The end of an era?

Long, long ago, when dinosaurs roamed the land, before even the internet and google, in fact in 1993, I commissioned a genius called MDG (who wrote software for me at the time) with the job of buying my business a new computer. The result was my much cherished DIAMOND brand 486-DX2-66MHz. CPU's did not need fans in those days. This machine was top of the range with VESA accelerated disk and graphics cards, and it has served me faithfully until - argghhh - this morning it went belly-up. Thankfully the hard drive is still intact and I have been able to plant it in a DRDOS friendly pentium machine that happened to be handy.

I tried Googling components of this machine in the hope of help, and was met with emotionally loaded words like "antique" and "museum". The idea that anyone might still use such a behemoth is apparently beyond their ken. Our local Apple expert, Joe, sniggers when he comes in the office and I happen to be DOSsing.

Tsien BoardMaker 2 and BoardCapture is why I use this DOS machine. This software is for creating electronic schematics and designing printed circuit boards (PCB). Regrettably Tsien no longer support BM2, wanting instead to rent you their more expensive Windows BM3.  But there are still many engineers who still use BM2 because it is so fast (screen redraw on a 486-DX2-66MHz is faster than screen redraw in many Windows graphics programs running on current machines). And because its user-interface is so intuitive. And because, even though it must operate within the DOS 640kbyte memory limit, I have yet to design a board that exceeds its memory limited capacity. And because it does all I want and I know I would have to invest a huge amount of time to learn a new CAD program.

Which only goes to show how HORRIBLY inefficient modern software is. If only programmers now-a-days wrote to the same standards as that in BM2, think how powerful their software would be.

What are little boys made of?

Sugar and spice and all things nice?

You can purchase an ink-jet printer for less than 40 euro, including inks. This one was being thrown out by someone because the print-head was gummed up - maybe it cost a bit more than 40 euros because it prints (or used to print) CD's. So, true to character, I un-threw it away and took it apart. My first picture shows most of the constituent bits. Now, as an electronics design engineer, I start totting up what I would charge for all those bits and it exceeds 40 euro. By quite a bit.

It is well known that printer manufactures sell their offerings for less than it costs to make them, knowing that they will reap bounty from sale of ink. But surely not that much less? To enhance their profit even further today's ink cartridges have substantially less ink than those that fit the previous generation of printers. And the old cartridges do not fit the newer models. We know this to our chagrin - our own printer has just given up the ghost, and it timed it carefully to be just after buying a bunch of replacement cartridges.

Not all this ink makes it to your paper, mind you, especially if you only print occasionally. My next picture zooms in on the base of the printer case.

Base plate with 1/2" thick ink-pads

That larger absorbent pad is about 7" x 8" and at least 1/2" thick. Each time the printer is turned on it does a complex dance routine which, amongst other things, cleans the print head by discharging ink onto a pad (not one of the above). This printer had a peristaltic pump (also not shown) to deliver excess ink from there onto the above pads. Bang goes more of your pennies, up notches the manufacture's profits.

But I didn't spend time to dissect this machine to photograph a bunch of ink. I was after useful bits. My final picture shows the gold I mined.

Trophies

1 off switch mode power supply 42V at 0.6A.
2 off d.c. motors, one with a gear chain
1 off stepper motor
1 off precision guide bar
1 off linear sensor strip (black and white striped)
1 off photo-electric sensor for above

These will go in a box (and join other similar trophies) and be dished out when the next person asks "have you got a spare d.c. motor?" or for my next grandson's engine to be.

The God of Small Things

I have just finished reading this book. Apart from my usual difficulty in following any plot, especially when the time-line is convoluted, I thoroughly enjoyed this book - both its writing style and what the author has to say - and it made me cry. I will not even attempt to summarise it as I cannot match what others have said e.g. here and here. So you'll have to read it yourself.

I love the way she portrays what goes on inside the children. They kind of remind me of two kids I know. I don't want to miss the "small things" - because I too have experience of such things being swept under the carpet.

1000 things for boys to do

I have found the book I referred to in a post some while ago - "1000 things for boys to do" or at least something like it. Although I can't find the article I remember on making a steam engine.

OK, times have changed, instead of construction hobbies bright youngsters now-a-days play or write computer games or learn to hack government agencies. But I am still of the opinion that messing with hardware is at least equally important.

Imagine you had four hands

When I have taught piano I have encouraged the pupil to caress the keyboard, to enjoy the feel of and explore the keys, to be able to find middle 'C' by touch alone. A blind person "sees" with his hands. Imagine doubling this pleasure and feeling with your feet as well.

