AK's weblog

What happens when a vinyl runs on a record player for 10 days? The needle cuts a nice groove on the most inner parts of the record. Unbelievable. And I found that out because we forgot switching off the record player after listening to Pearl Jam on vinyl, drunk, the saturday about one and a half weeks ago, and I didn't notice this that until today. Fortunately, the player's needle is OK, and so is the record.

I recently heard from nion and others that "assert() is crap". I would like to object this, and back that assertion (harhar!) with a few facts.

So, why is assert() not crap? Well, assert() is an early predecessor of a concept that is now known as Design by contract (DBC). The idea of DBC is that the caller of a function and the callee (i.e. the function) place a contract on what function arguments are allowed (the so-called "preconditions") and which return values are allowed (the so-called "postconditions"). In order to check whether both parties meet the contract, these preconditions and postconditions are formulated by the programmer of the callee, and the compiler (if supported by the language) adds code to check these conditions or some support library checks the conditions. If one of the conditions failed, the program fails hard - as one of the parties has violated the contract, - usually by aborting the program. As DBC has its roots in the OO area, a third condition has been added, the so-called "invariant", which checks the internal consistency of the object before leaving the function.

So why use DBC? Because, if implemented properly for all involved functions, it provides a specification on how the function may be called and what return results can be expected. During development, more attention is paid to the code and specification, and during testing, a lot of bugs (not all, such as incorrect specifications and logical errors) can be detected a lot easier than without DBC. Experience with languages like Eiffel has shown that this way of implementing and debugging code is very efficient, helping the programmer to get a program practically bug-free a lot faster. Of course, as with other techniques, DBC doesn't solve all problems, and one must not solely rely on DBC to find and fix bugs.

Now back to the actual topic, assert(). assert() is a simple mechanism that can help C and C++ programmers to implement simplified variants of DBC. Especially pre- and postconditions are easy to implement with them. So that's why assert() is "not crap", as nion stated. It is a useful tool, can help with debugging and testing and even be disabled when not required anymore.

Last, but not least, the humorous side of engaging this argument:

Nachdem der Popkulturjunkie schon das Missverhältnis von Ankündigung und Inhalt des Films Die Luftbrücke behandelt, möchte ich noch meinen Senf zu einem kleinen, unwichtigen, aber gleichzeitig völlig absurdem Detail dazugeben.
Während des Films gibt es einen Dialog zwischen zwei amerikanischen Piloten, wobei ein Pilot erzählt, dass ihm seine deutsche Verlobte Buletten gemacht hat ("Fleischlabal", wie man landläufig hier sagt), und dass er die nur ganz OK findet. Daraufhin hat seine Verlobte ein Brötchen (Semmerl) genommen, die Bulette reingetan, und noch Salat, Tomaten, Ketchup, etc. dazu, und sie überlegt schon, das in Form einer Lokalkette zu betreiben, und er müsste sich noch informieren, ob man in den USA überhaupt Patente auf Essen kriegt.

WELCHEM DREHBUCHAUTOR FÄLLT SO EIN VERDAMMTER MIST EIN?

Nicht nur, dass dieser Dialog völlig absurd und für den Film irrelevant ist, er ist noch dazu Geschichtsverfälschung. Hamburger werden in den USA nämlich schon seit Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts verkauft, und wie hier zu lesen ist, sollte seit der 1930er Jahre der Hamburger in den USA wohlbekannt sein:

Wimpy joined the Popeye comic strip in 1931, and he played a significant role in popularizing the hamburger in the United States. Wimpy is probably best know[n] for his consumption of hamburgers.

Auf jeden Fall kann der Pilot diese Pläne sowieso nicht mehr verwirklichen, er stirbt nämlich kurz darauf bei einem Flugzeugabsturz.

Vor ein paar Tagen hab ich über das Buch "Apokryphe Apostelakten" geschrieben. Tja, wirklich weit bin ich noch nicht in dem Buch, aber schon am Anfang sind mir ein paar eher als brutale, aber trotzdem in gewisser Art und Weise unterhaltende Dinge untergekommen, eine Stelle möchte ich hier zitieren.

