Glyn Normington's blog

Using iPod shuffle with multiple Macs

2009-06-18T20:03:00.002+01:00

With Ben's help, got the following scheme working. Put the Music folder and iTunes library on the disk portion of the iPod shuffle and then start iTunes by Alt-clicking to select the library on the iPod. This way I can download new content and synchronise it without having to constantly wipe the shuffle clean because of using a different iTunes library.

Ubuntu Linux

2007-05-29T07:16:00.000+01:00

I finally decided to install Ubuntu on the family PC. It ran very nicely under Windows XP using a trial copy of VMware Workstation but not so well using the free VMware server. Since I didn't want to pay for VMware, I decided to set up a dual boot system. The install of Ubuntu was dead easy, but getting the Windows boot loader back so the rest of the family would see the usual boot up panel was trickier.

Why did I bother? I've had enough of Windows thrashing the PC when no-one is doing anything. This is probably either a virus scan or a virus, and it's not easy to tell which. Also, when I'm doing online banking, I feel as if someone might be looking over my shoulder the whole time (using a keystroke monitor). Ubuntu, and Linux in general, is less prone to viruses and other 'malware'. There is no need to give user accounts administrator privileges like you pretty much have to do on Windows and which enables a virus introduced by one user to infect the whole system.

Anyway, here's a screen shot.

Youth Hostelling in Tintagel

2007-02-25T18:25:00.000Z

Last weekend a group of 22 of us rented The Youth Hostel in Tintagel for a long weekend. The view from the hostel was breathtaking and we enjoyed cliff-top walks and investigated some of the beaches and caves.

Bay below Tintagel Youth Hostel

We also spent a wet afternoon GPS caching but eventually retired for a cream tea.

The final morning was spent on a beach which had a large area of slate cut into interesting shapes by a large stream flowing down to the sea. The photo. shows Paul on the right and a friend of his, Robert, on the left standing on a naturally formed rock bridge.

Natural rock bridge

This series of shots was taken by our friend Simon and cleverly stitched together as a panorama.

Coastline near Tintagel

IBM Hursley Park

2007-01-30T18:16:00.001Z

Nice photo. of Hursley House. My office isn't in the house, but I do walk along the path shown in the picture each morning.

Petition in support of Iraqi Christians

2007-01-29T20:43:00.000Z

Further to my previous blog on this subject, you may like to sign a petition to the Prime Minister.

Snow!

2007-01-25T10:09:00.000Z

Yesterday about 1" of snow fell overnight which is very unusual in the south of England these days. Our small snowman, pictured, used most of the snow in the garden but still standing today as the cold weather (-1°C) continues.

Twiglet pi

2007-01-21T18:26:00.000Z

My wife and I are closet mathematicians, but the children, although good at maths, have never really been enthusiasts. So I was comforted when my older son noticed this pi-shaped specimen while munching a bag of Twiglets after Christmas.

How to blog like a pro

2007-01-17T09:09:00.000Z

I came across a really good article on blogging. You'd think there'd be lots of these, but the ones I've seen are less helpful than this one. I have lots to learn, so any tips are appreciated.

Last time I checked, most podcasts were about podcasting, so the upside is that the blogosphere is less introspective...

2007-01-14T20:53:00.000Z

Just found my daughter's MYP page. :-)

2006-12-30T16:40:00.000Z

Christians in Iraq are getting a pretty raw deal. Here's the body of an email I sent to my MP. You may like to send a similar email to your MP. A journalist recently organised a protest at the White House and the situation has been reported in Christianity Today.

I am very concerned about the severe suffering of Christians in Iraq and I urge you to press for the creation of a self-governing province in Northern Iraq for ChaldoAssyrians, who make up at least 95% of Iraq's Christians.

