I first remember hearing about this technology a few years ago but didn’t think much more off it but now I’m more interested.  The basic overview of the memristor is that it acts like a resistor, by generating a voltage from a current, but then amazingly it “remembers” what current had flowed through it previously.  This is incredibly useful and will have lots of major applications around various technologies – one of which being Artificial Intelligence.  The system a memrisitor mimics is already seen in the natural world in simple and complex biological life with Humans being one of them.  This may have been one of the reasons why Artificial Intelligence has not had any major success (bar brute force) over the past decades compared to other fields of science.   It’s worth a thought.

To find out more follow this link to a NewScientist article (or Google it of course!)

Finally, I managed to track it down to an external source (everything in the plugin checked out fine and was returning the correct value(s).  So, I started looking through the other plugins’ sourecode, specifically ones that may modify the way the post is displayed.  Was looking through the sourcecode to the feed aggregator and found a reference to a couple of functions that saved the feed content before it is run through all the other wordpress/plugin formatting filters and restored it afterwards.  It also had a comment by it saying something along the lines “It is assumed all aggregated feeds will already be in an output-ready format so to make sure it isn’t mangled by wordpress, save the content temporarily before any filters are applied and restore after.”

Was just about to make some manual edits and thought “Hmmm, hold on a second…” went into the plugin’s settings in the wordpress administration page and there it was in a drop down box “Protect feeds from wordpress filters/Do not protect feeds from wordpress filters” *facepalm*  Well, at least it works now .

Also, while I was messing around with the blog I noticed I had a couple comments from mates but I hadn’t been notified by email.  Turns out Google Mail was identifying it as spam (sorry guys!), so I created a Google Mail filter to protect email I get from my blog… shouldn’t have that issue anymore.

Just a word of warning to CWolf (who is hosted on same server), you may want to create a filter for your blog in Google Mail .

For those who have no idea what Mechwarrior, or Battletech, is I’ll provide a little background information.  Mechwarrior is the computer game series based in the The Battletech universe.  The Battletech universe is one set in the distant future (3015 for this new game) where giant Robots dominate warfare and rule supreme.  The universe contains Earth but also a sphere of colonised planets named ‘The Inner Sphere’ that, in turn, contain multiple Royal Houses, Mercenary Units and later on the Clans.  The universe is in constant conflict between themselves or each other and involves heavy, but exciting political motivations.  This series was originally based off a game of miniatures that is played on a hexagonal based board.

To get back closer to my post subject: Over the years computer games of Mechwarrior have been made but the last release was in 2002.  Mechwarrior 5 was started but boxed due to the technological limitations of the current hardware / software for such an ambitious game.  Fast forward to today and now it is back!

The Battletech and Mechwarrior license world has been a battleground to mirror any Succession War (the name given to four major wars in the BT Universe).  The current Mechwarrior game creators are, instead of naming it Mechwarrior 5, rebooting the series and naming it Mechwarrior.  The graphics look great from the trailers and it’s based off a heavily modified version of the new Unreal Tournament engine.  The creators themselves are from the dead FASA so things look promising.

Let’s hope they don’t destroy my dreams.  Hopefully they’ll get this game out with it staying true.

However, I had lost contact with neon, immure and warmfusion (well not so much warmfusion but I hadn’t spoken to him for ages, and hadn’t seen him since uni – have seen him once recently though, was great catching up!).  There are quite a few others but I don’t even know how to get back in contact with them… yet.

Anyway, to stop this trend and to revitalise old friendships I started to systematically restore Comscare to it’s former glory.  The first step I took was setting up a forum at http://forum.comscare.org/.  Even though we didn’t have a forum before, I figured it was the first logical step since a lot of Comscarians may be restricted from IM in work and it’s rather tricky to block the web .  The next step was to set up the old blog aggregator, which is almost done now and lives at http://blog.comscare.org/.  I did a little web-surfing, trying to find old blogs and hook up their feeds but not many of us have blogs anymore (hopefully the aggregator will compel some old Comscarians to start blogging again).  I also hooked up some Twitter feeds to the blog site.

I may even set up an IRC server for us to chat on but I’m not sure how many Comscarians would idle there as they may be restricted the same way they are for IM.

Anyway, if you’re a Comscarian that I haven’t mentioned, make yourself known and contact me and I’ll hook you up with a forum account so you can join in on the discussions   Who knows what may come… Comscare Tournament 2009/10?

