bcs-programming-competition-d

BCS Programming Competition; Death Of

For the last 21 years, the British Computer Society has held a computer programming competition for students and professional programmers in the UK and Ireland. This year, they are, sadly, not holding it.

I've competed in it twice. It's a team competition; my college sent a team for the last few years. Team was chosen through programming competition within college. The first year, we got through the heats in Edinburgh and didn't do very well in the London final, the second year, we came first in the Bristol heats, and second in London. I was hoping we might manage to come first this year (though in practice this was improbable; we had a very good team last year, apart from me :), and I'm the only one left).

It was great fun doing it, and it gave me a bit of confidence in myself at a time when I was feeling otherwise fairly useless. It was also the only thing in the past four years that got me out of the country, so that was probably a good thing. And I made friends out of it. It's a shame to see it go; according to the BCS, there may be a revamped version in the next year or so, but it's uncertain. I'm left wondering why they actually decided to get rid of it. Hmm, never mind.

So, what now? I may try to participate more in this, despite the unsocial hours. I'm looking at organising a largish in-college, or possibly inter-varsity, competition. And I suppose I can actually travel a bit at some point without a competition as an excuse :)

geotargeted-ads

Geotargeted Ads

A banner ad somewhere just suggested that I "Find tons of sex partners in SANTRY". Hmm. Hadn't realised Santry-dwellers were so hefty.

ebaums-world-again

eBaum's World Again

Remember my post on naughty copyright-violator eBaum's World? Of course you do, my devoted readers. Tut-tut and all that.

Well, at 7 or so this morning, within 20 minutes of each other, two people commented on that post, both effectively saying "oh, there's no problem, and by the way, eBaum's World has a TV show!". Okay, within the realms of possibility, no? Well, both of them posted from IP addresses in Rochester, NY, on the same cable company. Guess where the contact in ebaumsworld.com's whois entry is? That's right, Rochester NY. By the way, they seem to have been different people; they posted using slightly different versions of the same browser. Stretching the limits of credibility yet?

Another interesting thing is how they got to the blog entry. One came from a GMail email. The other had no referrer information, but came straight to the offending post. This is consistent with clicking through from a mail client. So who's been emailing the URL around? I suspect it may be Google Email Alerts or similar.

Now, from the information above, I think we can all see what's going on. eBaums' people; really very, very disappointing. Next time at least use a proxy or something!

Meanwhile, naughty, naughty website continues to distribute the work of others without their permission. But it looks like they're trying to clean things up. Their legal page, where they showed the threats they'd had from large media companies, is gone. Most of these companies backed down on the basis that it would look bad suing a company run by a then-teenager. Will they be so quick to avoid suing a company with a national television programme? You can still see the page here on archive.org. The Wikipedia entry has also been fiddled with.

I'm interested in how I received those comments, though. Has anyone else received something similar? By the way, note that Baum's minions have difficulty with English.

the-next-generation-of-it-pro

The Next Generation of IT Professionals

Heard in a CS computer lab in college: "Is there any limits to java?"

isle-of-man-flexes-its-muscle

Isle of Man flexes its muscles

From the BBC: "The Isle of Man government has warned the UK it would be unhappy if more nuclear waste was disposed of at the Sellafield plant in Cumbria."

Also, "Environment Minister, John Rimington MHK, said the government expected to be consulted about the UK's plans".

It has 'warned' the UK? What on earth does it intend to do if ignored?

publicity-for-the-noughties

Publicity for the Noughties

For most of the 20th century, advertising generally entailed spending huge amounts of money buying very poorly targetted ads. Word of mouth was not, for most people, a useful form of advertising; far too slow.

When the internet turned up, publishers tried to reuse this model. Initially, banner ads went for crazy prices; up to $50 CPM (cost per thousand). The companies placing ads almost never saw a sensible return on this, and people quickly learned to ignore the coloured boxes. But after all, it was The Internet, so they went on spending.

