Rob's Blog - January 2004

XUXU Now Available.

Back in November I wrote I was in Xuxu Heaven with the new Strawberry drink XUXU (pronouced Kiss You, Kiss You).

Finally it is available in UK supermarkets, and I was able to buy my first bottle of it in the Colchester branch of ASDA for the bargain price of 4.39.

The bottle is German, and has the words Schmeckt Wie Der Erste Kuss around the top, which Jules has translated to mean Tastes Like Your First Kiss.

The drink itself is 45% crushed strawberries, and only 10% alcohol.

I might have to try one of the serving suggestions tonight, which is XUXU poured over vanilla ice cream.

Heaven!

We Love Horses

Rapidly achieving cult status is theme tune for Deagostini's magazine I Love Horses.

A favourite in the office at present is Mysterybob's remix of I Love Horses.

If your phone can handle SMAF polyphonic ringtones (Sharp GX10 etc), then you could have downloaded the I Love Horses ringtone, but I have been asked by Deagostini to remove it due to copyright restrictions.

However, all is not well for horse lovers as it turns out that some people don't love horses.

Having A Bad Day

I'm not having too good a day so far.

I had the orthodontist this morning, so that means a bit of a lay in. My brace was rewired and tightened, and i was also told i don't have to wear my removable one anymore. I also got a lift to Lewes to join the London train so I didn't have a long walk to Eastbourne station. Fantastic so far...

I them made the mistake of having a flapjack at the Runaway cafe and knocked out some of the new rubber banding on my brace. I called the hospital and they said i could come back to have it fixed. I had to get a train back to Eastbourne and walk to the hospital. So i didn't avoid the walk afterall. At least it was a fine sunny day.

On the way I went past a park and saw a squirrel sitting close by, so I took a quick photo of it with my phone.

It's now late in the day, and I don't think it will be worth going back to work, so i expect i'll have to use annual leave up and take the rest of the day off.

Bugger!

Heathrow Flight Arrivals

I was planning on meeting someone at Heathrow, and I wanted to know when a certain flight was due to arrive.

I looked at the BAA's website and they have the information online. However, it's not available for mobile phones, except as a commercial service, and only on certain networks.

I took this as a challenge and quickly knocked up a Perl script that would let me search for free using my WAP enabled mobile phone.

I have written this up and it is available for download now from my WAP section as an article entitled Heathrow Arrivals.

Running Perl On Nokia Phones

Nokia have a version of Perl for their series 60 phones.

Unfortunately it's an internal development version, though they are promising to release it to the wider phone development community through Forum Nokia.

Python is Nokia's preferred scripting language for smartphones.

I'm certainly looking forward to getting my hands on a mobile version of Perl, and i'd upgrade from my current series 40 phone to do so.

Trail Magazine Directs Readers Over Cliff

Trail magazine have had to apologise after their latest issue contained a route that would have led climbers over the edge of a cliff.

The current issue offered advice to walkers on Ben Nevis, caught in bad weather and poor visability, how to reach the peak safely. However, if the instructions were followed, climbers would have plunged to their deaths off the mountains north face.

The editor of Trail magazine is apparently "gutted" by the mistake.

Two Days Before Colleagues Realise Auditor Is Dead

I'm glad my office isn't like the Helsinki tax office.

One of the auditors died at his desk, but his colleagues failed to realise for two days, with his co-workers assuming he was silently poring over returns. About 100 others work on the same floor as the dead man.

It must a really fun place to work!

BF-120 IrDA USB

Maplin Electronics in Tottenham Court Road had BF-120 IrDA USB adaptor for 19.99 in their sale, so I treated myself to one so I could connect my Nokia 7250 to my PC without a data cable.

It was a total pain in the arse to get working with the Nokia PC Suite. I finally got it working with Windows XP after several hours of trying.

The model I have is a V6102F. It would detect the phone, but kept breaking the connection. In the end the solution was to go into the Windows Control Panel, System, Device Manager. Once there select Infrared devices and SigmaTel USB-IrDA Adapter. In the Advanced tab, change the Infrared Transceiver Type to Vishay 6101E, and that should do the trick.

