Monday 17 May 2010

Cool.. Oh so cool... super cool`



Every so often, you can come across something that takes you very nicely by surprise. Not just jump as in a loud bang. No this is a sort of continuing surprise. It’s something that half an hour later you’re still smiling at the thought and bathing the soap suds of your good fortune. The dog eating at the table is one.

Not building this up too much am I?

This is the one that lead to this blog, it's not a streaming site, so it will take a while to load. Let me assure you its not what it seems to be: so let it play.

The link is to the original site and not the shorter lower quality versions you may have seen elsewhere. Happy origami!

...Welcome back? I have to reveal at this point that the drawings of Escher and Dali’s limpid watch (scroll about half way down the linked page) held a special enchantment for me during my earlier years. A sort of cross between science fiction and art. Now there isn’t much art in the publication New Scientist, so when something which can be placed in the Art category comes up and is worth a few minutes of your time: it has to be a bit off the beaten path.

For completeness here is the link to the New Scientist article that lead me on. This week they published best new visual illusions 2010 and the winner just ticked the box.

If you’re interested in previous years then the finalists from 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2009, are listed in a panel half way down the left hand side.

Friday 14 May 2010

Don’t mix business and pleasure.


Oh what sordid stories could fall under that heading!  This is quite sordid (ish). I’ll do my best to make it interesting.  It is, I suppose about apples and oranges.

Don’t mix business and pleasure: pt 1

Modern technology is wonderful and the web is a great part of that. It is however, likely to bite the uninitiated. This story relates to a few years ago. An old colleague of mine has a very prim and proper wife. She was not technologically blessed.  At some point a computer appeared in the house. It was then attached to the Internet. It was purchase to help her technologically savvy daughter who was going to university. It was also for the husband who was starting an OU degree. To help Mum, daughter explained all about shopping on line, search engines and the like.
Daughter was away learning about like in the modern world, Mother sat at the new computer. Having mastered the on / off switch, the windows start button and clicking on the desktop, she felt quite pleased with herself. There connected with the browser waiting on her tentative keyboard strokes.  The idea was to browse the Marks and Spencer site. She carefully typed http://www.marks & spencer.com/  and got back “invalid URL” a little pondering and she typed http://www.m & s.com/ .  “invalid URL” was once again the inscrutable reply. Confusion and consternation, then she remembered something about search engines. There was this empty box which said “Google search”. Ah! daughter said something about how good it was at finding stuff when she did not know exactly where to look.  Not quite so painstakingly she typed M & S into the Google search box and clicked on search.  In those days Google returned the results for the letters M and S in the same way as S & M. Apparently quite a fit of the vapours ensued....
Today you will get http://www.marksandspencer.com/ as the top hit. I must admit that frequently enough I find the serendipitous hits from Google, more interesting than the original search. It will be a sad day if ever Google finds a way to show us just what we think we want!

Don’t mix business and pleasure: pt 2 

The same is true for the latest iTunes update. It launches an app called com.apple.IE.client.exe. This does a passable impression of a denial of service attack. It gobbles up memory using one and a third gigabyte on my 2 gigabyte laptop. It renders the machine unusable.


 It also launches dialog boxes:


The iLounge site has quite a few entries. Some of these quite are negative about Apple's response to user pain. The answer is to rename the file/ folder:

 com.apple.ie to something like x.com.apple.ie

The laptop concerned has both business and (iTunes) pleasure applications on it and it was V. annoying when the laptop ground to a halt when I had a remote session to a customer going.

Monday 10 May 2010

Spam with a hidden agenda. Some useful tips you may not know.


Most of us are pretty aware of spam and spam filters, letters from Nigerian solicitors, Banks we don’t have accounts to, IRS rebates and the like. Here at Ava (temp agency and staff bank software) we use Google mail and Google spam filters are pretty good in our view. They do however occasionally make mistakes, so we trawl through the spam just to check there is not an email enquiry from a potential customer.

I was struck by one (of several) emails advising me that “setting for your mailbox ****@*.co.uk  are changed”  (sic)

For the a postmaster with access to the company domain, all the bogus addresses come to one post box. The postmaster knows there is no ava7 email user.  Also this was one instance of about a dozen nonexistent email addresses. However if you are a single user you may not get that hint.

This email was slightly different from the norm:  Almost passable English, no over flowery phrasing. “Delightful over waited salutations to your esteemed unctuousness etc. “

I'm curious about these things, in the same way I'm curious about seeing Lions in the zoo: fine if there are iron bars between me and the Lions (or something equally effective) to stop any significant chance of actual contact! If I have a suspicious email, one of the signs is: there is a link which you are urged to click on.  Never do.  You may not know that:  if you hover the mouse over any link, you will find the actual address that you are over on the boarder panel at the bottom left of your browser. I occasionally do this and depending on the inventiveness of the spammer, they can be astoundingly similar to a proper bank address (but actually a completely different location) or just daft.




 Surprise! This email the link not only was the same, it was from Google as well who provide our email – ah! But the site /domain is Google groups and this can be anybody. More over the package to be downloaded was a zip file and not an html link or txt file.  Never download a zip in an email.  Attached zip files are usually stripped from emails by anti-virus software for good reason.

On other thing you may not know about Google mail is that if you click on the drop down button top right of the email, you can see the actual contents of the email.



