magicpete

IE using explorer.exe instead of iexplore.exe

2006-11-20T11:41:14Z

Here's one that might save me some time in future:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\BrowseNewProcess

determines whether each IE instance should run within a new process. It "randomly" changed on one of my workmate's machines over the weekend and we've just wasted half an hour figuring out what was up!

Developer Arrogance...

2006-11-08T10:35:16Z

Hey, we're all a bit arrogant when we're coding sometimes, but you've got to love the following comment I just found regarding String.split:

/**
* Convenience method to build a string array from a delimited string.
* Due to a silly bug in split, it will only return all empty tokens if there is at least
* one non-empty token at the end of the string. To get around this, a dummy token is added
* to the string before splitting. This dummy token is removed to the returned string array.
*
*/

Sigh - so there's this crazy bug in split() that no one else has ever noticed!! ;p

Unfortunately I can't work out who the original author is in order to educate them, so I've just checked it back in to CVS with the following amendment:

* -- As I can't be sure who wrote this, I'm writing this comment in the hope they'll
* see it:
* BTW, this isn't a "silly bug" in split - using the one arg method split calls
* split(String re, int limit) with a limit of 0. The API documentation clearly states:
* "If n is zero then the pattern will be applied as many times as possible, the array can
* have any length, and trailing empty strings will be discarded."
*
* What should actually be done is to use split(delimitedString, -1);
*

without actually amending the code (it would have to be regression tested, and the "workaround" does work I guess...).

long time no update....

2006-10-02T09:56:46Z

Wow, finally decided that I'd update my Journal!

Had a good weekend, out on the Saturday night in Nottingham where we bumped into the (Ex-)Morse people who were out celebrating their release :) Went for a nice curry and drank far too much beer... Had a little fall on the way to the club too - slipped on a road sign or something (who can I sue?!)

Anyhow, the previous night ensured that I felt crap for the whole of Sunday, but I was cheered up by the fact that we got another kitten - Yay! It doesn't seem to be getting on with the others particularly well yet, but that's a work in progress... given that I'm down in London, Lou's going to be sorting that out (along with all the lovely cat poo too!)

Blue Oyster Cult

2006-05-10T14:57:35Z

OMFG! Look who's coming to England:

http://www.blueoystercult.com/Road-main.html

Yay!! So who's going to come and see BOC with me? I'm up for any of the dates! Obviously going to be making an appearance at the Nottingham one ate the very least!

BSG Season 2 Finale

2006-05-06T00:22:56Z

No spoilers here, but how freaky was that last episode?!?

Man, now I have to wait for season 3! Looks like they're definitely making it though, so that's a good thing.

Polarised site

2006-05-05T23:43:57Z

This is going to be of interest to a very small audience :)

waterhoose - I've stuck what I could grab from the Web Archive on http://www.magicpete.org.uk/Polarised/ - it's good for a quick look at but obviously most of the links don't go anywhere after you get past the first page :(

Comedy meme

2006-04-20T11:19:09Z

meme from luciphah- Strange, I thought my humour was slightly darker than that...

the Ham
(23% dark, 61% spontaneous, 26% vulgar)

your humor style:
CLEAN | SPONTANEOUS | LIGHT

Your style's goofy, innocent and feel-good. Perfect for parties and for the dads who chaperone them. You can actually get away with corny jokes, and I bet your sense of humor is a guilty pleasure for your friends. People of your type are often the most approachable and popular people in their circle. Your simple & silly good-naturedness is immediately recognizable, and it sets you apart in this sarcastic world.

PEOPLE LIKE YOU: Will Ferrell - Will Smith

The 3-Variable Funny Test!
- it rules -

If you're interested, try my best friend's best test: The Genghis Khan Genetic Fitness Masterpiece

My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender:

You scored higher than 2% on darkness

You scored higher than 89% on spontaneity

You scored higher than 23% on vulgarity

Link: The 3 Variable Funny Test written by jason_bateman on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the 32-Type Dating Test

Easter Weekend

2006-04-18T10:15:41Z

Had a nice weekend at Lou's parents for the Easter. Ended up going out on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and managed to fall asleep in pubs on two nights - d'oh!

louweasel asked me what "Badger Badger Badger" was, so I introduced her to Weebl's toons - she ended up watching most of the toons on there, and I think some of them may have disturbed her a bit! She spent quite a while looking into the pschology of Salad Fingers...

