DubHubDub

Unlimited Google App Engine Usage

2011-09-01T00:29:00.003+01:00

A long, long time ago (at least 442 days ago) I tried out Google AppEngine using Trackon and then submitted my tracker address (fordred1.appspot.com) to trackon.org and quickly forgot about it.

But then after receiving an email from Google about the new AppEngine pricing scheme and was reminded of my tracker. So when I go to look at how much use my tracker gets, I get quite the shock.

That's definitely a lot more than I was expecting, averaging 700 requests a second. Interesting to see the requested URI's though. Looking further into the logs I see that most of them use uTorrent/3000(25460) and come from an IPv6 address (I hadn't considered whether AppEngine is IPv6 compatible before this)

And now for the main surprise, my quota usage and limits

Nice, so at the moment, my application should be costing me about $20/day to run, but for some reason quotas have been disabled and so my application hasn't seen any downtime, and in return, sending it up the charts on the afore mentioned trackon.org. Hopefully when the new billing comes in, I'll still be given unlimited quota and not have to pay $80/day to keep my tracker online :)

SCM

2011-07-30T23:40:00.001+01:00

This post is of little use to lay people, but when a bunch of programmers or engineers come together and collaborate on something, they like to use a SCM (Source Code Management) to keep track of changes and to help manage source code as many people try to work on it at the same time.

So I started a new job, and was saddened to hear that they had just changed their SCM from Mercurial to a closed, proprietary system. None of my fellow engineers really liked this new system, everyone had become accustomed to the open source Mercurial project, although management loved it, as it allowed for greater permissions to be set on the engineers (well, that's my theory anyway).

The main point of this post though is this....the original programmer who first came up with an SCM...what was he working on that made him say "I wish there was a better way to manage my revision, rather than employing a hap-hazard Save As all the time"?

Furthermore, the company that made the SCM that my company currently uses, what SCM did they use in the beginning whilst developing their own software? Because, to be honest, I don't think they should have wasted their time creating a new proprietary system, but instead contribute to the open-source SCM's such as Mercurial and Git.

Finally, and a bit more jokingly, I presume that they have now become self-hosted, relying on their own software to manage their source code...which does explain why it's so frustrating to use as it must keep losing their changes :)

Google Maps UK, Now With Traffic

2011-06-28T10:18:00.000+01:00

Don't know how long this has been enabled, but Google Maps in the UK now has a lot more detailed traffic view. Previously restricted to just motorways, it can now be found on most main roads in the UK. It looks like with the proliferation of Android devices on this side of the pond, Google feel they now have enough users/data to provide accurate traffic details.

On a slightly more humorous note, South Kensington underground station is now known as The South Kensington Bookshop - it's nice to see TfL diversifying their operations :)

MtGox Hacked

2011-06-19T23:41:00.000+01:00

So apparently MtGox was hacked. Fortunately I had no BitCoins in the account, but within an hour, my Android phone was having trouble signing in. Tried to sign in to my Gmail account online and was told suspicious activity on my account had been detected, and I needed to change my password before I could be logged in :( well, that was rather quick of the hackers. Fortunately, my Google account password is not the same as MtGox so no harm done :)

London Overground on Google Maps

2011-06-02T10:34:00.001+01:00

Even if it was only a minor change to Google Maps, it was a massive moment of joy for me. At first I noticed an orange roundel that TfL normally use for the overground, and then when I clicked on the Transit layer, I was saw this:

I know it's not much really, but I often use the overground and being able to see this on Google Maps will help me loads when I'm heading somewhere I'm not too familiar with.

Thanks Google Maps Team :)

How To Run a Bitcoin Miner on Mac OS X

2011-05-17T01:54:00.005+01:00

First of all, head on over to the Bitcoinpool.com forum and follow the first 3 instructions.

Be sure to download the poclbm-mod Miner.

