Live astronomy event, this Saturday 30th March. Free entry. Stargazing, Prizes, Quiz, Live Podcast Show and more!

The Jolly Farmer (Pub), Blacknest, Hampshire (opposite Alice Holt Forest). 5:00pm to 10:00pm

Achievement unlocked: Troll Google Streetview.

Today Google updated their UK Streetview Maps today with an extra 10% of content. I’m in that extra content. Now I feel like an extra special DLC (downloadable content). Yes, it’s a bit dorky but I only had a two minute warning that the Streetview car was on the way.

Apologies to our neighbours.

Shark hat by Dylan (aged 5).

At least for a while.

I know I’ve not blogged much recently. My plan at the start of the year was for more time off, more time cycling and blogging and I’ve pretty much failed since I’ve done zero miles on my bike and I can count the number of blog posts and videos I’ve made on no fingers.

There are quite a lot of changes happening right now; I’m mostly kept very busy with work related activities, projects for customers and of course RTI. There’s a move on the cards and a lot of new changes this year which I’ll be writing or talking about.

In the meantime, 2020 Astro continues unabated and we’re running a big astronomy party in the pub we record at on the 31st of March. We’re expecting quite a few people so check the 2020 Astro website for more information closer to the date!

All the best,

Mike

(These machines were built in the summer of 2011)

When I last wrote about Bitcoin, building a mining rig was a very good idea. Today, not so much (depending on how cheaply you can build, whether you have unused hardware you can put to use and how expensive your electricity bill is).

However the method for building monstrous powerful parallel-computing beasts hasn't changed, so it's well worth a blog post.

Bitcoins are a distributed, peer-to-peer digital crypto currency. Money, but not as we know it. There are no banks, no governing agencies and no fees. The network is programmed to be self-maintaining and just like fiat currency ($, £, etc) require a vast amount of processing power to maintain, so does the Bitcoin network. This processing power checks every financial transaction and keeps the network running. In government-controlled currencies, governments have the power to literally print new money at printing presses. The Bitcoin network does this automatically at a controlled rate and as a reward for all the hard work of the many computers in the network, the new money is issued, at random, to one of them.

The machines require a special sort of computational power to process Bitcoin transactions. A standard 'fast' processor takes a series of complex mathematical problems and compute it quickly. However in the Bitcoin world we have many, many more 'problems' than a single 'fast' processor can efficiently handle. Fortunately there is a solution: Instead of using expensive fast CPU's to do the work, we will use GPU's – graphical processing units – which are capable of processing massively large workloads, in parallel, simultaneously.

Think of it this way: When building a computer for gaming, a powerful graphics card is almost always preferable in place of a powerful CPU since the bulk of the workload for graphic-intensive games comes from having to render complex graphics to the display, hundreds of times per second in order to generate a smooth 3D image for a player. A CPU meanwhile is responsible for running the operating system, background tasks and processes and conducting the orchestra of components.

Step 1 – Choosing the components When choosing components for a typical PC workstation build one usually looks to obtain the best performance and scalability parts within the budget, bearing in mind that the single slowest component will usually be the bottleneck of the system. It makes very little sense for a typical workstation to have the latest and greatest processor but meanwhile a small 1 or 2 GB of RAM, or slow BUS clock speeds, since the CPU won't be fed and clock cycles will be wasted.

Therefore these machines are built with two design goals in mind:

1. To deliver the optimum parallel computing performance for the smallest financial outlay
2. To reduce wasted energy and dissipate excess heat

I thought it might be fun to see if I could make a profit – from parallel computing. So almost £2,000 later, these boxes arrived on the doorstep:

There are a few interesting design choices here that make these machines rather unique. For a start, each miner has THREE high-end ATI Radeon 5870 graphics cards (£134 each) in a specially highly-ventilated case (£130), but yet have only 2GB of RAM (£16) and a processor with as much power as a 1980's Casio “Al Quaida” watch. Amazingly powerful at parallel processing, but lame at Excel. Perfect.

