Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2008

  • Cod Science

    It amazes me that tosh such as Brain Gym is apparently taught in schools. Clearly aimed at raising a gullible generation of Woo-fodder, then. I’m very thankful that I got through the school system before this rubbish was around. We got taught critical thinking instead.
     
    Update: I see that Brain Gym has also enraged Charlie Brooker. He does rants so much better than I. Go and read it.

  • The Problem With XML

    Cliff Longman, of Kalido, has a very good explanation of why XML should not be regarded as the universal panacea for data integration. He also talks about the genesis of Kalido. It was a tool developed to tackle the horrendous problems of data integration within the oil products businesses of Shell. As Cliff says, at the time, there were a hundred different operating companies, none of which agreed on the same way of defining their data. Trying to discover how much oil had been sold worldwide, and to whom, was a complete nightmare.
     
    (hat tip to Andy for the link)

  • Chimeras or Porkies?

    After his scaremongering over stem cell research a couple of weeks ago, I see that Cardinal Keith O’Brien has not learnt wisdom. His latest comments continue his farrago of misinterpretation and downright fraudulence. What a piece of work he is. It is of course perfectly possible for a representative of the Church to talk sense on this subject – here’s the Rev Dr Alan Billings doing just that – but sense is something that the Cardinal appears to have little of. Plenty of knee-jerk ignorance and duplicity, though.

  • Letting Them Down Gently

    While I manage to spot obvious scams fairly easily, I think it’s only fair to recognise that not everyone does. And if I come across some poor fish on the end of a scammer’s line, then I hope that I will have the sense and grace to deal with the situation just as this librarian did.

  • Another British Triumph…

    … in the long tradition of cock-ups. Heathrow’s Terminal 5. I confess to stirrings of schadenfreude over this:
     
       
     
    I do feel for the poor guy (one Ian Bailey). His faith in computer technology is touching. The scenes of baggage being stowed by automated stacker cranes brings back terrifying memories of the time I spent writing (and debugging) the software for the automated conveyor system that handled pallets of Austin Mini parts in the British Leyland factory in Birmingham in the late 1970s. Shudder.

  • Wave Goodbye…

    … to Human Rights. The UN has just signed the death warrant. Depressing.

  • The Wonders of Science

    I’m grateful to Twisty Faster for the link to this breakthrough in German medical science. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. When I read it I hear the voice of John Cleese speaking German, which I know that he can do after a visit to Movie Park in Germany, and experiencing Time Riders…

  • The Dawkins Rap

    Fucking brilliant – nothing else comes close.
     
         
     
    Oh, and there’s a high resolution version available via BitTorrent. The video has sparked off enormous discussion on both Pharyngula and Richard Dawkins Net over whether this is pro science or not. Frankly, I don’t care if it was produced by a bunch of creationists – it’s very funny, and if we can’t laugh at ourselves, then we’re all doomed.
     
    Update: Apparently, the video was made by Michael Edmondson at the behest of the Expelled producers (aka as a bunch of creationists). Well, they may be a bunch of wankers, but Michael made a piece of art. Kudos to him, it’s still brilliant.
     
       
     
    Update 2: and here’s more of the story behind the making of the video.

  • Weeding Those Links

    A garden benefits from regular weeding. So does my list of links to web sites stored in the "Favourites" of my web browser. Up until now, I’ve done it manually, but with currently over 1,200 links in the list – it’s a real chore to check for dead links. Thanks to a tip I found on Watching The Net, I’ve discovered AM-Deadlink, a utility that will weed out all those dead links for me automatically. A terrific little tool that does its job very well indeed.

  • Fun With Vista

    While Microsoft Vista has been getting some bad press, on the whole, I’ve been pretty satisfied with it, and would not want to return to Windows XP. True, in the early days, the shortage of proper Vista software drivers from third party hardware manufacturers was a real issue, and I suffered from that as well. But now, those problems are mostly behind me(*), and my Vista systems have been humming along nicely. Until, that is, a couple of weeks ago.
     
    I began to notice that free disc space on the main drive on one of the systems was vanishing at an alarming rate, and I could see no reason for it. Gigabytes were disappearing daily. I ran the Disk Cleanup utility, but, as expected, that reported it could only recover a couple of gigabytes from the disc space allocated to my files. I began to wonder if the disc was beginning to fail, so I ran the low-level error check on the disc. This also revealed nothing untoward. Meanwhile, the relentless tumble in the amount of free space continued.
     
    Finally, I stumbled across the additional option in Disk Cleanup to delete Shadow Copies and Restore Points. Now, my versions of Vista (Home Premium) do not have the Shadow Copy feature, but they do use Restore Points. Well, nothing ventured, nothing gained, thought I and selected the additional option as I tried the Disk Cleanup utility again. This time, I got over 100 Gigabytes of free disc space back… 
     
    So, that was the cure, but what was the disease? Why would Vista’s Restore Points be taking up so much space? After further googling, I came across this excellent article: How To Reduce Disk Space Used By Windows Vista System Restore. It turns out that, by default, Vista should be set to use up to 15% of a drive to store Restore Points, but on my system, it was set to "Unbounded" – in other words, Vista was free to keep on grabbing disc space for Restore Points. I used the vssadmin command as described in the article to change from no limit to a reasonable 30GB (on a 400 GB drive). Something had occurred in the past few weeks to set that parameter on the Shadow Copy Service of Vista to "Unbounded" – I still don’t know what it was, but at least I have got it back on track.
     
