Misheard lyrics 3

Sometimes it is very difficult to hear song lyrics, although the internet pretty much means you can now look up the correct version. Here is another that I have misheard.

I'ts beginning to get to me - Snow Patrol.

Actual Lyric:

"And it's beginning to get to me
That I know more of the stars and sea
Than I do of what's in your head
Barely touching in our cold bed"

My version:

"And it's beginning to get to me
That I know more of the stars and sea
Than I do of what's in your head
Barely touching on Uncle Ben's"

Why they should be singing about an argument on Uncle Ben's microwave rice I'm not entirely sure but that is what it sounds like.

Then again it is amazing what little things can set arguments off. Maybe somebody burnt the microwave rice, which started this massive argument and now they are barely talking about microwave rice.

I think I better get my coat now.

The Future of the Car - Part 2

Source: New Scientist, Vol 196 No 2630, 17 November 2007. pp 28-30.

I wrote an article about the future of the car, in July 2007 where I mused about the future of computer controlled cars.

According to the New Scientist article the computer controlled car has come one step closer.

DARPA, the US defence research agency has been running an Urban challenge which builds on their previous challenges for computer controlled cars.

The Urban Challenge was a 6 hour, 100 km race along the roads of a simulated city. All participants must navigate roads, obey the laws of traffic and avoid each other. Not only are there the normal route finding tasks but also individual tasks like parking. Six teams managed to cross the finish line.

There are some features that were not tested that will be needed before we get civilian production models. The cars were not tested against moving objects like people or pets, plus none of the cars reached speeds that would be acceptable out in the normal world.

Having said all that, those tests could come next, so the future is a step closer.

The author of the article had this to say about the driver less future:

"It will also be a long, and maybe un-winnable, battle to persuade people to give up their love affair with driving."

Driving, yes but what about commuting. Who wouldn't want to flip a switch and then fall asleep on the way to and from work. What about nights on the town, cant drink because you have to drive, not any more, let the computer drive you home.

Can't pass your driving test or simply cant be bothered, buy a computer controlled car.

Lost your licence buy a computer controlled car.

I think the author clearly, a keen driver underestimated all the times people cant drive or just hate to drive. It is a much stated fact that people drive because they have to, now there would be an alternative, let the computer drive.

Lets face it who wouldn't want their own chauffeur?

Plus what about costs, lets assume that the computer controlled car is the ultimate in safe driving. Insurance costs would drop, fuel costs would drop as computers are more efficient at fuel efficient driving and the government might even introduce a tax reduction for computer controlled cars.

It may be a slow start but people will give up driving, or at least driving will become a hobby something to enjoy on the weekends or on holidays, not on the boring traffic jam on the way to work.

Friday's Work day prayer

While trudging to work at the end of a long week I was thinking of a prayer to get me through the day. Don't worry I am not about to get all religious on you I was remembering some joke prayer about asking for the strength to get through the day despite all the idiots or something like that.

A bit of google work later... there are a few versions of a joke email that gets forwarded everywhere which is in turn a corrupted version of a famous prayer called 'The Serenity Prayer'.

The Joke Version:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I cannot accept,
And the wisdom to hide the bodies of those people
I had to kill today because they pissed me off.

You can see how apt this is when you are facing another day at the organisation where the phrase 'bureaucracy gone mad' was invented.

The Original Version:

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

--Reinhold Niebuhr

The second version is a nice little prayer even if you don't believe in God.

This all got me to thinking that really in the poem the word god could be replaced by something like " God, any other religious deity, any being or anything that has the power to help me".

In my simple thoughts of religious matters I ponder whether belief in a god is necessary for a prayer to take place. After all a prayer could be described as asking for something where the outcome is not certain. After all if a close relative is dying we still will them to survive even if we do not start our thoughts with "Dear God".

Which made me think of a thought experiment about whether atheists pray. If a person had for whatever reason jumped out of a plane without a parachute and was plummeting to the ground with about four minutes to live what would they be thinking. Well you would be thinking I hope something happens to save me which in a sense is a prayer. Proof positive.

Of course testing this would require speaking to people who are falling to their impending death. Given that most people don't willingly jump out of a plane without a parachute this could be a bit difficult.

All those thoughts because of another tedious Friday.

Note: If this article has caused any offence to anyone, this was not my intention. It was merely a random thought from my brain.

Some quotes about genius

Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them.

-Albert Einstein

A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

-James Joyce

Genius... is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one.

