Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Brian Cox on Hardtalk

Last night I watched Brian Cox (the actor, not the physicist) being interviewed by Stephen Sackur on BBC's Hardtalk.

He was speaking from his home in Upstate New York and I have to say that — out of the hundreds of domestic settings we are becoming used to seeing on our screens — this has to be one one of the nicest looking.














But it was the interview itself that was inspiring. He is a thoughtful and compassionate man. Watch it if you have the time — though you might want to start at the 9 min mark:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m000h5pc/hardtalk-brian-cox-actor

Saturday, April 11, 2020

Excuses, excuses

Following my last piece, a number of readers have written in, offering …

Wait, wait. What’s this stuff about readers? Is that the right term? Can you lot really be described as readers, or is there a better word for what you are - and furthermore, one that you will be happy to answer to?

Maybe it would be more accurate to refer to you as subscribers - but that’s not quite right either. Being a subscriber implies some sort of contract and — let’s be honest — getting sent ‘New blog from Omnivorist’ emails every other day is not something you ever signed up for.

How about devotees? Now there’s a word with a nice ring to it.

All the same, there’s the undeniable fact that while devotees might be nice to have they’re not always so nice to be, besides which, having devotees — tending them, nurturing them and so on — sounds like an awful lot of work. In any case, I really can’t see the people who read my stuff being happy to think of themselves as devotees — however much they might enjoy it. Might as well go the whole hog and call them disciples while we’re at it.

Followers might work — it is very popular and has a wide currency on social media. It is still not quite right though. To describe someone as a follower suggests a dull-witted, bovine compulsion to munch-up whatever is placed in front of them — something which certainly can’t be said of you lot. It’s difficult enough even to get you to click on the link.

I wouldn’t really have a problem with the readers thing were it not for the fact that it reminds me of those lamps: the very expensive and incredibly bright ones, designed for the kind of old people who are flattered to be classed as Serious Readers.

Of course the very term Serious Reader implies there is another sort, namely the non-serious reader or the flippant reader — you know, the kind of person whose reading of Jane Austen’s celebrated opening line, might go something like:

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be ........... whatever !”

No the serious reader is one who approaches the written word with a degree of quiet determination. The first sentence is read, then the second followed by the third. Then the third sentence is read again and then the fourth begun … until the eyelids droop and the chin sinks slowly onto the chest. An unseen hand flicks off the lamp and the room is silent save for the sound of gentle snoring:

xorghf, xorghf, xagagagakkk

So where was I ?

Yes, that was it: following my last piece, a number of readers have written in, offering all sorts of excuses as to why they still haven’t bought a copy of The Wisdom of Wormwood.

Here are just a few of them, starting with the paltry ones:

I won’t have the time to read it
   Be honest - that’s not really true right now is it?

I don’t like being pressured into buying things.
   Go away, come back later and pretend you found it all by yourself.

I fear that buying a copy will only encourage you to write more.
   There is always that risk.

I don’t want to spend £2.99 without being absolutely sure that it’s any good 
   Let me assure you: it is very good indeed — better than you could possibly imagine. 

I’ll do it tomorrow
   Yeah, yeah.

And then there are the legitimate excuses:

I don’t have a device capable of running Kindle. 
Having vowed to renounce Bezos and all his works, I refuse to buy things on Amazon.
I have never really liked your stuff anyway.

Fair enough

Wednesday, April 08, 2020

A piece of shameless self promotion

You may think you have seen this before and you'd be right but the fact is, if you haven’t already got yourself a copy, you NEED to get one NOW




“But where can I get one?” I hear you ask.

The answer is, you can get one here

And it is no use coming up with excuses: that you haven’t got the time, have too many other things to do and so on, because — sorry — but it just won’t wash.

During these difficult days [add phrases invoking wartime spirit etc etc], we should give ourselves the time to smile or even to surrender to a hearty belly laugh — you know, the kind where you rock back and forwards in your chair, slapping your thighs, while throwing your head back and emitting gales of full-throated laughter.

So if you find yourself thinking:

“I’d like some of that — it sounds just the ticket.”

