My first form

I've now got a little further with CGI programming, and have got data entered into a form emailed back to me. This time I had to make a few changes to the code I copied from the website.

However, receiving emails containing my own statistics is gradually losing its excitment, so I should be grateful if some of my readers would go to the new visitors' page of my website and fill in the form.

My first CGI program

It was remarkably easy. Admittedly I copied the program from a book, or rather cut and pasted it from the website accompanying the book, but still, it did work first time.

Any readers who have forgotten what computer, browser or operating system they are using should go here to be reminded.

They will also be reminded how much information may be divulged to any web site to which they connect.

Birmingham Science Museum

A fortight ago I led a visit to Birmingham Science Museum by members of the Leicester U3A Science and Technology Group. It has taken me a long time to write an account because I've been very busy gathering fruit, making jams and jellies, and struggling to control frames with javascript.

There were ten of us in the party; we met on the platform at Leicester Station and travelled together, obtaining a 30% discount for travelling by public transport.

Ever since my early childhood I’d often changed trains in Birmingham, and had sometimes wandered around the Pallisades shopping centre that engulfs New Street Station while waiting for a connection, but the first time I visited Birmingham to look round rather than to pass through was in 1994. Much of the centre had clearly been rebuilt in the course of the previous 30 years or so. On subsequent visits, made at intervals of three or four years, I’ve noticed the re-rebuilding of Birmingham as the 1960’s buildings have been demolished in their turn, and at each visit I come across bits that I suspect were not there last time. My Birmingham street map, published in 1993, now seems badly out of date.

One thing that seems to increase remorselessly is the cost of using the lavatory at New Street Station. Forewarned by one of our group, we all managed our eliminative functions well enough to avoid that expense.

On this visit, we walked through the Palisades shopping centre and out along a sort of plastic pedestrian tube that I’d never seen before.

I don’t recall ever being in the part of Birmingham where the museum is situated, though there are large areas where previous buildings have been demolished, so old landmarks will have disappeared. There seems to be no haste to rebuild. Sites have been cleared but are not fenced off; they are just grassed over. I was puzzled by the state of the grass. It was not long and unkempt, yet neither was there any sign that it had recently been mown. It looked well grazed, and I imagined the Birmingham City Council Shepherd watching his flocks by night.

The Museum shares a large building with Aston University and Matthew Boulton College. That made the topology complicated. To get from the Museum to the only open coffee bar, that was outside the museum but inside the main building and on the first floor, one had to get to either the second floor or the ground floor of the museum, go out, and then use stairs or lift to get the first floor. That was particularly irritating when two of us were on the first floor of the museum, could see the coffee bar through a window, but could reach it only by one the tortuous routes described.

The Museum is on five floors. The ground floor houses a large collection of machinery, and goods manufactured in Birmingham using such machinery. In the 18th Century the Lunar Society flourished in the Black Country. One of its members was Matthew Boulton who manufactured a wide variety of consumer goods, samples of which were on display.

The first floor was a viewing platform overlooking the larger of the exhibits on the ground floor.

Floors 2 and 3 displayed various exhibits primarily directed at children, but still not without interest to the elderly visitor. There were various devices that responded to visitor input, including simulated recycling machinery, and there were displays showing what happens to our food during its passage through the digestive tract right up to the final extrusion of the faecal bolus, though this was unfortunately not animated. Another static display illustrated the development of a foetus. Animation of the various stages would have been particularly illuminating in that case.

The fourth floor was devoted to transient exhibitions which on our visit were a small display about robotics, and a much larger one of models of dinosaurs, the highlight of which was a video of animations of dinosaurs, arranged so that if one stood in a particular region of the room ones image was imposed on the video.

Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera. My new mobile phone takes photographs, but I haven't yet found out how to get them out of the phone into my computer. Both phone and computer have several means of communication, but they don't seem to have any in common.

I find I enjoy looking at things much more enjoyable when accompanied by people with whom I can discuss them. Had I visited the museum on my own, I'd have been through it in an hour; at it was I spent nearly 4 hour there - including two long chatty breaks in the coffee bar. I seem to enjoy the trains of thought and conversations stimulated by looking at things much more than I enjoy the looking.

A misplaced Quantifier

I winced this afternoon when I heard someone interviewed on Radio 4 say:

"There's something we can learn from every event"

Absent Mindedness

I've just deleted a post that duplicated the one I made on 24th.

Oh dear!!!