-Ezra Pound

Genius is the ability to reduce the complicated to the simple.

- C. W. Ceran

It makes you think doesn't it.

Snow Watch 2007/08 season

It would appear we kick off to an extremely unheard of early start.

Reporting live from North Oxfordshire is Dermot Dermot-son.

"Yes, here in a rather quiet part of Oxfordshire, locals are witnessing what can only be described as sleety-snow.

The locals are in shock, even the octogenarian local weather man has checked his records and cannot find another occurrence in all his 70 years of records of sleet/snow in November.

This is Dermot Dermotson reporting live from a sleety Northern Oxfordshire."

Is this an early start to a very harsh snowy winter. Or it could just be slightly freakish occurence, maybe we will have a rain of toads later.

Ok so not the best of pictures, you will have to take my word for it. That the white lines going across that light is the first snow / sleet type stuff of the year.

When you are bored of the internet.

When you have surfed your way all over the internet.

When you still feel there is still one more page to look at.

When you feel there has to be one page, just one final page to make sense of it all.

When the google 'I'm feeling lucky' is just not enough any more.

When you don't know where to go, but you want to throw the dice one last time.

When the dice is spinning on a point and it comes up seven... Just.... Click here.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

II Waging War

11. On the other hand, the proximity of an army causes prices to go up; and high prices cause the people's substance to be drained away.

12. When their substance is drained away, the peasantry will be afflicted by heavy exactions.

Notes by Zephyrist:

The first one is quite simple, armies eat resources causing prices to rise generally ruining the country and impoverishing the people. In extreme this leads to starvation and desolation of the land.

Apparently, I had to look this up, exaction means a heavy an unjust demand. Basically the local populace aren't really obliged to support the army but end up doing so. As an extension to this the local populace will probably resent the army which as Sun Tzu has mentioned previously will lessen the chances of success.

To summarise Sun Tzu believes that large armies are to be used, not just hang around waiting for a battle.

Recursive dreaming

I read in New Scientist magazine about the linked blogger who wondered how many levels in a recursive dream you could have.

Basically a recursive dream is a dream within a dream.

My dreams are fairly good and I can exercise some limited control over them or at least I have had some dreams so many times that I can rewrite them.

My recursive dream tends to be about getting up and doing all your morning preparations and then leaving the house. In some ways its quite a natural dream in the sense that your brain is waking up and preparing itself to get ready, so it is creating a mental to-do list and running through it which is expressed as a dream. The other thing is that morning routines are fairly regular and repetitive so most of it could be done subconsciously in your sleep not really having to wake up until you eventually arrive at work.

Anyway the dream is quite simple, I get up, get shower, shave, clean teeth, get dressed, go downstairs, get breakfast, collect final bits and leave house for work.

So I am busy dreaming this very real dream which feels just like a normal day, I leave the house and then I wake up. This is where the recursive bit comes in, because although I wake up I start the dream over again, so I wake up, get up etc until the point I leave the house again except then I wake up.

Its difficult to say how many times I have managed to repeat this dream but I think at least three times in one morning. Of course by the time you are actually awake all you can think is that you have done all this three times already.

Another repeating but not recursive dream I keep having is an old favourite about failing an exam. It varies from turning up late or not preparing, I know it means that I am just worrying about some detail that I haven't finalised yet.

It has become such a common dream that now I often start telling myself not to worry as I passed these exams years ago. As these dreams are in the past it is a past me with future knowledge. I have to say that the past me never recognises this time paradox.

Dreams are such strange things and I always find mine fascinating.

Salary Converter V2.0 - Convert annual to hourly, weekly, anything

I finished the major upgrades today.

You can now convert from hourly, daily, weekly, 4-weekly, monthly or annual to hourly, daily, weekly, 4-weekly, monthly and annual pay figures.

In addition I have incorporated amendments for part time and non standard working weeks. The original version had an assumption that everybody worked 37 hours a week and five days a week. Clearly for people that did not their daily rates and hourly rates would be wrong.

A nice little project which will be extremely useful when job hunting. Now I can compare rates between jobs however they put the pay on the advert.

Unless anybody else has any suggestion I really cant see any further improvements to be made. Jobs a good 'un as I always say.

This Week 50 years ago (New Scientist)

In this weeks New Scientist the accidental discovery of super glue is told.

Apparently a polymer was discovered and thus standard tests were undertaken to establish the physical properties. The refractive index was being measured by squeezing a sample between two prisms.

