Joe's Blog

A new harmonium Part 3: Bellows

Sun, 08 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Start with Part 1.

Bellows are a mystery to me. Even now. There are plenty of tutorials showing you how to draw lines on paper and then fold them up, but my brain doesn’t find it easy to visualise it. Easily solved, I’ll just make a model.

A new Harmonium 2: Deconstruction

Sat, 07 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Start with Part 1.

I just wanted another portable harmonium. Whether that meant buying or building one.

I saw one on eBay, listed as a fixer-upper that doesn’t play. I had to get it. In the best case I would have a harmonium. In the worst case I would have learned something.

The seller was quite open about it not working. I took the gamble, and met him in a car park off the M4. It looked exactly like its photo.

A new harmonium 1: Springs

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I should be clear that I already have a harmonium. It has three octaves, two ranks (voices) and knee-pedals to operate the swells. It’s small, and folds up smaller. If you saw me carrying it you might mistakenly think I was struggling with a very heavy suitcase.

Performance of folktunefinder.com and Cloudflare

Sun, 21 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Long story short

I put Cloudflare and a CAPTCHA on Folk Tune Finder. It’s a pragmatic decision, which ensures that the limited resources of the site are used for the people it’s intended for. It’s an uneasy trade-off that doesn’t align with all of my principles. It does, though, align with the fundamental principle of folk tune finder: helping people to find tunes.

Three Bean Salad: Jingleography

Sat, 15 Jan 2022 12:00:00 +0000

I have been asked to pass on the following message to Three Bean Salad Podcast:

Esteemed Beans,

Your recent episode, “Elevators”, was so flagrant in its profligate use of jingles that I must break my silence and share my top secret research project.

Unlike many, I don’t use your podcast to go to sleep. But I do use it to wake up, and the jingles really get me out of bed. Knowing the exact timings of each episode is crucial for my scientific lifestyle. I have therefore scientifically catalogued every jingle and cross-referenced it against every episode.

Pipes and Paper: Ancient Abstractions (or: hacking my ReMarkable tablet into a live presentation tool)

Sun, 11 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

None of the below is particularly original. That’s kind of the point.

Paper

I’m addicted to paper. When reviewing documents I prefer to print them out and scribble on them. That’s all well and good in an office located on a planet with infinite trees, but I find myself in neither of those situations.

As a programmer, I also find it useful to scribble things down on paper, point at various scribble marks and ask people questions. I do enjoy making carefully perfected, data generated, diagrams with arcane tools. But scribbling is a necessary precursor.

A Light Box in Heavy Times

Sun, 22 Mar 2020 00:00:00 +0000

My son is nearing his second birthday, which makes him nearly two years old. When he was only four months old I decided that I would make him something with buttons. I didn’t have much more of an idea than that, but I ordered one hundred illuminated buttons and started mulling what to do with them. Nothing much happened for a few months; I knew this was a long term plan. But every so often my subconscious would come up for breath, and I would open the drawer and get them out. Just to see how they felt.

UX for Toddlers

Mon, 09 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This was a micro-slot talk at Oxford Geek Nights #51.

As my son found his feet and began to walk, he found his hands at perfect height to reach the piano. Music is very important to us, and I could not have been more delighted to see him walk over to the piano and press the keys with the tips of his fingers.

Dry Land

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 21:30:00 +0000

This is the ninth of the eight boat stories, and quite possibly the last.

“May the road rise up to meet you”, goes the saying.

In eight years I spent living on a boat, the water did rise up to meet me quite suddenly once or twice: one minute ‘down there’ and the next ‘rushing up to meet me at speed’. On other occasions, during floods, it rose slowly, deliberately, made its point and then ebbed away.

Guyana

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 21:00:00 +0000

This is the eighth, and penultimate, of the eight boat stories.

My first boat, Dawn, arrived with a Lister LR2 diesel engine. When I bought her, the boat was about 20 years old, but the engine was double that. What lives, I wondered, had the engine had before it ended up in a boat?

It wasn’t a terribly long after that that my father laid his hands on a very slightly better engine, a Lister SR2, and convinced me that it would be in my interests to swap engines. The Great Engine Swap ensued. And you can read about it here, here and here.

Wot? No Diesel?

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 20:00:00 +0000

This is the seventh of the eight boat stories.

Canal boats aren’t quiet. They may seem that way from a distance, but, when underway, the captain is often unable to hear the first mate over the sound of the engine. Important communications, such as offers of cups of tea often go unheard. At least, that’s the most generous interpretation of the occasional lack of tea. (One mustn’t take a cynical approach to boating; that way lies bow thrusters).

Icebergs

Sat, 06 Apr 2019 19:00:00 +0000

This is the sixth of the eight boat stories.

Boats are akin to swans. Which is to say that they’re like icebergs. Whatever their appearance, there’s a lot more going on beneath the surface than you’d think. On an afternoon stroll down the river, one might spot one or more boats, swans and / or icebergs. And unless someone’s having a really bad day, you probably won’t see what lies beneath any of them.

Conferences and committees

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

2019

Programme Committee, PIDapalooza 2019
Programme Committee, Wiki Workshop at The Web Conference
Committee, 5:AM Altmetrics Conference
Keynote talk, Metrics in Transition Workshop 2019. “The role of open scholoarly infrastructure in metrics”
Talk, PIDapalooza 2019

2018

Programme Committee, PIDapalooza 2018.
Talk, PIDapalooza 2018.
Talk, altmetrics17 workshop.

2017

Talk, 4:AM Altmetrics Conference.
Talk, altmetrics18 workshop.

2016

Talk, 3:AM Altmetrics Conference
Talk, csv,conf,v2

Balti Express and other Imaginary Boats

Sun, 06 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fifth of the eight boat stories.

People get funny ideas when it comes to naming boats. After all, our boat is called Monstronauticus and it’s virtually the only name that my wife and I could agree on. Our son happily avoided a similar fate.

Who can explain it

The phenomenon can be explained by good old British bureaucracy. Like cars, every boat must be registered and licensed. On the canals they chose a numbering system. On the Thames, where numbers are impersonal and insufficiently poetic, the name is the numberplate. I was allowed to keep my first boat’s name when I brought her onto the river, but was warned that I might have to change if a pre-existent ‘Dawn’ came to light.

Going in

Mon, 31 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is the fourth of the eight boat stories.

Experts agree: the best way to learn something in depth is immersion. Whether you’re trying to pick up a new language or learn a new skill like boating: in at the deep end, you’ll be the wiser for it.

Many boaters will say that you’re not a real boater unless you’ve fallen in ’the cut’. ‘The cut’ refers to the canal, which is usually only a couple of feet deep, rendering the point about depth moot. Rivers are another beast altogether.

What's that sound?

Sun, 30 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is the third of the eight boat stories.

I spent the first week aboard my floating home-to-be surrounded by the sounds of nature trampled underfoot by the chugging of the diesel engine, the wail of tungsten carbide disc on steel, underscored by a whirring petrol generator. Though nature is famously noisy, that week definitely represented the triumph of industry over environment.

That is not to say that the soundscape was entirely unsubtle. We spent happy hours gliding through canals, the gentle rippling of the water as it bubbled and folded round the stern. Even in these quiet moments we were not entirely alone with nature. The occasional scrape as we glid over submerged shopping trolleys reminded us that we were cruising man-made waters excavated, then filled, by hand.

Hoisting the flag

Sun, 18 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is the second of the eight boat stories.

Whatever happened to that Lister LR2 engine that valiantly got us from Staffordshire to Oxford on only one cylinder? That was hoisted out and replaced with a model with only marginally higher horsepower?

It sat in my father’s shed for years. That is, until I met someone that I knew I wanted to spend my life with. And not all that long after we got to know each other I started to hatch a plan.

Eight Boat Stories

Sat, 17 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

November, fast unfolding as I speak, marks eight years since I stepped onto a boat and called it home. Boat-buying typically starts in summer, when all is bright, exciting and verdant (if you’re lucky). Like house-buying, it can take ages. There’s an array of things to fix: Surveys, licenses, insurance and, in my case, an engine. I’m not the first to move in just as a brutal winter descends.