Eventually, the advertisers noticed that for a thousand dollars expenditure, they might sell one beanie baby (those being all the rage at the time) or similar. So they started looking for more. The advertising companies responded with pop-ups, animated banners, and other horrors. Still completely untargetted, of course. And for a while, all was well. Beanie babies sold by the hundreds. Users clicked on the banners telling them that they'd won fabulous prizes. And then, once again, people learned to ignore them, and programs were developed to block them.

The arms race between advertiser and user continued, with javascript and flash ads, popups that could beat the blockers, new and better blockers... Prices for ads plummeted; that $50 CPM banner might now go for $0.20 CPM.

Meanwhile, many websites and companies got enormous publicity by word of mouth. In the real world, it might take a few weeks for people in the next village to hear about your next product. With the internet, people on the other side of the world would have heard about it at the time.

Then came the contextual text ads. They weren't loud or flashy or annoying. They blended into websites. Sometimes they were actually helpful. Users, perhaps conditioned by years of trusting links, clicked.

But that wasn't enough. Some people wanted lots of publicity, for free. So deliberate spreading of word of mouth, through viral ads and so on, became a big thing. The Million Dollar homepage was an interesting example; it only worked once, and succeeded entirely due to the publicity generated from its being so outrageous in the first place.

Another one has turned up. This guy is offering $500 for a blog template design, on the condition that he gets permission to redistribute all entries (under the GPL, apparently). So for $500 he gets ridiculous amounts of publicity, as people, including me, link to his site saying how amazing this is. Very clever indeed. And, like the million dollar thing, will probably only work once. Next time someone tries it, it'll be old news.

This obscure person stole a template from this widely read blog, with minor changes made. Of course, designer of blog finds out and is annoyed. There follows a stream of publicity for the obscure person. Note that all the comments on his blog are on these two posts relating to the incident. Another success. And again, not easy to repeat.

Innovative, and in some cases vary dubious, marketing methods are turning up outside the internet, too. In once case, a TiVo-type service had its set-top boxes all record a particular new show, as advertising for that show. It apparently worked; people did start watching. I wonder how long it is before smarter set-top boxes start customising advertising to the user, based on programme preferences and so forth? Will there be text ads on the television?

grammar-police

Grammar Police

More dodgy grammar in a prominent place: EuroDisney ad on RTE's website. "Kid's go free". Quite.

If I had my way, this sort of thing would attract the death penalty.

morality-through-prolog

Morality Through Prolog

I was reading a book on Prolog this morning. Prolog is an interesting language which I suspect to be part of an evil plot by some RISC vendor or other to get people to use recursion more.

Anyway, an example given in the text:

lessthan(avocado, clergyman).

What's going on here? Is someone laboriously describing their moral system through Prolog? Is

lessthan(greengage, avocado).

?

Well, no. It's something only marginally less surreal, though; it is being used to demonstrate Prolog's perverse ability to convert symbols (like clergyman) into strings. Stored as lists of characters. Linked lists, naturalment; simple blocks of data wouldn't require enough recursion. An interesting language indeed.

embarassing-advertising

Embarassing Advertising

I just saw an ad for dreamhost on Something Awful. Besides their dubious claim that they'll provide 20gb storage with a terabyte of transfer for $7.95 a month (someone should test that), they have, in the ad, spelt 'terabyte' 'terrabyte'. Oops. How very professional.

spotting-a-planet-aggregator

Spotting a Planet Aggregator

Note the little half-hourly jumps. That's my Planet Aggregator. What that jump at 7am was, I'm not quite sure.

silly-fun-personals-site

Silly Fun Personals Site

okcupid.com is a rather odd personals site that I was just introduced to by a friend. It seems to be dating site meets mad psychologist. It revolves around LOTS AND LOTS of personality tests. Here are my results on one of them. Well, quite, quite.

