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!

Frantic Semantics: DOAP, FOAF, DOAC, SIOC and DC

This is the third and final post in a series on RDF and the Semantic Web. The first post is here and the second one here.

So far, we've looked at what RDF is for and how it works. In this post are details of some popular projects that use RDF.

FOAF

FOAF (standing for 'Friend of a Friend') is an RDF vocabulary that allows creators of RDF to describe themselves and the people they know. There are tags for providing your contact details - should you wish people to know them - expressing your interests, showing off your online accounts, establishing your social ties, recording your projects and even detailing where you work or go to school. FOAF is far and away the best supported and most developed-for RDF vocabulary for describing everything about you, so if nothing else it's the most sensible move.

DOAP

Description of a Project, or DOAP for short, is a method of describing projects, programmes and plans in RDF. It allows you to give some informational text on the project, specify its homepage and - where applicable - source code, and give credit where credit is due to those who develop and maintain it. It can also integrate seamlessly into FOAF, so you can show off all the wonderful things you work on within the comfort of your own profile document.

SIOC

The Semantically Interlinking Online Communities project, otherwise known as SIOC (pronounced 'shock'), is a project to establish a common RDF vocabulary for describing community sites such as blogs and forums that allows them to be linked together in new and exciting ways. Every Site can host several Forums, each of which can in turn contain a number of Posts written by various Users. Again, this vocabulary can be mixed with others such as FOAF to give additional information.

DOAC

DOAC stands for Description Of A Career, and is an RDF method of putting your CV online. It encompasses experience, education and language skills, and when combined with FOAF is compatible with Europass, an initiative by the European Commission to help EU citizens display their qualifications clearly and simply.

DC

The DC, or Dublin Core, is a vast collection of terms for providing general metadata about a resource. Alongside FOAF, it is one of the most popular RDF vocabularies around and covers just about everything relating to web resources you can think of. Extremely useful for large organisations with a lot of paperwork to deal with!

Further Reading:

• The RDF page at the W3C's site.
• The W3C's official RDF primer.

Further Semantic Antics: XML and all that

This is the second part of a short series on RDF and the Semantic Web. The first part can be found here.

RDF is essentially a form of XML, but it isn't quite the same as other XML formats such as SVG or RSS 2.0. Let's take a look at a snippet of RDF code (I will assume you have a working knowledge of XML):

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#"
         xmlns:example="http://example.com/vocab/">
   <example:company rdf:about="http://acmeinc.com/ourcompany#us">
      <example:companyName>Acme Inc.</example:companyName>
      <example:hasEmployee>
         <example:person>
            <example:personName>John Smith</example:personName>
            <example:employeeID>385740</example:employeeID>
         </example:person>
      </example:hasEmployee>
   </example:company>
</rdf:RDF>

Confused yet? Let's go through it step by step:

1. The first thing to notice about this document is the abundance of colons. This is thanks to XML Namespaces, which allow tags from different vocabularies to be used in the same document. (A vocabulary is a collection of tags used for a specific purpose.) The namespace is a URI with the last portion missing - otherwise known as the base URI - and when the name of the tag is appended a full URI is created that references that tag specifically. Instead of having to write out the base URI over and over again whenever you want to use a tag in a particular namespace, you can assign it a name. Now when you use a tag, you can write its URI as nameOfBaseURI:tagName. For example, if the base URI http://exampletwo.org/vocab/ has been assigned the name exampletwo, then the tag name exampletwo:thing represents the URI http://exampletwo.org/vocab/thing. If you were to visit that URI, it would probably give you a description of what the thing tag meant. Base URIs are assigned names in the outermost tag of the document, in this case the rdf:RDF tag, using the attribute xmlns:assignedName, where assignedName is substituted with whatever name you want to give to the base URI in question. In RDF, all tags must have a namespace.
2. The second thing to point out is the way in which triples are represented. In the example above, the tag example:companyName is nested inside the example:company tag, meaning that company is the subject of that particular triple whilst companyName is the predicate. Inside the example:companyName tag is a 'string literal', in other words a plain bit of text rather than a URI, and this is the object of the triple. Therefore, this triple means: "There is a company with the name 'Acme Inc.'." The second triple is much the same, but this time the object is not a string literal but an example:person tag, so the triple means: "There is a company that employs an example:person." The example:person tag is itself the subject of a third and fourth triple, which give us the name and ID number of the employee respectively.

