Cooking With Richard

Photos from the Boston Skywalk, stitched together into a panorama using hugin in Fedora:

Click to enlarge

Click to supersize me (TIFF image)

Today is the 10th anniversary of bubble3d, a screensaver that I wrote while I was very bored and trying out OpenGL for the first time at Orchestream, previously known as INmEDIA Concepts Ltd. I think I left Orchestream only a couple of months after this and because I left just before the peak of the dot-com scam I missed out on millions of pounds of potential wealth (so it goes …)

It feels like a long time ago, maybe not 10 years. One thing I remember about writing this was that the bubbles are actually inside out because of an error in an issue of the OpenGL red book.

The iPM programme put up the full, unedited version of my interview:

(IPM blog, Previously …)

New Scientist commemorates 30 years of spam and links to the spam archive.

So does the Grauniad.

This morning I was called out of the blue by “George” a researcher at BBC Radio 4 iPM programme, interactive little brother of the PM programme (Radio 4’s 5 o’clock daily news).

George wanted to talk to me about the Great Spam Archive, all the spam I’ve collected in my inbox since August 1997 (archive by date), and I was happy to oblige. I ended up going to Broadcasting House this afternoon, and being interviewed by Eddie Mair about my “favorite” spam, and why on earth I started to collect it (answer: I simply never delete any old email).

The process is a bit strange — they sit you in a sound-proof booth and you talk to the presenter over a microphone. (Eddie was sitting in another BBC studio). The whole interview lasted perhaps 10 minutes after which Eddie politely thanked me and I left. Now I guess they cut the ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ out and cut it down to a 1 or 2 minute slot. I’ll find out soon — the broadcast is due on-air at 5.30pm (in about an hour).

Update

Well, it’s over. They edited it a lot to make me sound intelligent .. I’ll have an MP3 clip from the show up shortly in case people want to listen.

Update #2

No sound file posted by the BBC yet, but they’ve put some background information up on the iPM blog here.

Update - audio

Here it is –> Edited MP3 file with my interview <–

If you want to hear the full program, it’s available for the next week on the iPM podcast site.

Previously: Uncanny valley of the dolls …

(Skip to 2′50 in the video to see the effect at work)

More info on the project page

I tidied up my office!

…

For the past few weeks N-sama has been wondering about the strange secret project I’ve been engaged in. Well, here it is, revealed to the world for the very first time:

JONESFORTH

The internet in all its glory forgets my first brush with FORTH, which happened in around 1981 or ‘82 with ARTIC’s FORTH. I still have my original cassette and manual.

Ever since then I wondered how it worked …

Only now have I found out and become enlightened.

Please somebody buy me a Jupiter ACE.

But can you tell what’s missing from the photo?

Yeah!

A thing of beauty …

Habitual birophagists will be familiar with the unwelcome crunch of plastic and the taste of ink which comes from poorly designed promotional pens. Google’s free pens (of which I got a big handful at their last bash in Belgrave House) suffer in particular from a weak plastic screw joint, and they break apart after even relatively short hacking sessions:

Here’s hoping that the smart folks at Google can rectify this problem (metal pens, anyone?) and send me some. I don’t need to tell them — they’ll find me.

More birophagy:

Download great desktop backgrounds for your computer .. like mine!

Just go to the Pages -> Desktop backgrounds link on the right hand side of this page!

• 4-core AMD Athlon development box
• 2-core Intel Xeon development box
• IBM X60s laptop

3502-9369-5389-2620

To join you’ll have to add me to your address book by following these instructions:

1. Go to the Wii Message Board (the mail button, bottom right)
2. Go to Create Message (the right-hand button at the bottom left)
3. Go to the address book
4. Click Register → Wii
5. Follow the instructions to add my number 3502-9369-5389-2620
6. Mail me! I have to add you to my Wii before anything happens

I have to admit I splurged out on Mario Kart a few days ago. It’s a very good game — even after 9 years.

Some of them are a little bit uncanny actually.

I look rather mad, but that’s because I was concentrating on taking the photo. Actually my new job’s pretty cool.