Normal
So, yeah!
It’s been a little while since I last wrote here. If you don’t like it, well, I blame my irregular update schedule (or well, lack of an update schedule, really). As I’ve stated in my little About Me section: it can be a day between posts, a few months, or anywhere in between. Who knows. (I certainly don’t.)
So, yeah!
Normality.
What the hell is it anyway? When are you normal? When are you not?
For starters, being like me would probably put you in the latter category. But that is entirely beside the point.
Wikipedia (oh, how we love thee!) states that ‘in behavior, normal refers to a lack of significant deviation from the average’. This is pretty much how I would define it myself. However, I find this definition a bit unclear.
In order to determine what normal is, we’d need to first find a way to quantify every aspect of a person. Some of these are easy: a person’s age is already counted in years. We can easily count how many times a person has had sex (well, it kind of hangs on how drunk the person usually is when they have sex, but that’s a separate aspect), or how many different bikes they’ve owned as a kid. When it comes to personality traits, it gets a bit more difficult, but let’s assume that we’re able to measure stuff like how well you respond to humor, at what level you’re interested in science, how socially developed you are, and a gazillion other things, on a simple scale of 1 to 10 each. Of course, there are other factors as well, such as what gender you have and how pretty you look.
Now we have the tricky bit. We’d need to know the values for each of these scales, for every living person on the planet. This may be a liiiiiiitle bit problematic, but in order to accurately figure out what ‘average’ is exactly, it’s pretty important.
So, now we know how an exactly average person would be. We know exactly what he/she would look like. Actually, the matter of whether this average person would be male or female is a bit tricky, but since there are slighly more females than males in the world, our person would have need to have a single breast and both a vagina and a penis, but the vagina would have to be slightly larger than the penis (but still of average size of course – you can see why this is a bit difficult). He/she would probably live somewhere in the molten section of the planet’s core (though leaning more towards China than any other area on the planet), have about a quarter of an internet connection, and own something like three quarters of a mobile phone. We would also know exactly how his/her personality is, how well he/she likes certain subjects, and everything else there is to know.
(Obviously, if we take the world’s internet user’s as an accurate representation of the human population, chances are than our average person is a dumb annoying idiot.)
So, yeah.
Now we have a perfectly average person. Problem is, there is probably not going to be any living human in the world who is a perfect match to this average, and besides, we’re talking about normality, which we’ve established to be having a lack of significant deviation.
‘Significant deviation’ is again a pretty vague term. When exactly is the deviation significant?
I’d say, the deviation is significant when it’s more than the average deviation.
Oh boy, we’re gonna need to pull out the numbers again, and compare everyone’s scores against the perfect average, and write down the difference between everyone’s scores and the average scores, and then find the average of that. In other words, we’re calculating the average deviation that people have from the perfectly average person.
Now we have a pretty good baseline: we know what ‘normal’ is exactly, and we know how much you can deviate from ‘normal’ without reaching an over-average (ie, significant) deviation from being normal.
Since our average person is just about halfway between male and female, and pretty much everyone else is either male or female, we all have a large deviation from the average, so you’re probably safe on that count. In other areas… Well, I can’t tell that for you. Not until zeh maths are done.
So, there we go. Normality.
Have a nice day now!
One Ring…
One Ring to add to the thousands of others, actually.
Yeah, it’s a (small) piece of chain mail, and yeah, I’m learning myself how to work this stuff.
It’s actually more complicated than it seems at first. Getting the first bit right is tricky, but once you have a piece of fabric (like the above), it gets easier. The rings will arrange themselves in their pattern more easily, and any mistakes you might have made become more obvious.
Also, it takes a LOT of time.
Eight
We all know that Microsoft has had a tradition with Windows, in which each good version is followed up by a horrible one. Windows 2000 was a good OS, ME was… Well, we all know. XP was (and still is) a good OS, Vista, well, even Microsoft admitted that it was crap. Windows 7 is good. But Windows 8…
Of course, somewhere along that line we could also mention Bob, but Bob was never officially released. Microsoft Bob was an attempt at a very easy-to-use version of Windows. You probably know the annoying paperclip from MS Office? The one that you feel compelled to axe-murder the nearest person every time he came up to offer you a tip? Yeah, he’s actually a leftover from Bob. Now imagine what the rest of Bob was like.