Imagine a culture where it was not "done" to expose one's hands, and having to always wear heavy leather gloves with rigid, solid soles, lined with thick woollen sleeves.

Now take your shoes and socks off and be free. Not just in the privacy of your home: go shopping barefoot, running barefoot, climbing trees barefoot.

Jane

Here's a new idea that resonates with Jane. If it works we could end up with robots that develop amazing skills overnight. Both amazing and scary...

Did God create my watch?

Probably everyone knows about the watchmaker analogy. Having been brought up by fairly conservative evangelical parents and in a very conservative evangelical church I can remember preachers who would dig this one out in the "gospel service". I must say it didn't do much for me - the conclusion that surely God must have created the world did not seem to me to follow necessarily. And whether I or anyone else thinks it does or does not will not change whether it actually happened or not.  And those who think not will of course dis those that uphold the argument as proof of a divine creator.

José Cordeiro

And so my ears perked up when I read an interview with José Luis Cordeiro in E&T this afternoon whilst taking a bath (as one does). This man claims all manner of futuristic stuff including a prediction that 2045 will be the year of the singularity when "we will reach hardware and software immortality". You will have to read the article to have any chance of decoding the jargon.  He appears to be the David Ike of technology.

Anyway the bit that made my ears perk was regarding us humans creating brain upgrades and doing a better job (and here I quote) "Remember, our brains are the product of random evolution and we are creating things by design". Notice the complete reversal of the "watchmaker analogy". And because the preacher's analogy left me cold I regret to say that José's reversed version does likewise. But it makes interesting bath-time reading none the less.

Slow TV

Bruckner was infatuated with Wagner's operatic music although it is thought that he would neither have understood nor cared about the plot. I feel similarly with computer games: I am drawn towards the adventure type but always want to explore places that the computer reckons are out of bounds, and I care not about the point of the game which appears to usually be to kill the opponent. Or with movies like the Lord of the Rings where the scenery is so magnificent that I just want to look around and the plot gets in the way.

So I was interested to hear about Slow TV where films have actually been made about, for example, a train journey in its entirety - with no plot other than the fact that it is a train journey and, joy of joys, the camera is in the driver's cab!  Here is a preview of NRK's seven hour offering:

I love it...  Not sure about watching the whole seven hours though...

F8 bug or how I hate I2C bus

I have been revisiting assembler code I wrote maybe 10 years ago because of a software bug.  The device announces the problem by displaying a message "ERROR CODE F8" which, being translated into the vernacular, means that when my Microchip 8-bit microprocessor accesses external serial EEPROM via I2C bus the bus gets into a can't-get-out-of-it situation. That the serial memory devices should suffer such ignominy is my case against I2C.  SPI bus is simpler and is my preferred choice.

It turned out I was trying to access a memory address that did not exist and, after many days of searching, it turned out that this was because I had initialised said memory (pointers and wotnot) after my first attempt to access it. The solution - move the call to the initialise code back before the first access. Simple - once I had identified the problem.

It took me so long to identify because I had very poor debug tools.  I had very poor debug tools because I hadn't previously made any those 10 years back when my teeth were shorter, and in this recent spate of work I thought I could do it without the necessary tools. This morning I decided that was bad thinking. I made a terminal routine that would dump salient registers to a display screen and hey presto I was able to locate the bug. The most helpful part of my debug tool was the display of stack pointer and return addresses on the stack from which I was able to figure what part of the code caused the error display.

Which adds weight against the inference in the absurd proverb "a bad workman blames his tools". It should read something more like "a bad workman has bad tools".

A similar principle applies when routing cables through or driving screws or hammering nails in awkward positions. If you cannot see what you are doing, chances are you will mess up: the screw will drop into a void, you will instead hit the nail on your finger, or the cable being poked will just refuse to exit where you want. But once you can see what you are up against it is oh so much easier!  For this reason I keep a stock of small flash-lights and mirrors.

There could be a moral here somewhere...

Christmas morning

My Christmas morning walk to the lake, shod, with Meg, having figured my back would not let me run...

Frosty fields

Lake shore

Curious tree roots

View towards Kings River

That's Meg out there

Valleymount bridge

Reflections

An unusual angle on HH

Meg

The bridge again

Winter branches

Of human bondage

Somerset Maugham

I have just finished reading the book "Of human bondage" by Somerset Maugham.  It is generally agreed to be his masterpiece. The Guardian and Penguin expose some of Maugham's life story behind this partly-autobiographical work and paint a pathetic picture of a weak man without hope. And yet in so many ways I identify with his pseudonym Philip Carey in the book. I too am weak and hopelessly affected by what I think other people think. The book underlines human frailty and its dependence on fate even if, for the sake of the reader, Philip is left in a positive state as the book closes. We are left thinking that, for all his manifold failings, Philips is a good man.