In recent months there has been a shocking increase in violent attacks on Iraqi Christians. Kidnappings, especially of children, are a particular problem. Apparently, kidnappers mistakenly assume that Christians are wealthier than others or can obtain money from relatives in other countries. For example, in October 2006, a toddler was kidnapped in Baghdad and since the child's mother could not pay the ransom, the toddler was returned to her beheaded, roasted, and placed on a mound of rice. Also in October a prominent ChaldoAssyrian priest, Father Iskander, was beheaded and dismembered soon after his family had paid the ransom. On 11 October, AsiaNews reported an unoffical estimate of 12 young Christian women and girls abducted in the previous two weeks. Rape is a serious problem for kidnapped women as the shame of being raped in Middle Eastern culture is far greater than in the West. For example, an abducted girl who had been gang-raped by nine men felt so ashamed that she asked her family not to pay the ransom. They did pay, but on her return home, the girl took an overdose and died.

In addition to kidnappings, Islamic militants are attacking Christians in order to force their conversion to Islam, drive them out of Iraq, or kill them. For example, the Assyrian news agency also reported in October the beheading of a 14 year old Christian boy, Ayad Tariq, by Islamic militants. Also, insurgents are more likely to attach Christians because they assume they are in league with the so-called "Christian" Coalition forces.

A further source of attacks is the Kurdish militia, working for the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), which is trying to appropriate ChaldoAssyrian property and incorporate historically ChaldoAssyrian land into Kurdistan. In October a Kurdish militia group attacked Ashur TV's headquarters in Nineveh. This was one of a series of similar attacks by the KDP militia on Ashur TV, which represents the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), in the predominantly ChaldoAssyrian Christian area of the Nineveh Plains.

Thousands of Christians are fleeing from Iraq to neighbouring countries. UNHCR has reported that 40% of Iraqi refugees are Christians in spite of the fact that less than 3% of Iraqis are Christians. Although most Iraqi groups are experiencing violence, the Christians, unlike the Sunnis, Shia, and Kurds, are in danger of being completely driven out of Iraq. This would bring to an end an ancient, indigenous community and also one which is a strong force for religious moderation in Iraq, something the country surely needs for a stable future.

The ADM has repeatedly called ror the ChaldoAssyrians in Northern Iraq to be granted their own self-governing province. This province would provide a much-needed refuge for Iraq's Christians and would encourage the Christian refugees in other countries to return to Iraq. The ADM has consistently received more votes from Iraqi Christians than any other political party which indicates the widespread support for a self-governing province among Iraq's Christians.

So, I urge you to write to the Foreign Office Minister with responsibility for Iraq, Dr Kim Howells MP, asking that the Foreign Office do everything in its power to press for the creation of a self-governing province in Northern Iraq for the ChaldoAssyrians, located in the Nineveh Plains and including the Al-Shikhan and Al-Handaniya Districts. This will provide an essential refuge for Iraqi Christians and will also separate the ChaldoAssyrians from Kurdish control and oppression thus decreasing the risk of a violent, all-out conflict between the Kurds and ChaldoAssyrians.

Thank you for taking the time to read this rather long email. I look forward to your response.

2006-10-14T13:04:00.000+01:00

The Saturday Guardian's new futoshiki puzzle is a bit of a mess. Last week's puzzle was identical to this week's and it had at least two different solutions!

2006-10-14T09:25:00.000+01:00

Building another PC

The components I used last time are now discontinued! I'm currently thinking of an Intel D975XBX motherboard from DABS with an Intel Pentium D 960 processor, also from DABS.

2006-07-21T15:04:00.000+01:00

We can definitely recommend a new French restaurant we've discovered. "Clos du Marquis" at the Leckford Hutt near Winchester has superb food, service, and atmosphere. You can read a review if you want to check it out.

It's expensive, but worthwhile for the quality of food and has an excellent wine list. Apparently it has only been open 18 months.

2006-07-21T11:45:00.000+01:00

Just listened to an interesting Radio 4 programme on Marin Mersenne who is known for "Mersenne primes". The largest prime number which has been discovered so far is the Mersenne prime 2^30,402,457-1.

2006-06-18T12:16:00.000+01:00

Today is Fathers' Day or Father's Day or Fathers Day - a less crucial version of Mothers' (or etc...) Day.