Anyway, I’ve read a few things about it before, and today a lenghty article has been published on the Dutch IT-news website Tweakers.net. It goes into details about the new interface that Microsoft is putting on Windows 8, called Metro. It is supposed to be (and well, actually is) the biggest makeover since Windows 95 (and quite possible earlier). It also looks like the most epically-sized mistake Microsoft has made since Windows 95.
Sure, the Metro interface looks all shiny. Integration between applications is definately something I can appreciate. And if this whole Metro interface ended up on smartphones and tablets, there’s not much negative stuff I can say about it. On such a device, the interface will work, and it’ll be all pretty and nice and great.
But not on a desktop.
The first big mistake is that apparantly, the Metro interface is just shoved down your throat and you can’t easily get around it. The “classic” interface with a desktop with icons and a task bar is still there, but is considered an application within the Metro interface, and not one you can go into by default. It’s no secret that running with multiple monitors has not always been optimally supported in Windows (the ever-present lack of native support for a taskbar on those extra monitors is a perfect example of that), but I fear that in Metro, the extra screen space that people like me have come to love can hardly be utilized at all.
Guys, the whole reason why I have more than one screen is that I have more space to put stuff in, not so that I can have the same things only with bigger icons and more empty space (which seems to be the trend that Microsoft has been following lately, along with many others).
Bringing in HTML5/JavaScript/CSS as a platform to develop Metro-applications is language abuse of pretty much the worst possible kind, and using Internet Explorer as the platform to run it on is arguably even worse. I can foresee Microsoft getting serious legal issues because with this, they are once again forcing IE down people’s throat rather than letting you choose which browser to use. The infamous browser selection screen, and especially the debacle that led to its creation, is an issue that is going to roar its head and spew fire like it hasn’t done before.
Just about every single existing application is going to be marked as legacy/outdated in this new Metro interface, and the new application store (yes, yet another one) will again be a perfect opportunity for Microsoft to siphon cash from the pockets of hard-working developers.
The perfectly good explorer-interface from Windows 7 has been desecrated by forcing the infamous Ribbon UI on it. The fact that the world has widely shown its disapproval of the ribbon once again doesn’t seem to bother Microsoft in the least. They’ll do whatever the fuck they like and what the actual users want is certainly none of their concern.
Casual computer users will probably accept the new interface that comes with Windows 8, be it with a bit of getting used to. But unless Windows 8 has at least the option to turn Metro the fuck off and just use the desktop environment that we’ve all come to know and love (which is especially true for power users), Microsoft’s latest stillborn creation will be right up there alongside ME, Vista, and quite possibly, Bob.
Solutions
Lately, I’ve been putting quite a few hours in a little electronics project. It involves (amongst other things) a bunch of microcontrollers; primarily PIC18F2520 (or probably 18F2420 at a later point; it’s the same except for having less memory and being cheaper) but also an occasional PIC18F1330. These microcontrollers are supposed to talk to eachother using CAN.
CAN is a bus system that has some pretty neat features. It can handle a lot of devices, can achieve pretty good bit rates, it has very good error handling and bus arbitration functions, and so on. It was originally designed for use in vehicles (and in fact, any car manufactured in the last 10 or 20 years or so is largely built around tons of individual devices talking on a CAN bus) but of course there’s a lot of other situations in which the features offered by CAN are useful.
I’ve been trying out the new MPLAB X (which is still in beta). There are some major shortcomings, but overall it’s starting to look like a pretty good IDE, which is nice because I absolutely hate the old MPLAB. Compiling is done using Hi-Tech C.
Now, if you were to ask my opinion on Hi-Tech C a week or two ago, you’d get a pretty negative review. I’ve been having issues with it. Weird issues, like global variables not working (no matter what you write, they always read as 0 unless you access them via a pointer, which is a bit of a stupid and inefficient workaround). I’ve also been running it in Lite mode, rather than Pro, because in Pro mode it uses the big Omniscient Code Generation – an optimization technique which is actually quite good, except that it always seemed to turn out horribly bad code that performed nothing like it was supposed to.