Not very practical at all, but a lot of fun.

programming-problems

Programming Problems

Since 1st year college I've been involved in our (Trinity's) entry to the BCS programming competition, a team programming competition open to students and IT sector workers in the UK and Ireland. I was on the team then (we got through to the final, then didn't get anywhere significant there), and the next year (we came 2nd overall). This year, I'm (trying to) organise our entry.

So, we had a competition in college today to try to start finding a team. Disappointing. One person turned up. Hmm. When I was in first year, there were at least ten or fifteen at the first competition. It was a bad day to have it, but still...

Also, there is no mention of the programming competition now on BCS's website. Hope it's still on; it was great fun the other two years... I've emailed them to find out.

stupid-mindless-quiz-thing

Stupid Mindless Quiz Thing

As I'm bored and waiting for washing machine to finish, I'm filling in one of these quiz things, which I stole from some other blog:

Birthday: 25th May 1985
Birthplace: Somewhere in Dublin; don't recall

Current Location: Dublin
Eye Colour: Blue
Hair Colour: Brown
Height: 5ft 11 inches
Right Handed or Left Handed: Right Handed
Your Heritage: My what now?
The Shoes You Wore Today: size 11 not-quite-runners, can't remember brand
Your Weakness: Low self-esteem
Your Fears: That my poor computer's hard drive will fail; I am far too lazy for regular backups
Your Perfect Pizza: I have issues with cheese, so none
Goal You Would Like To Achieve This Year: Get Schols (improbable), win BCS programming competition (also somewhat improbable; it may not even be on this year.
Your Most Overused Phrase On an instant messenger: tsk
Thoughts First Waking Up: Argh. Alarm clock.
Your Best Physical Feature: I don't HAVE good physical features
Your Bedtime: A lot later than it should be
Your Most Missed Memory: Hmm, more missed opportunities than anything else
Pepsi or Coke: Pepsi (diet)
MacDonalds or Burger King: No, thank you so very much all the same
Single or Group Dates: Dates? Those something pretty people have, no?
Lipton Ice Tea or Nestea: Haven't had the, erm, pleasure
Chocolate or Vanilla: Cchocolate.
Cappuccino or Coffee: One is a subset of the other, but hot black coffee.
Do you Smoke: Nope; silly waste of money.
Do you Swear: Rarely.
Do you Sing: Yes. I probably shouldn't.
Do you Shower Daily: Good lord, doesn't everybody?
Have you Been in Love: Hmm, sort of, yes.
Do you want to go to College: There already.
Do you want to get Married: Not an option right now; I'm one of those filthy homosexual things.
Do you believe in yourself: I'm moderately certain I exist, certainly.
Do you get Motion Sickness: No.
Do you think you are Attractive: Good lord no.
Are you a Health Freak: I try to eat healthily and go to the gym. I drink far too much coffee, though
Do you get along with your Parents: Yes, I think so.
Do you like Thunderstorms: I don't have any issue with them.
Do you play an Instrument: Theoretically, I can still play the piano. I rarely do
In the past month have you Drank Alcohol: Yes.
In the past month have you Smoked: No.
In the past month have you been on Drugs: No.
In the past month have you gone on a Date: No.
In the past month have you gone to a Mall: Nothing larger than a convenience store, I'm afraid.
In the past month have you eaten a box of Oreos: No.
In the past month have you eaten Sushi: No.
In the past month have you been on Stage: No.
In the past month have you been Dumped: Yes.
In the past month have you gone Skinny Dipping: No.
In the past month have you Stolen Anything: No.
Ever been Drunk: Not really, no.
Ever been called a Tease: We're slow at recognising a theme, no?
Ever been Beaten up: No.
Ever Shoplifted: No.
How do you want to Die: Something quick and painless, for preference.
What do you want to be when you Grow Up: Hmm... Bishop.
What country would you most like to Visit: Hmm, not sure.
In a Boy/Girl..
Favourite Eye Colour: Not bothered
Favourite Hair Color: Black.
Short or Long Hair: Longish
Height: Not terribly bothered. Short guys are cute :)
Weight: Skinny/normal (I know, I know, I'm horribly shallow)
Best Clothing Style: Generic gay. Something I have great difficulty pulling off myself, incidentally.
Number of Drugs I have taken: Morphine, once, for legitimate medical purposes. That's it.
Number of CDs I own:a few
Number of Piercings: None. Always vaguely liked the idea of an eyebrow piercing, but don't know if it would suit me, and don't like pain.
Number of Tattoos: None.
Number of things in my Past I Regret: Almost all of it.