The reason for this blog entry is that my daughter's card destroyed a photo. which I wanted to preserve for posterity.

It shows daughter, elder son, and me in my parents garden years ago.

My younger son's card was, in contrast, typical of his sense of humour:

2006-06-10T14:45:00.000+01:00

By popular request (thanks Carole!), here are snaps of our recent trip to Florida.
Our 8 day itinerary with star ratings:

Disney World (***)
The Kennedy Space Centre (*****)
A work 'jolly' at Boca Raton: talks, catamaran trip plus snorkelling, kayaking, posh restaurants, dinner dance (****)
Miami Beach art deco quarter (****)
The Everglades (****)
An hour on Key Largo (***)

Sally and topiary 'Nessie' at Disney World.

Below: spare Saturn V rocket; room at Boca Raton: wonderful view, lovely furnishings, no kettle.

Ready for dinner dance in our glad rags; in Miami's art deco quarter.

Friendly Everglades resident?

Key Largo.

2006-05-13T16:09:00.000+01:00

The film of "The Da Vinci Code" is released next week and the TV and press are full of it. The book is a gripping block-buster, hard to put down, but - most importantly - prize twaddle. More at Da Vinci Code Truth.

2006-05-09T20:34:00.000+01:00

Backbytes came up with another pearl. Apparently the Google translation tools sometimes get a bit confused. Like the French avocado recipe which translates to lawyers stuffed with hazelnuts (follow the link to find out how to remove the cores, etc.). Yum yum!

2006-03-19T19:27:00.000Z

After upgrading my laptop at work, I realised that I needed to retrieve my copy of MindManager. This is an excellent mind mapping tool I've been using for over five years. I think I first heard of mind mapping on a creativity course, but I don't remember reading a book or being taught how to do mind mapping. If you look at some good examples, you pretty soon catch on. Perhaps you just need some ideas for how you might use it: see the example above.

Coincidentally a friend, Ken, told me the other evening that he has recently discovered mind mapping and showed me a couple of his beautifully hand-drawn maps.

Mindmanager produces superb maps, like the one above, and has an extensive symbol gallery to make maps more interesting although at least one free alternative program, Freemind, is slowly catching up, as the following example shows.

2006-03-14T18:24:00.000Z

My son asked me today: "You know that ballot Dad? So what happens now it's over?". He was referring to a proposal I've been involved in which has now been accepted and which I'll be working on for months to come. So I thought I'd try explaining it in simple terms so that he, and other members of my family who are a bit mystified about what I do, might understand a bit better.

The proposal is to make a change to Java. Java is a programming language plus some other stuff that lets programmers write computer programs that can run unchanged on lots of different types of computers.

I won't bore you with the technicalities of the proposal as that's written up in a so-called "Java Specification Request": JSR 291. Suffice to say it gives programmers a way of splitting large Java programs into smaller "dynamic components" which fit together in a particularly neat way. I said "dynamic" because these components can be switched in and out of a running system without having to stop the system and restart it, which is not as easy as it sounds if the system needs to continue running for a long period, like months or even years. Think of changing the wheels on a car while the car is still moving...

The proposal had to be voted on by a standards group which looks after Java, and earlier today the ballot ended and the JSR was approved.

So, to answer my son's question, I'll be leading a group of experts and will be producing three things. We will decide on the specification for the JSR: what the technology should do. We'll provide a reference implementation: an example of how the specification can be implemented, i.e. some programs. Finally, we'll provide a technology compatibility kit: some tests that someone uses to certify that their own implementation of the specification is, in a pretty specific sense, acceptable.

The really nice part is that we don't have to start from scratch. In fact, the first release of this JSR will be based closely on some existing technology produced by an industry consortium known as the OSGi Alliance. They have been working on this technology for several years -- I only got involved a couple of years ago. Another pleasing aspect is that several of the experts who will be working on JSR 291 have also been working in OSGi. Not only do they know their stuff, but we already know each other and have worked together successfully in the past.

