Karmic Koala

I'm sure that you've noticed the Ubuntu countdown on my sidebar. You'd be amazed at how many emails I've received asking me to explain this. Precisely none. What's that? You're not amazed?

Since a lot of people are no doubt wondering about it but afraid to ask, I thought I'd provide an explanation ayway.

License

The Ubuntu folks produce a new release of their operating system every six months, and as well as giving it a number (9.10 means October 2009), they also name them after animals. Since Dapper Drake these have gone in alphabetical order, so because the last release was Jaunty Jackalope, this one had to be an animal beginning with K.

They didn't ask me, which is why Thursday's release isn't going to be Kinky Kitty, Karaoke Kingfisher or Knackered Kronosaurus. Instead they chose Karmic Koala.

Seeing the cute picture above, your first reaction may well have been the same as mine. What does koala taste like? Are they served in fast food establishments Down Under (Kebabbed Koala, anyone?). The answer is no. At least not legally, since they are protected. Apparently they used to be hunted for their fur - presumably an adult would have been just enough to make a pair of gloves and a matching steering wheel cover. Not that I'd condone such a thing. After all steering wheel covers are not only so last century, they also look stupid.


Anyway, what's all this got to do with something serious like an operating system? The answer is, more than you think. If you know about kebabs and steering wheel covers, then you already know more than enough to install Ubuntu on your computer. Eighteen months ago I didn't know how to partition a disk, or what DHCP was. I wasn't even sure that I wanted to replace Windows XP, since as a home user, it pretty much worked (it's in an office environment that it really sucks). It was annoying to use, though, with all the mouse clicks you need to do anything, and the stupid pop-up messages.


It wasn't until I'd consumed a large amount of vodka one evening that I felt brave enough to install Ubuntu on my computer. I'd never installed an operating system, and yet it was up and running in less time than it takes to get rid of the annoying sidebar in Windows Vista. And I've never looked back. I now have a computer that is easier to use, that gives me a nicer windowing system and is less prone to viruses.

I've just let Helena have my laptop on semi-permanent loan. My ex had been talking about us going halves on a computer for her, but I hardly use the laptop. The one thing I was sure about was that I didn't want her using a Windows machine, because of the risk of getting viruses or malware on there. She is quite happy using Ubuntu, since she already uses my computer at weekends, and she knows a lot more than me about enabling every last piece of window manager bling. I bet she could probably have installed Ubuntu too.

As it happens, I've had to learn a lot more about operating systems in my professional capacity in the last eighteen months. I now have a pretty good understanding disk partitions and network configuration. Before Ubuntu came along, I'd probably have needed that knowledge and more. There's a reason why it's currently one of the most popular distributions of Linux.

And after "Karmic Koala", what's next? Lusty Leech? Languid Lizard? Lunching Lion? None of these. Again, they didn't ask me. Ubuntu 10.04 will be Lucid Lynx.

Which means I've got 6 months to find some recipes for lynx...

Wordy Wednesday - "With it" Dad

I'm sure you're all familiar with the stereotypical generation gap when it comes to "music". Where your parents or grandparents can't understand what it is about all this new-fangled noise that interests their younger relatives. What was wrong with the music from the good old days? That had tunes and stuff?

I never experienced this as a child. My father was a Country Music addict, and my mother had bopped to Cliff Richard and co in the 1960's, so neither was really in much of a position to criticise anyone else's tastes. I was also never very interested in following my schoolmate's fads, and by the time I was in my late teens was beginning to favour stuff written by people who have been dead for at least a century or three.

My grandmother, however, was liable to complain about modern music. This would have been in the 80s. It was just a noise. It didn't have any tune. You couldn't understand the words, and they didn't know how to dress properly. Not like Val Doonican, presumably, who was one of her favourite stars.


It's difficult to understand why all the pop singers didn't wear outfits like his. Of course Mr Doonican hasn't quite achieved legendary status, mourned by millions who view him as a saint. Not like Elvis Presley or Tammy Wynette. The main reasons for this are (a) he's not dead yet, and (b) he's probably going to outlive most of his fans.

Anyway, on to the younger generation. Helena's favourite band this week is "Muse". She usually finds my jokes hilarious, but I didn't get any laughs when I suggested that they got their name because the noise they make is similar to a cat's "mews". I spent ages thinking that one up, too. She also likes Michael Jackson and Johnny Cash.

We were in Pizza Hut a while back, and she suddenly said: "That's Muse's latest song." I listened, but I couldn't hear anything over the noise of the packed restaurant. I'm sure she can't have better hearing than me. It's not as if I'm getting old or anything, and she must have ruined hers by now listening to that new-fangled ipod thing. Don't get me started on ridiculously overpriced Apple products - it wasn't me that payed £100 for an ipod when you can get the same spec MP3 player for about £40. When I was her age, they'd just brought out the "Walkman", but it was so expensive that only Cliff Richard could afford one.


Later on she claimed to hear a Michael Jackson hit. She hummed a bit of it for me. "That's not Michael Jackson", I said. "That's a song called Eat It from the 80s." She wasn't convinced, but thanks to modern technology and You Tube, I was able to prove that I knew what I was talking about.



