Ember Dart's Blog: Software, Mathematics, HamRadio, Music

Who I really am (and a revamp)

2026-06-03 18:05:02 UTC

Good evening.

I have recently decided to revisit my own identity.

Those of you who have been following me already probably know that I'm trans, but maybe not quite all of the details.

For a little while between 2014 and 2018, I went by "Kathie", since it stemmed from an addiction to coffee and I thought it would be quirky. Great reason to name yourself after something, right?

Later on during my deepest relationship, I was encouraged to think "perhaps I'm actually non-binary" and went by a different name for the next eight years.

This year, after much consideration, I thought "Ember" would be a nice name to go by, to keep the fire alive inside me, since after reconsidering my identity and name a couple of times, I believe that the identity "trans-fem" fits me better.

I have now revamped my websites and blogs, so if you see anything amiss, please let me know in the comment emailer.

Dark Mode Now Available

2025-07-18 16:05:00 UTC

A short one for this evening: you may (or may not) notice that dark mode is now available on all my websites and blogs.

As someone who likes "hacker" themes, I prefer and default to the dark mode css theme, but if your system is setup for light mode defaults, you shouldn't see any difference.

Please let me know if you see any issues with my new theme!

Toodloo!

Long scale is better than short scale

2025-01-14 23:38:45 UTC

Hi!

It's been a bit since I've posted anything quite as substantial, so here we go!

I was brought up with what we were led to believe was the "British/French" system of numbers, known as "long scale", which many countries still use, as opposed to the "American/German" version, which apparently Britain now uses, also known as "short scale".

The difference? The powers of ten:

10^n	1000^n	Short scale	Million^n	Long scale, -ard	Long scale, thousand
3	1	Thousand	0.5	Thousand	Thousand
6	2	Million	1	Million	Million
9	3	Billion	1.5	Milliard	Thousand million
12	4	Trillion	2	Billion	Billion
15	5	Quadrillion	2.5	Billiard	Thousand billion
18	6	Quintillion	3	Trillion	Trillion
21	7	Sextillion	3.5	Trilliard	Thousand trillion
24	8	Septillion	4	Quadrillion	Quadrillion
27	9	Octillion	4.5	Quadrilliard	Thousand quadrillion
30	10	Nonillion	5	Quintillion	Quintillion
33	11	Decillion	5.5	Quintilliard	Thousand quintillion
36	12	Undecillion	6	Sextillion	Sextillion
39	13	Dodecillion	6.5	Sextilliard	Thousand sextillion
42	14	Tredecillion	7	Septillion	Septillion
45	15	Quattuordecillion	7.5	Septilliard	Thousand septillion
48	16	Quindecillion	8	Octillion	Octillion
51	17	Sexdecillion	8.5	Octilliard	Thousand octillion
54	18	Septendecillion	9	Nonillion	Nonillion
57	19	Octodecillion	9.5	Nonilliard	Thousand nonillion
60	20	Novemdecillion	10	Decillion	Decillion

...etc.

The details of this table is probably my best backup as to why I prefer long scale to short scale.

As you can see, the long scale directly comes from the Latin of the power of a million, but short scale comes from what seems to be a hack: "a thousand times the power of a thousand"? "One less than the power of a thousand"?

If you're intent on using a thousands-based system, I have suggested a "power of a thousand" name below,with the added benefit that it divides directly into the long scale without having to add such a "hack factor"!

10^n	1000^n	Silly name
3	1	Thousand
6	2	Bisand
9	3	Trisand
12	4	Quadsand
15	5	Quintsand
18	6	Sexsand
21	7	Septsand
24	8	Octsand
27	9	Nonsand
30	10	Decsand
33	11	Undecsand
36	12	Dodecsand
39	13	Tredecsand
42	14	Quattuordecsand
45	15	Quindecsand
48	16	Sexdecsand
51	17	Sepdecsand
54	18	Octdecsand
57	19	Nondecsand
60	20	Viginsand

This is obviously very tongue-in-cheek, but it's one of the times that a common usage of numbers (which I like very much) has disappointed me.

Till next time.

