It has always frustrated older people when the next generation thinks they’ve discovered something new, because it’s invariably something that has been around forever. Sex is the classic example: no matter how naughty, new, or wild you think you’re being, humanity and the species that predated us have been doing it before. As Bill Hicks observed: look at your family tree and remember that every time the line splits, there’s fucking. And if you ever had any suspicion that Internet porn was responsible for inventing some of the extraordinary perversions that have now become commonplace, just see if you can find some uncensored historical texts. No matter what debasing act you think you’ve discovered, I guarantee that as long as it doesn’t rely on modern engineering techniques, it was done thousands of years ago.
It’s not just sex. In my accidental career of, what is now called, “software engineer” the atmosphere is riddled with the hormones of excitable youthful pricks who believe they have discovered a whole new area of computing. Spending time in an office full of millennial “programmers” (what we used to call ourselves) is the equivalent of walking through the fetid stench of a school gym changing room. They spend their time going to conferences and listening to their peers describing white-hot, bleeding-edge, paradigm-shifting technologies that were actually discovered decades ago. Armed with their new knowledge they return to their jobs and look down on everyone else who doesn’t know the new names for the old technologies they’ve discovered.
One of the tragedies of this situation is that in twenty years time they will feel the same miserable exhaustion that I feel now, but if they have any sense they will have departed the technical path and moved into management by then.
My personal curse is that I have eschewed any kind of management track, or “management bollocks” as I prefer to call it, which means I’m surrounded by these little gits who know everything.

By the way, it’s safe to say they are “little gits” because I was one. In my twenties my brain was faster than now and I thought I knew everything. In fairness I knew a lot more about the technology of the period than some of my peers, but looking back I was an ignorant nobhead. It’s hard to feel I was more ignorant then than I know myself to be now, but it’s surely true; it didn’t take long to learn the vastness of the universe of stuff I don’t know about; a universe that seems to expand exponentially with every article read. This is another significant problem: after twenty or so years of learning how little one knows, one tends to feel beaten down.
The only benefit of this awful, miserable realisation is that stamina combined with a vague interest in new technology is all that’s needed to hang on to your career. If you wait five years, the genuinely good technologies become fashionable again and you can ignore all the nonsense until then. NOSQL is a classic example of this. NOSQL was not originally “NoSQL”, it really meant “Not Only SQL”. This was an interesting development based on the real need for fast, scaleable key-value stores without the complexity of a SQL cluster. The world could have taken two paths at this point:
1) Reinvent database technology.
2) spend more time making SQL databases more scalable.
3) Use both.

Obviously they all happened, but the youthful excitement of new, hot, technology caused the young pioneers to throw away all trace of 2). That was old fart technology!

A few years down the line, the brilliant work of the forefathers is recognised once more as being pretty bloody useful and so relational databases, together with their trusted underlying technology, are about to take over again. Good.

Now, I hate Oracle as much any anyone else on this planet but don’t tell me it can’t outperform MongoDB with billions of rows of data because I’ve done it. Admittedly getting the queries right is an absolute bastard if they’re going to perform well – but compared to the alternatives it’s a piece of piss!

Yeah, there’s a lot more to say here. But it’s time to shut up.

“The local time is 7:02 AM, and your internal clock time is 2:02 AM. We hope you managed to get a couple of minutes sleep despite our concerted efforts to make the journey as uncomfortable and cramped as legally possible. The weather in London is traditional English: grey, mild, with a chance of showers. UK and EU passengers should join the ludicrously long line for the newly improved rapid, automated passport control system. Simply walk into the slaughterhouse-style enclosure, place your passport on the glass and stare at the screen until the flashing sign asks you to seek assistance. Once the “Border Force” employee has attended to all of the other gates she will ask you to step out and back in again. The whole process should take no more than a couple of hours.
Passengers with checked baggage should wait by carousel number 3 for approximately an hour while a selection of mysteriously unclaimed suitcases are displayed for your entertainment.
Once passengers have negotiated the bewildering maze of customs passages, interconnection with London Underground is a short 45 minute walk along corridors decorated with beautiful murals depicting the wondrous experience you would bloody well hope to expect if you forked out 25 quid for the Heathrow Express. Passengers should be aware that by the time they reach the London Underground it will be rush-hour and consequently should prepare themselves for a hellish journey of about an hour and a half, packed in with commuters who want to kill them for bringing a large quantity of encumbrances and obstacles in the shape of suitcases and backpacks onto an already impossibly overcrowded train.
Thank you for flying Air Airways – we hope you choose to fly with us again, even though we are fully aware you didn’t actually choose us.”

