It is somewhat facinating that Americans will debate the British origins of many English phrases without ever consulting an Englishman.
A case in point: The debate on the origin of the phase "Rule of Thumb" which people parrot as being a part of British Common Law permitting husbands to beat their wives, which is then used as an explanation as to why it is not written down. A few problems: English Common Law is written down as it utilises past precedent and that the earlist reference to "Rule of Thumb" as an defense for beating a wife in a case near the beginning of the 20th century. The best explanation is this: The phrase has its origins in the textile industry as a way to measure fabrics. Half the circumference of the thumb does approximate an inch. It was well established as a phrase when the English went to the New World. In the Americas, some pious preacher then invented the concept that it was ok to discpline an errant wife whereupon it entered into American folklore. That concept was then exported back to Britian at the turn of the 20th century through literature and by US servicemen who served in Europe.
Another thing which does irk me some is the ancient nursery rhyme which Americans know as "Ring around a Rosie". Here is the version I learnt as a child:

Ring-a-ring o' roses,
A pocket full of posies,
ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo (like sneezing)
We all fall down

It is popular to attribute this rhyme as related to the Black Plague... However another interpretation which is not concidered much is the ancient pre-Christian practice of dancing around the maypole, which is an ancient fertility ritual.
Isn't history so much fun?

I was browsing cnet's news and I noticed that they posted some photos of the Collosus rebuild project. In the blurb, they failed to mention that the British had built several more of them for redundancy and increase throughput... and of course each later one carried improvements from the previous. If you're ever near Milton Keynes, it is worth spending a day at Bletchley Park. There is a computer museum there which has many working old computers, including an IBM PC model 5150, similar to the first PC that I owned. The Sinclair ZX-81 doesn't count as that belonged to my dad.

What a wonderful quote from Siân Berry of the Green Party (UK) on 29th Jan 2007:

"There will be thousands of tonnes of dumped monitors, video cards and whole computers ... Future archaeologists will be able to identify a 'Vista upgrade layer' when they go through our landfill sites."

Such insight! That is assuming that Vista is a consumer hit with existing computer owners...

So many projects I am iching to do, so little free time. I still believe my idea or a MySQL storage engine is viable. My ideas for an alternative computing platform. The OS/2 clone system. So little time.

Yet another root canal... Hopefully the last. This didn't go too badly but that is hindsight: I hate injections and the sounds and smell of metal cutting in to teeth completely fails to fill me with joy. I have a couple more check-ups in the future: With luck, they should now be uneventful.

The Apple Tech Talk was interesting... chatted with a few interesting people. I think that I should talk to Calvin to take advantage of some opportunities Leopard can give MySQL... Couldn't stay for the "Cheese and Wine" reception as the last Metro home departs Union Station at 6:30pm.

It is 8am. Funny thing... I have been living here for over 15 months and today will be the first time I venture into LA alone and I am travelling by train.

UPS delivery drivers here are complete and utter MORONS! Actually, thats insuling to the common moron. Look at the box: Three large symbols, first one means "this way up", the second one means "fragile", the third means "keep dry". Yet this delivery man throws the box from his cab onto the front door step - a clear 15ft that the box, which contains a replacement hard drive from Seagate, is airborne! That does not fit my definition of careful handling. And UPS has no easy way to lodge a complaint about mishandled packages on their web site - as if they hope that no one will complain. Wankers, the whole lot of them!

This device looks like a nifty toy. Pity I don't have much time for toys.

Seems as if there is a bug going around ... Not the computer kind... It seems as if I have caught it and I am not feeling so great.

The car did have a defective bearing. It has been replaced for no charge. Thank goodness for warranties! And while on the topic of warranties: The faulty hard drive was sent to Seagate today. Sad to note that if I buy a Maxtor drive now, it will be the third time I have purchased a Seagate drive. The first was an ST-225 and the second was something like a ST-364A...

Chaos reigns supreme! For the second time in as many months our car, a 2006 Saturn Ion Coupe, is in for repair except that this time, not only is the power steering dodgy but it appears that the front left drive wheel bearing is failing! Less than 20,000 miles and only 16 months old.
Renting a car at Enterprise Rent a Car...

Time to plan my New Year's Resolutions... All kind of things I'd like to have there but I think I should limit myself to a few achieveable objectives.
I would like to see Katie and myself move into an apartment...
I would like to get the WarpBSD/Nemesys project off the ground (now that would be something! It's been in planning stage for 10 years now.)
and many many more,,
And while I am here... How come I can visualise a product I would like to buy for Katie - and such a product not exist? I'm referring to the bluetooth/ipod car adaptor I have been looking for about 6 months now. It's simple really... It plugs into the car cigarette lighter, it charges the iPod, it plugs into car's aux audio input, it has a microphone, when a cell call comes in, it pauses the music and uses the car's stereo and its own mic as a hands free car phone solution. The technology certainly exists. Why is it not available?

A hard drive failed in the evening. Fortunately it's in a RAID set so nothing was lost. Funny that it was the very drive I expected to fail first and I have already purchased a spare. I guess that I should make some effort to erase the old drive before I return it to Fry's for a repacement.

It has been a very long time since the last blog posting. Must try to post reguarly.

Time flies when you're busy... I haven't been doing well to keep up a diary or a blog.
I plan to do better - I should make it a daily occurance, as part of a routine.

Nostalgia... I am sure that a lot of people who have used computers at least as long as myself experience it often. Today, I was introduced to Oprofile. It looks like it will satisfy my search for a code profiling tool... However, it made me remember using Turbo Profiler 386 for DOS in the very early 1990's... I remember being sad having to give it up when I went to use OS/2.

Oh well, Oprofile is not as user friendly as Turbo Profiler, I shall just have to put up with that and get work done.

Start of a new week. Didn't do any programming last night, instead went to sleep pretty early (for me, anyways). Going to make a fresh start on the current patch - I know what is needed and I still have the previous ?almost? patch to compare with... Actually, that patch runs the failing test case perfectly but I found a more serious flaw which will if fixed will make life easier.

Making multi-process code into multi-threaded is not easy... The synchronization needs to be examined and the locking redone as the assumptions are different.

No sleep for me, I guess.

Something different, trying out plogit...
Perhaps if I could add entries from the convience of the palm with no PC attached, I would write more and keep this up to date. Nice theory anyways.
...its cold this morning but I am wearing a T-shirt.