So as you can see, I can't be accused of being one of those old fuddy-duddy parents...

(not so) Wordy Wednesday

I made my weekly visit to my local pub last night. It was the usual mixture of some quiet time reading my book (useful when people I know aren't in there), chatting and copious quantities of Stella. I should add for any foreigners in the audience that Stella is a strong lager.


On my way home I picked up a cheeseburger, and as usual stuck a DVD on while I ate it. And as usual just managed to turn the DVD off before I fell asleep. I've watched most of the DVDs I own at least once, but I've watched the first twenty minutes of each of them countless times.

Although I woke up early this morning, I was tired and dehydrated, which meant that I went back to sleep again, woke up late and drank about a litre and a half of water before attempting to go to work. I don't tend to drink enough to be hungover, so once I was properly awake the day went okay.

This in turn means that I got home late this evening. And realised that I had a blog post to write. Hence it's not going to be the usual meticulously planned 15 chapter epic.

Anyway, I was over at Kat's blog, where she was commenting on some educational issues, and it occurred to me that all the people in Britain who do degrees like Media Studies and Egyptology would be far better off being trained to pull pints, flip burgers and clean toilets.

I'm not complaining about the service I got last night in the pub, nor about the tasty burger from the kebab shop across the road, nor particularly about the cleanliness of the pub's toilets. Nevertheless, these are three areas in which there is a definite skills shortage in this country. So much so that these jobs are often done by Polish immigrants. And people with degrees in Media Studies and Egyptology.

Sadly none of the people that make important decisions ever ask me, so I doubt things will improve. It's always the same story. Recently they appear to have decided to stop selling Noodle Town Instant Won Ton Noodles in our local supermarket, leading to an important deficiency in my diet. You'd have thought with the amount I was buying they might have at least run this by me beforehand. Oh, well, it could be worse. At least they've still got Green Beans...

Wordy Wednesday - Ig Nobel Prizes 2009

This year's Ig Nobel Prize Ceremony was held last week at Harvard University. These are prizes that are offered for improbable research - things that are quirky, amusing or just baffling.

The Ig Nobel Peace Prize was won by a group of Swiss researchers who conducted experiments to determine whether or not it was better to have an empty or a full beer bottle smashed over your head. The answer was that both can fracture your skull, though the empty bottle requires more force to break it. They're missing the point, which is that using a full bottle is a waste of beer, and therefore more criminal.

Meanwhile, at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, they've been looking into producing diamonds from tequilla. Presumably this process involves not drinking the tequilla. Isn't that illegal in Mexico?

My favourite, though, was an invention from Chicago. This is a bra that in an emergency can be converted into a pair of face masks. I'm not quite sure what kind of emergency this would be, but it would be interesting to see one. The picture below shows one of the inventors demonstrating it at the award ceremony:


This idea isn't just a potential life saver. It would solve the age old problem men always have with hooks and fasteners. Now you'd just have to shout "gas leak!". Definitely a worthy winner.

My Retirement Plan

I've decided that I'd better plan for my retirement. After all, I'm not getting any younger, and the way things are going, with all the pension funds disappearing and legislation to increase the age of retirement, my generation will probably have to work until we're all into 3 figures.

I could give up work, but sadly the retired and unemployed eat just as much as the working, so I'll need to find an alternative income. I've looked into several options:

1. Become a professional layabout. Benefits aren't exactly lavish, and they expect you to at least pretend you're looking for work. In fact, the workshy spend so much of their time going for interviews, courses and so on that they'd be better off getting a job. None of this seems very compatible with spending my time on a beach in Barbados.

2. Blackmail. I've been wondering how much money I can extort. There might be plenty of people in blogland who would pay me good money not to post ever again. If there aren't, just wait until I turn this blog into "Brian's Song and Dance Showcase", featuring daily videos with excrutiating performances by yours truly. Let's put it this way: I can't dance to save my life, and my singing is worse. Again, this seems like a lot of effort to go to not to work, and I'd probably injure myself in the process.

3. Computerisation. Program a computer to do my work and blog whilst I'm off somewhere sipping something cool and intoxicating.

Option 3 is clearly the best of the bunch. The only question is: Is it feasible with today's technology? Could a mere computer really be good enough to replace me?

British mathematician Alan Turing was a pioneer in the theory of computers in the 1940s and 50s. He managed to come up with various abstract models and rules which were not directly related to the particular technology of the time, but which were general enough to hopefully apply to any computer that could possibly be built.


Amongst other things he is famous for The Turing Test, which is one answer to the question of how to measure computer intelligence. There are two rooms, one of which contains a computer, and another contains a human. The tester can send written questions into each room, and receive written answers back, and he has to see if he can work out which is the computer, and which is the human. If he can't tell them apart, then the computer must be just as intelligent as the human being.

Obviously, if I could get hold of a computer that had passed the Turing Test, then the only problem remaining would be which plane to get on. Sadly, no-one has managed to program a computer to do this, despite a lot of attempts.

I'm not going to give up hope though. I don't need a computer that can pass for an intelligent human being in some lab test. My requirements are a lot simpler - I just need one that can be programmed to write a bit of software now and then, answer the odd email and write the odd blog post. The computer will pass the BOV test so long as no-one realises that I'm actually stretched out by some Caribbean pool.


