP, the Internet Protocol; TCP, the Transport Control Protocol; SMTP, the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol; FTP, the File Transfer Protocol; HTML, the Hypertext Markup Language; CSS, Cascading Style Sheets, and on and on. As we increasingly use distributed systems there will be no choice but to use agreed, standard protocols: otherwise there would be no distributed computing.

Things are, in fact, moving in the direction of even more standard protocols, covering even more areas of computing, not less. For example, there is now an Open Document Format standard that covers areas such as standard formats for word processing, spreadsheet and presentation documents. Microsoft fought it tooth and nail, and even got its own rival version agreed (OOXML), but even they have recently admitted defeat. The next version of MS Office will support ODF natively. PDF has become an international standard recently, as well.

The problem I had was not that the Apache Axis software was ignoring the standard, but that it had mis-implemented it. I've no doubt that our partners will make out a bug report and it will soon be squashed. In the meantime, I have a workable solution that should not break even if the bug is fixed.

Computer languages are something else. There are many of these, but the reason for that is because they tend to be good (i.e. efficient) at different things. So your choice of language is based on what you want to do, not who owns the language: and in fact most computer languages are themselves defined in international standards, so they aren't "owned" by anyone. If you want to change something in the C# language, you don't talk to Microsoft, you talk to the ISO, or possibly ECMA - both of which are international standards bodies. And remember, at the end of the day, all computer languages finish up as machine code. So it doesn't matter what high-level language you use: if you're writing for an Intel chip, say, it finishes up in x86 machine code. Computers only understand 0s and 1s. That's how all computer code finishes up.

Cheers

Peter

In response to:At your service

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 22:59:26 +0200

What a hairy situation.

You do live in hope when you suggest that one day there will be a single standard, but then I suppose someone must have faith. I ask the question, why should computing be any different to life in relation to operating with single standards, or more likely, not?

Computing languages and systems are devised by homo sapiens - and a clever lot they can be too - however, human beings, being what they are, a contrary lot with masses of different ideas and with each person or group thinking their ideas/productions are best, there will either never be agreements for a single protocol. So far this has been borne out.

Alternatively, there will be a compromise to work within a few approved parameters. What a mish mash there would be if they were all merged. Perish the thought! No doubt, even if some kind of agreement was cobbled together, someone somewhere, would adapt it, creating a need for further tweaking.

I hope you get some ideas of use to your headache. It sounds like you have reached a workable solution, or would you call in a compromise?

In response to:Web servers: a digression

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 16:53:11 +0200

Yeah, you were right, Peter. Never mind.

In response to:EPP

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:21:23 +0200

A number of techie people reading the blog would understand what I don't. It is nice of you to think of people like me, who would really be left on the periphery if explanations, to a point, were not given.

In response to:Who dares, wins

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 22:17:51 +0200

Peredur, I shall be happy to continue my interest within the levels of my own understanding and a bit of assistance in that department from you.

I am fascinated by the outline you have given of the Machiavellian politics. Even our erstwhile friend Machievilli knew when to negotiate and mediate. MS have begun to moderate their arrogance, just a little, it would seem. Early days yet, but as you say, interesting times.

In response to:EPP

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:43:32 +0200

Yes. I wrote it late at night after a hard day at the code face. I should probably have spent more time explaining what it's all about. Maybe I'll get chance to return to it at a later date.

In response to:Who dares, wins

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:41:16 +0200

S4C probably get a good deal from MS in return for using their stuff.

Arguably, though, the world is changing. The bit of it occupied by software, anyway. Increasingly, as we enter a more networked era, the people who make decisions are confronted with the need to interoperate. It is this that is forcing Microsoft's hand on any number of issues. The playing field, with luck, is becoming a bit more level and MS are finding it hard to compete, because they can no longer set the agenda.

The admission recently by one of their Office systems gurus that the open ODF document format had, "Clearly won" against Microsoft's rival OOXML specification was, to my mind seminal. The fact that MS is going to include ODF support in Office 2008 is a major volte face for the software giant.

Interesting times.

Nice to know you still take an interest, Menhir. Thank you.

In response to:EPP

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:54:27 +0200

Oh hi,

having had a preview of this subject matter, I feel smug. The acronyms leave me standing of course, but the main content of the discussion is understood.

:)

In response to:Who dares, wins

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:32:46 +0200

I say, you deserve some champagne to go with the choccies.

As I read your progress report, I thought, with my usual cynicism, that S4C might have been getting platform support or dosh from some MS community fund and were keen to keep it. I still might be right, but also, there may be a bit more freedom to express broader advice than I at first thought. Of course, S4C are still primarily promoting MS so I guess they are not wrong footing in that respect.

