Colin's Journal: A place for thoughts about politics, software, and daily life.
SimpleTAL 3.2 is now available. Notable changes from previous versions:
New features
Bug fixes
Thanks to Wichert Akkerman for the initial implementation of the 'python:' path, the move to string methods, and for finding the repeat variable scope problem.
This posting on Gallowglass provides an interesting insight into one of the changes that the proposed constitution introduces. It seems that the number of areas covered (both in theory and in practise) by the co-decision procedure will be increased. Co-decision is where the Council and the Parliament both have to agree on something for it to be adopted, essentially ensuring the the will of the Parliament has to be respected.
Given that the European Parliament is the only democratic element of the EU institutions I'm not sure why Matthew Yglesias thinks this is a bad idea. The major reason that no-one cares about the European elections is because it's clear that the Parliament doesn't have any significant power. Ensuring that a majority of the elected representatives and a qualified majority of member states are in agreement seems like a good way of enacting EU legislation to me.
DRM is usually taken to mean Digital Rights Management, an often derided concept that entails restrictions as to what can be done with digital media. I've just learnt about another meaning for DRM: Digital Radio Mondiale.
This version of DRM is a digital radio standard for existing AM band radio stations (frequencies less than 30MHz, including short, medium and long wave). The broadcasts are to start on the 16th of June this year, and the standard is ratified for most of the world (Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia/New Zealand), with the notable exception of North and South America. The quality is claimed to be similar to that of existing FM services, but not as good as the main digital radio standard DAB.
I doubt I'll be hearing any DRM broadcasts soon because the current generation of digital radios only seem to be supporting DAB (based on higher frequencies and useful over shorter distances than DRM). I can't imagine how the marketing for DRM will work given the name clash with a disliked technology, and the phrase 'digital radio' being so closely associated with DAB.
Recommending beer in general is a fairly pointless exercise, it is after all generally regarded fairly highly by most. In this case however I'm recommending a particular brand of beer.
Chimay is readily available, even in the government run wasteland of the LCBO, and is an excellent beer. It's a Belgian Trappist beer that I was first introduced to after a colleague of mine named a server after it. Be warned however that it is on the fairly strong side, with the red label version running at 7%.
To make matters more interesting it only seems to be sold in 750ml bottles in Toronto.
I've finally got around to uploading my backup scripts, now named RSyncBackup. There are two scripts: RSyncBackup a Python module that provides a convenient interface to rsync, and an example backup.py script that demonstrates how to use RSyncBackup.
The RSyncBackup module is the same version that I have running on my machine, and so far I've not discovered any bugs with it. If you aren't familiar with rsync take things slowly with this, otherwise you could end-up with less data than you started with.
If anyone uses this please let me know.
Another draft of the first part of the EU constitution were published today. Most of it seems fairly good to my untrained eyes, but I do take issue with the amount of space that has been given to the development of a common foreign and security policy (Article I-39). Take for example:
Member States shall consult one another within the Council and the European Council on any foreign and security policy issue which is of general interest in order to determine a common approach. Before undertaking any action on the international scene or any commitment which could affect the Union's interests, each Member State shall consult the others within the Council or the European Council. Member States shall ensure, through the convergence of their actions, that the Union is able to assert its interests and values on the international scene. Member States shall show mutual solidarity.
By having a clause like this (which carries no real weight) the whole constitution is going to be taken less seriously. It would have been better to state, in the preamble, that a common foreign policy is an aspiration, and then issued a constitutional amendment at some point in the future when such a policy is more realistic.
Mean while the Tories don't like it, claiming it's a step on the road to an EU state, without actually letting us know which bit they don't like. Presumably under a Conservative government we would just fail to ratify the constitution and get kicked out of the EU. The reporting the BBC is doing seems to be fairly well balanced politically, but inaccurate as far as actual content is concerned.
For example in the linked article they state that the constitution calls for an elected EU president and foreign minister. This is accurate, but gives the impression that the they would be elected by the people, whereas the constitution states that the European Council will elect the president by qualified majority. The BBC also states that The new EU president would be a serving or former prime minister of an EU country elected by the leaders of member states.
, whereas the constitution specifically states that: The President of the European Council may not be a member of another European institution or hold a national mandate.
Eurovision has just finished (yes I watched it on-line, terrible isn't it?) with Turkey winning (good song) and the UK as the only country to get no points! This will mean that we have to go through a qualifying round next year before we can even take part in the final. Still we certainly deserved it.
