Nuts to Dough

Just thought I should mention, en passant, that when I referred to misspelled donuts the other day, I was talking about the ones that can’t spell “crispy” or “cream”,1 not the spelling of “donut” itself. I was brought up with it as “doughnut,” but I guess I’ve come round to the other, presumably American, spelling.

  1. And that don’t taste at all like proper do[ugh]nuts. ↩︎

New Job

As you may know, I’ve been between contracts lately. Had quite a lot of interest from my CV, but not been so lucky with the tests and interviews.

Yesterday at about 10am a recruiter called me. Today at just after 5pm I was offered the job. A new contract, six months initially, with the likelihood of extending. Sometimes things go fast.

Some Open-Source Software for Your Delectation

I have made a thing, and pushed it out into the world. Well, really, this is me pushing it out into the world, because nobody will have noticed it before now, and with this, there’s a chance they might.

A couple of months ago Manton Reece and Brent Simmons announced the existence of JSON Feed, a new syndication format to sit alongside RSS and Atom; but using JavaScript Object Notation or JSON, instead of XML.

They invited people to write parsers and formatters and so on for it, and I quickly realised that no-one had yet written one in Java. As far as I can tell that is still the case. Or at least, if they have, they haven’t made it public yet.

No-one, that is, but me, as I have written just such a thing: a JSON Feed parsing library, written in Java. I’m calling it Pertwee. That’s the product page at my company site (more on which later). It’s open-source, and can be found at Github

As software projects go, it’s not that exciting. But it is the first open-source project that I’ve released. I hope someone might find some use for it.

Not the Nails I'm Looking For

I got an email from Songkick about a forthcoming gig in Camden by Nails.

You’ll recall, being the avid reader of this blog that you are, that a while ago — OK, six years ago — I wrote about a great song called ’88 Lines About 44 Women’ by a band called The Nails. I know nothing else by them, but the idea of seeing that song live in a tiny basement club is pretty cool.

But I had my suspicions. Especially when the first comment on the Songkick page was all about how it was the loudest gig they’d ever been at. Clicked through to the band’s page, played the video there, and it was immediately obvious that the hardcore band Nails are not indie/new wave/whatever band The Nails.

Just goes to show the difference a definite article can make. Nails sound pretty good, but I don’t think I’ll be going.

Site Moved

This site is now running on a Linux virtual private server (VPS) at Linode. There may be some teething problems from the move, so please let me know if you see anything strange.

Mayday for Human Rights

More evidence, as if it were needed, that this government is not just incompetent, but actively malevolent:

The EU (withdrawal) bill, published on Thursday – known as the “great repeal bill”– which will formally enact Brexit, includes a clause which says: “The charter of fundamental rights is not part of domestic law on or after exit day.”

Yes, Theresa May and her cabal of crazies do not believe that British citizens should have the same fundamental rights guaranteed to them as citizens of the rest of the EU.

Mayhemic Mistake of Two-Year Parliament

This is amusing. Turns out that May has shot herself in the foot:

May has blundered with the threat to use the Parliament Act to force the Lords to pass Brexit bills: a bill must be rejected by the Lords in two successive sessions before the act can be invoked, but that’s been nullified by May’s creation of a two-year session.

Great New Phone; All the Wrong Reasons

My iPhone 6 was getting slow, and its battery was poor. I have been thinking of replacing it. But September is approaching, and Apple will announcing new iPhones (three new ones, according to rumours). So I had more or less set my mind on waiting till then.

That would also be consistent with my iPhone buying history: 3G, 4S, 6… the next in the sequence is 7S.

Friday changed my plans. I was standing at a bus stop on Old Street, just replying to a WhatsApp message. Something touched my hand, and for half a second I thought someone was bumping into me. Then there was a firm grip on my phone and it was gone. Pulled right out of my hand and off down the road on a moped — which must have come across the pavement from behind me.

I should have been more aware. I knew this kind of theft was a thing. We’ve been hearing about them for a few months. But you don’t always think about it, and you never think it’s going to happen to you. And, yes, OK, drink had been taken. But not that much.

