Robert Synnott

And now, to condoms

2013-01-16T21:35:00.001Z

We return from the icky, complain-y world of David Quinn to the the more salubrious land of condoms.

It occurred to me, while going on about Tesco's range of prophylactics a while back, that, while Tesco had extra large condoms (like all their condoms, in special perspex boxes to prevent escape, which one must ask staff to open), it lacked condoms for those who were at the back of the queue when the naughty bits were handed out. However, if I were to mention this, I would have to be careful to avoid that most henious of all crimes, libelling a supermarket, by implying that they discriminated against the smaller gent.

So, I went forth to their website, and looked at their range. Immediately, a problem occurred. Unlike the clothing and footwear industries, which merely use numbers that vary widely by region and brand, the condom industry uses nonsense worlds, like FeatherLight, LeadHeavy, HyperVole, and so forth. So I needed a lookup chart. Lookup chart found, it occurred to me that none of the jokes I was considering were very funny, and that I should probably scrap the whole thing. This continues to be the case; I think it would be in very poor taste to make jokes about horses.

There was something slightly amusing on the chart, however; a group called TheyFit, the Condom Experts. Again, though, I'd dropped the whole thing, so didn't mention it. The day the post went up, I got an email from someone proporting to be the founder (or, as he signed it, Founder & Condom Revolutionary) of this company, suggesting I write about it. Apparently, this blog is now a world authority on condoms, or something.

So, yes, why not. TheyFit is a company which makes 95 (yes, 95) different sizes of condom. These range in length from 8cm to 24cm (goodness), and come in plain packaging from SNGCORP. They use coded sizes in the form B11, which they claim is for privacy (in case anyone found out that greatest of secrets, what custom condom size one uses), but which is, of course, because they couldn't be bothered to make up 95 wonderful condom names like HyperVole.

And, my word, is this creepy:

Premier supplier of girls. Eek!

So, yes, if you spend a lot of time dashing desperately around the condom section at Boots, foaming at the mouth, ripping the packages open and applying the Vernier Callipers, until removed by store security, then this might be for you. Otherwise, well, possibly not.

A Whine at Bedtime with David Quinn

2013-01-15T22:04:00.001Z

TREMBLE WITH FEAR, MORTALS. David Quinn, King-Emperor of Complaining, Harrier of the Homos, Defender of the Dickheads, [The Iona guy. Yes, those people.] will now address you via the medium of Tweet:

This is of course in reference to the terrible, naughty European courts saying that it was okay to discipline or fire people if they refuse to do their job, even if they refuse to do so due to the presence of ICKY HOMOSEXUALS. They might have to civil-partner them, even! Imagine being a registrar and having to civil-partner people, like in the job description!

Similarly, of course, we don't see many Muslim or Jewish pork butchers; I trust that Iona will be immediately campaigning for the banning of pigs. I myself do not care for PHP, loathing it probably almost as much as Quinn's little band of bigots hate filthy gays such as myself; well, what if I want to work for Facebook? Iona, you know what to do. And when will Iona speak out on the very real issue of boring things, which thousands of people daily are forced to do as part of their work? I am glad that Iona is defending our constitutional right to get paid for not doing our jobs because we don't feel like it.

For that matter, I'm not sure how much I care for Iona, and yet if I were to become a postal worker, I would presumably have to deliver letters to their door, risking catching communicable stupidity from the letterbox. Iona, when will you campaign for the abolition of yourselves, and all other things that anyone, anywhere, happens to dislike?

Don't let the door hit you on your way out

2012-12-22T01:02:00.001Z

I'll quit as minister if abortion laws go too far, says Lucinda

Promise?

Seriously, though, I'm puzzled as to who this warning is for.

Perhaps it's to let Enda know that if he doesn't play ball, he'll face the arduous task of replacing such a key figure?

Or possibly it's a warning to us the voters. After all, where would we be without Lucinda Creighton to make thoughtless and offensive remarks about gay marriage and suicide and such?

Well, Lucinda, don't worry too much on our behalf. I'm sure that, if all goes to all, we can get John Waters to do a bit of overtime.

Important update on Tesco Value Condoms!

