A Serial Offence

Ha ha!

I suppose you thought I'd gone for good, didn't you? Don't try and deny it. You thought I'd been struck by an incurable bout of apathy, or that I'd succumbed to apricot withdrawal symptoms and snuffed it. Luckily for me, nothing of the sort has happened. Suffice it to say that, for some time, I have been engaged with other matters such as schoolwork, exams and the like.

But this is beside the point. So far beside the point that you can barely see it. So far beside that if it were any further beside, it would reach the end of the universe and start coming back, in which case it wouldn't be further beside, so in fact it can't be any further beside, if you see what I mean, which you probably don't, because I know I don't. So, in any case, it's irrelevant, insignificant and unimportant. What is relevant, significant and important, however, is that I haven't yet written anything that isn't either self-referential or gibberish, so I'd best get on and write something interesting.

[Brief pause as Jake tries to think of something interesting.]

Well, there was the 'debate' over whether serious authors ever write series of books. It all kicked off when my mother put forward the suggestion that writing a series of books was largely the domain of the children's author. Us being the sort of family that we are, this was immediately contested. My dad and I reeled off a number of writers, most of them sci-fi authors and all of them male:

Terry Pratchett!
Frank Herbert!
Arthur C. Clarke!
P. G. Wodehouse!

Ok, so P. G. Wodehouse wasn't a sci-fi author, and strictly speaking Terry Pratchett is a fantasy author, and to be honest the Discworld series can be read in pretty much any order you like and it still makes sense, but you get the gist of it.

This led mum to conclude that the only adult authors who wrote books in series of any sort were men, and, let's face it, slightly unusual ones at that.

Not so. A little hunting in the bookcase revealed Anne of Green Gables, the first of a series of books written by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, the first of a series by Alexander McCall Smith who, although a man, isn't really that strange. And as for the Harry Potter series...

Conclusion? There's nothing wrong with writing books in series, although it helps if you like technology. Or fairies. Or possibly both.

Just Say No

Okay, I think I've just reached the bounds of normal, sane behaviour. Everything strange I've ever done up to this point pretty much pales into insignificance compared with what's happening now. Fact is, I'm addicted...

...but not to something believable or reasonable, oh no. Not drugs, not alcohol, not smoking: nothing near as predictable as that. You promise not to laugh if I tell you?

Apricots.

All right, you can laugh now. Yes, it's utterly ridiculous. But oddly enough, it's true. I find myself in the unusual position that if I haven't had a dried apricot in a while, I start craving them. Worse than that: I start needing them. It's as though an apricot-shaped hole suddenly develops in me.

Am I crazy? Or am I just one of many who suffer insatiable appetites for otherwise mundane objects? If there are others, are they crazy as well? Are you one of these people, and do you consider yourself crazy? Answers on a postcard! (Or preferably a comment, given the speed (or lack thereof) of the postal service.)

Merry Christmas!

Well, we've reached that time of the year again; have a great Christmas Day!

It's probably a little late now, but if you're still dissatisfied with your decorations then here's something that might help: my guide to making Impossibly Easy-Peasy Cardboard Baubles (Guaranteed 78% Not Tacky). All you need is a bit of spare time, plenty of cardboard and lots of split pins...

1. Cut the cardboard into long, thin, strips, all of which should have the same dimensions. Punch three small holes in each strip: one near each end and one right in the middle.
2. Once you have plenty of strips, take a few of them (four is best) and lay them on top of one another. If the cardboard you're using is only decorated on one side, make sure that side is facing upwards. Then push a split pin downwards through the central holes in the strips.
3. Turn the whole construction over and arrange the strips in an eight-pointed star formation by fanning them out. Open the split pin to hold them all together.
4. Take one of the points of the 'star' and bend it upwards and inwards, forming a semicircle. Holding it in place, push another split pin downwards through the hole at its end.
5. Still holding your initial point, take another point and attach it to the split pin in a similar manner to the first. Continue to attach points until there are none left, and you should be left with a roughly spherical bauble. Finally, open up the split pin to hold the points in place.

Once you've made a few baubles, you can use them however you so please. The obvious answer is to hang them up as recession-busting Christmas decorations, but there are plenty of other uses for them. Place them in unusual, yet aesthetically pleasing, locations around the house. Hurl them across the room without fear of breaking something. Give them to the cat to play with, perhaps. The possibilities are limited only by your imagination (and some minor physical constraints, of course, but we'll ignore those for the time being).