The extraordinary adhesive property was only found when they tried to separate the prisms after the test. It could not be done.

Just think how easy it might have been for someone just to throw the prisms away without realising the significance of them being stuck together.

Humanistic design touches

I have been thinking some more about noises that things make which perhaps could have been designed in or out but somehow survived into the final product.

My MP3 player says"bye" but not"hello", it could have said "powering down" or just switched itself off. I wonder if bye is translated in foreign versions.

I used to own a motherboard which spoke on start up, until it entered into a suicide pack with my graphics card.

On start up it used to say,

"Power on self test complete, Computer now booting from operating system."

I miss that re-assuring voice. Of course you could have chosen different words how about:

"I have spun my drives, as far as I can tell you have a graphics card processor and some memory now lets see if the operating system wants to start today."

"Hardware OK, now cross your fingers, operating roller coaster system about to start"

"Hardware confirmed, now launching missiles"

"Hardware confirmed, Operating system starting. Do you feel lucky?"

"Hardware confirmed, please insert coffee."

"This is your computer talking. Pre flight systems have been checked, If you care to check out the Windows on your left, we will be serving Java shortly."

Sorry went off on a tangent there.

Salary Converter

I run meltdownclock.co.uk with a friend of mine, it is based on an idea I had which has never really taken off. Although to be fair we never really pushed the advertising all the limits.

I sometimes programme things just because I want to challenge myself. One project I got an idea is for a salary converter, so you can convert annual salary to monthly pay, or hourly rate to monthly pay. This would have been particularly useful to know when I was temping. I knew how much I needed to take home each month to live on but didn't know what that would equate to as an hourly rate.

So I thought why not write a perl script to work it all out.

So here it is

Salary converter.

It will convert from hourly, weekly, monthly and annual to hourly, daily, weekly, monthly and annual pay. if you see what I mean.

I have some ideas for the next version two, I want to accommodate part time and non standard working weeks. Plus I might add 4 weekly to the list as some people are still paid that way.

Watch this space as they say.

Lets talk to some 10 year olds about technology

This is one of those articles which makes you feel old even when your not really. Ten year olds do not remember rotary phones, they are blissfully unaware of what life was like BI (before internet).

The BBC news website team, to celebrate their ten years of existence rounded up some ten years olds and talked to them about future technology.

One of the things they showed these kids was a rotary dial phone:

"I've seen these in movies but never used one before," said one. Another added: "I've seen one in Heartbeat. It must be hard to remember numbers."

My parents had a rotary phone in the 80's when I was a kid. Numbers were not hard to remember, I know its out of fashion but we memorised them.

I know several numbers off by heart, my home phone, my mobile, my work phone, several old work numbers. After all before mobile phones I had a phone card and a charge card, if we needed a number we memorised it or wrote it down.

I also remember when every phone call was from a withheld number and the only way to find out who was calling was to pick up the damn phone.

In recruitment trying to arrange interviews can be a nightmare, the idea of a mobile is for people to be contactable, not for them to stare at the screen because it is a withheld number and then let it go to answer phone or worse just ignore it. I would not mind but anyone that has applied for a job should expect calls from withheld numbers because those are the numbers recruiters call from.

So here is a test to see how old you are: Do you know off by heart your mobile and home phone number?

How many people have had the following conversation on their mobile:

Other person: "What's your number?"
You: "Hang on, I will have to look?

Maybe I am whinging on about things, but is this not the first step of relying on technology too much.

These everyday tasks of memory work the brain muscle which in this electronic age is starting to waste away.

We have been through a lot of temps recently at work and one of the first things we have to tell them is to write things down. Even with all the electronic assistance we have you still need to keep, process and organise a lot of information in your head. If you are not able to memorise your own phone number it is going to be an uphill struggle.

I feel a bit like an old man writing this article but maybe its because technology moves on at such a rate that the only people who are young any more are the ten year olds. Even teenagers are out of date, technology has moved on.

The Roy G. Biv theory

This is one of those half baked ideas that I have.

I cant decide whether this idea is:

a multi million pound paper back book Christmas special finally giving ordinary people the key to live a happy, successful life...

Or...

a parody of the million pound paper book back... blah blah blah etc etc etc...

Or...

a collection of odds and sods reorganised into something that is completely worthless...

Or...

just an interesting coffee break thought.

For those of you that don't know 'ROY G BIV' represents the colour and order of a rainbow (although according to wikipedia there may be some argument about this).