TL;DR. In the 1970s the BBC produced a TV adaption of “The Phoenix and the Carpet” by E.Nesbit. The images stuck with me and it was probably my first introduction to the concept of a magic carpet – something that I’ve been intrigued by ever since.
On a whim, I decided to see if the Internet could provide me with a way to watch it again, but all I could find was a 15 minute clip on YouTube that served only to whet my appetite even further. So I kept searching. It transpires that the BBC remade the series in 1997, and I did manage to find a torrent of this, but it just didn’t suffice: I’ll explain why further down.
On further searching I discovered a tantalizing link to a BBC site with the title “The Phoenix and the Carpet | Watch Online | BBC Store” and a summary containing the magic date 1977. Of course, disappointment was only a click away and came in the form of the only-too familiar “BBC Store.com is not available in the US and Canada.” together with a page explaining why you may be seeing that page even if you’re not in the US or Canada.
Now, it’s not necessarily the BBC’s fault that they have to enforce this ludicrous restriction, but it still irritates me in the extreme when archaic legal restrictions based on national boundaries attempt to apply themselves on the Internet: apart from being illogical, it doesn’t work.
So after trivially bypassing the comical IP address restriction I am delighted to discover the BBC are selling the original 1977 series either per episode or for 12 quid all in! Now that’s more like it! I don’t want to end up watching this on my laptop though, I thought, so it better be downloadable. It is! Whoopee! A quick financial transaction later and I was able to start viewing the episodes right then and there, and under each episode was a button that said “Download”.
Now this is what it’s supposed to be like in 2016. This is what all the fuss was about. Technically there’s no reason why this wasn’t possible a decade ago but it has taken a while for the provders to realise they can open up their archives and even make money from it! Everyone wins!
I excitedly clicked the download link so that I can watch it on my TV and was interrupted by a bolt of misery that was a big modal pop-up informing me that I had to install a download app. Gaaaah! This is another menace that seems to proliferate on the modern web. There is absolutely no need to install some potentially insecure downloader/uploaded spyware solely for the purpose of getting stuff from, and putting stuff to the web. Seriously, browsers can do this stuff now!
This wasn’t the first time I’ve capitulated and sold my soul – Amazon, Google and now the BBC had got me beaten down. I reluctantly ran the package installer and instantly froze in fearful shock and terror when the dread phrase that no ordinary sinner should ever have to read, appeared on my screen:

You must install Silverlight.

I cried out in anguish as the terrible truth had begun to dawn on me: the BBC have turned to the dark side and by my foolish eagerness I had followed them along the fetid path to eternal misery and damnation. Silverlight? Why? WHY? DRM is bad enough but the added insult of a moribund, failed Microsoft exercise in power-mongery was too much to bear. My laptop has already been compromised enough by my greed and bad judgement in the past – I couldn’t do this to it. So I had a choice: give up on watching The Phoenix and the Carpet and demand my Monday back from Aunty Beeb, or…resort to…methods.

It’s been a while since I was motivated to dabble, and this was the perfect opportunity.

They allow streaming of the media to your web browser. This means there is a way to get the media from them to me and watch it. No matter how much clever encraption and obfuscation they shroud the process in, it’s possible. Not only that, but they support iPads which means there is almost certainly a high quality stream available that doesn’t rely on ropey old flash.

After a bit of probing with Firebug, and some judicious Googling I learned that they were streaming the video using Adobe’s HDS: sending it in 4 second chunks of MP4 video, each with a MIME type of “video/f4f”. Your browser does an HTTP request for each one and seamlessly stitches them together in realish time for your entertainment.
So, with this knowledge, and the observation that the download file names were predictable (identical except for an incrementing decimal number at the end of the file name), I could now get hold of entire episodes by writing a simple little shell script.

After about 20 minutes my script had pulled down all of the 500 or so chunks of video that form episode 1. But now what? How do I join these things together and tune them into something I can play on my telly? A quick google provided the answer: some lovely soul has written a little tool called AdobeHDS.php that does exactly what I want: it looks for downloaded chunks of f4f and combines them into a nice playable FLV file as easy as typing:
php AdobeHDS.php --fragments episode1
BOOM! I have my own copy of the episode that plays on my FMT and that I can keep forever to play at will – long after Silverlight is a piece of historical comedy. Which is fair enough considering I paid for it!