Long time no update...

2006-04-12T09:55:29Z

It's been a while since I updated my Journal, about a month in fact.

Loads of stuff is going on at the moment - louweasel and I have bought a house (well we're in the process of buying - silly mortgages!) It's a bit closer to the job in Derby so that's nice, although I'm a bit worried that Lou's journey time is going to shoot up.

Heh, when I said "loads of stuff" it looks like I just meant the house really, but I guess that's kind of a big thing to sort out so that's probably why it seems like that.

Off to louweasel's parents for the Easter weekend - should be good. We've had to get the pet sitters in to look after the kitties (if you can still call them that), hope that all goes ok.

Also been writing a website for a mate's brother's band - the Sinatra Sextet - you can have a peek here: http://www.sinatrasextet.com. At the moment it's hosted on Easily, but because of their package limitations the URL just loads a frameset which points to another URL - got to love that. Going to invest in some Virtual Server hosting from http://www.bytemark.co.uk to solve that on brindy's recommendation.

Another little project that I thought I'd do was to resurrect the Polarised website - ahhh, nostalgia. So that should be up in the next week or so with however much content I can glean from the Web Archive at http://www.archive.org/ - waterhoose, do you have any of the content at all still? I know you've got all the pictures hosted but I nabbed a copy of them anyhow.

Anyhow, that's enough of an update for now!

Jack Johnson

2006-03-02T09:05:22Z

Went to see Jack Johnson at the N.E.C. last night with louweasel and my brother. Despite getting completely lost whilst walking there from the E4 car park (I insisted that this would be more fun than getting the shuttle bus), we still managed to get there whilst the first support act was still on - not that we saw any of that though, just hung around outside the arena for a bit. Got seated in time for the second support act, Matt Costa. To be honest I thought the guys tunes were pretty good, but I wasn't a big fan of his singing!

Jack finally got on stage at around 9ish and played a top notch set and the musicians were using some pretty unusual instruments at times - I think a melodica and something that was shaped like a lute (although I don't think it was one). Anyway, it was a good show and I'm thinking that I'll have to add a few JJ songs to the repertoire, not that I'll attempt to sing them though. I just have to figure out his funky sounding hammer on / off technique that he uses too!

Draw a pig!

2006-02-16T19:55:54Z

Draw yourself a pig

Here's mine:

My pig!

Comedy film!

2006-02-12T11:11:10Z

Ended up watching The Substitute 2 last night - what an amusing movie. Never have I seen such bad acting before - especially when the girl's mourning her father (don't worry, that's not a spoiler). Anyway, I thouroughly recommend the film, but probably best viewed after a few beers!

Spectral Analysis

2006-02-11T17:52:08Z

I have no idea what this is but hey...

Get your own spectral analysis from Area 23^®

Phone Phraser Part 2

2006-02-09T11:08:29Z

Well, here's my effort:

Usage is as follows:

java pjg.util.PhonePhraser 768286

obviously you'll need a word list text file as well. Should have really made that as an argument passed in, but I can't be bothered :)

package pjg.util;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.List;

public class PhonePhraser {
    /**
     * Map to hold the possible word representations of a given number. Key is
     * the number, value is an ArrayList containing the words associated with
     * this number.
     */
    static HashMap wordMap = new HashMap();

    /* 
     * Static initialiser which builds a map of numbers as key 
     * and their possible word representations as a list value.
     */
    static {
        File f = new File(ClassLoader.getSystemResource(
                ("wordLists/wordsComplete.txt")).getFile());

        try {
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(f));
            String line;
            long start = System.currentTimeMillis();
            while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
                String key = getNumericalRepresentation(line);
                if (wordMap.get(key) == null) {
                    List li = new ArrayList();
                    li.add(line);
                    wordMap.put(key, li);
                } else {
                    ((List) wordMap.get(key)).add(line);
                }
            }
            long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
            System.out.println("Initialize time: " + (end-start) + "ms");
        } catch (IOException e) {
            System.out
                    .println("Error initialising word map: " + e.getMessage());
        }
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();

        String inputNum = "768286";

        List phraseList = getPermutationsForNumber(inputNum);

