The Eagle Eyed Daemon

I recently read a very good book that definitely deserved a blog post all of it's own. The day I finished reading it though I watched a film that shared so many ideas and themes with the book that I decided I'd write a joint book/film review. OK I'll stop waffling now and start by telling you about the book.

I often get annoyed with films and books when computer technology is depicted as it never seems to be accurate or even feasible! For instance, don't get me started on using a computer virus to beat the aliens in Independence Day -- probably one of the worst abuses of computers in film history! So when I saw an advert for the novel Daemon by Daniel Suarez I was intrigued enough to order a copy. Daniel Suraez is currently an independent consultant who has previously developed enterprise software for the defence,finance and entertainment markets so he should know a thing or two about software development and computers in general. Fortunately he can also craft an exceptionally good novel. Rather than trying to describe the novel myself here is the blurb from the back of the book

Computer genius Matthew Sobol is dead, but his final creation lives on. An infernal web of autonomous computer programs, Sobol's Daemon feasts on the lifeblood of our hyper-connected society: information. Gathering secrets and stealing identities, it soon has the power to change lives as well as the power to take them. Those who serve the Daemon are rewarded; those who defy it are eliminated. Recruiting acolytes from the dispossessed and disaffected, the Daemon grows stronger with each passing day. We face a stark choice: confront a faceless, formless monster or learn to live in a world in which we are no longer in control.

It really is a cracking good read which effortlessly weaves good and accurate computer information into the story without it getting in the way. As an example, if you know why putting ' or 1=1-- into the username and password fields of a website might get you logged in then you should enjoy this book.

So the evening I finished reading Daemon I sat down and watched the film Eagle Eye. I won't try and write a review as I'm sure I'll give away the plot so here is the trailer:

Click To Play

So you can see similar themes: a computer contacts people and forces them to do what it wants. Now there are vast plot differences between the book and the film and other than the general theme they have almost nothing in common. I would say that the book is infinitely superior to the film but if you don't have time to read 450 odd pages but would rather be entertained for the evening then I would highly recommend the film. Of course my star ratings are a little biased as I have to both compare the film to the book as well as other films I have reviewed.

My Rating for Daemon: A really good book. A terrific thriller and with the added bonus of accurate and believable computer details.

My Rating for Eagle Eye: A really good entertaining film. It doesn't quite make 5 stars simply as it is similar in theme to Daemon but not in the same league.

Skiing for Crumpets

The Ski Sunday theme tune is taken from the opening to a piece of music call "Pop Looks Bach" and if you don't know what I'm talking about have a listen to this excerpt. According to the BBC it conveys pure speed: close your eyes and you're whistling along on a pair of skis, on a dizzying descent down a mountain.

In contrast to the BBC's description I don't get any skiing related feelings when listening to the theme, instead I can smell crumpets. This has happened to me for almost as long as I can remember. Being a wintry pursuit I assume that Ski Sunday is only usually broadcast during the winter. As a child if we went out walking when it was cold and wintry then tea would often involve hot buttered crumpets in front of the TV -- hence the association between the Ski Sunday theme tune and crumpets. Knowing why the two things are associated doesn't though explain why I can actually smell crumpets when hearing the music.

One of my Christmas presents was the book On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins and Sandra Blakeslee. Jeff Hawkins has devoted a lot of his professional life to thinking about intelligence. On Intelligence sums up his understandings of how intelligence works and how we could apply this understanding to build intelligent machines -- if you are looking for a book about cyborgs you will be disappointed his ideas are aimed at intelligence and not replicating human behaviour.

The framework he has developed is called the Memory-Prediction Model and in essence can be summed up as follows. Sensory inputs are used to make a prediction of what we should sense next. These predictions are passed back to our senses and then compared with what actually happens. Discrepancies are flagged as unusual behaviour. For example, if you see a cat you could predict that it might miaow. If it did, this would be normal and you wouldn't think anything of it as reality matched your prediction. If on the other hand instead of miaowing the cat barked you would be very surprised.