The Reith Lectures

I'm not a great enthusiast, but this year's Reith lectures coincide with my washing up after breakfast. I usually listen to Radio 4 then and so far the lectures haven’t irritated me enough for me to dry my hands in order to switch off, but they do irritate me a little.

The lecturer bases much of his argument on scholastic ideas of nature and necessity. Qualities of subjects are divided into the essential and the merely contingent, and the nature of something seems to consist of the set of its necessary qualities.

Those distinctions involve great difficulties, in my opinion so great that the distinctions are useless. However there is no sign that the speaker is even aware that there are any difficulties.

See chapter 5 of my Philosophy notes for a discussion of the problems involved.

I wonder if he's using long words he barely understands in the hope of impressing.

A penny Drops

I'd long been baffled by the suggestion that when data from a form is sent according to the GET protocol it is included in a URL

Enlightenment came yesterday. I was pouring over an example in a book about CGI programming and suddenly realised what was meant.

The data is attached to the URL of the program designed to to process it.

I've never come across an explicit statement to that effect. Why do computer folk so often feel the need to communicate in winks and nudges, instead of in plain English prose ?

Alone On the Top Deck

The bus I caught into town today was a double-decker. When I climbed the stairs I found I had the top deck to myself, so I was able to sit at the very front.

That's always been my favourite seat, but there used to be keen competition for it. These days I'm rarely denied it.

The top deck used to be populated mainly by smokers and schoolchildren. The former have been abolished, and there seem to be far fewer of the latter on buses these days, but it still surprises me that more people aren't attracted to the top deck for the wonderful view of things hidden from those who travel nearer the ground.

Most buses on the routes I use are single-deckers; perhaps many people forget there ever is an upper deck.

Judicial Arithmetic

I recently heard a broadcast interview with Lord Carlisle, in which he explained the need for detention orders against potential terrorists. He said that 'ninety nine point nine recurring percent' of the Muslim's living in Britain reject Al Quaeda and terrorism.

99.9 recurring = 100 so his assertion entails that they all reject terrorism.  If there were no terrorist sympathisers, there would be no need for detention orders.

I'm sure he didn't mean that so he should have chosen his words more carefully.

Those who don't understand arithmetic shouldn't use long words like 'recurring' just to impress.

Counting Slowly

Yesterday evening I watched the reporting of  European Election results on the BBC 24 hours news program.

I was surprised how long it took for the British results to appear. We voted on Thursday, yet many countries that voted yesterday still produced complete results while all we had were the results for the North East.

Perhaps our civil servants need bigger abacuses !

A Devious Journey

On Wednesday I went to London backwards.

My train left Leicester travelling Northwards, turned East to go through Melton Mowbray and Oakham, then entered Peterborough travelling in a South Easterly direction.

At Peterborough I was able to scamper across the bridge to arrive at platform 2 just in time to board a Southbound train for King's Cross, whence I had an invigorating walk to St. Pancras where I had arranged to meet Gerard, with whom I then visited Kew Gardens.

It was all  much more exciting than the conventional journey, though it was not what I intended when  I set out that morning.

What I hadn't allowed for was the body at Bedford.

When I arrived at Leicester station, rather early, I noticed the train before mine waiting in the station, it's expected departure time moving forward so as to be always a minute or two later than the prevailing time. On the platform were two groups or railway staff in earnest conclave, mobile phones pressed to their ears.

When I asked if anything was wrong I learnt that trains had been stopped until police had finished examining the corpse of someone who had inconsiderately jumped underneath a train near Bedford. The devious route through Peterborough as suggested as the best bet.

We do make an unreasonable fuss about bodies. Once someone is dead, their remains are of little significance except as evidence where foul play is suspected, or as teaching materials if someone has died in an especially instructive way.

 Usually it should be enough for someone to take a few witness statements and a few photographs and then move the body to the side of the track where the police could examine it at their leisure, allowing trains to thunder by at their customary 100 mph.

Blogging Statistcs

I've noticed my blogs tend to cluster. There will be a week or so when I don't blog at all, and then blogs seems to tumble out almost daily. Perhaps I have bloging moods and non-blogging moods, though that may be more a desciption than an explanation.

I wonder if other people blog with similar irregularity.

I can't think of a helpful statistical test. I could show clustering by testing for a Poisson distribution and show that it isn't one, but that wouldn't tell me what distribution does apply.

Suggestions would be welcome.