Das hier ist aus den "Johannesakten", der genannte "Johannes" oder "Apostel" ist Johannes der Täufer (Auslassungszeichen markieren nur langweilige Querverweise auf andere Bibelstellen, die oftmals nicht wirklich relevant sind, um Spaß am Text zu haben):

Eine im Traum ergangene Weisung bringt den Apostel am nächsten Tag zum Ort eines Verbrechens außerhalb der Stadt. Ein Landmann pflegte ein ehebrecherisches Verhältnis zur Frau eines Arbeitskollegen. Als sein greiser Vater im deswegen Vorhaltungen macht, versetzt er ihm einen so heftigen Fußtritt, dass dieser daran stirbt (im Text heißt es [...] nur: "er macht ihn stumm", [...]). Der junge Mann erkennt, dass er sein Leben verwirkt hat, und stürzt mit einer Sichel bewaffnet davon. Dem Apostel, der ihn aufhält und zur Rede stellt, gesteht er seine Absichten: er wollte die Frau töten, dann deren Mann und zuletzt sich selbst, "denn ich ertrage es nicht, vom Mann der Frau gesehen zu werden, wie ich die Todesstrafe erdulde" ([...]). Er verspricht aber, von diesem Vorhaben abzulassen, wenn Johannes den Vater wieder lebendig macht.
Johannes ruft diesmal in eigener Person den Vater ins Leben zurück, der darüber zunächst nicht einmal glücklich ist. Der junge Mann kastriert sich mit der Sichel selbst, eilt zum Haus der Frau und wirft ihr seine Genitalien als Grund allen Übels hin. Auch diese drastische Aktion findet keineswegs den Beifall des Apostels. Sie ist für ihn vielmehr, wie vorher schon der Totschlag, vom Teufel inspiriert.

Tja, nicht nur im Alten Testament kommt Sex, Totschlag und Gewalt vor, auch in den Apokryphen kommt sowas vor. Kann das bitte mal wer verfilmen?

In the last few days, synflood.at was migrated to my own root server which I recently acquired. Today, DNS was switched, and so far it looks like everything went smooth. Many thanks to mik for helping me with it!

People that know me a little bit also know that I believe [harhar] in Atheism. Nevertheless, I'm very much interested in religious studies, as I think that, as an Atheist, I can have the necessary distance to have a (relatively) unbiased view towards all religions (of course, I would be totally biased when comparing religions with Atheism, but that's not the point of religious studies).

After digging around a little bit on Wikipedia (which is an excellent source for stuff like that), I came across one thing that seemed to be very interested, namely Apocrypha, religious writings that are (partially) accepted by the church, but still not part of any canon like the Old or the New Testament. Christian apocrypha are e.g. alternative versions of the gospels, often showing a different picture of the sceneries described in the four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

After having read quite a bit on this topic on Wikipedia, I went to the nearest bookstore, just out of curiosity, and looked for some literature on this topic. After searching for some time, I even found a book that was exactly what I searched for: Apokryphe Apostelakten (in english: "apocryphal apostle files"), which seems to be a standard work on exactly this topic. So far, I didn't have much time to read it, but what I came across so far was quite interesting, like the writings of a patriarch, denouncing certain writings as heretic, due to certain attributes they bear, like that Jesus wasn't crucified (and he laughed at those who thought they crucified him), two Gods (the "evil" God of Judaism, and the "good" God of Christianity), which I immediately recognized as a variation of early Gnosticism.

Anyway, for an "outsider", it is very interesting to get a view on alternative opinions of Christian belief, many of them contradicting what Roman-Catholic Church teaches, in its purest and unaltered form, and the mentioned book can definitely help with that. Nevertheless, I will keep on believing in Atheism.

Today, Nico asked me about how the dc(1) shell magic a la 'echo 28832971807093258P | dc' works. I didn't know it in the first place, but after some manpage reading, I understood it, and tried to explain it to him. I don't know whether he fully understood it (and if not, it was definitely not his fault), but my next idea was to automatize that, i.e. write a script that takes one string and automatically generates the shell one-liner to print out that string. And, well, here it is:And here's how it works:

$ ./dc-fun.sh ak@synflood.at
echo 505828119445447424943077054048465930P | dc
$ echo 505828119445447424943077054048465930P | dc
ak@synflood.at
$

Isotopp reminds me to update my travel map. Here it is:


create your own visited countries map

As reported previously, I made a trip to London, starting on the 10th of November, and arriving back in Linz on 13th of November. First of all: my fears of being arrested or detained during arriving in or leaving London were totally without reason. Entering London via Stansted Airport was flawless. All that happened was that the woman controlling my passport had to grin because of the old and bad photo in it.

After picking up my bags, I took the A6 National Express bus to Golders Green, where I was welcomed by Paula, who lives just around the corner of this subway/bus station. We had supper, spent some more time chatting and catching up all the things we had to tell each other, and then I went to bed.

The next day, Friday, I woke up early, had a quick breakfast, and after Paula's advice, I bought a 1-day bus pass at the 24/7 (!!) store on the other side of the street, and took the 13 bus. The 13 bus directly brings you to the center of London. Actually, I didn't know where I should leave the bus, nor did I have any map or was able to read the names of the bus stops, and so, when a lot of people left the bus, I told myself to leave the bus at the next stop, and bang!, I was standing on Trafalgar Square. Now that was a direct hit!

