A seriously influential DJ, sad to see him go.

For me he will always be associated with Pink Floyd and Wish You Were Here. Partly because when it came out he played it, side one & side two back to back on Radio One. In the days when the Radio One Play List was all naff singles and DJ’s talked over & faded in / out the 3 minutes they lasted to play a solid 45 mins of an album was amazing.

Also he “features” on the album. The title track starts with someone tuning around on a radio then playing along with what they hear. As they tune about we hear a snippet of one of Fluff’s famous classical jingles. Of course they could have just tuned through Radio 3 but for those of us who listened to The Rock Show on a Saturday Afternoon the reference was obvious. For some of us it was the only show we listened to. Peely was a bit weird (and on crap reception AM) and everything else was chart singles.

More Rush, more Zep, more Purple Fluff - not ‘arf  

I had the fundamental rule “you mustn’t use goto’s” well drummed into me in my formative days but I was also programming in BASIC and assembler so I needed them (albeit in a strict structured format). I am therefore neither terrified by or delighted with them but I am still quite shocked to see them in “proper” code. I inherited some ‘C’ code the other day which had a raft of the beggars.

They were quite sensibly used as the structure was:

do_init(){
start initialising
if it failed goto error
do some more
if it failed goto error
do the last bit
if it failed goto error
return OK
error:
display message // just one message, not duplicated in every failure
return ERR
}

There are neat ways to do this in ‘C’. The obvious one is to abstract the initialising into a function

do_init(){
if (my_init()==ERR){
display message // still just one err, “goto” effected by return
return ERR
}
return OK
}

my_init(){
start initialising
if it failed return error
do some more
if it failed return error
do the last bit
if it failed return error
return OK
}

A sneakier way is the pretend switch (or loop)

switch(1){
default:
case 1:                      // using “default” will generate (ignorable) compiler warnings!
start initialising
if it failed break
do some more
if it failed break
do the last bit
if it failed break
return OK
}
display message
return ERR

Basically you’re using break as a goto but because it can only goto one place (ie “}”) it forces structure rather than relying on potentially unsafe goto’s to implement what was basically sound structure anyway.

I popped into my local music shop to buy a buy a ukulele (as you do) and the chappie said come back tomorrow as he had one but not in the shop. Back I went the next day but he was deep in conversation with a rep so I took the chance to browse round the nice guitars & ear wig. The gist of their chat was:
rep)     Take some of our guitars
shop)    I’ll have to spend loads and people just come in and try then leave without buying and get cheap ones online.
rep)    Take some of our guitars
shop)    Do you supply those cheap internet places? How much do they discount them?
rep)    10% maybe more - take some of our guitars (I didn’t think he was doing too well myself)
shop)    I’ll check the net and see how much they are there. They come in here, bash my stock about then say “I can get it cheaper on the net”. I tell ‘em “Never come in here again!”.
rep)    Take some of our guitars (he was persistent at least)
shop)    So and so’s gone out of business, so and so’s retired ….
rep)    Take some of our guitars
shop)    I’m having a sign made “this is not an internet show room”. And another telling people if they buy online it’s distance selling and they can demand their money back up to 30 days even if they’ve gigged the gear.
rep)    That’ll just encourage people to buy online, if they think they can send it back. (a pleasant change, though Mr shop didn’t think it pleasant)

I finally got round to interrupting and tried the uke then realised I’d left my wallet in the office!!!!

“It’s very nice but I can’t pay for it now - I’ll come back tomorrow.” In an attempt to stop him setting the dogs on me “I can get one cheaper on the net” (cue the dogs) “BUT I’d rather pay a couple quid more to try one, I’ll be back … honest”. whoops.

But that is the cost to the real shops. Not only do people spend online they want to check the stuff out so they add insult to injury by trying it out in their local shop first.

In the spirit of accessible computing I’ve been being good & checking my App is easy to use without a mouse. This ofcourse means adding accelerators (the underlined letter that leaps you there with the Alt key). Missing accelerators are easy to miss(!) as they aren’t shown until you press the Alt key. They are normally specified in the code by adding an & - “&File”, “Save &As” etc.

When I added them to my labels I displayed

&Fred: [text box]

F&laming Nora: [text box]               etc

It always worked OK in Windoze programming - but because labels don’t get focus QT doesn’t think they should have accelerators. Until you “setBuddy” them when the accelerator appears and you are accelerated to the “buddy” object. Windoze (rather helpfully) assume focus should be set to the next object that would accept it. Having a label that accelerates you to a box in a different part of the screen doesn’t seem like  an intuitive interface.

I can live with having to make the extra call but does it have to be setBuddy? It was bad enough living with setColor in VB days but at least that was written in the states.

The language of the NET maybe English but it is US English

Anyway, can ya spare me a dime?

The good old Today program had two “unrelated” articles this morning.

One was about employees appealing for less management speak - less “thinking outside the box”, “helicopter views” etc.

The second was about rhyming slang & the pearly king interviewed reckoned it was used so outsiders couldn’t understand what was being said. Did I say “unrelated”?!

We all like to belong to exclusive clubs - it’s a measure of our worth & acceptance. Some people do it via funny handshakes, some people by paying over the odds (keeps the riff raff out) and some people (in fact everybody) by using “in” jokes & language. When someone talks about rub a dubs down the frog and toad they are staking a claim to their membership & only if you understand it are you “in”. They are also having a bit of a laugh (slang is always amusing somewhere) and showing off. It’s the same with management speak &, dare I say it?, IT speak.

RAM’s and ROM’s & OOP’s & FLOPS all show we are clever, witty(*) & part of the in(*) crowd as well as just being quicker & easier to say.

(*witty - for IT people)

(*in crowd - of IT people, not your actual fashionable in crowd obviously)