Well, that's all for now. See you in the New Year! (Or possibly sooner.)

JakeC

Green Gardening

You may remember that, as part of Blog Action Day last year, I talked a little about the environment. Unfortunately I wasn't able (i.e. forgot) to participate this year, but I have got some interesting news on eco-developments in West Berkshire. Not long ago, the council introduced green bins, into which you can put so called 'green waste'. Distasteful as this may sound, it refers simply to any waste that degrades quickly and harmlessly into compost and the like. For example, we generated a significant amount of green waste the other week when we pulled down the ivy covering one wall of the house, and still further yesterday when raking up the leaves on the lawn. (Tip: Don't try raking leaves on gravel. It's a road to nowhere.)

This leads me rather neatly on to the many joys to be found in gardening, not least of which is lopping. I don't know if you've ever wielded a decent pair of loppers before, but the feeling of power and capability gleaned from it is probably the greatest to be derived from any garden implement. They exude strength, indestructibility and an I-can-cut-through-pretty-much-anything-I-so-please attitude that makes using them a strangely pleasing experience. I am, in a manner of speaking, the official 'overzealous person with loppers' of the household, thanks to my efficient (if somewhat haphazard) pruning of unruly shrubbery and assorted other plants. My methods: cut little, cut well, cut everywhere, and don't stop cutting until everything is perfect. Oh, and don't worry too much about the bits you've cut off.

Coming a close second in my list of favourite gardening tasks is the usage of the humble rake. Firstly, there is the fun factor. If you own a leaf rake, much excitement can be gained by gently hitting on the ground and listening to the amusing 'boingggggg' emitted as a result. Alternatively, you can hold it at the very end of the handle and let the prongs fall to the ground from a small height, at which point you start to walk backwards. When the prongs hit the ground (preferably grass for best results) the lateral motion you are providing gives them enough energy to spring upwards to around the same height as they were at originally. The miracle force that is gravity causes them to drop again, and for as long as you continue to walk backwards the rake will bounce up and down to great comic effect across the garden. What fun!

I'm afraid this is all the horticultural fun you're going to get for the moment, but tune in next time when I'll be discussing... er... hmm... something. See you then!

BEAM Robotics: Innovation on a Shoestring

Here's the situation: You're an amateur electronics enthusiast, and you've had a sudden irrepressible urge to build something awesome. Something that moves, something that thinks, something that feeds, something that lives. In other words, a robot.

But there's a snag. From what you've seen on television and read in the news, most robotics projects take many months of work - years, even - and obscene amounts of funding just to get off the ground. You don't have that kind of money, or enough spare time. You could buy a robot kit from a hobby shop, but it wouldn't offer nearly as much satisfaction as starting from scratch and you wouldn't actually learn anything.

That's where BEAM robotics comes in. Invented by Mark Tilden, BEAM uses only basic electronic components such as transistors, capacitors, diodes and resistors to achieve complex behaviour traditionally associated with custom processors and lengthy programs. In fact, the only 'unusual' parts that turn up are voltage detectors and some assorted ICs.

The amount of BEAM information on the internet is a little limited, and many of the sites on the subject that do exist are quite old, but there are plenty of tutorials and explanations nonetheless. Here are some places I have found useful:

• Solarbotics.net - A site offering lots of information on every aspect of BEAM. Features a circuit library, detailed descriptions of how it all works, and a gallery of robots. Any BEAM enthusiasts wanting web hosting can get their own site here as well.
• BEAM Online - Calling itself 'The Yahoo of BEAM', this site offers a great portal into the world of BEAM. There are plenty of pictures and snippets of information available, and a few links to other helpful sites too.
• Solarbotics Ltd. - A popular BEAM parts vendor, stocking all manner of components and kits. Although I've never bought from them (and, assuming I don't move to America, never will), many BEAMers recommend them should you be having trouble finding what you need. They provide the web space for Solarbotics.net, which explains the similarities between their names.

If you've ever felt the need to dominate the world with mechanical monstrosities but aren't prepared to fork out very much for the privilege, then these sites are for you. Happy BEAMing!

P.S: Eton starts tomorrow... aaaaargh!

April Fool!

This being the day of jokes, tricks and other such tomfoolery, I think I may as well write a little about this year's festivities as far as I am aware of them. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the fun!