Maugham's lack of foundation stands in stark contrast to "Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God..." John 13:3-5. The author and Philip, early on, express pride in freeing themselves from religious bondage, but seem to miss the point of true religion.

I come away from book book with a mixture of identity, sadness but a kind of "new year's resolution" to be different.

Incidentally the fact that I have enjoyed this somewhat long and stodgy book supports my theory that books and films and music (indeed art generally) that appeal to me are those which I can identify with in some way. The joy of sharing the appreciation of a landscape, a face, a musical transition or melody, a character trait - of the discovery that someone else in the world thinks or has experienced just a tinsy bit like I have.

Bloatware

Wikipedia has "Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program become perceptibly slower, use more memory or processing power, or have higher hardware requirements than the previous version whilst making only dubious user-perceptible improvements." My definition is broader in that it includes unnecessary complexity in the user interface.

We have a new microwave. A domestic microwave is essentially either 'off' or 'on' for a period of time. Granted there is also the sometimes used complexity of pulsing on and off for defrosting.  So why the bloated user interface with its need to press multiple buttons to do the most common function when one would do?

Lewis acknowledges the malady with " 'If that's all they mean, why do they wrap it up in so strange a fashion?'. 'Doubtless,' said Arnom (and I could tell that he was yawning inside the mask, being worn out with his vigil), 'doubtless to hide it from the vulgar.' "

Way longer ago Occam acknowledged it with his famous "lex parsimoniae" principle of parsimony, economy, and succinctness.

Conversely I belong to a church where a sermon is not worth much unless it is at least an hour long, never mind the content. I was asked to comment on one recently - the man had a good point, I noted, but he could just as well have said it in a sentence and then sat down.

The most common negative criticism I have heard concerning Peter Jackson's The Desolation of Smaug is that there is too much padding, too little plot - it is bloated.

Whilst the principle applies across the board it is perhaps most noticeable in software. I was watching a 4-year old playing a educational "game" - the user interface was so ridiculously convoluted doubtless intentional to prepare for later life.

The programming language 'C' claims to be as efficient, as close to the computer's native assembler language, as they come. And yet it is bristling with unnecessary paraphernalia.  And how about the 'C18' construct:

unsigned char n = 7;       //8-bit
unsigned short integer r;  //16-bit
r += n * 200;

The compiler has to translate this to assembler. In assembler the basic multiply instruction takes two 8-bit values and generates a 16-bit value, as one would expect. The 'C' statement starts with a 16-bit variable 'r' so one would expect the arithmetic to be carried out to at least 16-bit precision but, no, although the compiler has to use the 16-bit result assembler multiply instruction, because 'n' is 8-bit the compiler chooses to trash the upper 8-bits and gives the answer r = 120.  Without so much as a warning message.

'C' also promises tight code, but fails to deliver. True, it does make programming easier, faster and less prone to error - that is an essential quality of any higher level language, but it is not true that it avoids bloat. I have written similar code for embedded systems in both assembler and 'C' and the latter is far less efficient in terms of amount of code memory used.  But at least with 'C' it is easy enough to include sections of assembler for critical functions if one is fussed about speed or code efficiency.

The modern GUI (graphical user interface) lends itself to bloat with its keyboard / mouse duality. Programmers seem to think that both have to be used whatever the function. The mouse is good for graphical operations but a keyboard wins for text, so why mix the usage?  Having to use both is wasting my time.

My opening quote Wikipedia compares the amount of memory and processor speed required by successive generations of MS-Windows - OK I know that good features have been added during that time but no-one can convince me that I really need at least 2Gbyte of RAM, a 1GHz processor and untold amounts of hard disk space just to do word processing an social networking (let's face it - that's what most people use their computers for).

I use (2D PCB) CAD software 'BoardMaker' that runs under MSDOS on a 486-DX2-66MHz computer with just 640Kbyte of RAM. It is lightening fast, the user-interface is ultra-slick, and it just WORKS.  OK the memory limitation does set a maximum complexity to my designs but I haven't reached the limit yet. Don't tell me I need a bloated CAD package that only runs on a super-work-station - although doubtless one day I shall be forced to buy one.

Apple preen themselves on minimalistic design, but minimalistic is not necessarily the opposite of bloat. To get one button to do everything may not be that efficient even if it looks nice.