Updated Websites and Blogs!

2024-12-26 21:17:00 UTC

Hi! It's been a while!

I've just released a major new build for all my websites and blogs. It features, amongst other things:

Fixes for RSS feed readers
Fixes for rendering older posts
Separate "tag" and "post" permalink pages for each blog, in order to properly link to them.
Nice sidebar menus.
Better mobile layout optimisation.
Better embeds.
Different font (do you like it?)
Various metadata and sitemaps to allow pages and posts to be properly indexed.

Coming soon will be:

the ability to choose the older font if there's enough demand
dark mode.
any suggestions in the next period.

This will also allow me to more frequently write blog posts, so look forward to what's next!

Here is the current list of websites that have now been updated:

And blogs affected:

If you would like to use this package for your own website, I'd be happy to help. And if you notice anything wrong with it, please let me know.

Ta-ta, and happy Y'all-Tired!

What would you like to see more of?

2022-10-31 00:55:00 UTC

I have many ideas, but I don't know what's going to be received the best.

Please comment on this post to help decide what kind of content and projects I should work on.

Toodloo!

New Tech Blog

2022-09-11 22:08:08 UTC

Hello everyone, it's been a while. I've got a new tech blog out - it's intended for things attributable to JolHarg (e.g. release announcements, tutorials, news, assorted tech things), in order to separate my non-code/non-"official" thoughts and opinions from those of my company, for what it's worth. This isn't due to anything I plan to say, but rather so that people who would like code-only thoughts can get them. I've moved some of my older blogs from this blog to that blog, if they were better attributed, too. Please let me know if you think I've miscategorised anything. Please also remember to reset your RSS feed reader, if you use the atom feed.

Here's the JolHarg Blog, and here's the new atom feed

Also, the comments are back!

A short story about your childhood: Part 2

2022-03-28 17:04:27 UTC

Four years later

Your new life and house are pleasant, and your brickwork hast scarcely a scuff. However, as you look back to the time before your degree, that haunting feeling never left you. The echoes in the streets of the unknown and untold enemy have gone, but in their place lie silence, solitude and, whenever you requested it, friendliness.

As your introduction to construction this afternoon dragged on, there was one question you forgot to ask. Don’t mind it though, everyone misses things, even if they are as big as this.

Signing up to construction class was your first mistake. It might sound an innocuous enough passion, but surely, surely it couldn’t have been the cause of all this, you tell yourself.

Sweet comforts are all you have, when you’re alone on a tiny island in the middle of a lake.

What could it hurt to call for help?

What, indeed?

The rescuer... you seem to somehow recognise him on your special proprietary phone, and then it slowly dawns on you.

It’s his voice.

A short story about your childhood: Part 1

2022-03-28 16:46:21 UTC

You wake up, and leave your comfortable, beautifully decorated house, but there’s some kind of ill feeling in the pit of your stomach.

You begin to look around, and the instant déjà vu you experience brings tears to your eyes, which you didn’t expect.

"I remember...", you start to think. What on Earth is so strange, yet familiar about your environment, and yet you cannot put your finger on it?

You attempt to brush your feeling of uneasiness off, and you attempt to take a single step when-

Suddenly, with a flash of dirty brown, it all comes flashing back. Every time you’ve done what you’ve done before, everything thereafter you were forced to do. Every time through no fault of your own you had to start your entire routine again.

It’s him. It’s that horrid "groundhog", the one you were always forced to come face to sweating, hairy face with, and he wants the same thing he always wants, whenever you do this to yourself.

Dark, sombre tones play from nowhere and everywhere, and your memories replay a thousand times over.

"No, I don’t want to do this ever again!", you internally scream.

"This putrid charade, this utter malfeasance, this evil, evil guardian..."

You have already started to bow fearfully in order to grovel, beg and plead, just to get on with your day, as his upper half finishes rising, and shaking his sharp implement, his low, croaky voice angrily stutters:

"You again!"

Should I cross-post?

2021-11-05 16:24:24 UTC

My blog used to be hosted exclusively on Google's Blogger platform, and then was cross-posted to Tumblr.

