I slipped on the paraffin-laden solid granite pavement, everything went flying, and I ended up getting a very different kind of photo entirely;

That’s my right arm, and somewhere in there a minimally-deforming radial fracture that I don’t remotely have the training to actually see. Though I definitely don’t like the look of that suspiciously lumpy bit of bone. Here’s another look;

As fractures go, I think I got the best kind. It’s now 3 weeks later and I’m almost back to a full range of movement and strength is starting to return. I can write, type, take photos and most importantly, play music once again. The people at St. James’s Hospital have been very good, and if you ever plan to break anything I can recommend doing it near them.

Science is really really cool. Randomised control trials have shown that a simple millennia-old sling (not a cast) is the best treatment, so that’s what I got. About a century of rigourous bio-chemical engineering has led to little pills I could buy in a pharmacy that magically suppress complex sources of pain with minimal side-effects.

Over that same century we’ve progressed from a naive understanding of “Röntgen radiation” as mysterious emanations from a vacuum tube, to a complex quantum-mechanical model of X-Ray interactions that allows us to record these highly-ionising photon jet-streams on a semi-conductor, convert the impression into a digital image and then have it pop up on my clinicians desktop. Right now, reading a random blog on the internet, you can see inside my body – as easily as you might look out the window.

And social science is used too. Because people frequently forget their appointments, there are text message reminders; a few days, and one day before anything that’s scheduled. Again, a trial has shown that this is both cost-effective and clinically beneficial. And when I go to the physio-therapy clinic, I get given a simple set of tried and tested exercises that have been shown to lead to improvements.

Cooler still is that despite all of the science, and care and attention involved in the whole process – really it’s the body doing the work. Through some magic – mostly unknown – system of DNA signaling, controlled protein unfolding, stem-cells and “stuff”, tiny microscopic organic “bits” somehow communicate and coordinate the building of whole new bone, mostly in the right place. So without having to do all that much, I can play Fussball and write dumb blog entries again.

It’s almost worth doing just for the experience.

For each one of those particles, there’s some chance it could just pop into life on the far side of the moon, or even the universe. But something, I guess “motion” is averaging everything out and look, there the sum of me pops, every tiny instant getting slightly closer to Dublin.

If the train was in the vaccuum of space – or somehow free from the effects of friction – it wouldn’t even take anything to keep this atomic leap-frogging going. Each small micro-part of me would just keep on dancing. And somehow at the same time, it’s exactly as if I were staying still all along – there’s no real difference. This has been tested.

But if for any reason a change of tempo was required, to move from a waltz to a samba, something intangible and ephemeral – mysteriously lumped into the word “energy” – is required. It’s weird and mystical and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but it can be measured and described – and relied upon.

And as I sit here and write, using the word “I” like that, it feels like there’s a “me”. It seems as if there’s a real sense of ownership over my thinking, I can’t tell where my thoughts come from, but they are mine.

I feel like I’m free to choose things, when I get off of the train I could get straight into a taxi or walk to a tram. I don’t know which I’ll do yet, there are a lot of factors to consider, but neither choice seems pre-ordained, and once it happens it will feel like “I” owned that choice.

“Free will” seems as real to me as the forward motion of this train, it’s an inexplicable dance, but it’s my tune. And that makes less sense. Reality is describable by all of these symbols and equations, and we can make predictions with them. This has been tested.

There are even divisions between what is predictable in detail, and what is predictable only in the aggregate, random and unknowable at the finer grain.

Here in my head, it doesn’t seem like my thoughts are predictable, or could be. If they are just an inevitable cadence, then that “I” is merely an illusion. It also doesn’t seem like thoughts are random or unknowable, to me anyway. I have patterns of thinking, recurring themes, and a detectable personality. It can’t be the same dance.

How many miracles are there on this train? Motion is miraculous enough, that “I” can think, that the universe even exists seems miraculous too. But most astonishing, is that these simple realities are seemingly contradictory.

I’m still on that train, I haven’t gone anywhere, there haven’t been any angels visiting me, or deitious interventions. These thoughts haven’t led anyone to complicated dogmas, wars or ceremonies. Some say science is cold. Maybe the dance is a myth.

And if this mental dance should one day just end, where are the real love-songs? Songs that speak to the real meaning, the genuine warmth, of spending a fleeting, passing, bittersweet whirl around the floor with someone. Not an infinitesimal slice of eternity living in hope of a better dance; that’s cold. This has been tested.

