The LambCutlet Disorganisation

My maternal grandmother, 85 years of age, died in the early hours of August 24th, 2007. She parted us peacefully in her sleep with family by her bedside after a final two week long, strong and dignified fight; having had many years of gradually deteriorating health.

As a survivor of the Warlord Era of the then newly founded Republic of China, the Chinese Nationalist-Communist Civil War, Communist Collectivisation, numerous episodes of famine and lastly fleeing as refugees to the safe haven of British Hong Kong with my late maternal grandfather and then young children. She was the immovable rock to my maternal family and is survived by her son, my uncle; eldest daughter, my aunt; one grandson, myself; seven granddaughters and six great-grandchildren.

Having been using an Asus A7Jc since the last quarter of 2006 (having got rid of the old Samsung) and running Windows Vista since day one (pre-RC1 (build 5536), RC1 (build 5600), RC2 (build 5744) and now the released retail version (build 6000)), even the foresight of maxing out the “laptop” (as a 17″ widescreen tipping 4kg on the scales, it’s a desktop replacement really) to a generous 2 GiB of RAM, still isn’t quite enough considering how I abuse hardware via the dark art of multitasking. :P

As fully solid state drives are still extortionately expensive and/or don’t have the capacity of traditional magnetic platter harddrives, Vista allows the usage of compatible flash memory (like those used in USB thumbdrives or digital camera storage cards) to work alongside SuperFetch to improve system performance by using the flash memory to cache data that are typically small in size and would be randomly read from the harddisk.

Why is this? Whilst even the slow harddisk like those found in laptops would beat even the fastest commercial flash memory in sustained read and write speeds, flash memory access latency is typically 10 to 100 times faster by virtue of not having to wait from the data to come full circle on rotating platters, so when data is access is tonnes of random read/writes… flash memory has the upper hand.

For the average person using Vista, ReadyBoost is most obvious when enabled on systems with tiny physical RAM of under 1 GiB (Vista’s minimum requirement is 512 MiB) where the performance improvement approaches 50% faster! Systems with larger physical memories will see a sharper drop off in improvements less you happen to be one of those evil bastards (like me) that hammer a system close to or beyond available physical RAM.

So what about my experiences with ReadyBoost? Well, whilst I do have a thumbdrive and USB flash card reader… I really didn’t like the idea of having a system enhancement that dangled off a laptop (though by design, ReadyBoost will gracefully deactivate itself should the flash device fail and/or removed accidentally) so took advantage of the integrated SD/MMC/MS-PRO flash card reader where I could stick any one of the acceptable cards flush into the slot. ;)

Whilst the price differential between a 2 GiB and 4 GiB SD flash card was minimal, the recommended ratio between flash and real memory is 1:1. As I “only” have 2 GiB of physical RAM, I chose the former and in anycase, ReadyBoost actually compresses the cached data to a ratio of 2:1, so a 2 GiB will store roughly 4 GiB of data! Oh and the cache is encrypted with 128bit AES, which is as strong as the default encryption available with Vista’s EFS (per file/directory encryption) or BitLocker (full drive encryption), so wouldn’t have to worry about people snooping into one’s data should they get hold of said flash-cache.

After poking about on various online shops, I opted for a 2 GiB Transcend TS2GSD150 with superficially fit all the requirements for ReadyBoost. On receiving the goods and plugging it into the slot, Vista’s autoplay dialogue popped up and plumbed for the “Speed up my computer using Windows ReadyBoost” option.

Disappointingly, the tests came back saying the device was not up too the job, even with a few clicks in the properties tab to get Vista to retest the device. Figuring that the integrated card reader might be the bottle neck, I decided to full format the card using FAT32 and on checking the property pages, see that the card was now suitable for ReadyBoost! Wooh!

I can only guess that the default FAT16 formatted card was something that didn’t agree with ReadyBoost (formatting as just FAT will be FAT12 or FAT16. In any case, FAT32 is a more robust filesytem of the 3 and is the only way to make use of cards that are larger than 2 GiB, so this should always be the first choice for ReadyBoost.

Why not NTFS you ask? Whilst ReadyBoost does support Microsoft’s (as of Vista) transactional filesystem, it has too much overhead for such usage and is ill suited to the architecture of NAND flash anyway. In an ideal world, Microsoft would have added NAND specific filesystem support (akin the Opensourced JFFS2 or YAFFS) for ReadyBoost, eliminating the square-peg-round-hole situation as current.

Is the difference noticeable? So far, things look good… having let things cache for a while, one thing that annoyed me in Firefox when switching to Flash and/or AJAX laden pages if a 30-something second lag where the browser does jack-shit plus a lot of disk thrashing (not helped by the fact I have around 250 tabs open across 6 windows… parallel web-browsing at its finest!) are reduced to a mere couple of seconds and minimal disk thrashing! Wooh!