Like an ever rolling stream

Writing it down, eight years doesn’t seem like all that much. But in that time I’ve had three jobs, three engines, two boats, one wife and a child. I haven’t counted precisely how many days it’s been so far, but I have convinced myself to sleep in a steel box floating in oft perilous water thousands of times. In years to come I will look back on this time and there will be stories to tell. And what stories!

Listers never break

Sat, 17 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This is the first of the eight boat stories. There will be more to come, including more engine excitement.

After much searching, I found the boat that I wished to call home. Dawn, for it was she, was moored in Staffordshire. My father and I both booked precious time off work and, after testing the suspension and kicking the tyres, we set off for the week-long journey. Destination: Oxford.

We planned a journey that took us along the Shropshire Union Canal, Grand Union and Oxford canals. There were probably others (it gets a bit complicated round Birmingham). On our journey we passed through tunnels, diversions, and lots of locks.

Remembering Barbara Newman

Tue, 13 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Barbara Helen Newman was my grandmother. She died aged 99. I would like to write a few things down to celebrate her life, keep her stories going and tell you a bit about her. Of course her personality and presence is what really counts, but I’m not sure I have the ability to adequately distill a description of her character out of the day-to-day interactions I had with her. Her quips and word-play were quick off the tongue but just as ephemeral. She was a linguist and a musician. She played the piano and was particularly fond of Schumann. She had a fierce intelligence and quick wit, a playful relationship with words and bags of character. But rather than attempt to describe her character I shall relate character-forming stories that I remember her telling me.

Five principles for community altmetrics data

Tue, 29 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I presented these ideas at the altmetrics18 workshop. You can read a slightly more formal version of this blog post here.

These five principles are my answer to some of the difficulties and problems I have observed in the past couple of years. In that time I have been collecting the kind of data that altmetrics are built from, and talking and working with researchers. Altmetrics data is derived from the community. I think that community should continue to be at the heart of every step.

Some thoughts on 'General discussion of data quality challenges in social media metrics'

Tue, 29 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Zohreh Zahedi and Rodrigo Costas recently published a comparison of altmetrics data providers. Included in the comparison was Crossef Event Data, the service that I have been designing and building for the last couple of years. I am writing this blog post as a personal response to their study, “General discussion of data quality challenges in social media metrics: Extensive comparison of four major altmetric data aggregators”. We will also publish an official Crossref response, which I will link to when it is published.

Tracking scholarly discussion online, as it happens

Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

This blog post goes with my talk at Oxford Geek Nights. It’s about the work I’m doing at Crossref but the talk and this blog post are provided in a personal capacity, and don’t officially represent Crossref. That mostly means I don’t have to use American spelling. Which is fortunate for you, as I’m really bad at accents.

What does ‘scholarly’ mean?

“Scholarly publications” are things published in pursuit of scholarship. That’s mostly articles, but it also includes datasets, peer reviews, journal issues, monographs, books &c.

Gemini PDA

Thu, 12 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Which came first?

I am, after a lag of a few weeks, finally writing a few words about my Gemini PDA. As tradition, I’m writing it on the device itself.

I don’t feel that it’s possible to write a fair review after a short amount of time. I’ve had my BlackBerry Passport, my current phone, for about 4 years and I only just feel qualified to start mulling it. My imaginary review, when I get round to it, will say that on balance, it’s a very good phone with a nice keyboard, great sound, and that you should have bought one in 2014. All the best historians wait a decade.

A decade of Folk Tune Finder, an open manifesto for the decade to come

Tue, 13 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Today marks the release of the Digital Folk report, a study into the way that folk music is being played and shared in the digital age. The report opens with a timeline of some of the tools available and their history. It reminded me that Folk Tune Finder is ten years old this year - the folktunefinder.com domain was registered at half past nine in the morning on the 27th of January 2008. This seems like a good time to look back at the last decade and think about the future.

Annointing the Threshold

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 22:00:00 +0000

A couple of years ago I fished a large chunk of wood out of the river. It had a very satisfactory heft, oblongularity and poise. A piece of timber solid not only in body, but in character. In short: a perfect doorstep.

I spotted it floating in a weir and thought ’that would make a fine doorstep’. We shan’t dwell on the story of how I hoisted it out of the river and, in exchange, lost my brand new, favourite, and first ever, pair of sunglasses. Suffice it to say, it took a length of rope, a boat hook and about ten minutes (it also took something else, but I can always get another pair next time I visit Massachusetts).

Why I'm giving up on Facebook

Sun, 22 Jan 2017 22:00:00 +0000

One of my new year’s resolutions is to try and be more intentional about the way I lead my life. That includes a close look at habits and deeply wired-in behaviours.

Last year I had the epiphany that whilst chocolate, ginger nuts, IRN BRU and sugary comestibles were very enticing and almost unthinkable to give up, I’m far better off without them in my life. I’ve known this for at least 15 years, but last summer I actually did something about it.

Snowing now, is it?

Fri, 13 Jan 2017 22:00:00 +0000

My wife sent me an email. It conveyed words to the effect:

It is snowing!

I replied:

Is it now

We make a point of sending each other grammatically ambigious emails.

And that made me realise that in the sentence

“Now it is snowing”

has at least two levels of word-order to contend with.

Talking to teams in different timezones: an idea

Thu, 01 Dec 2016 22:00:00 +0000

Working with colleagues spread across Massachusetts, New York, California, Oxfordshire, London, Britanny, Victoria, Lower Saxony (and that’s when they’re not travelling) means that face-to-face conversations aren’t universally available. Instant messaging is good because it’s the next-best thing to direct contact.

With geographical distance comes timezone distance. Before the invention of immediate communication this was a self-correcting problem (most people can’t shout over more than two timezones). Of course, when one simply has to type into a computer (caps-lock for shouting) one must be sensitive to the timezone of one’s correspondent. Easy advice to give, but also easy to forget. Slack, like any long-distance communication medium, has the effect of reducing people to avatars somewhat.

Login and favourites are being removed from FolkTuneFinder

Mon, 14 Nov 2016 22:00:00 +0000

On November 30th 2016, the login feature of FolkTuneFinder.com will be removed, and you will no longer be able to use favourites and group tunelists.

One month ago I wrote the a blog post about sign-in on FolkTuneFinder and placed a message on the site. I also put word out on the FolkTuneFinder Facebook page. Since then I have recieved only two messages. There are 5,367 accounts on FolkTuneFinder. Some of them are spam, but some of them are real users who log in and use favourites.

Royal Mint "most secure coin in the world" website is insecure

Mon, 31 Oct 2016 22:00:00 +0000

The Royal Mint are launching a new pound coin. It’s

The most secure coin in the world

according to their website. I saw it linked from BBC news.

The site looks good. It’s all about how businesses should look out for the new coin and adjust their security practices.

It goes into some detail about just quite how secure this coin is. They’ve obviously put a lot of thought, time and energy into the micro-lettering and latent image.

Skint 2016

Sun, 30 Oct 2016 22:00:00 +0000

Skint is a weekend of music and dancing, with workshops, bals and sessions all run by volunteers. I’m on the committee.

This year’s Skint was a joy. I am immensely grateful to everyone who came and made it what it was, which, as I’ve said, a joy.

These are not the best photos in the world, but they are mine.

Bundpolska Workshop.

Hands up who’s here for the first time.

Removing Favourites from FolkTuneFinder?

Sun, 16 Oct 2016 00:00:00 +0000

Summary

I want to remove the ‘favourites’ / ‘bookmarks’ feature (and then the ability to log in altogether). I would make sure that no-one lost their ‘favourites’ lists and could transfer them elsewhere. What do you think? Email me at joe@folktunefinder.com , but preferably read the whole piece first!

FolkTuneFinder is used by up to 10,000 people per month. It’s enough to make me feel like it’s worth running keeping it going, and I hope I always will.