• Flying Penguins: This BBC documentary preview dispels the common myth that penguins are incapable of aviation. Who would have thought it?
• Gmail custom time: Make your emails arrive whenever you like. Never be too late again!
• Wikipedia's Manic Main Page: The famous open reference site goes a bit batty today. Take a look at the 'On this day...' section in particular.
• A whole lot more...

N.B: I'm also a mite suspicious about Google's new 'Google Weblogs' feature, as mentioned on Blogger Buzz. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Duck race photos

Yet more photos from me. These are some I took at the annual duck race. For the uninitiated, a duck race works as follows:

1. Take a load of rubber ducks.
2. Bet on which duck will win.
3. Chuck the ducks in a river.
4. Note which ones reach the finish first.
5. Fish them all out again.
6. Award prizes.
7. Go home.

But I digress. On with the pictures! A big pile of ducks. Top of the heap. The stragglers.

Damned statistics!

The question of statistics is, without question, an oft visited topic, but what sort of bearing does that really have on a rural teenage schoolboy? A very good question, and the blunt answer is 'The wrong sort'. At the very moment I write this, I am surrounded by people who, on a daily basis, can and will spout out, argue over and compare numbers and facts containing not the slightest meaning to the uninitiated.

Let us start with probably the most recent and divisive statistical craze to hit us around here, that of the trading cards called 'Match Attacks'. The basic premise of these is based, not altogether surprisingly, around football. Each card depicts a footballer and quotes their estimated 'Attack' and 'Defence', the calculation of which is beyond me. I would put the entire number of different players available somewhere in the quadrillions, and the number grows alarmingly. As one might suspect, they can also be traded for other cards, either to get some better numbers or just to build one's collection. There is, apparently an associated game on top of all this, but I am unable to say very much about it.

But, as I mentioned earlier, the worst part is that the very mention of the words 'Match Attack' will cause an explosively wide range of reactions. Some love it and play it with wild abandon, others despise it with a passion. So much so, in fact, that there exists an 'Anti Match Attack League' that actively encourages the destruction of cards. Being a stalwart fence-sitter it doesn't really bother me either way, although if I could turn a corner just once and fail to find a single card awaiting me then it would probably please me quite a lot.

Even worse than these on the 'my pointless number is bigger than yours' front, however, are those maddening and almost unbelievably lucrative trading card and media franchises such as Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh. I quote for you here an imaginary, but not entirely implausible, conversation between two fans: "Hi! Do you play Me-No-Good?" "Why yes, as a matter of fact. Fancy a game?" "Of course! You start." "Right. I'll play Mr Bun the Baker. That's two Basic Paperclips to me." "Curse you! Now it's my turn..." [Some time later] "Ha! My Triple-Conjoined Tyrannosaur beats your Mega Sardine of Doom! 9847583758 Bing-Bong points!" "You *@%$£^~!" "Just surrender now, and avoid a slow and painful defeat!" "I'm not done yet! Take a look at my Double Pikachu with added Wham-Wham!" "Flipping ^*%@!!" "Plus that means I can play my Inverse Riffle-Shuffle, gaining me an extra 13842237834467 Bing-Bong Points and a Quadruple Cheese Grater! I win!" "Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!" "Well, there we are then. Good game, eh, old chap?" "Yes, old man. Splendid."

You see what I mean by 'pointless numbers'? Who would have thought it was possible to gain so much joy from such a premise?

My school - a day in the life

• Time: Early
• Location: My bed, My dorm, My boarding house, My school, Berkshire, England

I wake up, as always, early in the morning. My brain is, to put it lightly, not working to its full capacity. I try and gather my thoughts for several minutes, until eventually the house master opens the door and sweeps all them all away. I am expecting this, as half the doors in the house make an appalling racket and my dorm is near enough to the end for there to be a significant creaking build-up. The curtains are rattled open also, leaving the room bathed in a pleasant light. I haul myself up to sit and peer through the two windows visible from my current position, one in my dorm and one in the room opposite. Both reveal largely tree branches, but the lighting difference is evident. Behind me, the many spreading twigs are flooded from the front with the sunlight, revealing every scrap of lichen and change in colour. In front, a little way away in the opposite dorm, very similar twigs are silhouetted against the bleached white sky. Pleasingly different.

