James : Rants

Freedom Of Information email disclosure

Dear Paul,
I do hope you are enjoying your holiday.
I have a few requests for some improvements to my working environment, which are detailed below:

1) There is to be a jazz band playing in my room from approx. 10am every day, which must disperse no earlier than 6.30pm (and 5.30pm on a friday)
2) There is to be a large coffee stall (manned) directly adjacent to my mouth at all times
3) A 100Gbit Fibre will be installed directly, and in line-of-sight between capfs1 and my terminal. Traffic travelling on this line shall be considered priority one, and capfs1 will close all other pending connections when traffic arrives on it.
4) All CSG staff will be re-tasked as my permanent on-site tech support, effective immediately. They will stand with their arms folded neatly behind my monitor at all times until needed.
5) The water cooler will be moved adjacent to my hand; and thus mouth
6) My blood sugar will be monitored by a full-time member of staff, and when it falls below acceptable levels non-fair-trade chocolate will be placed lovingly in my mouth.
7) My squeaky office chair will be replaced with an camp, extravagant white leather suite
8) I require a highlighter (yellow)
9) Absolute silence is to be maintained outside my window, such that when it is opened I do not have to listen to the likes of air conditioners, ill-maintained fans, screaming babies and the like. The only sound must be the jazz from item 1) above.
10) I require a mobile phone mast to be installed in my face, as per my recent article on the subject.
11) The suite as in item 7) above is to be cleaned twice daily.
12) Electrical power is to be turned off to the fire alarm system at once, it is a nuisance and much a folly
13) My desk will be replaced with a beautiful 1800s banquet table in mahogany, preferably with walnut veneer. Holes will be recklessly drilled in this for the fibre as in item 3) above.
14) Wireless connectivity will be improved to the point where it is useable. A young boy will follow my laptop around with a wireless base station at all times. This role may be combined with the role in item 2) above for cost effectiveness.
13) All power sourced from renewable sources will be immediately disconnected, and replaced with diesel generators exhausting into primary schools.

Please advise once work commences on the above.

Warmest and most fervent regards,
James

Dear James,

I am indeed enjoying my holiday.
In addition, I have started instigating your requests.

The Jazz band have said that they are unable to meet your requests on
short time scales. They are only able to perform between the hours of
3am and 7am. I have actioned this anyway as although I do not expect
you to be present when they are playing, I believe it will improve the
general ambience of the room, with the knowledge that such activities
are occurring.

Please see Mrs Compton about the order for a leather suite. Please note that you must stick to approved college suppliers, but I gather this will not be a problem as I believe the rector uses only the finest white leather furniture.

Faster,
Paul

Help for first year electrical engineers

Answers:

a) Correct. First years: design all your circuits like this.
b) The wires will fill up with electrons until they are too big to fit in a torch
c) Problematic in practice: they will argue about it
d) Each voltage is greater than the one to the left and to the right of it

An Englishman’s House

In a survey of their worst nightmares, the middle class answered the following:

• Running out of olive oil
• Runnout out of potpourri
• A “Safe-Way” opening within 800 miles of a loved one
• Being robbed in the night
• The cancellation of Heartbeat¹

Fig.1: Some delicious potpourri

These concerns will be addressed in order of priority.

1. Oilve oil can be purchased at Waitrose.
2. Potpourri is just stuff from the bin.
3. The middle class are far more likely to be robbed than a new Safeway store opens.

Fig.2: This man is certainly from the east end

There is a large amount of controversy surrounding whether one should defend themselves from possible attack in their own home. At what stage is it acceptable to defend one’s self? Is pre-emptive defence a form of unmitigated attack? Does a person give up their right to expect safety when entering a home illegally?
There have been numerous cases where people have been imprisoned for harming a person found in their house. Unfortunately, being robbed in the night by some despicable pirate porch-climber is becoming more and more likely, and one can find as many stories about people being attacked in their own home as they can stories about teenagers over-eating and having sex.

