Proving the Obviously Untrue

I've had my Google development phone, the g1, for some time now. I haven't had the luxury of time to write anything for it, but I mainly wanted it to try out Android anyway. I've reviewed the phone before, and again after some canonical firmware upgrades.

I use the truly excellent K9 application for mail, it has good support for self signed certificates, now has IMAP push support and is generally excellent. However, it stores all the mail on the shockingly limited internal memory on the device. That, and upgrades to things like Google Maps, adding truly excellent new functionality, left me constantly looking for applications to remove.

This is why in the end I decided to try Cyanogen's ROMs. Since I have a development phone, I didn't need to root it, and just followed the relevant instructions (in truth, I couldn't be bothered to downgrade the OS to root it first).

Here are some observations about the new ROM:

• Apps2sd is amazing.
  I have the whole pleasure of trying different apps all over again, without sweating about every byte. I don't have to worry about how much data is in my contacts (whether I assign them icons), my emails, and so on. I have plenty of room. I was delighted to be able to install DocumentsToGo. Which makes the phone much more useful for work emails. Loads of great apps I had to remove have been reinstated, and I can play with others, like the awesome Google Googles.
• Extra workspaces
  There are five workspaces, making for more widget playroom. I now have a calendar app taking up a whole workspace with the events to come. Excellent.
• It fixes several problems I had with MMS functionality.
  
  • It fakes a variety of user agents, meaning that a test video message I sent myself on o2 finally worked, for the first time ever.
  • The stock ROM allows you to prevent data access when roaming, which is good. But it also doesn't fetch MMS when roaming, which is (for me) a nuisance, and these are usually on a different tariff system. So when you receive an MMS on roaming, you end up enabling all data access to quickly receive the MMS, and then turn it off again. The Cyanogen ROM has an option to retrieve MMS on roaming.
• UI feels snappier
• USB tethering
  can be enabled, which JustWorks (TM) with Debian. Excellent.

On the downside, I have had some reset problems, but admittedly I have sometimes been pushing the phone very hard indeed to test it. And the battery life on the g1 is still awful. I know Noodles has solved the problem by not actually using his phone :-), but I want to use mine.

Another minor problem I encountered some weeks ago was the accelerometer suddenly starting serious misreporting on one axis. This problem seems to be becoming less severe, but even reinstalling the stock and then cyanogen ROM did not fix it. However, note I did not wipe the user data.

Cyanogen has made my phone fun to have again. And I will still replace it when a new Android handset comes out that I really like, but a lot of the urgency has gone. I'll certainly buy him a beer for Christmas.

Posted by Colin Turner

Last week I wrote a little about the size of black holes, and incidentally discussed very primitive calculations I did on the lifespan of any black hole created by the LHC.

A few days later, this interesting article showed the results of professional physicists on just how little such little black holes could grow, in some cases even if their lifetime was not restricted. Enjoy.

Posted by Colin Turner

I allowed myself to become rather distracted by my second years last week as the class was finishing. They were talking about an episode of Horizon that discussed General Relativity and theories of Quantum Gravity. What followed was a free ranging discussion on the nature of infinity, mentioned briefly in the program. But we also talked about the nature of a black hole and its size.

It's surprisingly easy to calculate this with reasonably elementary maths and physics. I first did this when I was about 17 (how very sad) using classical physics equations, and was astounded to discover that even so, the answer was correct (I checked it in the Encyclopedia Britannica in the library at the time).

Here is Newton's universal law of gravitation, between two bodies. It describes the force F between two bodies that are r metres apart. Let's take the one with mass M to be the black hole. G is a small (though mysterious) constant.



You can work out the energy needed to escape the black hole using the old stand by equation that work done is the force times distance traveled against that force, but that only works with a constant force, this force will change as we move, so we need to use the big daddy of multiplication, integration.



Specifically, we will work out the energy needed to escape from the event horizon, the surface at which the escape velocity is the speed of light, which is c (299,792,458 m/s). So the energy will be given by moving my little mass m from the radius of the event horizon, let's call is R to infinity, to show we have broken away.