Now you're going to need PyOpenCL. Instructions on how to download, make and install can be found at wiki.tiker.net/PyOpenCL/Installation/Mac.

In terminal, cd to your poclbm-mod folder, and cd into the sources folder

cd Downloads/poclbm-mod.03.24.2011/sources/

Run the following

python poclbm-mod.py --user=BITCOINPOOLUSERNAME --pass=PASSWORD -o bitcoinpool.com -p 8334

You'll receive a warning, telling you to choose a device, followed by a list of devices, such as

# [0] GeForce 9600M GT
# [1] GeForce 9400M
# [2] Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P8600 @ 2.40GHz

Re-run the previous command, but also append -d DeviceNumber

python poclbm-mod.py --user=BITCOINPOOLUSERNAME --pass=PASSWORD -o bitcoinpool.com -p 8334 -d 0

You can also open up a new tab in terminal, and run the command again but choosing a different device.

It is possible to tweak your speed with the -f parameter (30 by default). On the graphics card that's not being used by the desktop,

python poclbm-mod.py --user=BITCOINPOOLUSERNAME --pass=PASSWORD -o bitcoinpool.com -p 8334 -d 1 -f 0

Although doing this on the active graphics card will cause noticeable lag. For that, I would use

python poclbm-mod.py --user=BITCOINPOOLUSERNAME --pass=PASSWORD -o bitcoinpool.com -p 8334 -d 0 -f 20

If you have an ATI video card, you could also try using the -v command to allow the work to be done with vectors. On my nVidia cards, vectors seemed to slow things down though.

At the moment, I am able to achieve about 1800 khash/s on the GeForce 9400M, and 3800 khash/s on the GeForce 9600M GT simultaneously whilst using it (also, check out codykrieger.com/gfxCardStatus for an easy way to switch between cards without logging out).

If you want, you can feel free to donate some Bitcoins to me at 1D9W7EQE9PPJM2cRKVkT8AAQ6xw4yZ4Spy

What to do if you find a stranded whale

2011-05-12T01:00:00.000+01:00

Don't ask me, consult this government webpage for advice :)

First Thing a Parent Should Do With Any Technological Service...

2011-04-28T22:31:00.003+01:00

Authorise their tech-savvy kids to speak to technical support on their behalf. Recently, the Netgear DGN1000 supplied by Orange Broadband has been flaky. Devices connecting wirelessly would experience a huge drop in packets. Pings of 32 bytes to the router would take over 1 second to reply, and only had a 75% success rate. Meanwhile over Ethernet, pings were sub 1 millisecond, and no packets were lost. Pings with 100 bytes or more (unfragmented of course) would fail to be acknowledged by the router at all. A factory reset would fix the problem, but having to do it more than once a week was annoying.

So I tried to email Orange technical support, telling them my problem and everything I've done to debug it. First thing they tell me is that my forename does not match that of the account holder (even though all the other details matched) so they were unable to help. I then had to ring up Orange, and ask my mother to confirm that she was the account holder (although I could have had any woman say it was her) I was then able to request that I be allowed to speak on her behalf. I was then asked what the problem seemed to be, and after 15 minutes of being passed from person to person (each of them with a worse connection than the last), I ended up at the Indian call centre where I spent the next hour being read the troubleshooting guide that I had spent 3 minutes going through online the night before, and I even told him this, but he didn't seem to understand anything more than yes or no answers (the quality of the line was unbearable to be fair to him).