Intruder attacks woman in kitchen
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/nottinghamshire/4556788.stm

Pensioner frightens intruder with stick
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/1759106.stm

Man assaulted by intruder at home
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/staffordshire/4160126.stm

Pensioner is attacked in her home
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/tyne/3862769.stm

The middle class have an almost unearthly desire to bash something in the head, but unfortunately they recently must also conform to the same laws as the common.³. The more a burglar expects to be attacked when entering a home, the more likely he is to arm himself. The only action one may take and guarantee to avoid prosecution when faced with a potential intruder is to calmly turn to one’s spouse and state:

“Margaret! Margaret! I see it so that you have awoken. Downstairs there is a burglar. This offends me primarily in that my most sacred sanctity of possession has be unduly violated, and my perception of innate refuge within my domicile henceforth abandoned. But judge us not, dear Margaret the nature and disposition of those who wish to defile our sanctimonium of conciliation. Let us return to sleep and hope, that as we do so we will be pierced not by cutlasses of malevolence but enter the innocuous kingdom of placidity - and in which point I shall take no further action.”

 
In years past, the easy solution was to hire a local huntsman to stand near your house, who would simply fire his blunderbuss³ in all directions until tea time.

Fig.3: Each terrible robber is more dead than the one to the left and to the right of him

This rather dated approach to home safety has become unfashionable since huntsmen are imaginary.
The following popular methods have also reliably shown themselves to be ineffective against burglars.

• Fig.4: You might as well go fishing

• Fig.5: Arming one’s self both to and from the teeth

• Fig.6: The house is easily lifted to remove valuables

• Fig.7: Just be nice, maybe he will go away

Under English law none of the above ways to secure the home are acceptable (bar being nice, which is specifically ineffective). In 1628 Sir Edward Coke, a member of parliament and legal advisor to King James wrote:

“It is against reason, that if wrong be done any man, that he thereof should be his own judge.” For it is a maxime in law, aliquis non debet esse judex in propria causa.

This would imply that upon suspecting an intrusion in the home, for one to leap down the stairs with a cricket bat in the bloodthirsty manner of a starving hyena is illegal.

“Householders who injure or even kill intruders are unlikely to be prosecuted - providing they were acting ‘honestly and instinctively‘, new guidelines say. The law also protects those who use ‘something to hand‘ as a weapon.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/4224473.stm

Under my interpretation of UK law, if a burglar somehow perishes in your home and no body is ever found, or DNA recovered, or admissions made or guilt felt then that is definitely legal. One evening whilst pondering this in a restaurant I happened across a particularly fine example of the ubiquitous electric wire fly-catcher device. Every few minutes a fly would try his chances near the kitchen and meet his end in doing so.

Fig.8: Inspiration often comes from the kitchen

This genius device attracts the fly away from the delicious food under preparation towards a pleasant blue glow. Unbeknownst to the fly, between himself and said glow is a terrible, terrible electric grate which upon crossing abolishes the fly immediately. The crucial part to this is the fly enters the grate of his own free will. Would it not be frightfully cunning if such a device could be extended to catch humans, also?

I hereby present:
    “The James Englishman’s House Burglar Ensnaglerer“:

Fig.9A: The James Englishman’s House Burglar Ensnaglerer

As one can see, the same principle has been applied as per Fig. 8. The vilest embezzler de la nuit has been cleanly and efficiently extinguished by the 3000 trillion volt (DC) potential of the Burglar Ensnaglerer. (Simple calculations suggest that a human thief has 10 times the bad intention of his fly relative). He will become stuck to the outer mesh⁵ until safely removed at arm’s length with a broom.

If you represent a middle class family with a desire to purchase one or more Burglar Ensnaglerers, please get in touch with me to discuss pricing:

:: james at jgubby dot com

Appendixes
¹ Heartbeat (noun): a programme which serves only to accommodate the prejudice of the middle class.
² Blunderbuss (noun): like a gun but far more middle class

Appendix 3: Cow Granny. It is not uncommon for the elderly proletariat to be cows.

Appendix 4: Here is an artists rendering of a burglar upon realising there is a large amount of gold afoot. For some reason his brain is visible.

Appendix 5: Failure to remove the burglar from the ensnaglerer will result in the slow and disgusting deterioration of the burglar.

Fig. 9B : The longer you leave it, the less pleasant it is to clean.

NB: Always consult a qualified electrician before prying the bastard remains of the burglar from the device.

Packet switching === Intermittent connectivity

The following is offered without comment.

Mobile phone masts are good for your children

Fig.1: Our beautiful children, O Let them shine

With the prevalence of ridiculous ill-informed articles on the subject of mobile phone masts I would like to finally set the record straight in this highly misunderstood field. I also aim to include as many puns on the word ‘field’ as possible.