For the interests of exposure, would anyone have an idea of whether I should cross-post, and a place I could cross-post? This will remain my major place to post though.

Any opinions?

On Lying (Again)

2021-11-05 15:07:12 UTC

A couple of years ago, I made a blog post: The categories of truthfulness of information. I'm now finding that some of that information is viewed not quite as I had written.

Lies

So I've recently been researching the meaning of lying, and there seems to be quite the divide.

On one hand, some believe that lying is a deliberate act, and some believe that it directly translates to "untruth", whether deliberate or accidental. What is your understanding?

Would I be lying if I told you something I legitimately believed, which turned out not to be true? Are people actually invested in pseudoscience lying, or is it just the people who told them that?

As soon as I get this blog ready with comments again, I shall also add the ability to poll, so you can easily tell me your side of the story.

That's all for now.

Is telling a falsehood always a lie?

2021-10-08 23:13:54 UTC

Alright, do you see lying as to communicate deliberately what you don’t believe, or to communicate deliberately what isn’t true?

So in other words, is it a lie for someone to unwittingly pass on false information, or are they not lying because they genuinely believe it?

My view on it is that if I were told that Mercury was the hottest planet (a falsehood) and believed it, then told someone, I wouldn’t be lying, even though I’d been misinformed?

Is that the consensus, or would people instead say that lying is based on whether or not something is actually “true” and that I had actually unwittingly lied?

Doesn’t really make sense to me that unwittingly lying is a thing, because one does believe it and isn’t trying to deceive.

The rules of tone in text

2021-01-15 13:20:35 UTC

Here's what I've found so far. I'll keep you updated if there are more:

Normal.

Emphasised!

** Really emphasised **!

Important also

-I didn't mean to say this, perhaps a mumble-

eXCITABLE

dErP vOiCe!

^Sarcasm^.

Have you got any more?

Always use UTC

2020-12-05 07:39:00 UTC

As a radio ham, I am used to writing times in Universal Coordinated Time, and it is my strong opinion that everybody should know how far away they are from UTC at any time.

Meetings are obviously global, now more so than ever before. It's of vital importance that when people do not have a convenient tool (so when speaking for instance) that people use universal time in order to avoid confusion.

Daylight savings' times are always changing, and there could be a difference of perhaps 5 timezones throughout the year between two or three people. This is because even throughout a hemisphere, people typically do not change their clocks at the same time, they may be for example a week off. When someone in one hemisphere is changing their clocks forwards, it could be about time for someone in the other to change their clocks backwards, but it may be another week or so before they do it!

Especially around clock-changing times, it's important to make sure there are no miscommunications, and especially when someone doesn't know the time of year that your clocks turn forwards and backwards, a single reference point should really be used.

And that is why in the first sentence of this blog post when I mentioned being a radio ham, I stressed this. Imagine how complicated logging a contact would be! Whose time do you log it as? What's their timezone? Do you have them all memorised? Do you want to have to look them up all the time? It's best to use one timezone throughout the world and that has been internationally standardised to UTC.

Fun fact: the "Z" at the end of dates you sometimes see stands for Zulu, which is convenient, as Zulu time is the same time as UTC throughout the year, as they don't use daylight savings' time. They've at least got it right.

Whether or not to have daylight savings' at all is always discussed around the times of the transitions and whether or not it helps you shouldn't matter if you're talking across date lines.

TTFN!

New Review Site

2020-12-04 00:01:00 UTC

Hey folks,

I've been working on making a new review site, and have a first review up now.

Here's the site and Here's the feed!

Hope you like it.

Atom feed now available

2020-11-05 00:21:00 UTC

Hey all!

My Atom feed is now available to keep track of this blog. RSS2 to come soon if there's demand

Here's the subscribe link.

Revamped my blog!

2020-07-25 20:48:00 UTC

Hey everyone. I've just revamped my blog, and I'm now writing it in Markdown using my custom Haskell-based website renderer.

Let's see if I can make sure it goes well.

Here's the new source to my website builder

Edit 2020-08-16: Finally got it DNS'd, because my phone is dead and I had to ask DigitalOcean to disable my 2FA and provide appropriate proofs!