There we go. Urgh, I feel dirty.

nuclear-nation

Nuclear Nation?

As anyone not living under a rock will have noticed by now, the world is abuzz with talk of nuclear power. New plants are being planned all over Europe, and a number of countries are considering ending their moratoria on construction. Lithuania has asked the EU for permission to retain a Soviet-era plant that was to be closed as part of the accession for another ten years, and Romania plans to resume work on a plant whose construction was halted 15 years ago. Even in the US, where there has been no construction for decades, and the half-finished shells of plants still apparently dot California, there is renewed interest. France plans advanced fourth generation plants by 2020, and India and China are building fast breeders.

In Ireland, there is an eerie silence on the subject. We have no nuclear plants. One was planned in the 70s, to be built in Wexford, but public opposition and subsequent recession put a halt to that. The site is now a wind plant. And yet, more than most countries, we are in need of a long-term secure power source. Almost all our power is generated with oil and gas. We have one ageing coal plant, a few hydro plants and some wind. We also have a rapidly growing population and a large high-tech industrial sector. So why not go nuclear? Public opposition would be strong, but it is strong everywhere, and they get by regardless. There is, of course, a high initial cost, and if there is one thing our government does not like, it is high initial costs. Far better to pay more in the long-term, after election year.

Fortunately, we will be okay. There will be no rolling blackouts across Dublin as fueling the plants becomes difficult. The reason? Northern Ireland, which, for those of you who are from foreign lands, is a part of Britain. Ireland's ESB, the semi-state electricity company, has already looked at building gas plants in NI. With nuclear construction looking like it will resume across the UK in the next few years, there seems no reason why they can't build a few plants in the North, too. So, we seem to have a safety net, as long as they get building in time to be finished before serious fuel shortages start.

I realise that it is a terribly unpopular thing to voice support for nuclear power on the internet, and also an unpopular thing to acknowledge that Northern Ireland is a separate country and likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Simply mentioning nuclear power is enough to earn oneself a mention in NEI Nuclear Notes, and to draw fire from Greenpeace. And mentioning Northern Ireland as a part of the UK irritates the sort of people who use avatars of machine guns and so forth in forums and have names like gerry_adams_543. I will risk it, though.

ex-encounter

Ex Encounter

Hmm. I was having a cup of coffee in the Arts Block in college today, as is my occasional habit. I like my alone time, and it's far enough away from my end of college that I'm unlikely to come across all that many people I know. Five minutes after I got there, the guy I had been going out with until recently, when he dumped me, turned up at the next table.

I had to make a run for it, more or less, and finished my coffee down the corridor.

holocaust-what-holocaust

Holocaust? What Holocaust?

I recently discovered that someone I knew moderately well, and who seemed quite a reasonable person, doesn't believe the Holocaust happened, and believes in some sort of world Jewish Conspiracy. Now, I had always assumed that Holocaust denial was confined to some sort of mad, obvious Nazis, who I'd probably never have the pleasure of meeting. As for a Jewish Conspiracy, I considered, like any [insert disliked minority group here] believers, that those who talk about it are completely deranged.

I was talking to someone on th'internet about this recently; much the same attitudes. And someone made anti-semitic comments on my blog a few days ago; naturally I deleted them immediately, but it is surprising to me that there are that many people with these ideas out there.