Even better though is for those of you guys and gals that are buying a cutting edge laptop this latter half of 2007 as ReadyBoost’s sister feature, ReadyDrive can be made use of by laptop featuring hybrid harddrives (traditional platter harddrive but with integrated NAND cache) or system platforms like Intel’s Santa Rosa with Robson technology without the need to attach dangly bits to one’s laptop and/or use up an integrated flash reader slot! :D

It was way back in the beginning of December 2003 with what was then phpBB 2.1 Milestone1, over the course of 4 and a bit years with the announcement on the 14th of January, 2005 by Paul “psoTFX” Owen (ex-Lead Developer) that phpBB 2.2 had evolved to become phpBB 3.0, and now… phpBB have reached yet another milestone, phpBB 3.0 Release Candidate 1, the very first version marking the end of the Beta phase and a sufficiently hardy release suitable for live installation!

phpBB’s Development Team Leader, Meik “Acyd Burn” Sievertsen, announced the release like so:

We are very pleased to announce the availability of the phpBB3 RC1 package. This is the first release candidate which is meant to become the Gold release if no more bugs or problems arise. Of course there may be more than one release candidate.

With this release we will give full support, allow uploading language packs as well as modifications and styles. Please note that during the first few weeks support questions may not be answered as fast as with the 2.0.x line. We also only give support to those having a clean RC1 installation, previous conversions or updates will not be supported. We encourage only those running the release candidate wanting to test out the new version, it is still recommended to wait for the full release; after all this is a release candidate.

Personally, I’m most excited about the fact this is the first public release which bundles the über-secret and outright über-sexy prosilver style for the user facing forums and the back-end ACP, which has had a tantelising “Development of” page over at phpBB.com since the site re-launch, where the only way to show how awesome it is short of printing screenshots out and wrapping ones naked body with them, is by the way of a good old fashioned Photogasm™!:

Those of you now bursting for some relief of sexual tension, can head over to the download page and test drive (or indeed start a brand new community!) using the phpBB 3.0 Release Candidate 1 package! ;)

For statistics spunky-monkeys, some more goodies for you to peruse:

• Bug statistics for the timeframe between Beta5 and Release Candidate 1
• Bug statistics since the opening of the bug tracker for phpBB 3.0.x

Summit of Olympus Mons is in sight… onwards phpBB 3.0.0! :D

Nick Broomfield’s “Ghosts (鬼佬)” premièred on More4 a week or so ago and is about the Morecambe Bay cockling disaster which occurred back in 5th of February of 2004 (15th day of the 1st month by the Chinese calendar, so it was also “Little New Year”, that is: 元宵節 (Lantern Festival)) where 23 immigrant Chinese cockle pickers drowned, 20 of whom were from my late mother’s home province of 福建 (Fujian).

The film tells the story of 林愛琴 (Lin Aiqin), herself also from 福建 (Fujian), as she travelled for 6 months from (as mother would put it ever so eloquently in Cantonese) the “poor as fuck” home village across land and sea, finally arriving in ye olde Blighty.

Already available on DVD, our crazy Swedish friends have already “digitised” it, complete with English subtitles for those that can’t want for a shiny silver DVD to land through the letter box. Here’s a snippet by way of the official trailer and interview with families of the Morecambe Bay victims:

I’ve yet to watch the full film myself, though I have to say it’s curious the thoughts and emotions it has evoked already… particularly clear is my mother telling me the story where she had to literally “swim the last mile” to 香港 (Hong Kong) after being ship-wrecked near the coast (where luckily the Colonial Government of 香港 (Hong Kong) had the wisdom to have an “open door” policy regarding refugees and oversaw an immigrant driven population increase from 600,000 to 3,000,000 between 1945 and 1960), fleeing the Communists and re-uniting with family whom had already landed in 香港 (Hong Kong) a few years prior.

It is by pure fluke of history that I’m here with multiple-citizenship that allows me to live more or less anywhere (worth living in) I choose… so why should accident of birth deny anyone else that right? Some of these people have saddled themselves with the equivalent (on Western wages) of €1,000,000 worth of debt, travel half-way round the world, for the promise of a better life for them and their families… all for what?