The usual journey starts at me waking up at 5.30am and getting on the road by 6am.  I usually manage to do good timing and arrive at 7.50am-ish.  Today I was caught by a massive crash between a minibus and a truck carrying cows… of course – that usual crash sight.  Today’s morning trip came in at 4hours and 30minutes and due to getting into work ‘late’ at 10:30am I’ll be leaving late.  I’m dreading the trip back today as I fear the total commute will come in around 7hours.  I’m currently running off painkillers and coffee with a possible addition of proplus.

I hate travelling.  At least it’s nice to live in Cardiff again.

Steady State – Any state that does not change over time, or is in a dynamic equilibrium[1]

Its a straightforward concept, but trying to define it in an effective algorithmic version was conceptually problematic; I wanted to create something that not only was simple to understand (and hence implement) but also gives a good generic solution that we can use on later profiling projects.

Based on experience from working with analysis of stock market trends using various indicators, I knew that its possible to utilise the difference of two moving averages of different sample windows as a trigger. One average over a longer period shows a general trend where the smaller average hints towards more localised fluctuations, and as such when the two converge to within a certain threshold we can state that we’ve reached a stable state.

The formula that I eventually settled on is something generally like this, the 10/100/200 values are arbitrary and need to be fitted to what is under test, but as a general rule of thumb it can give good results.

ABS( AVG( 100 ) – AVG( 10 ) ) < 10ms AND DEV(100) < 200ms

I don’t have any evidence for the validity of these results, but I shall get some graphs from our testing and show the general principle in more visual terms. The one big problem I’ve encountered is that if the steady state of the system under test converges into a regular fluctuation (”dynamic equilibrium”) the formula simply never triggers as the near average fluctuates in accordance, but the far average runs catch up and the two never meet consistently.

I think the solution to this is possibly a Fourier transform, or some other algorithm that can normalise a general repeating sine curve. Any suggestions?

Phase One – How
After following the DirectDriveLEDMatrix playground post in the arduino forums, and learning that pins on electrical components are counted in a clockwise manner (ie 1 top right, 8 bottom right, then 9 is BOTTOM left and 16 is TOP left) I managed to get a working display.

Firstly i was hardcoding the arduino to display simple letters and shapes and using a really simple loop process. Once I was sure I had the pins lined up and the multiplexing was working correctly I moved onto Phase Two… External Comms.

Phase Two – Chatter
Using code I’d used for my ORBController (To be written) I added some Serial input logic to the Arduino, where it reads 8 bytes in a row and uses each BIT of each Byte as an on/off state for the LED. 8Bytes x 8 bits = 64 bits. Simple stuff and really really easy to work with… unless you’re in java…

So I have to use (byte) Integer.parseInt(’01010101′,2); in order to make a row light alternativly, but at least its working. I quickly knocked up an Animator that made a smile/meh/sad faces show alternatly, that demonstrated the display was able to operate through the Java comms and I was frankly thrilled.

But i wasnt happy… it was still hard coded values, albeit being sent over USB from a java application instead of flashed directly onto a PIC… so i created the JMatrixControl which is simply a JPanel with a GridLayout(8,8) which implements MouseListener and a load of Check Boxes which fire events back to the JMatrixControl. The event listener then simply checks all the boxes and using a String Builder makes a string of 0/1s which get put into a byte array and poked over serial to the arduino and Boosh, instant user controlable Matrix display.

Phase Three – Automation
Well thats cool and all, but I fancied something more graphically fun, so Game of Life on an 8×8 was needed… a quick method to convert a boolean[8][8] into a byte[8] array and an animate method that utilised the Game Of Life rule, a few issues with passing by reference/value with the arrays and it works! Its so simple.

I shall post pictures/videos of these things when I get a moment, and probably organise myself a bit better to show code and diagrams, but this is my first post and its good to get the ball rolling.

Toby

So yea, a couple weeks ago we got some really bizarre weather here in the UK… bizarre in the way that it was totally unexpected, over a week of snow… snow that actually settled!  Was great, everything looked so cool covered in a white layer as far as the eye could see.  Then came the realisation that I had to drive on this stuff to get to work.  The first couple days were alright cause the serious snow hadn’t hit yet, that was due midweek.  However, when Wednesday rolled around I was getting rather nervous since I have no experience when it comes to driving on snow.  Luckily my house has extremely easy access to the motorway and once onto there I was safe… until I got to where I worked.