Speaking of proofs, however, I made a Keybase - this is a great place to chat, send files or encrypt both files and source control transparently. I should make a tutorial on these kinds of things, so that I can help others learn from my mistakes and make use of untrustworthy cloud services.

TTFN!

The categories of truthfulness of information

2019-06-15 16:17:00 UTC

I keep hearing so much about the distinction between truth and lies. People say that things that aren't objectively true are "obviously lies". This isn't so, and there's a lot of different levels of truth.

What inspired me to write this was the detective visual novel and anime Danganronpa series, specifically the character Kokichi Oma, who uses lies to deceive playfully, and is often not known to either be telling the truth or lies. Other parts in the series revolve around finding truth using either other truths or lies.

However, there's a lot more fine detail to the level of truthfulness of information, that I'll briefly cover here.

Truths
- Objective facts
  
  Things that are objectively true, and always are true, independently of the universe. These things can be proved without doubt.
  
  Examples:
  - In the common system of mathematics, there are infinitely many primes.
Generally true facts

Things that are generally agreed upon that it is impossible to absolutely verify (at least for now), such as observations about the universe, and deductions based on it. This includes things "as far as anyone can tell".

Examples:
- We are living in a galaxy.
Specifically / subjectively true facts

Based on experience, what a person may internally observe, remember or prefer, whether or not what they remember is verifiable. This may not necessarily be a truth for everybody. Opinions are included in this.

Examples:
- I am writing a blog post.
- I like sushi.
- Any kind of delusion is an example, because the speaker genuinely believes it.
Unknowns
- Rumsfeld Known Unknowns
  
  Something that is known to be unknown, either for now or always.
  
  Examples:
  - I do not know whether my great-great-great-times-a-thousand-grandfather had three or fewer children.
- Rumsfeld Unknown Knowns
  
  What is not known to be known.
  
  Examples:
  - "It was right in front of our nose the entire time!"
- Rumsfeld Unknown Unknowns
  
  What is not known to not be known - at all, without any reference or guesses.
- Secrets
  
  What is known up to the specifically true range, but hidden and not explained, to protect people, data or knowledge. This information may later be leaked if it is not protected well enough, or deemed later to be not necessary to protect.
Falsehoods
- Mistakes
  
  Often misattributed as lies, somebody may think that they know something, but they get it wrong, either by mis-remembering, citing an incorrect source or being told by somebody who also made a mistake.
- Lies What is known up to the specifically true range, but deliberately obfuscated or told wrongly. There are several broad reasons for lying.
  - Malicious lies
    
    Told to deceive, confuse, avoid consequences, or to protect secrets or feelings
  - Political lies
    
    Told by many to get out of trouble.
  - Religious lies
    
    Told to ensure loyalty, or to induce fear and panic.
  - Forced lies
    
    Told to ensure an authority will not punish the liar.
  - Deluded lies
    
    When the alternative to lying is too painful, physically or mentally, but the liar knows that it is a lie. Different to a delusion, which is a personal truth.
  - Playful lies
    
    Told for fun, such as playing pretend, spreading chaos or to make things interesting. Often not serious in the slightest.
- Non-categorised
  
  Things that cannot be rated in terms of truth because they don't relate to a statement, such as a question.
- Nonsense
  
  Things that cannot be understood at all.

Let me know if I missed anything or if you think something should be changed!

Appropriate punishments?

2019-03-09 18:40:00 UTC

I keep hearing about people complaining about the punishment for this or that crime is too little or too much. I've got a simple (ish) idea for the calculation of appropriate punishment. This is what I would probably (naively) implement, had I known no better if I ever were to create or edit a country. Hear me out.

The decision for whether a crime is a crime is dependent on the relative loss to a person or entity. Generally, most crimes have loss and the amount of loss is to be decided between the lawmakers and those who have lost, taking into account what is gained proportionally to the ratio of that which has gained to what that which has gained already has.

Then, the appropriate punishment should be the addition of the reversal of the crime to the calculation of the amount of that which has been lost over the time over which it has been lost, to the extent that the entity which has lost is happy that the debt has been repaid.