I think this feedback of predictions is what is enabling me to smell crumpets every time I hear the theme tune to Ski Sunday. In my memory model hearing Pop Looks Back allows me to predict the smell of crumpets which is fed back to my olfactory senses and when I don't actually smell crumpets my mind flags this as odd.

Do any of you experience (or suffer from -- smelling crumpets without being able to eat them is just cruel!) such sensory illusions?

Clearly I didn't do the memory-prediction model justice with my three sentence description, but if you find ideas about (artificial) intelligence interesting then I would highly recommend On Intelligence.

My Rating: A thoroughly interesting and thought provoking book that, given it's subject matter, is remarkable easy to read.

Can You Drown in a Fathom?

I think that most people would say that you could easily drown in a fathom of water but how many of you know how deep a fathom actually is. I would have said that it was at least 10 metres. In a totally unscientific survey one other person suggested a depth of about 30 metres. A fathom is actually the width of a man's outstretched arms. Also the depth of water in which it's too deep for most of us to stand on the bottom without drowning. That definition comes from a brilliant little book I got for Christmas called About the Size Of It: The Common Sense Approach to Measuring Things by Warwick Cairns.

About The Size Of It is a short book, the spine is about a barleycorn wide, but it packs in a full, from the ground up, definition of all our main units of measurements. Not the boring SI units (although they do make a brief appearance so that they can be rightfully mocked) but rather those measures that we use in everyday life and have survived for generations as they make the most sense in everyday tasks -- like buying fruit!

My Rating: The writing style is informative and highly enjoyable. I could easily see a slightly expanded version as the Royal Societies Christmas Lectures it is that informative and entertaining.

Guinness Based Physics

A long time ago in a high school far far away... I studied applied maths. Like any other job teachers need some on the job training and we ended up with a student teacher. I don't think we were particularly nice to the poor bloke (I can't imagine anything worse than a room full of obnoxious 16/17 year olds). One of his lessons, however, forever changed the way we treated him -- he had somehow managed to make a maths lesson fun.

He was attempting to teach us the maths behind the centre of gravity in different objects. Rather than some random shape though he decided that the most relevant thing to us would be working out how steep a slope you could stand a pint glass on without losing any beer! Of course given a blackboard and white chalk it has stuck in my head as the Guinness based physics lesson. I don't usually reminisce about high school (not the most enjoyable period of my life) but something I saw the other day brought that maths lesson flooding back.

I read a review for a new independently developed computer game called Crayon Physics Deluxe. The game is described by it's developer as a 2D physics puzzle / sandbox game, in which you get to experience what it would be like if your drawings would be magically transformed into real physical objects. Solve puzzles with your artistic vision and creative use of physics. Drawn objects move and fall as they would in real life. No more maths to work out if that pint glass will topple over!

I downloaded and played all the way through the demo and thought it was so good I was quite happy to spend the $19.95 for the full version, especially as buying the game directly supports the single developer rather than going straight to the purse of some large games company.

My Rating: I think the idea behind the game is brilliant and it was well executed to produce a thoroughly enjoyable game.

Miscellaneous Random Facts

I know a lot of random facts that are usually only useful for entering quizzes! For example, the state flower of Hawaii is the yellow Hibiscus -- I told you the facts I know are random. Maybe this explains why I find question answering research so interesting. Given this interest it should come as no surprise that I really enjoy the miscellanies and almanacs compiled by Ben Shott. Unfortunately this caused a slight problem this Christmas and I must start by apologising to my mother -- sorry Mum!

When we went away in mid-November we had lunch at the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes (I waxed lyrical over the cheesecake). In the gift shop we saw a copy of Tom Holman's Yorkshire Miscellany. Not only did the book sound interesting but it has been published so as to perfectly match the Schott's Miscellanies. Unsurprisingly we bought it there and then. Unfortunately my parents went for lunch at the creamery about a fortnight later, saw the book, thought it would make an excellent Christmas present for me, and so also bought a copy. You can of course now see where this story is heading.

