Category: Technology

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Cosmography Humour Technology

Finally Fixing That Calendar

The phases of the moon: the golden part shows ...
An earlier, failed attempt at calendrical simplification

In many ways today is already the first day of a new year. Christmas is the de facto midwinter festival after all, and we’re already a week into the actual solar year. I wonder aloud, was December 25th chosen because it was the halfway point between the logical (but pagan-associated) solstice and the incorrect but well-established Roman new year?

So to start the year I will deal with some unfinished business. I’ve been promising to return to the topic of calendar reform since… January, gawd. As you’ll no doubt remember, I reached the conclusion that it would be nice if we could have one that keeps time with both the sun and the moon. The obvious problem here is that in reality, the periods of day, month and year just don’t divide into one another evenly. Why should they, after all? They’re just rocks spinning around in space.

The trick then is to find approximated versions of these periods that fit together neatly enough. Many civilisations have tried only to give up. Islam settled on a fully lunar calendar, which is why it is about 11 days shorter than the solar Christian one. That itself still has a vestigial lunar element; its months were originally in time with the moon, but various reforms have broken this almost beyond recognition.

Not though, beyond repair. They managed to square the solar cycle by adding an extra day every four years; we just need a similar idea to fix the months, so that the waxing and waning of one moon fits precisely into each. Because that would be cool. I put a lot of work into this, and figured out that it could be done quite easily. The real month is very close to being 29.5 days long, so we could simply have alternating calendar months of 29 and 30 days. No problem!

OK, months of that length don’t fit evenly into a year. There will be twelve and a bit between every winter solstice. But that’s the whole point – there aren’t an even twelve months in a real year, and trying to make it be that way has wrought a world where we all have to memorize a stupid rhyme. We just need to accept that and then we can move on.

But what we do want is for the months to stay, at least approximately, at the same time of the year; April will always be Spring, September Autumn, and so on. And as it turns out, just two “leap months” in every five years is sufficient to keep them aligned with better than 98% accuracy. Add a couple of minor rules and the cycles can be kept in time for thousands of years. I checked this out thoroughly, even using spreadsheets to painstakingly project the cycles centuries into the future. Incredibly, it stays in time. It seems almost too simple. Why had no one thought of this before?

Well of course, someone had – quite some time ago. After several days of calculations, I realised I’d basically just reinvented the Jewish calendar. It’s a fine piece of astronomical workmanship with roots going back to the very beginnings of civilization, and has been successfully keeping sun and moon in harmony for a very, very long time. Why don’t we use it, or something like it? I strongly suspect, simply because it is Jewish.

We should though.

The Whole Calendrical Reform Series:
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Cosmography Technology

Console Of Philosophy 2

Console2

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Cosmography Technology

The Console of Philosophy

Command Prompt 2

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Humour Technology

We Submit

And you thought I never went inside a church.

Woah. Well we got our term assignment project in. I have to admit, it was a pretty messy last-minute rush. Which is funny because it’s about Project Management, and in it we go to great lengths to display our knowledge of all the techniques and methods you can use to make sure that your project is not a messy last-minute rush. The irony is intoxicating.

Kinda head-wrecking too. It’s a project, about doing a project. It’s our Project Management project management project… project? I can’t tell any more. To make it worse still, there is no real project involved. I mean, it is a real project. But our real project is to describe a project we had to make up – ours was installing a computer system into a retirement home.

We didn’t actually get to create a system that elderly people would be depending on, thankfully. But we did have to research and understand the obstacles we would face if we did. So we went around and asked questions to a lot of real retirement home owners and staff, who were all very helpful. That was a good exercise, but still it was weirdly detached from reality. In an actual job like this, what would you be spending most of your time thinking about? Your client of course. Trying to please the bastard. We had no client. One of the members of our team tried to pretend, but it’s just not the same. Her interests are our interests.

So our objective, in our project about our imaginary project, was to please ourselves. No wonder it was hard to keep focused.

Incidentally, the picture has nothing to do with the post – as far as I know. I just thought it was time I used it. It’s a lovely brass electric candle-offering machine from a church in Castlebar, Mayo. You put in money, press a button. and that’s lighting a candle for someone or something. Oddly un-prayerlike, but kind of beautiful nonetheless.

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Politics Technology

The Kids Should Have Rights

Look at that. That’s the kind of crap I’m doing these days. That’s SQL – Structured Query Language. It’s what you use to handle the huge databases of information that all modern organisations run on. What’s more it’s SQL done the hardcore way – from an old-fashioned character terminal instead of your fancy modern graphical interface. It’s really just one step up from reams of paper with green lines on it. And as you can see, just to be extra masculine I’m doing it on Linux. What are the advantages of using Linux rather than Windows here? None at all. Linux actually makes it harder. But that’s how we like it.

