# Finally got around to reading the Guardian Unlimited interview with James Ellroy. He presents a much more mellow persona than the Demon Dog face he used to wear. You wouldn't really pick this up from the article as it's a reintroduction for people who are already familiar with him, not a full profile. He's a fascinating and frightening man, and I'm still wildly pissed off I couldn't go the reading he did in Birmingham this week.

sandy giammona said Until recently I have been able to buy 100% Colombian Excelso coffee beans at Cost Plus World Market. Since I no longer am able to do this, I have been searching for a supplier. I would be interested in knowing the cost/pound (16 oz.)and shipping costs. I think it is the best coffee I have ever had. I have served it to many guests in my home and get the same pleasant and satisfied response as well as questions regarding this pleasant coffee. Any information in response to the above inquiry would be appreciated. thanks sandy giammona [added 14th Aug 2001]

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#
Today's coffee is Equal Exchange Organic Colombian. Selected medium roast Colombian Excelso beans grown by the Neuvo Futuro Collective, according to the packet. It's a lovely light, almost refreshing day time coffee.

karen [e] said im 100% colombian and proud 2 say i lovvvvvvve coffee [added 11th Nov 2005]

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# Philip Greenspun's ArsDigita: From Start-Up to Bust-Up - If you've been hanging out around courthouses in Delaware lately, you may have heard about some legal acrimony involving ArsDigita's venture capitalists versus the ArsDigita co-founders.
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# This week's coffee is Cafe Beneficio Arabica, an organic fairtraded coffee from a Dutch company called Simon Levelt made from beans grown in Chiapas, Mexico. It's very pleasant, but very medium. It's not overly strong, not especially bitter, and gentle in your mouth. I normally go for something a little heftier but this is good for general daytime drinking. It wouldn't really cut the mustard as an after dinner coffee, or as the puddle of black tar some people need to get them going in the morning.
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# One of the reasons I contribute to WinerLog is to try and add a critical (and occasionally abusive) voice to Dave Winer's madder ideas. He's a clever guy, but his ability to separate good ideas from bad is pretty poor, his tolerance for critical examination is extremely limited and his memory of his own past statements is highly selective^*. The logic of his current position on off-line vs on-line, professional vs amateur journalism defies conventional Earth-bound logic, for instance.

Be all that as it may, he does have good ideas now and again. Tuesday Is Take a Programmer to Lunch Day is one of the stupider, funnier ones. It's a bit late to organize anything for today, but if there's anyone in the Birmingham area who'd like to go out for spot of lunch next week then get in touch.
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# The United States Patent Office has excelled itself again. Of course, it's not entirely their fault, because it takes a pretty unscrupulous and/or feeble mind to claim this as so startling innovative that it needs to be protected for the next 20 years:

The new patent protects Mind-it's unique ability to store and compare checksums, instead of text, dramatically reducing storage and the amount of computation required to perform change detection. For example, users designate a particular part of a Web page that they would like to monitor for changes. Checksums are generated for each HTML-bound section of that Web page and for the user-defined selection of text, and are then archived. When there is change in the text, the new and archived checksums are compared, and the user is notified via email or mobile device if there is a change. The technology behind the checksum-comparison patent allows Mind-it to be scaled effortlessly to support millions of users and documents, while also improving performance by suppressing detection of trivial changes, greatly reducing the frequency of spurious notifications.

Here's what it says
1 - Fetch a web page, and calculate a set of magic numbers based on the text of the page.
2 - Some time later, do it again.
3 - If the two sets of numbers are different, send someone an email.

Pretty mindboggling, eh? Except that people do it all the time - keeping checksums are a common way to to check if a file has or hasn't changed. If I transmit a file and its checksum to you, you can recalculate the checksum to check that's it hasn't been corrupted. (That's why they're called checksums.) Zip files use internal checksums for the same purpose.

While I diddled around with the side bar I experimented with just such a scheme for finding changed pages, then abandoned it. As a quick and easy way of working out if a web page has changed, checksumming gives far too many false positives - for weblogs anyway. Even small pieces of dynamic content (like the quote on tl'bg) will give a false positive, unless you come up with some kind of incredible heuristic to filter them out, or you have some manual intervention. There was no way I was going to do that for 100+ web pages, so I used the same method as Weblogs.com - if a page has changed size by at least 50 characters then flag it up. It gives far fewer false positives and doesn't need any intervention. This new patent is, it would seem, not only easy and obvious, but also bloody useless too.
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# Last Friday I had an AIM conversation with Meg, during which she outlined her theory of smoothness. Some people, she suggests, you perceive as sexual and some you simply don't. Put another way, some people have some undefinable it and others haven't.