Go the the Nokia PC Suite and select Infrared and that should detect the Nokia 7250 and connect to it. The PC Suite utilities will now be able to talk to the phone and download any content from it.

Perl Template Toolkit Book

I've finally managed to get my grubby little hands on a copy of Perl Template Toolkit by Andy Wardly, Dave Cross and Darren Chamberlain.

I'm sure the girl with long dark hair in Foyles computer department thought I was her stalker over the past week, turning up everyday to see if it was in stock.

The book looks excellent, I'm looking forward to learning more about the Template Toolkit.

On a related subject, Issac has asked if he can use my Template Toolkit example as part of his talk on writing web applications with Perl and... at YAPC::Israel::2004.

I just hope it's not as an example of what not to do. :-)

Colchester Hippodrome

Saturday night saw me at The Hippodrome in Colchester, and I'm not sure I've ever been to a worse nightclub.

To start with, it took over 20 minutes of queuing down a whinding staircase to get my coat into the cloakroom.

The club was dangerously overcrowded, full pissed squaddies and Essex girls looking for trouble. The music was shit, the floors like walking on superglue, and you had to constantly watch your back.

To make things worse, a friend had her purse taken whilst in there, and when it was found and returned all her money had been stolen.

Somewhere to avoid!

Sunday In Manningtree

I went to Manningtree, England's smallest town, on Sunday afternoon. It's a really lovely place, and I had a very tasty lunch at The Crown, which was apparently voted England's best pub a few years back.

Feeling the need to walk off the cod and chips i'd just eaten, I took a walk along the river to neighbouring Mistley. The sun was setting so I took the following snap with my phone of the church.

It was strange having a walk around the churchyard. Many of the old gravestones were covered with moss, over 100 years old, and very difficult to read. It makes you very aware of your own mortality. No one tends the stones as no one remembers the person they are commemorating.

Old Friends

It's always strange catching up with people. Out of the blue yesterday I had an email from Richie Rich inviting me to his wedding party. He's finally marrying one of his matching Scandinavians.

A quick scan of the list of the other people the email was sent to threw up a bit a of a blast from the past.

The lovely Laura now keeps a blog, so I had a read of it. Laura's user information is interesting, especially her choice of interests as they include, strap-on-sex, escorts, boys in make up and cheese.

Time for a catchup!

I Want Some Magic Sand

I'm not sure how this passed me by before, but I really want some Magic Sand.

Basically, it's hydrophobic sand, so it repels water. In air it is free flowing, but in water it clumps together and be modelled with. There's lots more on magic sand at the Journal of Chemical Enducation's website.

You can buy magic sand at Argos if you want to have a play about with it.

Lengthen Journey Times To Improve Train Reliability

Network Rail's new idea to make the trains run on time is to lengthen the journey time.

The idea is to add up to five minutes to every journey when the summer timetable is published. They claim this could improve punctuality from 80% to 83%.

What a great idea, make something appear better without doing any actual work. Maybe the Government could do the same for crime rates by making more things legal?

CD Wow! Sued

The BPI and IRMA are sueing CD Wow! for copyright infringement.

CD Wow! sources its CDs from Hong Kong and the CDs are far cheaper than they are in the UK, with prices averaging £9 a CD including postage.

CD Wow! is accused of not contributing to the local economy, not paying VAT and violating copyright and trademarks under EU laws.

Hardly a day goes past when we hear that big businesses are sourcing from the Far East for manufacturing or staffing call centres, so when a consumer tries to do the same thing, the industry cries foul. There is one law for business, one for consumers. Remember, these CDs are legal copies and the artists and the industry are getting royalites from them.

Cheap imported CD's are legal in Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In 1998 the Australians broke the music industries monopoly and allowed the import of legitimate copyrighted CDs. Universal Music and Warner were fined A$2,000,000 for anticompetitive behaviour and CDs now cost a lot less as a result.