In response to:Beyond lies the Web

Wed, 25 Jun 2008 09:24:06 +0200

Hello,

Long time no see.

While I understand the outline of what you have been doing, the techie bits go over my head. Remember, you are a highly educated IT man, a Master of it in fact.

If you get too many luscious boxes of choccies you might be tempted to over-indulge. I am rationing a hat box version of chocs from Fortnum & Mason but the reason for receiving them, was not the same as yours.

Great to see you here.

In response to:Web servers: a digression

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 22:11:14 +0200

Hopefully.

I'm very much afraid, though, that they'll tell you there's nothing you can do about it. Blog software tends to be a bit inflexible sometimes.

Still, you never know. So, best of luck.

Cheers

Peter

In response to:Web servers: a digression

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:57:51 +0200

Oh, I beg your pardon, Peter.

Thanks for the reply. I've just posted a plea for help. Hopefully we'll learn something!

from Matt.

In response to:Web servers: a digression

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:31:26 +0200

Sorry Miblo. I can see what you're trying to do, but I've no idea how to do it. Have you tried contacting the admins?

Peter

In response to:Web servers: a digression

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 20:46:16 +0200

Hallo, cc0028.

I've just finally arrived at your blog by a fairly roundabout way, while trying to find out what Query Strings we can use on blog.co.uk. In particular, I'd like to know how to make a certain page of my blog display a certain number of posts. I have a table contents page, you see, and via that it is possible to navigate to each chapter of my blog and read the articles from that chapter in chronological order. I have my blog set to display eight articles per page, and previous stuck with eight articles per chapter, but I've recently stopped doing that and my Chapter Fifteen has more than that. Thus a "Next Page >>" link is required in this chapter, but since it doesn't keep the "?order=ASC" query, it takes me to the second page as if that query wasn't passed. So, what I would like to do is to make my Chapter Fifteen appear in its entirety, thus negating the need for the "Next Page >>" link.

The reason for my commenting is to ask if you wouldn't possibly know (how/if it's possible) to do that, would you?

from Miblo.

In response to:A cat's tale

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 13:39:43 +0100

Thanks Peredur,

We do have outage time and clearly it is the ISP's system most times, as we can still get on the internet. The other outages a few and far between.

Ref the cat's tale, I sat on a a cat yesterday; what an outcry! :(

In response to:A cat's tale

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 12:15:36 +0100

Sorry for the delay. I've been waiting for more evidence concerning the router. I'm still not convinced that it actually is the router. I've had less problems since I put in the new one, but I've still had occasional outages over the holiday period. So I've started to keep a log, but up to now, there's been no downtime since 30th Dec, when my connection went down for 24 hours or so.

On balance, I wouldn't worry about the age of your router. Just bear it in mind as a possible point of failure if you have connection problems and your ISP and phone provider deny having any problems.

Cheers

Peter

In response to:Streaming video in Linux

Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:27:57 +0100

Nice job!

I'm looking fondly at mplayer. I've been using it since I started out about 6 months ago. I'm working on a script for mplayer right now. I'm not doing so well with it. But I'm working on it. Maybe I'll throw it up on my blog and get some community feedback.

In response to:A cat's tale

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 18:06:44 +0100

Do you think your cat noticed you had less computer activity and were paying him more attention instead?

Do you reckon routers only have a three year life. Our must be coming up to that. I'll keep a check on it.

"The address copy thingy" was about you signing in as a visitor to your own blog. I think we covered that one, didn't we.

In response to:A cat's tale

Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:58:56 +0100

Sorry about the delay. My router packed up and today was the first day I could get down to the local computer shop to buy a new one. I notice from my notes that the last one lived for exactly three years. Not bad I suppose.

Dunno about the email address copy thingy. I'm not really sure what you mean.

Now to get back to the rest of the 752 emails awaiting my attention whilst I've been off-line :(

In response to:A cat's tale

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:37:04 +0100

Do you have an email address copy facility set up for the click bit.

I got so fed up when I was away, having to sign into friends' sites to comment, I gave up. Time is limited in an internet café and there wasn't time for all of the extras, and especially when I wanted to use the time for a variety of purposes anyway.

In response to:A cat's tale

Mon, 17 Dec 2007 23:31:52 +0100

Didn't have to do anything like that. The only difference was I had to give a name and email address and copy a code. The name and email address just amounts to double-clicking on the text input and selecting the correct thing.