I have decided to reboot my blog using Blogger templates. This means the layout is not as well designed as I might like - the previous design had six years of editing and tweaking...! Since the most boring type of blog post is one that talks about the blog itself, I'll leave things at that.
I have recently started working at a new company, a cloud technology start-up based at Edinburgh University. Cloudsoft produce Monterey, a middleware framework for application mobility across various cloud infrastructure providers. I am developing the latest version of this, on which more later. It is a great environment to work in, with really smart colleagues and lots of challenges that keep me thinking. There are also the obvious benefits of being based in the University, such as very fast Internet and free access to academic journals.
Due to the scope of my work, I have found myself learning a lot of interesting new things. These range from picking up new languages (Groovy), libraries and APIs (jclouds, AWS, Seam CDI), applications (Redis, Karaf, Chef, Infinispan) as well as technologies (OSGi, PaaS). I am also working on open source projects during 20% of my time, which will mostly involve Qpid but I have also been investigating jclouds and elasticsearch. I hope to be able to write more about many of these topics.
23/09/2011
01/08/2010
Silly, Mischievous Fools and Rogues
The following extract from Churchill's Wizards: The British Genius for Deception 1914-1945 by Nicholas Rankin (pp379-380) is taken from a minute to the Security Executive, made on 06 September 1940, by Sir Alexander Maxwell, Permanent Under Secretary at the Home Office, in response to a proposed defence regulation making it 'an offence to attempt to subvert duly constituted authority.'
Sir Alexander Maxwell
06 September 1940
There would be widespread opposition to such a regulation as inconsistent with English liberty. Our tradition is that while orders issued by the duly constituted authority must be obeyed, every civilian is at liberty to show, if he can, that such orders are silly or mischievous and the duly constituted authorities are composed of fools or rogues [...] Accordingly we do not regard activities which are designed to bring the duly constituted authorities into contempt as necessarily subversive; they are only subversive if they are calculated to incite persons to disobey the law, or to change the Government by unconstitutional means. This doctrine gives, of course, great and indeed dangerous liberty to persons who desire revolution, or desire to impede the war effort [...] but the readiness to take this risk is the cardinal distinction between democracy and totalitarianism.
Sir Alexander Maxwell
06 September 1940
13/02/2010
LEGO Games 3835 Robo Champ
It was my nephew's fifth birthday recently, and I was struggling to find a suitable present for a young boy that loves robots, and also playing with LEGO. Then, I remembered I was supposed to be finding a present for Ben! Fortunately, I discovered Robo Champ while browsing the new Hamleys store, in Glasgow!
This is an excellent game, both conceptually and in actual execution. It consists of LEGO pieces, and instructions to build three brightly coloured, cartoon style robots and one die. All the robot LEGO pieces provided are standard shapes and sizes, as found in any conventional LEGO set, and there are 118 separate pieces in total. The only custom part is the die, which accepts 2x2 tiles on each face (or combinations of two 2x1 or four 1x1 tiles) so you can re-use parts or build extra robots if desired. The robots themselves are fairly simple to build and great to look at and play with once built - in fact the set would be worth it just as a three-robot kit, I feel! Once built, the robot arms, legs and heads are detatchable by design, and this is an essential feature of the game...
Gameplay is quite straightforward, with the amusing back-story above presented in the instructions. Players take turns rolling the die and each get to pick, swap or steal an appropriately coloured robot part depending on the colour shown. In line with the spirit of LEGO, the rules are malleable, and it is suggested that players and families develop their own sets. I felt that the initial set of rules was complex enough to provide a fun game, but still easy to learn. The first game I played took around ten to fifteen minutes, just as suggested on the box, which included the learning time. Of course it also took some time beforehand to build the robot pieces involved, which will depend on your individual LEGO skills.
