Notice: Use of undefined constant URL_ROOT - assumed 'URL_ROOT' in /mounted-storage/home156/sub039/sc82402-YRMC/classes/Wiki/Controller.php on line 141 Blog - TheDaddy.orgURL_ROOT/blogen-gbCopyright 2013 TheDaddy.orgTue, 21 May 2013 14:57:14 +0100NINA - http://nina.thedaddy.orgWed, 24 Oct 2012 15:49:05 +0100Buddhism for Atheists http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexFirstly I want to say that although I no longer consider myself to be a Buddhist, I still have the greatest respect for Buddhism and still go to classes at my local centre from time to time. I find these greatly helpful in living a happy life because they simply give practical ways of living a more peaceful life as a happy, relaxed and patient person. Who wouldn't want that? They don't push any of the supernatural reincarnation/enlightenment side of things at you and you are free to take as much or as little from their teachings without the judgement you get from several other major religions. Still though, I wanted to go over some of Buddhism's main teachings, and how they can all be taken from atheistic angle and be very beneficial to everyone no matter what you believe. **Reincarnation** What is this beyond living well, having children, passing on the best parts of you to them and leaving the world happy that your legacy will live on. My son is almost three months old and already I find it amazing to look at him and know that he is quite literally half me. When I am gone he and our descendants will carry on, keeping me alive in a very real way. **Karma** Lets face it, if we've done bad things, no matter how much we may deny it to others or pretend we don't care there is a little seed of unsettled guilt placed in our heads. Equally when we do good things, we get a corresponding seed of happy satisfaction. Now I know that when my head is in a happy place I make better decisions, I cope better with tough situations and generally have a more balanced life. However when my head is unsettled I am less calm, more likely to act rashly and can end up creating problems for myself. To me, this is all that karma is about. It's as if my own head is making sure that good actions are rewarded and bad actions are punished. No supernatural forces are needed to ensure that we know right from wrong. **Enlightenment** This is the Buddhist biggie. Train your mind, leave attachment behind and you attain the complete peace of enlightenment, transcending the mortal world. Now of course there can be no atheist equivalent to eternal peace in another plane of reality but perfect happiness and peace of mind area absolutely attainable by anyone. Stay mindful of your emotional state, don't sweat the small stuff and try to maintain perspective on the twists and turns of life and you'll be well on the way. As for transcending the mortal life to a place of complete peace that's easy. If I live a long happy life surrounded by family and friends and watching my son grow up to have a family of his own I know that when my time comes I will leave with a happy and peaceful heart. To me that ticks the box quite happily!Becoming a Father http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexWell my son has just passed two months old, and I'm finally at a point where I look back on the ups and downs of my most life-changing experience ever with a calm and balanced mind. It's been a complete rollercoaster of emotions going from delirious happiness to 'OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE I DONE I'VE RUINED MY LIFE' moments when confronted with evenings of continual screaming and filthy nappies. I'm happy to say though, that I'm now firmly in the camp of the happy feelings and good times. Nothing could have prepared my wife and I for this. No amount of younger siblings, nieces, nephews or evenings babysitting can possible prepare you for the full 24/7 experience of caring for your own child with no option of changing your mind or taking him back to the shop for a refund. There is literally no choice but to stick with it, enjoy the ups, get through the downs and let yourself slowly adjust to your new life. Eight weeks down the road for us we are past the worst of it. He's not yet sleeping through the night but we can get him to sleep about 7pm (he's even getting better at settling himself - only about 10 mins of crying first!) and enjoy some precious adult evening time. We've got into a routine, we know how to calm the tears (most of the time) and I'm starting to forget what it felt like not to have the little guy around. He's turned us into a family :)My Brother http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexI have been inspired by many people throughout my life, but none more so than my big brother Duncan. He was born six years before me so throughout childhood we weren't particularly close; although we of course had great affection for each other we lived in very different worlds. He was beginning high school as I was just out of nursery and as soon as I arrived at high school he was off to university. It was during his time at high school that Duncan fell in with the wrong crowd, began smoking and drinking heavily and found his studies to be less and less important. I was too young to understand what was happening, I just knew that there was much more tension in the house, my parents would be angry or distant for much of the time and Duncan was in the house as little as possible. Ultimately university didn't work out so Duncan bought a small house and ended up working for the council. His drinking continued to a point where he was really losing his grip, we tried to support him as a family but one Christmas, after enduring days of his drunken ramblings I snapped and told him in a rather less then diplomatic way what I thought of his recent behaviour. Looking back I absolutely regret speaking to him in that way but I genuinely feel that it wasn't the true Duncan that I was addressing, it was instead this shadow of the former him that was being controlled by alcohol. We didn't speak for a few months after that, but in the intervening time he quit drinking and began studying for a degree with the Open University. By the time we met up and buried the hatchet he was like a new man - a little battle-scarred admittedly but a sober, responsible brother with a renewed enthusiasm for life. He changed the whole way he lived his life; gaining promotions at work, taking up drum lessons, developing an interest in amateur photography and massively expanding his social life. A year later he'd quit smoking too. He even found the time for a regular curry night with his brother! For him to turn his life around so suddenly and so dramatically took a strength that most people only ever dream of having. I will forever be so proud of him for that. When my wife fell pregnant he was the first member of the family we told and he was thrilled about the prospect of becoming an uncle. He came to visit us at the first opportunity, bringing with him a huge stuffed bear (which to this day is