Elton John

The first I heard of Elton John having a child was when I read that the BBC had sought the opinion of the despicable Stephen Green on the news. Stephen Green is, in my unqualified opinion, delusional bordering on insane.

It's not (just) because I'm an atheist and he's religious. Some of my best acquaintances are religious. It's because he's a hateful biblical literalist, a Leviticus believing religious nutjob.

My opinion on gay sex, gay marriage, gay adoption, gay surrogacy, gay parents and gay elderly parents is that it's not really any of my business.

It's worth remembering, before judging these new parents, that children are born to terrible parents, to elderly fathers, to cuckolded husbands, into loveless marriages etc, all the time. No licence is required, no exam needs to be passed. The same applies here.

The objections are simply about homophobia, about man-on-man action, not about parenting. Usually, when sex is discussed, I'd say it's OK as long as it's consensual. The ambivalent and those supporting Elton don't see it as being about sex though, and so it's not about consent. Children do not give consent to their parents. Children do not choose their parents.

I'm not a fan, incidentally. If anything will make me turn the radio off, it's Elton bloody John.

Budgeting

I've been looking at my bank statements for the last 6 months to try to figure out where all the money's gone. I seem to spend a lot, but I don't actually buy much. Or at least I don't have much to show for it, except an expanding waistline.

My plan for 2011 is to have a budget. Unavoidable things will still go out as direct debits, petrol will go on the debit card. Food and drink will come out of a weekly cash allowance, and when it's gone, it's gone. If I want something, I'm going to save for it. I hope to find that by the time I've saved enough to make the purchase, I'll no longer really want it. I also hope that by using real cash, I'll become more aware of what I'm spending.

Level scores on Angry Birds

Game Centre doesn't give scores or ranking per level. This makes it difficult to target levels that are potentially going to yield more points. Below are my scores. I'm particularly interested in any scores you have that beat mine.

Angry Birds…

1. Poached Eggs.

1 - 1 34240

1 - 2 61200

1 - 3 42820

1 - 4 31120

1 - 5 64930

1 - 6 36570

1 - 7 45610

1 - 8 56410

1 - 9 55440

1 - 10 68560

1 - 11 59960

1 - 12 53560

1 - 13 53010

1 - 14 78180

1 - 15 52590

1 - 16 65760 [66300]

1 - 17 56620

1 - 18 50400 [56080]

1 - 19 39130

1 - 20 60590

1 - 21 83440

2 - 1 68350

2 - 2 73710

2 - 3 117740

2 - 4 56480

2 - 5 92550

2 - 6 74130

2 - 7 55300

2 - 8 55390

2 - 9 29420

2 - 10 43840

2 - 11 95430

2 - 12 63920

2 - 13 89760

2 - 14 52310 [56050]

2 - 15 67510

2 - 16 68490 [73150]

2 - 17 43690

2 - 18 64450 [70730]

2 - 19 54780

2 - 20 56490

2 - 21 82640

3 - 1 64560 [65420]

3 - 2 54920

3 - 3 76550

3 - 4 39650

3 - 5 105590

3 - 6 63030

3 - 7 56620

3 - 8 82290

3 - 9 66740

3 - 10 55090

3 - 11 50940 [56550]

3 - 12 50010

3 - 13 48680

3 - 14 52100 [55260]

3 - 15 63530

3 - 16 75460 [76490]

3 - 17 74160

3 - 18 91200

3 - 19 68260 [69500]

3 - 20 121630

3 - 21 130400

2. Mighty Hoax

4 - 1 67130

4 - 2 58250

4 - 3 62540

4 - 4 63880

4 - 5 93380

4 - 6 60040

4 - 7 71120

4 - 8 52880

4 - 9 42370 [46920]

4 - 10 46990 [54510]

4 - 11 95890

4 - 12 99200

4 - 13 77360

4 - 14 87000

4 - 15 88260

4 - 16 83180

4 - 17 30460

4 - 18 89400

4 - 19 52110

4 - 20 108660

4 - 21 90800 [94100]