Actually, AdobeHDS.php can even do the downloading of the file pieces and decrypting for you as it turns out. The author deserves a lot of love.

Of course I watched all eight episodes back to back and reveled in nostalgia and wonder at the magic of it all. I’m not sure whether the 1977 version was actually better or whether it was just because of my attachment to it but one thing I can say is that the 1977 Phoenix was far superior, and the crappy 1977 low budget SFX were no worse than the crappy 1997 low budget SFX. The other main difference between the two was the replacement of the 1970s mandatory white actors blacked-up and put in grass skirts, with black actors. I don’t know what was up with people back then that they didn’t consider this to be bizarre and ridiculous behavior but I’m grown up enough to write it off as stupidity from the past so it didn’t mar my enjoyment of the show too much. People did stupid things in the 70s such as enjoying Bernard Manning.

So what have we learned?

• Copyright is broken and ruins everything. Surely it’s better that works of art are made available, even for money, than being hidden away for nebulous reasons of “rights”. Especially if the owners and creators of the work get paid!
• Trying to impose national laws on the Internet is a foolish waste of money and is technically unenforceable.
• DRM only serves to punish people who try to pay legitimately. If you are foolish enough to buy DRM encumbered media you are buying damaged goods. Something you “own” may cease to exist or be rendered unplayable over time.
• Breaking DRM only needs to be done once. After that the genie is out of the bottle and the media is liberated. Spend money on trying to copy-protect media at your peril.

From https://libreboot.org/faq/#intel:

In summary, the Intel Management Engine and its applications are a backdoor with total access to and control over the rest of the PC. The ME is a threat to freedom, security, and privacy, and the libreboot project strongly recommends avoiding it entirely. Since recent versions of it can’t be removed, this means avoiding all recent generations of Intel hardware.

Apparently the fear of leaving hair-straighteners turned on is a widespread phenomenon. My wife certainly suffers from it to a ludicrous degree: pretty much every time she uses them there will be a phone-call or a return home to ensure that the things are indeed off. To limit my frustration, and to mitigate the risk that she ever does leave them turned on I’ve created didmicheleleavethestraighteneron.com. Not only does it let her monitor the state of her straightener, but if she should ever leave it on, she can turn it off remotely. Thank you Z-Wave

Early Halloween fun – I’ve been trying to find this classic cartoon for years but I didn’t know what it was called. Turns out it’s called “Bottles” and from 1936 – set in a pharmacy after hours, the bottles come alive.

One of the wonderful things about traveling on public transport, that car drivers will never experience, is the joy of discovering you’re sitting in a pool of the previous occupant’s urine. For the whole journey home.
I convinced myself it was simply some spilled Dr Pepper but once I had reached home it became clear, on closer inspection, that it was actually 100% pure tramp’s piss.

Non-Americans: look at this fake house, built out of chipboard and plastic bags. What’s it for, you may be wondering? Is this for a movie set? Perhaps it’s some subterfuge to fool an enemy into bombing a fake encampment; much like the allies did to the Nazis in North Africa, and Sheriff Bart together with “the good folks” of Rock Ridge did in Blazing Saddles?
Well it’s neither of those things.
Do you give up? In fact this is actually how they build houses here in the USA! Really! And these are real houses for people, not dogs or anything like that. Not only that, but when they’ve finished building it they’re going to sell it for half a million dollars! That actual house, there! Not a real house based on that cheap mock-up, that is the actual house!
I don’t blame you for being incredulous, I didn’t believe it at first either but it’s absolutely true.
OK in fairness, the house isn’t finished yet and obviously the finished product won’t look like that. Firstly there will be more of those plastic bags stapled to it. They’re not your normal plastic bags either – over here they call it Tyvek and it’s a bit tougher than than the supermarket jobs obviously. Secondly they’ll cover it in other material like stucco or cheap Aluminium siding to hide the fact the whole thing is made of offcuts from the local lumber yard.
Half a million bucks – amazing isn’t it? It’s only a matter of time before this sketch becomes a reality:

San Jose, from the perspective of a non-driver in my hotel, is exactly the same as San Diego: a fucking horrible set of roads interspersed with malls and business parks. King of Prussia with mountains, palm trees, and mountains. The mountains are in the distance because you can’t walk to them. I tried. That’s another story.