R - Red
O - Orange
Y - Yellow

G - Green

B - Blue
I - Indigo
V - Violet

Now inspiration particles (Terry Pratchett reference) hit in completely random places, this one hit me on a bus on the way to work in bright sunshine on a late October day. It was inspired by the following musical lyric.

"...And it was all yellow... "

-Yellow, Coldplay

So anyway on to the theory.

The Roy G. Biv Theory

Take any day and assign it a colour from 'ROY G BIV' according to the following colours and meanings.

Red -

Red is for passion, not just love but any day when you are passionate about something. It can be a thirst for making a change in your life or passionately arguing to change somebodies mind. It does not representative destructive anger or negative argumentative passion.

A red day is a positive day.

Orange -

Orange is about ideas and creativity. Orange screams listen or look at me. Orange are for those days where your energy and creativity are strongest. You mind solves intricate problems with ease.

An orange is a positive day.

Yellow -

Yellow is sunshine, happiness and contentment. Yellow is about being at ease with yourself and enjoying your day. Maybe nothing special happens but a yellow day is a pleasant emotionally stable day.

A yellow day is a positive day.

Green -

Green is the colour of change. Green is about changing not necessarily for the better. Green days are tough days that take a lot of energy and concentration potentially for little reward.

A green day is a neutral day.

Blue -

Blue is the colour of sadness. It can be a very emotional time, negative often associated with depression or tears. Blue days are emotionally draining days where you would rather be wrapped up under the duvet shutting yourself off from the world.

A blue day is a negative day.

Indigo -

Indigo is the colour of spiritualism. It is about deep thought sometimes with a detachment from reality. Indigo days are characterized by a feeling of not being a part of the every day world. A day of being lost in your own world.

An indigo day is a neutral day.

Violet -

Violet is the colour of anger. It is about anger barely contained, an explosion waiting to happen. Violet days are characterized by a general grumpy feeling, a tense day where you could lash out at anyone and everyone.

A violet day is a negative day.

Now do this for a week taking the predominant colour of each day and you will have a list like so

Colour
RRGBOYII

+/-
++ . - + + .. giving a total score for the week of +3.

Obviously the more positive your week the better, and for negative weeks you can look closely at your problem areas.

As the weeks go by you will start to see patterns to the days and emotions which will enrich your understanding of yourself.

This framework is about starting a voyage of discovery about you and your emotions and how that ebbs and flows over a week.

...End of theory...

Now,do you see the problem I had at the start of this article. On a very superficial level my theory seems as good as any other mumbo jumbo that makes it into the paperback Christmas chart but when you look a bit close isn't all just a load of made up nonsense.

All the colours are an adaption or reorganisation of existing colour theory or just what the colour sometimes means to me.

Either way I am going to park it here on my blog, make of it what you will.

Just in case, if it does turn out that the idea is worth millions, please note the copyright and intellectual property contained here in belongs to me, and I will sue.

Remembrance Day - 11 November 2007.

There are a couple of things that I feel are a moral responsibility for individuals in this world. One is to vote and another is to remember those that have died to give us and people around the world, to protect the freedom to vote among other things.

No matter how you feel about war our brave men and women serve in the armed forced to protect our freedom. Words are not enough, but we should never, ever forget the sacrifices they have made and will continue to make in the future.

Please buy a poppy this November and take just one moment to remember the fallen.

Bring Back 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'

I have been watching the run of the American version of 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?' on FiveUS. It is just as good as the older UK version.

For those of you who have never come across this show it is about improvisational comedy. A panel of four comedians are given a series of party games where a character or situation is given to them and they have to improvise the scene.

Some of the games have included, the Hoedown where they have to sing a hoedown based on a suggestion from the audience for example singing about being a fast food worker.

Another games is helping hands where one comedian provides the hands for another comedian from behind their back. Usually involving food or other props these games could get a bit messy.

The great thing about the show was this it was very hard, comedians had to think quickly on their feet to make you laugh and sometimes in failing they made you laugh even harder.

There were some regulars on the panel including Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles and Greg Proops which allowed for running jokes and a more intimate feeling about the show.

There has never been a show that has come close to replacing it and I think it should be bought back. Mix some of the old stars with the new talent that has built up in the late 90's and 00's. This type of comedy show is comedy on the edge it is all about whether comedians are still funny without a script. This is the heart of comedy finding the funny in any situation and making people laugh.

The show was always less pretentious than modern so called comedy quiz shows, it was notscripted, packaged and prepared. No one scored points off an obvious stooge participant, it was simply about making people laugh.

