Musings from the cloudface on virtualisation and (often un)related topics
Sometimes the simplest things can be the hardest to explain. Here, Admiral Grace Hopper (who retired as the oldest serving member of America’s armed forces) describes propagation delay by showing the audience a light-nanosecond. Genius!
Grace Hopper did more for women in technology than probably anyone else, even Judith Hann.
I have been greatly enjoying the Westminster Hall debate on cycling prompted by The Times “cities fit for cycling” campaign.
Many good points were made: my MP commented (as I had said to him in correspondence before) that magic white paint is not a solution to badly engineered junctions.
Sarah Wollaston commented on the joy of cycling, which I echo – pleasure while commuting no less! – and also safety in numbers, and changing the language, using “crash” or “collision” instead of “accident”, since so many are down to carelessness.
Many others commented. Very few repeated standard clueless nonsense, most were positive about cycling and cyclists, positive about the idea of investing properly in cycling as a public health and prosperity measure. Training was emphasised, which is good, as was maintenance and (of course) driving skills.
Overall it was a good debate, and I hope the momentum continues.
Tutoyer is a French word meaning to use the familiar tu when addressing someone, to be on familiar terms.
To English people the existence of the two forms of address – vous versus tu (or Sie versus du in German) seems odd. In both languages the formal version is the plural, whereas in English we don’t have a plural form of you.
Or do we?
I have been reading Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (or Lettres ecrites de Londres sur les Anglois et autres sujets) in order to improve my French. The first section of this discusses the Quakers and notes in particular that
Ils furent quelquefois persécutés sous Charles II, non pour leur religion, mais pour ne vouloir pas payer les dîmes au clergé, pour tutoyer les magistrats, et refuser de prêter les serments prescrits par la Loi.
In translation, this is rendered, more or less, as:
The Quakers were several times persecuted under Charles II.; not upon a religious account, but for refusing to pay the tithes, for “theeing” and “thouing” the magistrates, and for refusing to take the oaths enacted by the laws.
So, in the England of the 18th Century there was an equivalent to the French familiar tu, and it was thee or thou - and it was enforced with a firmness any French teacher would envy (vous ne devriez pas tutoyer vos professeurs!). You will see this in the earliest English language Bibles, the most familiar context now for “thee and thou” language, and this matches the Lutheran Bible with its use of du when addressing God, as we hear in Bach’s many settings of Lutheran chorales and other sacred texts, in Brahms’ German Requiem (Herr, du bist würdig) and so on.
We think of French and German as having an additional formal form of address, but in fact we have lost the informal singular.
This is something that annoys me quite disproportionately. When I was a lad it was drummed into me that a measurement is in fact comprised of two numbers: the measurement itself, and its attendant uncertainty.
It’s obvious to most people that if you say something is about half a kilometre away, that’s an estimate probably accurate to only one significant figure. But write it down in metres and suddenly the meaning is lost.
Let me give you an example from a book I’m flipping through:
“[I]t was estimated that the gun could penetrate 30mm of armour at 457m (500 yards).”
Leaving aside for a moment the fact that this was World War I, so probably 30mm means 1¼”, the estimate of 500 yards, an estimate to one significant figure, has been converted using a calculator to 457m. And why stop there? A millimetre is 0.0393700787402″ to 12 significant figures, we could use that instead. But it would be stupid. Whoever made the conversion recongised that it was stupid to write 457.2m but failed to appreciate that exactly the same rationale makes it inappropriate to give a conversion to three significant figures based on estimates which are to one or two significant figures at best.
You see this all the time. “Approximately 2 miles (3.2km)”. No, it’s about 3km, consistent with the accuracy of the original estimate.
I blame calculators. People have lost the skill of rough reckoning and analogue conversion, they now accept whatever the plastic brain spits out. In this climate it’s not hard to see how people get misled by the miserably poor standard of reporting on statistics.
Cinemeccanica cakestand
This is a cakestand. Not the sort that the Women's Institute would recognise, of course, it’s a piece of projection equipment.
