Geoff Coupe's Blog

Reflections on life at “De Witte Wand”…

Year: 2008

  • Whew!

    I was working on my photos today, refining some metadata. I use IDimager to do this. It has a nifty feature to search for photos where metadata in the image files themselves is not synchronised with IDimager’s internal catalogue. On using this feaure, I was surprised to find that 435 photos were flagged as being out of sync. Further examination showed that IDimager was also flagging them as being offline – in other words, no longer on the computer.
    Odd, thought I, they should be in the folders where I keep my photos… That was when I discovered that all the folders holding photos taken in February 2007 had been deleted. I have no one to blame but myself, and I don’t know when this happened, but somewhere along the line I must have accidentally deleted the folder for February 2007, which contained the daily folders holding the photos themselves.
    Luckily, I have had a Windows Home Server system running on the network since November. I opened up the backup taken in mid-November, and there were the folders. A quick copy and paste, and all the missing photos were restored back to their rightful place. Whew!
    (Note: IDimager is no longer available. Its successor is Photo Supreme, which I am now using)

  • The Lone Server

    A video that is a humorous look at the march of computer progress as seen by Windows Server 2003. Raised a smile with me, anyway.

  • How To Ruin a Good Idea

    BBC Four is currently running a series of programmes on Pop music. There are some gems in there, but also some real clunkers. An example of a gem was Paul Morley’s examination of his obsession with Pop music in his excellent programme: Pop! What Is It Good For? In many ways, it was a TV reworking of his book Words and Music, which I think is the best book ever written on Pop music. Both the programme and the book used Kylie Minogue’s song Can’t Get You Out Of My Head as the starting point for a meaty discourse on the genre.
     
    And an example of a clunker? Well, that would have to be last night’s How Pop Songs Work. The basic idea was good: what are the elements that go to make up a memorable pop song. And the central idea was to have Charles Hazlewood, a conductor, examine the music of pop songs. He’s done this before – I remember seeing a TV programme where he dissected the skills of Lennon and McCartney and successfully demonstrated their genius at its best. There, it was just Hazlewood and a piano, and it was shot without fuss, to let the ideas come through.
     
    Last night’s programme, though, was completely ruined for me by the director’s insistence of filming Hazlewood at the piano with multiple cameras – all but one at very odd angles and viewpoints – and then constantly cycling between them. The nadir was one camera lurking behind piles of CDs and spying on Hazlewood. It was at that point that I very nearly threw something through the TV screen. This was gratuitous tricksy TV, which completely undercut any argument that Hazlewood was making as far as I am concerned. Awful, awful crap. 

  • Hacking DNA

    We talk quite blithely about computer viruses and hackers. Here’s an absolutely fascinating presentation given by a biologist (Drew Endy) at the recent Chaos Communication Congress in Berlin. Here’s a biologist talking to an audience of computer folks (geeks, scientists and hackers) about hacking DNA. The analogy of moving from machine code to higher level abstractions such as programming languages, parts and devices is mind-blowing. It’s also quite scary. As one of the comments says, the idea of script kiddies being able to construct their own ebola virus may not be so very far away…

  • The Sixth Sense Candidate

    It wouldn’t surprise me if this turns out to be prescient.
     
    Update: Back from the grave. Excellent. It’s clearly not over until the fat lady sings.

  • The Truth Refreshes

    Over at The Quackometer, a new homeopathy site is reviewed: FairDeal Homeopathy. Clearly a refreshing change from the usual claims made by homeopaths. However, something tells me that this is probably a spoof. Genuine homeopaths wouldn’t be so genuine, surely?
     
    Oh, and while you’re over at the Quackometer’s review, don’t forget to check out Bovine Descenders. Obviously a service that I need to be aware of around here.  

  • Hook, Line and Rapture

    The ever-dependable Pat Condell aiming some barbs at a well-deserved target.
    Update: August 2013. I’ve long stopped watching Condell’s videos. It seems to me he has crossed the line into prejudiced argument. Avicenna puts his finger on it.