One caveat for this set is based on my experience with the recipient of the set I purchased, my young nephew. He is slightly younger than the suggested minimum of six years old, but has very readily grasped the idea behind building LEGO models from their instruction sheets, and loves robots of all kinds! He found it hard to grasp that his beloved new robots had to be taken to pieces after he built them so carefully, and also had difficulty accepting that he might not be able to re-build the robot with the correct parts. I think that older children would be able to understand this aspect of co-operative gameplay automatically, but it is a point to note if buying this for younger children. Also, the next time he plays, he will not have just built the new robots, so will be less apprehensive about their impending destruction.
Five out of five cats preferred Robo Champ
There are several other LEGO game sets which intrigue me, such as Creationary and Lunar Command. i think this is a great idea from LEGO, and hope they continue the theme. Sadly, some sets, like Knight's Kingdom Chess Set are no longer available, but i think a quick look on eBay would probably net a copy.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site.
This is an excellent game, both conceptually and in actual execution. It consists of LEGO pieces, and instructions to build three brightly coloured, cartoon style robots and one die. All the robot LEGO pieces provided are standard shapes and sizes, as found in any conventional LEGO set, and there are 118 separate pieces in total. The only custom part is the die, which accepts 2x2 tiles on each face (or combinations of two 2x1 or four 1x1 tiles) so you can re-use parts or build extra robots if desired. The robots themselves are fairly simple to build and great to look at and play with once built - in fact the set would be worth it just as a three-robot kit, I feel! Once built, the robot arms, legs and heads are detatchable by design, and this is an essential feature of the game...
There is a contest at the robot factory. The first to build a robot with all the correct colour parts will win this year’s trophy and be named the Robo Champ. If someone takes a part you need you may have to steal it back to achieve victory. A fast and fun game to play again and again for 2 to 3 players. Game play approximately 10-15 minutes.
Gameplay is quite straightforward, with the amusing back-story above presented in the instructions. Players take turns rolling the die and each get to pick, swap or steal an appropriately coloured robot part depending on the colour shown. In line with the spirit of LEGO, the rules are malleable, and it is suggested that players and families develop their own sets. I felt that the initial set of rules was complex enough to provide a fun game, but still easy to learn. The first game I played took around ten to fifteen minutes, just as suggested on the box, which included the learning time. Of course it also took some time beforehand to build the robot pieces involved, which will depend on your individual LEGO skills.
One caveat for this set is based on my experience with the recipient of the set I purchased, my young nephew. He is slightly younger than the suggested minimum of six years old, but has very readily grasped the idea behind building LEGO models from their instruction sheets, and loves robots of all kinds! He found it hard to grasp that his beloved new robots had to be taken to pieces after he built them so carefully, and also had difficulty accepting that he might not be able to re-build the robot with the correct parts. I think that older children would be able to understand this aspect of co-operative gameplay automatically, but it is a point to note if buying this for younger children. Also, the next time he plays, he will not have just built the new robots, so will be less apprehensive about their impending destruction.
Title / Robo Champ
Manufaturer / LEGO
Price / GBP 6.45 / EUR 8.98 / USD 19.45
Pieces / 118
Code / 3835-1
Released / 2009
An excellent, fun game for children and adults alike, with the added bonus of a collection of amusing robot models.
Five out of five cats preferred Robo Champ
There are several other LEGO game sets which intrigue me, such as Creationary and Lunar Command. i think this is a great idea from LEGO, and hope they continue the theme. Sadly, some sets, like Knight's Kingdom Chess Set are no longer available, but i think a quick look on eBay would probably net a copy.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site.
04/02/2010
Brain Overflow
I'm a great fan of Stack Overflow, which is a collaborative expert-sexchange style site that actually has useful answers to your questions. The site allows anyone to ask software development questions, and registered users can answer them, and also vote on other people's answers, giving a consensus opinion that is surprisingly accurate. The site itself has some nice features, with heavy use of AJAX for dynamic forms and open interfaces for avatars and authentication. The site also functions as a wiki and hosts meta-discussion about itself. And, if you want to do something clever with a host of questions, answers, ratings and wiki articles, the data is available as a torrent to download.