“It’s hard to know which way to vote,” my mother said today. We’re having a constitutional referendum on whether children should have the right to be recognised as individuals rather than as the property of their (biological) parents – which, simplifying violently, is the situation as it stands.

Don’t worry, my mother’s not ideologically opposed to freedom for kids. Like many others she was just confused by all the argument. The law requires the state – and state media – to give an equal hearing to both sides of a constitutional referendum. So if we ever decided say to put a clause against genocide in the Constitution, the government would have to publish booklets that were 50% in favour of massacring whole ethnic groups. Which would be interesting.

And this referendum has found so little mainstream opposition that it’s already spotlight time for the loons. Sinn Féin are in favour, for God’s sake. Even the Catholic Church isn’t opposing it openly. So people with some really quite odd opinions have been dug out to appear on TV. “Who is this John Waters?” she asked. “A wanker,” I explained.

There are some opposing arguments that are not irrational, but the overwhelming majority of people who have to deal with issues around child protection seem to be for this change, so it’s them I think I’ll go with. But whichever way you feel, I hope you do vote – if only to take advantage of the chance to protest against the horrific economic punishments being forced on this country. I don’t mean spoil your vote – referendums are too important for that. Someone made a brilliant alternative suggestion:

You have to fold your ballot before you put it in the box. But there are no rules about how you fold it.

Fold it into a paper aeroplane, to symbolise the ultimate fate of the children for whom government professes to care. Imagine the impact it would have when they opened the boxes on national TV if we all did it.

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Cosmography Humour Technology

Just Act Normalised

Long Story

I’ve just finished my first real college assignment, an analysis of database normalisation!

I know what ‘database normalisation’ means!

Or I think I do. But after having only four hours’ sleep in the last 48, I pretty much think I understand the universe.

Just a little worried that I’ll get it back marked “We said ‘Show your rationale’, not ‘Show you’re irrational’.”

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Cosmography Technology

Limerick Pictures

Once again, my apologies for being a lousy correspondent. At some point or points I will switch tracks and be able to write to you engagingly about the new world I’m exploring here. But as of now my brain is overloaded. I’ve written my first computer programs, built a database by hand, interviewed people, held project meetings. It’s been a month and a half. I feel like my thumb has been jammed down on the fast forward button. I’d like to tell you about all that I’ve learned, but it seems less like learning and more like being swept out to sea on a tide of knowledge. I don’t think I have the authority to explain any of it yet.

This is a polite way of saying that I have no idea what I’m doing.

So meanwhile, some more pictures from my wonderful visit to Skycon at the University of Limerick. UL is a young university and so has one of the most modern and impressive campuses in the country, though it can’t compete with what we have in NUI Galway of course.

OK… What the freaking freak is that? The department of bizarre architecture? We don’t have one of those.

And I bet these buildings hardly look impressive at all when the sun isn’t shining.

Another shot of that “Living Bridge” over the mighty Shannon. Our campus has a bridge too though. Actually, our campus is crossed by a bridge.

A bit of nature for ye now. It was a lovely day for invisible spiders.

Back in the hotel after, with the gang from NUI Galway’s Computer Society. (The decent hotel where Randall Munroe was put up. We stayed in a Travelodge, a sort of footlocker for people.) What is everyone looking at with such interest – a video perhaps? Cartoons? No. Server logs. They’re using phones to view what’s happening on the club computers.

I know I’m going to like these people.

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Cosmography Humour Technology

Randall Munroe in Limerick

They carry him back to their village and worship him as their god

You might expect someone who thinks so much and so deeply about mathematics and science to be socially uncomfortable with the normal humans, but Randall Munroe is an engaging and amusing speaker – both in front of a lecture theatre audience and over dinner later.

This was at Skycon’12, a really good weekend conference put on by the University of Limerick‘s computer society. Other speakers included Mark Shuttleworth, creator of Ubuntu Linux, and…

OK, how many people have I lost already? I need to remember that not everyone is immersed in Geek culture, even now. Randall Munroe is hugely famous; possibly the second most famous person I’ve met. After Colonel Sanders.

But he’s not… TV famous, for want of a better term. Not public property.

I spend much of my social life in a world where everyone but everyone knows who Randall Munroe is. That world is congruent with the other one – you’ll find XKCD fans in every country of every continent – but it is still a shadow world. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Geek culture is mainstream now, what with everyone being on Facebook and all, but really most people just hang around the gateway to the other realm.

