Dark Liquid

Well, my first barcamp has come and gone. Hats off to the BambooJuice, Yahoo Developer Network, Clipper teas, Twitfaves and TwitterJobSearch for funding it and Mark Ng and Adam Mills for making it happen.

I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I’m glad I went, it was awesome. Basically, it was just a massive 2 day geek fest. We hung out, played games, ran and went to talks on all sorts of interesting topics. Some of the talks I went to including one about The Skiff, a cool coworking/hackerspace down in Brighton, one about how to get into freelancing, one by ORG (the Open Rights Group) on protecting your bits and a few more. I even kind of ran one with Dan and Diccon, where we basically set up a couple of games of Polarity, which got a pretty good response. I got in a few good games but alas, I didn’t lose once, which was a shame.

The main thing about barcamp though was the awesome community spirit there. Everyone pitched in to make it a really fun weekend and it turned out marvellously. I met some awesome people and had a great time. My twitter following and followers lists are expanded thanks to that little event.

One of the best things though was when I became Pseudo-Mark for the new sport set to sweep the nation (probably not) – Tea-Stacking! Clipper Teas had given the barcamp a metric fuck-ton of tea, Yahoo Developer Network had provided frisbees. Combined, with geeks and prizes, a new sport was born. Basically, the competition was a tournament to stack boxes of tea as high as possible while people with frisbees tried to knock them down by hurling the frisbees at them. Mark Ng disappeared half-way through so I took his place as Pseudo-Mark and nearly got to the finals, but was beaten at the end by what was definitely not favouritism at all Apparently I nearly ate a frisbee, but I don’t recall this (maybe it’s the concussion ).

Tea-stacking and frisbee eating at barcamp bournemouth 2009, courtesy of Andy Trickett on flickr

I’m doing some extra-curricular coding for a change. Quite frankly it’s been too long, I’ve always been busy with other things. I like to watch new anime, films and other media, read new books, play and hopefully complete my various video games as well as write at Protagonize.com and roleplay both in real life on Thursday and Friday evenings and on RPoL.net. With all that stuff going on, not to mention the fact that I also code all day at work which mostly satisfies my need to code, I’ve not been working on much outside of work.

However, I’ve got a couple projects on the go one of which I’ve probably already mentioned before. I’ve finally started on a project that I’ve wanted to do for a while with some friends of mine, namely designing a complete computing architecture from NAND logic upwards. I’ve put together a basic toolchain for the very beginnings of this using Rake and Icarus Verilog up on github as gc-arch (for GeekCoalition Architecture).

Another project I’m only barely beginning is a basic DSL for describing presentations which can then be processed into backends to target different medias (PDF, HTML, etc). I’ve gotten absolutely nowhere with this as of yet, which sucks because the impetus for this was to write and use it for a presentation on DSLs in Ruby at the next BUNIX meetup, so I have limited time to get something up and running!

I went to BUNIX yesterday, the Bournemouth UNIX enthusiasts group that is run at Bournemouth University every so often. I heard some cool talks, a demonstration on how to install OpenBSD and what the particular idiosyncrasies in it’s installer actually been to a non-BSD-head. Another talk was given on Cloud computing and what it means, where it’s going and some of the cool things that can be done with it. The final talk was demoing some cool alternative operating systems – GoboLinux, something I’d heard of before which is a take on an alternate file structure and package management system based around grouping things together in obvious to non-techies ways and then making them work with a mass of symlinks behind the scenes. This was followed by two other operating systems coded entirely in assembler which booted lightning fast (sub-three-seconds) and had full graphical interfaces and various cool bits, such as a 3D teapot demo that looked like it’s framerate was somewhere around a billion FPS.

All in all some pretty interesting stuff. At the end of the meetup I got myself roped into doing a talk on DSLs in Ruby, so I guess I’ve got some planning to do for next month!

This coming Wednesday, I will hopefully be meeting up with some other Bournemouth Rubyists for the first ever Bournemouth.rb meetup and hopefully some cool stuff will come of that.

I’ve been using the awesome ping.fm for a while now for tying all my various social networking stuff together. From a single IM I can update:

• My Google Talk status
• My Facebook status
• My LinkedIn status
• My Jaiku account
• My Twitter account
• My Delicious bookmarks

I can also do the same thing via email as well, and by attaching images I can also post to Flickr.

This all ties together wonderfully with my T-Mobile G1 phone. I take a picture, use the in-built share functionality to send it via email to my secret ping.fm email bot address which then posts it to Flickr and makes a post on all my other services telling people about it.

It’s awsome and also incredibly easy to setup. Seriously, go to ping.fm and check it out.

A while ago I, among others, were harassed on the bus. Four young boys were yelling verbal abuse at the other riders, spitting at and indeed on them and otherwise behaving in a threatening and antisocial manner. A poor girl sat in front of me got off of the bus nearly in tears, only to have the kids spit at her through the window – I only hope she at least reached her stop and wasn’t driven off the bus early by the savages.

