parallel futures?

Great blog on What would you do with 80 cores? by Sean Koehl, an Intel researcher. This is one of my longer-lasting hobby-horses - I find the argument that we will eventually run out of steam on single processor architectures quite persuasive, and I would love to have a go at programming the 80-core teraflops research chip (is it as similar to the transputer in spirit as it appears to be?).

My hunch is that when and if explicitly parallel processing has taken off, the wave of change that this generates will open a window for optical computing, which has enormous potential for analogue and digital parallel processing.

In the mean time I'm learning Erlang as a background recreation - it's always good to give the grey-cells a work-out.

Republican virtues

I may not believe in God, but I can understand and respect the urge, in those who do, to seek his forgiveness for a serious sin. A touch of humility from those in power is always refreshing to the rest of us.

But passing on the news that you have in fact received not only your wife's but also God's forgiveness seems to me to reflect a slightly different virtue.

A stopped clock is right twice a day

I know a stopped clock is be right twice a day, and even my clothes may start looking fashionable about once a decade, but I've pretty well given up hope on my economic forecasting being proved right.

But if I'm going to get it wrong, I might as well get it wrong on the record and go down with all flags flying.

Evan Davis is worried about first quarter figures for UK real household incomes and savings.

And the boys have told us that they are planning to go back to Poland (once they've finished painting our new place, we trust) because Poland has is co-hosting the Euro 2012 football championship and no longer has enough workers to build the stadiums.

I think the property boom will be seriously over within six months. I've thought this for at least three years, and the market has made a liar of me for at least two and a half years, but let's make a prediction and see.

Waiting for the PRT wave, part II

An interesting Wired article on future engines - it seems that a surprising amount is happening here in the UK.

I've written before about my hunch that Personal Rapid Transport is a technology that may yet transform our worlds - my interest in this article is that some of the future engine technologies mentioned, such as the PMLFlightlink Wheelmotors in Hampshire, would appear to be highly suitable for PRT components such as ATS Ltd's Pod.

I suppose we also have to consider the possibility that electronic cars may be so successful that they kill the demand for PRT, thus leaving us with a second-best solution. Actually I could live with that, if the roads really were cleaned up and quietened down. But I don't think I will have to. Big developments like town centres, out-of-town shopping malls, airports and campuses are built using scarce resources, for specific purposes. Wasting money and space on road surface and parking has only ever been the price paid for efficient and flexible access. If and when a better alternative can be demonstrated to exist, then I believe it will be adopted - and rapidly.

On Ian McEwan

The advantage of a sleepless toddler is perhaps the unexpected reading opportunity - so started and finished On Chesil Beach between 4-something and almost-7 this morning.

It's a short book (166 pages) and given the apparently small focus of the narrative - a young couple on their wedding night in 1962, both virgins, both nervous - it's surprisingly gripping. This is perhaps a measure (perhaps intended) of the author's accomplishment, as is a hinted-at matter in her background which he confidently leaves un-explicated.

I can't help wondering if the title is also intended to be a reminder of the poem that lies, un-named, like the subject of a riddle, at the heart of the both the plot and themes of his last work, Saturday.

Is this kind of business a compliment to the reader's intelligence, or just a smug re-working of Mornington Crescent? I don't know, but I can see how tempting it is.

Revenge of the Zimmers

A band of OAPs with a combined age of over 3,000 have recorded The Who's "My Generation" for BBC 2's Power to the People programme, which I look forward to watching tonight at 9 o'clock.

The video is amusing and moving, and has created a massive stir. And if you feel that a 90-year old singing "hope I die before I get old" is in dodgy taste, try and remember how you felt the first time you heard Bono's "tonight thank God it's them instead of you". There are more important things to feel uncomfortable about - that's the point of this exercise.

It makes me proud to be a BBC licence payer. If not so proud of being part of a society that regards our elderly as an embarrassing expense.

Silent protest

Robert Scoble, the blogger I've followed longest, is going silent for a week in protest at the attacks on Kathy Sierra.