Oak Bees

Mon, 03 Oct 2016 00:00:55 +0000

We found an oak in the corner of a field in Oxfordshire. In the tree we found a colony of bees. The bees were making the most of a warm day with an abundance of wild flowers. From the rate they were coming and going I estimated the colony to be about the size of my bees. The hollow must be a cubic foot or more.

I hope they’re ready for winter. They looked like they could handle themselves.

Conferences in 2016

Sat, 01 Oct 2016 00:00:55 +0000

I sometimes to go to conferences. Sometimes I talk. Sometimes I listen. Sometimes both.

<tr>
  <td><a href="http://www.crossref.org/annualmeeting/index.html">Crossref LIVE</a><br>
      London, November 2016</td>
  <td>The Crossref annual meeting.</td>
  <td>To catch up with Crossref members and the scholarly publishing community.</td>
  <td>Not speaking (unless spoken to). Showing what the Strategic Initiatives team (that's Crossref Labs to you) are up to.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td><a href="http://altmetricsconference.com/category/3am-bucharest/">3:AM Conference</a><br>
      Bucharest, September 2016</td>
  <td>Discussing alternative metrics for assessing published research.</td>
  <td>To talk to researchers, funders and infrastructure providers about Crossref Event Data</td>
  <td>We need neutral infrastructure to collect data on how research is used and mentioned online. Here's what Crossref's doing.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td><a href="http://altmetrics.org/altmetrics16/">altmetrics16 Workshop</a><br>
      Bucharest, September 2016</td>
  <td>Sharing research and research methods for alternative metrics.</td>
  <td>To talk to researchers, and share and understand expectations and techniques.</td>
  <td>Transparency is important when producing the data that underpins alternative metrics. Here are the transparency principles of Crossref Event Data.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td><a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiCite_2016">WikiCite 2016</a><br>
      Berlin, March 2016</td>
  <td>Talking about how people cite things in Wikipedia and how to improve it.</td>
  <td>Lots of citations on Wikipedia are made using DOIs. </td>
  <td>Here's how much use they get.</td>
</tr>

<tr>
  <td><a href="http://csvconf.com/">csv,conf,2016</a><br>
      Berlin, March 2016</td>
  <td>Talking about data, both structured and unstructured.</td>
  <td>To talk about data!</td>
  <td>Here's how we collaborated with Wikipedia to improve DOI use. Here's what happened.</td>
</tr>

What?	What??	Why?	What did/will I say?
PIDAPalooza Reykjavík, November 2016	Discussing persistent identifiers for research objects.	To share experience and best practice about the use of persistent identifiers.	It's difficult when people don't use PIDs to talk about things that have them. I still have to look for them. Here's how.

First Honey

Mon, 26 Sep 2016 00:00:55 +0000

I’m not in it for the honey.

A refrain I’ve repeated for a year and a half. Bees are the most incredible creatures. I think humans are hard-wired to find fascinating what bees are hard-wired to do. A social insect, forming colonies from which intelligent behaviour seems to emerge. An insect which, on an individual basis seems to have enough character to be charming, but when viewed in great numbers is inescapably prone to anthropomorphism.

Another Year

Mon, 08 Aug 2016 00:00:55 +0000

I think that summer is a far better host to ‘new year’ than winter. If you’re lucky enough to be able to take time out to enjoy it, it offers a chance to stop whatever you were stuck doing for a little while and think about it. A reset, and chance to look backward on the last year and forward on the next. For me, winter is all about hard work, when everything’s an effort. Hardly the time to stop and think. I’d much rather do that basking under the sun than huddled round a fire.

I got a BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu tablet

Tue, 26 Apr 2016 22:06:36 +0000

I’m sitting on the bus writing this on my BQ Aquaris M10 Ubuntu edition tablet. It promises ‘full convergence’ so, taking it on face value, I thought I’d start typing a blog post using the on-screen keyboard at work then continue with a bluetooth keyboard once I get home.

The tablet ships with LibreOffice, gEdit, mystery ‘browser’ and Firefox which might be used to access Google Docs. But I’m not using any of those to write this blog post. I am instead using the Notes app, for reasons I’ll come to.

These are my first impressions. All of them are honestly observed, but a couple turned out to be special cases. But they were all things I experienced.

Save Aldershot Leopard Barn

Thu, 14 Apr 2016 20:57:02 +0000

None of the regulars I speak to at The Old Pump in Aldershot have a bad word to say about ‘hapless’ Sandra. She’s has been a well-liked member of the community since before it was known as The Old Pump, before when it was known as the Pumping Station and before that, when it actually was the pumping station for Aldershot’s sewage system. ‘Some things never change,’ they mutter into their pints.

Winter Turnaround

Sun, 20 Mar 2016 22:14:14 +0000

I got my bees in early 2015. They seem to have a good first year, increasing from a nucleus to a full hive, eating voraciously and putting away stores. But, as winter drew in and the year came to a close, I knew that they, and I, would face the first real test.

New Year, new Folk Tune Finder!

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 11:10:03 +0000

Happy new year! Happy new Folk Tune Finder! Why not try it out?

Those of you following along at home will know that this is version 7, and that I release approximately one new version per year. This one’s a big one, with lots of changes. I’ll concentrate on four.

Christmas Lights Competition 2015

Tue, 15 Dec 2015 14:52:33 +0000

Standards are high at the annual Christmas lights event. It’s important that every entry is a strong in order to outperform the competition.

Unwelcome guests

Thu, 12 Nov 2015 13:00:44 +0000

Cooking an evening meal, I reach for the oregano and then for the thyme. As the herbs start to work out where they are, why they’re here and what they’re meant to be doing, a familiar but confusing aroma issues. This doesn’t smell so much of my dinner as my beehive. And not in that cooking-with-honey way.

What a Difference a Week Makes

Sun, 05 Jul 2015 16:28:04 +0000

There are lots of kinds of beehives, but many of them have the same construction: a brood box, which is a large space for the colony to live, and supers, which are smaller boxes, added on top, in which bees make honey and which beekeepers sometimes have to take away for their own good (the beekeepers’ own good, not the bees’).

Honey are not the only bees

Fri, 03 Jul 2015 09:08:28 +0000

I’ve had my beehive for over two weeks. It’s full of honeybees, and getting fuller. In that time my neighbours have had two nests of very different varieties of wild native bee: leafcutters and bumblebees. They’re not camera-shy.

A Busy July day (video)

Thu, 02 Jul 2015 08:08:48 +0000

My nucleus is building up strength. It takes 40 days from its egg-laying to a worker bee going out on its foraging missions (bees spend their first ten days in the hive doing household chores). This means that the bees now out foraging were eggs long before I acquired the nuc.

Frustration (video)

Wed, 01 Jul 2015 15:04:52 +0000

I stopped off to wish my bees a good afternoon and to ask after their mother. One worker was clearly in some discomfort.

The First Death

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 11:34:19 +0000

Inspecting a beehive is the central mystical ritual of beekeeping. Seeing the bees at work, spotting the queen scuttling around and appraising the hard work they are all doing is, I’ll be honest, one of the major draws for me. It’s something that should be done as infrequently as possible because it disrupts the hive, stresses the bees and interferes with the environmental conditions that they’re trying to maintain. At the height of inspection season no more than once every few days.

Beekeepers go to great lengths not to damage or kill insects. But sometimes it does happen.

The Timelapse Beehive

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 08:57:32 +0000

Some background to timelapsebeehive.com

I’ve wanted to keep bees for 20 years, and I’m finally getting round to doing it. There’s a lot of nonsense going around about how it’s a new middle-class fad, but I recently dug this book out. It’s called the Golden Throng and it was printed in the 1940s.

Feeding Bees

Wed, 24 Jun 2015 20:44:50 +0000

To start with something worth saying:

**Do not feed bees honey. **If you find a tired bee, mix it up some sugar solution. One crystal of caster sugar to one drop of water should do. Honey from the shops, which is usually from a foreign country, and even honey from a more local hive can contain fungal spores which can cause serious diseases, like American Foul Brood.

Now that’s over, let’s move from feeding individual bees to the feeding of tens of thousands.