But these things never turn out to be quite as simple as you expect, so there'll be various problems to sort out along the way. One thing we'll be keen to do is to preserve "compatibility" so that the thousands of dynamic components that have already been produced will continue to work properly in the future as Java evolves. But this kind of work wouldn't be the same without interesting problems to solve.

Footnote: if you work in the computer industry and you read this far: well done! You're probably used to reading complex documents that hardly anyone, in terms of world population, can understand. You and I have probably written a fair few too. But here I've tried to be as simple as possible so that "normal" people can understand. I think this is important because some of the systems our industry produces also need to be used by normal people and, on the whole, we need to get a lot better at that.

2006-02-27T21:14:00.000Z

We stayed in Villa Zalia last Summer.

2006-02-15T09:53:00.000Z

While on Dartmoor, we found some letterboxes, including this one kept at the Warren House Inn. The view from the pub. is superb.

2006-02-15T08:57:00.000Z

Just got back from a long weekend youth hostelling on Dartmoor with family and friends. I'm gradually learning how good the Gimp is at manipulating images. The picture at the bottom was a bit too dull, but fixing up the colours and brightness produced the effect at the top.

2006-02-03T12:40:00.000Z

Backbytes turned up a couple of gems: www.dontclick.it is a "click less" web site while the more frivolous www.asciimation.co.nz is a character graphics version of Star Wars.

2006-01-22T20:06:00.000Z

Below is an old photograph of my father, Stanley, and his Great Grandma Dunning and on the right my father's mother Hilda and her brothers William and Wilfred.

2006-01-14T16:58:00.000Z

Got the PC parts yesterday and built the PC today. It wasn't bad, except I made an apparently common mistake of not connecting the 2x2 power cable to the motherboard. The motherboard manual contained dire warnings of destruction, but after I plugged it in and restarted, it worked fine. There is no beep when the BIOS has completed its checks, but apart from that, everything seems ok.

2006-01-11T09:05:00.002Z

I can't help finding mistakes in punctuation a bit irritating, but sometimes they can totally change the meaning of what's written. I liked these witty examples on the BBC's web site.

2006-01-11T08:55:00.000Z

Children and the Internet

Many people, including parents and teachers, are concerned about how using the internet can harm children. Here are some tips for reducing the risks. The main risk is that children will spend too long on the computer, so you may like to set time limits and be willing to enforce them.

Email and Instant Messaging

Very popular among children. Some said:

“I like emails from my friends telling me what they are going to do.”

“If I see an email bigger than 150 kilobytes, I just know it's going to be rubbish.”

Email can carry viruses, chain letters, scams, or simply junk. Never open an attachment unless you are sure it is safe. If in doubt, scan attachments with a virus scanner (with an up to date list of viruses). Viruses can send email which appear to be from friends. Chain letters can be troublesome especially if they promise that harm will come to the recipient unless they forward the email to others. Encourage children to delete these without hesitation.

Chat Rooms

Less popular. Typical experience:

“I tried a chat room but it was rubbish. I couldn't understand what everyone was talking about.”

Children should never reveal their real identity to people they meet in a chat room and should never arrange to meet anyone from a chat room for the first time without being accompanised by a parent. They should not ask anyone else for their real identity.

Search Engines

Useful for homework, but sometimes you find more than you wanted:

“Searching at school came up with racist and porn sites, but we didn't go into them.”

Filtering programs reduce the risks of accessing inappropriate sites, but such software needs to be kept up to date as new sites are added to the internet. Parental controls can be used, but you have to intervene whenever the child wants to access a new site. Also, children may access the internet using friends' computers, so the best defence is to make sure that if a child sees anything that they feel uncomfortable about, they should close the program and discuss what they have seen with you. Situating computers in public rooms or hallways rather than in bedrooms makes it easier to keep an eye on what children are looking at.

Gaming

Many an hour idled away and not only by children!