If you wanted to express this RDF document in English, you would get something along the lines of:

There is a company with the name 'Acme Inc.' and with an employee with the name 'John Smith' and the employee ID 385740.

And so now you know the way RDF works. In the next post I'll talk about some popular RDF vocabularies.

Antics in Semantics: What exactly is the Semantic Web?

A long time ago, you may remember me talking about Microformats. Just to fill you in on the details, Microformats are little nuggets of code that can slip unobtrusively into any piece of XHTML and inform software of what everything actually means: that one piece of the document is an address whilst another is a resume, or that one piece is an event whilst another is a review. Once the software can see the data on the page in a format it recognises, it can do a number of clever things with it, such as finding an address on Google Maps or adding an event to your calendar program.

That is Microformats in a nutshell, but this post isn't about them. Instead I'm going to be delving into the secrets of the bigger, more versatile, and altogether much stranger web language that is RDF.

RDF stands for Resource Description Framework, which just about sums up its raison d'être: describing resources. Resources aren't just web documents, though; anything can be a resource, regardless of whether or not it exists on the web or even in the real world. To identify a resource, the most common practice is to give it a URI (Uniform Resource Identifier). A URI is similar to a URL, except the former need not lead to an actual web document when typed into your browser. Since an address that doesn't lead anywhere isn't very helpful, it is recommended that any resource URIs you use in your RDF do represent an actual location on the web that can be visited for information on the resource.

So that's what RDF does, but how does it do it? The answer is triples, a concept whereby all information is separated into three-part statements containing a subject, predicate and object. The subject is always a resource, the object can be a resource or a piece of data such as a string, and the predicate is a property - represented by a resource - that links the subject and object together. An example of a triple in the English language would be: "Acme Inc. has John Smith as an employee." Here, 'Acme Inc.' is the subject, 'John Smith' is the object and the ownership of an employee is the predicate. But how do we express this in RDF? Find out in the next exciting instalment, coming out as soon as I've finished writing it!

My favourite: Drawing programs

Art isn't one of my strongest points, it has to be said, but when I do feel like scribbling, scrawling or doodling it helps to have some good programs at my disposal. This is a handful of the ones I use most often, and the good news is that they're all free.

Inkscape

Vector imaging is such a devilishly simple concept that you can't help but wonder why no-one thought of it sooner. Instead of telling the computer where to put pixels, why not tell it where to put shapes? When you zoom in on JPGs or PNGs, the resolution decreases; but when you do the same with SVGs - a vector image format - the picture simply gets redrawn without any loss of quality.

Inkscape allows you to draw images in vector format, and comes with a dazzling array of tools to help with the task. You can draw rectangles, ellipses, stars and much more with a few mouse clicks, and then perform any one of an enormous array of operations on them with a few more. If you're not convinced yet, then taking a look at some of the works of art produced on Inkscape is sure to change your mind. A highly recommended piece of software.

Art of Illusion

Despite sounding like it ought to have something to do with magicians, Art of Illusion is in fact a program for producing 3D models and graphics. It allows you to draw basic shapes such as cuboids and ellipsoids, and more complex objects can also be drawn using the comprehensive selection of functions at your disposal, such as triangle meshes. You can also apply textures and materials to your shapes to add realism, and render your drawing to produce a 2D 'photograph' of it from any angle you choose and with whatever lighting effects you want. Art of Illusion files can also be converted for use in rapid prototyping machines such as the RepRap.