In my post on the installation of a nucleus I showed the improvised bottle contact-feeder in action.

Achieving Bees

Mon, 22 Jun 2015 11:23:31 +0000

There are a number of ways one can acquire bees. To paraphrase Twelfth Night:

but be not afraid of bees: some are born to bees, some achieve bees, and some have bees thrust upon them.

Some people catch swarms. My great uncle Ronald had a hive thrust upon him. Although I’m the third generation of bee-keepers in my family, I wasn’t born to them (the previous two generations being predecessors but not ancestors). I went with the safer and easier option and obtained a nucleus from a local bee-keeper.

The hive

Sun, 10 May 2015 14:30:00 +0000

A couple of boxes arrived for me at work. There was a gorgeous aroma coming from them.

The Golden Throng

Sun, 10 May 2015 13:32:07 +0000

When I visited my parents at Christmas I re-discovered a book. It was given to me by my great-uncle Ronald.

The Golden Throng: A Book About Bees.

Co-Operative Online Banking

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 18:42:00 +0000

I bank with the Co-Operative bank. I know there was some awful mis-management in the past, but their heart is in the right place (I think) and they have ethical policies. I think it’s a good idea that they should exist, so I’m sticking with them.

Recently they changed the user interface on their online banking. I don’t know why. I preferred the old one, but that’s just, like, my opinion.

But the more I used it the more careless the design looks.

Unexpectedly good snow photos

Tue, 03 Feb 2015 11:02:01 +0000

Snow today. To work, via a snowy field. Stopped to take some photos using panorama mode on my Blackberry Passport. They came out rather better than expected. Click on them to view full size.

New boat. Part two.

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 09:43:40 +0000

I am overwhelmed by all this. On Monday our new home was craned in. Words to follow, but for now pictures will have to do.

The New Boat. Part One.

Fri, 02 May 2014 16:40:57 +0000

People do boat-build blogs. Breathlessly they document the progress of their build, keeping everyone up-to-date with up-to-the-minute information about how it’s all going. I am breathless about my new boat. I want to document the progress of the build and keep everyone up-to-date. I have a blog. It’s a very exciting event in life and I want to share it with my friends and family. But it’s also something I’ve never done before, not remotely, and, whilst I’ve been in good hands, there are so many horror stories out there that I didn’t want to tempt fate.

Taking apart a Nokia 105

Sun, 19 Jan 2014 22:26:38 +0000

New year reflection led me to the conclusion that perhaps having email, twitter, facebook and the Internet at large following me round in my pocket all the time wasn’t a great idea, so I thought I’d get a phone that wasn’t afraid to revisit issues of self-identity. The Nokia 105 makes phone calls, sends texts, has an FM radio and not much else. I’m very happy with it.

Effectiveness of interval histogram Euclidean distance for predicting tune similarity

Sat, 11 Jan 2014 20:02:14 +0000

In an attempt to quickly find almost exact melodic duplicates (give or take a note or two) in the folktunefinder.com algorithm I tried comparing the Euclidean distance between their interval histograms.

Getting to work in the 2014 Oxford floods

Tue, 07 Jan 2014 12:03:39 +0000

Flood water waist deep. Bit of a challenge getting out. Thames towpath below Oxford flooded knee-deep in places, just breaching at Donnington bridge. Someone in the University College boathouse shouted that I should be careful of sharks.

Oxford Geek Nights - Strong and Static Typing vs Weak and Dynamic Typing

Thu, 17 Oct 2013 09:36:50 +0000

Here are the slides from my talk last night. You don’t have to agree.

You should also read this Yegge rant if you have particularly strong feelings either way.

Comments on the Oxford Mail site are completely broken

Thu, 03 Oct 2013 20:20:31 +0000

There’s something very odd going on with the comments on the Oxford Mail site. No disrespect to the paper, but I have a tough time tallying up likely size of readership with some of the behaviour seen on the site.

To a toaster

Thu, 15 Aug 2013 22:55:48 +0000

O Toaster! What the hell with thee is wrong?

Thy kind hath served my kind for decades long.

A bond hath formed between two nations great,

That decades bond, though, weareth thin of late.

Photoshop Bug

Fri, 09 Aug 2013 21:14:35 +0000

A fascinating bug in Adobe Photoshop. Presented here as a photographic essay. Bug report as photojournalism. I only created one triangle and moved it around a bit.

Interview Questions

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 12:46:56 +0000

I have recently been on the job hunt (and come out of it with a new job, thanks for asking). I talked to a number of interesting organisations and answered a proportionally interesting number of questions. No less interesting is that fact that nearly all of these questions, whilst being ideal interview material, were also the kind of questions that would come up every day as part of the job.

Hot

Fri, 19 Jul 2013 07:15:32 +0000

Last night I dealt with the heat the only way I know how.

Unit Testing in Go, talk at London Go Users Group

Wed, 29 May 2013 10:47:14 +0000

A quick talk, the same content as given at Oxford Geek Nights in November 2012.

Unit Testing in Go at GLUG : handout version

A Phonetic alphabet for the 21st Century

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:30:57 +0000

With the help of @domeheid and @gasmanic. Try using this next time you’re spelling something out over the phone.

Aye

Bee

Cellar

Dvorak

Eye

Faroe

Gnat

Heir

Iain

Jalapeno

Knot

Llanfairpwllgwyngyll

Mnemonic

Not

Ouija

Pharaoh

Quay

Rote

Sea

Tchaikovsky

Umm

Vowel

Why

You

Zhivago

International Bagpipe Day at the Pitt Rivers

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 13:41:51 +0000

An event to celebrate the second International Bagpipe Day! Held at the Pitt Rivers museum, Oxford.

Global object appears not to load in Play framework

Sat, 02 Mar 2013 13:45:44 +0000

I was scratching my head for a bit over this one. Using Play Framework v 2.1.0 (Scala) in development mode I was defining my global object as per the Scala Global documentation. But it wasn’t triggering (and, I thought, wasn’t being registered).

OxLork perform at the Ashmolean

Sun, 24 Feb 2013 20:31:22 +0000

OxLork, a band of musicians in possession of computers (and, I hope, an increasing knowledge of how to make new things with them) had a gig at the Ashmolean Museum on Friday. Very exciting.

Not brilliant photos, but better than nothing.

Visualising folk tune structures

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 19:43:30 +0000

Traditional tunes have a particular shape to them. Many, especially northern European, have two parts, each repeated, possibly with first and second time bars. Within this arching structure that spans the tune in a few leaps, there are smaller repeated phrases, callbacks and variations. I remembered a visualisation I saw a long time ago which took a MIDI file and visualised the structure. I wanted to do something for the tunes in FolkTuneFinder.

All OxLork code samples online

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 16:06:57 +0000

I am hosting all of the OxLork ChucK lecture code samples here: https://github.com/afandian/oxlork-lecture-code

The trouble with buttons without captions

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 19:11:45 +0000

It seems like everyone’s got their own idea about how to implement a fairly standard commonplace widget. All broadly consistent. With one exception.

Using TASCAM US-122 audio/midi interface with Mountain Lion

Sat, 08 Dec 2012 18:19:45 +0000

(punchline: give up it won’t work but it’s an interesting story)

Thursday: Gas Mission.

Thu, 29 Nov 2012 13:26:44 +0000

Abingdon road still under a bit of water, but it’s now receding. I ran out of gas, which means no tea and no hot water. So I went on a gas mission.

Tuesday: Floods reach Abingdon Road

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:50:55 +0000

Today, Tuesday. Deepest yet; getting out of my boat I was plunged waist-deep. The river is bringing it to the residents of Abingdon Road. A lunchtime stroll.

Street deserted of cars. Very quiet.

Oxford Flooding: The Cold Light of Monday

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 14:48:08 +0000

A short lunchtime stroll on Monday after a weekend of flooding. The water is still rising and becoming worryingly strong in places (both in the river and across footpaths thigh-deep).

BETTER DROWNED THAN DUFFERS

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 11:24:33 +0000

Give me a cup of tea and a dressing gown and I’m made. Who cares if it’s flooding up to my thighs.