And so he can have literally millions of fans – of which I am certainly one – yet still speak at an obscure conference in a small city, and have a quiet dinner after with friendly and only slightly overawed strangers. If you’re going to be famous, I think that may be the way to do it.

Definitely not Frank McCourt’s Limerick.
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Humour Technology

Doing Teamwork By Yourself

The Engineering Faculty has some fairly decent overhead projectors

For our first project, we have to work in teams. But how can we build them when as yet we have little idea of each other’s skills, talents, and weaknesses?

I thought Well, apply communications technology, and took it upon myself to create a message board. With this we could discuss stuff when we weren’t in college, get to know each other better. And as an adjunct I thought we might have a spreadsheet – online but closed to non-members – where we could volunteer skills information; easy enough to set up with Google Docs. This would be helpful to everybody, but it would also demonstrate the useful sort of stuff I can do. Why, people would be bidding to have me join their project teams.

I got quite into this for a couple of days. When I looked up, everyone had formed into groups without me.

Fortunately there were enough of us left over to form another group. Team Not So Savvy At Team Stuff, we could call ourselves. Though actually I think this unusual selection process has left us with a pretty good assortment.

Perhaps not the best organised though. We had our first team meeting today. Only two of us turned up, and one of those was an hour late. OK that was me. I’d been up far too late trying to catch up with my reading on the whole area of project management. I learned a lot in theory, but in the morning completely failed the practical.

I know it’s a terrible cliché, but as my alarm blared away, doggedly failing to wake me, I actually had one of those anxiety dreams where you find yourself in an exam you’re completely unprepared for. I know, someone whose been through an exam system gets those dreams for the rest of their life, even when the cause for anxiety is wholly unrelated.

Only here I actually was failing to prepare for something I’m soon going to be graded on. So really it was hardly a dream at all. More just my subconscious doing a sardonic voice-over.

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Cosmography Technology

Tuam Raider

Tuam. Not the worst for traffic

Well here I am in sunny Tuam, for the first time really since I passed my driving test. Yes I’m sorry Tuam, I admit it, I used you. People say it’s easier here than in Galway city. After the fact, I’m not so sure. Galway traffic is insane at rush hour it’s true, but Tuam was then going through an interminable process of roadworks, diversions, temporary traffic lights and tailbacks. And though Galway has imposing roundabouts, Tuam has far too many of those ridiculous mini-roundabouts that transform a simple honest junction into a revolving door. Also, some trick signage; my instructor introduced me to a way you could fail your test without even trying. At one junction there’s a yield sign, so naturally you stop if there’s oncoming traffic. If there is no oncoming traffic, you fail your test.

How come? Because there’s a STOP line marked on the road – presumably left there from a time before the junction was demoted to a mere yield. But the indicator of the greater hazard overrides the lesser, so if you went through without stopping you’re breaking a stop sign, an instant fail, even though there’s no stop sign there. OK, it’s not part of any known test route, they’re not actually out to trick you with legal ambiguities. But with all those diversions in place, you never know your luck.

I’ve just passed a restaurant called Cré na Cille. It’s named after quite a famous novel by Máirtín Ó Cadhain, sometimes called “The Irish language Ulysses“. One  problem though. Literally, the title means “Graveyard Soil”.

I wonder what their specials are.

Speaking of tests, we have our first one coming up on the MSc course already. Well it’s a project, for the Data Analysis and Project Management module, but we will be marked on it. We’ve two weeks to get a proposal together, which includes assembling a team, creating a proposal, even devising a contract to sign for ourselves. It’s not something I mind doing, it’s just that before I do I could probably use a few lessons in, you know, project management. And data analysis.

We’ve had just two so far. I only have the sketchiest idea of what the course is even about. Project management and data analysis – you might as well say “All that businessy-computery stuff.” So I literally don’t know where to begin. I have no idea at all of what would make a good project. Or even a feasible project.

And as a part-time student, I’ve very little idea about a team either. The full-timers meet much more, and many of them will have been undergraduates together. Us part-timers meet literally one day a week. Some of us might be able to get together socially, but most not. So I’ve volunteered to create a forum or bulletin board for us, so we at least have some level of virtual presence.

I’ve done forum admin before, but I’ve never actually set one up from scratch. It’s not hard though – not at least if you rent some web space that supports the necessary technologies. I set one up last night in fact. And in the light of what I learned by doing that, I’ll be setting it up all over again today. I’m also going to suggest we create a spreadsheet of our strengths, weaknesses, and other factors, centralising the information we need to assemble project teams. A database, if you will.

Huh. Maybe I have a project idea after all.

Or would that be a metaproject?

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