Part Thirteen: Kids these Days

Then, one frozen midwinter morning, the aftermath finally made itself known. As the headmaster made his customary early-morning walk amongst the river of boys struggling down the corridors, he heard a small voice from the vague direction of his knees. “Who are you?” said a small, puzzled-looking boy who was staring up at him. “The most important man in this school,” said the head, rather amused by this interjection. The boy definitely wasn’t new, but he was probably a skiver who never went to lessons long enough to know any teachers. “Why do you ask?” “You don’t look very important!” said the boy, obviously unimpressed. “You’re far too old!” The head was in a jovial mood, so he gamely ignored this comment. “Are you deaf as well?” asked the boy impatiently. Again, the head pretended not to hear. “I hope they’re not all as deaf and boring as you,” said the boy. “I don’t like you.” The head was not a patient man at the best of times, but now he was more than a little furious. In one enormous sweep, he brought his hand down to the side of the boy’s head with the trademark sound that accompanied it... ...crash! That didn’t sound good. The head reeled around to find that it wasn’t good at all. There was a rather large hole in the wall where there quite blatantly hadn’t been before, with a rather confused boy on the other side of it who had quite blatantly not expected to be there. Still, the head thought, at least he was alive... He was alive? That was impossible! No-one could survive a blow that powerful. He looked at his own hand. No-one could deliver a blow that powerful. Something wasn’t right. Leaving the bemused boy to clean himself up and try to explain what had happened to the other teachers; he set off towards the car park.

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!

Part Twelve: Magic Moments

The inspector sighed. It had been a long day.
Of all the things he had learnt during his training, dealing with malevolent magical forces had definitely not been amongst them. Not, of course, that it was something officers of the law were expected to come across even in the most extreme of circumstances. But, nevertheless, it was undoubtedly magic. The forensic teams had confirmed a complete absence of human presence and, as far as the scientists could ascertain, no known or theoretical substance could be capable of such powerful or vivid hallucinogenic capabilities.1
Besides, the Orb was giving off a suspicious blue glow. Actually, it was more of a force field, and a good one at that. They had been trying all day to penetrate it, but to no avail. Truncheons had bounced off it harmlessly. Bullets had made a little difference, but they couldn’t fire them quickly enough. The hand grenades had been rather spectacular but had done no good, although PC Filk did seem rather pleased with his extra limbs. Unless they destroyed the school, there was no way they could get through that force field. Just as he was pondering over his remaining options, a boy rushed up to him.
“Mr Inspector, sir!” he said, panting. “The PC says come quick, there's something wrong!” He ran off, beckoning to the inspector to come. The inspector followed, dreading what might have happened. When he arrived outside the cupboard he found PC Filk desperately trying to keep the door shut with as many hands as possible.
“The field's getting stronger!” he shouted over the noise coming from the cupboard. “I can't hold on for much longer!” The inspector looked around in panic. There was quite a gathering of nervous staff and pupils by now, and the collective feeling seemed to be the perfect thing for the Orb to feed off. He tried to persuade them to leave, but they were all too engrossed in their own fear to pay any attention. What could he do? Any moment now that thing would go off and...
Of course! That was it! Taking a deep breath, he threw his head back and bellowed.
“IT'S GONNA BLOW!”
Like an impromptu conjuring trick, the entire crowd disappeared in a flash. Unfortunately, the flash had come from the orb. In a sudden blast the entire school became encased in a hemisphere of blue light. It seared in the sky for what seemed like an age. Then, without warning, it vanished. A slight shock wave swept silently outwards, having no ill effect but to knock over a few unsuspecting cows. When the policemen finally summoned up the courage to return to the cupboard, they found the Orb sitting nonchalantly on a table.2 It allowed itself to be removed to a high-security facility, leaving behind absolutely no damage whatsoever apart from a few shattered nerves and a bundle of classified documents. The school was allowed to resume its normal activities, with instructions to report any strange happenings immediately. Luckily, none occurred.
And that, so it was thought, was that.