Russia's entry (Tatu) turned out a very poor song, and despite the hype came in third. A very close call at the end with the final vote determining the winner - you can't get better than that.
My vote was split between several different countries: Turkey, Belgium, Sweden and Germany (yes it's cheesy, but it's fun!).
It's been a long week this week, despite only starting on Tuesday. I've been on training at work, and so of course this week was when all the conference calls had to happen. This meant 8am calls, 6pm calls, and interrupted training for most of the week, although things were calmer today.
It's a peculiar aspect of the work that I do that I have never met some of the people I work most closely with. With most work taking place via email and conference call there just hasn't been a reason to meet up with them, and I fully expect to complete one of my current projects without ever meeting the people involved.
On another note our email/web host went offline yesterday for several hours. As a result we have certainly lost email, so if anyone has sent me anything in the last 24 hours please send it again.
Victoria day is upon us! An extra day of weekend is greatly appreciated, here's some notes on how it's been spent and how it will be spent:
The call for a referendum on the UK's ratification of the EU Constitution seems to be gathering steam. I suspect that it won't happen, simply because the Constitution is mostly a (long overdue) paper work exercise. There are some changes to the demarcation of powers between states and EU level, but with the potential exception of a president for the European Council there's not that much change from the status quo.
Given this it's hard to see what a referendum question would be on. If the question was on the adoption or rejection of the constitution, what would happen with a rejection? If there was a particular part of the proposed constitution (and note that it's not even finished yet!) that was controversial for the British public then a rejection could lead to re-negotiation, but at the moment I can't see which particular aspect could be singled out like that.
It looks like we are finally going to see some serious competition in the handheld game console market, after years of domination by Nintendo. The two most serious contenders are Sony with a PlayStation handheld, and Nokia with the N-Gage console/phone combo. There's also some movement on a PalmOS based games console, but with this coming from a startup we are less likely to see this being a big player in the market.
With these new entrants we are also seeing some innovation that goes beyond what has been essentially the same format for the handheld console. Sony is basing their console on a 1.8GB optical disk format, protected in a plastic case, with better graphical capabilities than the PSone, and up to two hours of full screen video being available. They will have connectivity via USB 2.0, and memory stick support.
The biggest question is going to be on battery life - spinning an optical disk takes a lot of power compared to reading data out of a memory cartridge. If Sony can get a good life span out of it then it could become an essential travel gadget, especially if the latest DVD releases also become available for it. The competition is tough though - Nintendo is claiming the Gameboy Advance SP has ten hours of battery life with the light on, and eighteen hours with the built in light switched off! The importance of battery life in a handheld console should not be underestimated.
The combination of a game console with a phone is in itself a major innovation, but how many people will be willing to have a phone that is so obviously a game device? A less spectacular innovation, but still interesting, is the use of bluetooth to enable wireless head to head gaming. It will certainly be more convenient than messing around with cables, but I doubt it'll become a killer feature.
Apparently EU voters are not "mature" enough for an EU wide referendum to be held. The evidence for this: that given an undisclosed list of people to vote for, a sample of French voters picked the only Frenchman on the list, the rather famous Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
As Europunditry points out, in what way does this research show that an EU wide vote on adopting the constitution would be invalid? Even if we accept the hypothesis that people will generally vote for someone from their own country, how does this invalidate an EU wide vote for adopting or rejecting a constitution?
If an EU president was elected by vote (not something that's being considered at the moment) this research might be of some interest. The major point that is raised for me however is not that the European public is not mature enough to vote in an election of a president, rather that the voting method used is of critical importance. If a single transferable vote method was used, or multiple rounds of voting (probably impractical), you could very quickly get the electorate interested in candidates that aren't from their own country.
I've released version 0.4 of TALAggregator, my RSS aggregation software. This release fixes a problem where some feeds would not be successfully parsed because of the interaction between MySQL and Python when handling Unicode strings.
The source of the bug is that the MySQL interface in Python can do automatic conversion to and from Unicode for VARCHAR columns. Unfortunately it doesn't perform this magic for LONGTEXT columns, leading to all sorts of confusion on my part. It's should be solved now - I've disabled the automatic conversion and do it all myself.
Finding near by paths suitable for in-line skating is difficult in Toronto. If you are a good in-line skater who doesn't mind the odd hill, gravel road, or tram tracks there's plenty of choice. With my skill level however I've found it best on the beaches and out on the islands, both of which take a considerable time to get there.