2012-12-19T20:31:00.001Z

Okay, so it turns out that Tesco actually do have own brand condoms. Now, they're not in the value range, for which small mercy we must be thankful, but then again they're not in the 'Finest' range either:

'Sequre'? Really? Oh, well, every little helps.

They also have this delightful item:

I can only assume that they're to be used for the celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee.

Also:

Mmm, green-flavoured.

Further adventures in over the counter pharmaceuticals

2012-12-19T20:19:00.001Z

So it looks like, based on this and my last post, that I'm taking this blog less in the direction of computers, politics and complaining, and more in the direction of reviews of non-perscription medication. Given the small field, this limits me to about ten more posts, or possibly a few more if I lower myself to esoterica like Panadol for Women (this really exists) or homeopathic cat worming tablets.

Anyway, I bought some paracetamol in Tesco on Fleet Street. Now, this is a good place to buy paracetamol, as they do not enclose it in a perspex box, as some other Tescos do; this is to help avoid breaking the law by selling more than one packet, as if people want to attempt suicide with paracetamol, the government feels that they should at least be required to visit many supermarkets to do it, presumably to encourage them.

Oddly, they do trap the condoms in a perspex box, it seems. I suppose this is a theft-prevention measure, as opposed to an attempt to stop people having too much sex, but really, condoms aren't particularly high-value items compared to some things they do have boxless. Also makes the procedure of buying condoms extra-embarassing, I assume. Wine bottles (but not beer bottles) also have security tags, though the cartons of delicious Tesco Value Wine:

do not, presumably because when they attempted to staple the security tag on, they just got cheap wine-like liquid substitute all over the floor.

Back to the point! When I got to the automatic checkout machine, with its frightening uncanny valley voice, it decided that the packet of twelve paracetamol packets was a "bulky item" and that I should put it directly in my trolley. Not having a trolley, I foolishly put it in the output area, which enraged the machine, requiring human intervention. Still, could have been worse; could have been a packet of condoms. Or, even worse, Tesco Value Condoms.

Best pharmaceutical product ever

2012-12-18T16:46:00.001Z

Ibuprofen and pseudoephedrine in one tablet. I mean, what more could you want?

They are a rather unappealing yellow colour, however.

A perennial iOS annoyance

2012-12-02T14:59:00.001Z

This has been irritating me since I first used iOS five years ago. When you hit the power button to lock the device, the device locks… and about a second later makes a click sound. Unlock the device again, and the unlocking sound fires instantly (note that this was not the case until iOS 5 or so). Lock again, and the lock sound fires instantly. But leave it unlocked for a while and you're back to the one-second delay. This is the case on at least the iPhone 4 and iPad 3, and while I haven't used either yet, I'd bet it will be the same on the iPhone 5 and iPad 4.

I assume what's going on here is that the 'lock' sound has to be loaded into memory, and gets bumped out after a while. The user can hit the switch at any time, so there's no useful hint as to when it's about to be triggered. The unlock sound, meanwhile, can be reasonably loaded when the user views the lock screen (but, again, this wasn't done until iOS 5).

So, there's a reasonable explanation, and you can sort of see why it is the way it is, but really it is most un-Apple. I'd almost think they should sacrifice a few tens of KB of memory to have the lock sound permanently resident.

Oddly persistent SEO scam spam

2012-11-01T00:02:00.001Z

"Search Engine Optimization" is a weird field. On the one hand, it can involve improving sites which are actively inimical to search engines. On the other, more common, one, however, it is essentially the art of lying to search engines.

Of course, search engines, which hold themselves in rather high regard, resent being lied to, so tend to adapt to ignore these tactics. One which was popular a few years back was inserting links to one's site wherever, whether through comment spam, buying links, or more interesting tactics. Apparently, it still happens a bit.

In 2006, I wrote a post about AJAX, which was very much the thing at the time. In it, I mentioned, and linked to, Apple Safari. Apple, in common with many large companies, likes to randomly re-arrange its website every few months, so the link is now broken.

A month ago, I received an email notifying me of this dead link, and recommending I link to a page on a website called learnstuff.com. I, of course, ignored this, it being a form of SEO scam, albeit a pleasingly retro one.