Obviously my parents didn't tell me what my Christmas presents were going to be and the fact that I had bought this interesting little book didn't come up in conversation, well not until two days before Christmas anyway! Having eaten dinner we were washing up in the kitchen and rinsing out the beer bottles we had already drunk when I remarked upon the fact that I now had a new mission in life -- given the list of all the small breweries in Yorkshire I was determined to try beer from them all. This instantly set alarm bells ringing in my mothers head and she knew that was one of the pages in the miscellany -- when the truth came out boy was I in trouble.

Fortunately both my parents also liked the look of the book so we came to an arrangement -- they kept the book and gave me some extra money instead. I've since spent the money on the Lake District Miscellany also written by Tom Holman. Whilst I haven't had time to read through this one in detail yet, it looks just as good as the Yorkshire miscellany and the Shott miscellanies that inspired it's dust jacket.

My Rating: If you like random facts you will like any of the books mentioned in this post, I promise.

Calum's Road

I'm going to a Runrig concert this evening and so was playing some Runrig music on my iPod on the way to work. While listening to Wall of China I decided that I should blog about a book called Calum's Road by Roger Hutchinson. Whilst at first glance this may seem a bizarre jump bare with me for a few more lines and everything will become clear (I hope).

If I was writing the blurb for the dust jacket I'd write:

Calum's Road chronicles one man’s attempt to save a dying community. The north of the Hebridean Island of Raasay didn’t used to be connected to the rest of the island by road. It’s inaccessible nature saw the population dwindle until the population was just two; Calum and his wife. One morning Calum set out to change his world, he started to single-handedly build a road. It took him twenty years but eventually he brought a road to his hamlet at Arnish.

Still confused by the Runrig reference? OK I'll explain. I only found out about the book as it was reviewed in The Wire (the newsletter of the Runrig fan club) as it's subject matter had been used as the basis for the song Wall of China from The Stamping Ground album.

My Rating: I would probably have never picked this book up without having read the review, but I am so glad I did. A heart warming tale of perseverance in the face of an intransigent political system.

Heads I Win, Tails You Lose!

When we went to St. Andrews we made the mistake of escaping from the cold wind by looking around Waterstones. This is always an expensive mistake! One of the books I bought was How Many Socks Make A Pair? by Rob Eastaway. How Many Socks Make A Pair? aims to make mathematics interesting. Whilst there isn't an equation in sight you will learn about probability theory via the old choosing socks blindly from a draw problem, as well as learning magic and card tricks.

Having previously blogged about the changes to our coins I was particularly interested in a section on coin based probability, particularly the following fact about spinning a penny to determine heads or tails:

What happens if you try and remove the human error by spinning the coin on its axis instead [of flipping it in the air], on a smooth table? It turns out that this is even more biased. Depending on the currency you use, the results can be a long way from 50-50. If you spin an American penny, it has been found to end up showing tails as much as 80 per cent of the time. British pennies are also heavily biased towards tails.

Now given that the tail designs on our coins have changed I was interested to know if this was still true or not. So I conducted my own little experiment. I found two almost mint 2008 pennies; one with the old design and one with the new design. I then spun each coin a hundred times and recorded the outcome. I didn't record spins which didn't get fully up to speed or those that bounced off something else on the table as I felt that these may affect the result.

The first thing to note is that I couldn't replicate the result from the book as the old design penny actually landed 53 to 47 for heads. The new design, however, fell equal with 50 heads and 50 tails.

So what does this all tell us. Firstly the experiment isn't very scientific I'd need a lot more than a hundred spins to show a very small bias. Having said that it looks as if the new design is a fairer coin when spun than the old design.

My Rating: A really interesting book, that makes maths both fun and relevant without resorting to equations.

Travelling Light

As you may have noticed from this blog I do travel quite a bit, both with work and for fun. In fact I've since this blog started I've had trips to Bled, The Reeds Hotel, Marrakech, St. Andrews, Bordeaux and a long honeymoon in Scotland. On all these trips I've taken my laptop with me. In fact here is a photo of it sunning itself by the pool in Marrakech. Now it's not huge or particularly heavy but it can still be quite awkward to cart around, especially when flying. If I'm flying then the laptop bag becomes my one piece of cabin luggage and so I can manage a few books as well as the laptop but everything else has to go in my suitcase. So even if I'm away for only a day or so I have to have the added hassle of checking in luggage and hopping that it makes it to the same destination at the same time as me. Well I now have a solution to this problem -- take a netbook instead of a laptop.

