Sunday 8 May 2011

Oompa Loompas, Royal Weddings and Coca-Cola

It seems to have been an age since I last updated this blog; mainly because there wasn’t that much to say (not unusual, life sometimes throws these long repetitive streaks at you, during which the most interesting thing is that the spider that is oft seen crawling eastwards across the floor decides to crawl in another direction; incidentally: if you are really stuck for something to do you can catch that spider and make it crawl Westwards using a thin piece of thread – if you feel so inclined – but you would, indeed, have to be extra-ordinarily sadistic and bored to the point of brain death). Photo 0091
So: many months through the work, home, beer, TV cigarettes and peanuts routine, I ventured out onto the London Underground (that’s a capital ‘U’ there as it seems, now, to be a ‘brand’ – with T-shirts, mugs and maps – lots of maps) and I ran into some Oompa Loompas, as one would prior to coming home to write about it. Picture embedded.
I also notice that there’s been a Royal Wedding (I presume with a capital R & W, although not because of it’s capitalist tendencies… although???). Yes, sitting peacefully on my own throne reading the paper it appears I missed ‘the moment of the century’ – something I was quite shocked about. When did it happen???  Aaaah – I slept through it, I hope it held as much promise and joi-de-vivre as the last one – if not more…
Anyway – this brought me on to the next weird episode, something I had completely forgotten about; something to do with some terrorist – anyway, apparently he’s been caught or shot; not sure which; but it turned out that the president of America is very happy; no, relieved (I think is the official line).Photo 0104
Lastly, I’ve found a new place to live – a little sad as the old place (this place) is still great – but the new place is nearer to the things I love the most. Food and beer, mainly. Which can make an awfully big impact on one’s belly. SO I had better be careful and get fit – it had to happen sooner or later; I would have preferred later.
So, all in all, a good week – except for those Oompa Loompas, where were they going? Why was there only one female and, more to the point, since when has there been female Oompa Loompas anyway, at the last incarnation of them they were all clones of the one Oompa (and had a very unstable relationship with the world of pop music) – which all seemed rather surreal; I presume the underlying message behind the latest ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ ‘Drugs – just say no!’, which I sort of remember from my days playing arcade machines in the late 1980′s. Astonishingly, though, Coca-cola (despite the rumours one way and the other) does still contain ingredients from the Coca plant (albeit, I stress, a cocaine-free ingredient). Don’t believe me? Well here’s the extract from the Wikipedia entry:Photo 0097
In the United States, Stepan Company is the only manufacturing plant authorized by the Federal Government to import and process the coca plant,[34] which it obtains mainly from Peru and, to a lesser extent, Bolivia. Besides producing the coca flavoring agent for Coca-Cola, Stepan Company extracts cocaine from the coca leaves, which it sells to Mallinckrodt, a St. Louis, Missouri pharmaceutical manufacturer that is the only company in the United States licensed to purify cocaine for medicinal use.
Cocaine itself was dropped from the secret formulae back in 1900 according to this article: ‘Coca Kick in drinks spurs export fears‘. Amazing! Well – on a different topic, my photograph of the Oompas leaves a lot to be desired, I’m obviously not quite at the paparazzi level; but that’s a different story. Instead to finish with here’s some recently married Esso people – they’re living very happily together in a shop window not far from here. I missed their wedding too.
Well – thankfully, my photograph of the Oompas leaves a lot to be desired, I’m obviously not quite at the paparazzi level; but that’s a different story. Instead to finish with here’s some recently married Esso people – they’re living very happily together in a shop window not far from here. I missed their wedding too.
Oh – incidentally, the piano graveyard picture really has nothing to do with this post – but as I didn’t get off my arse to take the picture of the spider running across the carpet recently I thought I’d add my favourite picture of the moment. Who knows, this may become a running feature. But probably not.

Sunday 20 March 2011

Loading an assembly from a specific directory (i.e. when not in GAC)

C# Post HeaderJust like dynamically loading DLLs with C# - at last!

You do not have to put an assembly that an application must use at runtime in the bin folder of the application. You can put the assembly in any folder on the system, and then you can refer to the assembly at runtime.

My preference - which requires no configuration during installation - is to use method 3; just find your current executable's folder and calculate a relative path from there - ensuring that, even when the app is copied using a standard file copy, it still works on the new server (shedding any deployment requirements with regard to this). See here:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/837908

Saturday 26 February 2011

Flowers for Algernon


‘Charlie Gordon is a floor sweeper’, so the jacket blurb describes.  This is not in the same ball park as those standard 'space based' Sci-Fis akin to Star Trek. This could well be considered a psychological insight into the ever changing human state.
In this tale we follow the fortunes of Charlie who, at the outset, is ‘blessed’ with an IQ of 68, well below normal. There’s little to distinguish him from anyone else other than his inability to understand anything more than the ‘here and now’ – and with those around him either despairing at his ignorance or taking advantage of his simple nature there seems to be no real chance for progress.
That is, until he is confronted with the option to be ‘made’ intelligent through a surgical procedure. Without hesitation he takes the option with the assumption it will improve him, such is the engrained belief that everyone else knows best.
Over time he surpasses all around him, including those that performed the experimental procedure. He finds himself able to comprehend so much and yet, at the same time feels completely isolated from all – far more so than when he was a simple floor sweeper who was the butt of all jokes.
This book is not an easy read for the personification of the language itself – at the start this ‘diary’ monologue is that of a man with an IQ of 68. However, as the language improves so does Charlie’s understanding of his situation – and with hindsight he is conflicted by feelings of animosity to those around him for taking advantage of such an innocent; the former him.
Extra-ordinarily architected, this story shows the shifting of a human psyche from a constant to a growing, changing, learning individual who, once capable of objective and abstract thought, is from time to time offended by the routes used to get there. The conflict creates dead ends of thought to be avoided and quickly, as described in the text, the protagonist understands that to be productive, one must be happy.
In numerous ways this book illustrates humanity, from the the ‘birth’ of the new consciousness to the ‘nursing homes’ visited towards the end, and all the confusion of love, sex and work between the two.
In short – fantastic. I thoroughly recommend this book – but don’t take my word for it, read it for yourself! ;)

Tuesday 18 January 2011

The Stars My Destination

The Stars My Destination (S.F. Masterworks)
The Stars My Destination (S.F. Masterworks)
My rating: 5 out of 5 Stars
Brilliant. Took me a fair while to get into - it seemed fairly disjointed for the first half of the book, but that may have been due to the sporadic nature of my reading at the start of this month (January - just back at work). Second Part of the book accelerated and, like an urgent message from an anti-hero on speed, made it's impact. I liked it.

Written in the 1950's 'The Stars My Destination', despite sounding like a rather crap self help group, seems to be bang up to date even today. The only minor criticism that could be brought against it is that 'some' of the science seems fairly vague; this downfall, however, is more than made up for by the extra-ordinary imagination that drove the creation of the   more 'believe and they will come' based ideas.

In Gully Foyle's time: The world is a very different place with humans empowered, not just by knowledge, but by new physical abilities which (given their non-prejudiced distribution among the masses) have caused society to tear itself apart. This may now be all in the past - but such patterns have a tendency to repeat.
On a lighter note: Bester started writing this book in the UK and hence many of the names are based on English place names, book shops or a rather large holiday maker - so the locals said...

Go read it! Fancy buying it? Here's a link to Amazon and the book itself series: The Stars My Destination (S.F. Masterworks).