Monthly Archive for January, 2007

hierarchy

Let me break it down.

cheese on toast > cheese sandwich.

And while

cheese on toast > grilled cheese sandwich

it can not follow that

grilled cheese sandwich < cheese sandwich

due to what if often referred to as Cheddar's Theorem (Almqvist, Poole et al - 1974), which clearly states

D = -k(dT-T0)^2 + F

Where D is some objective measure of deliciousness, dT is the temperature of the cheese above room temperature. T0, k and F are all positive constants, with F dependant on the type of cheese, T0 on the eater's pain threshold, and k on the delivery method of the cheese.

This produces a graph much like the following:
cheese

As you can see, cheese is quite delicious at room temperature, and even when refrigerated to some extent. But beneath some key temperature it becomes too cold. As you heat cheese above room temperature it becomes yet more delicious, and increases inversely proportional to the square of the temperature difference approaching some ideal temperature. Beyond this the cheese is too hot, causing discomfort to the eater.

To simplify: within typical culinary temperatures, cheese gets tastier the warmer it is. Thus a grilled cheese sandwich is always going to be tastier than a plain cheese sandwich, even before you take into account the different k-values of grilled and raw bread.

Wordpress 2.stupid

Wordpress updated. Yay!

No, not yay.

They changed the link manager to a blogroll manager, and re-jigged the API(s) for calling up a list of links from this manager. That’s something I do a fair bit around here.

Now invoking the simple “wp_get_links(1)” gives me a plain list of all the links in all categories, separated by line-breaks, suffixed with their descriptions and divided into sub-categories separated by a large title.

Seems I now need “get_links(7, ‘[li]‘, ‘[/li]‘,’ ‘, FALSE, ‘name’, FALSE, FALSE, -1, FALSE, TRUE);”
Which would be just fine, if the wordpress codex was even half-trustworthy and I didn’t have to stumble down half a dozen dead ends until I reach the tag I want…

God knows why all the category IDs have been incremented by 6.

And there’s still no way to set the size of thumbnails without delving into the includes themselves.

To complain about something I’ve actually paid for: Bulldog raised the signal to noise ratio of my line today, to try and stop the modem from having to re-train every minute or so (which happens profusely after about 5pm). It seems to maybe be happening less often now, but has happened a bunch of times since, so it’s not fixed. Grrr.

Dietary Requirements

Tonight we cooked everything.

There was chicken, some of it wrapped in bacon, mashed potato, poached eggs, fried mushrooms, brussel sprouts, parsnips, steamed carrots and also peas.

One of the most varied meals I’ve had in a while, made all the more unusual because Helen and I are on a really restrictive diet right now. No sugar, no dairy, no gluten, no corn, no soya, no pepper, no vinegar, no sex, no drugs, no wine, no women, no fun, no sin, no you, no wonder it’s dark.

Basically, we’ve cut out everything that everyone could possibly be intolerant to, and then once we’ve been clean for two weeks we’ll re-introduce stuff one by one in a very methodical fashion and see that happens.

Mealtimes around here are very boring right now. I long for chocolate. Shit, even a yoghurt-covered banana chip would thrill me right up right now.

Last exam of the season tomorrow. Law. Argh.

piracy~

Yesterday I bought a R4DS. It arrived today. This is pretty good going, if you ask me, and a credit to the Royal Mail.

swedish devices - for those lacking an imagination“But what the hell is it?” you ask! “Is it another one of those Swedish… devices you used to use?” you add, cautiously. And since we’re narrating this conversation let’s say I try to feign shock at that last bit, and throw in some indignation for good measure. I then patiently explain how this device is a game cartridge for a Nintendo DS which accepts a micro SD card.

What you put on this SD card is up to you, of course. You might put music on it (MP3, OGG, other things, I don’t know), or specially formatted video, maybe eBooks? Its primary purpose, however, is to be filled with .NDS files – “rips”, or “dumps” if you will, of legitimate DS cartridges. Such files are, of course, widely available, so long as you know which tube to look in.

Thus far it has been found to work without flaw or seam. I have now entrusted the device to Helen until after my final exam on Friday, at which point she may or may not relinquish control. Nintendogs, it seems, is able to consign an individual into some kind of trance-like state, one in which they maintain only a peripheral connection with our crude fleshspace.

I created~

So, I’m a shameless nerd.

To confess, I got the idea from the comments at The Secret Diary of (fake) Steve Jobs (which I highly reccomend anyone read, because it is funny), it did not spring fully formed from my own mind.

A desktop background, chronicling the three ages of geek, or something:

iPhone youPhone weAllPhone for iPhone

behold, in all its glory!In February Orange are going to say to me “hey there, valued customer, you can have a brand new shiny handset now, totally for free!” and in response I shall say, “Eh, I suppose.” – I have been shown the future of phones, and I have been told that I must wait patiently.

I mean, I still really want the W850i, but now it is merely the best handset currently available. I would be pleased with it, but I would also be waiting for better things. I am not sure how the W850i will feel about this – it is not a solid ground on which to build a rewarding and lasting relationship.

In the mean-time I shall content myself with the things that are not so cool about the iPhone, that I might yearn for it a little bit less.

No 3rd party apps. That means no Skype, no IRC, no SuDoKu game, all the raw capability that redeems WinMo and Symbian.

No external memory. You’re stuck at 4/8GB. It’s a lot now, but maybe 12 months down the line when I actually get to buy one it will have been surpassed by a whole industry playing catch-up.

Low-res camera. My current phone is two years old, and it has a 2mpx cam. Also, no word on focus or a flash, methinks that particular part isn’t ready yet.

EDGE isn’t really 3G, I’ve never had a 3G phone though, and EDGE still beats the shit out of GPRS…

No IM. And with no support for a 3rd party client I am reduced to 10p-a-go SMS.

A merely mortal battery, but tasked with powering a phone of biblical capabilities. 5 hours talk-time is plenty, and I’m sure it’ll last forever on standby, but who could resist the urge to play with its power-hungry bells and whistles all day?

ZOMG Expensive. No word on European pricing yet, but in America it is going to cost approximately the price of a PS3 – with a 2-year contract. I can only hope this is Cingular being ass-backwards or something.

No IP syncing. I don’t want to fill up 8GB over wifi, but if all I need is my calendars and a small playlist then it’d be nice to have the option.

It’s BIG. I did a size comparison, right? Same width as the iPod, same weight and same thickness (by which I mean, between the 80GB and 30Gb variants), but a whole half inch taller. It is huge like Xbox.

Of course, I’m still going re-mortgage my house and sell Helen to some Arabs to buy this when it finally appears, I’m just trying to rationalise waiting in the meantime.