  • Careful With That Axe, Eugene

    I was watching Bill Moyer’s interview with Joseph Campbell in the first part of The Power of Myth yesterday. Campbell was expounding on his "Hero With a Thousand Faces" theory – the fact that many of the motifs in mythology are recurrent, and may have had a common source. Good stuff.
     
    At one point he was describing the motion of a flowering vine as it wound up his porch in Hawaii. And then he said something that made me sit up bolt upright:
    "Now you can’t tell me that that leaf doesn’t know where the sun is going to be. … That’s a form of consciousness." 
    Erm, well I think it’s heliotropism, Professor Campbell. And if we’re going to redefine that as consciousness, then I reckon I’m going to have to call the thermostat on my central heating system conscious as well. Sometimes, you can have such an open mind that your brain falls out…

  • There Will Be Blood

    Heavens, it is already scoring 9/10 on the IMDb web site. Since I adored Magnolia, this definitely looks like one to see.

  • Send In The Apostrophe Squad

    In the ultimate scale of things, a missing apostrophe is not really important, but whenever I see bad grammar, I mentally want to rip the intestines out of its still-living perpetrator. Overreaction? Yes, I know, but I just can’t help it.
     
    …And having access to them whenever you need a home, or over the Internet when youre out of the house.
     
    …Even when youre away from home…
    Aarggh! And what’s with the American accent for a product that is being released in the European market? Death to the Fujitsu-Siemens Marketing Department, say I!

  • A Plea For Violence

    When I read things like this, I realise that some people’s thinking is completely alien to me, and that I am not a cultural relativist.

  • Mavis on the Web

    I have never learned to touch type. My style is not quite hunt and peck, but I do need to look at the keyboard almost continuously. I was always very jealous of a colleague (hi, Harvey!) who was an excellent touch-typist. Over the years I’ve tried to improve. I’ve bought various incarnations of Mavis Beacon, all with little result. Now there’s a web-based training programme. Perhaps I should give this a whirl, but I fear it is a tale of old dogs, new tricks yet again.

  • Duelity

    A wry take on the duel between science and religion. For best results, go to the Duelity web site, choose Watch, and then Duelity to see the two views unfold in parallel…
     
    (hat tip to Dangerous Intersection for the link)

  • The Edge Question for 2008

    After you’ve read the Richard Dawkins essay that I referred to a couple of days ago, I hope that you will go to the Edge to read the answers from the rest of the 163 contributors to this year’s question: What have you changed your mind about? Why?

  • The Banality of Evil?

    It’s become almost a mantra these days to believe that anyone, given the right circumstances, is capable of committing evil acts. After all, look at the experiments of Milgram and Zimbardo. In the light of this, it’s interesting to come across this article in The Psychologist that questions that view of "the banality of evil". The traditional view is that:
    …psychologists and historians have agreed that ordinary people commit evil when, under the influence of leaders and groups, they become blind to the consequences of their actions. This consensus has become so strong that it is repeated, almost as a mantra, in psychology textbooks and in society at large. 
    But the alternative view might be:
    People do great wrong, not because they are unaware of what they are doing but because they consider it to be right. This is possible because they actively identify with groups whose ideology justifies and condones the oppression and destruction of others. 
    As the authors say, this raises a whole set of new questions that perhaps should be pursued.

  • Changing One’s Mind

    Richard Dawkins has a terrific essay on why good scientists will change their minds if the evidence is strong enough to persuade them. Worth reading.

  • Lord of Light

    I’ve just finished re-reading Roger Zelazny’s Lord of Light. This is a very fine SF novel, which won the 1968 Hugo Award for best novel. It is effectively based on Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. The "magic" in this case being elements and characters based on Hinduism and its pantheon of gods. More background and a plot synopsis can be found on the page in Wikipedia devoted to the book. Definitely worth (re)reading.
     
    The book begins (after a couple of quotes from religious texts, one real and one imagined) with a paragraph that, the first time I read it, guaranteed that I would settle down and immerse myself totally in Zelazny’s masterwork:
    "His followers called him Mahasamatman and said he was a god. He preferred to drop the Maha- and the -atman, however, and called himself Sam. He never claimed to be a god, but then he never claimed not to be a god. Circumstances being what they were, neither admission could be of any benefit. Silence, though, could."