Once the troubleshooting was finished (to speed this up significantly, be sure to tell them you're using some obscure Linux distro so that he won't repeatedly tell you to click Start>Control Panel>Network... or Internet Explorer>Tools>Options>Connections...), he spoke to his supervisor, and had me put through back to someone from the UK, although by now the quality of the call was so bad, that I could only just hear him say that he was going to call me back. This new guy was a lot easier to understand, and understood the concept of 'pinging'. His script was much smaller, double checking the router settings, and I had told him of how I had to Ad-Hoc an old Belkin router with WiFi on to this new one over Ethernet, he was confident that it was the wireless part of the router that was causing me grief. This guy only took 30 minutes of my time, but he was much more pleasant to speak to, and also able to tell me that he honestly had no idea why the firmware was V2.1.00.37_RG and Netgears site was only 1.1.00.41 (this was blocking me from 'downgrading' the router firmware). But anyway, he said that a new router would be sent to me straight away and I should receive it the middle of next week, and that he was sorry to hear that I had to use a second router for wireless connectivity.

Just for lolz though, I replied to Orange's email (the one complaining I wasn't authorised for the account) and told them I had been now. Just got an email saying that they had sent me a new router. Don't know how many routers to expect next week, but I'll be happy if I get two =D

The whole authorisation thing does remind me of having to go through a similar process for o2 broadband, o2 mobiles, and Vodafone mobiles, as well as Halifax Travel Insurance (but that's a whole new kettle of fish). I don't know why we didn't do it immediately when we switched to Orange? On a side note, it looks like I've been moved from Orange LLU to BT's WTC, and I'm now given an IP address in the 2.24/14 range (amusingly, the GeoIP database hasn't been updated with this info yet, rendering all location targeted adverts useless =P). The sync speed between the router and the exchange is lower, but I haven't noticed much difference in quality or speed.

Update: So I received two routers yesterday (one from the guy who I had spoken to over the phone, and one from the customer support people via email). Strangely, only one router was supplied with a Returns envelope, and a letter telling me that I didn't have to post back my old router, only if I wanted to (and yes, I did put that letter and envelope in the bin). The other router came with a letter that welcomed me as a new customer. The first router I tried looked liked it worked, and surprisingly had the 1.1.00.33 firmware on it (I was looking forward to being able to upgrade the firmware), but then disaster struck, the modem wasn't detecting a broadband line, let alone letting me connect. I've fired off an email to Orange asking if I could be sent another one, but they've yet to get back (plus it's a 4 day weekend so I'll be lucky if I get a return before I return to London). Still need to try the other router they've sent me, hopefully the modem will be working, and it will have standard Netgear firmware on it (fingers crossed).

Update 2: I unboxed the 2nd Netgear router and plugged it in. With baited breath, I waited as it flashed and started up. After 30 seconds or so, the broadband detection light began to blink, and I let out a sigh of relief. I then logged onto the router, entered my username and password, and began to configure it to how the previous box was. I did notice that the firmware was 1.1.00.33, and asked it to check the for an update by itself. It didn't manage to find one surprisingly (I blame what appears to be the Orange DNS servers, I've noticed a few oddities with them lately), but I downloaded it from the Netgear site and uploaded it to the router manually. After a minute or so, the router restarted and I was running V1.1.00.41_ww. I didn't have much chance to see the difference between 1.1.00.33 and V2.1.00.37_RG, but I can tell you that there isn't too much difference between V2.1.00.37_RG and V1.1.00.41_ww, the main difference being the Advanced Wireless Settings page. Now it allows you to turn the WiFi on and off according to a schedule, as well as displaying the Primary and Secondary WiFi channels being used if you've enabled the 802.11N capabilities.

Gas Safety For Students

2011-04-04T00:51:00.002+01:00

Don't you just love this picture?

Mr Headaches looks like the guy is pulling his head off,
Mr Nausea is having trouble hearing what the bucket is saying,
Mr Dizziness looks like he's on a paint mixer,
Mr Breathlessness isn't so much short of breath, but seems to be exhaling smoke,
Mr Collapse looks like he's having fun crawling, and
Mr Loss of Consciousness is lying down, looking at the stars.

This definitely looks worthy of The System by Rosscott

Thinking of cutting my own hair

2011-04-02T04:31:00.009+01:00

I really don't like going to get my haircut. I don't know what the problem is. In London, my main gripe is the cost, £10-£15 in my area, and when I do get it done, it really does seem like overkill for what I want, a nice and simple shave and trim.

