Neil Hopcroft

As it looks like I’ll have a little more time on my hands in a couple of weeks, I thought I’d try to pick up some of the blue-sky thinking I was doing before I got stuck in the now. Theres plenty of room at the bottom seemed like a good place to start, since thats where it all started.

Poking around at Nanotechnology Institute they are running Advanced Technologies in Crime Prevention and Detection II, which I could be quite tempted by. Though I fear that we’re not really utilising the security mechanisms available to us already, so it seems a little redundant to generate more. Ho hum, maybe I’ll meet a mad rich investor who simply must throw money at me in exchange for hot air and a nice looking business card.

Japanese businesswomen in their summer suits….mmmm….

But apart from that not a lot happening here, the project is in a testing phase, where everything goes quiet until we get our test results toward the end of the week.

I caught hayfever, which is a little irritating, tastefully bloodshot and streaming eyes at the moment, its never really affected me that badly before, I had a couple of sneezy fits last summer (after taking a two hour walk through rape fields in full intense yellow flower) but hadn’t before classified myself as hayfever sufferer. Dammit.

And my plans for next haven’t improved much yet either.

In the UK there is one CCTV camera for every 14 people

“The key advantage from a wi-fi network camera compared with a fixed camera system is purely the mobility, and being able to be flexible enough to deal with crimes in certain areas directly at the times that you need it,”

Combined with the PocketPC Wifi Jammer (for which I can’t find a link right now) and live mobile video streaming you get quite an exciting riot organisation toolset.

The dangers of the reliance on multiparty cooperative air interface protocols for enforcement of security should be obvious. Its not how it works you need to worry about, but how it fails.

This is so wrong

“Emulating a CISC processor (i.e., the x86/IA-32 instruction set) via a small RISC processor (i.e., the ARM instruction set) is a very heavyweight task.”

And there was me thinking that running a spectrum emulator on your phone was cool… however, maybe a cygwin port would be handy?

Does anyone else out there use Eudora? I’m seeing more and more of my outbound mails bounced as spam. I think this is because the version I use incorrectly sets the ehlo to the domain of the ‘from’ address you use rather than trying to figure out the actual machine name (or, at least, domain). Anyone got any config magic they can suggest that’ll fix this with v5.1? (I’m reluctant to upgrade since this version does all I need and my recent experience of ‘upgrade’ software versions has left me with a machine running slower and offering me plenty of confusing buttons for features I don’t want to use).

Alternatively, can someone suggest an unblocked open relay I could use for my normal mailing activities?

Or, as a further option, could Grandi put me on his authenticated sender list?

Computer games of the 80s and 90s make so much more sense now. Chris invited me along to a Sumo tournament, to meet up with a representative of an embedded electronics company. There were the four of us, Sam, Chris, his wife and myself. We had a box on around the seventh row back – about two meters square, surrounded by rails about four inches from the ground seperating you from the next box.

We arrived around 2pm, to be joined by Sam later. Chris was giving me some background on the sport and the history behind it – his wifes parents are somehow involved with one of the stables so they know more about it than most. We were shown to our box and given a packed lunch (bento box plus many other things), there wasn’t really enough space there for four people plus that much food…

The tournament started with lower ranking wrestlers, working their way up to the highest ranking by the end of the day, with perhaps each ‘fight’ taking maybe five minutes, with preparation, psyching each other, fighting, then pronouncing winner. Each wrestler will only participate in one fight.

The building is a huge pyramid shaped roof, from which a ‘traditional’ roof is suspended, containing lighting and with coloured ropes dangling from each corner (green, red, white and black, which are supposed to represent the seasons). The ring itself is made of clay with a rice-straw circle around. It is raised, perhaps, 2 and a half feet, such that wrestlers occasionally fly off the ring and into the first couple of rows of audience.

I didn’t quite figure out the rules, but basically if you get your opponent to set a foot outside the ring or touch the ground with anything other than a foot you’ve won. There were a couple of close calls, where both participants flew spinning out the ring together, but thats what instant video replays are for, isn’t it?

Some of the matches are sponsored, adding to the prize money, when this happens there are a number of people parading around the ring with advertising banners of the sponsor. The final round had something in the region of 30 sponsors, each, I understand, contributes something like 200 pounds. I was surprised to see Hello Kitty sponsoring one round.

I enjoyed it more than I had expected to – its not so much violent as a show of strength.

Fast shooter

“When the camera is switched on, the start-up screen shows a photo of an actual Ferrari F2004 Formula One racing machine and plays the sound of a Ferrari engine, so users can experience the thrill of Ferrari F1 Grand Prix racing every time they turn on the camera.”

Big dumb booster

“The rocket accelerated rapidly, reaching nearly 6500 kilometres per hour in just 9 seconds. On reaching its altitude it then lingered for a few minutes before beginning its descent. The whole trip took less than fifteen minutes.”

…yet another update to the plan…I’ve signed for another three weeks, until the end of my visa (18th June). After which I’m not sure what happens, I’ll most likely be back in the UK for a couple of weeks, then maybe off to Finland. I should hear back from the guy I was talking to over there on Monday, we’ll have to see what can be worked out.

Since I had to rebook my flight this morning (it was supposed to be today and I couldn’t get through last night to change it) I’ve had to chose a day for my return to the UK – I’ll now be back on the 20th June. I still don’t know whats happening with my job, since the agent is now not responding, so maybe I’ll be heading down to Oz for a couple of weeks before heading back. Depends what they say, or, indeed, if they say anything.

Following some indecision and confusion the marvelousmrchip arranged to come to Tokyo at the weekend, just passing through on his way to New Zealand.

A museum, on a stick