Flooding in Oxford

Sat, 24 Nov 2012 09:33:24 +0000

I came home last night and was just about able to make it in wellington boots on tip-toe. Come 1am my landing stage was covered. Up at 7am to check things over and have a stroll. It came up almost to my waist in places. I wouldn’t drink this stuff.

Unit Testing in Go: talk at Oxford Geek Night

Wed, 21 Nov 2012 22:25:49 +0000

Download the slides for the ‘Unit Testing in Go’, a microslot (exactly 5 minutes!) at Oxford Geek Nights 29 on the 21st November.

Oxford Laptop Orchestra – Lecture 4 — Modulation

Sat, 10 Nov 2012 18:54:47 +0000

This is number 4 in my series of lectures in music technology and ChucK to the Oxford Laptop Orchestra. Delivered on the 5th of November 2012 at the Faculty of Music. Give the first three a read before reading this.

The content is complete here (except for a bit about Nyquist) so feel free to read this. But I intend to do a bit of copy-editing, and include sound samples before I declare it complete.

This week we look at low frequency oscillators, using them to modulate other oscillators and in the process how to do more than thing at once._

Oxford Laptop Orchestra — Lecture 3 — Transcending Analogue

Fri, 09 Nov 2012 21:35:54 +0000

This is number 3 in my series of lectures in music technology and ChucK to the Oxford Laptop Orchestra. Read the other two first. Sorry this blog post was a couple of weeks late. It’s quite substantial, but conceptually it underpins a lot of material. Persevere, read, ask questions.

This week sees a bit of a philosophical turn as we contemplate what ‘digital’ really means and how we can use it to play Bach on organ without having to build one first.

Oxford Laptop Orchestra – Lecture 2 – Control Structures and Timbres

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 21:00:38 +0000

This is number 2 in my series of lectures in music technology and ChucK to the Oxford Laptop Orchestra. Give the first lecture a read before reading this.

Last week we took a look at why, in my opinion, music and programming are natural bedfellows. We talked about what a program actually is and how it relates to Western music notation. We compared structural features of music and computer programs. We pinned down what the words ‘analogue’ and ‘digital’ actually mean, how sound is transmitted, and finally we wrote a program that plays a tune.

This week we’re going to continue down two parallel paths: more about the programming language and the nature of sound in general. The reason for all of this is to give you the tools to think about what you hear, apply analytical thought to the process of composition and creation, and to enable you to conceive of and make your own ChucK sounds.

Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines Dead?

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 14:27:08 +0000

According to Ian Betteridge,

‘Any headline which ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no’

But is this long-standing principle of journalism now dead?

Oxford Laptop Orchestra : Lecture 1 : Music and Programming

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:19:21 +0000

I’m very excited to be involved with the nascent Oxford Laptop Orchestra. This project, run by and for students at the University of Oxford, follows on from the work of the Princeton Laptop Orchestra. PLOrk, as its known, and now OxLork, is an effort to reproduce the form of performance embodied by a real orchestra or chamber group — that is, a number of individuals performing in concert, in a certain arrangement in space — with modern advances in electroacoustic music.

Putting the Engine Back : video

Sun, 14 Oct 2012 13:10:40 +0000

I posted some pictures about the removal of the old engine but never got round to its replacement. Time to correct that. The old Lister LR2 was replaced with and older SR2.

Birthday Shinbash

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 17:17:45 +0000

A few shaky photos from a magnificent 18 hour birthday stint.

My first piece of digital audio music: A Very Great Sadness

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 19:49:58 +0000

I used to make music on computers when I was a teenager. I used to spend hours in my room on a MIDI sequencer with a keyboard, a synthesiser and a mouse. These tracks were all MIDI. No they didn’t sound awful I had a nice sound module, but they do sound a bit dated now. But that was MIDI.

I very clearly remember a turning point. The day I bought my first (and, it turns out only) microphone. A Røde NT1A vocal mic.

IndexError 'list index out of range' in Django Admin

Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:12:58 +0000

Have you just got an exception from Django saying:

IndexError at /admin/mything/

list index out of range

Blacking Up (Part Two)

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 21:39:51 +0000

After Dawn’s slipping out, she was power-washed and given a new coat of bitumen. All the way up to the gunwales. Very smart. Especially compared to her prior grubby state. As on Friday, the slipping back into the water happened before work!

Blacking up (Part 1)

Fri, 17 Aug 2012 12:11:00 +0000

Last night I got a call out of the blue from Jon Ody asking if I wanted my boat Dawn’s hull blacking. It’s something that needs to be done every couple of years and I was starting to think about it anyway. The catch: it had to be done tomorrow morning and he needed a decision promptly, as he had a free slot in the boatyard. It didn’t help that it would make me homeless for the weekend. After some umming and aahing I said yes.

Modified external lamp

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 11:13:07 +0000

I picked up an outside light, the kind that you plug in and stick in your lawn, going cheap at B&Q. Although it said it had blue LEDs (I’ve never claimed to have much style but anything with blue LEDs in it is an unforgivable faux-pas) I had a roll of white LEDs at home. It was a nice sealed unit (no IP rating but it looked solid enough) which I thought would come in handy for stickig on the outside of my boat and shining at things.

Sound file Plotter in Go using gosndfile / libsndfile

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:27:46 +0000

It’s no secret that golang is my new favourite language. I’ve used it to implement the latest folktunefinder search engine and really enjoyed it.

On an unrelated note, whilst looking at what libraries are available I came across the gosndfile library written by Matt Kane / @nynexrepublic. It’s a wrapper for libsndfile, a C library for reading and writing sound files.

Strange error in Go: 'fmt.Println not used'

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 11:42:37 +0000

I had a mysterious error in a project in Go:

myproject/types.go:89: fmt.Println not used

If you declare a variable or import a package in Go, that’s a compiler error. Good thing too, in my opinion. But this one was puzzling. It wasn’t complaining about an imported package, it was complaining about a function within a package. As far as I’m aware, the syntax of Go allows only for importing a whole package (or sub-package) at a time, rather than members of that package (as Python does).

The odd thing was that the error was reported on the last line of the file. The entire contents of that line was:

Mapping Live River Conditions on the Thames

Sat, 23 Jun 2012 10:00:12 +0000

I love going out on my boat and I do it as often as I possibly can. Unfortunately the recent rain has meant that I’ve been unable to as often as I’d like. If the current is too fast, it’s not sensible or safe to do it.

The Environment Agency has an excellent site which gives live information. But I wanted to put it on a map. Cue an evening of hunting down coordinates of every lock on the non-tidal thames (Google data is surprisingly bad) and writing an app to take data out of the online service and put it on a map. It’s fun putting things on maps.

Jaga Jazzist Concert at the Barbican

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 19:04:49 +0000

I have been a devoted fan of Jaga Jazzist, a Norwegian group (they pretty much defy description) since around 2003, when I heard one of their tracks on a sampler CD issued by the Norwegian Embassy in London. This is the third gig of theirs I have been to. The first two were in the normal venues you would expect, with a lot of space for movement in response to the music.

Peacock Experts — video

Fri, 15 Jun 2012 07:26:05 +0000

One of the great things about my workplace is that

we have unlimited peacocks at our disposal
a number of my colleagues are qualified peacock-ologists

Here’s a short video of just one of the peacocks, along with some commentary about their feeding habits and behavioural characteristics (something about baked beans, pretending to be a bike and the thing from Jurassic Park, I don’t know it went over my head).

Don’t worry about the noise at the end, it’s just a peacock alarm (or indeed a peacock alarmed).

Graffiti Tribute to Hussain Mohammed

Wed, 13 Jun 2012 12:53:36 +0000

I live not far from the spot where Hussein Mohammed jumped in the Thames and drowned. Local youths have spray-painted their tributes in the underside of the bridge. Touching.

Aeropress explosion (and copycat Gaggia)

Tue, 12 Jun 2012 10:17:29 +0000

Respect the aeropress. If you don’t pay it enough respect it will explode, sending coffee EVERYWHERE.

