On the subject of astrology

Have you ever stood on the edge of a conversation about astrology. Those astrology fans, they are blessed with marvellous recall. 12 Star signs. A dozen attributes per star sign. All the combinations of who should pair up with who, or shouldn't. That's 144 boxes with snog, marry or avoid written in them.

If you give them your birthday, they can instantly recall all of this. 1st of March? Pisces, indecisive, careless with footwear, pines for you if you pop out to make a sandwich. Snog Capricorns, marry Aquarius, avoid other Pisces. Disclaimer: I may have made this up.

They can go one step further, and tell you this for the star sign you would have if that 13th star sign hadn't got itself deprecated. It's called Ophuculus or something like that, spidery.

So, the only way to join the party is to make up stuff. Leo. Great at origami but tends to eat the results. Not had an original thought since they were 7. Always fancies Cancers.

If you're really brave, you might be able to bluff your way through with some-made up star signs. Caninus, the Dog. Only if you're born at 11:15 - 11:35 in the morning on May 28th. Disloyal in an ironic way. Don't ever pair up with Caecilius (the Senator, born on 29th February in a leap year, very at home in their garden).

A Brief History of Conspiracy Theories

There is only one conspiracy - men of power and wealth run a system that maintains and expands their power and wealth. And it's not much of a secret.

The rest goes like this.

They didn't believe that one man shot JFK, so they don't have to trust the government. Doesn't matter because it doesn't change the fact that one President and one assassin died. The rest is history.

They didn't believe that Apollo 11 landed on the Moon, so they don't have to trust the government or NASA. Doesn't really matter as your life doesn't change much just because people went to the Moon.

They don't believe in a round Earth, so they don't have to trust the government, NASA or science. Doesn't matter - the Sun still rises and falls, satellite TV and sat nav still works even if they go la la la with their fingers in their ears when you try to explain.

Yeah, so far, they can be left to their petty little delusions, they're not really hurting anyone. Shall we continue?

They don't believe vaccines are safe, and now they definitely don't trust the government or science. Even though most of them are old enough to have been vaccinated and maybe to be alive due to herd immunity.

Only now it matters because children are dying.

They don't believe in COVID-19, wearing masks, social distancing because they still don't trust the government and science. 

And people are still dying and are going to stay ill for a very long time.

And most of all, this is where it all ends. They don't believe in anthropomorphic climate change, because they don't trust the government, NASA or science. It's nothing to do with them because they were right about JFK, the Moon, the Flat Earth, vaccines and COVID-19. Job done

It matters. Do I really need to spell out how much more it matters than any of the crap above?

Meanwhile, there has only been one conspiracy - men of power and wealth run a system that maintains and expands their power and wealth. And it's not much of a secret.

Family

Finishing the FutureLearn Course

Finally spending a few hours to make me feel like I have finished.

So I have made the changes suggested in week 4 (loops and arrays) to add the sad balls. They didn't seem to appear in the right place but all was cured when I pasted in the week 5 code

Weeks 5 (algorithms) and 6 (functions) were interesting. At this point, there were only suggestions for open ended additions to the game so all I did was look at changing (reducing)  the score when the red ball hits a sad face. Seemed everything was in place so that there was one function call to do that

There is plenty to look back at here as the workspace has the whole structure for setting up the space and adding images / text plus code for moving

If I have time -

• suggest using the tilt of the machine to increase/decrease the speed of the red ball. It can take a long time to reach sad faces if it hit the walls at steep angles
• How about moving sad faces so different chances to get the red ball through
• And random direction for ball at start
• Red ball could  get faster as time progresses. 
• Not hard to see  how different levels could be implemented too

In all, quite satisfying. Still think I prefer C# as it is a bit more forgiving with converting between types; makes me lazy

Thank you for having me

Games course Week 2 postponed

Did I mention that the laptop I was using for this died at the start of the start of the week? So, got the software reinstalled a while ago and then, nothing.

Finally found a bit of time to do week 2 - making simple changes to the game

Seems the variables are already nicely set up in the class so small changes to mBallX mBallSpeedX translate into the actual changes on the screen.

worked on phone and tosh laptop, not Hudl.back later

FutureLearn Games Programming

Ok, so I'm doing the FutureLearn course on programming - making your first game in android. #FLmobigame

Why? Thought it'd be an excuse to have another chance to learn java. I've done this once or twice though made much more progress with the very similar C#. Cos C# runs faster gives clearer error messages and I can get the full visual studio for free from dreamspark.