Here are a few shining examples:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/11_november/08/masts.shtml
“I don’t think it is acceptable… we have got charge of other people’s children – taking charge of them and meeting health and safety regulations elsewhere. But we can’t stop the airwaves coming in.”

http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/032002/08/mast_emissions.shtml
“I really feel it must be the link that the main beam is beaming directly through our houses into the town of Crediton and unfortunately we’re in the wrong place.”

“The fact of the matter is we don’t know whether there’s a link or not,” said Mr Bristow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/westmidlands/series6/phone_masts.shtml
“Despite the lack of evidence proving any link between phone masts and ill health, the residents of Wishaw finally get what they have been fighting for.
The mast’s removal comes not from the tireless campaigning of SCRAM however, but a group of vandals who pull down the 60 foot mast under the cover of darkness.”
(Irony: The vandals probably received about 500 years’ worth of exposure by going that close to the mast)

http://www.noemr.com/whatyoucando.html
“The mobile phone signal is over-engineered by a factor of about one million”
What a piece of crap… this is like saying “The mobile phone is too square by a factor of its weight”

But I think the ill-educated public outcry is best summarised by the following:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/nottingham/content/articles/2006/05/05/mobile_phone_mast_groundswell_feature.shtml
Kay Rose, one of the leaders of the protest group, said she was worried about the proximity of the mast to both her house and the school where her two young boys will be attending. She says, “I just don’t know what the health risks are in relation to the masts being located close to the schools and the houses, and if it is going to cause us any harm. Until we do know more, I don’t want the mast near my house or near the school. The more research I do, the more worried I become.”

Quick search of bbc.co.uk reveals this many articles for devon alone:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/032002/08/mast_emissions.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/092001/24/phone_masts.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/news/052001/22/masts.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/have_your_say/phone_masts.shtml

Some other amusing articles:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/herefordandworcester/talk/masts.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/actionnetwork/A2019584
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/mobilephones/index.shtml
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/shouldiworryabout/mobiles.shtml

The following diagram shows some school children enjoying a geography lesson, their mothers safe in the knowledge that the nasty phone mast is 1km away and cannot possibly hurt their children.

Fig.2: Mrs Cooper is the children’s favourite geography teacher, due in large part to her commendable tolerance and age-defying liberalism.

Fig.3: The ‘far field’

The authorities have instead placed it on a “far field”, vindicating the people’s weeks of vigourous homemaker-style protesting and uninformed indignation.

Here is little Johnny and his friend little Ronny. He is happily discussing stickers and loony-toones products on his portable telephone with a friend, Ronny. The prefix ‘little’ is a common emotive device used here to imply explicit vulnerability to electromagnetic radiation.

Fig.4: Little Johnny

Fig.5: Little Ronny

Assume that if little Johnny were 10m from the nasty mobile phone mast, his phone would need to transmit 0.1mW to communicate successfully with the mast. The mast would need to send something similar back. Therefore there are two components to the amount of radiation going into Johnny’s soft soft brain tissue, one from his handset and one from the mast.

This can be proved by taking an EM photograph of a child skipping through a field of daises.
Look at his appealing childish irreverence.

Fig.6: Irradiated child number 49312

The inverse square law states that at 20m the phone needs to transmit 0.4mW, at 30m it would transmit 0.9mW and so on. At 1km a mobile needs to transmit 1W to maintain the same level of communication, which is 10,000 times more energy. A mobile phone is able to transmit up to about 2W if it needs to in order to maintain a good signal.

Extensive testing has been conducted to determine the safe levels of electromagnetic radiation entering the human head. After a few centimetres the field has died down to near-zero, suggesting that it is totally absorbed and turned into heat. It has been empirically determined that this heating should not exceed 2 W kg^-1 (watts per kilogram) of body tissue.

Fig.7: Bad science

A typical mobile phone mast might transmit around 60W of energy, which could all be absorbed by a human if he were standing right next to it. Since it’s beam width is around 60 degrees wide, this means that at 1m the power as seen by a person 50cm wide would be:

At 2m he would absorb 119mW, and at 3m 53mW.

The following diagram shows the siting of a mast 1km from a school with 9 students all on the phone.

Fig.8: Looking down onto the top of the children from above.

The contribution at this distance from the mast itself is negligible. However, 9 mobiles each transmitting the required 1W means that each student is holding a 1W transmitter directly by his head. Assuming it transmits uniformly in a sphere, this is probably about 0.5W into each child’s brain.

I therefore propose the mobile phone mast be moved onto the roof of the school, aimed straight downward towards the children.

Fig.9: Optimal location of the transmitter.

Here of course the contribution from the mast is much higher than before since it is mere feet from their eager young minds.