Clues here include the mismatch of the “Delivered- To” and “To” addresses and also the mismatch of the “Return-path” and “From”.


Added value applications ltd (aka Ava) will never send you an email with a zip. Unfortunately if we send you multiple documents, they may be converted to a zip file by Google mail.  However they will all be listed separately.

Be alert – don’t click.

This sort of attack is sometimes called phishing. What is phishing?

PS Our Temp agency and staff bank software is really good.

Wednesday 5 May 2010

What is the picture at the top of the blog?


I’ve just added an image to the blog header. I thought you might be intrigued by what it is and why i put it there. 

The why first:

When I was a young boy at school, (If I remember correctly) I won a prize: The Larouse Encycolpedia of Astoronomy. The book is amazingly out of date now! It did then serve to kindle my interest in astronomy.

Apart from being quite a massive book, there were some splendid mind stirring pictures. Not nearly as many or as fantastical and profound as those pictures now available now at Hubble

Today we understand the universe is a far bigger and more complex place than we could even think existed in the 1960’s. Moons in the solar system were thought of as lumps of barren rock just like smaller versions of our moon. Today we know quite different. In the 60’s it was thought black holes were forbidden by some quirk of universal laws: theoretical object only. Today we understand that there are billions of them lurking in every part of the universe.

The how:

With telescopes peering ever farther into the universe and not yet at the (apparent) point where the first galaxies condensed, an immense or even almost overwhelming number of images of objects including a multitude of colliding galaxies have been gathered. A few years ago these were published on the internet. This was done with a view to getting amateur astronomers to help classify them.

This project is  known as the galaxy zoo.

This very simple use of the internet was surprisingly successful. Whenever advances in technology have enabled us to look finer, further or at different wavelengths we have always discovered unexpected and revealing aspects of our universe. Entrancing views, demanded new and challenging explanations.  With such a plethora of new images from Hubble, the suggestion of simply asking everyone who was interested to look at the images was a low cost, low risk attractive option.   As it turned out, since the amateurs has a less grounded understanding of what they were looking at they were more inclined to the unbiased determination needed by science. Indeed one of these amateurs made the headlines by discovering a class object not previously encountered or observed.

The what:

The relatively unfettered discussion forum for the zoo also lead to these images being sorted in a serendipitous fashion.

This was possibly prompted by an earlier astronomical alphabet  or maybe just that compulsion having thought one galaxy unusually looked like a letter in their name, the idea arose that it would be cool to sign ones name on an astronomical forum in galaxy images?  What's not to like?

Individuals started organising some of the pictures into facsimiles of the alphabet. The results are here

Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: @ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO
Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: PQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_
Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: `abcdefghijklmno
Topic: Galactic Alphabet Repository :: pqrstuvwxyz{|}~

Actually the success of the galaxy zoo internet project has lead to further projects where everyone, no matter their qualifications, can be involved in genuine front line and ground breaking research.

Go for it!

We live in truely interesting times.

Sunday 2 May 2010

Spring is here, blossoms are out: so it’s raining


Well it is as I write....

Spring is here, we have had a nice sunny week end, a warm week, a nice walk along the river, a bit of a sun tan. That was last week, so it’s the south of England the week end and it’s bound to be raining.  Actually, last week there was ne’r a cloud in the sky: no high cirrus, no veil of opaque water vapour streamed from passing airliners. We don't get really clear skies any more. The contamination makes the naturally pure blue heaven a much more incipid lighter shade of pale grey blue. The sun gave a quicker tan last week I'm sure. The nights last week were certainly colder and the global government conspiracy theorists misted a trick. The last time the meteorologist had the data from this sort of experiment: (grounding all planes) was 9/11. Then the range between day and night temperatures increased by about 3 degrees across the USA.  Last week, here the nights were noticeably colder and the sky noticeably bluer. Still no ‘wacko’ has suggested that scientists chose ‘over react’ to the volcanic ash and ground planes unnecessarily so that further measurements of the effects of aviation on global warming could be made....

The forecast suggested that there might be rain. The meteorological models were bound to be off after last week, but to be on the safe side, the first walk of the year towards the source of the Thames started with me wearing a waterproof jacket. There were noticeably more blooms than the last walk towards the source.

I was reminded of Nordrhein-Westfalen  where I worked for several years. Immediately before Easter the land was muddy brown, the forest thin and bare of leaves. Post Easter, it seemed instantly the grass sprouted, the trees unfurled their leaves and the countryside transformed. England is always far greener even in the depths of winter.

The river birds were exploring territories for nests.
A coxed pair made its way up stream.
The River and Rowing museum hid behind freshly foliated trees.
The narrow boats were out.
And so were the Gin palaces
The stands and enclosures for the regatta are well under construction.
Piles are being driven into the river bed for the course. We are not quite sure if it’s the left hand or the right hand side where the piles are being driven with the greatest force...

The riverside pub gardens served more than just a few hardy souls.
The more venturous imbibed further downstream.
Enjoying the views of chocolate box house and fresh greens of spring.
Temple Island has started performing its summer functions.
Temple lock is flowering up nicely
Even though the weir is still flowing at a fair rate.             
Such are the peaceful joys of a riverside walk... and the Daily Mail has printed and article in agreement. Actually there must be some mistake because the article is positive and upbeat. Clearly why it stood out!

Ah well, legs stretched, mind calmed, back to writing temp agency and staff bank software