And then, a few weeks later, I got a followup. So, this is interesting.

A search for the text of the first spam gets me 516 results. The second, 729 results (some people seem to have gotten a variant of the first as their initial contact). The third, which arrived today? A mere 7 results. I'm oddly excited to see whether I'll be one of the lucky few favoured with a fourth.
I really have to wonder, though, at this point why bother? Search engines are surely good at detecting this naughtiness by now?

The mail relay being used is also interesting. It's smtp.com!

"But now I do so with confidence!"

By avoiding those cheap, low-end Star Trek transporters which leave one's face slightly out of phase.

"Everyone must know the truth about Safari. Everyone."

Funny goings-on at the New York Times

2012-06-02T01:38:00.001+01:00

David Pogue reviews the Samsung Galaxy Player 4.2, an iPod Touch rival.

I originally went to this article as it was linked as a particularly blatant example of an "unbiased" (in the sense of "unbiased" meaning "praising an inferior product so as to avoid offending the company's fans") review. Myself, I don't see this; it reads as a parody of said genre. In particular:

The Player is not as light or as thin (0.35 inches thick instead of 0.28), but the slight thickening makes possible a removable back panel. Inside are two things the Touch doesn’t offer: a removable battery and a memory-card slot.
You’ll probably need to buy a memory card, in fact, since the Player comes with only about four gigabytes of free memory for your files. But the point is: the capacity of your Player is up to you. Choice is good, right?

But, note the title:

Now, here's the same article, from a Google search:

And the URL: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/31/technology/personaltech/galaxy-player-4-2-by-samsung-aims-at-ipod-touch-and-falls-just-short.html

I don't think this is an example of nefarious censorship of an uncomplimentary review title; rather I think it's to fit with the article; the original title clashed a bit with the sarcastic tone.

Unpleasant surprises

2012-05-05T15:53:00.002+01:00

Every few months, a Progress robotic spacecraft (it's basically an automatic Soyuz without the living space or re-entry module) visits the ISS, with supplies.

It occurs to me that it would be hilarious if the occupants opened it up... to find an enraged, floating cat. But then I realised my mistake.

An owl would be far better.

I expect NASA and Roscosmos to give me 10% of the revenue from the hit reality TV show which results from this.

Important Theological/Medical News

2012-05-01T01:25:00.001+01:00

Regulators have determined that Jesus is ineffective against cancer, with no improvement in outcome as compared to a placebo deity.

Principal distributor Catholic Church Ltd (NASDAQ: INQSTN). has issued a prophet warning, but CEO Joe Ratzinger assured investors of the continued viability of the conglomerate's financial services and childcare businesses. It is understood that production of a next-generation product, codenamed Secundo Adventum, has been accelerated.

Representatives of other manufacturers, which have been locked in legal disputes over the medication since the patent expired in 1521, were unavailable for comment.

Disaster-friendly domains

2012-04-23T23:31:00.002+01:00

So it turns out that the OPW has a website called flooding.ie, for what to do in a flood.

Has anyone checked their other recent registrations? If they have plagueofvoles.eu or zombiestalin.mobi, the public has a right to know.

Note the cheerful wave design. Not pictured; cars floating mournfully in their underground layers, imploding shopping centers etc.

And then there's this:

We don't actually have any facts about flooding, but these magic boots are in some way involved.

I do love the cheerful illustrations, though.

Apple, the mysterious shrinking processor, and hot iPads

2012-04-13T00:59:00.001+01:00

There was an interesting article today about the new Apple TV's processor. Essentially, the Apple TV now has a dual-core A5 with one core disabled. But that's not the interesting part; it's actually a fairly common strategy in dealing with a not-100%-reliable process, where one core may end up unusable. Those weird three-core AMD processors, for instance, are reportedly four-core parts where one core did not work correctly, and was disabled. All PS3 chips have one SPE (a glorified DSP; the Cell chip has a number of them) disabled, likely to improve yield.

The interesting part is that, unlike all previous A5s (and A4s), which were made on a 45nm process, this one was made on a 32nm process. In general, you'd expect an equivalent 32nm chip to have lower power consumption (and thus heat output) than the same design on a 45nm process.