When I was a penniless student oaf I was technical officer of Union Films, the multiple award winning student film society of Southampton University. I was a projectionist, too, of course, and specialised in showing very long films. I think the longest I ever showed was 11 reels, but I could be wrong. The Color Purple sticks in my mind as one of the longer ones, and Kelly's Heroes as the one form which the most souvenir frames had been taken by previous exhibitors…
A standard feature would be maybe five reels (2000′ per reel of 35mm film, 18″ per second, around 22 min per reel). There are a couple of ways of handling this: the classic way is to have two projectors running the film from top to bottom, and to switch projectors at the end of each reel. That’s what the white flashing cue marks are for at the top right of the screen every 20 minutes or so.
A Cinemeccanica V5, I have driven one of these. Two, in fact.
Obviously that’s a lot of projector switching, with potential for mistakes, and a lot of handling. One way of mitigating that is to join three 2000′ reels onto a single 6000′ reel, as with the picture of the Cinemeccanica V5 at right, so there’s only one change per film (or more for long ones).
But the second option, colloquially termed the cakestand, fixes three problems at once: it removes the need to switch for all but the very longest films, and it removes the need to rewind, and it also removes the need to keep two projectors focussed.
The film is spooled as usual (spooling is checking for broken sprocket holes and other imperfections that might cause the film to break in the projector), joined onto 6000′ reels then wound onto the horizontal platters. These can take over a dozen 2000′ reels, 8km of film or 17,500s (4.8h) of playing time – enough for the most self-indulgent epic.
Once you’ve wound the film onto the platter you remove the centre ring and put the payout arm in place. This takes film off the inside of the spool while the platter is driven by a motor. If the platter runs too fast the payout arm is pulled clockwise and the controller senses this and speeds the motor up – and the reverse if the platter is running too slowly.
The film is then run across to the projector (only one needed though most theatres will still have two in place) and run through the gate in the usual way. It’s then taken from the bottom of the projector and run back to another platter on the stand, which is also motor driven so takes up the film as it plays.
Film on cakestand
The result is a continuous run of film with no reel changes. You can even run the film from one projector to another and show it twice more or less concurrently (the Odious at St. Albans used to do this for popular films, I’m told).
So there you go, I hope you found that interesting. There’s some more arcana of projection I can share when I’ve found suitable pictures of things like anamorphs. It was quite engrossing at the time.
As often seems to happen a train of thought has resonated across several areas of life.
I was doing some work on a customer relationship management (CRM) system and it occurred to me that CRM systems are one of the things that make big, faceless corporations appear… big and faceless. It’s not that we don’t want them to remember us and our preferences, but the way CRM systems work it’s always rather like a child actor who is not quite capable of delivering the lines in a convincing way, leaving you constantly aware of the fact that this is someone playing the part of a personal relationship and not the real thing.
The same came up in discussion with Jimmy Wales and Johann Hari in the pub yesterday. I have said before that having a social media strategy is a strong indicator that a company doesn’t get social media, and Jimmy was saying that a startup based on crowdsourcing is inherently doomed, which is another side of the same coin: if your goal is to exploit social relationships rather than enable them then you are not really doing social media.
Today I went to collect the wife’s car from the garage after a service. They last saw me last July when I took my car in for service. The boss greeted me by name, the receptionist (his daughter) brought me the paperwork for the car and talked me through the new MOT certificate format, and on the way out the boss ribbed me gently about the “half a bike” in the workshop (I had ridden there on my Brompton). No CRM here: this is RA Engineering, a family firm where I have been taking my cars for the best part of twenty years. The relationship is genuine.
Even social media itself is a mixed bag, I find. I can’t remember who it was said that Facebook is where you are friends with people you hate in real life, while Twitter is where you make real friendships with people you’ve never met. That’s a bit close for comfort with me, though of course an exaggeration for comic effect. Friends Reunited is a bit of a fail, though good for those who rely on old school networks. LinkedIn is all about “what can you do for me”, OK in its way but not where I’d hang out. Wikipedia, on the other hand, is, and always has been, properly social. That’s how come I was sipping beer with Jimmy. Wikipedia forges bonds of trust – not uncritical, we know each other’s faults and the best Wikipedians can help others to understand what those faults are and compensate for them, but in the end we know that if Uncle G or made this edit then it is almost certainly reliable, and if Newyorkbrad is active on a talk page then the raging fire will be out momentarily.