It turned out that all of those issues were caused by the extended instruction set being enabled in the PIC’s configuration bits. What happens is that that bit doesn’t only make a few extra instructions available (8, in fact) that are primarily of interest to a C compiler, bit it also changes the way memory addressing is accomplished. Thus, if the extended instruction set is enabled while the compiler isn’t generating code that uses those extended instructions (or specifically, its way of addressing memory), things go wonky. Big time. Turn the extendend instruction set off, and everything works like a charm (OCG included, cutting the code size in half!). Today, I’m pretty darn happy with Hi-Tech C.
Of course, the user manual doesn’t make a single reference to the extended instruction set (I’d say this is exactly the sort of thing that should be mentioned in the manual, but yeah. It’s not).
Also, for the CAN part, I’ve been using a setup with the MCP2515 CAN controller IC, paired with an MCP2551 transceiver. By my initial look at the datasheets, this should have been easy, until the moment I got to actually using it and had to figure out how the bit timing configuration works (and it would seem that I havn’t been the only person to struggle with this). As it turns out, once you grasp it it’s simple enough, and since I havn’t been able to find a functional calculator tool on the Interwebz (just one for the older MCP2510, which isn’t entirely compatible), I might just find some time to write such a calculator.
Still, with the bit timing issue aside, the packets that one of two CAN nodes is transmitting don’t seem to be making it to the other end, for some reason. That’s a thing to figure out once I have the opportunity to put an oscilloscope in the mix and see what’s going on.
One Hundred and Zero
Words rarely satisfy me. More often than not, I find that the words and constructs in virtually any language are simply insufficient to describe exactly what I want to, to put an emotion or idea down exactly how it is, rather than cutting it off with the crude tools that mere words can provide. Despite that, with this one, I have managed to reach the one-hundreth post on this blog (not counting the ones made on the old DamnLeet – the era before a period of about a year where I temporarily lost control of the domain and all associated posts were lost). As such, I think it time for a little story.
Meow.
Meow.
Meow.
It was the sound that Robertus awaked to every morning.
Meow.
It could go on for ages before he actually woke up. It was a rather dull and soft sound, after all.
Meow.
But not today. Robertus had been clearly awake ever since the first moment the alarm clock started spewing forth its demonic rumble.
Meow.
He had lain in bed, enjoying the warmth and comfort of it, watching as the binary suns of Oomg-Zalaag slowly rose. The two small stars did a rather remarkable job at warming the little backwater planet, considering their tiny size. Suns were, after all, like any self-respecting star, supposed to be enormous you-really-cannot-imagine-how-big-they-are balls of flaming gas, hot infernoes of atoms colliding and fusing and getting so hot that they don’t really remember that they were atoms in the first place.
But not the suns of Oomg-Zalaag. No, the suns of Oomg-Zalaag were small enough to mistake for apples.
It was not the only interesting feature of the planet that Robertus had been calling his home since the day he was born. It also happened to be one of the many features that gave Oomg-Zalaag the wonderful reputation that it had proudly upheld for as long as anyone could remember: a small, filthy, dangerous, dull, poor, smelly, and just generally weird place where you really didn’t want your corpse to be found.
The matter of whether one wishes to have his or her corpse found at all is, of course, another matter. Most people, even those unfortunate enough to live on Oomg-Zalaag had generally stuck to the idea that dying is unpleasant and as such, they avoided doing so if at all possible.
Meow.
Robertus took another good long yawn before he finally convinced himself to get up. He had a lot of things planned for the day that he needed to see to, urgently. A great many of those things seemed to involve hanging around treestumps with Bozo, drinking, and falling asleep again.
The thought of it alone made Robertus reconsider his decision to get up.
However, the door that was being knocked on urged him to stick with his decision.