On Trafalgar Square, there is, well, a huge pillar with the statue of Admiral Nelson, with two fountains nearby. You can go up the stairs, and you'll be at the National Gallery. It looks pretty nice, but that isn't all of London, and since I could see the Big Ben just down the street, I decided to walk there.

After probably five to ten minutes, I came to closer to it, and then I saw Westminster Abbey, too. Oh, nice, all the sight-seeing stuff in London seems to be so close together. I crossed the bridge, took some pictures of Big Ben, but then turned around because on the other side of the river it seemed that some of the uglier parts of the town began. Then I went on to Westminster Abbey, photographing the main entrance. Since the entrance fee was horrible, and because it wasn't allowed to pictures inside, I decided not to enter it, and to continue my walk.

I came across a little book store, where I just looked around a bit. After some looking in the computer book section (which wasn't too interesting), I stumbled upon "Schott's Sporting, Gaming and Idling Miscellany", a successor of the "Schott's Original Miscellany", of which I own the German translation. I bought two of them, one for me, and for my uncle and aunt, who bought me the Original Miscellany. Curiously, the cashier, who seemed to be a Frenchman, was really nervous, and after paying he though that I hadn't paid yet and refused to give me the books until I told him that I did pay and that I could show him the bill.

After even more walking through some pretty boring parts of London (mostly banks and pubs), I came to some area that seemed to be more open, and bingo! I was at Buckingham Palace. Wonderful. So many tourists. I looked like this strange change of the guard was going on, which I didn't attend, and so I went further.

Suddenly, I came to a crossing where quite some police was standing, and several policemen advised all the cars on a near parking lot to leave. Then, they totally closed down the street, evacuating the remaining people in there, but without any hurry. This was a somehow scary scenario.

Anyway, I went back to Trafalgar Square, and while going there, I met a really funny Australian, probably 60 years old, who I had a small chat with. He told me that he paying 300 pounds per night for his hotel room, and thought that this would be a fair price for some privacy in this city. Well, fortunately, I lived for free in London, 300 pounds would be definitely way too much for me...

After some more walking, I decided to buy some food, and went for a Tesco sandwich. In fact, that's what I liked so much about London: you get those sandwiches everywhere, and always such a huge selection of wonderful, tasty sandwiches. Unfortunately, it was basically impossible to get sparkling water at that Tesco. But hey, life isn't perfect.

Back at Trafalgar Square, went the other direction than before, but actually, there wasn't much more to discover, so I decided to walk some of my route a second time, where I discovered that I missed Downing Street before.

Downing Street itself was a big disappointment. When you see Tony Blair opening the door and talking to the press, everything looks so relaxed. But in fact, Downing Street is totally blocked by huge steel gates, and visitors have to go through two search points.

Reaching Trafalgar Square yet again, I had the good luck on my side, and found a 5 pound note on the ground! With that money, I decided to have one more sandwich, at Pret, namely a sandwich with smoked salmon, and a "chocolate goddess" cake (which really deserved its name!). I wrote some postcards, and then I took the bus back to Golders Green, where I spent some time resting and watching TV.

British (terrestrial) TV is actually quite boring, except for one thing: one channel (ITV, iirc, but I'm not totally sure) brings three episodes of The Simpsons: at 18:00, at 20:30, and at 21:00, with some British TV series and two episodes of Friends in between.

In the evening, Paula and I met with some Argentian guy she knew, and his girlfriend. We went to a pub, having some drinks. And here I saw one of the things that sucks great about London: the pub closed down at 11 pm! Yeah, that's right. A huge party was going on, lots of young people dancing like crazy, and then at 11, the music was turned off, and no more drinks were sold. We left, with me being a bit angry, and went home again.

The next day, I met with Richard, who I went to school with, and who now studies in Cambridge. We drove to Tower Bridge, where we also had lunch, and where I tried to make some contact with typical English cuisine: Steak & Kidney Pudding. Even though this sounds not to good, it is wonderful: some dough, pudding-shaped, with small pieces of meat and liver and a wonderful sauce inside, and some vegetables and mashed potatoes with it.

Then we proceeded to walk up River Thames, where we watched a wonderful firework, and then went home again. And as evening programme, we decided to have a pizza. Paula's flatmate also had a guest, so I was the only man in the round. The girls and I watched two movies, Before Sunrise and Before Sunset. Although they warned me that these would be movies solely for women, I actually enjoyed them, not only because of their simplicity (both movies basically consist of the dialogues of a man and a woman), but also because of the thought-provoking insights it gives on the feelings of the two characters.