No, the criterion is not whether it looks nice, whether it has more flashy gimmicks that the competition, whether it boasts a 64-bit processor - the criterion is: does it do the job I want done efficiency and without falling over.  What are your expectations when you buy a car - that it is easy to control, economic and reliable, and above all safe are expectations so paramount as to be hardly questioned - and yet those are the very features that get missed with bloatware.

Why have I not blogged?

It's a good question. Too busy? Lost the muse? Am I becoming boring? I like to think it is temporary - I just don't have much interesting to say at the moment. Wait...

What about car radios?  Some countries outlaw the use of cell phones whilst driving but what about car radios?  Take the following example. You want RTE1 and the last person who used the car has filled up all the presets with noisy music - and you try to keep your eyes on the road whilst groping the myriad buttons and knobs. I'd say that was as dangerous as or worse than pressing one button to take an incoming call.

Hello to Willand

Willand is my mother-in-law's new home. Having driven her there we helped clean, unpack and did various other odd jobs, and I managed two early morning runs, thus the last two of the four mentioned in my last post. Once again you have to interpolate the beginning of my route because my GPS device takes such an age to get first lock. My first run took the road from Willand to Halberton turning left towards Sampford Perverell, total distance about 12km.

Grand Western Canal, Sampford Peverell

Tiverton Parkway station

My second run started hesitantly to the church and then towards Cullompton then, as the main road was too busy, I retraced my steps to the church where my GPS device got first lock, then across the river meadows to Bradfield and Coldharbour.  Total distance about 11km.

Weir on River Culm at Coldharbour

Goodbye to Norfolk

Here is a rather belated report on four runs during recent UK trip. I attempted to GPS track all four but my smartphone took ages to get first lock and I wasn't going to hang around waiting for it, getting frozen. So you will have to interpolate a bit from the end of the track which was obviously the beginning of my run to the beginning of the track

The first two are perhaps my last runs in Norfolk (sob, sob). My first track was perhaps 15km.

First sun from Broad Lane

Coxford church

Almost home again

The second track was just over 10km - shorter because I was worn out from the previous run and all the house packing we were doing. I returned via West Rudham church. Running barefoot through a cabbage field was an interesting experience but one feels obliged to keep the English public footpaths in use!

Granpa's grave

West Rudham church

Footpath through cabbages

Showing the church, and the cabbage path below it

If I get around to repeating all this hard work my next post will be two runs in "Hello to Willand".

The most beautiful girl in the world

Did I mention this before?  Well, if I did, this is a better photograph of the original than my last attempt.  The original is a black and white photograph hand tinted with, I suppose, water colour.

The most beautiful girl in the world

I am reliably told that this is the same person
(on another occasion)

Beeston tram works

The Beeston line

On the way to Ali's mum - another shopping stop giving me time to suss out work on an extension to Nottingham's tram system. The works introduced a considerable detour in our route to the shop Ali wanted.

Norfolk

Tuesday Market place, Kings Lynn, after the deluge

The occasion: stopping for the inevitable shopping at Kings Lynn on the way to helping Ali's mum move from Norfolk to Devon.

The Great Ouse, from the ferry steps, just before the deluge

So Ali is off shopping for Goodness knows what and I have some free time. It is very liberating taking to the streets of an unknown city running barefoot in the rain. Actually I manage to shelter during the worst of it at the steps where the ferry to West Lynn stops.  The "Great Ouse" - what a wonderful name for such a sluggish river!

The West Lynn ferry arriving

Looking upstream to the steps down to the ferry
Ouse-mud feels so soft between the toes...

Zooming in - some people waiting for the ferry

Barefoot Tullamore

Grand Canal east of Tullamore

Grand Canal west of Tullamore

The Grand Canal connects Dublin with the River Shannon. We were staying two nights in Tullamore on the occasion of our wedding anniversary giving me a chance to explore the canal. The pictures suffer from morning poor light but at least you can see the grass barefoot-friendly tow-path.  The canal is in excellent condition which renewed my idea to navigate it by canoe from Naas to the Shannon. 

Last lake swim this year?

Saturday, work on the new boiler is drawing to a close, so after lunch I ran along the lake shore and had a quick dip - the water is noticeably cooler so my swim was a few strokes out and back. Meg's attempt was even feebler: as soon as she sees me turn back she's out like a shot. Then biked to Joanne's to see her smoke damage, Larry came too but rather slowly and it rained so together I got rather cold. Painted a door for Joanne then cycled back and Larry's bike broke so he had to be rescued. Got back just in time for dinner (thank you Caroline) so my much longed for hot bath had to wait.