Anyway, the creators have spun off the software behind it as a stand-alone product for community question-and-answer sites as StackExchange. They sell consultancy and services as well as hosted versions of the software as white-label sites, and give away free access for non-commercial usage. It's a nice business model which I'd love to copy with my own software...
While looking at some of these associated sites, I discovered Math Overflow, which makes Andrew feel stupid.. This is chock full of people asking about non-trivial isomorphisms, homologous cauchy integral groups over non-integral fields, and getting intelligent answers! Of course, there's also lots of homework questions, and potentially unanswerable stuff in there too. I really like some of the philosophical discussions that pop up, as well as the more basic questions which are good at reminding me how much of my education I've forgotten due to alcohol and time...
The whole point of this post is that I found this amazing video, which is a sphere being turned inside-out in the most awesome way possible, with a little help from Pixar and the University of Minnesota. The frame shown is above is just part of the transformation, which is very clearly explained. The whole video is just over 20 minutes long, and I suggest you watch it all the way through, as it's pretty cool (and probably expensive, counting the number of grants that funded it...) animation for 1994.
Anyway, the creators have spun off the software behind it as a stand-alone product for community question-and-answer sites as StackExchange. They sell consultancy and services as well as hosted versions of the software as white-label sites, and give away free access for non-commercial usage. It's a nice business model which I'd love to copy with my own software...
The whole point of this post is that I found this amazing video, which is a sphere being turned inside-out in the most awesome way possible, with a little help from Pixar and the University of Minnesota. The frame shown is above is just part of the transformation, which is very clearly explained. The whole video is just over 20 minutes long, and I suggest you watch it all the way through, as it's pretty cool (and probably expensive, counting the number of grants that funded it...) animation for 1994.
18/04/2009
Working Standards
well, i've now been working at yell adworks for almost three months, and i'm really enjoying it so far. after spending (probably too much) time on design, we have got started on development of a workflow engine system. i'm using spring, hibernate, mule, cxf, jbpm and other interesting technologies, some of which i'm still learning about (mule and associated esb technologies) or, in the case of spring, updating myself on - until now the most recent version of spring i had used was 2.0.9 and we are using 2.5.6, with attendant annotation based goodness and so on.
one of the only problems so far is the continuous integration system, which is set up with a very strict set of checkstyle and PMD rules for code quality. i'm all in favour of managing code quality as an automated process and continuous integration with these tools is a Good Thing, but i keep falling foul of some of the rules, in particular the checks for multiple return statements in one method, to enforce single exit points. i believe writing methods with guard clauses up front is the most readable and elegant way of expressing certain types of logic, and apparently martin fowler agrees (see his refactoring book) with me. the following discussion on stackoverflow is relevant, too. also, there are strict rules on long variable names, which keep me from naming things like constraintDefinition or workflowInstance although i do agree with the restriction on short (less than four characters) names.
i'm (really) going to try and make more of an effort to keep this blog updated more frequently, since it's over a year since i last posted ;)
one of the only problems so far is the continuous integration system, which is set up with a very strict set of checkstyle and PMD rules for code quality. i'm all in favour of managing code quality as an automated process and continuous integration with these tools is a Good Thing, but i keep falling foul of some of the rules, in particular the checks for multiple return statements in one method, to enforce single exit points. i believe writing methods with guard clauses up front is the most readable and elegant way of expressing certain types of logic, and apparently martin fowler agrees (see his refactoring book) with me. the following discussion on stackoverflow is relevant, too. also, there are strict rules on long variable names, which keep me from naming things like constraintDefinition or workflowInstance although i do agree with the restriction on short (less than four characters) names.
i'm (really) going to try and make more of an effort to keep this blog updated more frequently, since it's over a year since i last posted ;)
16/03/2008
greenock central
sunset over greenock central station taken with panorama setting by stitching three landscape frames together using a sony ericsson camera phone.
29/02/2008
images from outer space...