Part Eleven: A startling discovery

When the head woke that afternoon, all the dizzy ecstasy of that brief moment had been drained from him. Happiness, he thought as he slowly regained consciousness, was like alcohol. It was nice for a while, but if you had too much of it all at once you ended up with one heck of a hangover the next morning. Slowly he sat up, groping for any sturdy objects in roughly the direction he was trying to head. He was in his study, and on the desk was a newspaper that he realised he hadn’t yet read. Picking it up, he surveyed it with half-hearted interest.1 Most of the news was of the usual dismal nature and none of it very eye-catching. They say no news is good news, thought the head gloomily. That would explain why all the news is so awful. Just to illustrate his point to the world in general, he picked a few articles at random:
Graffiti on derelict building, Vandalism levels soar, Dog eats postman, Hamster spontaneously combusts, Local scientists predict Armageddon, Museum reports theft of unidentified artefact…
This last item struck him as odd. He read on:
Mossam Museum yesterday revealed that one of its more mysterious artefacts had been stolen. The object, known to museum staff as ‘The Orb’, is a small pyramid in which is embedded a sphere. Research into the inscriptions on the object has so far proven fruitless, but historians believe it to be cursed. No information is yet known about the material from which it is made, but it appears to consist of a silvery metal of great strength. Anyone knowing the whereabouts of the item is requested to report the matter to the Mossam police station.
Mossam police? Weren't they the ones trying to sort out the mess at the school? And a curse. Hallucinations didn't just, well, happen, did they? The pieces of the puzzle all seemed to be fitting together quite nicely. He would have to tell the police about this, although the prospect of facing up to the inspector again was less than inviting. Mind you, the prospect of having to face up to this damned curse for the rest of his school career was even less inviting. Against all his previous intuition, he went out in search of the inspector.
“So,” said the inspector, who was more than a little suspicious about the headmaster’s new-found talent for deduction, “you think it's not so much a case of who done it as what done it?”
“Even better,” replied the head, who was – in contrast to the inspector – feeling more than a little smug about his triumph over modern policing techniques. “I know what done it, ahem, did it.”
“What?” queried the inspector, his suspicion becoming curiosity. “Any clues are better than none.”
“Well,” whispered the head conspiratorially, leaning in towards the policeman. His smugness tank, having overflowed ages ago, was now spreading havoc around the rest of his brain, especially his common sense, “you know that museum robbery you're dealing with?”
“I most certainly do sir,” confirmed the inspector, now deeply puzzled by this latest non sequitur. “But what has it to do with the murders?”
“Why everything, my good chap!” slurred the head, the smugness having attacked the speech centres of his brain. “This orb you're searching for is the doer of the dones that have been done by the doer of the dones!”
The policeman regarded him quizzically.
“Are you feeling all right, sir?” he asked, looking rather worried. He had stacks of policing duties as it was, without having to deal with a lunatic teacher. “You don't look too good.”
The head's primitive instinct of one-upmanship suddenly kicked in with a vengeance. He wasn't going to ruin it all now, just as he had the advantage! Hurriedly, he straightened up and tried to look knowledgeable.
“Of course I am, man!” he retorted. “Never been better! Anyway,” he continued, putting on a more serious note, “the curse contained within that orb is the cause of all this,”
“What makes you say that, sir?” questioned the policeman warily. The head then proceeded to recount his incident in the janitor's cupboard. At the end, the inspector looked thoughtful for a moment before speaking.
“So, you think there's an accursed relic in the cupboard that's picking everybody off one by one?”
“That's no way to talk about the jan…” began the head, before realising what the inspector meant. “I mean, exactly! You must remove it immediately!”
The inspector sighed. It was going to be a long day.

Leaver's projects

To fully appreciate this post, you might want to take a look at this other post. Or then again, you might not.