---

• Time: A little later
• Location: See above

The light is turned on, and I climb out of my top bunk blinking.Painstakingly, I tear another leaf from my 'Easy Answers Science Calendar' - or something like that - in search of this morning's enlightenment. I read the day's entry and feel a little cleverer. Then I dress and trudge downstairs for washing, teeth brushing etc. It's a little quirk, albeit quite logistically sensible, that everyone does their teeth before breakfast. With this done, I go to the main common room and attempt to divine which sofa has lost the least stuffing. I sit down and watch the news, which is showing inaudibly on the television in the opposite corner. Soon afterwards we go.

---

• Time: Quite a bit later
• Location: Lower field, just outside the house

The main portion of the school lies a short way from the house, meaning that to get there you have to cut across one corner of the playing field. There is a lot of frost this morning, which is surprising - given the fairly warm weather of late - but not entirely unexpected. It really is quite cold.

---

• Time: Breakfast
• Location: The dining hall

I have breakfast, unsurprisingly. Cereal, some food or other, and toast. Highly nutritious.

---

• Time: Lessons
• Location: Various

Lessons go along nicely, as always.

---

• Time: Break time
• Location: Somewhere

Dull.

---

• Time: More lessons
• Location: Various

As before.

---

• Time: Lunch
• Location: The dining hall

Chinese New Year recently, so Chinese food for lunch today. Chopsticks too. Quite how the Chinese can live with eating implements like that is quite beyond me. I imagine it takes them an entire day just to eat breakfast one piece at a time. I have some unidentifiable curry and some rice. The headmaster says that it is traditional to eat the animal whose year it is, so as it is the Year of the Rat I'm thankful for once that I am a vegetarian. It later turns out to be something mediocre like beef, but not before someone has thanked the kitchen staff for 'the rat'. What a laugh! We also have watermelon, easily the most disappointing fruit known to man.

---

• Time: Rest
• Location: The music school

A quick tinkle on the ivories before the sports session. Practice makes perfect!

---

• Time: Games
• Location: The sports ground

I do sports. Badly. It's a miracle they've actually managed to find people my equal. I am what the more sensitive teachers call 'in it for the enjoyment';, and they are what I call 'wildly overstating'. Putting all that to one side, I do actually enjoy it.

---

• Time: Yet more lessons
• Location: Pretty obvious

Lessons. You know what I mean.

---

• Time: Tea
• Location: Brink of insanity, somewhere in the dining room

This is about the time when I start feeling like throwing myself in the path of a large ballistic missile. I have to supervise one of the tea tables, even though there are probably a number of human rights regulations explicitly banning it. Trying to serve 10-12 unruly school pupils an entire meal, and get them to clean up afterwards, is no easy ride. Take it from me.

---

• Time: Bed
• Location: The house, again

Thank goodness for sleep! One moment you're yawning beneath the sheets, the next an entire new day of pure horror has arrived. Goodnight.

Simplicity

The other week, I had a sudden thought which, like any sudden thought, struck me when, where and how I was least expecting it. That is, on a Sunday, in the shower, by means of a small bottle of wildly exotic liquid soap. At first I dismissed it, but then, just the other day, it occurred again, and I felt compelled to tell the world about it.

You see, the soap to which I allude was by Original Source, a company who create soap in the way nature intended (if nature ever intended us to use soap). And it occurred to me that, all things considered, this simplicity was in surprising demand these days. Then, with my rudimentary knowledge of history, I looked back, and found that it hasn't always been this way. For centuries, in fact, fancy Renaissance and Baroque and hundreds of other complex styles have been the height of fashion. Then, with my similarly rudimentary knowledge of prehistory, I looked even further back, and found that, actually, it has been this way once before. Give a caveman a piece of flint and a big stick, and he's happy.

And then (and this is the important 'then') I thought - as I do rather too often - about the Internet, and there was the connection. Give an early Internet age programmer a means of connection and a draft HTML specification, and he's happy. Then later, everyone wants large, impenetrable code blocks that do practically nothing. But now, the time of semantic HTML has come, something that can be read by even the most backward of browsers, that actually makes sense. And I like that, which is why this momentous occasion has been immortalised in a vEvent Microformat, which I like almost as much. The age of simplicity is here for good, and I'm welcoming it.