Netbooks are designed to be exceedingly portable. They are small and lightweight and leave lots of room in a bag for other luggage. While there may have been small lightweight laptops for a while, netbooks are relatively new. The first was the Eee from Asus, but there are now quite a few different models, and I've bought the Mini 9 from Dell -- thanks to everyone who gave me money for my birthday as this is what I bought!

Lets start by looking at it next to my normal laptop. As you can see it really is small. In fact the spec sheet from Dell tells us that it is just 9.13" (232mm) wide, 1.25" (31.7mm) high and 6.77" (172mm) deep and weighs just 2.28 lbs. (1.035 kg) -- in other words it is about the size of a large hardback novel and weighs very little.

Now the netbook isn't as fast as a laptop or desktop machine. For example, the CPU is a dual core Intel Atom clocked at 1.6GHz whereas my laptop contains a 3Ghz dual core processor. But in reality you often don't want to do lots of heavy processing while away but you do want to be able to check e-mail or give presentations and for that a netbook is ideal. It maybe that netbooks could be built with faster processors but they are currently limited due to licensing deals with Microsoft. Microsoft want to sell licenses for Windows Vista while their customers clearly prefer Windows XP. They have relented a little and allowed OEMs to continue to sell XP with systems that are not powerful enough to run Vista. So the netbook manufacturers are deliberately not putting more than 1Gb of RAM in the netbooks so they can sell them with either XP or a flavour of Linux. Fortunately the Dell is very easy to upgrade (2 screws remove the base giving access to the memory, hard drive and wireless networking card) and so while it arrived on Thursday with only 1Gb of RAM by Thursday evening it was running quite happily with 2Gb (I bought this 2Gb memory module if anyone is interested in doing the same).

I've been looking at buying a netbook for a while but found it difficult to choose between the different models available. I eventually bought the Mini 9 from Dell as it doesn't have any moving parts and so should hopefully withstand being bounced around a bit while travelling. This means it doesn't have a fan so doesn't get noisy but more interestingly it has a solid state hard drive (SSD).

If you are salivating over the pictures and description then a word of advice -- even if you want to run Linux on the Mini 9 spend the extra £30 and get the Windows XP version. The reason for this is that you get a 16Gb hard drive instead of an 8Gb one which given the current price of SSDs is a bargain.

I'm sure there will be more postings about the netbook as I find more interesting things to say about it, but already it has proven useful as I'm writing this sat in the Marton Arms Hotel, Thornton-in-Lonsdale without having dragged my large laptop bag along with me!

My Rating: A fantastic netbook that is going to make traveling so much more enjoyable than when taking a full sized laptop.

Mamma Mia! it's WALL-E

Having been looking forward to seeing WALL-E ever since I saw the first trailers, we finally made it to the cinema yesterday to watch it. It was brilliant, even better than I thought it would be.

As we often find it difficult to see all the films we want to at the cinema, we thought we would make the most of yesterday and so saw Mamma Mia! as well. Now I've never been fond of the idea of a musical based on a single band's music. For example, I'm a big Queen fan but have no particular interest in going to see the musical We Will Rock You which uses their music to tell a story. I'm also not a huge ABBA fan (I have been known to dance to their music when drunk, but who hasn't?) so have never really been interested in going to see the stage show version of Mamma Mia! It isn't that I don't like musicals (I've been to see quite a few over the years, including Starlight Express) I just could never really imagine how songs that were written as individual pieces could be crafted together to create a good musical -- I always thought it would seem that the songs were forced to fit the story.

Even when I heard there was going to be a film version of Mamma Mia! I wasn't that interested until I saw the trailer. It looked funny, and the performances of the songs sounded pretty good. So I decided that maybe it would be worth seeing. In fact it was really, really good. Ignoring for a minute the fact that Pierce Brosnan can't really sing, the whole thing worked really well. I won't spoil it for you by giving away any of the plot, but I will say that if you go to see it at the cinema don't leave until the white on black scrolling credits appear otherwise you will miss some hilarious dancing and singing.