Apart from the risk of addiction and wasting time, free games sometimes contain viruses or pests. Viruses, as the name suggests, propagate themselves to other computers and may also delete or modify the contents of a hard drive. The only protective measure, apart from regularly using a virus scanner, is to use a less popular operating system such as Linux or MacOS X or some of the more antiquated versions of Windows such as Windows 98 as these are less susceptible to viruses.

Pests can track your usage of internet sites to target you for sales, capture credit card details, display inappropriate “pop-up” advertisements, or even dial premium rate telephone numbers without your permission. You can reduce the risk of pests by regularly running a pest scanner (see e.g. spybot which is free). If you connect to the internet via a modem, you can avoid the risk of a rogue dialler running up a large bill by asking your telephone company to block premium rate numbers. The risk can be reduced further by using broadband and eliminated altogether by cable broadband. It is also wise to run a firewall (see e.g. the free one from zonelabs) to prevent hackers gaining access to your computer while you are connected to the internet.

Conclusion

After reading this, you may feel that the risks of children using the internet outweigh the benefits, but responsible internet use will be a useful skill when they grow up.

For further information, see for instance KidShield.com.

2005-12-30T15:27:00.000Z

The Victoria and Albert Museum exceeded expectations. Apart from its shear scale (5 millions objects; 8 miles of corridors) the variety of artefacts was amazing. The general theme is art and design. One particularly interesting room featured plaster and wax models of famous works of art including Michelangelo's David.

2005-12-30T10:26:00.000Z

Just checked for emails from the PC parts suppliers to find Joel Spolsky's latest blog: The Perils of JavaSchool. He complains that a smaller proportion of Comp. Sci. graduates are much good at programming now that degree courses teach Java and avoid trickier stuff like pointers and recursion.

When I was recruited by IBM back in 1980, I was part way through a maths degree and had only done some recreational programming. But I like to think that the maths problems I was solving proved I could pick up programming, which turned out eventually to be the case.

Actually, it wasn't quite as straightforward as that. One of my early assignments at IBM was to write a compiler for a graphics workstation. I failed miserably as the only computation modules I did in my maths degree were rather more theoretical (e.g. programming language semantics and error correcting codes). The standard comp. sci. module on compiler writing was not on the syllabus.

But my maths degree gave me the basic problem solving skills I would need in interface design, assembly language optimisation, dump analysis, software system design, etc., once I had taken suitable courses.

So, given the turning of comp. sci. degrees to Java, maybe it's time for software companies to reconsider their hiring policies and give more credence to other non comp. sci. degrees such as maths, classics, languages, etc.

2005-12-30T10:17:00.000Z

"High Society" was great fun. Some aspects of the old film were preserved: the actors who played Dexter Haven and Mike Conner resembled Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra a bit. But some aspects were changed including various lyrics such as the memorable "High So, High Soci, High Society". And there was no equivalent to Louis Armstrong's jazz band, which isn't surprising.

Earlier in the evening, one of my children had received a text message saying it was snowing back home in Winchester. So as we travelled back by train and bus, we hoped for a snow-ball fight at the other end only to find wet roads and the lightest covering of frost. Maybe we'll get snow in the next couple of months.

2005-12-29T08:49:00.000Z

Well, apart from doing some shopping yesterday in the January sales, I did order the parts for the PC. So, if I've chosen badly, I'll find out before too long! The parts will take a couple of weeks to arrive, I guess, so I'll post back here with any problems I find when I start putting the machine together.

Later today we are meeting up with some other family members to see a show in London. The train route has engineering works and a bus service, so it'll take a couple of hours to get to Waterloo. We plan to visit the Victoria and Albert Museum, meet up with the others to see the Christmas lights in Regent Street, and then grab a Chinese meal before going to see "High Society" at the Shaftesbury Theatre.

2005-12-28T19:12:00.000Z

So, here's the final shopping list:

2005-12-28T14:42:00.000Z

Just checking a few details. The graphics card has to have a PCI Express interface, so the one I chose earlier with an AGP interface is no good. A suitable card from Novatech has PCI-E.