Then you NEED to click here and get yourself a copy of

The Wisdom of Wormwood 


That's right — do it NOW

Wednesday, April 01, 2020

Books

Looking at all the bookshelves appearing in people’s webcams reminded me of something I wrote some years ago that was going to form part of a larger collection called ‘HTML and all that’, which is unlikely to be brought to completion for the simple reason that it was rooted in the time I spent writing computer software and is now somewhat dated. This chapter is about building a technical library. I was thinking of modifying it with the intention of giving it wider appeal but, life being too short, I decided to leave it as it is. 

So you have to buy some books. Notice I say 'buy', by the way, and not 'read' or 'borrow', for  this is an important point - you  must own them. In fact I can safely say without exaggeration that owning the book - or more precisely - taking possession of its content is the very essence of what we're talking about here. Bringing the book home, taking it out of its little bag and making a special space for it on your shelf - this is what it’s all about. Now (already), to all intents and purposes, you have appropriated the knowledge it contains. Think of it, if you like, as a sort of long-term storage. Your own memory, the bit you carry round with you inside your head, is a precious resource and should not be treated as a mere shopping bag in which to lug around all sorts of arbitrary information. No the proper place for that kind of thing is on your bookshelf, or on the disk of your computer, both of which can be thought of as extensions of your own intellect, holding information ready to be loaded up the moment you require it.

But I am running ahead of myself; before you can buy the book you must select it from amongst all the others in the shop. How do you go about doing that? In this piece I will give you a few guidelines which, if followed, will guarantee satisfaction.

So there you are, in the bookshop confronting an enormous set of shelves on which is arrayed the most magnificent collection of books. Let me acknowledge right away that at this point it is not unusual to suffer a kind of dreadful premonition in which you see the selfsame books stuffed, dog-eared and slightly mildewed, in cardboard boxes outside some depressing second-hand bookshop, tagged with a handwritten label announcing '15p each - 5 for 50p' Should this happen - and it is inevitable from time to time - there is nothing else for it but to leave the shop immediately. Go and do something else; this isn't the right time.

But today the books are looking pristine and inviting. Where do you begin?

Well, you have to narrow down the choice and this should be done in the most efficient way possible - that is with your hands in your pockets. The first selection criterion is a simple one - thickness. You are looking for books that are between 1 and 2 inches thick. Less than that and, I guarantee, it's going to be heavy going. It's difficult to explain - but there's a certain quality of meanness about a thin book. You can be sure the author considers himself very clever and is somehow justified in receiving a small fortune for the privilege of parting with a few pages of incomprehensible gobbledegook. The only exception to this rule applies to those cases where the title alone is so enigmatic and impressive that it might be worth acquiring the book for it's spine alone. Tastes vary but something along the lines of In Defence of Failure or Cloud Geometry would be strong candidates for my own shelves.

The very opposite can be said of thick books. Though it is a somewhat arbitrary threshold, anything over 2 in thick has to be considered distinctly suspect. There's an increasing tendency in this direction with books of 4-5 inches thick regularly on offer.

Who are these authors who can say so much on a subject that only a month ago was completely outside the sphere of human knowledge? The suspicion is that these books are not so much written as generated. For some reason only known to the publishers they are invariably red and have titles that are either boastful: The Guru's Guide to Goo or simply enigmatic: FffD Secrets. If you were to heave one of these tomes down from the shelf - and be warned, this can be dangerous - you will be presented with a photograph of the author while, at the same time, your fingers unconsciously trace the outlines of a CD glued into the back cover. In case 900 pages is not enough, you are offered a 600 Megabyte memory dump of the author's own personal computer.