Robertus turned around in his bed, hoping that whoever it was would go away. The whoever it was didn’t. “Robertus McFidgydoodle?” asked a rather unhappy sounding voice on the other side of the door. “This is the police. Open up or we’ll have to force the door.”
Suddenly, Robertus jumped out of bed and quickly searched for something to put on. The idea of having to repair the door terrified him something awful. Having decided that just pants would be quite sufficient, he rushed to the door and opened it. He was greeted by a tall, red-ish alien creature that had attempted to wear police uniforms. It failed rather miserably at it; the police uniform had been designed to be worn by an approximately human-shaped individual with two arms and two legs. The alien had rather a few more of both, and appeared to have several regular uniforms stretched awkwardly around its body and taped together to cover its flesh.
Oomg-Zalaag silently proceeded to revolve slowly around its axis.
“Are you Robertus McFidgydoodle?” started the displeased looking alien. Robertus gave him a displeased look. “It says so on the door, don’t it?” Obvious questions annoyed him. They would only require energy on his part to answer. Wasted energy, as far as Robertus was concerned.
“We have a warrant to search your house. Actually, we don’t, but we just feel like it.” Robertus absently gestured with his hand that the alien was welcome to come in.
The alien slowly worked its way inside. Coordinating so many legs to move through a doorway made only for human passage proved to be somewhat of a challenge. The alien disliked it; not only were humans considered to be rather dull, inefficient, and not notably proficient at performing any task; their architecture turned out to be less than cooperating as well.
But Robertus was quite satisfied with being human. It may be rather dull, and he may have been clumsy and useless compared to most other races of the galaxy, but that had been a perfect match to his personal philosophy. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, he would always say – and if it is broke, don’t fix it unless you really need it.
He would then apply that same concept not only to fixing things, but to pretty much any activity that involved, well, doing something. Robertus was, as some would say, lazy.
At present, he was – in addition to lazy – also displeased. As most people, he didn’t take kind to being yelled at for having accidentally stored several crates of illegal weapons in his living room. Unfortunately, that was exactly what the police alien appeared to be doing. Worse, though, it was entirely possible that the alien had a point. Robertus considered this for a brief moment.
“… say can and will be used against you. You have the right to a lawyer, in the highly improbably scenario that one is willing to come to this rotten piece of rock out of his own free will, and also – ”
Oomg-Zalaag suddenly stopped revolving around its axis.
The shock of it propelled Robertus against the police alien. The creature screamed out in agony; several of its limbs were suddenly positioned in unusual angles.
Meow, went the alarm clock, while the planet shook violently. Sounds of broken glass, screams from injured people, and gasps from people who were wondering what had just happened filled the morning air. Dust came down from the ceiling. Several of the beams carrying the weight of the roof started to show cracks, under the continued stress of the ground shaking. Oomg-Zalaag certainly seemed very unpleased for suddenly losing all of its angular momentum.
Robertus figured it would be a nice time to temporarily abandon laziness in favor of survival, and run out of the door. Not any faster than strictly necessary, of course, but moving certainly seemed preferable to being crushed by his own house.
The police alien continued to scream while a roof beam broke and crashed down on the alien’s body. Quickly thereafter, he went silent.
Robertus looked back into his house, and saw the mutilated corpse of the police alien. Suddenly, he was grasped by a number of arms that pulled him forward, away from the doorway, which collapsed moments after he was clear of it. With a mighty crunch the walls of his house started on a rapid descend towards the ground. Dust went up into the air, possessions were broken under the weight of the rubble, and everything became a huge mess.
It was going to take forever to clean this up.
He gazed at his collapsing house while it, and most of the buildings around it, were slowly reduced to a pile of rubble and became progressively smaller. One of the people who had pulled him away from the door urged him to move. “You should come in now,” it said. “The airlock will be closing in a moment and we plan to break orbit in about an hour. Unless you wish to stay, of course, but then you’ll have to jump. Otherwise, you’re welcome to stay aboard the Fengor.”
Robertus suddenly realized that he was standing on the ramp of a smallish dark-green space ship heading away from the planet.
It had probably saved his life.