Today we were supposed to start work with the client that was paying for our flights and rooms in this four star hotel, but we didn’t because of some bollocks I still don’t understand. They make so much money that it doesn’t matter apparently. Instead I slept off the bloody awful flights, went for a walk, and then spent the evening in the hotel bar.

The bar is also pretty horrible, with five 50 inch TVs above it forcing the miserable sport of American Football on all clientele. But I am happy as long as I’m left alone to read my books, respond to quiz challenges, and do all of the other things with my phone that keeps me feeling attached to sane people.

Then the drunk guy next to me starts demanding my attention. That’s fine, I understand drunk people, and so I use my drunk translation skills to express un-interest and preoccupation, but he doesn’t take the hint. Oh dear. He must be really gone…

We chat, which involves several circular conversations in which I tell him many times where I’m from, what I do, and why I’m here. He tells me his name, which I decline to print here, and that he is a pilot, for an airline that I also decline to name.

We talk nonsense, have a laugh, and then he notices that my nationality seems incongruent with my stated job as info-security guardian, and goes a bit weird. By this point he is slurring his words and thoughts so apparently that I fear for his passengers tomorrow morning at 10am – the time he told me earlier that he was due to fly. He asks me what clients we work for and I explain that it’s a closely guarded secret. He then turns serious and asks me if we’re working against ISIS! On being informed that we don’t directly work against ISIS, he makes a big, loud joke about how he’s going to call the police by typing 911 into the iArse login box of his iPhone. I play along with his stupid joke and hope that my new colleague, whom I have yet to meet, will appear and rescue me. At this point my opinion of the drunk pilot is that he’s hitting on me. I don’t have a problem with this because by now he knows, or rather would know if he’d actually absorbed anything I’d said to him, that I’m straight and married. So I don’t run away.

My new colleague appears and we recognise each other by the vague descriptions we gave each other over the phone a while before. I enthusiastically invite him to sit down at the bar and we talk nerdy stuff – he’s an awesome guy it transpires and we have a lot to talk about. Our drunken pilot friend meanwhile amuses himself by putting his head in his hands and murmuring to himself. As my colleague and I begin to bond about microcontrollers, Flight-Captain Pisshead clambers off of his bar stool, puts down some money, leaves the rest of his glass of Chardonnay and shambles off to talk to the bar staff. My new geek friend and I move on to discussing SDR, and begin to enjoy ourselves, especially as Orville Wrong is observed to depart the vicinity.

The geek-fuelled chatter continues now that the mad bloke has departed and it is a while later before I ask Mine Host if the Flying Sotsman was alright, and whether he had spoken about us. He laughed sheepishly before explaining that we had both been reported to the hotel management as terrorists!

As unlikely as this seems, we really had been reported to the hotel manager as terrorist suspects and, frankly, I’m surprised we’re both not incarcerated at this moment. Luckily his demeanor of an incapable drunk did not convince anyone of his theory. I only hope that by 10 am tomorrow – in 12 hours time – he has his shit together enough to pilot a plane load of passengers across the country.

For someone who spends an embarrassingly large proportion of his time watching detective and spy TV programmes, it was quite galling to discover I’d been oblivious to a British show that aired in 1978 and was described by the New York Times as “The best spy show in TV history.” Worse still, I was made aware of it by an American work colleague. The final indignity was to discover it was every bit as good as the hype suggested.

There’s no James Bond nonsense here, just a tiny Whitehall department, encumbered by budgets and politics, that nonetheless has to undertake missions ranging from foiling terrorist bomb plots to organizing foreign coups. There are no absolute rights and wrongs, and no conventional heroes. Instead there some extraordinarily plausible plots, brilliant acting, and superb characterization that combine into a thoroughly gripping, albeit traumatic at times, TV series. There are many reviews out there that express this better than I ever could, but If you’re a fan of complex, well thought out, realistic spy dramas in the mold of Le Carre then please get hold of this as soon as you can

As a final enticement, here are two Interesting facts about the mysterious author of this masterpiece, Ian MacKintosh:

• One episode of the second series was dropped because it contravenes the Official Secrets Act.
• Before the scripts for Series 3 were completed, Ian MacKintosh disappeared under mysterious circumstances in a private plane together with a friend and his wife. This is why the series was cancelled.