It was impossible for the bus driver not to notice, yet he did nothing. Noone complained, mostly due to fear of drawings the kids attention, especially since the chances of the bus driver taking action seemed pretty slim given he had done nothing at all so far.

The system seems so unfair and unjust, innocent riders like myself have no recourse but to ride out such incidents when the bus driver does nothing and retaliation is feared due to being condemned for assault. Who can we go to for help? The police? Could they even do anything? We feel powerless when those in authority do nothing and any chance of defending ourselves is taken away by fear of being branded a criminal. Does anyone have any faith that if they complained the camera footage would be watched and the kids consequently caughr? The answer is no. Most think little would happen and any justice handed out meaningless. Not only that but also the fear of retribution, what if the kids took revenge for any punishment or investigation against them? They surely saw the people they tormented and could recognise them again.

I myself feel guilty. I might have done something, but one can not help but feel one is making oneself a target for these thugs when you do, and when you have such little faith or hope of a good outcome, fear is a powerful motivator to sit down and hope things don’t get worse.

When did bus drivers stop caring about their passengers wellbeing? When was it ok for things like this to go on unchallenged? When was it that even retaliation and self defence were things to fear, afraid our own protectors would mark us as criminals?

In fact, I asked this very question of the bus company themselves and their response wasn’t very helpful.

Essentially it boiled down to “We can’t do anything and nor can our drivers, call the police and have them deal with it.”

Now, I can understand that they can hardly make it company policy to put their drivers in harms way, nor would I want them to, but the driver is in a position of authority and at the very least, if they don’t want to get into a confrontation they could perhaps call the police themselves from the relative safety of their concealed seating.

The main problem with calling the police as a passenger is that you are in full view of the assailants and you don’t know how they will react. Will they steal your phone and beat you up? Will they stab you? Will they leave and remember your face to come and get you at a later date? You don’t know. There is the additional worry of phoning. Most people don’t know the number for the police directly, they only know 999 and nobody wants to phone 999 so they can essentially say “someone’s picking on me on the bus”. Doing that in and of itself feels like a crime that could put a ‘real’ emergency call at risk of being answered too late and no-one wants to be told of by the emergency services for wasting their time, which I think is actually a crime.

It’s shit like this that fuels my misanthropy.

Well, a few things have been happening recently.

Mum had a stroke. She’s fine now, especially since it was a minor one, but those kind of things are always a bit of a scare.

I’m doing an internet radio show. Go to gamingradio.net on Mondays 1900-2200 GMT to hear me and some friends make an arse of ourselves between bouts of music. It is meant to be a sort of general geek-out show but at the moment it’s mostly us talking bollocks and swearing until we establish ourselves properly We also have a tendency to spew hatred and bile directly at our listeners on account of us all being bastards.

I’ve been watching anime again. So far watched all of Ergo Proxy, now watching my way through Speed Grapher.

I’m developing more of an interest in politics and government action. Not a huge amount, but it’s a surprising departure from my usual apathetic tendency to dismiss anything that doesn’t instantly and immediately effect my life directly in an obvious way. I think I like it. I’m hardly an activist now, but I’m at least trying to keep myself informed about some things now.

That is all for now.

Have you ever thought it would be nice to be able to access the context from within a custom Liquid::Drop when using the Liquid template system?

Turns out, you can.

On Drops there is a method ‘context=’ which gets set by the parser when it comes across a Drop object. From within the drop, all you need to do is access the @context variable and you’re away.

Why this isn’t advertised more is beyond me, or maybe I’m just an idiot and missed it, but I couldn’t see how to do this at all until I decided to sit down and essentially try and write it myself and delved into the code in Liquid that deals with processing variables. Turns out it’s already there and it works a charm. Nice for writing Drops that behave differently in different contexts, depending on register settings and the like.

Anyway, I thought it was useful, hope this helps someone else before they pull all their hair out.

Normally, I don’t dream, or more accurately, I never remember my dreams. But last night, that changed.

I had a really bizarre dream, the specifics of which I can’t remember but generally it involved a christmas party at my home (which wasn’t the flat but some kind of 70s style semi-detached house) and someone we invited ended up breaching our trust when Dru and I went out to get something by inviting tons of people we didn’t know, making a huge mess and pimping out our bedroom to these horny strangers she invited.

I was so incredibly angry in the dream because I knew regardless of what she said, Dru and I would be the one to clean things up, plus we had a bunch of strangers in our home we didn’t trust.

I kicked people out and yelled at everyone, then her Dad came to back her up and threatened me, not in a physical way, but a kind of warning of ‘you really want to do this?’ mode. I did want to do it, and somehow we ended up in a paint-fight (weirdos had been painting crap all over the bedroom walls while they were having sex on Dru and I’s bed).

Eventually the dream ended up with me killing the kill and her Dad, setting it up to look like her Dad and sexually assaulted her (by faking evidence) and then burying the body of the girl and dumping the body of her Dad in a lake somewhere, as if he’d deliberately drowned himself for shame of “what he’d done”.