The bus arrived a few seconds later, so there was nothing I could do but get on and head home. There was another guy at the stop who witnessed it, and he very kindly set up a hotspot on his phone and let me use it from my iPad. The Find My iPhone app didn’t find it, so the thief had probably turned it off right away. But I was able to request a remote wipe in case it’s ever turned back on, and I got an email from Apple saying all the card details had been removed from Apple Pay.

All of which meant I had to make a trip to the Apple Store on Saturday. And to the Three store, where it was alarmingly easy to get a replacement SIM. I just had to tell them my phone number and give them a payment card. No questions asked. Not even my name and address.

So I now have jet black 256 GB iPhone 7. Which is lovely. I’m late to all the new features, obviously, but here’s a quick rundown:

  • TouchID: it’s now insanely fast to unlock my phone. Seems like it’s almost before I touch the home button sometimes.
  • 3D Touch: people on podcasts seem to be saying they’ve stopped using this, but I’m loving it. Especially the edge-press for activating the app switcher (a feature which seems to be going away in iOS 11, I hear, so I probably shouldn’t get too used to it).
  • The haptic feedback generally. Little clicks that tell you when you’ve activated something. Just makes the whole experience much nicer.
  • The “taptic” home button. When I’ve tried this in the shop before now I wasn’t too sure about it. But a couple of days using it for real and I think maybe I prefer it to the feel of the old real button.

Plus, it’s black. Really, really black.

Even the box was black.

The cables are still white, of course. Which reminds me, I’ve always disliked Apple’s ear buds, and passed all my past ones on to my kids. But I thought I’d give these a try, not least because I wouldn’t mind trying the AirPods if they’re ever in stock anywhere,1 and they have the same form factor.

And I don’t hate them. I thought I always had trouble getting them to stay in, but that doesn’t seem to be the case now. The main problem is they don’t give enough sound isolation, so you can hear the traffic and people talking even with music or a podcast playing. I’ve always preferred the kind with rubbery tips, which form a seal. But aside from that, these are better than I expected. Which bodes well for AirPods.

Downside: the battery life doesn’t seem dramatically better than my old one, weirdly. For the first couple of days it was busy downloading updates and restoring things (and getting hot), but that should be over now. I’m assuming that I just have to give it a few full cycles till it beds in and the measurement gets more accurate.

And all the things you have to set up again. That’s not the fault of the phone, though, so much as the way it came to me. If had planned this I would have done an encrypted iTunes backup, which would have meant more things were restored to the new phone.

Anyway, that was a lot of words and no links about not very much.

  1. I asked in the shop if they had them in, and of course they didn’t. ↩︎

Micro.blog iOS Going Universal | Manton Reece

I’d like to be able to use Micro.blog from the iPad — well, I can, but it’s iPhone sized scaled up (or tiny in the middle of the screen) and doesn’t rotate to landscape, so I can’t use it with the keyboard. Manton tells us he’s going to fix all that, which will be great.

A Firefighter's Words On Grenfell Tower

This can’t be spread widely enough: the words of a firefighter who attended the Grenfell Tower fire.

General Election: Vote!

TL; DR: Vote Against the Tories

This is long, and I’ll understand if you don’t want to read it. So, a summary.

The election should never have been called; Labour should have resisted it when it was. But now that it’s here we need to take advantage of it to protect the NHS. And maybe hold out some hope for stopping, or at least softening, Brexit. Because with the Tories we’ll only get a disastrously hard crash out.

Vote to stop the Tories and save the NHS.

Read More →

Right Wing Pirates to Plague the Med

This is a disgrace on humanity:

Far-right activists are planning a sea campaign this summer to disrupt vessels saving refugees in the Mediterranean, after successfully intercepting a rescue mission last month.

Members of the anti-Islam and anti-immigrant “Identitarian” movement – largely twentysomethings often described as Europe’s answer to the American alt-right – have raised £56,489 in less than three weeks to enable them to target boats run by aid charities helping to rescue refugees.

From The Guardian.