        Iterator tI = phraseList.iterator();

        while (tI.hasNext()) {
            System.out.println((String) tI.next());
        }
        long end = System.currentTimeMillis();
        System.out.println("Lookup time: " + (end-start) + "ms");
    }

    /**
     * This method returns a list of all possible phrases that can be made from
     * permutations of the numbers contained in the inputNumber string. The method
     * is used recursively to build up sub lists of phrases that are then concatenated
     * to the String.length() firstPart possible Strings within the inputNumber string.
     * 
     * @param inputNumber -
     *            The number for which to return all phrases.
     * @return List a list of all possible phrases that can be made from
     *         permutations of the numbers contained in the inputNumber string.
     */
    public static List getPermutationsForNumber(String inputNumber) {
        List completePhrases = new ArrayList();

        for (int i = 1; i <= inputNumber.length(); i++) {
            String firstPart = inputNumber.substring(0, i);
            String recursivePart = inputNumber.substring(i);

            // If the current number has word matches recursively find phrases
            // in the other part of the string else skip this non matched part.
            List firstNumWordMatches = (ArrayList) wordMap.get(firstPart);
            
            if (firstNumWordMatches != null) {
                if (!recursivePart.equals("")) {
                    List phrases 
                        = (List) getPermutationsForNumber(recursivePart);

                    Iterator wordIterator = firstNumWordMatches.iterator();
                    while (wordIterator.hasNext()) {
                        String word = (String) wordIterator.next();

                        if (phrases.size() > 0) {
                            Iterator phraseIterator = phrases.iterator();
                            while (phraseIterator.hasNext()) {
                                String phrase = (String) phraseIterator.next();
                                completePhrases.add(word + " " + phrase);
                            }
                        }
                    }
                } else {
                    Iterator wordIterator = firstNumWordMatches.iterator();
                    while (wordIterator.hasNext()) {
                        String word = (String) wordIterator.next();
                        completePhrases.add(word);
                    }
                }
            }
        }

        return completePhrases;
    }
    
    
    /**
     * Gets a numerical representation of the given word. Uses a StringBuffer
     * to build up a representation of the word by iterating over the characters
     * in the word string. An alternative way of doing this processing is to use a
     * "long" to represent the word and for each incrementation of "i" multiplying the
     * previous number by ten and adding the new one. The reason that I've not implemented
     * it using that (slightly more performant) method is that it would be more difficult 
     * to deal with dictionaries with words containing preceding "0"s.
     * @param word the word for which a numerical representation is required.
     * @return String the numerical representation of the word as a String.
     */
    private static String getNumericalRepresentation(String word) {

        StringBuffer numRep = new StringBuffer();

        char[] wordChars = word.toCharArray();

        for (int i = 0; i < wordChars.length; i++) {
            switch (wordChars[i]) {
            case 'a':
            case 'A':
            case 'b':
            case 'B':
            case 'c':
            case 'C':
            case '2':
                numRep.append(2);
                break;
            case 'd':
            case 'D':
            case 'e':
            case 'E':
            case 'f':
            case 'F':
            case '3':
                numRep.append(3);
                break;
            case 'g':
            case 'G':
            case 'h':
            case 'H':
            case 'i':
            case 'I':
            case '4':
                numRep.append(4);
                break;
            case 'j':
            case 'J':
            case 'k':
            case 'K':
            case 'l':
            case 'L':
            case '5':
                numRep.append(5);
                break;
            case 'm':
            case 'M':
            case 'n':
            case 'N':
            case 'o':
            case 'O':
            case '6':
                numRep.append(6);
                break;
            case 'p':
            case 'P':
            case 'q':
            case 'Q':
            case 'r':
            case 'R':
            case 's':
            case 'S':
            case '7':
                numRep.append(7);
                break;
            case 't':
            case 'T':
            case 'u':
            case 'U':
            case 'v':
            case 'V':
            case '8':
                numRep.append(8);
                break;
            case 'w':
            case 'W':
            case 'x':
            case 'X':
            case 'y':
            case 'Y':
            case 'z':
            case 'Z':
            case '9':
                numRep.append(9);
                break;
            case '0':
                numRep.append(0);
                break;
            case '1':
                numRep.append(1);
                break;
            }
        }

        return numRep.toString();
    }

}

Early morning...