They hadn’t even gritted any of the roads!  Driving along the roads at 5mph wasn’t too bad though, but the offices were up a hill, so when I got to the bottom of the road that goes up to it and it was still covered in completely fresh snow (apart from a few tyre tracks) I decided against it and go in through the exit of the complex which is on flatter ground.  Unfortunately the gates were closed (think the gate mechanism was frozen shut).  So on I go and I come to the other end of the first road which looks a little less steep, so I go up it and it wasn’t long till my wheels were spinning freely.  A bit startled and panicky I put on the brakes and hit my hazard lights and let the 4×4 behind me past.  My GTi has too much low end power for snow driving, but remembering some advice I was given previously, I change to 2nd and very gently press the accelerator and slowly crept up the hill.

As soon as I was on the flat I was happy and proceeded to the office carpark… which was practically empty.  Anyway, I go in and start work, but there was hardly anyone around, but as time when on people started arriving.  Guess they left it a little later so it’d be safer.  However, I did hear that the original entrance to the road I was going to go up had been closed due to a crash halfway up it… it’s pretty steep, I’m glad I didn’t go that route!

The next day I left from my girlfriend’s house which is on the side of a hill, which I managed to get to the top of, unfortunately there was a crash at the bottom of the other side and traffic just was not moving.  The only time traffic was moving forward was when other drivers were getting impatient, giving up and pulling a U-turn and going another way.  Well I was sat at the top of this hill with my hand-brake on wondering what to do (remember I don’t have much drive-on-snow experience) and my car started to slide down the hill towards the car in front.  I slammed on the brakes and luckily 4 locked wheels gave enough traction to stop me.  That completely freaked me out and I decided to bottle, was so not going to risk crashing to get to work, I don’t prioritise things that way .  So I very carefully made my 3-point turn and handed back to my girlfriend’s house.  Luckily I don’t have to give up a day since I emailed a colleague to get the VPN details so I could work from home.  Of course, after the girlfriend got back from physio we went out and built a snowman it had a top hat .

One of the main reasons I took that day off was because we don’t get that kind of weather much and it hasn’t snowed that much for like a decade, so there’s no harm taking a snow day once in a few years or so?  Not much to ask  However, the next day was worse… previous days snow is now ice with new snow on top.  I can’t use the snow card again.  Was leaving from my girlfriend’s house again so was not looking forward to a repeat of the previous day… if I could get the freakin’ car away from the side of the road.  Was just wheel spinning where it was due to the camber of the road and ice.  Took a quite verbal lesson from the girlfriend on how to drive on snow (I guess they get quite a bit up north in Cali), managed to get the car into the middle of the road and drove on a bit to the main road that goes up the hill.  Man, this was a bad idea :/ loads of cars all driving up this icy road extremely slowly and half of them are wheel spinning.  This minivan in front of me got to a point where they couldn’t go forwards anymore, so I went around them, get about 10 metres further and also got to the point where I just had no traction (hill slowly increased in steepness).  At this point I was holding up traffic so I figured I’d pull over and work out a plan of action.  Unfortunately I was totally stuck against the curb now, couldn’t do anything but wheelspin and slip backwards and I didn’t want to damage my wheels.  So I called my girlfriend (was only about 300-400 yards away from her house) and she came out to help me, I so wanted to just say “Fuck it!  Work isn’t worth this…” but she encouraged me to keep trying (I wish she hadn’t…).  Anyway, she pushed against the back of my car as I slowly reversed away from the curb to the T-junction where I could turn around and I went back through the middle of town which took me over an hour, but at least I was heading downhill to safer roads and the bottom of the motorway.

All in all it took me 2:30 hours to make a 30 minute journey.  I was so tired of concentrating on driving and my ached hurt from pedal control.  Wasn’t the best experience of my life but at least I didn’t hit anything, which I think quite a few people did that morning (the road I got stuck on was closed shortly after I turned around… crash).  One of the things that annoyed me the most was when I rang up work to let them know I’d be in late, the receptionist went on to tell me how other people from the city I live in managed to make it in fine… big-fucking-whoop-de-doo, I wanted to bitch-slap her for her insolence.  Yea people made it in, but they probably lived in more accessible areas (like my house right next to the motorway… if I had stayed there that night) and they probably had more experience driving in hazardous conditions (haven’t even had my car for a year yet).  Anyway, I was glad that the worst of the snow/ice was over with (and that the weekend had arrived), hopefully the UK will just stay miserable and wet for a while… that I can deal with .