I didn't think of it at the time, being slightly fogged for primal brain reasons, but there's a third state. It's for people who you see as sexual but in an entirely repellant and horrible way. For me, Andie MacDowell is one such person. It's not simply that I don't understand what people see in her - it's that I find her so lacking in any kind of sexual pizazz that she's like some kind of negative-woman who radiates great waves of anti-it. According to Meg you just can't imagine a sexual encounter with a smooth person. With anti-sexual people, you can but it fills you with a terrible empty dread.

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# The IE5 version of the Updated UK Weblogs side bar is now powered by a little script of my own, rather than by the desperately slow victim of its own success that is Weblogs.com. The end effect is essentially the same, but it should display much more quickly.

jen said Ah, well done! Now, what do I have to do to make you let me have it? ;) [added 25th Apr 2001]

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# BugPowder is one of Blogger's Blogs of Note for the 19th of April. Keen.
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# Once upon a time, about the only company I'd have considered going back into permanent work was Ars Digita. Sadly, though, not anymore.

prashton said Yes, this is an interesting and not uncommon story about companies that let in those ruthless venture capitalists. As a director of a privately owned company I seriously wonder about ever opening the doors to outside investors. Seems like they encourage you to go into debt then circle like buzzards until you bleed to death. The adjective "Venture" is definitely a poor choice of word. [added 20th Apr 2001]

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# The new machine is here! The installathon begins ...
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# The Coffee Grounds Canadian Correspondent writes

The following was forwarded from the Public Sector List:

Can you imagine working for a company with a little more than 300 employees and that has the following statistics:

30 have been accused of spousal abuse
9 have been arrested for fraud
14 have been accused of writing bad cheques
95 have directly or indirectly contributed to the bankruptcy of at least two businesses
4 have done time for assault
55 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
12 have been arrested on drug-related charges
4 have been arrested for shop-lifting
16 are currently defendants in lawsuits
62 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

Can you guess which organization this is?

It is the 301 MPs in the Canadian Parliament.

He continues Canadians are so anglophile that they modeled their democracy on the UK's, from their parliment buildings down.

This sounds a little foafy but I cannot find any references. If it's true, it looks like Canadian MPs really do go above and beyond our own well regarded and highly respected MPs.
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# Feeling a bit childishly excited - new machine arrives today.
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# New force to tackle cybercrime - The unit will initially employ 40 specially-trained officers who will operate from a secret location in London.
That secret location's a secret IP address, right?
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# For the past few days I've been thinking about putting together a replacement for the Weblogs.com driven Updated UK Weblogs List (which also sits behind my sidebar). Weblogs.com is very heavily used and seems to be increasingly unreliable, and I didn't think it would be very difficult to duplicate. I got around to slinging a bit of code at the problem this afternoon, and it seems to be ticking along nicely. I'm going to leave it bed in for a day or two so it can build up a history, then see about rolling it out to the sidebar.

chrisr said i was wondering what was with those WebLogMonitor/0.1 hits. a much needed alternative to an overburdened system. although the problem with fractionalising such monitors is that i fear the day where i get more hits from bots than people. [added 18th Apr 2001]

chrisr said you're following the robot exclusion protocol, of course? ;-) [added 18th Apr 2001]

It's being followed for me - I'm just using the Perl LWP module, although I don't think it really applies. I'm not crawling, I'm just banging through the list of links at gblos.threadnaught.com. [added 18th Apr 2001]

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# I crossed some kind of parenting line last Sunday. Something that has always turned my stomach is seeing somebody pick up some morsel of their infant's discarded food and eat it. It's revolting, it's horrible and it's just plain wrong. Sunday morning, the Bean had been fiddling around with the end of his breakfast for a while, and obviously wasn't going to eat it. Instead of dropping on the floor for Badger (the only table scraps he gets), I picked up this well-gummed soggy bit toast and flipped it into my mouth. What has happened to me?