still bigger than my child) and suggesting that he be referred to as 'Uncle Duncle'. We had never really discussed his thoughts of starting a family of his own but it seemed to me like although he would love to have that aspect to his life, he needed to find peace within himself before sharing his world with another to that extent. What I did know however is that when my child arrived it would be so showered with love from Duncan that it would be like having a second father. On the day of our twenty week scan we discovered that we would be having a boy, and again Duncan was the first person I called (from the hospital car park!). He was delighted of course, but even more so when I told him that we'd like to give our son "Duncan" as a middle name. He actually had to hang up the phone because he was welling up in the middle of a crowded office but then proceeded to send a series of gushing text messages expressing his delight and honour. It was the best reaction we could have hoped for and I actually found myself becoming rather excited for him that after all the twists and turns of his life he would be able to help us shape this new life into a really amazing little person. It was about six weeks later that I was working at my desk when I received an email from one of Duncan's colleagues saying he hadn't been in work for a few days and they were worried. I hadn't heard from him for a week or so (which wasn't unusual) and after trying his home phone and mobile numbers I called our mother, who lived fairly near to him, to ask if she had heard anything. She said she hadn't and immediately jumped into the car with her spare key to his house. The details here are not necessary and need not be shared, but suffice to say that normal boring rainy Monday rapidly turned into the worst day of my life. Suddenly, without any warning my brother had left this world never to return. He would never get to meet his nephew or watch him grow. All my son would know of Duncan would be the photographs, the stories and the big teddy bear - the only present he'll ever have from his dear uncle. We said our final goodbyes to Duncan two weeks later on another rainy Monday morning. Then the hardest task of all had to begin. I wont call it moving on, as to me that term implies forgetting about what has happened and consigning it firmly to history. Rather we had to begin the process of simply functioning again. My son would be arriving in three months and there was no way to slow him down, so for his sake if nothing else my wife and I had to bring back some sense of normality. I really struggled at first, and thanks to an extremely unsympathetic attitude in the company I worked for I ultimately quit my job to start my own business. It's a hard road to take, and I do find myself worrying about where my next payment will come from, but I try to remember the strength that Duncan had and use that to spur me on. I don't believe that he is "looking down on me" from any sort of afterlife, but I do believe that he would want me to live a happy, productive life and make sure that all the lessons he gave me are put to good use. So here's to you Duncan. You were stronger than I'll ever be, had a heart as big as a planet and the world is seriously diminished without you. Rest well xxGoing Freelance http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexThis month I've taken the biggest step ever in my career. I've gone freelance. I am now 100% responsible for finding the clients, managing the projects, writing the code and ensuring that there is a pay packet at the end of every month. It's scary but the most liberating feeling ever! I took this decision for a number of reasons: **Work-life balance** My son is now almost 8 weeks old and I really want to make sure I see him grow up. Working for myself and not being fixed to a 9-5 life I can balance my time around him, remaining as flexible as possible. I'm free to spend time with him in the week and make up the time on the evenings or weekends. **Enjoyment** Let's face it, most of us spend half our waking lives working so it really needs to be something we enjoy! I know that not everyone has the opportunity to start their own business but if you stay in a job you hate for the simple reason of a 'safe' paycheck makes for a pretty rubbish life. Of course family and financial commitments have to be the number one priority and you need to have the marketable skills and certifications to make your business a success. Don't take any unnecessary gambles with your security but if those boxes are ticked then there may be little standing in your way, **Plain old ambition** I want to lose the safety net and have the opportunity to make a success of my own business. Building a business from scratch puts my fortune firmly in my own hands and no-one else can hold me back. Although it's early days yet, I'd certainly give the following bits of advice to anyone thinking of going freelance: ##Make sure you have at least three months rent/mortgage payments in the bank just in case.## ##Have at least a couple of decent clients lined to make sure you can hit the ground running. Spending your first few weeks waiting for the phone to ring is not a good way to start.## ##Have as many potential revenue streams as possible. Different clients, personal projects, additional part time work etc should hopefully all add up to both a decent income and a decent safety net in case one or two don't work out.## I'll let you know how it goes...Religious Intolerance http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexWith the 9/11 anniversary just passed, fanatical american pastors wanting to burn korans, outcry over the 'ground zero mosque' (which is [[http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/23/charlie-brooker-ground-zero-mosque|neither]]), fighting in the Middle East etc. I just wanted to take a moment to express my own opinion about religious intolerance - particularly in the main three western religions. Christianity (and all its different sects), Judaism and Islam all worship the same god. You emphasise different prophets and worship in different ways but you're all trying to show your love and respect to the same overlord. Agreed? Now if I had three children, one of whom showed me love by bringing me chicken wings, one by bringing me pie and the other by bringing me a pint of quality real ale I would love them all the same. No child would be right or wrong with his/her choice of token of affection, as the actual token doesn't matter, simply the sentiment behind it. Exactly the same applies to religions - no faith is more or less correct in it's form of worship, just different. So let's stop all the fighting!Atheism != Nihilism http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexI was raised by Buddhist parents and spent most of my teenage years wondering about what religious ideas were out there, what made sense to me given my lifelong scientific inclination and how their ideas govern the way you live your life. After years of