STOP PRESS

Not wishing to be outdone, the Gaggia espresso machine had a go too. I should add that this happened to a colleague.

Trouble with local cross-domain Django cookies

Tue, 29 May 2012 23:44:55 +0000

I’m working on a Django app which is able to serve content on a number of subdomains. The app has a number of sites, which appear as subdomains of the main domain. There’s some middleware to look things up from the request and do the right routing.

In the wild the subdomains will be done with DNS, but for local development, I’m creating entries in my /etc/hosts such as demosite.local, using .local as my ‘main domain’ locally. After a colleague integrated some authentication code, I suddenly found I couldn’t log in on my development environment. It didn’t work with either the custom login screen or the Django admin. Very odd.

Using Subversion with PIP: Cannot find command 'svn'

Mon, 28 May 2012 22:31:39 +0000

Came across this when deploying a Django app to a fresh VM, installing with Python PIP from a requirements file.

Facebook JavaScript login doesn't work in Safari

Wed, 23 May 2012 09:23:15 +0000

I have been banging my proverbial head against a brick wall (or my actual head against a proverbial wall) for the best part of a few days, on and off, trying to find the cause of an inconsistency in behaviour between Safari and Chrome in a Facebook canvas app.

Grime and paint. : pictures

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:47:43 +0000

In the week after the engine came out, I was left with access to my bilges. These are usually hidden away behind an unmovable wooden wall, with access blocked by the engine. As far as I can tell these had not seen the light of day for two decades (my boat was built in 1993 and there are no signs of the engine having been out since then). It appears that they weren’t even painted, or if they were, there’s no paint left.

I was appalled at the state of them, frankly. The rust was thick, and not in a good way. My boat is my home, as well as my boat, and the sign of that much rust really wasn’t a very comforting thought.

The Great Engine Hoist : pictures

Sun, 13 May 2012 19:35:44 +0000

I come from an engineering family. I know no-one who enjoys playing with engines more than my father. Within days of me buying a boat he had opened up the engine and taken the cylinders off to re-fit the piston rings. Admittedly, the reason he did this is that the engine had failed and we were stranded thirty miles outside Oxford with an immobile boat. But I have a feeling it would have happened anyway sooner or later.

GET parameters in Facebook Canvas applications

Wed, 09 May 2012 10:23:18 +0000

I’m developing a Facebook app at work and was stuck on an issue for a bit. This post is just a mental note, and to prevent this happening.

Clandestine Mazurka, Brighton

Sun, 06 May 2012 23:47:28 +0000

Music in the bandstand in Brighton. Cold wind and rain by turns. We played and danced to keep warm.

I took a couple of audio recordings but this one just seemed perfectly to sum up the day.

Almost identifying the music in a BBC trailer

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 20:56:29 +0000

The BBC love their esoteric, obscure electronic music. I think it all started with Sigur Rós in Planet Earth and proliferated from there. It’s even started creeping into BBC Radio 4 trailers now. The trailer for Will Self’s ‘A Point of View: In Defence of Obscure Words’ had just such a music bed. I decided that I would very much like to know what that music was.

Putting the Potatoes In

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 19:52:16 +0000

I’ve had an allotment since November, but I came into possession of it just in time to wind up the year’s efforts and withdraw indoors. I spent some time before Christmas digging over a patch (what turned out to be a small patch in the grand scheme of things) before my next door neighbour turned up with a rotivator.

I am lucky enough to have a friend in Julian Cottee (of OxGrow) who furnished me with six chitting potatoes in six exciting varieties: Edzell Blue, British Queen, Isle of Jura, Salad Blue, Maris Bard, and Arran Victory. Today I cleared a patch, dug a trench and planted them.

Animals and Documents

Fri, 30 Mar 2012 18:30:59 +0000

A friend asked on Facebook why there were no documents penned by animals. He claimed that ’not a single one was to my knowledge written by an animal other than a human’. I disagree. Here are some notable quotes I have collected on the subject.

‘A cat could no more write a thesis on the plight of man than a man could on the condition of being a cat’

On the Nature of Existence, Jeramiah Bullock, 1808

What did YOU do on Tuesday evening?

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 22:22:17 +0000

Some bizarre ancient ritual that takes place in the last week of March?

No, it’s Mano Panforreteiro playing his Gaita bagpipes in Oxford. With help from some pipes of another kind.

First Torchbox Cruise of the Season

Sun, 25 Mar 2012 20:20:06 +0000

My first cruise of the 2012, the first Torchbox cruise of 2012 and the first outing for the new decking.

Crazy high CPU usage on Snow Leopard and a surprising culprit

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 21:21:59 +0000

After coming back from a team-building trip, I started to notice things were going a bit slow on my work laptop. I took it with me for casual emailing and working on the train, but spent about 4 days not really using it and certainly not ‘working’ on it. It came out once to display the lyrics to a song about Pithivier, and once to check emails, but that was about it.

Mucking about in the Umeå snow

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 19:30:32 +0000

When visiting Umefolk recently we came across a snow castle in the city centre. It would have been impossible not to have a go…

The end of Umefolk 2012

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 18:23:22 +0000

Play the MP3 and imagine this. I recorded it walking through the musicians.

A weekend festival, with a 25 year heritage and massive following, is drawing to a close. Hundreds and hundreds of people must have passed through its doors. Headliners such as Garmana and Hoven Droven have drawn in crowds, impromptu sessions have brought out nyckelharpa players, and a large variety of players from all over north-east Europe have entertained and captivated. The event is winding up, and on the dance floor Anton and about 30 young people are playing for the final dance…

Umea and Umefolk

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 16:26:32 +0000

I spent the last week at Umefolk, a folk music festival in Umeå in the north of Sweden. We met Anton Teljebäck, who runs the festival, at a small festival in the UK and he invited us. Umefolk is well established (the first was in 1986), and Anton was keen to spread the word further afield.

We are no strangers to Scandanavian music in Oxford. There is a budding session which has found its feet in the last few months, run by Ed Pritchard, who plays a nyckelharpa amongst other things. I also listen to whatever I can get my hands on on Spotify and around the web. So we jumped at the chance to go.

Crazy idea: Hold music cadence machine

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 17:22:41 +0000

I’ve just been on a call with a client. They have Strauss or somesuch a hold music. Orchestral waltzes. The person on the other end picked up exactly at the end of a phrase. It was perfect.

My idea:

On-hold music programmed with meta-information that stores the exact timecodes of cadences and the end of phrases. When the person who is being waited on picks up the phone, the system keeps playing the music until the next point.

Agency, empathy and the 0736 service to Manchester Piccadilly

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 08:54:02 +0000

I am sorry to announce that the 0736 service to Manchester Piccadilly is delayed by approximately 40 minutes due to engineering works. I am extremely sorry for the severe disruption to the service.

Luckily I wasn’t trying to get to Manchester Piccadilly, but from the reaction on the platform someone was. This well-spoken automatic pre-recorded announcement was clear, and told us everything we immediately needed to know. It was spoken courteously in perfect Recieved Pronunciation. It is the same voice that is used to announce all the official goings-on at Platform 2 of Oxford Station, and at stations across the country. I quite enjoy hearing the voice if I’m honest.

Tracks that use Gradual onset of Distortion to Great Effect

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 13:37:25 +0000

I love Spotify. I refuse to participate in the ‘social networking’ aspect of things. Indeed I find the idea of assuming I want everyone knowing what I listen to, and the assumption that I want to see what other people are listening to mildly offensive. That’s ok, I don’t mind being offended.

That said, here is a list of songs (not a playlist) which use the gradual onset of distortion to great effect. Distortion has been used since the dawn of time to make guitars fuzzier, vocals warmer, snares more brutal.

WordPress on Apache being Reverse Proxied by Nginx in an Endless Loop

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 14:52:25 +0000

I have a couple of WordPress installations running on Apache (on a non-80) port, and I’m reverse proxying them through nginx. Somewhere along the line WordPress is getting its knickers in a twist about the port not being the same as it expects. This results in WordPress going into an infinite redirect loop.