When faced with nothing, make something. This, I'm pretty sure, is the general idea behind the Leaver's projects. The school having done so much for you, you do something for them. Generally, this is something practical: maintenance of golf tees, for instance; however, creative and organisational tasks are also open to the less technically adept. The possibilities are, proverbially speaking, endless, although there are some projects that tend to crop up periodically. There has, for example, been a tradition of making sculptures out of musical instruments for display in the Music School, and for contact purposes a Leaver's address book is essential.

Talking of which, I must email some of my friends, if only so they know I actually have an email address. Some slight problems led to it not being included in the address book, so hopefully a quick message will set the record straight. I can only hope they're not all too busy trying to find my non-existent Facebook account. That's if they've got a copy of the book with my contact details in it at all, that is. Did I say slight problems? I meant big ones, though most likely on my part. My form-filling ability must be deteriorating.

School's out!

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooo! The Summer Holidays are here!

So, where's the sun?

For the benefit of my international (i.e. non-English) readers, I think it's worth mentioning that the weather in the UK is a little inclement at the moment.* However, this does give me an excuse to write this post, if I actually needed one in the first place.

So, what work have I been doing in the last few weeks of term? Not much, as a matter of fact.

I know. Criminal, isn't it?

Cast your mind back, however, to this post. Loath as I am to bring the matter to your attention yet again, you may remember that I had gained a scholarship to Eton College, which in most respects made any large amount of work a little pointless. Far from being my situation alone, however, this affected six others of my general category, not to mention a further 22 to come later on. But what, with no mean amount of time at our disposal and our lessons judiciously cut back upon, were we to do?

Before I embark upon the full, excruciating detail of recent happenings, however, it is worth making some important clarifications regarding the description gobbledegook given above.

• Me and the 28 others** are all in Year 8, in other words 13 years old (again, I can't vouch for this being true in countries other than my own). This was our last year at prep school.
• All the year 8's (and indeed the rest of the school, for that matter) are boys.
• The overwhelming majority of them - or rather us - are at least a little excitable, and needless to say this trait has been exploited to its full potential.
• The official name for us, should you ever come across it, is the Leavers.

Rather than tell you everything in one long, ultra-boring blob of a post, however, I'll split it up for you. First stop, the Leaver's projects!

* It should be noted that, due to the ongoing nature of the writing of blog posts, the time referred to as 'the moment' at one point may no longer be anywhere near the time at which the post is published. As it stands, the 'moment' referred to in the part of the post so handily marked with an asterisk was some time yesterday, with today being when this footnote was written. At least for the moment, anyway.

** I know a number of people who would most likely kill me for saying this rather than: 'The 28 others and I.' But be honest, which do you think sounds better?

My favourite: Simulations

About four months ago, you may remember me saying this:

One-off spurts of fun and stuff are all very interesting, but maybe a little series of posts would be nice?

Now, approximately one third of a year later, I've finally managed to mop up enough creative juices to write the second part of the 'My favourite' series. Sorry for the long wait, but hopefully anyone out there with the same interests as me will agree with my choices.

A challenge often tackled by computer scientists is the imitation - or simulation - of various real-life phenomena. It's a subject that interests me, and so here I list some internet gems that I have found recently on the subject of simulation.

Boids

Flocking birds exhibit some of the most organised behaviour in the animal kingdom, and yet they have no leader. It turns out that each bird uses simple rules to coordinate themselves with their neighbours, leading to an overall consensus as to the direction and speed of the flock. In 1986, Craig Reynolds came up with an algorithm that imitated flocking behaviour using simple computerised creatures called Boids. The Boids program I have linked to in the title is not as fancy-looking as some of the others I have seen, but in my opinion it has a much cleaner feel and many more variables to twiddle with.

Note: If you have even a moderately good processor, the simulation will probably be running far too fast to watch properly. If you set 'Refresh delay in ms' to something higher, it should be easier on your eyes.