So for those who haven't seen it yet here is the trailer:

Click To Play

WALL-E, My Rating: The film lived up to my expectations from the trailers and I'll certainly by buying the DVD later in the year.

Mamma Mia!, My Rating: A truly brilliant film, much better than I would have thought given the premise of turning ABBA songs into a musical.

Mushrooms

Over the years I've owned or used a number of books to help me try and identify fungi that I've come across. Often I've struggled to come to a definite identification and usually felt that the books I've looked at have been lacking in good photos or illustrations.

Take for example this fungi I photographed about 10 feet in the air just outside the churchyard in Kirby Lonsdale.

I couldn't work out what type of fungi it was from the books I had. Eventually after consulting at least two if not more of the fungi books of a friendly blogger I came to the conclusion that it was a porcelain fungus or in Latin Oudemansiella mucida.

During our Honeymoon we took a trip to Dawyck Botanic Garden (more on the garden in later postings). They have a lovely new visitor centre which contains a nature orientated bookshop. Flicking through a book on mushrooms my eye was caught by one of the plates showing a perfect picture of the porcelain fungus -- so close to what I had seen that there was no room for doubt. Of course I now own a copy of said book, Mushrooms by Roger Phillips. I'd certainly recommend anyone who has an interest in mushrooms to buy a copy. For reference here is the photo that caught my eye.

If you want to see more of the photos and to get an idea of the accompanying text then Roger also maintains a very good website devoted to mushrooms.

My Rating: A truly excellent book, the best book on mushrooms I've ever used.

Strange Geography

My confusion about why Notingham Castle and Shrewsburry Abbey both look the same got me thinking about the weird geography seen in other television programmes and films. Strangely I can stay with the theme of Robin Hood for this post, as the geography in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves is exceedingly strange.

Now I know that during the 12th century people were more accustomed to long walks to get places than we are today but even so the distances covered in Robin Hood Prince of Thieves are just silly. Lets start with Robin's journey home at the beginning of the film. We see three scenes of his journey to Loxley after having escaped prison. Firstly he jumps out of a boat onto a fairly recognisable beach. Next he battles Guy of Gisbourne around a solitary sycamore tree, and then finally he arrives at his fathers derelict castle.

As they set off from the beach Robin mentions that they will be eating with his father by nightfall, so obviously the journey to Loxley can't be very far. Wrong. If you wanted to drive from the beach to the sycamore tree and on to the castle seen in the film, then Google Maps suggests that it will take you about 13 hours to drive the approximately 734 miles! The first scene is obviously the Seven Sisters at Dover on the South East coast of England. The scene with the tree is Sycamore Gap on Hadrian's Wall in Northumberland, and the castle is actually Old Wardour Castle in Wiltshire. Even if you didn't want to go via Hadrian's Wall it is still approximately 154 miles from the beech to the castle -- not a walk you are going to manage in a single day, no matter how fit you may be!

The silly geography doesn't stop with just that first 734 mile afternoon stroll. There are many more examples in the film.

For instance, the ford where Robin fights Little John is at Aysgarth Falls in North Yorkshire and about 250 miles from Burnham Beeches in Buckinghamshire where they eventually build their tree top village, although they seem to get there quite quickly after the fight.

All I can think is that as the film was aimed at an international market the director went for nice scenery rather than trying to keep things believable for those of us who know anything about the layout of England.

My Rating: Even with it's strange sense of geography Robin Hood Prince of Thieves is still worth watching for the nice English scenery and Alan Rickman's fantastic portrayal of the Sheriff of Nottingham, although Kevin Costner's attempt at an English accent leaves a lot to be desired.

Review: Loch Lomond for Children in Need

In general I'm not a fan of Children in Need. Don't get me wrong I'm all for raising money for worthy causes, I just think that the build up to the main day, and the evening's TV is always overblown and not very interesting. In recent years they have always had an official single, and for some reason they always choose groups that I have no interest in listening to. This year is no exception, with the official single being the new Spice Girls track -- as if I care!