2006-02-09T07:25:14Z

... courtesy of getting a support call at 5:00.

There's nothing I love more than a nice little support call to start the day off ;)

Anyhow, I was of the opinion that I may as well get up and come into work early today otherwise I'd end up sleeping until 9:00 like yesterday.

What's really funny is that I was saying to Pika that I couldn't be bothered to take my laptop home as I'd just come into work in the unlikely event of receiving a call, but I just had this strange nagging doubt at the back of my mind (after walking out), and came back and got it - quite happy about that now!

Phone Number Phraser Challenge

2006-02-08T16:40:17Z

Ever seen this challenge before?

http://blogs.msdn.com/the1/archive/2004/03/29/102123.aspx

I fancy giving it a go at some point.

Here's some word lists to help out:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/wordlist/12dicts-4.0.zip

Now to write something extremely inefficient :)

Brief roundup

2006-02-04T17:46:38Z

Well this week was pretty cool. Went up to Glasgow on Wednesday to see Dragonforce - what an excellent gig that was! Had a great time afterwards to. Cheers for putting me up brindy!

Last night was a trip to the Greyhounds where I found out that I was no good at betting on the dogs! louweasel won some money back though :)

louweasel's birthday with a couple of friends - not completely sure what we're doing yet, but I'm sure it'll be lots of fun!

Memoirs of a Geisha

2006-01-23T11:00:14Z

Went to see Memoirs of a Geisha with louweasel and her mate Debbie last night after going for a Thai meal where I managed to get another beer in for the challenge: "Chang Beer".

The film was surprisingly good actually - I didn't think it'd be the kind of film I'd enjoy, but it kept me interested and awake for 2.5 hours which has got to be good when I was still a bit hungover ;)

Fun Weekend

2006-01-23T10:56:43Z

Had a great time at the party! Cheers everyone :) I think I'll wait for waterhoose to write an entry on his blog rather then detailing everything here (he always seems to write awesome accounts of everything!)

Surname profiler

2006-01-20T14:56:41Z

Nicked this of waterhoose : http://cetl2.geog.ucl.ac.uk/uclnames/Surnames.aspx

I've pasted my results into the cut as the site seems to be under heavy load!!

Edit: I've cut this as it was making the layout of my journal a bit sucky!

Polarised Pics

2006-01-20T14:35:17Z

Finally got around to uploading some pics into my Gallery. These are ripped off from waterhoose. It was a nice reminder of being in the band all that time ago :)

Badger me Backwards!

2006-01-20T11:03:50Z

Heh, I've been working on an interesting problem the last few days - One of the sorts in an XSL stylesheet has to be a numeric sort in ascending order with null values at the end. OMG, who would have thought it would prove to be such an annoyance?!

Anyway, it turns out that the simplest solutions are sometimes the best:

Stylesheet:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<xsl:stylesheet
 version="1.0"
 xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform">

 <xsl:output method="html" encoding="UTF-8" indent="yes"/>

 <xsl:template match="/test">
  <xsl:for-each select="priority">
   <xsl:sort select="string(number(text()))='NaN'"/>
   <xsl:sort select="text()" data-type="number"/>

   <p>x<xsl:value-of select="text()"/></p>
  </xsl:for-each>
 </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

Input:

<test>

            <priority>1</priority>

            <priority>2</priority>

            <priority></priority>

            <priority>4</priority>

            <priority>3</priority>

            <priority>9</priority>

            <priority>8</priority>

            <priority>0</priority>

            <priority>999999999999999</priority>

</test>

Inhuman Rampage

2006-01-17T15:09:10Z

Have been listening to Dragonforce's latest effort "Inhuman Rampage" - after a couple of listens I'm starting to enjoy it, but I don't think it touches Sonic Firestorm to be honest.

There are some pretty groovy bass breaks in there though! 2 more weeks until the gig!

BSG Season 2

2006-01-16T13:51:43Z

Spent Sunday morning watching Battlestar Galactica Season 2.0 - it's awesome! Still got 3 episodes to watch though, maybe I should save them for a rainy day though!

Definitely more fun to watch in big chunks though!

Lager challenge

2006-01-08T12:54:44Z

Updates to the lager challenge will appear on my friends page as entries to the beeryear2006 community to keep this a bit less cluttered!