A right wing organisation that wants to stop aid agency boats that are trying to rescue refugees. I hope the coastguards of Italy and Greece shut them down hard.

Extreme Pyramid Scheme

I didn’t intend to discuss these two episodes of Doctor Who together, but watching the first was delayed because I was in Scotland when the first one was on. And I didn’t realise they were a two-parter.

Except (spoilers) — oh, they’re not. They’re the first two of an n-parter, where n equals… who knows? At least three, and I’m sort of guessing from the titles and directors that it might be four.

Anyway, in them we have one really good episode, one not so good.

Episode 6, “Extremis,” was really very good indeed. Right up there with the best of this series so far. And good to get the mystery of the vault revealed early on, rather than letting it drag on to the end of the season and be an anticlimax.

Episode 7, “The Pyramid at the End of the World,” despite the great title, was weaker, largely because of scientific irrationality and foolish plotting. To say nothing of incredibly lax biosecurity.

That said, I did enjoy it while watching it. It’s one of those ones where a little bit more care, a few easily-insertable words, and it would all have held together much better. The problem with bad science or plotting based on foolish mistakes is that they can dump you out of the story. Critical faculties should be engaged after you’ve watched a show, not unceremoniously force-invoked by something happening onscreen.

Never mind, though: the next one looks very interesting.

Losing the War on Terror

The front page of today’s Guardian has a picture of what it looks like when you let the terrorists win:

96237412 27may1national01 1

Armed police used to be almost unknown on British streets. Now they’re becoming alarmingly commonplace. I saw two outside Liverpool Street Station yesterday; armed, like the two above, not just with pistols, but with big, two handed things that most people would call “machine guns.” This increasing militarisation of the police was taken a step further this week when the Maybot ordered actual troops onto the streets. And I read that armoured vehicles were going to be deployed at the FA Cup final.

Armed police on a beach: why? Was there a reasonable expectation of some sort of attack on Scarborough beach? And if there was: would weapons have helped? Armed police would not have stopped the tragedy in Manchester.

The aim of the terrorist is to cause terror. All this escalation does is make ordinary people feel more worried, more scared. Worry and low-grade fear aren’t terror, but they’re on the same axis. Overreacting like this is playing into the terrorists’ hands. As well, of course, as being a cynical political move in the runup to an election whose calling was, itself, a cynical political move.

Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn gave speech making reasonable, uncontentious points about the links between foreign policy and terrorism. Predictably the right-wing press and Tory politicians went ape.

BBC Close Their Store Without Explaining Why

I got an email from the BBC today, telling me that the BBC Store is closing in November. Oddly, they don’t explain why. This Engadget article says it’s because “people prefer streaming.”

At least, that’s what the headline says. The article actually says the decision comes “following poor sales and tough competition from streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Video.”

Which is plausible enough, I suppose. Though I doubt that most people could explain the difference between a streaming service and one in which you have to download the file first. And in any case, Netflix and I think Amazon also allow you to download now.

In fact my guess would be more that people prefer subscriptions. Amazon and Netflix are compelling because once your monthly fee is paid you can always watch anything they have. With the Store you had to buy specific titles, and there’s always that hesitation about paying before you watch something.

I only ever used it to watch a couple of episodes of something I had left too late to see on iPlayer. specifically, one episode of Undercover. Apparently I spent £1.89, and I’ll be getting a £2.50 Amazon voucher to make up for it. Whee, an investment.

So I guess I was part of the poor sales.

On the other hand, there is the opinion of some — and it would be of many in Britain, I imagine — that BBC programmes should just be available. We shouldn’t have to pay for them again. “We’re not just listeners and viewers, it belongs to us,” as a great man once sang.

Maybe that’s the solution to the arguments over funding: treat the licence fee as a subscription charge. Increase it, make it optional, but include access to the BBC’s entire back catalogue.

But the Engadget article goes on to say:

If the rumours are true, BritBox — the BBC- and ITV-owned streaming service that launched in the US earlier this year — could be expanded to host more of the BBC’s back catalogue and eventually launch in the UK.

BBC and ITV? Together? Well I never.