Over time, I’ve found that the best way to learn is by example, even if it’s a process of unconscious osmosis. And when I’ve spent time on what is sometimes called “personal development” I’ve found that there is real benefit in reading the biographies and the writings of truly awesome people. It certainly seems more productive than reading self-help books that are written in truisms and marketing crap.

I thought I’d share some of the people who I’ve really benefited from reading about, truly amazing people.

Richard P. Feynman

RPF is a legend; a nobel laureate physicist with an uncanny ability to explain complex ideas, an anti-authoritarian maverick who loved to screw with officialdom but most of all an incredibly generous, warm, loving guy (even if a womaniser at times). His writings on physics and his letters to his first, dying, wife are an inspiration.

Robert M. Pirsig

Pirsig, someone genuinely crazy enough to have been institutionalised, still managed to write one of the best sellers of the 20th century and to invent a philosophical system that many consider to have merit. ZMM is amazingly well written, all the more so when you consider that every paragraph was planned out in advance on index cards. Worrying, his narrator in ZMM is the only literary character I’ve ever strongly identified with.

Grace Hopper

Grace Hopper signed up for the US navy during World War 2, and rose (primarily as a reservist) to the rank of commodore/rear-admiral back when this was incredibly unusual. But more than this, she was an excellent experimenter, and kept a rigourous lab-book, despite being mainly a computer scientist. She was a strong believer in getting things done, and coined the phrases “dare to do” and “It’s easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission”. Seriously awesome woman. Oh yeah, and she invented the compiler.

Doc Watson

Doc Watson has been blind nearly his entire life, but that doesn’t stop him from being the truly most amazing guitar picker the world has ever seen, or doing crazy things like mending the tiles on his roof. His solo runs and accompaniment are incredibly good, and he’s somehow maintained humility in the face of multiple grammy awards and playing for the president on a regular basis. Another doer, he just kept going and became more productive after the tragic death of his duet partner and son Merle.

Dolly Parton

Dolly is a self-described mis-fit, but she is also a very very shrewd business woman as well as being a dedicated humanitarian and gifted songwriter. She is one of the really great singers, and is emotionally invested in every song she sings (even the ones that sound like bubblegum, listen to how sad she is in “Here you come again”).

CP Snow

CP Snow was basically a troll, but a very very good one. His arguments, lectures and writings weren’t always rigourous and balanced but they were always enlightening, thought-provoking and forward thinking. Most famously he identified the tension between literary and scientific cultures and made a great case for the unfair treatment of science. A scientist and a well-regarded author CP Snow is a great example that it is possible to straddle both worlds.

Peter Watson

Peter Watson is a prolific researcher and writer, the volume of his output and the breadth of his knowledge is unfathomable. I’m constantly reading something of his. He has methodically and thoroughly condensed practically all of known intellectual history, writing about all of the inventions of the human mind. His writing is great, but it also brings home how relatively ordinary our time in history really is, yet serves as a great reminder that so many things we take for granted even had to be invented.

No doubt I’ll think of more now that I’ve put a list together. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some of these people, but I’ve also been even more fortunate in that other people I’ve come across in my life have served as role models (starting naturally enough with my parents). I don’t intend this post as meme, but if you have role-models, I’d be interested in hearing about them. As I mentioned, it’s definitely a great benefit to read about such inspiring people.

I’m a command line type of person so much of the processing software for my photos is python scripts I’ve hacked together, but in this case it’s just some simple ImageMagick which you can do almost anywhere. ImageMagick is much better than using Python’s own Image Library (PIL) because it actually maintains the embedded colourspaces (PIL just strips them).

Step 1: Create the image

The first step is to actually write out the signature, and to take a photograph of it or scan it. I recommend writing it out as big as you can, with a thick marker, on white paper. If you’re taking a photo of it, try to light the paper evenly and take the photograph from directly atop the paper. Once you’ve got an image to start with, load it into the Gimp.

Step 2: Crop the image

Select what you want with rectangle select tool, and crop, using image -> crop to selection.

Step 3: Convert to 1-bit

We don’t want to worry about all of the various shades that are in the image, so we convert to a 1-bit image. Use Image -> Mode -> Indexed to convert.