What has our internet come to?

Don't imagine anyone will notice, but I'm following suit. It seems kind of pointless, but less pointless than anything else I can do.

Third time lucky

I took Johnny to the swimming pool at the Brixton Recreation Centre for one more try after two unsuccessful visits, where despite his love of bathwater he'd clearly found the whole swimming pool environment rather alarming.

Unlike our first visit the training pool was open this time, albeit after a ten minute wait for a lifeguard to appear. This is good - it's warm and has metre-wide, shallow steps going into it, perfect for aquatic toddlers to get used to the water. But Johnny wasn't impressed by any of this, and when I tried to lower his feet into the water he scrambled up my tum until he was clinging limpet-like to my shoulder.

I was almost ready to give up when I had the ridiculous idea that maybe I could get him used to the water without prising him off my shoulder, so I lowered myself onto my back with my head and left shoulder sufficiently raised to stop either of us from drowning, and waited for him to get bored. Jake's mum Melissa waded by and helpfully did a bit of splashing for Johnny, then he did some splashing with his hand, then he sat up on my chest and did some kick-splashing, and at last he slid off and waded around the knee-high top step.

With trumpets playing fanfares in my head, I lent him my hand to step out of the pool and back again, and then for stepping onto the waist-height second step and back a few times. Finally, when I was all ready to quit while we were ahead, he decided to step down to third step -up to his chest - and up again.

Two very satisfied individuals left that pool with smiles on their faces, one of them with his head full of notions about the importance of combining logic with spontaneity - until a post-pool Melissa punctured it all with her observation that we had made a fine sight, Johnny on me, me on my back, like the ship's cat on an upturned hull.

In praise of Babytype

My favourite new utility is Babytype, which makes your computer into a wonderful baby-proof activity centre - every key pressed pops up an image and makes an entertaining noise, rather than sending emails to employers and old flames or reformatting the hard disk.

The only flaw was that I kept having to dive across the sitting room to start Babytype whenever Johnny approached the keyboard, which he can now just reach. So I asked Raize software if it could be turned into a screensaver, and got the following helpful answer:

First, you need to go to the directory where you installed BabyType. The default location is "C:\Program Files\Raize\BabyType." In this directory, you will find several files. One of the files is named "BabyType.exe".

Select the BabyType.exe and then select the Edit|Copy menu item. The select the Edit|Paste menu item. This will create a copy of the file which will be named: "Copy of BabyType.exe".

Next, select the File|Rename menu item and change the name to: BabyType.scr

Then finally, select the File|Install menu item and Windows will install the program as a screen saver.

I would like to say that this works perfectly, that the sitting room PC is now goes into Babytype after 5 minutes without use, and that the reply was sent on Saturday night, which is pretty damn impressive for a product that currently costs a mere $19.

Great product, great attitude. Thanks!

Of Barbies and burqas

Interesting comment by Ophelia Benson on what religious fundamentalism and the commercial sexualisation of ever-younger girls have in common. Have I become a feminist without realising it?

Of course, the complexity always seems to re-emerge under a different bit of the carpet. Even at eighteen months we see our firstborn as "all boy". Naturally we both hope for him to grow into a happy and fulfilled man, so maybe we take even more pleasure in those sides of his character which we hope will help him become an alpha male (such as the fearlessness and joy with which he clambers up his cot and somersaults over the edge onto the sofa) than we would if he was a girl.

And marriage itself teaches you a lot (especially those innocents who've never lived with a partner before) about the reality of the differences of the sexes. But then it teaches you a whole lot about the realities of individual difference, and about adjusting to them.

As with religion, I think I respect sexual difference because it's an indivisible property of individuals - it's when you turn that around that things seem to start going wrong.

Adventures in Johnnycare

Eva's doing an online test for her OU course in accounting today, so I've taken the day off to look after Johnny. After a pizza at Franco's in the Brixton Arcade (officially called Eco nowadays, but us old-timers like the old name) it started raining, so I took him to Adventure World in the Brixton Rec.

