Regress bars

I was copying a large set of files, when I noticed some peculiar behaviour of the "progress" bar.

I'm used to the Minutes Remaining indicator usually being pretty meaningless (I've seen it go from days, to hours, to minutes, to seconds, over the course of seconds, and it often leaps up by an order of magnitude if I start doing something else on the computer). But this time it seemed even worse than useless.  I watched it for a few moments, then felt compelled to grab a pen and paper.  (I used an antiquated technology to record the data, as I didn't want to interfere with the copy process. These fluctuations were all its own work.)

The whole exercise covered a period of a couple of minutes (that is, the line representing the actual time remaining would be almost indistinguishable from the x-axis on this plot).  The final estimate (of 15 seconds remaining, up from the previous 10 seconds) stayed there for about three seconds, and the copy was finally finished.

Well, as they say, "Prediction is difficult, especially about the future".  But one might hope that the algorithm used gave better predictions as time progressed...

When "organic" is not "good"

The word "organic" is nowadays associated mainly with "environmentally friendly", as in "organic food", "organic agriculture".

Back when I was a student, Chemistry was taught in three main parts: organic chemistry (essentially the chemistry of carbon, and hence the chemistry of molecules in living stuff); inorganic chemistry (essentially the chemistry of everything else); and physical chemistry (focussing on the processes and laws rather than the constituent elements).

And I learned that many organic compounds are toxic and/or carcinogenic. When I was at school, benzene was the organic solvent of choice in practicals. By the time I was at university, benzene was no longer used, because it was realised to be a carcinogen, and toluene was the organic solvent of choice. Thanks, school.

Also, we were gleefully informed (by the physical chemists) that the lifespan of a bench organic chemist was reduced by 10 years on average. I have no idea if this is true (or if it was true then), but it certainly stuck in my mind.

So my strongest association with the word "organic" is "probably a nasty poison!", followed by  "molecules found in living stuff". This makes my reaction to the term "organic food" go something like:

1. Potentially poisonous?  Surely not...
2. Made from living stuff? Isn't all food made from (once) living stuff? If it's not "organic", it's not food. (Well, okay, except for salt.)
3. Oh... food produced without the use of inorganic chemistry

I often have this problem of trying to figure out what people mean when using a technical term I know, but in a non-technical context. My favoutite example is when I first saw a sticker saying "Nuclear power? -- No thanks" with a picture of a smiling sun.  "They want to turn off the sun?  What?  Oh..."

Anyway, if "organic" is the adjective of choice to mean "envinronmentally friendly", what should we call envinronmentally friendly chemistry, given that we can't call it "organic chemistry", because that almost means the opposite?  Well, it uses that other environmentally friendly adjective; it's green chemistry.

hello spotty

Take one ordinary digital SLR camera (Canon EOS 20D), add one sun filter (originally bought for the 1999 total solar eclipse), and see a spotty sun:

note to self: get an American accent

The speech recognition on the Android phone is pretty good, I've found.  But "Voice Actions", where the phone does something with the recognised speech other than merely google it, wasn't working for me.

Quick google for "Voice Actions not working" gets me the answer. It only works when set to "English (US)".

I change the setting.  Now Voice Actions work.  So, I can send emails, texts, and so on, all without typing.

Except that it no longer recognises what I say...

O tempora o mores

It was very windy in Scotland on Thursday evening. Two colleagues had travelled back up to Dundee after a meeting in York, so I Googled BBC news to see how bad it had been. I was amused to see that

Grampian Fire and Rescue dealt with 75 storm-related call-outs on Thursday night, three times the normal amount. Many calls were to remove trees and chimney pots and a number of trampolines which had blown away.

Trees, and chimney pots, and trampolines! Oh my!
A number of trampolines.
First world problems, indeed.

(My colleagues arrived home safely after a somewhat longer than usual train journey, btw.)

I like short meetings

I get quite of lot of email circulars for workshops and conferences. My first thought on seeing this one was, "well, that's not going to take long":

(And my second thought was, "but there shouldn't be a hyphen ... oh!")

perfection v. progression

Well, that didn't take long. 17 sets of games, each with 15-21 levels, completed.  Not perfectly: I have a few one star, and several two star, levels, and I found only 4 golden eggs along the way, so not all the bonus levels. (There are cheat pages on the web for finding all the eggs ... but that's cheating.)

I have found only four of these

  

So what next? (I have downloaded the Angry Birds "Seasons" set of level, but am waiting for the holiday to play that.)  The game itself suggests I could try for three stars on every level. Now, I admit I did a few levels more than once as I went through, when it seemed I just lucked out, or when I wanted to explore an alternative solution.  But, I prefer to move on once I have achieved what's needed, which here is to "clear the level" of pigs.

It's important not to spend too much time perfecting what you have done, in place of doing new things.  Do something as well as it needs to be done, then move on.  If you have moved on, don't go back and redo, knowing you could do it better now. (Of course you can do it better now: you've moved on!  Only go back if the earlier imperfect version is proving a shaky foundation.)  Polishing is much easier than progression, but is often only a displacement activity.

So, I will maybe try to get better scores on a few more levels (maybe try for no one star levels, anyway) in my "spare time", but it isn't anything like the same as marching on to new levels.

Next?