I noticed in passing that the mobo recommends a "thermally advantaged chassis". Sounds better than thermally challenged, I suppose. What about the Antec case? Well the hardware guys reckon the Sonata II, although not strictly TAC-compliant is suitable.

2005-12-28T14:15:00.000Z

If we decide to get a monitor, a 17" CRT model from DABS looks ok.

2005-12-28T13:45:00.000Z

A few more odds and ends to go:

2005-12-28T13:13:00.000Z

The book recommends Antec Sonata cases and DABS list a Sonata II case which, although a little pricey, seems to have good quality, 450W PSU, and USB ports on the front. The Antec site has specs.

2005-12-28T13:00:00.000Z

A cheap Asus Asus graphics card from DABS seems to fit the bill.

2005-12-28T12:15:00.000Z

A post to the book's website confirmed that Intel fans/heatsinks supplied with Intel CPUs will, as expected, match Intel motherboards.

Novatech are back from the bank holiday and confirmed that the Seagate disk is usually delivered within 3 days of ordering.

It's a beautifully crisp winter's day outside, so maybe I'll go out later. But now I need to check what kind of graphics card I need from some software we use....

Our graphics requirements seem pretty simple as the software says it needs a 32 Mb 3D card and lists a large number of chipsets, which I assume are compatible with DirectX v9.0c.

2005-12-27T18:40:00.000Z

So, here's the shopping list so far:

Intel D945PVS motherboard
Intel 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 CPU
Kingston 1Gb memory module
Seagate 250 Mb hard drive (depending on availability)
an operating system my family can run all their applications on (I'd prefer Linux)

2005-12-27T17:45:00.000Z

The mobo's feature table says this about memory:

Four 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMM sockets
Support for DDR2 667, DDR2 533, or DDR2 400 MHz DIMMs
Support for up to 4 GB of system memory

The book recommend Kingston memory (among others) and
the mobo's vendor self-tested memory table lists a couple of Kingston memory modules as working ok, but I couldn't find either of them at DABS or Novatech, so I had a google and found a 1Gb module sold by Kingston.

2005-12-27T16:51:00.000Z

The book has its own website, so I asked about hard disk interfaces to make sure a Seagate disk would work with an Intel mobo. Seems it will, but I now understand that SATA interfaces are Serial whereas ATA interfaces are Parallel (so why don't they call them PATA?).

I am considering buying the disk from Novatech since they seem to sell OEM operating systems cheaper than DABS and I need to buy a HDD, CPU, or some such to get the OEM deal. The above thread suggested a 7200.9 model, so I asked Novatech when they will get them in. I could pay more for a 16 Mb cache (rather than 8Mb), but I would have thought this wouldn't be much faster for non-repeated reads such as booting the sytem or loading a large application.

Better look at memory to suit the mobo next...

2005-12-27T16:24:00.000Z

A 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 630 is reasonable from DABS.

Intel even provide a video showing how to fit the CPU to a motherboard, although some sparks and smoke would have held my interest better.

Perhaps all Intel heatsinks will fit all Intel mobos: who knows...

2005-12-27T16:04:00.000Z

Let's start with a motherboard...

The book recommended Intel mobos and CPUs and since I have colleagues in Intel, it seemed like a reasonable choice. Parts companies like Watford Electronics don't seem to stock Intel, so I looked at DABS, which a friend once recommended.

A D945PVS costs £121 (it was $180 in Fry's, so it seems we no longer pay pounds for dollars for computer parts in the UK). It is of the modern socket 775 design and ATX form factor.

I fancy a 3.0 GHz Pentium 4 (600 series is suitable for a mainstream PC according to the book), so I'll need to check that the heatsink and fan will fit the mobo. How to check this is currently a bit of a mystery...

2005-12-27T15:52:00.000Z

After spending a couple of hours in Fry's during a business trip to San Francisco, I decided to build my own PC. Luckily I checked out prices in the UK and so returned to England equipped only with a copy of Building the Perfect PC.

So why bother with a blog? I needed somewhere to store the multitude of links and references that I've already accumulated. Plus maybe someone out there will find this useful.