The marvels of technology

As people go, I'm quite good at hoarding the most ridiculous pieces of junk ever seen by man.* One of them, however, has become rather a favourite of mine. In essence, it is an ancient static electricity generator. By pumping the handle on it as hard and fast as you can, you are supposed to be able to generate a very pleasing spark between two pieces of wire quite close to each other. For reasons unknown, it no longer works, but for reasons even less known you can still get a fair zap out of a strange and presumably meaningless piece of protruding metal that I swear wasn't there before. It will quite happily give a mild jolt to anything vaguely conductive which, to my not-entirely-pleasant surprise, includes me. With a bit of hard work I found that I could create a most satisfactory arc between the metal and my finger, albeit quite painful on my part. Although it's all very well being able to charge yourself up from time to time, I wouldn't recommend it. Not of course, that everyone has a pump-handle-spark 'n' shock-generator. * Or woman, for that matter.

Idle musings of a Clock Watcher

We're going home late at night and it's taking years! Just look at the clock! 20:27 - A good year. 20:28 - Oh, there's the Olympics! 20:29 - There go the Olympics. 20:30 - A new decade. 20:31 - The Olympics are coming! 20:32 - Shock horror! Vatican gets the Olympics! 20:33 - Third multiple of 11 since... no, wait a minute... 20:34 - *frantic calculations* 20:35 - ...20:35! And here it is! Some multiple of something since sometime a while ago. 20:36 - Isle of Wight gets the Olympics. 20:37 - Japan makes surprise entry to Eurovision and wins! 20:38 (approx) - DJ on radio moans about spiders. Wimp! 20:39 - It's Olympics time again! 20:40 - Trinidad gets the Olympics. Are we nearly there yet?

I'm back!

So you thought you could get rid of me, eh? This is like that part in the horror movie where everyone thinks the monster is dead, but then it just 'appears' again. I can only hope that you take a slightly more optimistic view on me.Anyway, what was I going to say? Oh yes, exams (shock horror!). Lots of exams (double shock horror!), and some of them one and a half hours long (double shock gulp horror!). And that means revision (double shock double gulp horror!), which is what I've been doing all this time. And when I get back to school (tonight!) I'm going to start boarding (double shock double gulp horror horror scream!). All of this explains my variable mood, jumping between:

• A smidgen worried.
• Mildly sad, rather sad and everything in between.
• Utterly terrified.

I'm sure it'll be alright, though.

But before you go off and feel depressed, some news. We went to see Pirates of the Caribbean 3 yesterday (very good, watch it!), and are going to the Reading Museum today. We were planning on visiting a stately home, but Berkshire is a little on the rainy side today *laughs sarcastically*. On the computing side of things, I have downloaded Jave. A clever little program, it allows you to create ASCII art just like that... ...'Just like what?', I hear you cry. 'Like that!' I reply. I'm smarter than I look. Here is an example: ______ / ____ \ / /____\ \_______________ \________|@______________\ / ______ |_______________/ \ \____/ / \______/ Cool, isn't it?All for now, bye!

Mixed box

As you heard, I have taken the pledge against Doctor Who. If you too wish to join Overanxious Anonymous, please drop a comment! In the meantime, I hand you over to Prof. Lazarus and his dedicated psychiatrist: Shrink: So, Mr. Lazarus, do enjoy your life as a horribly deformed lobster-thing? Lazarus: Frankly, no. People scream, run away and even try to kill me, would you believe it? And there's more... Shrink: No? Lazarus: Oh yes. Despite the fact that I can destroy iron bulkheads and crush coconuts without batting a limb, I'm still ineligible for the Mr. Universe competition! Shrink: So life's not great? Lazarus: You're quick. Say, you look tasty. Slurp, slurp. Shrink: I'll refer you to a plastic surgeon, is that good? Lazarus: Great! He'll do for afters! But don't go yet! There's more! I learned from my sister that there is a poem to do with children leaving assembly. Great! Those with the insanity to read/listen to it are treated to the varied manners in which they leave. For instance, Mrs. Water's class trickled out. Bored yet? Do not fear! For here (to quote an American phrase) is my two cents: Mr. Procrastinator's class left it until tomorrow. Mrs. Indecision's class weren't too sure, or maybe they were... Miss. Atheist's class didn't believe it was time to go yet... ...and Ms. Skeptic's class weren't convinced either. Mr. Communist's class thought they all ought to have left at the same time. Mrs. Pessimist's class didn't see the point. And Miss. Apathetic's class just couldn't be bothered. Some quick news. I'm listening to Classic FM (not the Yugoslavian version that I had previously) and I'm going to see a recording of I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue this evening. I need a lie down now!