5 - 1 58810

5 - 2 52900

5 - 3 89430

5 - 4 72990

5 - 5 84560

5 - 6 93830

5 - 7 87250

5 - 8 83650

5 - 9 72830 [79120]

5 - 10 52340

5 - 11 69260

5 - 12 73520

5 - 13 62190

5 - 14 58400

5 - 15 60790 [ 64950]

5 - 16 116840 [117770]

5 - 17 103620

5 - 18 112190 [116910]

5 - 19 115250

5 - 20 103620 [104780]

5 - 21 175600

3. Danger Above

6 - 1 69180

6 - 2 87140

6 - 3 76220

6 - 4 93430

6 - 5 70170

6 - 6 79000

6 - 7 125970 [124830]

6 - 8 101150

6 - 9 109640 (Don't think this will yield much more)

6 - 10 103590 [103820]

6 - 11 105670

6 - 12 111720

6 - 13 88930 [93520]

6 - 14 95850

6 - 15 139720

7 - 1 131030

7 - 2 143230

7 - 3 68410

7 - 4 86680 [86740]

7 - 5 83190 84840

7 - 6 80140

7 - 7 103750 [104070]

7 - 8 90290 [96080]

7 - 9 136720

7 - 10 107110 [115680]

7 - 11 113320

7 - 12 90110 [91290]

7 - 13 67270

7 - 14 65460 [69750]

7 - 15 158350 158650

8 - 1 107430

8 - 2 71330 [73020]

8 - 3 128600 [135380]

8 - 4 117670

8 - 5 97400

8 - 6 115610

8 - 7 167140

8 - 8 113640 [125310]

8 - 9 143550 [143560]

8 - 10 124500

8 - 11 108260 [110810]

8 - 12 106900 115020

8 - 13 152690 [153610]

8 - 14 90410

8 - 15 150290 [152750]

4.The Big Setup

9 - 1 24150

9 - 2 38830

9 - 3 44660

9 - 4 55890 [58440]

9 - 5 40090

9 - 6 53330

9 - 7 82830

9 - 8 58320 [61950]

9 - 9 47240

9 - 10 80970

9 - 11 57610 [58380]

9 - 12 66980 [71530]

9 - 13 78050 [83880]

9 - 14 71150 [73650]

9 - 15 86210 [88980]

10 - 1 71370

10 - 2 96290 [96960]

10 - 3 77060 [80880]

10 - 4 101850

10 - 5 93870

10 - 6 112100

10 - 7 89290 [97300]

10 - 8 75770

10 - 9 67620

10 - 10 73530

10 - 11 135470

10 - 12 85460

10 - 13 80270 [82020]

10 - 14 107700

10 - 15 105880 [109140]

11 - 1 117850 [121610]

11 - 2 112110 [115190]

11 - 3 131750 [153290]

11 - 4 89130 [95150]

11 - 5 125980 [137640]

11 - 6 100680 [104850]

11 - 7 124440

11 - 8 126010 [130760]

11 - 9 106430 [108810]

11 - 10 77020 [82090]

11 - 11 92120 [95520]

11 - 12 84390 [87010]

11 - 13 100000 [113450]

11 - 14 91400 [95860]

11 - 15 95690 [101340]

5.Ham 'Em High

12 - 1 76200

12 - 2 83020 [83740]

12 - 3 60280

12 - 4 83780 [88590]

12 - 5 79980

12 - 6 62150 [62170]

12 - 7 70140 [71240]

12 - 8 60260

12 - 9 101640

12 - 10 85520 [96250]

12 - 11 75650 [79370]

12 - 12 78350 [80880]