What's more, all the technology I require already exists. For writing blogs, there is the buzzword generator. This produces random incomprehensible phrases of the sort that my readers are well used to.

For email, there is something called the "vacation message", or "out of office assistant". Because eloquence isn't really my thing, I just need to set that to give replies like "That's great Bee. What's the weather like where you are?", and people won't notice any difference.

In fact, technology can do better than this. The Eliza program was written in the 1960s as a computerised psychiatrist. It's actually very simple, and just picks out words from the user's input and throws it back at him or her. User: "I've got problems with my hippopotamus." Eliza: "Tell me about your hippopotamus.". And so on. Or sometimes Eliza would say something completely inane like "That's very interesting. Tell me more." Click on the link above and try it for yourself. It could save you a fortune in pschiatrist's fees.

It was enough to fool some users into thinking that they were getting help for their problems, and I'd use it except that it's a far better conversationalist than I am, so no-one would believe it was me.

So, that's my plan. One day I'll disappear and no-one will ever know. The more observant of you will have noticed the picture at the top of this post. It's not a Caribbean island. After all, who am I kidding? If I really do get the chance to do a bunk, I'll probably spend my retirement in an Athens coffee shop. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got some programming to do...

... And the result...

In case you were wondering:

The Socialists won the election with a convincing majority in the new parliament, making Giorgos Papandreou the new Prime Minister. The defeated PM, Kostas Karamanlis has already announced his resignation as party leader.

The Ecologists didn't manage to achieve the 3% of the vote necessary to get seats in parliament.

Wordy Wednesday - Election Special

First, the small print.

DISCLAIMER: This blog post is not meant to be interpreted as serious political commentary. In fact, where possible the intention is the exact opposite.

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Now onto today's idiocy...

As you may be aware, it's election time in a major European country. I'm not referring to the German one, where they rather boringly didn't give the job of chancellor to the woman with the best cleavage (or at least that's what she claimed in magazine adverts - maybe it was all hype).

The Italians are far better at that sort of thing.

I'm referring to an election that hasn't yet happened. One in which the beleagured Prime Minister, whose party's opinion poll ratings are the lowest they've been for some years, looks set to be replaced by the official opposition. Nevertheless the PM is in fighting spirit, defending his government's record and of course promising lots of good things in the future.

I'm sure that by now you will have guessed that I'm talking about the Greek general election that is taking place this coming Sunday.

The Greek system is similar to Britain's. The public elect members of parliament, and the party that has the most seats is the winner. As in Britain, they need to control over 50% of the seats in order to govern. If not, there's always the possibility of a coalition between two or more parties, but this generally doesn't happen.

Since Greece abolished its monarchy in 1974, they have a President who is elected by parliament for 5 year terms. Like the British monarch, the President doesn't actually run the country, but carries out duties as defined by the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is usually the leader of the party with the majority in parliament, and is a member of that parliament.

Parliamentary elections must be held at least every 4 years, but the Prime Minister can call them at any time. The current centre right PM, Kostas Karamanlis, is 2 years into his second term in office, and it is expected that his socialist opponent, Giorgos Papandreou, will win an overall majority in parliament and replace him. However, polls aren't allowed to be published in the two weeks before the election, so we don't know what the current state of play is.

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Bluffers Guide to the Elections


Party: Pan-Hellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK)
Leader: Giorgos Papandreou
Background: Giorgos Papandreou is the son of former Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou, who was himself the son of former Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou.
Policies: Will undo all the mess left by the current lot. Will govern openly and without all of the scandals that have plagued New Democracy. Will give ordinary people a better deal.

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Party: New Democracy
Leader: Kostas Karamanlis
Background Konstantinos Karamanlis (Kostas for short) is the nephew of former Prime Minister Konstantinos Karamanlis.
Policies: Will continue to undo all the mess left by the Socialists last time they were in power. Will govern openly and with fewer scandals. Will give ordinary people a better deal.

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Party: The Communist Party of Greece (KKE)
Leader: Aleka Papariga
Background: Comrade Aleka has been General Secretary of her party for around 20 years.
Policies: Against profiteering. A better deal for workers. Neither of the main parties have the answer.

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Party: Popular Orthodox Rally (LAOS)
Leader: Giorgos Karatzaferis
Background: Journalist, writer and politician.
Policies: Believe in God and Greece. Right wing. Wants to make Greece great again.

Party: Coalition of the Radical Left (SYRIZA)
Leader: Alexis Tsipras
Background: Youngest of the leaders.
Policies: Wants the people to have a better deal. Neither of the main parties have the answer.

Party: Ecogreens
Leader (of the election campaign): Nikos Chrysogelos
Background: The ecogreens may or may not manage to get enough votes to have seats in the next parliament (they currently don't have any).
Policies: All environmentally friendly, unlike the main parties, neither of whom have the answer.

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So whoever gets in, they'll have open scandal-free government offering a better deal to everyone. Or something like that. Now you can amaze all your friends with your extensive knowledge of foreign affairs...