Tag: General

This weekend was spent at Ruth and Pirouel’s Wedding. There are photographs, of course – what would you expect from me? The vast majority of the people there were vegetarian (and quite a few were vegan) so the food was non-meat based (for the most part). Even though, I will have to say it was really tasty. Almost make me think of going that way, If it wasn’t for the love I have for steaks.
This weekend also marks the removal of the last pieces of my chattels from Dublin. I am officially not there any more. What on earth am I going to do now? Mind you Dermot still has a chunk of my DVD’s. I think I’ll go visit during the week and bring a baseball bat 🙂

Turns out that everyone was being really really paranoid, and we were getting lines crossed. the reason my mother was being held in the hospital was that she was required to remain really still for about 5-6 hours after the procedure. The overall analysis was that she has only 50% blockage, which should be remediable via drugs.

Home of the Underdogs
This is where I go to remember all the cool games of yore!

The Infinite Teen Slang Dictionary

18 hours until my next meeting

The last time I set a clock it was to recover from a flat battery on my PDA. That was about 6 months ago, and the PDA has languished in my desk for that time period, I’ll probably have to repeat the process, but that’s the punishment I get for not using it. The reason I don’t use it anymore is that I’ve upgraded from PDA’s to laptops. This has been quite a step for me, the changes in what I am able to do once I’m out of the office are considerable, I can now work anywhere I feel like, with the biggest stubling block being the battery life.
But, on to the actual reason why I am writing about video timers and complexity, several years ago there was a company called VideoPlus+, which produced a little remote control gizmo that could be used to set a video recorder to the appropriate time and channel and start recording you programs when you wanted it, the only thing you needed was the special sequence of numbers on the TV guide, and providing the video plus remote control was close enough to the video recorded and satellite receiver, it would change the channels and start the video recorder by using infra-red beams.
The problem was the hidden complexity of this machine. You had to inform it what brand of satellite receiver and video recorder you had. Then you had to program in the correct date and time on the remote control. If you didn’t then the system would not work correctly.
Now we have the TiVo, and Sky+, both of which allow you to record your shows. They have reduced the cost of learning to use the systems quite significantly, you don’t need to set the date and time on the boxes – this information is pulled remotely. You don’t need to type in some magical number sequence, you choose the item you want from the list of programs.
How does this change things? Well quite simply it means that none of my family are harassed by my parents every time they come over – set the video for this, can you make sure thay this is recorded while we’re on holiday.
What a huge change this little thing has had on us!

First impression – jeez what kind of lame ass makes you pick the episodes one by fscking one? Oh, yeah, that’s right it’s only a short series so they have to make it last as long as possible. I’m giving it to the end of the first DVD before I make a judgement, but so far, I’m not impressed.

In response to an ntp query about how many servers you should have, someone commented that 3 was sufficient.
This is a (unfortunately) very common misconception. NTP requires *four* servers before avoiding a single point of failure. In reality, the times reported by servers rarely if ever match, so three servers are not sufficient since in all likelihood, none of them will actually match.
NTP gets around this problem by using intervals based on the offset and plus or minus a calculated error. A candidate interval is created using two servers, and any two servers can form such an interval. NTP uses the shortest interval which encloses at least half of the servers. With three servers, this can always be formed no matter how wildly the servers disagree by choosing the interval made by the highest and the lowest server offsets, since the third will always lie between them on the interval.
With four servers, however, if three servers are very close and one is far off the others, the shortest interval will consist of the three in agreement, thus cutting out the bad guy. Of course, since NTP servers often use each other as time sources, it is better to have more servers to avoid the problem of one server contaminating another and cascading failures. But to avoid clock jumps you should have at least four.

I was at my sister’s 40th this weekend, and boy am I tired. She had her party in the lovely Carraig House, on Caragh Lake. A lovely location for having a nice quiet weekend. There was karaoke, and tunes for the aged. We didn’t finish up on the Friday night until after 4am, and on Saturday night I was guiding people to their beds at 5.30 in the morning. The poor nun was woken up at 4.30 by some kids in the room next to her – unfortunately they have no concept of time. I think their parents got a sum total of 2 hours sleep. This morning I had to get up for a 6am flight back to sunny Dublin. I was in the office before 8am – which is way too early for anyone. I’m drinking coffee and trying to keep myself awake (shhhh… don’t tell my manager).

Well the housemate arrived back yesterday. Due to a colossal communication breakdown I went out to the Airport twice yesterday. And me with a hangover. I shouldn’t have… really.