After that, there was much cleaning and hunting down stolen items that strangers had taken when we kicked them out.

It was all very odd and very disturbing, especially since I have only ever been as angry as I was in the dream once in real life, and then I had three people to hold be back when I wanted to go kill someone with rage. Maybe that’s the root of the dream – the fear of my own rage. I don’t really get angry any more, frustrated and annoyed sure, but angry isn’t something that really happens to me much any more and when it does, I hate it and feel really bad and sick about it. Maybe my brains just cleaning up some old issues I have while doing it’s nightly defrag and maintenance?

Well, the meme bug has bitten again! But this time it’s 25 things instead of seven. Here we go…

1) I’m an avid Linux user and have been since Redhat 4.2, which I think was released in ‘96
2) I can bring my arms from in front of me to behind me without parting my hands
3) I did beastly things as a child, such as turning lawnmowers upside down and throwing frogs at the whirring blades.
4) I also used to make elaborate snail races and obstacle courses. How did I make the snails compete? Salt for the track markings.
5) I find extreme amounts of fictional gore hilarious
6) I’ve been playing roleplays for quite a long time too. I play D&D mostly but find I enjoy White Wolf’s offerings much more and rather enjoy Shadowrun too.
7) I’m incredibly lazy, though I prefer to think of myself as ‘efficient’, littlest effort, maximum gain and all that. I can’t remember a thing. People, places, events, what I was talking about in the middle of a conversation. I’m terrible, what am I writing about again?
9) I’m normally very hard to rile up, being the embodiment of calm.
10) During a rather nasty incident, I kicked and door and damaged the hinges in blind rage while trying to get to someone so I could kill them. Two people needed to hold me back.
11) The same incident involved me and some others running away from home, but it lasted all of an hour or so before one my fellow runaways got hungry. It turns out people at gas stations get concerned about a bunch of children turning up at 3am.
12) I’m messy and my desk looks like a landslide of paper.
13) Ironically, despite my messiness I really like minimalism.
14) I can digest metal and glass
15) I have 2 more ribs than most people.
16) I once cracked my head open on a rocking horse when I was a kid and still have the scar.
17) My long hair and beard are mostly the result of the aforementioned laziness rather than a concerted effort to look this way.
18) I have size 13.5 feet, quite narrow and can’t wear anything but boots because anything else always seems to cut up my feet.
19) When I don’t wash I think my armpits sometimes smell like ham and pineapple pizza.
20) I love meat. I love it so much I once tried making a meat-shake. Word of advice – don’t try that, ever, you will not enjoy it. It comes out much the way it goes in – through the mouth and lumpy.
21) While on a caffeine high, I once swung a shopping trolley around my head while sprinting down the road.
22) I think I’m an incredibly boring person and always find these lists incredibly difficult to populate.
23) I hate travelling or going anywhere. I don’t really feel much benefit from paying to go somewhere and see something, I nearly always happier to see pictures on the computer for free.
24) Before I got into computing, I wanted to be a psychologist but a teacher told me not to bother because it was a saturated job market. So I went into IT. Doh!
25) I basically don’t watch TV, listen to radio or even go outside that often. I have adblocker installed on my browsers so I basically have no exposure to adverts at all. It really freaks me out seeing them because to me, adverts are really rare. Saying that, I also seem to have adblock in my head, so my brain rapidly tunes them out anyway.

Right, I’m not going to tag many people (the ‘rules’ state you should tag 25) because anyone I know who would actually carry this on will read this eventually and do so anyway. In fact, when thinking about tagging people I was amazed I actually had 25+ friends on facebook, especially since I deliberately try and keep my list of friends on here sparse. Amazing.

Well, I avoided joining my friends in consigning my soul to oblivion today. Today, I was sufficiently bored that I decided I’d try out EVE-Online, a game that until now I’ve avoided like the plague because I know it will consume my soul.

I used to be a massive Frontier: Elite II junkie on the Amiga and spent unhealthy amounts of time on that game. I suspected EVE would do the same, so I made sure to avoid it because I rather like my life as it stands and that will rapidly evapourate to be replaced by all-consuming obsession.

I lucked out though. Running on Linux with a dual-screen set-up has always been a bit of an arse when it comes to games, especially when you are also running compiz. Combined all together, the app wouldn’t run at a reasonable resolution, neither their Linux client, which is actually just the windows one with a crippled version of cedega bundled, nor their Windows version through WINE. The game constantly insisted it had to run at my full desktop resolution (3360×1050) regardless of whether or not I ran it in window mode, in fake fullscreen-in-a-window mode or anything else, making it somewhat unplayable – I couldn’t even log in because due to it’s stupid resolution screwup I couldn’t see the login box to enter stuff into and click login.

Oh well, I am saved at least until I get bored enough to try it again and it happens to be fixed.