Gay
A short while back was the big anual Gay Pride event in Amsterdam. Lots of people, most of them straight, come outside, get on a boat sailing through Amsterdam’s canals, and celebrate how open-minded we are and how much gay people are accepted in our society.
But really, are they accepted?
‘Gay’ is still widely used as a swear word, as an insult, to indicate that something is bad in some way or to add emphasis to a negative remark. Most straight people, when asked about the subject, explain that they are totally okay with it if someone is gay, followed by very strongly emphasizing how they are not gay themselves. And there is the Gay Pride.
In my view, the Gay Pride is not so much a celebration of homosexuality being accepted, as it is an opportunity for straight people to go to the zoo and laugh at the apes. Except that the zoo is Amsterdam and the apes are the people on the boats. The whole problem is that we, as a society, are still making a clear distinction between straight people and gay people. And if you’re not in our group, you’re with the others, and that makes you more an object of curiosity (or ridicule) than anything else. Events like the Gay Pride that serve no purpose but to keep that separation intact.
And at the end of the day, what the hell are we busying ourselves with anyway? Unless you are actually romantically attracted to someone, does it really make any sort of difference to your life at all whether that person were to prefer penises, or vaginas, or both, or none, or any combination thereof?
We should just stop worrying so much about what other people do in their (generally private) bedroom (or living room, or kitchen, or bathroom, or car, or garden, or local park, or shopping mall, or…) all the time and instead worry about things that actually matter. Like what’s for dinner. Also, we should stop making any distinctions or judge people based on it. It’s great for you that you are whatever you are. You are straight, you are not. Also, I wore socks today, my car has tires, oranges that are less suitable as food than orange ones and the Earth is, by approximation, round.
But if it really adds something to your life to know this, I am straight, and like many men I have on occassion had curiosities but never enough to actually do anything with them. (Are you enlightened yet?) I know a great many people who prefer penises (as men), vaginas (as women), or both, or combinations thereof. Also, I know a great many people about whom I am not exactly sure what their sexual orientation is. Nor do I really care to. And does it have an effect on my life in any way?
Nope. Not a bit.
Deleted
MSN was displaying annoying ads lately for a dating site, telling that you should sign up. So, I clicked the ad, and sign up.
I made a profile for myself. Or well, sort of. On the site I was Albertus the Astronaut, a just-in-his-thirties male. A happy guy, friendly, atletic, nice, funny, warm, good listener, honest, good-looking, fond of children, and all those other things that people seem to consider good.
I was even about to add a picture from the Apollo moon landing.
And now they decided that the information was inaccurate, and this morning I received an e-mail that they are deleting my profile.
Apparantly, they’re never satisfied.
Long
So, even with the fastest quad-core Intel Core i7 CPU that can reasonably be bought and quite possibly the most insane amount of RAM I’ve ever stuck on any single motherboard, Windows Setup still takes forever.
Yep, you guessed it. I am (finally) upgrading my PC 
Insensitive
It is official. I am completely insensitive to caffeine.
I had a can of Monster Energy. This is one of those drinks that you’re not really supposed to have more than one of per day, because the amount of caffeine you’d get at that point would be plain unhealthy.
But alas, an hour later I was sound asleep 
Unending
So, it is finally over. With the last episode of Stargate Universe having aired a little while ago, and the movies that were planned, cancelled, the Stargate franchise is no more. It is a sad day in television history.
I have to admit though, that the backstory of Universe sounded more interesting than (most of) the series turned out to be. But in the last half of the second season, it finally started to become really good. And now the show is cancelled, on a cliffhanger no less, with no hope of resolving it in the foreseeable future. Back when Atlantis was cancelled in favor of Universe – the producers basically could choose between continuing Atlantis or starting Universe – I thought it was a shame but Universe sounded like it had potential. Even though Universe had it’s good parts, now I mostly think they shouldn’t have cancelled Atlantis.
But still, SG-1 was the best. Apophis remains one of my all-time favourite villains (though Farscape’s Scorpius has more than a little brilliance to him as well).
Goodbye, Stargate. You will be missed.