To solve this, I put this in the nginx virtual server config:

proxy_set_header Host $host;

Fixed.

A snowy journey to work

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 11:32:21 +0000

I’m not normally given to taking photos of my commute, but in the case of the snow I made an exception.

In Which we Discover Some Rules About Python Scoping (which we already knew)

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:00:06 +0000

I’ve just been bitten by scoping in Python. If you gave me this code and asked me what it did, I’d probably guess that it was a trick question and look carefully at it. What would you say?

def demo():
number = 100
one = number / 100

numbers = [one, one+1, one+2]
big_numbers = [number * 100 for number in numbers]
bigger_numbers = [big_number * 100 for big_number in big_numbers]
print number

Old entries from simpler times: Busking

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:09:31 +0000

Whilst going over (and deleting) unwanted content on Facebook, I came across a few bits and pieces. I miss busking.

Found this old post from 4th August 2007.

Day five of ‘my’ Fringe, and the thought police are out in force. It feels like day two to me, but a lot has happened (including a technical rehearsal that finished at midnight, a street urchin and a stand-up routine about health and safety). The Fringe is getting started proper and potential audiences wonder round the city being picked off by hungry flyer-ers.

A polecat comes to visit.

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 13:09:37 +0000

I put my rubbish out on the deck last night. Today I heard a rustling and looked out to see a polecat had come aboard, unbidden, and nicked some pasty packaging.

For those unsure what a polecat is, wikipedia defines it thus:

A polecat is an animal.

Here is a video of the encounter. I can see why they named this animal ‘polecat’. It’s a bit like a pole and a bit like a cat.

From La Mantovana to the Moldau. Musical similarity in the absence of rhythm and what it means to FolkTuneFinder

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 22:24:54 +0000

Má Vlast is a set of pieces written by the composer Smetana in the late 1800s about his homeland, Czechoslovakia. One of the pieces in the set, The Moldau (Vltava in Czech) is one of my favourite symphonies of all time ever. It could be something in my partially Czech blood, it could be the fact that I’m soppy about Romantic-period orchestral music, whatever it is, I love this piece of music and know it intimately.

Old sailor's trick: Turning safety matches into strike anywhere matches.

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 22:09:25 +0000

There’s an old sailor’s trick that comes in useful when on the high seas, when stuck with safety matches and no box to strike them on. They can be turned into strike-anywhere matches with the use of a hot stove. This also helps pass the time on the long unending days when the ship is becalmed at sea.

Gloves were used because it wasn’t physically possible to get my hand that close.

The Rime of the Housemate

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 23:16:08 +0000

This was a facebook comment that got out of hand. If this isn’t the kind of pointless string of words that belongs in a blog, I don’t know what is. The first part follows the Rime of the Ancient Mariner reasonably closely. The rest correlates with the worst excesses of Roald Dahl at his most metrically depraved.

It is an ancient housemate,

And he washeth one of three.

‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye

Opening a can on a boat

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:31:04 +0000

The thing about living on a boat is that there is more than likely a hatchet to hand.

Which means that if you come home from the shops with a can and realise that you have no can opener, you can puncture holes in the lid.

Using the hatchet

… and get at the insides.

Try doing that in a house. I dare you.

FolkTuneFinder version 4 out now

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:48:15 +0000

On Monday 9th January 2011, version 4 of FolkTuneFinder.com went public. It was a bit of a journey getting to this point.

I run FolkTuneFinder in my spare time. Mostly it runs itself without intervention. I keep an eye on things, monitor spam (except for a recent occasion when it got out of hand) and answer mail. There is a fair amount of programming behind it, and I’ve re-written the search engine a few times over the years. The melody search is the main point of the site and the bulk of the programming, but recently the extra bits, such as comments, favourites, blogs etc have become more significant.

FolkTuneFinder: Why are the search results so different to what I typed?

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:44:58 +0000

When searching FolkTuneFinder, you may find search results that you don’t agree with or can’t understand. You may think tune has nothing to do with your query, or the highlighted notes bear no relevance to what you typed. Here’s why.

The thing about folk tunes is that they’ve survived in the aural tradition, in many cases for quite a long time. A good tune spreads because people like it, and different parts of a tune may appeal to different people. We all hear and experience tunes slightly differently, and we can interpret and remember them differently too.

FolkTuneFinder index building used to be expensive

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 23:44:01 +0000

The first version of FolkTuneFinder was written in a combination of Java and PHP. I was still working out the best way to do melodic indexing, and the index build process was parallelised. The job ran across 14 Apple Xserves, made available to me by my university. That was back in 2008. These days it runs in a single virtual machine … somewhere.

Crazy Idea: Steering lock for bikes on trains

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 16:03:29 +0000

It’s annoying leaning a bike up against something, especially on a train, only to have the handlebars rotate and for the bike to fall down. Or to be carrying a bike on your shoulder and have the wheel come round and smack you.

A simple lock on the front of the bike which could be flicked to stop the steering from moving whilst it’s being transported would solve this problem.

Recent downtime on FolkTuneFinder.com

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 22:54:26 +0000

I started FolkTuneFinder as a student project back in 2008. I’d done websites for a few years before, but this was the first serious one with any kind of heavy lifting or interesting behaviour. Over the years I added features that allowed people to interact, such as the commenting and FolkTuneFinder blogs, which has been surprisingly popular.

I have always had a very small problem with spam: I received perhaps a small handful of blog posts a month, which was fine to deal with. It wasn’t a problem, and the most time-effective way of dealing with it was to delete the posts when they arose. There has always been a battle with spare time, and various interesting things have happened to me since 2008 meaning that I haven’t quite had as much time as I’d like.

Crazy Idea: LCD windscreen dazzle reducer

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 16:16:48 +0000

I don’t drive, but being a passenger and a cyclist, I imagine dazzling lights can be something of a problem to drivers.

To combat this, a camera could be mounted in the head-rest of the driver’s seat of a car, so that it was able to see what the driver saw from the same perspective. It could identify where egregious bright lights were coming from.

A liquid crystal matrix could be embedded into the windscreen. An on-board computer could calibrate the camera and the ‘screen’ built into the windscreen. It could then darken in the spots where bright light, to provide a very specialised shield and prevent dazzling.

Crazy Idea: Matches with two heads

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 18:55:15 +0000

I strike a match to light my oven or stove, and blow it out within a few seconds. Most of the match is un-burned. Why not dip the match at both ends so that it can be used twice? And you wouldn’t have to get your fingers mucky: it’s not hard to avoid holding it by the end.

Storing integers in Redis

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:00:02 +0000

I’ve been looking into Redis. I wondered about storing integers as keys and values rather than plain old strings. After asking on Stackoverflow, I did my own experiments.

It looks like it is possible to use any byte string as a key.

For my application’s case it actually didn’t make that much difference storing the strings or the integers. I imagine that the structure in Redis undergoes some kind of alignment anyway, so there may be some pre-wasted bytes anyway. The value is hashed in any case.

The Annual Squash Balancing Ritual

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:56:50 +0000

There are few events more sought after and exclusive than the annual Balancing of the Squash. This happens in a secret location, late at night, early in November. This ritual has roots in the ancient culture of a secret society known as ’the Box of the Torch'.

Tonight the participants excelled both themselves and in some cases, each other.

It’s a legume.

Day of the Dead

Wed, 02 Nov 2011 23:42:58 +0000

Today is Day of the Dead. The Hurly-Burly-Bright-And-Early Band was out in force this evening celebrating. Or rather, mourning the passing of the Summer. Exactly six months to the day (give or take) since May Day.

My pipe is at a worrying angle.

Cooking with Wood

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 18:25:22 +0000

After success with a pizza, I’ve decided to try cooking in my wood burning stove. Little steps. Today I tried melting some cheese over some gnocchi.

A good start. If I’m honest, this wasn’t anything more than melting some cheese. Next time I might actually cook something. And that’s pepper not ash in the last photo.

Walking Home in the Dark

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 17:47:40 +0000

It’s that time of year again. This winter I am working for a company with offices in the middle of a country estate. To get home you have to walk through a copse and over a sheep field.