Adventure World is great - a safely padded three-dimensional maze of slides and ball-pits, ramps and rope-bridges. So in we go, happily chasing each other round until we find ourselves going down a ramp. Johnny's technique is rudimentary - he basically goes spread-eagled and slides down until one foot hits a padded rung, at which point he starts spinning until he hits the next one. He stops half-way down, turns his face up, opens his mouth, and "Waaah!"

Well, he knows he's stuck but he isn't in full meltdown yet, so I lift him by both hands and let him slide until both feet are square on the next rung. Down goes his bottom, up go the feet and he slides to the next rung, and so on all the way down. Have I traumatised him? He immediately heads down the next ramp, this time just holding my wrist with one hand as he confidently bum-slides all the way down.

Ah, the magic and rewards of having a toddler - the growth in skills, the growth in confidence - and it's pretty cool seeing Johnny learn stuff too.

Culture wars - is there still a fence to sit on?

It seems to me that you can have respect for individuals or respect for cultures, but these will inevitably lead to contradictions at some point, and that if and when the contradictions become serious enough you have to start making choices.

This article and, of the debate that it kicked off, this supporting piece by Turkish German author Necla Kelek, persuades me of the case for valuing respect for the individual above respect for culture.

Thanks to ButterfliesAndWheels for the link

The semantic web - no longer a pipe-dream?

Let me be rash - I've just had my first look at Yahoo pipes and I think this will prove a major milestone in the evolution of the web. I believe that the semantic web is appearing under our noses, not as the result of the ontologies and predicate reasoning that I used to imagine would be involved, but through a rapid evolution of bottom-up folksonomies and strength-off-association relationships, which in fact are a better fit to the loose-fit metaphorical reasoning we actually use in practice.

I'm too tired and coffee-wired and busy right now to write my own pipe - but I'll be doing it as soon as work and domestic circumstances permit.

Sometimes progress is progress

I've been chatting with a fellow-commuter on the Hampton Wick train, Caroline from Stylish Resorts, for a few years now, and it's pretty obvious that she really cares about the service they give to their clients going out to the Seychelles (where she comes from), Mauritius and Dubai.

Old-fashioned, personal service, you might think - just the kind of thing that is being destroyed by impersonal modern technology?

Well, Web 2.0 just caught up with Caroline - one of her clients gave her a rave review on a tripadvisor.com forum, some of her other clients joined in the fan club, and now her phone is melting down faster than a cocktail ice cube on an Indian Ocean beach. She didn't know where the new callers were coming from at first, but soon discovered not only what tripadvisor.com is, but also that their forum readers were more likely to conclude a deal than the regular callers. She also discovered that the competition were reading there too - or at least the competitions' headhunters.

Speaking as a techno-optimist, it's nice to see the dream materialising for once, and so close to home. I just thought I'd share the good news.

Francis finds Flickr

Finally started posting some of my snaps - I'm particularly fond of this one of Johnny on a swing which is one of those lucky snaps which just works. And when I say luck, it really was more fluke than judgement - my little Dimage X60 has a lag of around a second, so to get him mid-swing I had to press the button when he was just approaching the highest point and then pan hopefully as he swung forward again!

An old-timer returns

Two weekends ago my friend and former neighbour Beatrice came from King's Lynn to visit us here in Brixton - she bought well-chosen presents for Johnny and we all went to Franco's (as we old-timers call Eco) for some serious pizza, followed by a trip to the British Museum for their Byzantine money exhibition and some Greek and Roman glass.

I'd just like to report that the nice yellow flowers Beatrice bought are, to my astonishment, still blooming in their bowl by the window.