Step 4: Convert to grayscale

Now that we’ve cheated and used 1-bit mode to quickly go black-and-white, we need to go back to greyscale mode so that we can use transparency and play with the brightness a little. it’s at Image -> Mode -> Greyscale.

Step 5: Invert the colours

Use Colors -> Invert to transform the image into white on black, which is much better for overlaying onto photographs generally.

Step 6: Add an alpha channel

Since we need the final result to contain transparency, we need to add an alpha channel. It’s at Layer -> Transparency -> Add Alpha Channel.

Step 7: Remove the background

Use the colour-select tool at Select -> by Color to highlight all of the black background, and then cut it out using ctrl-x (or edit -> cut).

Step 8: Tweak the signature image

Personally I found that using a pure white signature was too strong and distracting, so I lowered the brightness by about 30%.

Once you’re happy with the image, you need to have it as a PNG file, so that we keep the transparency information.

Step 9: Applying the signature to photos

ImageMagick makes this fairly easy, all that I use is:

convert -composite -gravity southeast original.jpg signature.png output.jpg

Where photo.jpg is the original jpg of the photograph, and output.jpg is where you want the result.

Step 10: Enjoy the results

I’ve also added a new music section, which I’m going to expand over the coming months (hopefully!), reworked the about section and have also finally started to manage links properly.

The aim is to have a more readable website edition, with a more natural look in a browser. 450 pixel wide panels for blog entries just don’t look right at 1920 x 1440 and the text can get hard to read. Also, most of my entries these days tned to be pretty long, so it helps to have more room to spread out the paragraphs.

I’m still using the excellent Askimet and wp-cache wordpress plugins, but now also using FlickrRss for my Flickr bar at the bottom of the blog, and the Audio player plugin for the music page. It’s still a work in progress, so let me know what you think, but so far I like it better.

Business as usual will commence shortly, thank you for your patience.

It’s nice to see, it brought a smile ot my face, and clearly it’s intentional. Maybe it’s part of a car parks against conservatism movement, or maybe it’s religious subliminal messaging, or maybe just a fun meme to lighten the day but whatever it is, it’s good fun.

So, Nóirín helped me change this blog – to WordPress 2 – which is going very well so far. I’ve made it easier to post comments too, which was always a bit too hard for my liking (but I like comment spam even less).

On another note of change; on my travels I got a new Camera, which I’m having some fun with. My shots from San Francisco were taken with it, along with the two shots in this post (The papal cross in the Phoenix Park, and our good friend Conall O’Brien).

And yet again in the spirit of change, I went on my first successful geocaching expedition on Saturday, and it was great fun, I’d highly recommend to anyone. As it was my birthday over the weekend, we went to see two great Gigs in Airfield House. The first was Kevin Burke and Ged Foley and the second was Liz Carroll and John Doyle. Both were excellent, it was great to hear some master fiddlers playing and John Doyle’s guitar playing is truly amazing.

And I think the last note of change, is that yesterday, I finally got IP connectivity into the datacentre we’ve been building for the last few months, which means we are now officially in the migration phase. I might even have free time soon!

So, while you can see the map just fine if you go to http://www.stdlib.net/~colmmacc/, you can not see it from the permalink page, or in any RSS reader.

Uggh, why didn’t they just use a simple per-user key like the other Google API’s! Apparantly they are working on it. When it’s fixed I’ll make the change. In the meantime, I’ll see if I can use mod_rewrite to get around it.

Oh also, if you’re trying to make embedded Google maps default to satellite view there’s a bug in the API, instead of using:

You have to use:

That took a while to find.

Update: Oh and it seems the embedded google map crashes IE, I’m impressed. Just use mozilla.

Update 2: Solved the problem a really nasty way. The google map is now embedded in its own html page, which in turn is embedded using an iframe. *shudder*, but it works.

The 2-month gap between the deadline for papers and making the actual presentation at ApacheCon is working out rather annoyingly though. Since I wrote the paper, I’ve gone ahead and planned and purchased an entire new ftp.heanet.ie (details soon), so I’ll just have to fill that in when I make the presentation. Suffice it to say that we’re getting some pretty good deals, and the new spec will be fairly impressive.

I guess I’ll try and keep it interesting.

Update:

One very dirty hack of a script later, and it looks like the very old blog entries are back