Come on some UK network programme commissioner bring back 'Whose Line Is It Anyway?'. I personally guarantee there is a gap in the market for a simple less packaged programme that just makes you laugh.

The Art of War by Sun Tzu

II Waging War

9. Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy. Thus the army will have food enough for its needs.

10. Poverty of the State exchequer causes an army to be maintained by contributions from a distance. Contributing to maintain at a distance causes the people to be impoverished.

Notes by Zephyrist:

The first paragraph simply states that bring important things like armour and weaponry from home but feed off the land. More basically only transport that which you cannot reliably get on or near the battlefield.

The second paragraph is a bit more cryptic. Sun Tzu may have been saying something simple, with money tax the people near the army to prevent the state exchequer and the people becoming impoverished. Alternatively, he may just be saying the greater the distance between the army and the home land the more impoverished the state will become, so only make war close to home.

As usual Sun Tzu is open to interpretation.

Great Coffee

First up, I would never advertise a product or service I didn't love, so I am not on commission or anything.

I love Coffee and I have to say the best chain coffee bar for quality, price and value by far is AMT Coffee. Ok so they may not have one one every high street and they may only have kiosks not proper coffee shops but if you are lucky to have one near you then you should try it now.

My favourite style is cappuccino and AMT gets it right nearly every time. AMT are one of the only coffee shops to offer a choice of sprinkles for your cappuccino: chocolate, cinnamon or nutmeg. I changed from chocolate to cinnamon sprinkles and have not looked back.

The only snag is that the cappuccino comes to the top of the cup, so when you put the lid on the sprinkles stick to the lid. One of AMT's big point of difference between it and its competitors is that they listen to their customers. For example, they went organic and changed their snacks stock in response to customer feedback.

I thought I would test the customer feedback out. I collected one of their feedback forms and sent it in suggesting that either the cups or the concave lid should be redesigned so that the sprinkles remained on the foam.

I promptly got a letter back with two free drinks tokens and a good, slightly customized letter, hand signed. Ok so I haven't written many letters before to companies but I did write one to First Great Western once, who wrote back and told me I was clearly wrong.

So well done AMT, you obviously do listen to and value your customers.

I will keep you updated as to whether they change the design of the cup or the lid.

Humanistic Design

Humanistic Design is about how we as people relate to things like technology. Our interaction with technology is a whole science about human interfaces and usability.

Humans intuitively know how things should work. We pick up a camera and we know when we press the button not only should the button go click but we should hear the shutter open and closing.

The thing is technology is now so advanced that the camera doesn't need to go click and make a shutter noise. So why does it? Well quite simply if it did not we as humans would feel uncomfortable without quite knowing why. Therefore the camera would become an alien object to us and sub consciously we might buy the camera that does have the noises even if there is an option to turn them on and off.

The other strange thing about human design is what we expect technology to look and sound like. Take a gadget like an MP3 player, generally silver, small with sexy curves is a good thing. The MP3 player I bought a while ago followed this design ethos, it was small sleek with simple buttons.

However, I discovered a humanistic design flaw. The design is essential a tube with the headphone jack at one end and the usb port at the other. The problem came when deciding what the headphone jack would look like, they went for a straight jack rather than an L-shape. After about two months all the twisting has broken the cable and I have had to go and buy some new headphones. I bought an L-shaped jack and although it breaks up the sleek lines it probably wont break so easily.

Take cars as well, we all know that a really great car will have a throaty engine roar. So engine designers make sports cars with throaty roars, whether they need a good roar to have a good engine is a mute point. Humans demand a good throaty roar so they must have it.

Humans are fascinating creatures, we have so many rules, traditions and customs which our mind creates to make life easier. Our interaction with things is just one study of psychology that I have always found fascinating.

Here are two example clips of humanistic design which are pointless but satisfying, prepare to release your inner geek.

Camera shutter

Phone shut

Misheard lyrics 2

Sometimes it is very difficult to hear song lyrics, although the internet pretty much means you can now look up the correct version. Here is another that I have misheard.

The Automatic - Monster.
Actual Lyric:

"What's that coming over the hill
Is it a monster? Is it a monster?"

My version:

"What's that coming over the hill
Is it a boxster? Is it a boxster?"

As in Porsche boxster, coming over the brow of a hill on the road. Seemed much more logical to me and it had the added benefit of making the song a solid driving song for true petrolheads.