Sometimes a single image says it best:

Most users ever online was 8680 on 19 Mar 2007 01:28:47

Perhaps there was some wisdom in Bertie feeding the server some honey in trying to make it go faster? ;) Sometime we just have to think on our feet. :D

As much as I like Microsoft’s recently released Windows Vista as an improvement over Windows XP (though ironically, “vista” means “chicken” in Latvian :P) and using it right now (the pre-release Release Candidate 2 version, having registered for the Community Preview Program back in 2006), it has chronically pissed me off that even though the current exchange rate between the mighty Pound Sterling and worthless American Dollar is 1-to-1.95, the historic “1-to-1” rate for electronics and software compared to the States is still alive and well… thus sparking the following petition by Paul Milne to pressure the Right Honourable Tony Blair, to pressure Microsoft:

There is a huge difference in the price that people in the US and the UK are paying for Windows Vista the new Microsoft Operating System. As an example of this, in the UK a full copy of Vista Ultimate would cost you £350, in the US it would cost you £195. The US version of Vista is exactly the same as the UK version. There is no difference. Therefore I can see no reason for there to be such a huge difference in prices between the UK and the US other than Microsofts belief that the UK customers will pay more than their US counterparts. I ask people to sign this petition in the hope that the Prime Minister will bring pressure to bear on Microsoft over their pricing as it is my belief they are simply overcharging the people of the UK and therefore are ripping us off.

Indeed, this over charging isn’t just endemic within Blighty, as it has also infected our EuroDisneyLand counterparts on the mainland European Union with France and Germany paying an even more rip-off-tastic €550 (£370)! Curiously, in Japan, a full retail copy of Windows Vista Ultimate is an apparently eye-watering ¥47,500… till you realise that translates to £200 (€300), more or less exactly the same price as those in America. So what the fucking fuck is going on? Europe (and apparently Oceania) have to subsidise the cost of Windows for America and Japan? Kill two birds with one stone and give both Mr. Blair and Mr. Gates a good kick up the backside by signing the petition (assuming you are a citizen of her Majesty Lizzy Windsor, naturally).

I’ve seen many many oddball things on the Internet, though never would have thought I’d come across anything that’d evoke childhood memories of 香港 (Hong Kong) visiting friends & relatives of my late mother on the crowded government housing estates where there was a constant cacophony of various Chinese dialects that often sounded like quarrelling (you could never really tell) along with recollections of little old ladies practising Chinese folk religion with a bit of 打小人 (Hit the little man) by the street-side whilst burning joss sticks & joss paper. :D

The YouTube video I stumbled across (above) is actually a bit of slapstick-come-observational comedy from Singapore, the other ex-British colonial outpost and is really rather hilarious even if you don’t know any of the Chinese dialects. I’d probably consider it “not work safe” on the basis you may be in stitches laughing like an idiot which may prove detrimental to your job. :P

Ignore the first minute where it’s some (unfortunately rather catchy) Mandarin song which features two of the actors in the sketch that follows. The woman actually starts the 打小人 (Hit the little man) proper in English followed by the man doing the same in Malay! Then cometh the Chinese dialects, which if I’m not mistaken include 閩南語 (Hokkien), 廣東話 (Cantonese), 海南話 (Hainanese) and 福州話 (Hokchew/Fukkien).

The 廣東話 (Cantonese) bit, spoken by the woman is if I’m not mistaken:

打你個死人頭！打死你唔出頭！打你個死人口！打到你爛死嘴！打到你全身爛晒！打到你全家……瞓低！打！打！打！

… translates (roughly) to:

Hit you on your damn head! Hit you till retract your head (like a tortoise)! Hit you on your damn mouth! Hit you till your damn lips are busted! Hit you till your body is all broken! Hit all your family until they are in a coma! Hit! Hit! Hit!

Then the man replies (in 廣東話 (Cantonese), though seemingly with a heavy 潮州話 (Teochew) accent) chastising the woman on what an evil vindictive person she is! Rinse, wash, repeat! :D

Let’s do the Bertie dance! :D It’s been a long 2 months since the last beta, though today we’re proud to announce the availability of phpBB 3.0Beta5! This fifth beta release marks the last leg of the beta testing phase as the next milestone shall (hopefully) be Release Candidate 1, which will result in the first version of the long awaited phpBB 3.0 that will be suitable for production environments. Patience is Virtue!

New for Beta5 is the UCF, which will be used for converting non-phpBB 3.0.x to the 3.0.x format. Right now, we’ve only got the phpBB 2.0.x module bundled for testing though modules for other forums systems will follow once we hit phpBB 3.0RC1… so fear not, you will be able to migrate from Simple Machines Forum (1.0.x), Invision Power Board (1.0.x & 2.0.x), UBB.threads (6.0.x) and others to the awesomeness incarnate that is phpBB 3.0.x! ;)

Next up is the re-worked permissions interface within the ACP which is cleaner with less clutter and yet provide more visual feedback when the various settings are changed. Also, the i18n/L10n community will want to familiarise themselves with the language system so that they can provide translations via the new language packaging system with the roll-out of phpBB 3.0 on phpBB.com.

Advanced users are encouraged to download the beta, give it a good thrashing and getting those bug reports down. I’m particularly interested in bugs related to right-to-left scripts such as عربي (Arabic), עִבְרִית (Hebrew) or اردو (Urdu) since I’ve checked in changes which should hopefully resolve all layout issues on the user-facing forums and back-end ACP.

Happy beta testing and onwards to Release Candidate 1! ;)