For instance, for petty crimes like vandalism, it would depend on the type. So if we imagine a bridge with a mural has been vandalised with a large logo, the entity which has vandalised would have to reimburse the original creator of the mural with not only the exact fixes which were required (e.g. cleaning or repainting to the exact original specification so that an expert would not notice the difference), but also work on another mural with the same artist for as long as it would take to make up the value lost of the original (e.g. speed it up for as long as the vandalism was viewable, or perhaps take into account the amount of extra business that the creators had lost and add this on, until the original artist was happy). All of this would be decided between the entity that had been lost and the lawmakers.

A bigger example might be thievery. If a thief had taken a jewel, they would have to at no cost to anybody return it (which would mean buying it back at the original price if it had been sold) plus reimburse the place it had been taken from with the amount of lost business or people had it made a difference to the business from where it had been taken, or if it was taken from a home, not only return it in its original condition (one would have to clean it or something) but also perhaps to pay for a psychiatrist for the mental trauma it had caused and add the extra quantified amount of happiness to the person to make up for the time where happiness was lost (from thievery to the solved state upon finishing the course of psychiatry). Of course, if the happiness was never solved, the fine for the thief would potentially be unlimited.

For murder it's perhaps more silly, but the most reasonable thing I can think of is that the murderer would both have to spend the amount of time required researching and bringing the person back to life in their original state and invest in the amount of happiness required to make the mental state of their loved ones the same as it was before, as if it had never happened. They would also have to perform acts to the world which the victim was capable of, such as finishing their work in their exact manner. This could be difficult and troublesome but that's just the cost of murder now. This reminds me of the unaging quote from Kim-Yeung O'Flaherty: "You killed my accountant! Now you must be my accountant!" (I couldn't find an original source, but here's an impression).

Perhaps if the victim knew no one and the world was "not at a loss" for the loss of the victim, then all it would require is the restoration of the life of the victim and no more. This still is a ridiculous feat, but that's just how I see it, and it's what people would have to be tasked with for murdering. No less than a life of painstaking research of something that may not be doable.

In summary, I don't believe in "an eye for an eye", but I believe instead in "an eye for a replacement eye. functionally the same, and appropriate reparations for when this eye was not functional in an agreed way, as if there was never an eye missing".

So, criminals need to undo crimes to the extent that it's as if they never happened at all. No more, no less. No dying as punishment for killing. People's situations are all different! No spending time learning how to be a more criminal criminal with other criminals as punishment for being a criminal, and then not being able to get a job because the criminal was previously a criminal, which leads the criminal to do more criminal things, no. Just pure undoishness is my philosophy.

Did I make any sense? Could anything have been better clarified, and could I improve upon this idea? Please let me know in the comments below.

The solution to clickbait: put the answer in the title

2018-07-16 19:31:00.002 UTC

And perhaps a short explanation or description of the details as a subtitle.

Then maybe an in-depth description with history.

Break it up with paragraphs for easy reading, but don't put anything in between to break the readers' flow.

When you've finished, maybe explain how to get more of your ideas if you like, or some you particularly like, don't let an engine do it for you, since whenever that happens, it inevitably invades the users' privacy and shows them something inevitably irrelevant, because that's what pays the maker of the engine of "recommended links".

You'll then get liked and viewed more, because your content was easy to read, and wasn't riddled with irrelevancies that inevitably steal the users' attention, and think that the article has finished when it hasn't.

Now it has.

If you liked this, please check out more of my stuff, because I say things that are on my mind, rather than let machines speak for me for a quid.

ttfn

Algebra is not hard

2018-07-10 11:30:00 UTC

If I were to tell you that I was taking two apples and three oranges home, you'd know what I mean.

Algebra's the same.

You'd know that if I told you that my friend Geoff (I don't have a friend called Geoff) came home with three more apples and five more oranges, that we would have a fruit party, because we're pathetically hungry.

Using algebra is just the same as having shorthand. Maybe it's not the concept, but it's the shorthand that bothers some people?

