Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, and “That” Radio Show

 General, Media  No Responses »
Oct 292008
 

Over the last week or so, the news has been swamped with details of a certain radio show that involved Russell Brand (the host), and Jonathan Ross (the guest) phoning up Andrew Sachs and leaving “abusive” messages on his answerphone. I have not heard the show myself, but from the descriptions it goes well beyond what should be acceptable. But the right word is “silly” and not “malicious”.

But does it really deserve all this attention ? From what I can tell, there are plenty of other more serious problems that could be reported in the news. This is after all really just a couple of idiots on one radio show insulting another “showbiz” personality.

Russell has resigned, and the BBC has suspended Jonathan pending the outcome of an enquiry. There are some grounds for complaining about the BBC’s tardiness in dealing with this. Although this feels like a typical corporate tendency to keep quiet until everyone has huddled around and come up with an answer rather than responding immediately with “we’re investigating”.

Some of the criticisms around focus on the fact that the BBC is not a commercial organisation and there are claims that this sort of thing would not happen in a more commercial organisation. This is just classic anti-Beeb propoganda by those who believe that all broadcasters should be commercial. There are those who believe that free-market forces would ensure that such things never happened. I have no belief that the commercial sector is any better at dealing with such incidents, and those same free-market forces will ensure that broadcasters would be much less inclined to take risks.

There also seems to be some jealousy around the level of pay that these two celebreties get. I am not entirely sure why they are worth the amount of money they get, but criticisms of their pay should not be a consideration during this incident.

No Flash?

 Computing, General  No Responses »
Oct 212008
 

So I was trawling the web looking at chairs (one manufacturer in particular – it doesn’t matter who) available at various stockists, when I was suddenly brought up short by a little error message “Your browser does not support Flash files”.

Strangely enough the site I had just visited itself had an annoying Flash-based website … all presentation in full-screen window with non-standard navigation controls. So what was the error about ?

Well obviously my browser does support Flash, but the chances are the developers were checking for a particular version of Flash that does not exist for the operating system I use as yet. So “does not support Flash files”  is not quite appropriate, something more like “Nah! Nah! You aren’t as up to date as we are” would be more accutate.

Not really sensible however as I could have been looking to drop something like £1,000 on a chair (yes they really do cost in that region, and yes they probably are that good). Especially as the Flash site in question probably does not absolutely require all of the features of the latest version.

Ah well, I guess I won’t be buying a chair from that place then.

Street Furniture

 General, Politics  No Responses »
Oct 152008
 

We all know that street furniture that clutters our streets … signposts, street lights, traffic lights, etc. The majority of this furniture is for providing information to motorists. So why is it all planted in the pavements where it gets in the way of pedestrians?

The obvious answer is that one or two signposts do not matter that much and avoiding the street reduces the risk of accidents. Well maybe that was true when it was just a few signposts, and on quiet pavements without much foot traffic.

But all too frequently that is not the case. Rather than plonk down the poles for that street furniture right in the middle of the pavement, why not put them right on the edge of the road ? Or perhaps reduce the amount of signage where it isn’t necessary.

What Is A Zonky?

 General  No Responses »
Sep 202008
 

Apparently one of the most popular search terms hitting my Blog is “what is a zonky”. I don’t think I actually say anywhere, so as a service to those who accidentally end up here looking for information on what one is, here is the explanation …

A zonkey is a cross between a zebra and a donkey. More information on that can be found on the wonderful Wikipedia. Those who are looking closely will notice I haven’t answered the question properly. Given the syntax of the search, I think I’m seeing people who mistakenly think that “zonkey” is the same as “zonky”.

Just for completeness, “zonky” itself means odd or weird, or a person in a “zonked” (high on drugs or exhausted) state.

Mathematics, Physics, and Computer Science

 General  No Responses »
Feb 282008
 

First of all, a little apology … I’m no expert Mathematician, was pretty dire at Physics, and I’m no great name in Computer Science. In fact the “physics” here could be any science that makes use of mathematics as a tool. Now for the really scary part … I’m going to be talking about equations.

At least some of the unpopularity of Physics has something to do with the equations that can be found in it. There is no getting around it, Physics and other sciences cannot be really called “science” without equations. But I do believe that physicists do make their equations a little too mysterious :-

e = m c ^ 2

(apologies for not using real symbols there)

Now that is one of the better known equations from physics, but were it one that was less well-known the general reaction would be “eh?”. Does the obscurity of the variables here help ?

When I was learning to write programs, I quickly came to the realisation that using descriptive variables was the start of writing understandable code and went some way to documenting what was going on. It is all very well writing a piece of code with less expressive variables but it makes understanding what you wrote some weeks (or months) ago much harder.

The use of obscure variables come from Maths where you start with equations like :-

x ^ 2 = 9

Now Maths (as I understand it) is basically a set of puzzles that have to be solved using the techniques of Maths; those techniques and the puzzles are divorced from any real problems. The use of deliberately inscrutable variables is by design.

Which way should sciences that use equations go ? The way that Maths goes with inscrutable variable names, or the way of software engineering with descriptive variables ? Historically sciences have gone down the route in common with Maths; understandably enough, but why not try descriptive names. Isn’t an equation like :-

Energy = Mass * Speed of Light ^ 2

… far more understandable, and possibly just a little bit less scary to those put off by equations ? If changing to descriptive variables brings a few more young people into the study of science, is that a good reason for using them. I think so.

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