The even more interesting part... When they looked inside a new iPad 2 (the cheaper one announced at the same time as the new iPad), they found a 32nm A5, with both cores enabled. It'll be interesting to see if the new iPad 2s have better battery life than the old ones; you'd certainly expect it.

And now the borderline conspiracy theory part. The A5X (new iPad SoC) looked at by Chipworks was a 45nm part. But are all A5Xes 45nm parts? Surely, if you have a 32nm process available to you, you'd want to use it for your largest and most expensive, and hottest, chips? Is it possible that some iPad not-3s have 45nm SoCs, and some 32nm?

In a now-notorious test, Consumer Reports found that the new iPad gets hot, ~~so hot that it could melt a cat~~ well, warm; about 46 degrees, when playing a strenuous game and plugged in. They also found that the charger was unable to keep up with it in this condition; the battery kept draining. But, while some were able to reproduce at least some of this, others failed, with some tests finding it getting only marginally warmer than the old iPad 2, and cooler than many competitors. Could there be a 32nm version in the wild?

Back to the blog

2012-04-09T17:36:00.001+01:00

So, I think I'm going to start blogging again; in that sort of mood. For anyone who is still, for some ungodly reason, subscribed to this thing, you have been warned. Coming up, a book review, a webcomic review, and more, to bore you to death!

Google UI designers gone wild; or, how to create a filter in new Gmail

2012-03-01T22:56:00.001Z

So, I'm not a huge fan of Google's recent feats of web design. In particular, in Reader, they took one of the best webapps around and made it basically unusable. But that's a story for another rant-y blog post. Today I'd like to talk about creating a filter in GMail.

This used to be quite simple; there was a link for it. Now… Well, I'll let you guess from the image (and what you need to do it is in this image):

What's that arrow beside the search box for? Why, it must be a combo box! How very retro! Remember combo boxes? Sadly, they never really joined us in earnest in the 21st century, and certainly they haven't made it into this decade:

Well, no, actually, it is not a combo box. It is, er, this:

Yes, when you click it, you get a sort of drop-down pseudo-modal form. I propose that we call this fabulous new user interface paradigm 'the Google', and use it everywhere. Or possibly just call for an international moratorium on it.

Silly product description of the day

2012-03-01T21:50:00.001Z

From a liquid soap dispenser:

Dermatologically tested for kindness

For kindness? How does this work? Did they apply it to a dermatologist and then track how much he gave to charity? On the plus side, animal testing of non-medical products have been largely phased out, so it probably wasn't tested for kindness through being unkind to a rabbit.

From the same dispenser:

3x better at eliminating bacteria [FOOTNOTE: Than our previous hand cleaner]

This seems rather unhelpful, as for all we know their previous cleaner might have been made out of pure raw chicken.

Fun with Python for iOS

2012-02-26T04:34:00.001Z

So, a Python environment for iOS has been released. Unfortunately, it doesn't provide a way to import code. This more or less renders it a toy, right? Well, not quite!
It does provide both exec and urllib, so I wrote a little script to load libraries on it. The script works by creating modules with exec, putting them in sys.modules, and attempting to emulate the behaviour of Python's own module loading. Currently, the module must be specced in the following format:

('web',
        'utils',
        'net',
        'webapi',
        'http',
        'httpserver',
        'wsgi',
        'db',
        'template',
        'debugerror',
        'form',
        'session',
        'application',
        'browser',
        ('wsgiserver', '__init__'),
        '__init__'))

However, it would be possible to divine dependencies from the library.
You can see it in action by entering:

import urllib2
exec urllib2.urlopen("http://rsynnott.com/pyios/loadcode.py").read()

load_package('simplejson')

import simplejson

in Python for iOS, or indeed any interpreter. Run that, then enter 'import simplejson', and you have an external library!
For a slightly more interesting example, do

exec urllib2.urlopen("http://rsynnott.com/pyios/loadcodeweb.py")

This will give you web.py (actually a slightly modified version, with __file__ removed from the error page generator, and a minor modification to the wsgiserver to tolerate the module loading scheme), running a hello world app. If you switch to the browser and visit http://localhost:8080, you'll see the page, though it may take a little while to load.
You can see the loader code here.
Having the ability to bring in your own code obviously makes the app far more useful.
Python for iOS (and a few other interpreter environments for iOS) seem to occupy an interesting place as regards the App Store terms of service. You're not allowed, in principle, have an application which downloads and executes code from the web, but obviously in the case where you have an eval equivalent and a HTTP client, the user can do that themselves. In practice, this seems to be largely ignored.

