Coding Cogitations: Back to the Status Quo

Well my sojourn into Google Chrome as my default browser is at an end. I gave it my best support but have found too many websites where Chrome either doesn't work at all or numerous features fail. I am a big believer in always supporting various competitors in the market to create difference and promote variety. I am a staunch Microsofty at heart though and so it is with a small fond tear in my eye that I have reactivated IE 8 as my browser of choice. Sorry Google but there is still work for you to do. It appears though the IE has taken up the call of "If you can't beat em - join em" as many of its features mimic the good things I enjoyed in Chrome in any case.

WINDOWS 7 - another triumph!!

After labouring (and I do mean labouring) under Windows Vista on my main development PC for over three months I couldn't take it anymore. It was either take a punt with Windows 7 or blow the damn thing away and rebuild with XP. I bit the bullet and lept into 7. Wow! All the good things of Vista are there and none of the bad memory choking, blood pressure raising, keyboard slamming, cuss causing frustrations. It flies. It is smooth. It is highly customisable and I don't know how I survived previously without the pinnable taskbar.

If you are in any doubt on Windows 7 - I say take the plunge. You won't be dissappointed on this one! I'm still going to send Bill Gates a bill though for the time I wasted grappling with Vista. I think I lost 10mins from every hour of productivity waiting for things to load, think, render, crash, report, confirm etc etc. But I forgive as I think Windows 7 is altogether a great product. Google has it's work cut out for it if it thinks Vista left the might MS vulnerable in the OS market!

Medieval Musings: Agrarian Festivals

Who doesn't love a good festival. Medieval festivals were not mere parties, BBQs or even whole day celebrations such as weddings. These were week long extravaganzas that brought people from far and wide!

Medieval celebrations centered around specific feast days that had pagan origins and were based on ancient agrarian celebrations that marked when certain crops should be planted or harvested.

Wheat and rye were sown from Michaelmas (September 29) to Christmas. Spring crops would be planted from the end of Christmas through to Easter. Christmas, Easter and Pentecost would be celebrated with a feast of the Church. They were followed by a week of vacation. Visions of an Oktoberfest style celebration springs to mind but on a much larger scale.

There were many lesser celebrations as well such as:

- Candlemas (February 2),

- Hocktide (end of the Easter week),

- Mayday,

- the Rogation Days,

- Ascension (all in May),

- Midsummer or St. John's Day (June 24),

- the Lammas or Feast of St. Peter

These would all be marked with feasts and unique celebrations. Michaelmas marked the beginning of winter and the start of the fiscal year for merchants and tradesmen.

By November, feed was often too scarce to keep animals through the winter, and became known as the "blood month" when meat was smoked, salted and cured for consumption during the long winter ahead. The month began with All Hallows (later, All Saints) Day, followed by St. Martin's Day (November 11).

But medieval society awaited the dreariest time of the year to celebrate the grandest feast of all. The two-week period from Christmas Eve to Twelfth Day (January 6) transformed into the longest vacation for workers. The Lords of the manor or castle often gave bonuses of food, clothing, drink and firewood to ye olde servants. Houses were decked with holly and ivy (there's a song in there), and giant Yule logs were brought in and burned throughout the two-week celebration. New Year's took place during this time and added to the festivities, and "First Gifts" were often exchanged on this day.

"Plow Monday" took place the day after Epiphany, and freemen of the village would participate in a plow race, to begin cultivation of the town's common plot of land. Each man would try and furrow as many lines as possible, as he would be able to sow those lines during the coming year. Children would play the role of "Fool Plow" and go from house to house asking for pennies. Those who refused would find the ground in front of their door plowed up.

Easter, as Christmas, was a day for exchanging gifts. The castle lord would receive eggs from the villagers and in return, provide servants with dinner. May saw celebrations of love, especially on the 1st. Villagers would venture into the woods to cut wildflowers and other greenery for their homes to usher in May and hope for a fertile season.

Original and further information can be found here.

Bring back a life of festivities, common purpose and mutual exertion I say... especially if it also heralds the end of commercial corporate mass manufactured entertainment!

Hear Hear!

Reality Ruminations: Reflected as an Angel

I have always struggled with the ability of some people to create and perpetuate massive and unsettling lies about themselves, circumstances and events. The struggle was also with myself as my memories often were met with "that never happened" or "it didn't occur that way". What is going on?

I have read about 'Moral Disengagement' where a person excuses their own hurtful or bad (and I know that is subjective) actions within a moral framework that would justify and excuse or 'dress up' those actions as judicial or necessary or whatever made it palatable to them, but does that explain simple re-interpretations that aren't necessarily so morally loaded?

I recently had the experience of coming into conflict with a person who simply appeared disengaged from reality. He was saying things were done that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt never were and further that things weren't done that I know beyond a shadow of doubt were. I accept that interpretations can differ but he now (as this is a recent invention) has no such doubt of my obvious culpability. Is he simply mendacious or is something deeper going on? Normally I would not be particularly concerned except the he has now embarked on a campaign of misinformation that appears to be readily accepted by others. What is even more perplexing is that those relationships that were previously successful with great outcomes are suddenly being re-interpretated by them as abject failures despite prior emails of congratulations and past conversations of gratitude. It is like a spreading virus that is corrupting the holy into a decayed shadow of its former self.

In seeking answers I came across an article called "THE 'PATHOLOGICAL DISHONESTY' DISEASE" by William J. Beaty, 1998.

It reads: "The "liars" are formidable opponents because they have no need to ever surrender. When you take them on, you aren't even dealing with a human, instead you are fighting an unleashed subconscious which has far more extensive mental resources than normal. Also, they can tell enormous lies with a clear conscience, and people will believe their side of the story without a second thought, since their attitude and body-language is that of a truth teller. REAL truth-tellers always have some self-doubt, and when they go up against one of the liars, the liars appear to be far more truthful than the genuine truth-tellers."