Coping with the Web

Two excellent links which reduced the gloom of starting yet another Monday morning at my desk - first, an article on Forbes magazine (from an ad in gmail - shaming naivete or sohisticated support for the Web 2.0 business model of a valued service?) Beware of Infomania - the point is not so much the common-sense tips as a couple of brilliant quotes:

The Institute of Psychiatry at the University of London conducted clinical trials with volunteer office workers to measure how a constant flow of messages and information affects a person's ability to focus on problem-solving tasks.

Participants were asked first to work in a quiet environment, and then while being inundated with e-mail, instant messaging and phone calls. Although they were told not to respond to messages, researchers found their subjects' attention was significantly disturbed.

Instead of boosting productivity, the constant data stream seriously reduced the volunteers' ability to focus. The study reported that an average worker's functioning IQ falls 10 points when distracted by ringing telephones and incoming e-mails, more than twice the four-point drop seen following a 2002 Carleton University study on the impact of smoking marijuana.

and

Professor Hugh Heclo of George Mason University observes: "In the long run, excesses of technology means that the comparative advantage shifts from those with information glut to those with ordered knowledge, from those who can process vast amount of throughput to those who can explain what is worth knowing, and why."

which I think does rather illuminate the problem.

The second link, from the Juice Analytics blog, talks about the other side of the same coin - what to do with all this information, and they link to the amazing We Feel Fine project. All I can say is, load it and see for yourself.

Chinese activist "Beat himself up" - whatever next?

This could be farcical if Fu Xiancai hadn't been beaten up so badly - when returning home after being summoned by the police - that three vertebrae in his neck were broken, and he is unlikely ever to walk again.

His issue? He campaigned for people displaced by the Three Gorges dam. In effect he was hindering economic progress in the name of human rights - the property rights, presumably, of people to their homes and farms.

At the end of the 19th century The Economist famously forecast that the USA would overtake the UK as the world's leading economy in the next century. The equivalent forecast now is that China will overtake the USA in this century. It's hard to view this with quite the same degree of equanimity.

Whatever you might think of US conduct in Guantanomo (and I think it has undermined both the reputation of the US and respect for international law) and of the invasion of Iraq (and I went on two demonstrations to express my views on that) the fact is that having the USA as the world's greatest economy did, at least, show that being a society based on democracy, free speech and individual rights was compatible with economic growth and national success despite the temptation for incompetent and corrupt governments everywhere to argue otherwise.

Until or unless China is mature enough to have evolved a system of law which protects its citizens and their rights, I'm pinning my hopes that less-hyped dark horse in the economic growth stakes, India. What's more, I'll bet that if India does succeed in outgrowing China, it will be because of the greater social stability and freedom from expropriation provided by a free press and the rules of law, not despite it.

Poetry and science

Came across this quote from my favourite poet, Philip Larkin, in The Week (itself quoting The Independent)

I search myself for illusions like a monkey looking for fleas.

Two days later I found myself browsing Edward Tufte on the Columbia disaster, where he quotes Richard Feynman's famous (and, it apears, sadly ignored) conclusion to his appendix to the Challenger commission report

For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled.

Just one of those pleasing coincidences.

This morning

I checked that Johnny was still cuddled up to Mr Monkey in his cot in the sitting room, and had a bath. Pulled on some clothes and went back in to the sitting room, have a look into the cot. Johnny's now wide awake, giving me his usual big smile from the bottom of the cot, both arms stretched out. As soon as his shoulders are off the sheet he straightens his back and legs to get on to his feet as soon as possible - this is new in the last couple of days, he's so keen on being vertical that he'll pretty well refuse to sit down or lie down. He sits in my left arm as I pull back the curtains. It's a London kind of day, nothing special, a bit grey, but as usual we inspect the world quietly for a bit, cheek by cheek. I like the way that someone normally so full of beans can appreciate the quiet moments too. Then it's time to switch on the radio (without letting Johnny grab the remote control), change a well-filled nappy, feed him, chuck him in bed with his sleepy mother, and head off to Brixton tube station.

Why am I writing this here? In case I should ever forget.

and now for something completely different

Not sure this should be on the blog, but here goes...