12 - 13 77370

12 - 14 91680

12 - 15 150510

13 - 1 79340

13 - 2 82470

13 - 3 78610

13 - 4 93700

13 - 5 100480

13 - 6 97160

13 - 7 147700

13 - 8 60280

13 - 9 78630

13 - 10 65240

13 - 11 88460

13 - 12 90670

13 - 13 54300

13 - 14 82650

13 - 15 129810

14 - 1 120950

14 - 2 110460

14 - 3 63670

14 - 4 122830

14 - 5 68450

14 - 6 104710

14 - 7 58080

14 - 8 70670

14 - 9 102260

14 - 10 108310

14 - 11 94580

14 - 12 104520

14 - 13 87240

14 - 14 81990

14 - 15 129920

f - 1 114070

f - 2 67940

f - 3 92000

Angry Birds Seasons…

Easter Eggs

1 - 1 - 79640

1 - 2 - 121940

1 - 3 - 116990

1 - 4 - 121610

1 - 5 - 127710

1 - 6 - 90400

1 - 7 - 95190

1 - 8 - 96570

1 - 9 - 98600

1 - 10 - 100280

1 - 11 - 130110

1 - 12 - 94780

1 - 13 - 92640

1 - 14 - 109350

1 - 15 - 120770

1 - 16 - 106820

1 - 17 - 106120

1 - 18 - 121000

Hogs and Kisses

1 - 1 - 56830

1 - 2 - 118640

1 - 3 - 60230

1 - 4 - 168680

1 - 5 - 102940

1 - 6 - 67270

1 - 7 - 95650

1 - 8 - 65200

1 - 9 - 56150

1 - 10 - 58370

1 - 11 - 70400

1 - 12 - 66120

1 - 13 - 102070

1 - 14 - 110130

1 - 15 - 151560

1 - 16 - 113470

1 - 17 - 94940

1 - 18 - 78850

Season's Greedings

1 - 1 71140

1 - 2 82190

1 - 3 60730

1 - 4 95700

1 - 5 116820

1 - 6 63960

1 - 7 73570

1 - 8 91330

1 - 9 102050

1 - 10 60370

1 - 11 70480

1 - 12 85280

1 - 13 122200

1 - 14 102830

1 - 15 58880

1 - 16 100060

1 - 17 64230

1 - 18 113210

1 - 19 48820

1 - 20 50430

1 - 21 73900

1 - 22 100480

1 - 23 77360

1 - 24 59000

1 - 25 158630

Trick or Treat

1 - 1 48400

1 - 2 79150

1 - 3 75410

1 - 4 66090

1 - 5 71940

1 - 6 69530

1 - 7 84250

1 - 8 110310

1 - 9 102070

1 - 10 102090

1 - 11 110600

1 - 12 75350

1 - 13 103850

1 - 14 88710

1 - 15 85010

2 - 1 101650

2 - 2 98910

2 - 3 88090

2 - 4 93520

2 - 5 105290

2 - 6 91550

2 - 7 106390

2 - 8 91600

2 - 9 54120

2 - 10 83339

2 - 11 103270

2 - 12 101820

2 - 13 75250

2 - 14 100970

2 - 15 107520

3 - 1 120980

3 - 2 92040

3 - 3 110200

3 - 4 48840

3 - 5 73630

3 - 6 112110

3 - 7 96550

3 - 8 101080

3 - 9 77040

3 - 10 118620

3 - 11 112170

3 - 12 79940

3 - 13 113850

3 - 14 102620

3 - 15 102490

Angry Birds Rio…

Smuggler's Den

1 - 1 63060

1 - 2 48100

1 - 3 59320

1 - 4 60730

1 - 5 59360

1 - 6 74100

1 - 7 59240

1 - 8 121680

1 - 9 78690

1 - 10 84150

1 - 11 89430

1 - 12 85890

1 - 13 94500

1 - 14 84690

1 - 15 71410

2 - 1 96490

2 - 2 84290

2 - 3 95900

2 - 4 72980

2 - 5 52400

2 - 6 96920

2 - 7 63500

2 - 8 117340

2 - 9 84060

2 - 10 79780

2 - 11 61700

2 - 12 65440

2 - 13 108420

2 - 14 65880

2 - 15 92460

Jungle Escape

3 - 1 84420

3 - 2 76160

3 - 3 52150

3 - 4 106150

3 - 5 90960

3 - 6 70320

3 - 7 93350

3 - 8 147110

3 - 9 105480

3 - 10 94390

3 - 11 57040

3 - 12 98950

3 - 13 105100

3 - 14 84390

3 - 15 118020

4 - 1 63850

4 - 2 98760

4 - 3 68910

4 - 4 108210

4 - 5 75870

4 - 6 79910

4 - 7 94160

4 - 8 121320

4 - 9 56630

4 - 10 78340

4 - 11 88500

4 - 12 73040

4 - 13 63220

4 - 14 97740

4 - 15 72420

Note: Updated with new high scores.