Angie 2 said Ha Ha Ha! You are becoming your worst nightmare! I eat HTs' soggy squidged banana discards and that is revolting I agree, but we don't have a dog to clear up, so it's all down to me. We are just sick individuals, let's face it. [added 18th Apr 2001]

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# Just watched Simply Irresistable, a love-it-or-hate-it fluffy cutesy nothing of a movie starring sweet little Sarah Michelle Gellar. It's about a cook who, through some magic maguffin, imbues her food with the emotions she feels as she cooks it. It's the Last Action Hero of rom-coms. Tippity-top!
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# Cooked up some long spaghetti over the weekend. It's been ages and ages and ages since I last had long spaghetti. It so much more twizzly-wizzly fun than the short stuff.

Remember when there were only two types of pasta - macaroni and spaghetti? Macaroni was for macaroni cheese, obviously. Spaghetti came in a blue packet and you served it with what was essentially a shepherds pie without the mashed spud, with some of that foul-smelling powdered parmesan out a cardboard tube sprinkled over the top. Mmm-mmmm!

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# We slept in until 8 o'clock this morning. I simply don't remember the last time I slept in that late. The alarm goes off at 6:30 in the week, and the Bean's generally is awake by 7 at the latest.

And where did this triumph of lollygagging get us? It meant was there was no time to walk Badger, because Nat was heading out early to get her hair done. Bah!
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# Tip top day. Tom and Helen took the Bean all afternoon as well as taking dogboy for a walk. We trundled into town for a feed at Quod - the grilled smoked ricotta is amazing, risotto al funghi splendid, their gin martini's too dressed up with ice and lime - followed by an hour and half's harmless fun watching Spy Kids.
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# It's our 8th wedding anniversary today. Where would I be without her?

Angie 2 said Congratulations to you both. Hope you get to celebrate some time over the weekend.

Love Angie, Nick & HT

xxx [added 13th Apr 2001]

wunderwoman said Seems like only yesterday we were all there in our fancy gear - and you in your waistcoat and Nattie in her lovely frock - congratulations!!!!!! [added 13th Apr 2001]

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#

Date sent:      	Thu, 12 Apr 2001 20:06:22 +0100
From:           	Minister E 
To:             	Jez Higgins 
Subject:        	RE: European Directive On Copyright

Thank you for your e-mail addressed to the e-minister.  Your e-mail is
being dealt with and you should receive a response shortly.

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# The full text of the European Directive on Copyright is here. The main difficult with it is the conflict between Articles 4 and 5. Article 4 states

Member States shall provide authors, in respect of the original of their works or of copies thereof, with the exclusive right to any form of distribution to the public by sale or otherwise.

Article 5 describes certain exclusions to that right - those which are generally recognised as fair use in existing analogue copyright law - which member states may apply. Without those exclusions then The Reg's nightmare scenario kicks in (indeed I would have broken the law by cutting and pasting that smippet of the directive). I've emailed Patricia Hewitt, the e-Minister, asking if the Government intends to apply the exclusions although frankly I'll be surprised if I get more than a form letter acknowledgment.
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# EU sanctifies copyrights a la DMCA - The European Commission has warmly congratulated the EU Council of Ministers for adopting, on 14 February, the Directive on Copyright, a Draconian, industry-accommodating law which harmonizes all EU Member States' copy regs to the constipated level preferred by multinational entertainment corporations.
And they did so well on the software patents issue. If the Doomsday scenario The Reg envisages does begin to play out, then the law will be seriously out of kilter. As it's described here ripping your CDs to MP3s is an offence, using a still from a DVD in a film review is an offence, backing up your computer could be an offence. This is pretty fucked up.
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# Just had a bizarre conversation with my work colleague John using Yahoo's Instant Messager. As well as text messages it also sends voice message if you have a microphone hooked up to your PC. I did but John didn't, so I talked and he typed. As you'd expect it's a high latency loop, so as you talk you've no immediate feedback and everything becomes very stilted, especially when you get a text reply while you're still talking. It felt like I should be saying Over when I'd finished speaking. That's the miracle of the Internet - bringing people closer together in new and peculiar ways.
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# Usually I drink Cafédirect Machu Picchu Organic, but Nat went a bit mad doing the shopping this week and I'm off on little coffee voyage of discovery.

In the cup now is Equal Exchange Organic Sumatran Takengon. It's got a very long dark, earthy flavour, not overly bitter and feels quite velvety. Me like.
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# On a scale of mildly to extremely bloody, how irritating did you find my previous entry?