I uploaded the images from Bruce to a Flickr set, and tagged them with a note indicating the asteroid's location, since it's very faint (magnitude 16.6 in these images). Also, to see more details, including the IAU discovery details and citation, as well as confusing orbital ephemeris and data, I have updated the Wikipedia article. This contains the image you can see here, which is a composite of the LONEOS frames, saved as an animated GIF to show the motion across the fixed stellar background. I really can't explain how much I appreciate the fact that Ted named this object after Malcolm, so I'd like to publicly thank him anyway.
02/10/2007
coming home present
the problem is, of course, whether to be happy that biggles likes me enough to give me his dead mice, *OR* to be worried that there is (was) a mouse (or mice) in my flat... maybe it's time to board up the hole in the bathroom wall before it gets colder?
seeing music, hearing pictures
i just have to post a link to this site. it's called the music animation machine and consists of videos of classical pieces being performed, with a piano-roll type animation showing the notes as they play, with different colours for separate voices and highlights for the current tone, almost like a strange karaoke machine. you can buy them on dvd or just watch some samples on youtube. apparently edward tufte is a big fan, and uses the system as an example in his lectures, to show how information can be easily assimilated if it is in the right format.
the best ones i have seen are Johann Sebastian Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Frederic Chopin, Etude, opus 10 #7 and Franz Liszt, Feux Follets. i think they look like some sort of bizarre 2D cellular automata evolving with the music
enjoy!
(see also the IBM glass engine, infinity edition - a java applet for exploring philip glass's musical works.)
the best ones i have seen are Johann Sebastian Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, Frederic Chopin, Etude, opus 10 #7 and Franz Liszt, Feux Follets. i think they look like some sort of bizarre 2D cellular automata evolving with the music
enjoy!
(see also the IBM glass engine, infinity edition - a java applet for exploring philip glass's musical works.)
bandwidth gadgets
ok, i better post something since otherwise it'd be a full year (well, in a fortnight it would...) between posts. and, of course, fifty weeks is a perfectly reasonable gap instead.
the other reason for posting is that i finally got myself an interweb thing and my email and web-browser suddenly started working again! but no ADSL (no land line, rented property) or cable (not in my postcode, anyway) for me. instead, i now have a vodafone 3G data card in my laptop. it goes in the expresscard slot (although it does come with an adapter for PC card slots) so it looks nice and tidy, as opposed to the alternative white brick on the end of a USB cable i was offered. it does cost GBP 50.00 for the internal card, and the USB dongle is free, but there's no competition when you see them, and what else am i going to put in that slot anyway?
i also grabbed a new mobile phone, too - the sony ericsson W880i walkman phone. beautiful shiny steel case, really thin, candy-bar phone, plus it's 3G. the walkman features are pretty cool, and since it came with a 1Gb M2 data card and proper sony in-ear headphones (i.e. the ones with changeable rubber seals that stop noise escaping and irritating other people...) i might even start using it instead of my ipod. to complete my sony collection, i'm just holding out for the MBW-150 bluetooth watch, supposedly shipping in october...
it's still the 3g data card that amazes me, though. i remember my first GSM modem card (in an apple newton, actually, connected to a motorola star-tac) which gave me 19.2Kbps with compression, if i was lucky. this card gives me 7.2Mbps (peak, confirmed) or 1.4 Mega-bytes per second. boggle.
the other reason for posting is that i finally got myself an interweb thing and my email and web-browser suddenly started working again! but no ADSL (no land line, rented property) or cable (not in my postcode, anyway) for me. instead, i now have a vodafone 3G data card in my laptop. it goes in the expresscard slot (although it does come with an adapter for PC card slots) so it looks nice and tidy, as opposed to the alternative white brick on the end of a USB cable i was offered. it does cost GBP 50.00 for the internal card, and the USB dongle is free, but there's no competition when you see them, and what else am i going to put in that slot anyway?
it's still the 3g data card that amazes me, though. i remember my first GSM modem card (in an apple newton, actually, connected to a motorola star-tac) which gave me 19.2Kbps with compression, if i was lucky. this card gives me 7.2Mbps (peak, confirmed) or 1.4 Mega-bytes per second. boggle.
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