jodrell's New Writeups

July 7, 2005 (idea)

2005-07-07T21:47:07Z

"Why, Sir, you find no man, at all intellectual, who is willing to leave London. No, Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." (Samuel Johnson to James Boswell)

Today's events have got me thinking about London: the place where I work; and birthplace of my parents and grandparents, and its place in the world. London is the greatest city in the world, and might just be the greatest city in history. So it's no wonder that in the last two days London was chosen by the International Olympic Committee to host the 2012 games, and by al-Qaeda as the target of their latest outrage.

No other place has had more influence over the world than London. It is at the centre of the modern world, a world that it helped to create. Modern experimental science was born in the laboratories of the Royal Society. Modern democratic politics developed in the Palace of Westminster, the "mother of parliaments".…

The Baroque Cycle (idea)

2005-01-28T16:07:45Z

Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle consists of three volumes (Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System Of The World), published in quick succession between October 2003 and October 2004. At over 2,100 pages (and over a million words) it represents one of the most ambitious works in speculative fiction in the last couple of decades.

The Cycle deals with some of the ideas that Stephenson originally explored in Cryptonomicon, to which the Cycle is a prequel. At the heart of Cryptonomicon is an exploration of cryptography, computing and the modern financial system, and the ways in which all three fields are related and dependent on each other.

"Around the time that I was closing in on the end of Cryptonomicon, I heard from a couple of different people about some interesting things having to do with Isaac Newton and with Gottfried Leibniz. One person pointed out to me that Newton had spent about the last 30

…

Parson's Green (place)

2003-06-04T15:35:17Z

In Notting Hill, Hugh Grant's character describes the eponymous district as "[a] small village in the middle of a city". If that's the case then it's the first village I've ever seen that has multi-storey tower blocks. If there's any part of London that could be described as a village, it's Parson's Green. Even its name sounds villagey.

Alighting from the District Line at Parson's Green tube station (just past Fulham Broadway and before Putney Bridge) on to Parson's Green Lane, you'll see a fairly standard London street with a couple of trendy wine bars. Novello's features a regular Elvis impersonator, and The Pen, which attracts everyone from the scum of the earth (namely myself and my colleagues) right through to the Mayor of London himself. There's also the inevitable coffee shop and estate agents, and a supermarket.

Keep walking south for a little while longer and things start to change. The road opens up onto the Green itself, a broad…

Writing a Whois Client (idea)

2002-12-10T13:02:26Z

Whois is just about the simplest Internet protocol there is. Whois is designed to be so simple that even lusers can easily work with it.

Example:

$ telnet whois.centralnic.com 43
Trying 212.18.224.3...
Connected to whois.centralnic.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
jodrell.uk.net
Domain Name: JODRELL.UK.NET

  Registrant: Blah
  .
  .
  .
Connection closed by foreign host.

(text in bold is user input)

That's pretty simple, and it's a good one to remember when you don't have a dedicated whois client handy.

These days, the most common use for a whois client is in a website or application for checking the availability of domain names. Now, whois was never designed for this, but that didn't stop thousands of developers using it to do domain lookups.

Here is some example code for creating a whois client in Perl and PHP.

Perl

…

Doppler effect (thing)

2002-03-31T14:45:05Z

While I was at University, I took part in a project to create some toys to demonstrate physical principles like the Doppler effect to children. I came up with this neat little toy called the Doppler Ball, which I built and demonstrated (this little sucker made the difference between graduating and having to repeat my final year).

When I was doing my PGCE training I actually used it in anger, and it worked quite well, so I present here a construction and user's guide for anyone who's interested.

Doppler Ball Construction Guide

This guide will enable you to construct your own Doppler Ball. In the interests of safety it should be noted that construction of the Doppler Ball involves the use of a soldering iron and sharp knives, and therefore school students should only construct the Doppler Ball under supervision.

Introduction

The Doppler Ball is…

The Magic Roundabout (thing)

2002-03-18T11:28:10Z

In 1975, Brummie comedian and Folk nerd Jasper Carrott released the single Funky Moped, produced by ELO's lead singer Jeff Lynne. The single was a smash hit, mainly due to its B-side, a parody of the popular kid's show, The Magic Roundabout.

Here are the lyrics (if you can call them that). They were later re-printed in Carrott's book Sweet And Sour Labrador:

"Hello children. It s a quarter to six. Time today. for Magic Roundabout..."
"I wonder where Florence is?", said Dougal.
"I m over here.", said Florence.
"Hello, Florence.", said Dougal.
"Hello, Dougal.", said Florence.
"Boing!"
"Hello, Florence and Dougal.", said Zebedee.
"Hello, Zebedee.", said Dougal and Florence.
"Hello, Zebedee, Florence and Dougal.", said Dylan.
"Hello, Dylan.", said Zebedee, Florence and Dougal.
"I say,", said Dylan.
"What?", said Dougal.

…