I like social media when it is properly social. I am much more ambivalent about the types of social media which gain all or part of their revenue and user base by facilitating marketing and using their popularity as bait for those who pay the bill. I donate to Wikipedia precisely because it has never done this and I would rather pay for a Twitter that banned spammers (yes, @BoironUSA, this means you) than have a free Twitter that allows them. Still, Twitter is properly social, I have forged some strong friendships there, whereas I have not met any new friends via LinkedIn or Facebook (and no I bloody well will not allow your cruddy app to access my profile and send mail on my behalf, thanks all the same).
The Abbey School at Reading have pulled off something of a coup: last year they persuaded Roger Vignoles and Elizabeth Watts to visit, work with the girls during the day and give a recital in the evening, which was a preview of a recital they were about to give later that month. This was a success for all concerned, and this year Roger returned with John Mark Ainsley.
I have only heard Aisley singing big roles – oratorio and opera solos – so it was an absolute revelation to hear him sing lieder. In a programme of Mendelssohn, Brahms and Schumann he showed a delicacy and subtlety which were breathtaking to experience. He and Vignoles came across as an established and comfortable partnership; the standard of musicianship was incredibly high, they seemed to have a symbiotic connection resulting in a flawless ensemble allowing for tremendous flexibility with tempi and dynamics.
This was a hard-core programme of lieder: all in German, three lengthy blocks of singing, and the audience, largely made up of teenagers, was spellbound. The art of listening to and loving song is alive and well in one small corner of Reading, it seems.
Lieder singing has been described as the art of singing often indifferent German poetry in an incredibly mannered style. Well, tonight’s recital blew that old chestnut out of the water. There was an immediacy and a sense of a conversation, it felt very much of the moment and there was no point at which technique – vocal or pianistic – intruded in any way. These two performers are at the very top of their profession and they showed it by being the very humblest servants of the music and especially of the poetry of Heinrich Heine.
This, too, was a preview for a recital to be given later this week at the Wigmore Hall. Here’s the link for the programme. If you love classical music but have not yet succumbed to the lure of lieder, or if you want to experience the art at its highest level, I urge you to book now. I think you will be transported, as we were tonight.
Home movies. Embarrassing, eh? Well, not always. Here is one from the camera of James Rudd Ratcliffe, my wife’s maternal grandfather. Taken at Croydon around 1936 it includes footage of a number of airliners of the time including G-ACJK Imperial Airways Short L17 Syrinx, G-AAXC Imperial Airways Handley Page HP42 “Heracles”, HB-ISI Swiss Airlines Douglas DC2, F-AMHL Air France Wibault 280, G-AEPW De Havilland DH89A Rapide and what I am fairly sure is a Junkers JU52-3M, presumably Deutsche Luft Hansa.
Well, I thought it was rather interesting anyway and I hope you will too.
Update: the second aircraft seen is either OO-AGU, OO-AGV or OO-AGW, all Junkers JU53/3mge seemingly supplied to S.A.B.E.N.A. around 1936. One is preserved in Brussels aircraft museum, another was apparently lost in a crash in the Belgian Congo in 1944. Factory records are apparently confusing, listing at least three frame numbers for AGU. AGU went to the Potuguese air force in 1937, so this film is probably 1936 or 1937.
I am told by James Ratcliffe’s nephew that the final aircraft is indeed a Ju52-3m of Deutsche Luft Hansa, and on board was Joachim von Ribbentrop.
(Shamelessly stolen from elsewhere).
To whom it may concern
Dear Sir / Madam,
Holiday Greetings!
Without prejudice
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all.. and a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2012, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make this country great (not to imply that this country is necessarily greater than any other country), and without regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, or sexual orientation of the wisher.
This wish is limited to the customary and usual good tidings for a period of one year, or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first. “Holiday” is not intended to, nor shall it be considered, limited to the usual Judeo-Christian celebrations or observances, or to such activities of any organized or ad hoc religious community, group, individual or belief (or lack thereof).
Note: By accepting this greeting, you are accepting these terms.
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Yours faithfully,
For and on behalf of messrs. Sue, Grabbit and Runne, solicitors at law, commissioners for oaths, threats issued.
Site last updated February 26, 2012 @ 2:40 am