I normally wait until I return home to Manchester and visit my local barbers who for just £3 will give me a quick and generic cut. I like it, but my girlfriend doesn't.

I had tried getting my haircut for free, first with Toni & Guy training salon, but that was cancelled last minute (probably better that it did, I wasn't looking forward to a 'fashion' cut), and then I was more successful at freehaircuts.co.uk. I thought it was a good cut, my friends laughed at it, but after a few days I grew into it :) the only problem was that it took them 90 minutes to cut. I can very easily waste 90 minutes doing a lot of things, but 90 minutes passes awfully slowly when you're trying to make small talk with a guy whose interests are completely different from yours. I felt uncomfortable to say the least and would need to brush up on the latest football news before going there again.

My latest idea was to cut my own hair. it can't be that hard can it? After all, what's the worse that can happen? So I've been searching on Boots.com and then Amazon.co.uk, and found this cool looking shaver from Phillips

Philips QC5170 Mains Rechargeable Hairclipper

Looks pretty cool right...but then I come across this feature

Contour-following comb
The unique contour-following comb closely follows the contours of your head, giving you a smooth and even cut. Your Philips Hairclipper QC5170 comes with two combs. Using the large or the small comb depends on the desired hair length. The small comb cuts hairs from 3-11 mm and the big comb from 13-21 mm.

My question is this:

Whose head is this shape? Huh?

I'm sure that everyones also heard of hand models, people whose hands are used in photos of watches and jewellery, right? Well I give to you something new....a head model....tada!

Can you imagine what his portfolio looks like? Or the conversation he first had with the talent scout?

Anyway, I think the shaver does look extremely cool, and will probably get it. The Wahls do look reliable and have good reviews though, but the swivel head on the Philips looks like it'll be easier to cut my own hair.

Peculiar Wonderings

2011-03-31T20:25:00.000+01:00

Now and again, my mind wonders and creates questions which I have been unable to answer. Hopefully people will be able to aid me and answer some of these questions?

When looking at atoms using an electron microscope, the image will appear in grey scale. This lead me to ask the question, at what point is colour formed? As is often seen in textbooks, protons, electrons and neutrons are often coloured differently, but I doubt this is true. I have thought that groups of atoms, or molecules, gain colour when they become the size of the wavelength of light, but I've never been able to find proof of this. Can you explain or come up with a better explanation?
As you may have experienced yourself, when stood in between two mirrors, and look into one, you can see the frame of the other mirror, and inside that, the frame of the original mirror, and recursively the same frames getting smaller and smaller, until your head gets in the way and you can no longer see any further 'down the rabbit hole'. Suppose you were to have two large mirrors (whose edges you cannot see because they go off into the distance) facing each other, but this time, one of the mirrors is a two-way mirror that you could stand behind; what would you see? Previously you would have seen the frame and yourself. Now with nothing there, what would you see? And would it be possible to have an object in between the mirrors, have it vanish, and yet its image would remain propagating 'down the rabbit hole'? And what strange phenomena would we perhaps see as the two mirrors are moved close together, perhaps so close that a wave length of light became larger than the gap between them? Would we experience a blackout propagating from the centre or the edges? Or would something else happen entirely? This then leads on to my second question (and shortest)
Suppose you had a football (or a sphere) whose insides were a mirror. Would it be possible to fill this football with light from a torch or the sun, cork the hole so that light cannot escape, and then take this sphere to a dark room, uncork it, and use it as a torch? (Albeit, a very quickly discharging torch).
Lastly, and this is not a thought experiment but has real-world implications, this question is about the nature of light. As I look up at the stars, I realise that these stars are many, many, many light years away, and the photons hitting my eyes have travelled for many millions of years, without coming into contact with any other object, only to land on my retina for the briefest of periods, and allow me to view the star from which it came.
If we were to think of photons as particles (and for the sake of this argument, say they were a millimetre in diameter), think of a star as an infinitely small point from which the photons originate, we would find that a metre from the star, we would need approximately 4x10^9 photons to cover the surface area and the star would be viewable from every direction. But now suppose we move to a more realistic distance away from the star, say 1000 light years. The number of millimetre-photons that need to be emitted is far too large a number for me to work out on a calculator, let alone if I was to use the correct size of the photon particle. And yet, when I look at stars, I see them with both eyes, so a large number of photons must be emitted at any given moment in time.
It is now more convenient to think of photons as waves and not particles. I have learnt about the (in)famous double-slit experiment which proves the wave-particle duality of the photon, but can you explain how it is that both my eyes are hit at the same time by this wave which turns into a particle as it is observed/sensed by my retina? And if it turns from a wave into a particle as it hits my eyes, does it mean that an observer that was an equal distance from the star as I am, but on the opposite side, would not experience the photon wave-turned-particle at the same moment that I observed it? And perhaps even more excitingly, the dimming of a star that is detected by the Kepler telescope may not be caused by the passing of an exoplanet between the star and the telescope, but rather the observance of the wave-particle by aliens as it passed them and headed towards us, turning the wave that could have been seen by us, into a particle that had no chance of being observed by the telescope?