I don't know that if algebra is difficult for one person then arithmetic is also difficult, but do let me know if it is this way for you!

All algebra's doing is giving things shorter names so that they can be manipulated more quickly. Perhaps that's where the issues start?

If this therefore confuses you, it may be something deeper.

I'm going to have the letter "r" short for oranges here, as having "o" is too much like zero:

2a + 3r + 3a + 5r = ?

Is it easier if I write it in words?

Two apples, and three oranges, and three more apples and five more oranges, is how many of both?

In real life you'd know to count apples together and oranges together, and even if you do it one by one, I'm struggling to see where the difficulty is in that.

Is the difficulty having symbolic metaphors? (I have to use 🔶 for oranges because Blogger doesn't know about them).

2🍏 + 3🔶 + 3🍏 + 5🔶 = ?

Would one have to count them out to make more sense?

🍏🍏🔶🔶🔶🍏🍏🍏🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶 = ?

That's now just simple rearrangement. Is that somehow easier? So, I move some around and...

🍏🍏🔶🔶🔶🍏🍏🍏🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶 = 🍏🍏🍏🍏🍏🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶🔶

Ta-da!

(I wonder how much all of that costs...)

So I really struggle to understand which bit of algebra is difficult for people. Any thoughts, anyone?

What would you like to see?

2016-10-28 03:03:00.001 UTC

Just a short one tonight:

What would you like to see me cover here? What would you most like to see?

More tech, more personal, less personal, more science, etc?

Ta-ta!

You're Doing It Wrong: How to report a bug

2016-10-19 19:45:00 UTC

[Taken from a Google+ post]

Many support requests don't contain critical information needed to actually support.

Learn how to ask for help by following these instructions:

Make sure all attachments and power are double checked to be secure connections
Look for an error message
Google the error message
Submit your question along with any error related output, custom settings and most importantly steps to reproduce.
Wait.
Don't pester.
Learn English, it's a lot better if you use proper grammar so that people will understand your problem.

Wrong: Help!!! My Linux doesn't want print! I need have my no.

Right: My brand x model y printer refuses to print on the grounds that I get the coloured light z and my distribution Q tells me that the reason is W when I try to G and then H. Can somebody suggest what steps I should take to resolve this?

This information has been brought to you by the society of programmers who wish people would learn to report bugs properly.

General update on the current state of my life

2016-10-19 19:00:00.003 UTC

Hello everyone!

Thought I'd give something of a general overview of my current October "2016" (but is it really, etc.). Life updates are something I'm really, really bad at, and I thought it would be nice if I didn't just have 140 characters or a broken platform to play with. Not that Google isn't a total joke.

Maybe I'll move this blog over to my real website, which uses Let's Encrypt, which is a free SSL certificate vendor, and offers an automatic client to refresh (since oddly it only gives 3-month certificates).

Job hunting is sour. I had really hoped to be able to carry on getting people to contract me to make websites but I haven't had anything for going on 7 weeks now (gosh, I sound like a mother telling you the age of her child). My usual contract profession is that I build websites for people at home (If you happen to know anyone who needs it, please get in touch), but I am also an avid musician who plays the guitar and keyboard mostly, and am interested in perhaps joining a local band.

I'm making a plethora of new software (mainly because I like coding and I'm often bored, see my GitHub). I was inspired by Matt Parker in his video about letter to number relationships, so I tried to build something automated to see if I could find more. I do love maths and have made a bunch of programs to do a few maths-y things (here are some more!). I've even got myself onto the Online Encyclopædia of Integer Sequences (twice!), and made a Node.js library for accessing it.

A few things I've made that I'm particularly proud of are Project Chaplin (edit 2021: archived) (code) the first free software video sharing website, a half finished social network manager, an automated Apache vhost manager, a clever command-line Omegle client, the beginnings of a first person shooter, with its inspiration in a set of software-rendered demos. I have also made a DeviantArt and Pinterest photo scraper, and had yet another thought about how universal packages should be built.