agnosticism and no small amount of time spent in the Buddhist world I finally reached a point where I could no longer try to rationalise any ideology based upon any form of supernatural beliefs. Yeah there is plenty that science has yet to understand fully but the basic laws of physics definitely preclude overlords, creationism, heaven etc. Now I've heard many ridiculous ideas about the nature of Atheism over the years, the top ones being: **"Atheists don't believe in anything"** I think you'll find that's Nihilism. Atheists simply don't believe in supernatural religious ideas. **"Atheists can't have a moral code"** What? just because we can't be scared by any sort of 'god is watching you' ideas doesn't mean we don't know right from wrong. Equally when you see the scale of war, pain and persecution brought by followers of one faith upon another you can never claim that religion in itself provides any kind of moral code. Good and bad exist everywhere. Deal with it. **"Atheists have nothing to live for"** So because we accept that when we die we are gone for good we must therefore live out our lives in abject misery knowing we're doomed? Screw that! I'm here, I'm healthy and there is a whole load of living I want to do. In fact I think that Atheists can have a much greater appreciation of life exactly because they know they only get one shot. I actually prefer to refer to myself as a Humanist rather an an Atheist. To me the word 'Atheist' defines me by what I don't believe, whereas the word 'Humanist' defines me by what I do believe in - life, love and the goodness of people :)IMac Apps For the Discerning Developer http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexSo after years of straddling the line betwixt Windows and Linux - both loving and hating each in equal measure - my company offered to upgrade my computer to a brand spanking new 24" IMac. She so beautiful. From the day it arrived at work it was less than two months before I'd saved my pennies and bought one for home too and now I'll never go back! Macs in general though are rather a chimera of ideas from the computing world. They are Unix based and as such are extremely powerful and efficient with resources, yet like Windows the hardware support is excellent (kinda easy to do that when you know exactly what hardware you will be running on eh Apple?). While there are many apps for OSX that are free, it's very much more a premium platform that requires you to put your hand in your pocket for the best apps. So here is my rundown of the best apps for working efficiently (and fairly cheaply) on OSX. ====[[http://www.barebones.com/products/bbedit/|BBEdit]]==== Being a big believer in [[http://www.textpad.com|Textpad]] under Windows I found this a much more intuitive application than [[http://macromates.com/|Textmate]]. Lots of available plugins, great Subversion integration, nicely customisable highlighting and indentation. In short, everything I need from a decent editor and although at 5 it's one of the more expensive editors Id say it's worth it. ====[[http://macrabbit.com/cssedit/|CSSEdit]]==== Live previewing of CSS in a Safari-integrated browser. Plus lots of controls to speed up your work and keep your styling valid. A bargain at .95. ====[[http://www.charcoaldesign.co.uk/shades|Shades]]==== Although I love my Mac, one of the first issues I had with it was the screen brightness. Even at the lowest setting I'd have a headache at the end of a full day's work. Enter Shades - a free app that can take your brightness level right down to zero and will even work independently on seperate monitors. ====[[http://www.islayer.com/apps/istatmenus/|IStat Menus]]==== Enables you to put a vast amount of system information on your main menu bar. CPU load, memory usage, network traffic, disk space, temperature... this app has it all. Plus it's free and version two has recently been released which is fully functional in Snow Leopard. ===[[http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/|Size Up]]=== For .99 you can bag yourself an app that allows you unprecedented control over your windows. With a couple of key presses you can stack and tile windows in every possible configuration. It takes a little time to setup/learn the shortcut keys but when you're done you'll wonder how you ever lived without it. ====[[http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html|MAMP]]==== A free application which, when run will launch a self contained Apache/MySQL/PHP web server complete with PHPMyAdmin and a host of other tools. Even if you have another web server set up on your computer this will work away quite happily, avoiding any conflicts. It even comes with a neat little widget for turning it on and off. ====[[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/9796|Keyfixer]]==== A Firefox addon that fixes your home and end keys to work properly on OSX. 'Properly' meaning that 'home' takes you to the start of a line and 'end' takes you to the end. No more of this top/bottom of the page rubbish!Why Pets Should Be Adopted http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexBeing an animal lover and living with two excellent rabbits and two ridiculous guinea pigs that my wife and I found at rescue centres I have very strong moral feelings on the benefits of adopting from rescue centres rather than purchasing from pet shops. The basic argument is quite simple really - when there are thousands of animals in rescue centres throughout the UK that desperately need a loving home, why would you pay a breeder to bring more into the world for profit? In addition the treatment of the animals is vastly different. Rescue centres take in unloved animals, often unwanted pets, more often taken from breeders that have been closed down by the RSPCA for neglect or mistreatment, and care for them with love until they find a new home. Pet shops (Pets at Home is a prime example of this) have no regard for the welfare of their animals, they simply want to turn a profit on them as quickly as possible. I've seen animals experiencing terrible neglect, animals that are clearly unwell (wet bum and scabs around the nose are classic signs, along with evidence of an upset stomach) and animals that are far too young to be sold. In Pets at Home recently I saw a litter of baby rabbits that couldn't have been more than two weeks old that were all up for sale. The shock of being separated from their siblings and thrust into a new home will have likely killed half of them! Finally have you ever wondered about where many of the more interesting breeds come from? Bulldogs, pug dogs, long-haired guinea pigs and many many more breeds have been created by people who wanted an animal to look a certain way without any regard for its health in the process. Let us not forget the amount of inbreeding needed to produce these breeds in the first place and then maintain purebred descendants. Inbreeding leads to a wide variety of health problems - joint problems such as arthritis and rheumatism being very common. I have adopted