Now, this should just balance the kinetic energy possessed by my little mass m traveling at the speed of light.



and if we rearrange for R we get that



In other words, the radius of the event horizon, the bit we think of as the "hole" is dependent entirely upon the mass of the object. Please note this is based on a very simple model of a non rotating black hole. Nevertheless we can do some nice calculations from this.

The Sun, would have to be compressed from its diameter of about 700 million kilometres into a radius of just under 3 kilometres. The Earth's mass would need to be compressed so much to form a black hole you would need to squeeze its radius of over 6 thousand kilometres into a radius of around 9 millimetres. That's how dense we're talking here.

We can also consider the radius as described by the contained energy of the black hole, since we know that



and so, replacing our M in our above equation we get



Wow. Remember c is a big number, taking it to the power of four is a lot. So why do this? There's been a lot of speculation about the possibility the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) could create a black hole. This has caused a fair degree of panic, and at least one suicide. It's a physicist's dream that a black hole might be created. I just looked up the "high" energies used by the LHC, and high is a relative term. It plans to bash protons together with 7 TeV (Tera electron volts) of energy each, or lead nucleii with 574 TeV each, let's take the latter. Just how much energy is that in a collision? Well, doubling and converting to good old Joules gives 184 micro Joules. That's really not a lot, 184 millionth's of a Joule. A 100W light bulb uses 100 Joules each and every second. How big would the radius of such a black hole that might form be, from that energy? Check the maths, because so far I haven't but I get.

metres

which is 0.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,003 metres wide (I hope, I didn't double check the zeros either), which is probably not the planet swallower of people's imagination (but this is fun). But the problem is people think this tiddler will grow very rapidly, but that's because they don't know about Hawking Radiation. This is an interesting quantum effect that means black holes aren't really black, they do emit a little radiation. Large holes would gather surrounding matter faster than their low radiation rate, but small holes have the opposite situation, they radiate more rapidly. The maths for all that is pretty complex, and you need to make lots of assumptions, but the time taken for our little black hole to "evaporate" is (hurriedly calculated by me)



a tiny, tiny fraction of a second. Even allowing for the ambient temperature and some fall in of matter, this little baby is not in equilibrium, it's not getting mass fast enough to accumulate more. It's safe*.


* All disclaimers apply. No liability is assumed for foolish unvalidated experiments done by you or other members of your species. Do not attempt to create black holes in your garage. Any subsequent destruction of your civilization, planet or solar system is at your own risk, and any "EPIC FAIL" signs placed by aliens on the remains is not due to me or my calculation. No calculations have been done on the matter of strange matter either. If you break the planet / system / galaxy or universe you own all the parts.

Posted by Colin Turner

Success at last. I've written before about my problems getting vidzone working, and tonight while taking a breather from some work I tried the Oracle of Google again, and I found a solution. As I suspected, it wasn't a network problem at all.

Kudos to lyonix, who suggested that deleting a corrupt cache for Vidzone from the game data utility often works. It worked perfectly for me, (note even removing and reinstalling the software doesn't affect that).

Posted by Colin Turner

I installed donut earlier this week. This is on my G1 devphone, so I don't recommend you use the htc page otherwise. This time I didn't bother going through all the nonsense with the tools, I just mounted the phone on USB and slapped the image across one by one into the SD card as update.zip.

This is not as significant an upgrade as cupcake was but nevertheless, it's improved the phone in a number of key ways.

• the search widget now searches phone content as well internet content, this works very smoothly;
• the camera / camcorder apps are now easy to switch between, and much faster;
• the gallery is quicker, but only after it takes a complete age to index/whatever;
• the market application is hugely improved, and as a bonus, lots of content that was previously unavailable on the devphone is now listed;
• the speech synthesis stuff is installed, but I don't really see it does much just yet;
• the battery monitor app is very useful, especially since the g1 battery life sucks so badly.

My battery life is, by the way, 29% taken up by wifi (forgot to switch it off today), 18% by display, 14% cell standby, and so on. 8% was taken up by voice calls.