The original full article is HERE.

After reading further I found that this sort of "Convenient Disremembering" is a defence mechanism we all have. If we are challenged or 'called' on poor behaviour, our subconscious launches into defence mode and begins reinterpretating reality to cover the hole. I know I have done that in the past myself when my behaviour has been less that noble. Either within my own mind or in conversation with those around me I have 'modified' what really happened to shine a better light, not overtly or intentionally but certainly with an element of subconscious spin. This might perhaps sound like a minor infraction but it is actually quite hideous when you look at it deeper. I guess that is why you hear that even mass murderers believe they are good people and something (generally outside of themselves) justified, caused or created the terrible behaviour.

Beaty in his article also says that we "also put much emphasis on the idea that all of reality is just a matter of opinion. A very strange viewpoint. Though the "blind men" disagree, this doesn't have any effect on the elephant!". I wonder given the discoveries of quantum scientists that the observer has an impact on the fabric of reality whether it actually does have an effect on the elephant. Perhaps in the agreed conversations of humans the past and present is changed and I now need to apologise.

Gardening Goings On: 10 Foot Planet

I have started a new Blog with the family for all the Garden Goings On as there is enough material there to warrant its own site.

http://www.10footplanet.blogspot.com

Enjoy

Technology Tidings: Transparent Aluminium

Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.

Full article is Here

The material is apparently a completely new state of matter and of course its implications are enormous in terms of both space and deep sea exploration. It has other fantastic implications in the area of Nuclear Fission though I don't personally appreciate that aspect.

The new technology works by knocking out a key electron within the Aluminium atoms that leaves its basic crystaline structure intact rendering the material transparent to certain light.

"'What we have created is a completely new state of matter nobody has seen before,’ said Professor Justin Wark of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, one of the authors of the paper. ‘Transparent aluminium is just the start. The physical properties of the matter we are creating are relevant to the conditions inside large planets, and we also hope that by studying it we can gain a greater understanding of what is going on during the creation of 'miniature stars' created by high-power laser implosions, which may one day allow the power of nuclear fusion to be harnessed here on Earth.

The discovery was made possible with the development of a new source of radiation that is ten billion times brighter than any synchrotron in the world (such as the UK’s Diamond Light Source). The FLASH laser, based in Hamburg, Germany, produces extremely brief pulses of soft X-ray light, each of which is more powerful than the output of a power plant that provides electricity to a whole city."

Music Mutterings: The Kinks (Wonder Boy)

La-la-la-la...
Wonder boy, lifes just begun.
Turn your sorrow into wonder
Dream alone, dont sigh, dont groan
Life is only what you wonder.
Day is as light as your brightest dreams,
Night is as dark as you feel it ought to be.
Time is as fast as the slowest thing,
Life is only...

Wonder boy,
Wonder boy.
Everybody is looking for the sun.
People strain their eyes to see,
But I see you and you see me,
And aint that wonder?

Wonder boy, some mothers son,
Life is full of work and plunder[? ].
Easy go, life is not real,
Life is only what you conjure.

Wonder boy,
And the world is joy, every single day.
Its the real mccoy,
Wonder boy.
Everybody is looking for the sun.
People strain their eyes to see,
But I see you and you see me,
And aint that wonder?

Wonder boy, some mothers son,
Turn your sorrow into wonder
Dream alone, go have your fun.
Life is only...
Life is only...
Life is only...

An old favourite - apparently John Lennon was fond of this one too!

Technology Tidings: Witricity

I was listening to Coast to Coast AM with George Noory (a highly recommended show for anyone interested in 'other' ideas of what we are all doing here!) just last week and the guest was talking about Harmonic Resonance technologies, Tesla and wireless electrical systems. As I mentioned in a previous post I have a great interest in the work of Nikola Tesla...Wireless electricity...is it possible...?

Well...while researching gardening of all things I came across this story from the BBC - A system that can deliver power to devices without the need for wires has been shown off at a hi-tech conference....wow!

The system is based on work by physicist Marin Soljacic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It exploits "resonance", whereby energy transfer is markedly more efficient when a certain frequency is applied. When two objects have the same resonant frequency, they exchange energy strongly without having an effect on other, surrounding objects.

For example, it is resonance that can cause a wine glass to explode when a singer hits exactly the right tone. But instead of using acoustic resonance, Witricity's approach exploits the resonance of low frequency electromagnetic waves.

The fascinating thing about this technology is that all you need is a 'like minded' receiver (by which I mean same resonant frequency) coil inside a laptop, television, toaster that matches the energy source transmitter and it will automatically make use of the resonant electricity to charge or power itself. No more wires, cables, batteries etc. The system utilises magnetic fields so keep your floppy disks somewhere else but otherwise the technology appears harmless to humans, pets and cockroaches (I say appears as we often can't predict the effects of these systems until someone has had decent exposure to it....Thalidomide anyone?).

Interesting enough the article in discussing precursors to the technology mentions the work and ideas of Edison and Tesla and writes "Tesla even went so far as to build a 29m-high aerial known as Wardenclyffe Tower in New York. "It ran into some financial troubles and that work was never completed," said Professor Soljacic"....financial trouble...It was canned by JP Morgan to prevent universal free energy!! Haven't you been on YouTube!!

*takes of his tin foil hat and returns to his discourse*

A world without wires is a fascinating idea - it bodes well for electric cars that charge themselves in your own garage or at the office carpark....surely that's not going to make big oil very happy though....

The full article is available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8165928.stm.

Enjoy!