Only now, having narrowed down the field somewhat, should you give serious attention to titles. Titles are important. When you are interviewed on the Horizon programme in a few years time you will be filmed against  the backdrop of your bookshelf and, however clever you sound, the impression is going to be seriously compromised if titles such as The Beginners Guide to Basic or First Tottering Steps in Computer Programming  are clearly visible over your shoulder. Avoid these books like the plague. They serve no purpose whatsoever. As long as they remain unread they will only serve as a source of anxiety, causing you to wake up in a cold sweat the night before you are due to address an international conference on Image Recognition Architectures with the unshakeable conviction that there was something in Fun Pictures on your PC in 3 days that you completely overlooked. If you do choose to read them (and as we shall see later, this should be considered a strategy of last resort) then you will want to heave them out of the house as soon as possible.

So you have eliminated about half the books on the shelves without touching any of them  and now you're left with books between 1 and 2 inches thick with good, dependable titles - like Comprehensive C++, A Lisp Primer and so on. Even so there are still an awful lot to choose from and, there's nothing else for it, this is where you're going to have to reach up and handle them.

First thing to look for is the front cover. It’s difficult to state hard and fast rules here but a few simple guidelines can be stated.

Animals are good. If the book has an animal on the cover it is definitely worth looking at more closely. So keep that book with the picture of the amphibian on the cover for further consideration. Another good indicator is the cover illustration that looks like it might have been painted by the author - you know the kind of thing: a wizard or suchlike, floating awkwardly against a background depicting badly painted castle walls with maybe a medieval maiden in a wimple. Is that the right word? You know, one of those conical hats with a bit of gauze draped from it. The whole composition is enough to make you feel sick of course, but let's try to understand this. The author, being some arch-nerd, has thought it a really Great Idea to provide his own cover illustration and the publishers (shrewdly) have the insight to appreciate that Like Attracts Like (or some other such principle) and, ignoring the protestations of the art department, have gone along with it. The guy must have something about him to be worth flattering in this way and the publishers have no doubt calculated that the nerd-market alone is going to be sufficient to bring in a healthy return. No - put aside your understandable distaste and keep the book on one side for further consideration.

The cover illustrations to reject are easily recognisable. Anything that looks vaguely technical - flow charts, circuit diagrams and the like - these go straight in the reject bin. There's no safer indication than this that the book has been commissioned by serious business people. It is going to be boring. No, worse - it's going to be deeply depressing. Don't take my word for it though. Go on, open it up, turn to the Preface or Introduction or whatever it is that immediately follows the horribly long and turgid Acknowledgements. Read the first sentence. It starts: "In today's dynamic business environment … "  doesn’t it? Need I say more?

To go any further, you're going to have to open the book and look inside but don't despair - a glance at the dedication is sufficient to eliminate a good 50% of the volumes remaining. What you're looking for is something distinctly quirky like:

To Annette for feeding the marmosets

A dedication of this sort should be readily distinguishable from the more pathetic:

To my wife for her patient and selfless support.

In the first case, we're talking about someone who is clearly deeply in love with the author. Even though Annette is clearly somewhat afraid of the small animals, doesn't like touching them, let alone changing their soiled bedding, she willingly does it simply to be occupying the same space as her brilliant partner, who spends every evening hammering out his life's work on the PC.

The second dedication, on the other hand, speaks of an abandoned and resentful woman whose selfless support consists of nothing more than a willingness to tolerate, endless lonely evenings patiently explaining to the children how their father is very busy earning the money to pay for their riding lessons. See the difference? You don't want to spend good money on a book written by someone so uncaring.

So now, finally, we come to the part where you must delve deeper. This doesn’t need to take as long as you might imagine. Raise the book to your nose and riffle through the pages. Does it smell right? Tastes differ but you’re looking for something like new-mown grass or the smell of rain on stone paving after a long dry spell.

If you follow the principles outlined above you will find yourself with a technical library that not only provides you with the comforting assurance that you have a vast body of knowledge at your fingertips but will also be the envy of others.

Books undoubtedly have a number of additional qualities that I might have touched upon. There are some individuals, for example, who are passionate about the contents of the book – specifically by the detailed way in which the words are grouped into sentences, paragraphs and chapters. This is something of a specialised topic which I do not propose to embark on here and is one that, in my own experience at least, I have not felt the need to trouble myself with.