I accidentally ordered 2GB of DDR2 1333Mhz RAM, but could have gotten away with 1GB of the same speed…

At the risk of sound a little narcissistic, here’s an article that I was in last week on PayeRti.Org: www.payerti.org/news/view/rti-when-to-report-and-when-to-pay

The next release of Gateway Solver, which is currently in the HMRC LIVE RTI PILOT, is due for release in early 2013 and will support all of the RTI forms. The website will be available soon, but it you want to know more, get in touch with me (links on the sidebar!).

I recently led a four-hour practical astrophotography class for HantsAstro at the Petersfield Community Centre. It was a blast! I think it’s fair to say that we all learnt something and thank you to everyone who attended, and to Dave Woods at HantsAstro for co-presenting with me!

If you’re in Hampshire and fancy learning more about Astronomy or Astrophotography and would like to take one of these courses and would like more information, click here.

Well, Vicky and Dylan did most of the work

…but I put the candle in it!

It was a lot easier than it looks to make. At first, Vicky drew the outline of the shark’s features onto the pumpkin and we cut out the lid (leaving a triangle lip at the rear so it only fits back on the right way), hollowed it out (easy with a spoon) and cut out the features.

Happy Samhain/Halloween!

It’s a tale as old as time, particularly in the digital age. Boy (actually an adult) meets (12 year old) girl. Girl is persuaded to send a nude picture to boy. Boy extorts girl with blackmail threats. Girl falls into depression. Boy releases picture, community bully girl, girl kills herself to escape the psychological torture.

This is a very sad story. I’ll let the 16 year old girl, Amanda Todd explain herself, posthumously on this video posted on her YouTube account last month. I dare you to watch the whole story:

She’s gone now and can no longer be reached by the internet trolls who pursued her relentlessly, leaving particularly nasty comments on Facebook, YouTube and Reddit.

The Hacker group Anonymous claim to have identified the man responsible:

Only it turns out that Anonymous might have gotten the wrong guy.

Reddit in particular has a section (subreddit) called r/creepshots which basically encourages creepy guys to take photographs of unsuspecting women in as creepy-a-manner-as-possible and to share them online. A couple of weeks ago, a substitute teacher in Georgia was found to be posting photographs of his students to this board and has since been fired.

While we’re on Reddit – Adrian Chen the top dude at Gawker recently outed Michael Brutsch – a 49 year old programmer from a financial company in Texas who claims to have posted racist and sexual images of unsuspecting young girls on reddit as a way to “unwind from work”. It’s a very interesting read: http://gawker.com/5950981/unmasking-reddits-violentacrez-the-biggest-troll-on-the-web.

"My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment," he said. "I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time." – Michael Brutsch (Internet Troll).

Negatively affect on his employment, it will and this fucker should have thought about his employment, his disabled wife and his home before bullying others. The trouble is, a lot of internet trolls and hateful people enjoy what they do from behind the assumed immunity of their keyboard and monitor fortress. After posting pictures and comments insulting people’s dead relatives, they make their own pathetic lives feel just a little bit better.And they do it capriciously, anonymously (or so they think) and without facing the consequences.

The sheer douche-baggery of Michael Brutsch has even gotten him an interview on CNN with Anderson Cooper, airing tomorrow:

GRIFFIN: ANDERSON OUTED YOU WITHOUT SAYING YOUR NAME A YEAR AGO, RIGHT? YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED THEN. IS THE ONLY REASON YOUR’E STOPPING BECAUSE WE NOW KNOW WHO YOU ARE?
BRUTSCH: YES. I MEAN THAT IS, YOU KNOW, VIOLENTACREZ IS WHAT I DID IN MY SPARE TIME TO UNWIND FROM MY 10-HOUR-A-DAY JOB. THAT’S HOW I RELAXED IN THE EVENING. I NO LONGER NEED TO RELAX IN THE EVENING, BECAUSE I NO LONGER HAVE A JOB. THAT AND THE FACT THAT THE CURTAIN’S BEEN PULLED BACK AND EVERYONE CAN SEE THE PUPPETEER…THAT AND THE FACT THAT I HAVE, AS WITH THE RAPE AND PREGNANT REDDITS, I HAVE COME AROUND OVER THE LAST FEW MONTHS TO UNDERSTAND THAT SOME OF THESE THINGS CAN BE HARMFUL TO OTHER PEOPLE.