Be warned, the new upgrade seems to suck up more space, and takes a long time to start-up after first reboot.

You can see a full list of the changes here, and though it's modest, I think it's a nice upgrade in lots of ways. At this time, it's hard to know how much limitations in the G1 experience are from the hardware or the OS, I'm looking forward to seeing how android behaves on new hardware.

Posted by Colin Turner

I recently had a conversation with some people who wondered if there could be any place for compassion in the martial arts in general, and certainly in Iaido, or Japanese swordsmanship in particular.

It may be useful to start by considering the idea of Bushido, or "the Way of the Warrior". A lot of people have heard about Bushido, but often through a very distorted perspective. This is not least because the ideas have been smeared by the inexcusable behaviour of some Japanese in the Second World War. These individuals were not, by the way, samurai. That class had long since been dissolved in the Meiji Restoration.

The closest analogous concept for us in the West is that of Chivalry and the word has similar linguistic roots. Now, we do not believe that Christian knights always behaved in a way that was above reproach, do we? Certainly not, but we do not throw out the baby with the bath water. The legend of Arthur is a romanticised and idealised idea of chivalry but one that has inspired many to better conduct.

Bushido lists seven virtues (some say the seven folds in a hakama represent these), which I will borrow the listing of from wikipedia rather than mess with the kanji myself:

• Rectitude (義, gi^?)
• Courage (勇, yuu^?)
• Benevolence (仁, jin^?)
• Respect (礼, rei^?)
• Honesty (誠, makoto or 信 shin^?)
• Honor (誉, yo^?)
• Loyalty (忠, chuu^?)

Do you find any of this list surprising? It might temper your view of how a warrior might see himself. Perhaps you did not expect respect and benevolence to make such a list.

I think it's a nice list to consider with a martial art like aikido which is a modern budo that seeks to avoid gratuitous damage to the "opponent". For the practitioners of such an art, it provides a compass for our behaviour. I constantly emphasise the importance of compassion in aikido when I teach, and strive to embody it in practice. There are actually pragmatic and selfish reasons why this behaviour is martially more effective; you do not damage joints you need to effect control; you do not provoke responses you need to contain and so on. Some might argue if compassion with self-interest is still compassion. The concept of cause and effect, or karma provides a strong incentive for acting appropriately, isn't it a bonus that it is not merely "right" but also effective?

But the sword is not a weapon designed to control or subdue but to kill. There is a Japanese word katsujinken, the sword that gives life. What can that mean? It can have many meanings. It could mean to not use the sword when not necessary, to fight without fighting.

Compassion requires the love of others. I feel I have long understood that. It has taken me longer to realise it also implies the love of one's self, and I still struggle with the consequences of that. Compassion can manifest itself in many ways. Exercising compassion may require hard and apparently brutal choices to avoid greater suffering caused by another path. Such choices can be be traumatic for the one who acts as well as to those whom it appears to affect the most. Reconsider the list of seven virtues in that context if you will. The samurai were required to take quick, just decisions, and see them through, with all that entailed.

To assist another as they commit Seppuku was (it is now illegal in Japan) an act of respect, benevolence and compassion. There are many stories of samurai acting as seconds for both their closest friends, and their defeated enemies to shorten their suffering. To regretfully, but decisively take a life to protect one's own can be an act of compassion (to one's self), and in many cases as an act to protect the lives of many innocent others.

A final thought from the modern era. If you found yourself in a hijacked plane post 2001, with the split second opportunity and means to kill the hijacker, would it not be a compassionate act to swiftly and decisively kill that person before they could take any action to kill so many others? Might it not even be an act of compassion towards that person and their family?

If you seek mastery of the sword, seek first sincerity of the heart, for the former is but a reflection of the latter.

Iwakura Yoshinori

Posted by Colin Turner

Derren Brown has been back on our screens recently with a series of big events. It's brought him a lot of publicity, and a lot of the public comment has been amusing to say the least. I've been watching everyone comment on the TV and Radio that he's a trickster, and his explanations of how he does things are often bogus.