Beard or Double Chin? You decide!

2011-03-02T17:30:00.001Z

Double Chin or Beard?

Mistaken for a Man

2011-02-17T22:26:00.000Z

On the topic of artists looking different from what they sound like, I remembered when my nan thought Tracy Chapman sounded like a white guy. So we watched the above video, and my girlfriend said it was an easy mistake, "he does sound white"!!!

Metre vs Meter

2011-02-17T00:44:00.000Z

So, it comes to this again, America vs The World. Why do the Americans not feel the need to differentiate between a unit of measurement, and a device that is used to measure things? Next thing you know, an American company brings out a new small thermometer, and decides to give it the name "Picometer". Alternatively, I foresee a scenario where someone wishes to purchase 5 meters (devices) but ends up purchasing 5 meters (length) of something completely different.

I know this may seem far fetched and nitpicky, but come on America, get with the rest of the world!

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

2011-02-15T01:45:00.000Z

As I was reading this Have-I-Got-News-For-You worthy article, I couldn't help but notice the signing off, or signature, left by one, Jonathan Amos. I did a quick Google and found he finishes all his articles like this, but has anyone ever tried to email him?

Blond(e)

2011-02-01T23:45:00.003Z

TIL that blond is used when referring to something male or masculine, and blonde is used when the subject if female of feminine.

Well, I'll be damned.

Spoon

2011-01-12T10:43:00.000Z

As I was browsing Wikiquote for a speech from The Matrix earlier today, I fell into the Wikipedia Snowball, and it wasn't long before I came across an all-time favourite quote of mine,

You there! What the hell is this? - Father Jack, in Father Ted

Matrices Notation

2011-01-08T22:53:00.001Z

Is it just me, or is the notation that's in use for Matrix rows and columns the wrong way round?

In my mind, I would think that m (i) would label the horizontal axis, like it does in 'normal' maths and mechanics. Why did this happen, why???

Happy New Year

2011-01-01T00:00:00.003Z

Yeah, I was lame and had a post scheduled, so sue me :)

I Really Don't Like Ethics

2010-12-31T21:02:00.002Z

It's taking far too long, there is no correct answer, and counter-points for arguments can be counter-counter-pointed by the original argument...grrr.

On a lighter note, I went to bed at 9am and woke up at 5pm, nice way to end the year :) and I'm going for a lovely curry with my lovely girlfriend in an hour :D

Coursework Todo List

2010-12-30T17:14:00.001Z

Controversies and Ethical Dilemmas (150 words down, 1850 to go)
Discrete Maths
Communication Systems
Final Year Project - Inception Report
VHDL Final Report

Who said Electrical & Electronic Engineering at Imperial was hard?