Contact tracing

Since I first posted this piece late last night, discussion of contact tracing appears to have gone viral (as the saying goes), partly in response to the rumour that the UK is about to launch something very similar to TraceTogether (first developed in Singapore and described below). I was going to add some links but you can find them everywhere. So, by all means skip the piece below; it adds very little to the general discussion. I do however recommend taking a look at the Youtube link at the end - if you haven't see it already. 

There appears to be a growing consensus that the only effective way to manage (and eventually eradicate) the Covid-19 pandemic is through a rigorous program of testing and contact tracing. This is the policy advocated by amongst others: the WHO’s Bruce Aylward and the UK former Health Minister, Jeremy Hunt. The merit of the approach is supported by evidence from SE Asian countries — most notably Singapore and South Korea — where testing and contact tracing were adopted from the outset with a measurable degree of success.

So how does it work? At the simplest level, public health bodies identify people either testing positive for the virus or showing symptoms and then, by means of interviews, ask them to remember with whom they have been in close contact. These people would be followed up in turn and offered testing and advice on limiting further spread.

It doesn’t take long to see the impracticalities of this method. For a start, people are unlikely to remember all of their close contacts and would be unable, in most instances, to identify individuals - for example, after travelling on a bus or visiting a supermarket. Also the resource requirements involved in tracking down and interviewing a widening network of contacts would be considerable.

So how was it done in Singapore and South Korea?

In South Korea the government texted people to let them know if they were in the vicinity of a diagnosed individual using location data from mobile phones. In any case, it is an approach that would be unlikely to gain acceptance in the UK on account of the privacy implications. It is also difficult to see how this would help trace contacts of asymptomatic individuals who later tested positive.

The method adopted in Singapore is more interesting. Here they encouraged people to install an app on their phones called TraceTogether. Each app was assigned a unique ID and the Ministry of Health maintained a database linking each ID to the user’s phone number.

The way it works is this: every time you come into close contact with another person with the same app installed on their phone the apps communicate (via Bluetooth) and each simply stores the ID of the other contact together with the current time. If you remain free of the virus there is no need for you to pay attention to the data being collected - in fact, it is virtually meaningless, consisting simply of a number of timestamped numerical IDs. If you test positive for the virus however, you are encouraged to contact the Ministry of Health and allow them to access the data stored on your phone. The Ministry is then in a position to inform those contacts whom they deem to be at risk and advise them to be tested.

Although this still requires the involvement of a government ministry, the TraceTogether app is designed in such a way as to reassure users with regard to privacy. In essence it is little more than a streamlined version of the contact tracing approach described earlier, the main advantage being that it does not rely on individuals being able to recall (or identify) the people they have been in contact with.

Before I heard about the TraceTogether I found myself thinking about something along similar lines. As it turned out, this was very similar to TraceTogether except for the fact that, in my own scheme, the records would be uploaded to a central body which would, as a consequence, be in possession of the data necessary to construct a detailed representation of contacts across the entire population. Not only would this allow those at risk of infection to be identified and contacted but it would also enable the co-ordinating body to evaluate the effectiveness of social isolation directives as well as assessing the consequences of contacts involving key workers (emergency services, medical staff etc.)

It is the sort of idea that seems wonderful for a while, until one realises it could also be a nightmare.

Many of these issues are discussed in a recent article by Jon Evans. In it he makes the observation:

More generally, at what point does the urgent need for better data collide with the need to protect individual privacy and avoid enabling the tools for an aspiring, or existing, police state? And let’s not kid ourselves; the pandemic increases, rather than diminishes, the authoritarian threat. 

The whole article makes very interesting reading. You can find it here:

https://techcrunch.com/2020/03/29/test-and-trace-with-apple-and-google/

The author comes to the conclusion that Apple and Google are capable of constructing a near-complete contact model within the time frame necessary to bring the virus under control and that furthermore they can be trusted more than governments not to misuse the information obtained.

I am not inclined to comment further other than to point out that such a proposal would be — at the very least — controversial.

Finally though, you should take a look at the following short presentation. It shows what is presently possible using location data from mobile phones.

It is a bit of an eye-opener.