Yes.... Yes... That's the point. He's a magician, a showman, he tells you right up front at the start of the show. Misdirection, magic, showmanship and more. It's entertainment. He is the first to make it clear that what he does is a trick. He doesn't claim otherwise. If you can't bring yourself to enjoy that, I humbly suggest you watch something else. And while we are on it, I'm relieved people see it's a trick. I think David Blaine's closeup magic is among the most impressive I have ever seen, and I shudder when those around him don't even seem to consider it's just a trick.

Personally, I love Derren, I love his cheeky smug as hell smile as he gets away with it. I enjoy his faked discomfiture. I enjoy it when he fakes near success in tricks to make them more convincing. I enjoy calling him names as I laugh as he lies through his teeth to the audience. I have casually studied a bit of magic in my time, and he is a fine magician. Many big stage magicians rely on assistants, who actually do all the hard work, but he is clearly the architect of most of his own tricks. I'm reading his book and it is informative and very amusing to me, and I very much respect him as a fellow in fight against (rampant) irrationality (a little bit can be a fine thing).

Sadly I've missed a few of the "events", since it clashes with my Iaido class and I wasn't organised enough to record it. I'm slowly catching up on 4OD. But I did see the program on how he stole the lottery. And I'm a mathematician, and I laughed and laughed at it. I didn't believe a word of it, but even the deceit was cleverly convincing and it's not trivial to say exactly what he really did.

He claims he averaged the results of a crowd of people picking lottery numbers. There's a consequence to this. Consider this: how many ways can 50 people pick a number that averages to 1? How many ways can they pick numbers that average to 30? If you understand this point you'll see the possible "answers" from the crowd have an odd distribution. But the cover story was very amusing in its own right. You don't want to know how he really did it, it'll be shockingly dull.

So yes. We know he didn't show the numbers in advance of the draw. Yes, we know his explanation is nonsense. It's a trick. That's the point. Enjoy it and smile along with his insufferable smugness .

Posted by Colin Turner

The PS3 has an free network application called Vidzone. I downloaded it when it originally came out some time ago, but it never actually worked. It would load, show playlists, adverts, and the seize up the whole console when I tried to actually play videos. It's a shame, because it looked like a nice app for putting on some music.

Since then the PS3 itself has had a big firmware upgrade to 3.0.1 and Vidzone was upgraded to 1.0.4. Worth trying again I figured. Well, initially I couldn't get the application to crash the console anymore (I did later!), but certainly it wouldn't play videos. It did show adverts, even video adverts, playlists, everything but actually play videos. Which is weird to say the least. So to be honest, it looks like the problem is somewhere at the PS3/Vidzone end, since absolutely all other network functionality works on the PS3.

But, as a precaution I thought it was worth checking out that old bugbear, the router firmware, and there are some hints that's an issue. I'm a Virgin Media customer at the moment, for complex reasons I don't really have a choice at the moment, and they supplied a cable modem and router when they connected me (rather late as it happened). When I looked at the router firmware, it's shockingly old. So I clicked on the link for the knowledge base and downloaded the latest firmware. It failed to upload, no explanation of why. I tried every intermediate release, which took quite a while to do. They all failed.

So now I'm suspicious and confirm that, yes... Virgin are specifically blocking updates, even though many, many bugs have been fixed in the new releases. I find this pretty puzzling.

I phoned their tech support to try and confirm this in person. I suggested that I would have to buy my own router if I wanted to get round these problems, and they informed me I wouldn't be supported. I put it to them that I seem to have a choice between being supported with no actual support and no means to help myself, or getting new hardware, being officially unsupported but able to help myself. He put me on hold to check it out, a minute later the line went dead.

So if you're out there googling for "vidzone doesn't work", this might be part of the reason, but who knows? It seems it could be fixed at the PS3 end in any case. But it's a cautionary tale that the stock VM hardware might come with lots of problems you can't fix.

Posted by Colin Turner