So, the steps were:

1. Saw the first presentation last year, thought I'd avoid the beta test
2. Registered last December
3. Got brownie points from the boss for registering as it's cpd, then discovered my colleagues doing different courses
4. Got details of a competition for the students so encouraged them to register along with Dave Atkobeau and Allyn Truro. If they stay interested there's a comp in Reading sometime

So, steps tonight

1. Had a go at the android programming and at least got something running on my phone last year. Seems the key is to install Samsung Kies
2. Installed the Android dev kit - using a version of JDK on the machine
3. Got the emulator working for the week 1 game. Yawn Yawn whilst it kicked into life
4. Made my first apk file which installed, ran and did next to nothing as expected; transferred via drop box but saving my work to Google drive so that should sync pretty fast
5. Still working on the debugging on a device but I think I can crack it for my phone as I believe the laptop has the correct samsung usb drivers - I am sure I got it working last time. The phone just asked if I wanted to allow usb and bingo, runs on the phone. Instralls as an app so in business
6. trying for hudl with generic usb driver - see http://helpdesk.rsupport.com/entries/21710102-Installing-the-Generic-Google-Android-USB-Driver NO JOY https://www.facebook.com/tesco/posts/588612207864581 suggests the google driver should work with hudl
7. Could try editing the driver http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9709263/google-android-usb-driver-and-adb
8. or this https://www.topnotchtablets.com/installADBdriver has download; this asked me to replace the driver so it may screw the samsung connection ho hum we shall see. In fact it chose to uninstall itself and I can debug on the SIII, install and run on both. That's enough for tonight
9. UPDATE: tried it again with the hudl plugged in and it will run on there in debug mode too. hooray

Long term thoughts

This course looks like it will work by getting us to update the code that describes the game behavior in the TheGame.java class. We will need to add images for other parts of the game. Will we learn to start a game from scratch or will the other files, like the manifest, be left as a mystery to us??

The Large Canine Collider

You may have noticed the news that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN has broken it’s own record for particle energy – with a massive 3.5 TeV. Now that sounds impressive – that’ll be 3 500 000 000 000 electron-volts. However, you may not be aware that an electron volt is not an especially large unit of energy – about 0.000 000 000 000 000 00016 Joules. And any good physicist will tell you that a Joule is about the amount of energy needed to lift a litre of orange juice by 10 cm. That makes energy of a proton in the LHC about 0.000 052 Joules. Doesn’t sound a lot, but to a proton it’s enough to make it move pretty close to the speed of light.

Here at S & N & NC headquarters, we have our own accelerator - the Large Canine Collider (LCC). This basically consists of 2 Rottweilers and the dining room table. When their play fighting gets a bit too much for us, we release them into the collider and round and round they go.

Now a Rottweiler has a mass of about 35 kg. Running at, say, 3 m/s, that gives it kinetic energy of about 162 Joules - I make that about 3 million times more than in the LHC. Impressed? You should be. Even when the LHC is fully up to speed, it's energy will be twice what it is now, not a patch on the LCC.

This means that we should consider other differences between the LHC and the LCC.

The Location

The LHC can only be found in one place - on the Swiss/French border. However, a LCC can be constructed anywhere there are 2 large canines and a table or similar.

The Name

The LHC is so named on account of it's size - a circular tunnel 17 miles long. The hadrons themselves are not large (and the protons and anti-protons that they use are light as hadrons go) .

However, the LCC comes with much more flexible naming. The name can apply to large canines in a large room, large canines in a small room or small canines in a large room. Only if one were to use small dogs in a small room would we have to rename it the Small Canine Collider.

The Purpose

Great claims have been made for the LHC -that we will see back to the Big Bang, that we will discover the God Particle (Higgs Boson) and learn much more about Life, The Universe and Everything than we already know from the number 42.

The truth is a bit simpler. It will produce a bit more information about the behaviour of matter in similar high temperature conditions as existed shortly after the Big Bang. Future, bigger colliders will see an even earlier state of the universe, but we'll consume all the resources on our planet before we come even vaguely close to the Big Bang. Similarly, discovery of the Higgs Boson will confirm theories of physics, following a long tradition of predicting the existence of particles then saving up a very long time to do the experiments that will produce them. However, such an outcome cannot be guaranteed.

The LCC is designed to leave your canines happy and tired, which it achieves pretty much every time.

Cost

The LHC cost billions to build. If you already have 2 canines and a table, the budget for the LCC is nothing.

Good times to collide

The LHC is not use much in the winter as the electricity in Switzerland is required for more prosaic tasks, like cooking and heating. The LCC can be turned on whenever your dogs have the energy.

Bad times to collide

The LHC is so expensive that it is not really a good idea to turn it on during a global economic downturn, in a world worried about global warming or when Switzerland might be about to win the World Cup in extra time (an overload at the LHC will probably blow Switzerland's fuse).

The LCC can be used at any time, unless you have neighbours who might object to the noise at 4 in the morning.

Conclusion

It seems to me that the LCC is more energetic, flexible and reliable than the LHC. I urge the science ministers of the world to investigate it further.