two long haired guinea pigs which have been bred so that their hair never stops growing meaning they must be trimmed every couple of months or it will cause serious problems. To breed an animal to be unable to care for itself and need the care of a human just to live is truly awful.Help Needed http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexWe have quite a big environmental conscience here at TheDaddy.org. The planet is such an amazing place (and of course the only home we have) and it's in such a fragile state at the moment that everyone needs to start doing their bit to protect it. As such, our newest venture is [[http://www.futurefootprint.co.uk|Future Footprint]], a site designed to help inform people of what is going on with the environment, its biggest threats and practical ways in which you can help. Also we're really enjoying building a 'mythbusting' section which aims to bust all of those ridiculous myths about the environment that seem to serve only to help ignorant people ignore the realities of climate change. So, what we really need to help get this site going is more content. If you have an opinion on climate change, want to critique a few governmental policies, comment on current issues, provide some useful advice to living a more eco-friendly life or talk about any other related issue then we want to hear from you. You can get in touch through the [[http://www.futurefootprint.co.uk|Future Footprint]] contact form or emailing info [at] futurefootprint.co.ukProtect Your Privacy http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexA new company called 118800 will be going live next week with its new directory service that allows anyone to contact them with your name and general location and get transferred to your mobile phone. They claim to have over 15 million mobile numbers on the system already. Now I should point out that they actually will never give out actual numbers to anyone, and as the recipient of the call, you can decide whether or not you want to speak with the caller. Even so they are already taking serious heat from privacy campaigners about the implications of this service and its inherent invasion of privacy. However worry not, you are able to 'go ex-directly' and take your number your of their system on [[http://www.118800.co.uk/removeme/remove.html|this page]]. While you're at it I heartily recommend registering with the [[http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/ctps/number_type.html|Telephone Preference System]] and the [[http://www.mpsonline.org.uk/mpsr/mps_choosetype.html|Mail Preference System]] to avoid marketing calls to your land line and junk mail. They're not 100% effective but definitely make a big difference. Now if only there was some way to do this for emails...Top Tips for Coding With Currency http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexAs anyone who's ever made an E-Commerce system knows, money is everything. No, really if you don't get your financial sums right then you can't hope to build a successful online business (and may find yourself creating potential legal issues with the tax man). So here's a rundown of the top tips I can give for making your financial calculations that bit easier. ===Always Work In Minor Units=== I can't stress enough how much this helps in terms of accuracy, rounding and speed. Working in major units may look better to you as you don't have to reformat the numbers to display them but I hope I can make the case here for minor units. **Integer arithmetic is much much faster than floating point arithmetic** Remember that even a single decimal place makes a number a float as far as your computer is concerned and all the processor overheads that go along with them suddenly arrive. I know it's not a lot slower but in a complex financial system it all adds up believe me. **Floating point arithmetic can get it's sums wrong.** Don't believe me? Then pull up a Ruby console and try this: %% a = "69.54".to_f b = a * 100 b.ceil %% Gives 6955 instead of 6954. This is because the limitations of floating point arithmetic have caused something like 0.0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001 to be added to 69.54. I spend a good 4 hours chasing this bug which manifested itself as a 1p discrepancy. **Trailing zeros can cause problems for major units.** Think of trying to pass round £10.00 or £1.10 in major units. Storing it as a float you would keep losing the trailing zeros and would find yourself having to sprintf all over the place. I've seen plenty of systems in my time that store prices as decimal strings to get round these issues! There are of course various decimal formats that can be used (decimal is a data type in MySQL and BigDecimal has been introduced in Ruby on Rails) but when it comes down to it, these are just wrappers around either floats or stings and majorly sub-optimal for the other reasons given. ===Freeze the Exchange Rate=== If your business works in pounds but you allow payments to be made in Euros then with every payment you need to store the current exchange rate with it. Exchange rates change by the day and if you don't know exactly what rate you get for your transactions then you can kiss goodbye to any sort of accurate profit calculations. ===Rounding - Pick a Direction and Stick With It=== Often you will need to apply discounts, add markup etc and have to perform percentage calculations. If you are working in minor units this should be the only time (in normal day to day operations) that you ever have to handle fractions of pence. You will make your life so much simpler if, for all these calculations you decide the direction to round and stick with it. Do you want to keep the extra for yourself or be a nice guy and let the customer keep it? That's what the decision comes down to. If you don't have consistency in this you really will find yourself spending days chasing 1p discrepancies. From a coding point of view I tend to round down as preference because (as I demonstrate above) floating point arithmetic can get it wrong sometimes and, as it just wipes out everything after the decimal point, a 'floor' function is much more reliable that a 'ceil'. ===Use a Pre-Filter on your Data Submissions=== Of course your customers are always going to want to work in major units - no-one wants to see prices in pence splashed all over your website and it's much more intuitive to type major units into form fields. What I like to do is put a pre-filter on all input coming into my back end system (so in Rails you would run the filter on 'params' or in PHP you would run it on '$_REQUEST') which pattern matches any string monetary amount (remember, all form submission values come through as strings) in a major unit and converts it to an integer minor unit. In Rails it's in the application controller and looks like this: %% def filter_units (input) if [Array, Hash, HashWithIndifferentAccess].include?