The Sound of Audio Formats

Amusing that in the same week that I post a criticism of software patents, the final patents on the MP3 format expired. Some people are characterising this as the “death” of MP3, which is just nuts.

In fact, far from being dead, it can finally come to life, as Marco Arment makes clear.

Software patents: they’re what needs to die.

In other software-and-the-law news, here’s a story about a case of alleged GPL violation coming to court. The judge so far seems to have made a good decision, by stating that the existence of the GPL and the defendant company’s use of the software does mean there was a contract in place.

Landmark European Court Case Could Curtail Freedoms of British Dual Nationals

The Home Office refused his application on the grounds that she could not rely on her EU freedom of movement rights, which include the right to bring in a family member, as she was a British national as well as an EU national.

Does this legal case mean that British citizens automatically have fewer rights than EU citizens in general?  If that’s the case then we should be leaving the UK, not the EU.

Space Suits You

Back to form, then, with Doctor Who season 10 episode 4, “Oxygen.” Jamie Mathieson has written some good episodes before, and he keeps up the standard here. A tale of capitalism red in tooth and claw, it reminds us at times of “Silence in the Library,” and also of Duncan Jones’s Moon.1

It’s a “monster of the week” episode, but the monster is capitalism. This season so far has been surprisingly political. Well, maybe not surprisingly. These are politically-charged times, and science fiction is nothing if not of its time.

There are no particularly egregious pieces of nonsense here, either. Why the suit’s force-field helmets are OK inside the station but not enough outside isn’t really explained, but the real reason is so the actors don’t have to wear helmets for the whole episode, so that’s all right.

Oh, one thing: they’re on a space station: what are they mining? I mean, for copper, but in what? We have to assume it’s asteroids, but they could just have said.

The really interesting stuff is what we might call the “arc” material (if we are harking back to our Babylon 5 days). The shades are back, but only because The Doctor is blind now. Can he fix it by regenerating, maybe? Or by doing a partial regeneration, like Ten? And more about the vault and The Doctor’s oath. Nardole fears what would happen “if that door opens.” But we saw it open last week, so things are not quite as Nardole thinks, at least.

And the very last scene in the “Next Time…” Yes!

  1. Which is a great film that you should see at once if you haven’t already. ↩︎

Wood and Puzzles

Well, I suppose they couldn’t sustain the excellence forever. I mean, there’s bound to be the odd weaker episode, right? “Knock Knock”, Doctor Who season 10 episode 3 is certainly that. I have to say it’s the weakest episode we’ve seen so far this season.

This is largely because it doesn’t make much sense. Alien bugs turning people to wood? And back again? Well, I guess it’s no more preposterous than many things we’ve seen, but you need to have some semblance of a rationale, and this had none.

Plus it had less of what has really been making this season great: the Doctor/Bill interaction.

Still, it had an interesting season-arc-related ending, with the Doctor taking Mexican food into the Mysterious Vault to share with whoever is in there. And we now it is a “who:” they were playing the piano. And they eat, presumably.

I think there are two possibilities:

  1. Since The Doctor mentioned regeneration, and we know he’s going to regenerate this season, it’s something to with that. Like a future version of himself, for reasons to be explained.
  2. As I said before, it’s The Master, or Missy, since we saw both the latter and the John Simm version of the former in the season trailer. That would be plausible but weird.
  3. Or, and this occurred to me just tonight: what if it’s Susan? His granddaughter from right back at the beginning? Her photograph was on his desk in the first episode… but that’s just fanciful, and why would he have her in a vault?

Protect the Human Rights Act

There’s a petition at Change.org to get the parties to commit to protecting the Human Rights Act and Britain’s membership of the European Convention on Human Rights. The latter was drafted by British lawyers, remember, after the Second World War; and now some British politicians are suggesting we should abandon it, as we are seemingly committed to abandoning the EU.1

The former enshrines the convention in UK law.2

This one is definitely worth signing.

  1. Although I retain hope. ↩︎

  2. Thereby protecting it from faceless Brussels Eurocrats, I dare say. ↩︎