Angie 2 said !!!extremely!!! [added 13th Apr 2001]

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# I won't be updating this site for a while. I'm [going to bed|don't feel like it|busy|getting in the bath|in the midst of personal crisis|drunk|having a poo|hung over].
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# Sniff My faithful old PC, Tia, which had been quietly serving out its days under my desk dealing with email died last night. A solid old Cyrix-powered Carrera built like a tank, it never really recovered from getting all its fans clogged up with plaster dust while the house was being done over but nonetheless struggled gamely on, acting variously as a proxy server, print server, file server - you name it, Tia served it at sometime or another. But no more. Sniffle. Parp!

Ordered a wizard new Panrix machine this afternoon. Can't dwell on the past you know.
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# Abrosia - M&S Orange Juice with Banana. Six oranges, two bananas squashed into one bottle. Get it while you can.

planetcutie said No. No, this doesn't sound good at all. Where's the sucrose? Where are the chemicals? More lemon flavour bonbons! More Pepsi Max! More frozen pizza! Yes. [added 9th Apr 2001]

Pepsi Max is indeed God's own Cola, but sometimes the old bladder needs a change from non-stop diuretics. [added 9th Apr 2001]

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# Piss, piss, piss, piss, piss, piss, PISS!

James Ellroy, author of LA Confidential^* and self-styled Demon Dog of American Literature, is making one of his extremely rare visits to the UK to promote his new book. He's doing a reading at Waterstones in town at the end of April, and I went down today only to be told it had sold out. BOLLOCKS!

Bollocks, bollocks, BOLLOCKS!

^*If you thought the film was good, you should read the book and discover something four times as labyrinthine, three times as evocative and seven times as involving. In Ellroy's own words Great fucking movie. Better fucking novel.
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# Don't you hate when it starts to rain ten minutes before you're going to walk the dog and stops raining ten minutes after you get in?
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# More Batman comics free to good homes.

ricky rudolph [e] [w] said hi my name is ricky rudolph, i am writing this letter concerning you free comic books, and i would like to get them as soon as possible please, i really want them bad, because i have been trying to find some that are really cool, and other things like that too. [added 8th Nov 2006]

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# The fame game - At 7.15 in the morning, sitting on the strange purple sofa in our green room ... was Chrissie Hynde, who had, inexplicably, accepted our invitation to debate the rectitude or otherwise of eating meat. So I went up and said hello. "Why don't you have any soya milk?" she asked, as an opener, looking disdainfully at the breakfast spread. My usual response - "because only mad people drink it" - dissolved on this occasion and instead I just grinned like an imbecile.
If they didn't think she would accept why did they invite her? At last they won't be having her back.
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# Do you use the Mozilla or Netscape browsers and just can't wait for the latest update to The Coffee Grounds? Well, just install the Jez UK sidebar and keep in constant touch.

Alternatively, install the much more interesting Updated UK Weblogs sidebar.

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#Monday Nite is Kiddie Food Nite!
Well for me it is. For Nat, it's yoga night, which means I have dinner by myself. due to the interplay of walking the dog, Nat going out, the Bean going to bed and Nat coming in again there isn't normally time to cook anything more complicated than very simple. Last night I had Pokemon on toast.

Eating little bits of pasta shaped like characters from your favourite game doesn't sound like something kids would really go for, but they are. Star Wars, Bob the Builder and Manchester United and more have all been immortalized in pasta and "tomato" sauce. You can even get Animal Hospital shapes - tiny effigies of sick puppies and wounded kittens for you to euthanise by boiling up in a pan and eating them.

Perhaps eating food like this is part of an attempt to reach back to a more primodial time. Is this pasta merely simple shapes? When you pour it onto your toast, are you in fact pouring a power-filled pile of sigils brimming not simply with carbohydrate but the very essence of that which they represent? Do children up and down the land imagine that by consuming an effigy of Ryan Giggs some of his footballing magic will be transferred to their own feet, that they can absorb some of the amazing recuperative abilities of the Animal Hospital patients, or that they too can fit inside a small ball? Yes, because food is more than fuel, it's magic.
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# My brain is still full.

Attended the ACCU Conference at the end of last week and came away with a head full of C++ template metaprogramming and Java exception handling, together with a place on the ACCU committee. I'm still spinning with ideas, and who knows how long it'll take me to settle down again. If you spend any time programming in C++ or Java and you weren't there, you did yourself a major disservice.

On Sunday I tried hard physical labour as a recovery technique, turning the three year old large hole at the end of the garden I euphamistically referred to as "the pond" into a watertight hole that really is a pond. As I type this, it's still full of the water. A triumph indeed.
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