Jersey based Play.com is the next victim of the monopolists.

We live in a global economy, and we all need to adapt and survive.

Missing Dalek Episode Found

Good news for Doctor Who fans. The previously lost 2nd episode of the Daleks' Masterplan has been found.

Francis Watson who worked at the BBC in the early 1970s was asked to throw it out, but decided to keep it to watch at home. Thank God he did. Hopefully the BBC will now be able to include this as a DVD extra in a forthcoming Doctor Who release.

Hydrogen Powered London Bus

Walking from Oxford Circus Tube station today I saw one of the new route 25 fuel cell buses.

Each time it pulled off down the road a great white cloud erupted from its rear. Initially I thought it was smoke, but these new buses only emit pure water vapour.

They run on hydrogen gas stored in six cylinders in the buses roof. The gas is turned into electrical power and the only emission is water.

Very clever stuff!

Amusing Grime Message

A comedian has etched this rather amusing message into the grime on tonights South Central Trains service to Eastbourne.

Don't clean me, the dirt is holding me together.

It seems the massive cleaning budget still doesn't extend to the actual cleaning of the trains, but probably only as far as the managements waste paper bins.

New Record Set!

One of the most annoying stories in the news today is that Pop Idol winner Michelle McManus is claiming to have made history yesterday.

No, she's not cut back on the pies, but is apparently the first Scottish female to go to straight to number one with her debut song.

Well if this is making history, then I'm proud to announce that I have also made history today.

I am the first 28 year old male Perl developer from Eastbourne to have spent the weekend in Colchester, caught a bus to the station, boarded the 7:15 train to Liverpool Street, tube'd to Oxford Circus, had a hot chocolate and blogged it all before 11am.

It feels absolutely amazing, I'm still in a dream-like state. I'm extemely grateful to everyone who helped me achieve this. Thank you so much! Price said.

As for this record, all I can say is that I'm so proud to be able to do this for Eastbourne.

Notes for editors: Robert Price is a 28 year old Perl developer, originally from the Sussex seaside town of Eastbourne.

Penguin Poo Power

Penguins are able to project their poo with such force it can land up to 15ft away from their nests. They generate pressures of up to 60 kilopascals a poo.

However this is nothing compared to the silver-spotted skipper butterfly caterpillar. They can can poo 4ft, the equivalent of a human emitting a projectile poo capable of travelling up to 250ft. Just imagine the splashback from that!

I wonder what the hard working scientists at the International University of Bremen will discover next.

T68i Emulator Accessing WML Page Over HTTP

I'm having a nightmare trying to get a WAP application working on a Sony Ericsson T68i.

My application works in the T68i emulator, but apparently not on the real device. As I don't have access to a real device I'm a bit stuck. The emulator is a bit of a pain as it doesn't work out of the box for connecting to HTTP WML pages.

I managed to get the SonyEricsson T68i Emulator working with the Nokia WAP Gateway Simulator 4.0.

To do this start the Nokia WAP Gateway Simulator. This listens on localhost 127.0.0.1 on ports 9200 and 9201. Now start the T68i emulator and go to View and Settings. Select Gateway and Add. Set Title to Nokia, and set IP Address to 127.0.0.1 and select OK. Don't worry about a User ID or Password.

You should now be able to enter an HTTP URL into the browser and surf mobile sites in the emulator.

Goodbye XS Segfault

I've been playing about with XS in Perl the past few days and I've been driven mad by my code segfaulting when I tried to set an error callback.

I've just found out what the cause of the problem is and it's totally obvious now I've found it.

Basically, when I was creating my XS Perl object I was calling New instead of Newz to allocate memory for it.

Calling Newz means that the area of code I am setting is zero'd first, so my callback now correctly checks to see it needs to allocate a new SV or reuse an existing one. Previously it was seeing a value in there and trying to reuse a non existant variable.

XS is very hard going, but the rewards are worth it sometimes. Hopefully the result of this work will be a CPAN release of my new module when it's completed.