When I moved into the house I’m in at the moment I brought my server (WOPR) with me as well as my enormous media collection, unfortunately the mini-ITX box we had as the media centre wasn’t mine so it remained behind.  Luckily I’ve got a 360 which is capable of streaming from a media server and there are a few around for linux.

At first we ran twonkymedia, which is pretty good, but as it is commercial software an alternative had to be found when the trial ran out.  I had my mind set on purchasing a licence for it but only one thing stopped me.  No transcoding.  Since the 360 only played specific formats, a lot of the media in my collection is unplayable from the 360 and this was unacceptable, so twonky had to go.

I looked around and found a few opensource/free alternatives, one of them being fuppes and the reason fuppes stood out was because it claimed to support on-the-fly video transcoding, which would solve all my problems.  Getting it up and running wasn’t too tricky and we’ve been using it for a long time now.  Unfortunately there was 2 major issues with it.  The first is that the video transcoding doesn’t work, no idea why it doesn’t just refuses to do it as if the feature never existed even though the web interface claims it is enabled. And 2, every now and then while watching something on the 360 the video goes *BLDFDBLBFFASDBlarg* and dies, which I think maybe a caching issue since we’re running it over wireless.

But lately a 3rd issue has arisen (well not really lately but it’s become much more of an issue lately) and that is the database is failing to rebuild itself, I think I’ve reached the maximum size cause SQLite is now complaining halfway through an index rebuild that it is having IO errors or cannot write to disk (even though there is loads of space left).  I’ve been playing with SQLite trying to figure out if there is any issues with my installation of it and at first I thought there was, various libraries were reporting different versions, but that’s been fixed now and it does seem to rebuild faster, but it still crash and burns .

Anyway, I’m sure that I can sort out the rebuilding but I’m still at a complete loss as to why the video transcoding just doesn’t want to play.  Quite a few people on the forums claim to have gotten it to work but I can’t see how.  Even when I use their configs I get nothing, not even a debug message at the console.  I’m running the most recent revision from the SVN (0.627 from memory) but nothing.  Also the sourcecode hasn’t been updated in absolutely ages, which someone with better programming prowess than myself would take up the development of fuppes, I think it’s pretty good, just really buggy at the moment.

If I can’t work out how to sort it out soon I’m going to have to get rid of it and try another media streamer but I didn’t see many others which supported transcoding.

Bah…

In hindsight I should have stayed at home.  With all the snow that has fallen over the last couple days I was so tempted to use it as an excuse not to go into work (which I know a lot of people (would) have done).  The motorways were fairly uncongested and moving freely which was ok, but getting into the town where I work was fairly dangerous.  All the roads were white or icy, everyone moving 10mph… and then I got to the road that leads up the hill to where I work.  One look at that and I thought “Fuck it, I’ll go around and enter through the exit of the estate, at least that’s level.”, but alas, the gates were closed.  So I found the other end of the first road which goes up the hill a little less steeper and went up there.  Wasn’t really a surprise that my Polo GTi started wheel spinning halfway up… too much low-end power.  I managed to break the wheelspin and stop myself on the hill while I figured out how to proceed (am not used to driving in such conditions), I turned on my hazard lights to let the 4×4 behind me know I was having difficulties and let him past incase I slipped backwards into him.  After that I was faced with a hill-start on ice/snow but it wasn’t that bad, just had to be really sensitive on the accelerator.  Anyway, got into work thinking “I should have stayed at home.” and if it wasn’t for the fact I’d probably slide down the hill trying to leave I would have.

So here I am at work and an unrelenting tiredness has overcome me.  There’s only decaffeinated tea left, but I’ve had 2 pro plus but it doesn’t seem to be doing anything.  Having extreme difficulty focusing on work and feeling like my eyes want to roll into the back of my head, I needed to somehow keep my mind active through lunch.  So have started playing Singularity and now blogging to keep the myself from slipping into neutral or stalling, heh.

Maybe the reason I’m so freaking tired is because I’m fighting off an illness of somekind, had a pretty bad sore throat yesterday, but has eased up today.  I think I’m gonna take an early night tonight or I’m going to be crippled for badminton tomorrow.

Well, bad to Singularity… laters,
Jargon