The next day, that is Sunday, I had to get up relatively early, to catch my bus back to Stansted. But it was totally chaotic, and although the personnel at the information desk at Golders Green that I would just have to "jump on the bus" with my open-return ticket to Stansted, this wasn't the case, as it was totally overloaded. A lot of people were totally pissed off, including me, as we all had to catch our flights. Then, they sent in another A6, which was totally empty, and everybody was happy. Well, until everybody was inside the bus, but the bus wasn't driving off. That made even more people get pissed off, because they were waiting for more passengers to board. How crazy is that?! So, finally, we were going to Stansted. I had no problems catching my flight, but several others had to hurry. This was so totally fucked up.

At Stansted, check-in and security checks went very smoothly, with a very friendly and polite security personnel. The flight was also very smooth, and very diverting, as a very friendly Indian, who said he is working as software developer for the IAEA in Vienna, was sitting next to me, and so I arrived on Sunday at about 4:30 pm in Linz.

One more word about England: the English seem to be crazy about CCTV, but not in a (from the view of someone who is in favor of privacy protection) positive way: you will find CCTV literally everywhere, and along with CCTV warning signs (including contact information). This is so absolutely sad, because you read about it that in London, CCTV is deployed on so many places in the inner parts of the town. But in reality, it is much worse than you can imagine! The cameras are really absolutely fucking everywhere, on every building, sometimes open, sometimes well-hidden, even in the buses! When I went home on Friday afternoon, I was in a bus that had eight cameras installed! And you could even watch what they were recording, as there was a flat-screen installed that constantly between the cameras. So fucked up.

Anyway, I documented all that with a few pictures, which you can view here.

Tomorrow I will fly to London, spend a few days there, and return on Sunday. I was invited by Paula, who lives there for almost half a year already, and of course, I gladly accepted the invitation, and booked a super-cheap flight (Linz - London and back for as much as EUR 60). So, some days with probably lots of sightseeing lie in front of me. And I will meet my former school colleague and good friend Richard, who studies in Cambridge since this term.

There is only one thing that bugs me: I'm paranoid. Totally paranoid. They could get me. Because I put this online. And they are allies of that respective country. But I want to feel the thrill of not knowing what will happen when I enter the UK (remember, they never signed the Schengen treaty, they only take part in the Schengen Information System).

Update: there are always things you don't think about when travelling to another country, like the shape of power plugs they have there. Let's see whether I will get such a universal connector to be able to connect my good European plugs to the British system.

... Austria's most popular radio station Ö3 makes TV commercials for their podcast offerings. Of course, FM4 also has their very own podcast page. Nevertheless, I'm really impressed that the ORF really advertises podcasts, something that is still most popular in the geek scene.

Die Frage des "Filmquiz", um ca. 01:45:
"Welche Filme gibt es wirklich?
1) Der mit dem Hund tanzt
2) Lara Croft: Tomb Raider
3) Ghostbusters
4) Shrek
5) Der Herr der Ringe - die Rückkehr des Königs
6) Rambo
7) Das Boot"

Gefragt sind alle Filme, die es wirklich gibt.

Meiner Meinung (und nach einer ausgiebigen IMDB-Recherche) ist die richtige Antwort: 2, 3, 4, 5, und 7, und ich werde diese Antwort auch begründen.

Den Film "Der mit dem Hund tanzt" gibt es nicht, und scheint auch nicht bei IMDB auf. Lara Croft: Tomb Raider gibt es. Ghostbusters gibt es. Shrek gibt es. Der Herr der Ringe - Die Rückkehr des Königs gibt es. Das Boot gibt es. Einen Film names Rambo gibt es nicht, der heißt nämlich First Blood. Tja, soweit mal die recherchierten Fakten.

Wenn man allerdings etwas über die Fragestellung meditiert, merkt man, dass diese ziemlich ungenau ist, denn was heisst "wirklich geben"? Dass es sich nicht um Science-Fiction oder Fantasy handelt, dass es von echten Schauspielern gespielt ist, dass es sich um historische Verfilmungen handelt? Tja, das wird nicht behandelt. Und ebenso wird auch nicht die angeblich richtige Antwort "3 und 7" behandelt und begründet.

Nein, ich habe dort nicht angerufen, falls sich das jemand fragt. Mir als Filmfan tut es jedoch im Herzen weh, und ein tiefer Hass beginnt sich aufzubauen, wenn Cineasten mit echtem Filmwissen derart mit Füßen getreten werden, und stattdessen so Bullshit-Antworten von den Anrufern verlangt werden.

Ein Foto von dem Quiz folgt. Das jetzt noch hier reinzutun, dafür bin ich schon zu müde.

News of the day: my 22C3 lecture submission was accepted! Hooray! Now I have to work for it even harder to produce a good presentation.

In the comments of my previous blog entry about the lecture submission I mentioned that I wouldn't want do this presentation in the USA or the UK. Oh, well, I was invited by Paula to... London, and I will go there from November 10th to 13th. Let's see whether they will arrest, interrogate and detain me...