The Game of Life

Note: For a little background info on Conway's Game of Life, try the Wikipedia article linked to in the title, or my post on the subject.

In actual fact, the Game of Life doesn't really simulate anything very convincingly, but it is a very important concept in terms of semi-chaotic behaviour. Many different structures can be implemented using it, from simple patterns that cycle around indefinitely to more complex arrangements capable of creating other objects or even themselves. Even watching the results of a random arrangement of cells can be fascinating, as well as demonstrating Life's chaotic unwillingness to settle down. If you're really keen, there's even a Game of Life pattern for a Turing machine.

Gravitee

Despite actually being a game (and having a pretty cheesy title), Gravitee is a fairly convincing imitation of Newtonian gravity. Basically it's a golf game, but interplanetary, and when you hit the ball you find it obeys all the laws of physics you might reasonably expect it to. Obviously you would need billions of pounds in funding and a pretty hefty launcher to play this sort of game in real life, but otherwise the science is sound. Moreover, it's great fun to play.

I'm afraid you'll have to excuse me now while I play another round of Gravitee golf, but I'll be back soon. Tune in next time!

Part Ten: It's all in the head

Later, when all the staff had dispersed reluctantly to their lessons, the headmaster had his usual patrol of the main building. It was mainly to distract him from the pressure of running the whole anarchic establishment that was the school, but it also gave him a chance to hunt down any skivers. The head was not greatly keen on blood sports, but he knew a skiver when he hit one. As he trudged along, he suddenly heard a loud crash from the other end of the corridor. He broke into a jog, gradually gaining speed until it became a run. Still the crashing continued, and it was getting louder by the second. The noise appeared to be coming from the janitor’s cupboard, known to be the favourite haunt of lesson-dodging pupils. Although it was called a cupboard, it also doubled up as the janitor’s miniature home from home and was considerably roomy. Coming to a halt outside the door, the headmaster rolled up his sleeve and prepared to enter. “Right then!” he bellowed as he strode through the door. “Who is responsible for…?” Suddenly the room seemed to sway around him. Colours swirled and faded, and there was a general feeling of warmth and fuzziness in the vicinity. Small fish flitted among huge purple trees on gossamer wings; two-tonne ducks dabbled upside down in a floating orange lake and with a sigh the head passed out on a bed of soft black mushrooms. Well, at least he wouldn’t have to go to the school council meeting.

All is revealed...

On Tuesday 6th May, in case you were wondering, the Eton King's Scholarship exams took place.

Now, I know perfectly well what you're thinking. You're thinking: 'What on earth is he talking about? Has he finally flipped? Has his blog been taken over by the Eton College ICT Department resident hackers? Has he come up with some stunning piece of wit on the subject of the Scholarship exams? Or has he (heaven forbid) taken to advertising?

You'll probably be pleased to hear that none of these could be further from the truth (although the advertising idea certainly sounds tempting). The simple, straightforward and several orders of magnitude less exciting answer is that I took the exams. I sat down in a hall with around 100 other people and took some tests. See, I told you it wasn't a very exciting answer.

The more interesting - and indeed fortuitous - part, however, is that I passed. The results were pretty good - in at least one case (I'm not telling you which) surprisingly so - and I somehow managed to grab 4th Scholarship.

So what about the title? 'All is revealed..'? What, you are thinking, does that mean? Nothing's been revealed. Or has it..?

Well, I suppose I'll have to tell you now. Getting an Eton Scholarship was the ultimate aim of my secret plan, despite the fact that it was neither very secret nor much of a plan. But you can't be picky with these things.

So now you know it all, and a very good thing that is too. But I think I'd better cut this post short before it gets too heavy and unwieldy, or possibly before I get unbearably smug, whichever is the sooner. Until we meet again, Adios!

All Quiet...

Well, here we all are again. Much changed since I've been gone?