However, for once, I'm actually interested in something Children in Need related. The Tartan Army (the main fan club of the Scottish national side) decided to help raise money, simply by making use of something they do at every match anyway -- sing Loch Lomond.

As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of Runrig. Whilst they sing and record all their own songs they are also widely known for their rousing rendition of Loch Lomond. So for Children in Need they have released a new version using backing tracks recorded at half time back on October 13th when Scotland beat Ukraine at Hampden Park.

My Rating: It's a fantastic new version of the track, and well worth buying, but the fact that for once it's an interesting way of helping raise money for Children in Need should help. So if you want to hear it and raise money for a worthy cause at the same time, then it is available from iTunes, Amazon and HMV plus some good old fashioned brick-and-mortar stores!

Book Review: The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde

Having mentioned Dodos in the last post I thought I'd review Jasper Fforde's excellent novel The Eyre Affair. This is fact the first in a series of novels centred around the character of Thursday Next who happens to have a pet Dodo, although that isn't really central to the plot of the book.

It is difficult to pigeon hole Jasper Fforde's work, it is an odd blend of crime, science-fiction, fantasy and, in the case of the Thursday Next novels, classical English literature. They really do have to be read to be truly appreciated! A word of warning though if you ever intend to read Brontë's Jane Eyre then read that first as the entire plot line is exposed in The Eyre Affair.

Thursday Next is a policewoman. She doesn't, however, deal with ordinary everyday crimes. She is in fact a literary detective, tracking down "counterfeit Coleridge or a fake Fielding ... arresting the gang who were stealing and selling Samuel Johnson first editions". But when someone starts kidnapping famous characters out of their stories and holding them for ransom Next's job takes an interesting turn.

My Rating: Worth reading just to see a footnoterphone in action!

Book Review: Michael Marshall

This won't be a straightforward book review as I want to point you towards an interesting author, Michael Marshall, rather than a specific book of his. He write what I would describe as conspiracy theory thriller novels, which usually revolve around a select group of people getting away with despicable things. Anyway rather than reviewing a specific book I thought I'd give my favourite quotes from two of his books The Straw Men (the first in a series which also includes The Lonely Dead and Blood of Angels) and The Intruders.

"I like the Internet. Really, I do. Any time I need a piece of shareware or I want to find out the weather in Bogotá ... I’m the first guy to get the modem humming. But as a source of information, it sucks. You got a billion pieces of data, struggling to be heard and seen and downloaded, and anything I want to know seems to get trampled underfoot in the crowd."

"This young man already spent a lot of time alone, and seldom seemed more content than when taking something apart or putting it back together. That was cool, of course, but she hoped it wouldn't be too long before she saw evidence of his first hangover. Man cannot live by coding skills alone, not even in these strange days"

My Rating: The themes of the novels may not be to everyone's tastes but I really enjoyed all four books that I've read.

Film Review: Fracture

My brother bought me the film Fracture for my birthday after I'd said that the trailer for it looked interesting.

I finally managed to find the time to sit down and watch it at the weekend and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it. It reminded me a lot of the John Grisham courtroom novels (such as The Runaway Jury or the Rainmaker). Without giving away any of the plot the film focuses on the game played between the two main characters: Ted Crawford (played by Anthony Hopkins) who has been arrested for shooting his wife and Willy Beachum (played by Ryan Gosling) the prosecutor who is trying to prove the crime occurred.

My one complaint about the film is that it could simply be viewed as a two hour Apple advert. I didn't actually see an iPod at any point in the film (although given my powers of observation I could easily have missed one), however, you couldn't miss the vast number of MacBooks placed prominently in many of the shots. As evidence I give you exhibits A through C:

There were also quite a few shots of videos being watched in QuickTime, although they were not quite as glaring as the MacBooks. I have no problem with subtle product placement in films and TV programmes but this was especially bad. In fact I'd go as far as to say it was worse than the new version of Casino Royale which, whilst a very good film, is basically a very long Sony advert.

My Rating: A truly excellent Apple advert film!