I enjoy walking in the dark immensely. I have always enjoyed it. I like to the extent that I find flashlights genuinely offensive in the dark (until you’ve dropped something). When I’m out in the dark and quiet I feel like the space that I inhabit expands a little. My own little personal bubble grows and weakens and I feel a bit more connected with everything. I am more aware of noises and movement around me in the half-light of the gloaming.

Typing on a one-row keyboard possible?

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 12:12:42 +0000

I’ve seen a number of special computer keyboards. These include, for example, five-finger units that require learning special ‘chords’. The idea of a one-handed keyboard is enticing but I don’t like the sound of having to learn specific combinations. What about re-using existing knowledge?

Anyone who touch-types knows that each letter belongs to a given finger. I wondered what would happen if you restricted the keyboard to just one row (i.e. one button for each finger) whether this would make a functioning concept.

The Gribbin

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 20:24:14 +0000

There’s no hiding musicianship. Lock it up, put it in a box, or — crucially — ply it with significant quantities of drink … still it will shine through. There’s something immutable about musicianship that means that a bottle of Pimms and and half a bottle of whiskey later, it still keeps on playing.

It was in circumstances such as these that The Gribbin came together for the first — and last — time. In the heady days of 2006, The Pimms Sessions were recorded in a murky studio in scenic Oxford and (and subsequently presented to the unsuspecting, and arguably undeserving world).

The Stage Hand: The Flyerer

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:24:43 +0000

Back in the day I used to do a lot of sound and lighting for student theatre. I did a lot in Oxford, and went up to Edinburgh a number of times to do the Edinburgh Fringe. I did not go to Oxford University, but I did hang around with a lot of people who did. Once or twice I contributed to a theatre column in a student paper. It’s a bit thespy because it’s okay to experiment with language when you’re young. Reprinted here because why not.

Stage Whispers: The Techie

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:21:25 +0000

Back in the day I used to do a lot of sound and lighting for student theatre. I did a lot in Oxford, and went up to Edinburgh a number of times to do the Edinburgh Fringe. I did not go to Oxford University, but I did hang around with a lot of people who did. Once or twice I contributed to a theatre column in a student paper. It’s a bit thespy because it’s okay to experiment with language when you’re young. Reprinted here because why not.

Stage Whispers: The Stage Hand

Thu, 27 Oct 2011 18:16:53 +0000

Back in the day I used to do a lot of sound and lighting for student theatre. I did a lot in Oxford, and went up to Edinburgh a number of times to do the Edinburgh Fringe. I did not go to Oxford University, but I did hang around with a lot of people who did. Once or twice I contributed to a theatre column in a student paper. It’s a bit thespy because it’s okay to experiment with language when you’re young. Reprinted here because why not.

Crazy Idea: Physical haptic feedback of progress through an ebook

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:21:05 +0000

Haptic feedback is still an area where real books win over e-book readers such as Kindles. Being able to tell how far through a book you are by the feel of it, by the balance and thickness of the pages adds something instinctive to the reading process.

My idea is to have a little linear actuator with a small weight on it that spans the width of the ebook device. Just a very small motor (the type you get in phone vibrators) and a small worm-gear (like you get in floppy disk drives) would do, and wouldn’t take up much space. The weight would gradually move across from left to right as you moved through the book. This would allow you to assess your progress through whatever tome you were currently reading just by feel.

Boat from Home

Mon, 24 Oct 2011 21:44:37 +0000

Like most, I grew up in a house. These perform a number of functions. A safe place to sleep, eat and raise a family come fairly high in the list, as do entertaining guests and storing things. The house doesn’t undergo any substantial change in order to fulfil these different functions. It largely stays put. In effort to impress the guests you might re-arrange the furniture, clean the windows or hide the cat. The prime change is in the disposition of the house dweller, who changes their mental state in order to fulfill the task of getting through another day, feeding the children again or keeping the guests entertained until it’s time for them to go home.

things

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 22:56:59 +0000

Don’t ask me what this does.

Today I Have Been Mostly Chopping Wood

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 17:04:44 +0000

Today I chanced upon some logs. So I took them home…

… and went at them with a hatchet…

I reckon that’s a few weeks’ worth of warm evenings some time around winter 2012.

Some people are worrying about the cost of heating their homes. I’m out scouting for wood.

Any woodologists able to identify what this might be and if it’ll burn obligingly? Failing that, practising xylologists?

One Last Joke

Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:42:20 +0000

Immediately after leaving university I joined a software company, and stayed there for 2 years and 8 months. It was serious slice of life. I’m glad I spent it there, but I’m also glad I left. Over the almost-three-years, my self-control wavered from time to time. I enjoy a joke, and if there’s a practical element, all the better.

In his goodbye speech, my manager went over the list of things I had done in my time there, including several practical jokes.

Guess the Icon!

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 16:28:55 +0000

Microsoft Windows sets the bar high for software developers. Their standards of usability and UI consistency are something that few developers are fully able to attain.

With that in mind I present to you…

Guess the icon!

What’s this

Yes, you guessed it, it’s Intel’s Active Management Technology Status. And it’s disabled.

Not that you’d know.

Theatre Shows I Have Teched For

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 00:00:42 +0000

During my time as a student (and during my time as a human) I’ve done a fair bit of lighting design and teching for student theatre. Here is a list of shows I have worked on.

2010

**Bent **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford)

**Paradise Lost **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford)

**The Blue Room **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford)

2009

**Captain Improv **ICE

**Much Ado About Nothing **(Lighting Designer; O’Reilly, Oxford)

**The Tempest **(Lighting Designer; Moser, Oxford)

**The Truth **(Lighting Designer & Op; OFS, Oxford)

My Instrument Zoo

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 00:00:30 +0000

I like instruments and have somewhat of a menagerie. Here are some of the less embarrassing inmates.

Squeezeboxes

Here is a Castagnari Lilly. It’s a small, single-voice D/G melodeon. Because of its size and the fact it has one reed per note, the reeds are mounted directly on the board rather than in a reed-block. It sounds a bit like a concertina. The buttons are much smaller than a normal melodeon so it’s easier to play fiddly things.

Fixing a leaky Castagnari Lilly

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 00:00:52 +0000

After a brilliant Swanage Folk Festival, I got my box home and, to my horror, heard a slight hissing sound. Nightmare. A few seconds’ listening suggested it was coming from behind the grille. So off it came.

Somehow the wax on the pallets had melted and allowed a valve or two to slip out of place. The wax melts at a very low temperature (a bit too low in my opinion). I carefully used a soldering iron to warm the armature (not the wax itself!) in short bursts. It took very little heating indeed to allow me to move the valves back in place.

De-Dusting Melodeon Air Vents

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:55 +0000

My third- (or perhaps fourth-) hand Dino Baffetti melodeon has some pretty impressive basses, but the tonics on the chord side (key-note) have slowly started to sound a bit out of tune. Jon Spiers suggested that whilst it might be a problem with the reeds, the shape of the chamber also affects how reeds speak. It was noticeable that the tuning was fine at low volume, but at higher pressure the tone bent up as much as 50 cents. I took apart the chamber and bellows to see if anything was amiss, but it all looks in order. I did notice that the dust filters on the air vents were looking a bit mucky and that that might be causing the problem:

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Propolis doesn’t come off. At least the proplis that my bees make. Whenever I open the hive I have to slowly ease the boxes apart, slowly prying them as the glue stretches and releases its grip. It’s known as bee glue for a reason. Like honey, it’s a product of its environment, and its stickiness depends on the trees that the bees have access to. Like honey, it’s produced by a chain

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I captured the event stream whilst I drew a circle.

$ ssh remarkable ‘cat /dev/input/event0’ > /tmp/pen-input

This ended up being 22,832 bytes. I then cleared the screen and piped some data back over the connection:

$ cat /tmp/pen-input | ssh remarkable ‘cat - > /dev/input/event0’

Nothing. This was understandable, as the data was all sent in one go, and the tablet likely though that my hand was moving at infinity meters per second.