(input.class) input.each do key, value #recurse through the data structure input[key] = self.filter_units(value) end #match the string format for a major unit elsif not input.nil? and input.match(/^d+.dd)$/) #convert to a minor unit integer (input.to_f * 100.0).to_i else #return the value unchanged input end end %% This also has the added benefit of validating monetary amounts - if a monetary field doesn't hit your back end as an integer then you know it has failed validation.The Benefits of RESTful Development http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexREST or Representational State Transfer development is quite simply web development with controller functions geared around the four HTTP request types (or verbs) - POST, GET, PUT and DELETE, equating these (classically but by no means exclusively) to the CRUD operations Create, Read, Update and Delete respctively. Once you start developing in REST the advantages of this quickly become clear: * Restricting your controller functionality in this way naturally prevents you from building bloated controllers * It ensures that the layout of your code doesn't become too obfuscated * It allows you to make calls without having to specify your controller action explicitly in the request (as you do in a normal HTTP GET request). Basically RESTful development is all about nouns, and a complete RESTful design will have the entire functionality of the website broken down into nouns that can be manipulated exclusively by CRUD operations. Each noun will be a controller (and often but by no means always it will also be a database model) and each controller will have up to four functions to represent each CRUD action. For example take very simple online CMS with a database of users who can log in and change the text on various pages. A RESTful design might look something like this: Noun - 'user' POST - Create new user GET - Read user details PUT - Update user DELETE - Delete user Noun - 'page_text' POST - Create new text GET - Read text PUT - Update text DELETE - Delete text As you can see, RESTful design where the nouns are models is very very straightforward and logical. But what about allowing the users to log in? We don't have a 'login' model in the same way as the users and page_texts, but we can represent the action in a very similar way: Noun - 'login' POST - Log a user in (create a 'login') DELETE - Log a user out (delete a 'login') And if we wanted the ability to preview new text before saving it: Noun - 'preview' POST - Show (create) a 'preview' Now everyone knows how to send GET and POST requests but what about PUT and DELETE. Despite being part of the HTTP protocol since day one they are surprisingly under-used. All modern server-side languages should accept these as valid HTTP methods but in practice the PUT method is rarely used for an update operation as this can be distinguished from a create operation simply by the presence of a key relating to the noun that will be updated: POST request with no key - Create GET request with key - Read POST data with key - Update DELETE request with key - Delete It really is that simple. It doesn't take much thought to break down any operation into one or more nouns with one or more of the CRUD operations being performed on it. Simply remember that a noun does not necessarily have to represent a database model and it does not necessarily need all the CRUD operations to be defined in its controller and you'll be off programming RESTfully in no time.How Much is Enough? http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexBeing the ripe old age of 28 I thought it was finally time for me to start looking at the amount I drink and how that fits in with the 'government recommended levels'. My issue with these levels when I was younger was that they always seemed to amount to pretty much half a pint per fortnight which was just plain ridiculous and caused me (and I'm sure half the young people in the country) to completely ignore them. My feeling was (and remains to a degree) that if you want to have any hope of people meeting a target like that, it at least has to be a realistic one! I'm the sort of man who works hard, has a busy life, gets to the gym two or three times a week and enjoys a couple of beers when he gets home to help relax and put the day behind him. I'll also happily go to the pub a couple of times a week and drink three or four pints. Most people would say that's fairly normal - I haven't been properly drunk in nearly a year, I just drink to relax, socialise and because I plain like the taste. However apparently this amounts to an average of about 32 units of alchohol per week, 50% above the recommended level for men. Really? I don't feel like a booze-hound... I don't feel the great compulsion to hang around street corners causing fights... I've not lost bladder control in well over a decade... Yet still, the numbers don't lie - You're looking at a recommended limit of 21 units per week as a man and only 14 as a woman (coupled with the reported increased risk of breast cancer for pretty much any drinking). In real terms for men that's less than a beer a night on weekdays and three on weekend nights and for women it's a large glass of wine per night. You know what though, despite being a chunk less than what I drink at the moment, it no longer seems unrealistic. Keeping within the limits I can still have a beer when I get home after a long day, I can still go out at weekends. I'm not a student any more and don't have crazy parties or pub-crawls every other day so I can look after my health without really changing my lifestyle. That has to be a good thing :) For more information Bupa has a [[http://www.bupa.co.uk/health_information/asp/healthy_living/lifestyle/alcohol/alctest.asp|weekly units calculator]] to figure out your own consumption.The Anthropic Principle http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexSo I was reading a very interesting article recently about the 'Anthropic Cosmological Principle'. It sounds very complicated but it really isn't. It basically says that the reason that all the conditions on Earth, the Solar System and the Universe seem so perfectly tuned to support our life is that were they not, we would not be around to marvel at them. Why is the gravity on Earth enough to keep us on the ground and encourage sufficient muscle growth but not enough to crush us? Because were it not, we wouldn't be around to ask the question. Why is the Earth contained within a system containing two gassy giants which act as vacuum cleaners for meteors, protecting the Earth from continuous impacts? Because were it not, we wouldn't be around to ask the question. Why is water in its liquid state on the majority of the Earths surface? Because were it not, we wouldn't be around to ask the question. You catching the idea? All these facts and many others along similar lines (right type of star, sufficient ozone layer, nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere etc) are often quoted by Creationists as --proof-- that some sort of overlord exists. Otherwise they say, the probability of all these conditions combining