In many countries, Holocaust denial is illegal. Ireland is not one of them. I wonder should it be? It seems that the vast, vast majority of people who deny the Holocaust have a very unpleasant agenda; they are, quite often, exactly the same people who babble on about Jewish Conspiracies. But should historians be barred from investigating it? It's not unusual to investigate very improbable things. Should academic freedom take priority over the necessity to avoid the use of the "No Holocaust" myth as a piece of extremist propaganda? Even in the second case, should we ban that usage? I don't know. Interesting question, though, and seemingly a moral grey area, where one is damned either way.

wacky-americans

Wacky Americans

An American university graduate group is bribing students to report naughty, naughty lecturers who dare to speak out against Bush, multinationals and the military in lectures. It really begs the question of why? Isn't this sort of thing expected of any self-respecting academic? And what, precisely, do they plan to do with the information?

Update: Ah, good, the university is going to take legal action against them.

ebaums-world

eBaum's World

It's not often that I see a website that really makes me feel nauseous. This is one of them (rel=nofollow, naturally; I don't give Pagerank to thieves). It operates on the principle of stealing content from small producers around the internet, re-branding it (de-compiling Flash, and so forth, which under the US DMCA may count as circumventing a copyright protection system), and displaying it. It makes, apparently, about $6000 a day.

scare-tactics

Scare Tactics

With resistance to nuclear power in the UK crumbling, Greenpeace has come out with this nonsense. If you can't come up with a rational argument, a happy family being horribly killed is a decent second best.

computers-for-mad-people-agai

Computers for Mad People Again

Who wouldn't want a semi-transparent hard drive? After all, it's "an engineering feat unrivalled in the annals of the hard drive industry." And, allegedly, gives you a "view into the unknown". Hmm. It still lives inside the computer, though; you won't be looking at it much. And it really is alarmingly expensive. Still, I'm sure the more money than sense brigade will jump on it like Margaret Thatcher on a semi-state company.

Also, there are memory sticks with LEDs to indicate activity. How... useful.

bright-young-things

Bright Young Things

I am, as we speak, possums, watching Stephen Fry's 'Bright Young Things'. Great fun. Highlights so far:
(a batty elderly colonel to a guest)
I suppose you'd better give him his own DECANTERS, Mrs. M. Can't have him passing them up and down all the time

and


I don't want Creme de Menthe, I want a piano! (2 bonus points to anyone who can spot the in-joke)

That's it, really, I just thought I'd write a brief note on it. Bye-bye!

breakthrough-in-glowing-pig-r

Breakthrough in Glowing Pig Research

Taiwan has produced glow-in-the-dark pigs. With green skin and internal organs. Other researchers have apparently produced partially-glowing pigs, but these are the first ones to glow all the way through. Jellyfish DNA was used. They hope to breed them with conventional pigs, creating a new generation of glowing pigs.

But what are the civilian applications? I'd suggest that energy can be saved on refrigerator lighting by simply keeping a few packets of glowing bacon around. These pigs may avert global climatic disaster!

And in separate transgenic pig news, a Canadian company has trademarked the 'EnviroPig'. My spell-check doesn't think that's a word, but Google does (it suggests it as a spelling correction).

rebellion-in-the-distributed-

Rebellion in the distributed processing community!

SalemTheCat100 is not happy. He is holding a prime number calculating community to ransom by withholding the services of 6, yes 6 computers until the developer of the application in question makes it run faster on the AMD Athlon (SalemTheCat100 is unwilling to accept that his beloved Athlon could possibly be slower than an similarly priced Pentium). Six months later, still protesting. Drama! Excitement! Irritating smileys! Poor grammar!