I decided to try my luck at Etienne Brule Park this afternoon, and it seems like a good place. In theory you can follow the trail all the way up to Lawrence, but I found that the path deteriorated in quality by Dundas West. Maybe once I've got back into the swing of things I'll try going further up.
From the Old Mill subway station it's just a short walk to the park where the path starts. There's a separate brick path for pedestrians, and a paved path for cyclists and bladers both of which generally follow the path of the river upstream. The surface quality is mixed but generally good, with the inclines being shallow enough for me to cope with. The path does climb slowly as you work up river, which means that coming back is much more fun. It's a shame that it's not a little longer, but I may yet give the path into Lambton Woods another go to try and extend the run.
It seems that BitTorrent is finally getting some mainstream press, inevitably because of it's use to download material that's under copyright. The BBC has an article describing how that latest episodes of US TV shows are being made available for download.
The two take away points from this article seem to be that the "problem" is at this point rather small (not many people doing it), and also hard to disrupt. I'm sure that TV companies will try to shut down sites assisting in the distribution of TV shows in this fashion despite the difficulties of doing so. Other actions that they are less likely to take, but which might also have an impact:
If downloading TV shows becomes really popular it could even become just another channel of distribution. If it's easy to find an official version (with adverts) most people are not going to bother hunting down a hard to find version which has had the adverts stripped out. Bandwidth costs can be contained through the use of the peer-to-peer network, although multiple versions would have to be provided so that the advertising is targeted to the correct audience.
I suspect the biggest challenge would be that people can skip through the adverts, which reduces the amount of income derived from them. If they are kept short enough however it might work, it takes time to skip ahead and then backtrack to the point where the advert finishes and the show resumes...
There's a fairly detailed rant/analysis of the new on-line rail timetable in The Register and all it's failings. Some of the things mentioned in the article have already been corrected (for example the 'Today' and 'Tomorrow' buttons are back), however the best part of the article is the link to the German alternative. Yes you can search for UK train times using the German site, and it's better than the new UK version!
Not only can you search for train times for journeys in the UK, but it seems to handle most European countries. For example you can work out that you can take the "train" from Helsinki (yep Finland) to Preston in a mere 44 hours 52 mins!
For the curious: You take a two hour train from Helsinki to Turku, the overnight ferry to Stockholm, then back on the train to Hamburg with a change in Koebenhavn. Another train to Bruxelles (Brussels), the Eurostar to Waterloo, underground to Euston and then a direct train to Preston.
Perhaps more realistically you can do Preston to Venice in just shy of 21 hours, with only 3 changes (excluding the underground)! If you fancy having a play yourself check the timetable site out.
I've just had my first skate of the year, and my feet hurt. I managed to spend half an hour (I know, pathetic isn't it?) outside in the bright sunshine skating around the neighbourhood without falling once.
If the weather is this good next weekend I think I'll head down to the beaches, the paths there should be in far better condition than the roads around our house are, and the scenery is far more interesting.
I've uploaded a few pictures from Kevin and Mary's wedding. If you would like to see them (see me in a suit!) drop me an email and I'll send you the login details.
I think I've tracked down the reason for this page not being displayed correctly in IE. I was setting the width of the left hand column explicitly, which worked fine in Mozilla but caused IE to display visual glitches. Having removed this it now seems to display OK in both browsers (you may have to control-reload the page to see the fix).
Mozilla's "DOM Inspector" was very useful in helping to find this - highly recommended for web development.
On the way in to work this morning I spotted the Metro headline, that two more people have died of SARS in Toronto, so I looked up what the Globe & Mail were saying on the subject. The article is interesting because I learnt a couple of things that I've not seen mentioned elsewhere:
Although SARS has been linked to a specific coronavirus, that virus is being detected in fewer and fewer cases. And, more puzzling, it has been found in some people who show no symptoms, suggesting that it is possible to contract SARS without ever knowing it.
Francis Plummer, the scientific director at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, told the conference at a Toronto hotel that only 40 per cent of people who have been diagnosed as probable SARS cases have tested positive for the virus. That number has declined in recent days to almost zero - something the scientists are at a loss to explain.
So it appears that cause of SARS is still a bit of a mystery. It makes sense that in some cases the virus would show up without any of the symptoms, but why would people with the symptoms of SARS not have the virus present if it does indeed cause the disease?
Last Modified: Thu, 25 Mar 2004 04:20:39 GMT
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Copyright 2008 Colin Stewart
Email: colin at owlfish.com