by chance to make a planet capable of sustaining life is so minuscule as to be disregarded. The presence of a creator overlord is much more likely! Leading on from this is the Weak Anthropic Principle: --"Weak Anthropic Principle (WAP) is the observed values of all physical and cosmological quantities are not equally probable, but they take on values restricted by the requirement that there exist sites where carbon-based life can evolve and by the requirement that the Universe be old enough for it to have already done so. We should emphasize once again that the enormous improbability of the evolution of intelligent life in general and Homo sapiens in particular does not mean we should be amazed we exist at all. This would make as much sense as Elizabeth II being amazed she is Queen of England. Even though the probability of a given Briton being monarch is about 10^^-8^^, someone must be. Only if there is a monarch is it possible for the monarch to calculate the improbability of her particular existence. Similarly, only if an intelligent species does evolve is it possible for its members to ask how probable it is for an intelligent species to evolve. Both are examples of WAP self-selection in action." -Barrow, John and Tipler, Frank (1986): The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Clarendon Press. (Slightly edited)-- It is an amazingly insightful principle despite its simplicity and strangely is one that seems to be quoted by scientists and creationists in fairly equal measure. This, of course is implying that creationists can never be true scientists. Well, to call a spade a spade they can't. Not in any branch of science involving cosmology, biology or anthropology anyways. I have no time for a theory so obviously contradictory with every modern scientific finding. Creationism was a theory that conveniently explained the universe without requiring any thought whatsoever which was necessary for earlier civilisations who didn't have the tools to carry out complicated scientific studies. Now that we have advanced further in science we do not need any simple, convenient explanations when we can figure out the real ones for ourselves. The reason that the Weak Anthropic Principle is quoted by Creationists as 'evidence' of a higher being is the mention of the values of physical and cosmological quantities being restricted to those that are conducive to the development and sustainability of life. This gives the impression of some supernatural outside force guiding these quantities to allow us to survive and thrive. This is __not__ the idea behind the Weak Anthropic Principle. The principle is merely explaining that the reason that these quantities --appear-- to be restricted for our benefit is that were they not as they are, we would not be here to comment on them and wonder why not. We only need to look five miles directly above us to find an infinite void, which is very hostile to the development and sustainability of life. Our Earth, Mars and one of the moons of Jupiter are arguably the only places in the Solar System that contain or once contained life. Earth is the only one to contain intelligent life. Thousands of stars in the galaxy have been examined by astronomers and still only a dozen or so have been deemed capable of supporting life on an orbiting planet if indeed such a planet exists. Currently the primary criteria for such a star are the type of star and 'wobble' - when a star seems to be wobbling from side to side, this must be caused by the orbit of a very large planetoid which is itself exerting a gravitational pull on the star. As described earlier, such a planetoid is necessary to act as a vacuum cleaner and attract much of the stray meteors away from life-capable planet to give that life a chance to develop. Anyway I digress. Within say, a couple of hundred light years (the distance light can travel in two hundred years) of Earth (I have no exact figures but I expect the number to be even greater) there are a dozen systems which could in theory support a planet that is itself capable of supporting life if many other conditions are also fulfilled. We only know of one for sure - us. Chances are we are the only life within this range. So within a volume of space marked out with a radius of two hundred light years there is one little piece of rock with a circumference of just 24,000 miles (light can travel seven and a half times this distance in a second!) that contains intelligent life. Now if we think of the volume of the Earth as a percentage of the volume of this area of space, it is very hard to imagine it as anything but 0%. To any sensible degree of rounding (and I'm talking hundreds of decimal places), 0% of the universe is capable of sustaining life. Given the vastness of space even if a planet containing intelligent life orbited every star in the universe, the proportion of the universe capable of sustaining life could still not be seen as anything other than 0%. Now think about the probability nebula (from which stars and planets etc. are all formed) existing within our given volume of space, multiply by the probability of a star such as ours forming from this nebula, multiply by the probability of a very large vacuum cleaner planet forming around it, multiply again by the probability of a smaller planet forming at a distance from the star so that its water would be primarily in liquid form etc. The end result will be a very, very small number indeed (you don't need a degree in cosmology here, we're working rough), but will it be smaller than our value for the proportion of the universe that is capable of sustaining life? I doubt it. In fact the values may very well be quite close to one another. Increasing the values greatly for the means of explanation we could say that there is a one-in-a-trillion chance of an environment capable of sustaining life forming from in the given volume of space and such environments exist in a trillionth of that space.Less Obvious Heroes Part One http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexOver the next few posts I want to talk about some of my heroes, but rather than pick someone obvious like Darwin or Hendrix I thought I would focus on some less obvious choices that might be of interest. I have embedded links to the Wikipedia page of each person if you wish to read further. **Steve Wozniak** First up is co-founder of Apple Steve Wozniak. I would like to quantify my admiration of him by saying that I am by no means an Apple fanboy. While I think they have created some great products I generally prefer Ubuntu to OSX for my home machine. Woz as he likes to be known was the technical genius to Steve Jobs marketing brain. A child prodigy who was reading and improving design schematics of mainframe computers while he was still at school, Woz designed the entirety of the Apple II himself. To put this achievement in context; when the Apple II was released a home computer was something costing thousands of dollars that came as a box of components that you had to solder