    Aren’t computers fun?
     
    * It took over a year for Creative Technology to release proper Vista drivers for my EMU 1820m audio hardware. And I gave up waiting for Creative Technology to sort out the problems with the Vista drivers for the Audigy range of soundcards. I finally ripped the Audigy card out of my PC in disgust and replaced it with a soundcard from Terratec, which came with working Vista drivers. I’m still not completely out of the woods though. Steinberg, the company that many musicians love to hate, announced, to an angry chorus of frustrated users, that it would not be releasing 64 bit Vista/XP drivers for its Midex 8 interface. So that means I have to stick with the 32 bit version of Vista, where I can use the old XP driver for the Midex 8.

  • Time To Die

    Mark Crislip has a thought-provoking post over at Science Based Medicine on whether people can die simply by willing it. He points out that while he has anecdotal evidence of the phenomenon (he’s apparently a doctor working in an acute care hospital), the study data is much less clear-cut.
     
    It also, as he points out, shows up a contradiction of two views. One is that the mind is simply the result of the workings of the brain. He and I both share that view. But, on the other hand, if there is evidence of people who die simply because they will it, then does that not point to the "mind over matter" possibility? He’s not convinced that it does, but he remains intrigued (as do I) by that little niggle of doubt.
     
    Oh, and this article has a bearing on the topic, but I’m not convinced that the evidence that the physical changes in the brain that can be brought about by training (The Knowledge is another example of this) can be said to be the same as willing oneself to die.

  • It’s Baaack!

    …that’s the BBC’s Apprentice. Yet another series that starts with 16 hopefuls demonstrating all that is worst in human nature. Is it just me, or are these 16 even more frightful caricatures of human beings than ever before? The first casualty, Nicholas de Lacy-Brown, was so over the top as an upper class fop who apparently knows nothing of how ordinary folks live that I wondered what century we are living in. It’s getting to the stage when I am finding it difficult to watch this programme without screaming continuously. I do, however, look forward to the pompous Raef Bjayou getting his richly deserved come-uppance.
     
    Update: Anna Pickard has a screamingly funny stream-of-consciousness blog on this episode here. Well worth reading.

  • Coincidence

    While it’s rather a nice coincidence, it remains just that – a coincidence. Nice one, though.

  • I Don’t Know What I’m Talking About

    Well, unlike Norm, I really can’t get worked up about sport. Never did, never will. Bread and circuses, anyone?

  • Snow Mo

  • We Are Made For More

    It’s strange. This article misses the point on so many levels that it’s more than simply sad, it’s verging on a sin. As one of the commenters notes, it is a "breathtaking exercise in hypocrisy, cant and mendacity."
     
    Update: Justin says it far better than I could.

  • Unscientific Scorn

    I see our Maddy Of The Sorrows is back again with yet another ill-thought out article. This time she is worried about the amount of scorn that is being poured upon complementary medicine. Well, just two short comments, Madeline.
     
    First, no-one is saying that the placebo effect does not exist. It’s just that when homeopathists claim that their treatments are valid against diseases such as AIDS, cancer and malaria, then I think a border has been crossed. Medicine is not "complementary", it either works or it doesn’t.
     
    Second, with homeopaths such as Dr. Charlene Werner at large in the populace, I really do fear for society’s health.
     
     
     
    (hat tip to Ben for the terrifying clip of Dr. Werner. Thankfully, he does also provide a clip of Richard Feynman to soothe the pain)

  • Prosopagnosia

    If you suffer from prosopagnosia, then you are unable to recognise faces.  It turns out that there’s a specific part of the human brain that has evolved to do nothing else other than to recognise faces. Here’s an interesting web page that uses the analogy of recognising stones to point out some of the tricks that people with prosopagnosia have to use to compensate for their face-blindness. 
     
    (hat tip to Rachel for the link)

  • Scaremongering Sermons

    I do get very fed-up of prelates who wilfully, it seems to me, scaremonger and tell untruths. There appears to be a concentration of such people in Scotland at the moment. First we had the Bishop of Motherwell, Joseph Devine, with his charges of a "gay conspiracy" out to conspire against Christian traditions, and now we have Cardinal Keith O’Brien with his attack on the UK Government’s Human Fertilisation and Embryology bill. As Ophelia and Joe point out here and here, the Archbishop is being very economical with the truth and simply scaremongering.
     
    Update: Justin is also scratching his head in an attempt to find reason and morality in the pronouncements of those challenged by thought.

  • Torchwood…

    … continues to disappoint. I’m sorry, but tonight’s "Out of the Rain" episode was not a patch on "Something Wicked This Way Comes", from which it all too obviously seemed to be derived…