I'd like to be able to say I haven't had the time to post recently, but really I've just been a bit stuck. Hopefully I can try and unstick myself briefly. (Fine, so 'unstick' isn't a word. But it ought to be.)

What's the time? 18:55. Which actually makes it 19:54, since my clock is 59 minutes slow. Twenty-two hours and six minutes until finally my grand master plan reaches its climax. Wow. Oh, er, give me a second...

[Brief interlude for picking-up grandparent.]

Sorry about that, my grandmother arrived. Where was I? Oh yes, my secret plan...

What do you mean, 'What secret plan'? The secret plan! You know! Ok, so maybe you don't. Well, I mentioned it here a little while back if you're interested. Not that I really described it in much detail (although isn't that the point of a secret?).

But anyway, now you know all about the secret plan (figuratively speaking) I suppose it's worth moving on to more pressing matters. Like cellular automata.

So, hands up all those who've heard of cellular automata. If you haven't got your hand up, then perhaps you'd like to use it to click on this link to the Wikipedia article on the subject. If you want the definition in a nutshell, imagine you have a sheet of squared paper and colour in some of the squares (although usually they're called 'cells'). Then imagine you have another sheet and, by applying certain rules to the first sheet, create a new pattern of squares. That's a cellular automaton.

Take Life, for instance. That's 'Life' with a capital 'L', by the way. Formally known as Conway's Game of Life, Life is probably the most widespread cellular automaton around. Part mess, part beauty, Life has deceptively simple rules:

1. Cells can be in one of two states, alive or dead.
2. If a cell is dead and has exactly three neighbours - either horizontally, vertically or diagonally - that are alive, it will become alive the next time the pattern is redrawn.
3. If a cell is alive and has either two or three neighbours that are alive, it will stay alive when the pattern is next redrawn. Otherwise, it will die.

Are you following all this so far? Good, you'll need to be...

The Game of Life is barely the beginning, though. For a wide selection of interesting rule possibilities and an easy way of tying them out, Windows users can try Mirek's Cellebration. If you've got a Mac, I haven't found very much for you except Golly, which nevertheless has plenty of Game of Life patterns to keep you entertained.

Well, I'm afraid that's all for now. My secret plan beckons!

Deja vu (again)

Phew! Where does all the time go? Sorry I haven't posted in millennia, I've
been largely occupied with the final stage of my secret plan. What secret
plan, you ask? Ah, well that'll have to be a secret a little longer. But I
digress...
This morning a thought struck me, which is rather ironic considering it was
to do with all the other thoughts that strike me so often. The gist of the
matter is that I appear to have a remarkable, if distinctly annoying,
propensity to realise things that, actually, I had already realised not long
beforehand. In other words, realisation déjà vu.
If you're still confused - and judging by my general shortcomings in coherent
ability, I wouldn't blame you - a case in point is my examination technique.
Let me run you through it:
1. Receive exam.
2. Do first few questions. Pretty easy.
3. Look at questions coming up, and see that they're very difficult.
4. Panic and stall.
As techniques go, it's pretty bad, but that's not the point. The point is
that every time it happens I treat it as an utterly new revelation. I never,
ever, ever, ever, EVER think to myself: 'Hmm, I'm sure I've realised this
before.' And the thing is, it happens all the time, with everything I do.
When I do something I do often, I always think: 'Well I sure do this a lot.'
Always. Without fail. I know afterwards what I've done, but it doesn't stop
me.
So remember, be very careful with what you think. You just might not be able
to stop thinking it. Hmm, I'm sure I've told you that before...

Let it snow!

Would you believe it? More snow! Where's it all coming from? Just in case you need proof, I've provided some photos. There's also some pics of my recent visit to Chedworth Roman villa. A small but exquisite section of the mosaic found at the villa. Some of the remaining walls, still in surprisingly good condition. Footprints in the snow (sorry this is not rotated!) My rather inappropriate choice of footwear.

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.