What about Freedom of Speech? Well, Reddit’s view is that, “We stand for free speech. This means we are not going to ban distasteful subreddits. We will not ban legal content even if we find it odious or if we personally condemn it.”. Of course, they exercised their stand for free speech by retaliating against the Gawker doc dropping of their creepiest resident internet troll by promptly banning all Gawker links on their site. Free speech has limits and clearly hypocrisy does not.

The story has been covered already in plenty of places but I feel that i have a couple of points to add to the discussion that appear yet to be raised;

1. Freedom of Speech

“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” 
– Evelyn Beatrice Hall, The Friends of Voltaire (1906)

It’s easy to argue that Free Speech is fundamentally important and should be protected. It’s much harder to defend Reddit’s CreepZone, the candid creepy photography of unsuspecting young women in public for the purposes of communal sexual gratification as “freedom of speech”. I wouldn’t seek to end this practice (although I find it odious and unethical), I do believe that freedom of speech has limits. Shouting “Fire!” in a crowded theatre, Screaming outside an operating theatre or distracting a driver or pilot for instance would be considered potentially damaging. People generally don’t do these things though as they have no expectation of anonymity. The internet changes this and it is good that this particular troll has become unemployable because of his actions.

Speech must be free and yet the words must have an owner.

2. Safety and Abuse Reporting

While writing this short article, I noticed a lot of comments on Amanda Todd related video’s (and her own YouTube channel) celebrating her death and making vile and odious commentary typical of extreme internet trolling. Not wanting her family to see these comments, I flagged the troll’s account within YouTube and was presented with the following dialog.

“Please note that we only consider Harrassment complaints regarding content targeting you or someone you represent as a legal guardian. Third-party complaints will not be processed.”

Well that’s a lot of fucking good, isn’t it, YouTube? This is completely unacceptable. Presumably the analysts designing the Safety and Abuse Reporting feature don’t care much for children once they’re dead and it’s clearly up to the family of the deceased to sit in front of their computers 24/7 filing harassment reports, isn’t it?

YouTube – sort it out.

3. Support

• Education: If you’re reading this and have any kids in your family, educate them about the dangers of predatory and abusive relationships.
• Happiness is important: Don’t put up with bullying. Deal with it. If the school won’t deal with it – you can leave. Life is too short to spend time around people who suck the life out of you.
• Intervene with the bully’s: Identify and address the problems with the bully’s directly.

If a picture paints a thousand words, then for a video is surely overkill.

In this video I get covered in mud, hot water, cold water, man sweat and a cute (stuffed) kitten gets shot at.

I’m reviewing the latest SeV ScotteVest Transformer Jacket and Travel Jacket.

ScotteVest’s products are now officially available in the UK from Amazon: http://amzn.to/RtbsQU

Your footprints will remain on the moon as a constant reminder to all of your courage and the achievements we can all accomplish if we direct our will towards it.

I am thankful that the Apollo 11 mission was successful and that we can celebrate the first of a series of successful moon landings and not rather, that this rather beautiful and poignant speech would have been given:

I feel that this letter, the speech that was never made, gives the best tribute to the remarkable courage of both Armstrong and Aldrin, and the skill and will of NASA and the American people who almost fifty years ago embarked on an adventure that would take humans for the first (and currently the last) time into interplanetary space.

“Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.

These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind’s most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding.

They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of man.

In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts.

For every human being who looks up at the moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.”

– An undelivered speech for President Nixon, written by his Chief of Staff, William Safire. July 1969.