The scores in square brackets are the highest known scores from other people.

My son is appalled by this. "Oh My God!", he said, "You're an Angry Birds nerd!"

20110429: Updated with Ham 'Em High, Rio and Easter Seasons scores.

A problem with headphones.

I'm pleased to read this from Marco Arment. I've had the same problem with all in-ear-with-grommets headphones that I've tried. I'm pleased simply because I've never heard anyone else echo my complaint.

I hadn't considered that other designs that also make a seal would have the same problem. It's something I'll consider when I buy replacements.

Link Bomb

Janelle Monae - Tightrope

Mr Deity and the Woman

Lucky Louie - Ass (Audio NSFW)

Louis CK learns about the Catholic Church (Audio NSFW)

Tim Minchin - Storm (Audio NSFW)

Tim Minchin - Pope Song (NSFW. May offend you if you're Catholic)

Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Sesame Street: Smell Like A Monster


The Western Nostril

Яolcats

http://devour.com

The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players - Mountain Trip

Charlie and the Swiss Chocolate Factory

XKCD Sys Admin

Writing UTF-8 files from Python

As always, there may be better ways to do this (using XML libraries, for example), but it took far too long to figure this out, given that there's so little to do to fix the problem. I found a lot of the examples found on Google didn't answer this specifically, but just added to the confusion.

The problem:

a = 'âêîôŷ'
print a

gives this error:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii', '\xc3\xa2\xc3\xaa\xc3\xae\xc3\xb4\xc5\xb7', 0, 1, 'ordinal not in range(128)'

The proper way to define a unicode string is this:

a = u'âêîôŷ'
print a

which yields:

âêîôŷ'

In my search, though, there was lots of talk of how to convert strings to UTF-8, and this is *not* what you do if you want to write to a UTF-8 file. If you convert to UTF-8 before writing, you'll probably get errors becasue it'll contain values >=127.
This is how you do it...

ascii='abcdef'
uni = u'⢸ðêƒ'
file=codecs.open('utf-8.xml', mode='w', encoding='utf-8')
file.write(ascii)
file.write(uni)
file.close()

The only difference here is that you must use 'u' when defining literals, and you need to used codecs.open, with the encoding specified, when opening the file.

If, when you read the file, it appears to have 2 strange characters rather than the one unicode character you expect, the file is probably OK, it's the viewer that isn't reading UTF-8 properly.

More fun with Python

I'd recently written a little Python app to create a load of test data. The test data is XML, and should be UTF-8. I'd not really considered this properly, and for my original purposes, it's irrelevant. For a bit of fun/experimentation/learning, I put a tk front end on it, and email ed the project team to let them know, just in case it was useful.

Coincidentally, the vendor of the external product that would be producing these XML files in the real world was going to be late by several months, meaning that the XML files would need to be hand-crafted, the test data generator turned into a deliverable, and I briefly turned from tester into nightCoder.

There were a number of feature requests. My testing colleague started testing and raising defects against my code. Testing revealed areas in which i could be improved. I added a log file, properties files, some exception handling and error reporting dialogs. I had a real developer moment when it was deployed, went wrong and said (with a tester's smile on my face), "well that doesn't happen on my machine!".

While trying to figure out that problem, using a Swiss keyboard, typing garbage into some mandatory field, committing yielded another error as a result of non ASCII characters. As the client is Swiss, and these fields will probably included non ASCII, a fix was definitely required. Had this been just a learning exercise, I may not have been too worried, As I was now delivering this software, I had no option other than to figure it out. This highlights my main problem with self-teaching: I really struggle to find projects, and often abandon them in an unfinished state because nobody is relying on the solution.