Things to do whilst you're supposed to be doing coursework

2010-12-30T01:25:00.003Z

How to procrastinate:

Read all the latest news on Google Reader
Check Reddit for the latest stuff

Check 'upcoming' on Reddit for the bleeding edge news

Check out your neglected Tumblr dashboard to see what's been happening
Check the visitor stats for your sites on Google Analytics
Log in to blogger and post about how you're procrastinating.

Update post until coursework has been completed
Change and tweak the settings and themes of your blog

Try to decrypt an Excel file (it's not as easy as it sounds)
Bug Gauri to update Sims 3

Repeat.

I know I'm not the only person in the world to procrastinate, but I sure do know how to drag it out :-)

Geek Cred +10 points

2010-06-10T04:20:00.001+01:00

Isn't it great? I certainly think so. I didn't order it. It just came in the post. At first I was thinking "This is the greatest gift ever from my stalker," but then I told my girlfriend, and she was like "Oh, your welcome, I got it for you," and I was like "Awwwh, thank you, I love it." There's still a little bit in me that wants it to be a Dexter-come-CSI-ish stalker, but even better, I have a girlfriend who knows exactly how to push my geek cred buttons =D

Love you Gauri
xXx

Red Bull placebo

2010-05-28T18:00:00.003+01:00

I often hear of students drinking Red Bull to help keep them awake, alert and stimulated, something which seems to be useful during the exam season. However I often wonder how much the drink contributes to this? Looking at the ingredients, I can see that Red Bull contains no more caffeine than a normal cup of coffee, and that the sugar dose is really quite normal. So without researching any deeper, I'm happy to conclude that most of the effects that Red Bull gives you are nothing more than a placebo effect - the powers of advertising, huh?

On a side note, I'd just like to mention that I would rather have a cup of coffee than Red Bull. Sure, it won't give me wings, but at least it'll keep me nice and warm :-)

Taking Control

2010-05-28T01:20:00.001+01:00

As I'm stuck here revising for my exam in Control, I can't help but wonder how it ever came about. The equations they use are so abstract and random, they use far too much of Laplace for any sane person to handle, and the results aren't of much use either.

Am I losing the plot (excuse the pun), or is Control Engineering a form of black magic?

Things That Go Bump In The Night

2010-05-27T12:00:00.011+01:00

Down below me, lives a very peculiar woman, along with her daughter. I have only spoken to them once, and seen them a handful of times, but every night I hear them quarrelling, slamming doors, stomping about. Poor, poor, Mr Swiss who lives below them :(

Anyway, the point remains, how do they manage to do this all night, and also go to work during the day (as far as I know, the daughter isn't as reclusive as her mother) and what on earth could they possibly be arguing about so much?

Either way, I would like to suggest to them, that they remove all doors, and instead install some nice 'room dividers' in order to stop the slamming door sound that is constantly keeping me awake. I'd also like them to lay foam down, and lots of it. Lots, and lots, of squishy foam, that would make stomping around a thing of the past (the same could be said of Mr Bank upstairs - his designer wooden floor, along with expensive shoes don't do him any favours).

Lastly, I'd like to wish them a little bit of peace, along with the rest of the world, goodness knows we don't have enough of it.

TFL

2010-05-25T20:40:00.001+01:00

What is it with London and transport? As comprehensive as TFL is, they make everything so confusing! The price of a train ticket from Watford to Euston can vary dramatically depending on whether you chose the Overground or Underground station. And there's something not quite right with the route planner. I can't quite put my finger on it, but when I do, I'll be sure to let you know.

hello, world

2010-05-25T04:06:00.002+01:00

As is traditional in the world of technology, the first line you ever output is "Hello World".

I'm not too sure of where the custom originates from, but I'm sure Wikipedia can tell us more about it.