Family life, raw and unedited. Enjoy.

Fire in the Embers

Went with friends to see Embers on Tuesday, to celebrate Eva's birthday. I was a little worried - the early reviews were mixed, emphasising the near-monologue second half as a challenge that Jeremy Irons either surmounted or failed, depending on the reviewer.

The other challenge of the play to an early 21st century English-speaking audience is that it Sandor Marai's story is, well, so un-English. It takes friendship, love and the betrayal of both seriously. Irony is used to intensify, rather than to diminish, involvement. And back we come to the fact that the second half is pretty well a monologue. Where the play succeeds so well is that it convinces us entirely that this intensity is not ridiculous but real, so much so in fact that someone behind me called on her creator at least a couple of times as the story unfolded.

Are we right to accept such high-flown drama? Isn't this the the slippery slope to melodrama and Victorian hypocracy? Not, I think, in case of Sandor Marai. Take a look at his US journal. I laughed at how the first line of the programme's entry on him started with the date he shot himself, and joked that was how all good Hungarian biographies started, but just read the journal. The intensity is all there - it is natural, it is moving and it is entirely real. I am not at all embarrassed to be moved by the play or the journal.

Calling out around the world

A nice surprise to be mentioned by Gail Ilagan in the Phillipines last week - especially from someone who not only has such sound views on Eowyn and Aragorn, but uses passion and reason to write truthfully and movingly.

I was gently lobbying her to get a blog so it would be easier for lazy folk like me to keep up with her pieces - like this, which as a new father, I especially responded to.

Her response - in effect, that the further into the rootless internet she moves from her on-line regional newspaper column readers, the more communication with readers tends to be polluted by ignorance, misconception or prejudice - is hard to argue with.

But I like to think that anyone (anyone - is there anybody out there?) reading my blog would probably be an exception to that rule. So I hope she'll forgive me tugging her into the blogosphere with this entry - after all, she proves what we all hope, that personal reflection can be of universal interest.

On the psychology of group incompetence

We watched Real Story: The Ripper Hoaxer last night. I hadn't expected it to be so moving - Beryl Leach in particular, describing the loss of her only daughter, gave back the human reality behind the "Ripper" headlines.

I also hadn't expected it to be a story about a massive police hunt being led astray by group-think. The police team were so convinced that the hoaxer was in fact the murderer that they had a policy of ignoring suspects (including Peter Sutcliffe, the real murdere, on nine occasions) who didn't have a Geordie accent or matching hand-writing. This despite there being little convincing evidence for the hoaxer's veracity, despite one of the ripper's survivors - who'd talked to him for half an hour - stating firmly that he had a Yorkshire accent, and despite two of the voice experts putting their reservations in writing - the reaction to this last was to lean on them to shut up.

Anyone who has read Norman Dixon's excellent On The Psychology of Military Incompetence will recognise patterns here. Everything he descrives in the context of military history is applicable to non-military organisations too, and seems to have happened in spades in this case. And anyone who's read Tom DeMarco and Timothy Lister's Waltzing with Bears will be asking themselves why the police didn't do a simple check to see if the hoaxer's supposedly unpublicised information (a reference to another murder as a potential ripper victim) had been - as it was in fact - published in the papers. Given the risks of over-committing to the hoaxer being real, a certain tolerance of skeptical thinking and a small investment in research would have been a reasonable insurance cost which might well have saved lives.

Time to start Getting Things Done

I keep an eye on Scott Hanselman's blog and a post yesterday finally got me off my backside and down to the local bookshop for a copy of David Allen's "Getting Things Done".

I've got an IT job in a small company, my own software and study projects, and Eva and little Johnny at home. I simply can't afford to keep spending time being disorganised.

So far the book makes a lot of sense. Right now my energy and confidence levels are rising, and I'm getting more done. I hope that this isn't just some kind of intellectual sugar buzz - I'm going to finish the book and try to adopt the habits, and I'm hoping for the best.