A few more toys (I wouldn't call them big projects) I've created are a dumb wordoid generator, a Pastafarian finite state machine, a program to play cricket with the input stream to teach me a bit of C++, a few spacey gravity simulators, an equation-based synthesiser, a webcam-based tone generator, a third-party Jamendo audio player, and even a edit: 16, 32 and 64-bit OS, to teach me assembler and C.

Although hardly started, I seem to love gamepads so much, I made something that looks almost like a game (with free pictures taken from the Internet) that basically does nothing but allow you to test a gamepad.

On the useful scale, I decided I wanted to see how up-to-date a few popular GNU/Linux distributions were, so I made a little tool to find out. I might extend it with something or add automation later.

In the future, I will probably re-make my static silly Linux-based distribution into something more sensible (stay tuned), make something to do fun things with Wolfram Alpha (I haven't decided what yet), and make an automatic web page categoriser based on string matching of page structure, as I did when I used to work for an analytics platform.

Entertainment-wise, I finished marathoning most of the Star Trek (all series) episodes ever. I thought that series 3 of Enterprise was total gobshite. 4 was alright though.

I'm marathoning Doctor Who. It's fantastic stuff, I haven't yet gotten past the lost episodes, but there are plenty of clever reconstructions from photos, occasional surviving clips and the existing (I think?) audio. At least it sounds like the real Doctor (I've gotten up to Troughton, if you're interested). Maybe he's got an impersonator? Who knows.

I play computer games more than usual (which I know is an important life skill). My favourite at the moment is Skyrim. Let me know if you want more on that.

I research my family history. I've gone back about 500 years, I'm sure I could even find you. I use Ancestry for that kind of thing and have almost 1000 people in my tree. It's very interesting to me and one discovers pretty crazy things about one's own heritage!

I'm going to see if I can blog a bit more, as it gives me a bit of free reign. Maybe I should do regular segments like discoveries of the week. Yes, I'm definitely a podcast. In fact, I'd rather like to do a tech-related podcast with someone. Any takers?

Ta-ta.

My favourite font is nonexistent!

2016-10-19 17:59:00 UTC

I think I'm a bit OCD. When I was growing up, I was shown a way of writing and since have always preferred it. However, there seems to be no such font. This is very particular of me, and the font I'm looking for is close to a "natural" font, or so I've been told.

It is described thusly:

Sans serif
Single story "a"
Round letters (based on circles)
Double height "f"
Single non-looped "g"
Triple-tipped "G"
Serif-topped "I" and "J"
Non-flicked "q"
Inside and outside straight 45 degree Q-tip
Double-tipped "t"
Asymmetric "Y"
Seriffed "1"
Non-stroked "7"

Font buffs, do you know of anything? A hint is that it may have been used for educational purposes. I may have to edit a similar font if I can't find what I'm looking for. It's a shame that none of the "describe to find" font websites provide simply free software and open source fonts, or are available on Google's font library.

That's it for my incredibly OCD rant, till next time.

Features I'd like to see in Sauerbraten

2010-02-08 00:38:00 UTC

I love the game Sauerbraten. But I can think of lots of ways I think it could be improved. I'll of course try to help this happen, and might update this list (and add suggestions!).

Proper gravity (including flying objects, perhaps toggle gravity of objects)
Fire hurts
Gunge/Poison
Circles/spheres easy creation
Saving of objects/big stuff for later
Admin coop AKA Play God - in which only the master can use editmode - great fun for "playing god" and wreaking havoc when no one else can.
Heightmaps in multiplayer (H key)
Breath (eg you die underwater after a while, like in Quake)
More ambient soundtracks, ambient noises.
Button triggers (eg you press or shoot something and something happens).
Proper doors that open or swing
Moving objects (automatic or manual via button/trigger) - eg trains.
Large walls of teleport material, for e.g. trains, yourselves.
Materials that change to others after a certain time, e.g. noclip slowly to air
Door keys
Liquid viscosity
No glitching when you try to put a hole in a pyramid
More human models
Gun reloading sequences
Auto getmap/sendmap (Getmap when you join, sendmap when someone else joins)
Master newmap restriction
Grappling hook
Item capture - person who captures most items without being killed wins.
Marks on walls from chainsaw
Flamethrower
Gravity gun
Physics gun
Time/space warping (global/local/gun) (haha)
Shield/Disarming field
Turrets
Vehicles
Flammable items/materials (e.g. wood) with degrading.
M/F Voices (inc. player), not just "captured" but also "lacerated" etc.
Female models?
Customisable music
Panic mode (Fuzzy/red view when player has too much adrenaline)