Assuming a child has a diameter of 0.5m from above, and the mast again transmits a 60 degree beam. At 30m (the height of any good school) the power passing through the child is the ratio of his area to the flat area of the conical wave-front:

Fig.10: Don’t worry what this is if you are stupid or fat

So at 30m, a child of width 0.5m will pick up 0.013% of the energy, or 7.63mW from the mast. The difference is; each phone will need to transmit something similar to get back to the mast, (say another 7.63mW) so half of this will go into his brain, giving a total of 11.4mW.

Conclusion
I have proved it is safer to put a mobile phone mast on top of a school than anywhere else in the country, other than in the sea.

I foresee a world in which children are encouraged to use mobile phones rather than warned of the dangers of unproved technologies.

Fig.11: One of the many applications of the mobile phone

Caveat: These calculations are exceptionally spurious at best, and come from almost no knowledge or indeed study of the field.

APPENDIX

APPENDIX Fig.12: This child is clearly off his face on EM waves of the worst kind.

APPENDIX Fig.13: Nobody likes this child because of his slightly incredible appearance, but his oversized ear gives credence to the view that children are evolving to use mobile phones as their primary method of communication.

Upgrades this weekend

I’ve just finished upgrading the server farm that runs jgubby.com. It didn’t go extremely well, and had to be done in three stages, each time forgetting a tiny bit of stuff I needed. On the plus side webmail should be many times faster now.
Please tell me if something doesn’t work by text, because I think one of the hard disks is sad.

Dramsoc vs the CV

Why is it that despite spending a vast amount of time doing it, when I come to write a CV it is very difficult to make it sound as it Dramsoc isn’t a total masturbatory indulgence? How does:
“Good head for heights; standing in the rain at 4am doesn’t phase me.”
even remotely begin to woo a software engineering recruiter?

Sunday: 12pm

Procrastination is like masturbation: its great fun until you realise you’ve fucked yourself.

Pens of choice

During revision time, one must be equipped with the very best in terms of writing imlpemi. Remember: it’s not what you write, its with what you write it! I have today spent some considerable time in the union walkway shop researching the very best in modern writing equipment. I present a few pens which have made a difference to my life, in the hope that this will inspire the reader to buy outside their normal “safe zone“.

First off, the classic Parker cartridge fountain pen (blue). Made in the UK this attractive model comes in blue, red and black bases, and takes the ubiquitous parker ink cartridge. Offering smooth, even writing and non-calligraphic lines this is sure to be the mainstay of any concerted revision effort. Having owned mine since I was born I can say that without it much of the exams I have revised for would have suffered.

Next in the line-up is the Pilot VBall Grip. With its superb, refined penmanship and a low cost of £1.99 (Union walkway shop) I couldn’t resist adding one to my collection. Personally opting for the red I cannot honestly say I have ever encountered a line more suitable for highlighting equations not found in the formulae book. The lubricated ball and rubber grip provide a writing experience that leaves one screaming out: “Margaret, can you get me another Pilot VBall Grip in blue please, such that I can write in blue, also.“.

Next is the 0.9mm Pentel P209. This propelling lead pencil was initially made popular by architects and designers in the 80s, but has come on from there to be the pencil of choice for anyone serious about block diagrams and parallel lines. With a good solid infrastructure and a corrugated grip it is unlikely to let you down. Accidentally stolen from Tom Brodrick last week, already this isn’t a pencil I would leave home without - it really is a thorough ravishment each and every time it is employed.

If Tom realises I’ve got his pen and asks for it back, I shall be safe in the knowledge that in my bag is the BiC Matic 0.5mm #2. A considerable upgrade from the acutely miserable world of the #1, which suffered from frequent malfunctions of the main lead riser-gripper - often leading to a stalling of the mechanism.
French, the BiC is very much an entry-level unit for those looking for a gentle introduction into the world of the propelling pencil. The BiC Matic is sold in packs of three (£2.99 from Ryman). Like the Pentel, this attractive yet inexpensive model contains an in-built (although woefully ineffective) hydrocarbon polymer eraser which can be replaced by the user. For more substantial errors, however I would suggest the Ryman Rubber (£0.79). It particularly lends itself to drawing sine and cos waves, but it is also adept at drawing diagrams of communication systems.

Summary

These are just a few of the high-quality pens available from most competent stationers. Anybody with a desire to do so can easily spend a good hour refining their choices until they achieve the perfect combo for any task.