Introspection

2012-01-13T00:05:00.001Z

So, for the last couple of years I feel like I've been stuck in a rut. I'm not depressed, as such; been there, done that, it's a lot different. I'm just a bit, well, apathetic. Anyway, I just realised that in a bit over a year, it'll be ten years since I started college. Ten years! So I'd really better snap out of it, start doing stuff again. Hobbies, not dreading the long evenings, etc. Maybe even get back to writing this blog!

Well, that's it, really. I just wanted to get that out, so I told the Internet, which hopefully is too busy with popup ads and cat photos and The Twitter to judge me for it.

Come Censor with Me

2012-01-08T18:09:00.000Z

I was watching Come Dine with Me with the subtitles on (as you do), when I noticed something vaguely interesting. One contestant was bemoaning her shriveled vegetables; the commentator's line was "Shriveled or not, the show must go on", but the subtitles said "Shriveled or not, the show must go on, as the actress said to the vicar". I assume this was considered a little racy for a respectable Channel 4 show about having horrible people over to your house, particularly as one of the guests was a vicar...

Careless, careless governments

2011-11-06T02:11:00.004Z

As you'll no doubt remember, the Irish government recently found an extra 3.6bn euro it didn't know it had. Bizarre, right? Well, it turns out there's a good bit of this about!

Last week, Germany found a little windfall in a nationalised mortgage bank; 55 billion. And the week before, the US government found 6.6bn dollars it thought it had lost in Iraq.

Perhaps the entire financial crisis was caused by national governments losing a billion here, a billion there, down the back of the couch.

Another victim of LIBERAL OPPRESSION

2011-10-30T19:35:00.000Z

Poor Eamon Delaney. The gays are demanding rights, when everyone knows that those are only for white heterosexual middle-class men like Eamon Delaney! Really, when I first saw the article I assumed it was a parody of one of those absurd American right-wingers moaning about minorities...

I mean, really:

Increasingly, it seems as if the homosexual community has forgotten that it is the minority

Bloody minorities, looking for special treatment! (NB. In screeds of this sort, 'special treatment' means the rights that everyone else has anyway.)

AS the cliche goes, some of my best friends are gay.

This has to be a joke, surely?

Bisexual? Isn't that reminiscent of the loose Seventies sexual experimentation? How many bisexuals are there? And will the plain people of Ireland be happy with legalising rights for, and spending money on, all of this?

Bisexuals? Do they exist, Ted? Also, bisexuals are apparently very expensive.

Thus gay magazines are full of ads endorsing late-night gyms, sex lines and a freewheeling sexual activity which would be dismissed as sleazy in heterosexual culture.

Did you know that there are no sex lines for heterosexuals, and those which don't exist certainly aren't advertised in magazines that you can buy in Easons, or indeed on cable telly? It's true!

Still, at least someone benefits from all this; Kevin Myers, who for once didn't write the stupidest thing in the Independent this week.

More Android tablet numbers confusion

2011-10-22T23:07:00.004+01:00

The latest controversy in the world of mobile devices is the market share of Android tablets; in particular, when analysts claim that Android has, say, 26% of the tablet market share, are they talking about sales to real live people, or shipments to the channel?

One technique for getting a very vague idea is to take the total number of Android activations (190 million) and multiply it by Google's version share data for the tablet OS, Android 3.x (1.8%), giving 3.4 million total Android 3.x tablets (as compared to about 40 million iPads sold thus far). Clearly less than 26%. I used this technique before it was cool.