together yourself and had a row of metal switches and a row of blinking lights as the only means of control. By comparison the Apple II had a keyboard and a screen with colour graphics, (The first ever to have this now standard layout) was easy to program and came assembled in a nice plastic box. It was rather like Ford skipping the model T and replacing the horse and cart with a Mondeo. The II was such a classic design that it stayed on the market from 1977 to 1993. Single handedly inventing the home computer is achievement enough, but it's the attitude that Woz brings to his work that I'm most interested in. Despite being a billionaire Woz has always been more focussed on being the best engineer he could be and having a laugh while he did it. His sense of fair play led to him giving millions of pounds of his personal Apple stock to long term employees. When a serious plane accident nearly cost him his life he revaluated his goals, walked away from Apple and set out to live his life the way he wanted to. He went back to college and completed his degree, organised huge open air concerts even though they would loose millions because he wanted to organise cool gigs for people to go to and taught kids about computers while donating hundreds of computers to schools. Most important to me is his belief that to be a good engineer is one of the most important things a person can be and that the development of new technology is one of the most significant ways to benefit mankind.Coalition Spending Review http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexNow this isn't going to be one of those blog posts that'll join the thousands comprehensively slating the spending review in every aspect. Tough decisions had to be made and they were. Did George Osborne get it completely right? No. But he was given the insanely difficult task of cleaning up the mess in which Labour left this country's economy and that meant serious cuts that wouldn't please everyone. Being part of the 'squeezed middle' myself, with a wife who works in education I will be immediately on the firing line for several of the cuts. Am I angry about this? No. However strong the cuts are they are many times better than our country becoming completely insolvent. That would have major consequences for everyone in the country, result in many more lob losses and set us back decades. ====Banks==== I believe that the first move George Osborne should have made is look at selling off the government stakes in the banks we, as taxpayers, had to bail out during the economic crisis. I'm well aware that there are many arguments surrounding return on investment that can be used against this idea but when you factor in the scale of the deficit interest payments we are facing, losing such a chunk of the deficit in one go would be a vastly beneficial move. My second banking point relates to people are shouting about how the banks got us into this mess so they should get us out of it (quite a big Labour point this as they are trying desperately to shift their part of the blame). Definitely we need to place strong taxes and levies on the banks but we need to remember that if we squeeze the banks too hard they will simply move their operations abroad where governments are more lenient on them resulting is thousands upon thousands of job losses. I find bankers salaries and bonuses as offensive as anyone, but we have to be realistic about the impact of knee-jerk penalties. ====Tuition Fees==== Tuition fees are high enough already. The cap should not have been removed. The government is in danger of creating a new class system in higher education where only the richest people can afford to go to the best universities, or even go to university at all. Many of the large universities are among the most inefficient, mis-managed businesses in the country and sufficient savings could be made via efficiency audits, and closer governmental regulation. Don't make the students pay for the failings of institutions that have become complacent and sloppy due to lack of regulation. ====Child Benefit==== The child benefit threshold makes sense to me. When you're earning well over forty thousand pounds you shouldn't be receiving benefits taken, in part, from the taxes of those on much lower salaries. However what should have been done is make the threshold based on total household income, not the income of individual workers. We should not have a system in place where a single parent earning forty five thousand pounds loses their benefits but a family with two parents both earning forty thousand pounds each get to keep theirs. ====Military==== Trident renewal has been pushed back which is a massive liberal win. It will save billions over this parliament and hopefully allow the time required for those in power to realise it's a cold war relic and should not be part of a modern military. The other cuts in the military arguably do go a little too far. I'm a lover, not a fighter but I am behind the forces fighting for the freedom of the people of Afghanistan and the safety of those in Northern Ireland. I honestly doubt that we will ever have, as the tabloids keep claiming, aircraft carriers without any aircraft, but the losses are sizable. I say get rid of Trident and give those saving back to the rest of the military. ====Science and the NHS==== Both science and the NHS have had their funding ringfenced for the duration of this parliament, but will be subject to efficiency reviews. I think that's the right decision. Although the budgets won't rise in line with inflation they have got off lightly compared to many services. The NHS provides a great benefit to anyone living in this country and it is taken for granted by far too many. Investment in science is key to pushing our country forward - we have so many brilliant minds and institutions, we would be doing ourselves a disservice to allow this to slip.Lib Dems: Not Just Electoral Reform http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexThe key agenda people know the Lib Dems for is electoral reform. We want to make the voting system fairer, give every person in the country a fairer say in how they are government and make sure that the people sat in the house of commons are the ones wanted by the majority of the country. That is not the case at the moment but will hopefully be so in time for the next general election. But please do not be fooled into thinking that electoral reform is our one and only agenda. The fight for the end of Trident got a great boost when Lib Dem pressure helped the treasury decide to make the MoD pay the bill for Trident. The cost of Trident represents over half of the MoD's annual budget and this decision will the be key catalyst for intensive scrutiny of the costs involved with Trident. Of course the MoD are arguing passionately against this decision claiming that the bill should be paid by the government as Trident is a matter of national security (prompting the question of what aspects of MoD work aren't a matter of national security!) but