A year later, they have caved to his demands. There's an important lesson here. If you're unhappy about something, WHINE LIKE MAD until it is changed. And include uninformed babble, too; people with some idea about the topic at hand like that.

enterprise-flash-applications

Enterprise Flash Applications

I accidentally clicked through to Macromedia's website today. It invited me to design an enterprise application in Flash. I made my apologies and left hurriedly, but not without wondering what such a thing would be like, and how many annoying sound-effects it would have.

I wonder would it be worse than Lotus Notes...

Update: on Googling for it: "So why are so few enterprise applications using Flash as a viable RUI client?" Er, because it's horrid? I can't find any real-world applications.

Maybe this is Web 3.0

html-to-php-converter

HTML to PHP Converter!

Did you ever need to convert HTML to PHP? VisorSoft know the feeling. That's why they produce a HTML to PHP converter. Yes, really. It's amazing! For:

<b>Duuuuuuhhhh</b>

it produces:

< ?php
print "<b>Duuuuuuhhhh</b>";
?>

Imagine! How did we ever live without it?! Note that they've been working on it since at least 2003. Sadly, it's only available for Windows. So I spent ten minutes recreating their masterwork. free version here. For the paid version, you'll have to send vast dollops of cash, I'm afraid.

renewed-optimism-2

Renewed Optimism

I've got a horrible, horrible cold today. Paracetamol does little. Despite, I'm actually feeling quite optimistic, for some reason. I'm back in college today, and I seem to be getting myself back together (ever since I got dumped a while back I've been a little depressed and not doing much).

if-in-doubt-steal-rants-from-

If in doubt, steal rants from crazy religious websites!

A post on boards.ie, ostensibly the user's own, going on about the horrors of the word 'homophobe'. It's from http://www.catholic.com/library/Homosexuality.asp, tho. (Search for "Those opposed to homosexual behavior are often charged").

Silly boy.

cheerleading-spreading

Cheerleading Spreading

Once confined to American television (until quite recently, I thought it was something that had been made up for the movies; it never occurred to me that it was real), cheerleading has now spread to the UK (Mind the Java applets). May the lord protect us all.

There are, apparently, 4 million cheerleaders in the US. Arghhhhhhh!

dumped

Dumped

I got dumped :(

Was sort-of going out with him for about a month. Had sort of been expecting it, as he was really quite a bit out of my league. I really liked him tho. First guy I was ever really with. All sad now....

americans-cultural-confusion-

Americans, Cultural Confusion Of

Someone from the UK says something about the British TV Show "The Office" on a messageboard. An American says, and I quote: "I love the office, you guys have that in the UK as well?" The English accents and so forth weren't in any way a giveaway?

I've seen something similar before; someone babbling on about how they'd love Doctor Who in Britain, what with all the 'British accents' (what's a British accent?) and that they should show it there. In deadly earnest. Hmm.

web-20-making-things-worse

Web 2.0, making things worse.

Google recently decided that AdSense report checker would have to become more Javascripty, with lots of AJAX and so forth. Because all the cool kids are doing it these days. So first of all, the internals went all Javascripty. Fine, fine. Not a big deal. Then the login box became a Javascript-operated iframe shared with gmail and other services. Which is fine if you use your gmail account for AdSense and have the same password. You probably don't. But it will confuse the hell out of most browser password-remembering tools, and if you have Javascript disabled, forget it. Interestingly, once you get past the login, the rest of the site has a no-Javascript mode. Horribly annoying, to be sure.

dont-link-to-us

Don't link to us

After my little ordeal with Smeggle/Name removed, here's another site with odd ideas about linking. Sadly, I'm far from the first to notice this.

wacky-legal-threats

Wacky Legal Threats

It's good to see that crazy legal threats continue to protect the fragile virtue of mad internet people: Blogger wants to sue over being banned from a website.

Sadly, he doesn't seem to be a fullscale Archimedes Plutonium type loon.

rude-rugby-songs

Rude Rugby Songs

Oh, Google AdSense never disappoints; on a music site it was showing an ad for this. (NSFW, or for people with working brains). Lovely!