However, it should be cautioned that it is a very, very vague technique. There are a few problems. First of all, the Google version share numbers are based on Android devices which have been in accessed the market in the last two weeks. Does this mean all devices in use and in communion with the Android market, or does it mean all devices where the user has hit the marketplace button in the last two weeks? If the latter, it might be the case that there are lots of Android tablets, but their owners don't bother much with the marketplace.

Second, what is an activation? For instance, if a phone is sold to person A, returned, and sold to person B, is that one activation, or two? If person B then buys a new phone, is that another activation? That is, does the figure relate to a specific device, or to a specific Google account, or to a specific device with a specific user account?

Then, even if there have been 190 million Android devices 'activated', undoubtedly many are now out of use. Say there are 100 million now in use; that's only 1.8 million Android 3.x devices now in use.

And finally, is it possible that Google's reported figures are just wrong? A cap of 3.4 million 3.x tablets sold seems bizarrely low, as compared to shipment numbers of 4.6 million in the most recent quarter alone. It should be borne in mind that these numbers include Android 2.x tablets, and the Barnes & Noble Nook, which, while it can be used as a tablet when rooted, is really intended to be used as an ebook reader, of course.

Anyway, I mention this because of this GigaOm article, by the same author who cited me a while ago on the above technique. I think he's relying on it too much; he seems to almost be stating as a matter of fact that there are 3.4m 3.x tablets, and further muddying the waters by comparing that estimated lifetime sales number to a claimed Q3 shipment number. All a bit messy, I fear.

The AWFUL TRUTH about the Star Trek replicators

2011-09-25T21:43:00.000+01:00

In all series of Star Trek but the Original Series (where they eat common household sponges), most of the crew's food comes from the replicator. The official line is that this is a machine which synthesises food, through Star Trek magic. But think of it; how much simpler would it be if it were simply a 3D printer which produced the 'food' out of whatever biomass was available (human waste, crew members shot by the Romulans in the previous episode, etc.); tongue implants would then be used to lie to the brain about what the subject is tasting.

This would also explain why, when they visit Earth, we see people cooking, even though they have the magic ultra-convenient replicators.

It can, in fact, even explain the peculiar tendency of Kirk-era Starfleet people to eat kitchen sponges (watch an old episode if you believe me not); presumably the secret to 3D printers was lost in the turbulent years of the 21st century (along with circuit breakers to stop consoles randomly frying operators, emergency stop buttons for enormously dangerous things like the Holodeck, emergency brakes for lifts, and so forth), and subsequently rediscovered (unlike any of that other stuff).

And why do we never see toilets on Star Trek? Because the toilets discreetly built into the back of the 'replicators' would be distasteful to modern audiences!

HP's poor luck with CEOs

2011-09-24T13:25:00.000+01:00

With all the fuss about yet another ejected HP CEO, I can't help remembering Carly Fiorina, about three ejected CEOs ago. Who ran for office in California. With THIS:

I mean, if you were a company board, would you hire the sort of person who'd greenlight that as a CEO?

Incidentally, the new HP CEO, Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, also ran for office in California, but had less insane ads.

The slow, grinding death of Flash continues

2011-09-15T21:38:00.000+01:00

When in 'metro mode' (the mode for tablets), IE10 for Windows 8 will not support Flash, or any other plugins. Further, it looks like IE for Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) may lack Flash, too. Adobe had previously said that Windows Phone 7 would be getting Flash, but then, back in the day they said that the iPhone would be, too.

There's been a rather perverse tendency in the tech press to view the absence of Flash on iOS as some personal vendetta of Steve Jobs'. I don't think that's really credible, now, if it ever was; other companies are clearly willing to avoid it.

By the way, I called this in February 2010:

Microsoft says that it is working with Adobe on this. I strongly suspect that Microsoft, which has the advantage of entering late, is just playing for time; by the time the initial Windows Mobile 7 (or whatever we're meant to call it now) comes out, Flash will have been on Android for some time, and Microsoft will just be able to point and say "Given that everyone hates Flash on Google phones, we're not going to bother". This wouldn't be a great surprise; when Microsoft pre-announces a feature, that by no means demonstrates that the feature will actually ship, as we saw with Longhorn/Vista

It increasingly looks like Mobile Flash will be an Android-only thing, which can't be wonderful for Adobe.