A * For That

2009-09-12 22:32:00 UTC

My goodness. First it was I'm a PC/Mac... obviously you're a bloody human.... since Apple said "there's an app for that", Subway of all companies have invented "There's a Sub for that"... Geez, talk about not being able to afford imaginative people... Oh, and I'm Spartacus.

Answers to the big questions

2009-06-29 12:30:00 UTC

Questions like "Why is the universe made mostly of matter?", "Why are we here?", "Is there a god?", and "Is there life on other planets?" are answered scientifically here.

Why is the universe made mostly of matter? Simply because it had to have matter and antimatter to come out of pure energy. Antimatter, doubtless, is hanging around somewhere, perhaps it's the "dark matter" or locked up in that "dark energy" that scientists are theorising about so much. But the fact remains, if we are here to question it, there must be one type of matter primarily in the same region of space as us. Otherwise we wouldn't be here to ask. If there were matter and antimatter in the universe, one would annihilate the other and we wouldn't have got here.

Why are we here?

This question is quite vague. By "why are we here" I mean, why did humans exist in the first place? Not "why am I living here specifically".

Imagine the early universe. Googolplexes of things bashing into each other at phenomenal rate. One is bound to create an atom of some sort. In a universe of such ridiculous amounts of matter, one somewhere is bound to create something useful. So chances are, one is bound to create life. Now this life may or may not die out almost instantly, so it needs a way to duplicate itself if it's going to survive. It may or may not care, but the important thing is, that if a life form is created during the early time of Earth, only life forms that do reproduce actually get to evolve. And evolution, obviously, is tiny changes in genetic structure, randomly happening. So, only the life that evolves into the "right" kind of life gets to stay reproducing. Granted, other forms of life mutated too, but only the "best" kept its longevity. So random life just happened to appear our of the primordial ooze of the early Earth. It was of course bound to happen somewhere. So up and up went the forms of life that were best suited to surviving. Eventually, humans evolved out of those plants and animals. We discovered machines, and they help us to do what we want. In fact, some believe we are going lower and lower on the evolutionary ladder, because we are getting more and more used to technology helping us along, and become less and less needy of the things we are born with naturally.

Now, so why did we have to be HERE, specifically? Well, we'd be asking that wherever we were, because if we weren't here, we'd be asking the same elsewhere. It's all just a factor of chance.

Is there a god?

Since we've gone this far from randomness alone, and what pretty randomness it is, there is unlikely to be an external force needed, except for whatever the big bang was created out of. People have created imaginary deities in their mind, tried to believe there was a familiar "being" that could not be explained or argued against, and that we were at the centre of the universe, and let others believe this too. This was to stop them from going mad, because if anyone knew the truth about how insignificant we were, or how we didn't matter that much, cosmically speaking, they would, to put it bluntly, not be content,

Are there other forms of life on other planets?

Almost certainly. In the random beginnings of the early universe, there was bound to be more than one life form that evolved. Some believe close planets such as Mars may have contained life at some point, but do not now. In our theory, life as we know it has to have water as one of its important constituent components. But who says all forms of life have to have water? For all we know, planets might be alive. But here, we do not quite know what defines as life. Maybe a different form of life has some of the forms of life as we do and not others. We wouldn't classify it as life. Just as we wouldn't classify robots as life, aliens might do. They reproduce (create other robots), eat (electricity), excrete (fumes), move, and all manner of things that might be attributable to life. Even intelligence is not necessary in life. Just look at plants. We do not think they are particularly intelligent, but if they've survived this long, they must be doing something right. So to me, it's almost a certainty that life exists elsewhere, it's just a matter of us understanding what life is.

Next time, how many dimensions are there? How many universes are there? How far can we perceive?