so long as the decision sticks, we should finally get a true cost vs benefit analysis. The MoD will be much less inclined to vomit billions of their own budget on a largely pointless enterprise. I realise some may strongly disagree with that last point but I am strongly of the belief that with the size of nuclear stockpiles held by our key allies, there is literally no benefit to us having out own subs sat on the ocean floor. David Cameron would happily take all the credit for the policies encompassed within his 'Big Society' drive but within that you'll find many Lib Dem policies on educational reform, welfare and taxation. Zero tax on earnings up to 10k, the pupil premium to target support to more disadvantaged areas, pension reform... it's all happening. Also lets not forget the tempering of Tory policies going on the whole time. Do you think we're going to allow any of their old fashioned right-wing "let's help the rich get richer" policies without a fight? No chanceWhy I'm a Liberal http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexI've always voted in our elections. There are so many people around the world fighting for the right to a say in how they are governed that I never want to take our democracy for granted. I've also always voted Lib Dem. Now I've not always been greatly interested in politics but the one thing I've always felt is that a true three party system would be extremely beneficial for Britain. For too long Labour and the Tories have rested easy, thinking that no other parties are worth worrying about, they just need to argue with each other and ignore everyone else. This attitude is both completely counterproductive for themselves and leads them to ignore the voice of an increasing proportion of the population. With a three party system, there would be no room for this complacency to develop - the simple knee-jerk reaction of Labour disagreeing with everything the Tories say and vice-versa wouldn't work anymore. Other voices would be heard and rather than the childish squabbling we are used to, parliament could become a much more productive place. Ok, so this might be a bit of an idealistic viewpoint and I'm well prepared for people to disagree with me on it but even just to calalyse a drop in the complacency and bickering of the two old parties, few can deny that a true three party system would bring some benefit. To my mind the term 'Clegg Fever' was thrown around far too much in my opinion during the election. Belief in a strong leader who inspires confidence and gives hope of real change in our country shouldn't be dismissed as 'fever', it was simply a widespread (and long overdue) gain of faith. We have the leadership and the policies to be taken seriously. Of course the election didn't bring about the results we were hoping for. The new found confidence in the Liberals didn't translate into more seats in parliament yet there was not enough confidence in Labour or the Tories to give them a majority. What then happened was historic - after some intense negotiation, we ended up with five seats in the cabinet as part of the new coalition government. Some say we 'sold out', 'did a deal with the devil' and other comments that I won't repeat on a public blog but I say we took the opportunity to put the Liberal voice right at the heart of the government, get policies heard and no longer sit on the sidelines. The election proved beyond a doubt how strong the voices of the country are, and the influence we have over Westminster. Political apathy is down and change is happening. It's an exciting time to get involved and that is exactly what I decided to do. So I joined the Liberal Democrats. Sure we didn't get all the policies we would have liked, but we got some key ideas such as political reform and fairer taxation. I would have loved to see Trident scrapped, proportional representation brought in without the need for a referendum and immediate plans to remove troops from Iraq (I'd love to say Afganistan too but they simply aren't ready for that yet) but we have to remember that we are still a minority voice in the coalition. We got a very good deal given the relative numbers of seats held in parliament and these missing policies are exactly the reason why the Liberals need all the support they can get. The creation of the coalition government only means we need to fight harder for these policies as we finally have a chance of making them happen. Our voices will be heard.The Coalition Government http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/indexThe election result came as no great shock to me I have to say. Labour were clearly directionless and drifting without a strong leader, and had plunged our financial system into what can only be described as chaos. The conservatives, despite what I may think of some of their more right-wing policies, had a strong leader and were offering a great deal of new thinking on the problems of Britain. And the Liberal Democrats again had a very strong leader and some brave new policies but were still suffering from long being third place in the polls and trying hard to overcome the 'a vote for the Lib Dems is a wasted vote' mentality that has been so popular. So the votes were clear - the country wanted Labour out but weren't a hundred percent sure they wanted the Conservatives in. If the Liberal Democrats chose to take a side then a majority government could be formed which would leave the country with solid leadership and give the Liberal Democrats an unprecedented level of power within the government. So they went for it. And I'm very glad they did. Many have criticised Nick Clegg for 'selling us out' but look at the options he had in front of him; become a core part of the government with several Lib Dem cabinet ministers beside him and key policies being brought in, or walk away with his party and policies, with little power to bring the changes we voted for. To me it was a complete no-brainer of a decision and gives the next election a greatly levelled playing field. It can no longer be said that Britain simply has a two party governmental system. The Liberals now have their strongest voice for decades and believe me, over the next five years, it shall be used!Top Ten Unix Commands That Never Made It http://www.thedaddy.org/blog/index**sudon't** - refuses to run a command as root **mcdir** - creates a directory that's never as good as it looks on the poster and is 90% cow toenail yet you keep going back for more **assassinate** - like 'kill' but will take out the specified process with a long range sniper rifle during some high profile public ceremony **echo** - runs a command over and over getting slightly quieter each time **choon** - changes the owner of a really good MP3 **ps orcs** - lists all the orcs currently resident in your computer **dog** - like 'cat' but doesn't work until you throw it a stick **p45** - alias of 'sudo rm -rf /' **grape** - performs a text search but gives a little wine as it does so **toe** - like 'finger' but a little smellier