I’ve just release and tagged v0.1 of QManager.

QManager is a library, for use with Django, that provides a helpful abstraction for those creating Django models. It defines a subclass of Django’s Manager. This subclass is called QManager.

For information on what it does, go to django-qmanager.googlecode.com.

I’m currently looking for a few good testers. If you have experience with Django, make sure you try it out.

I've just done some work for rst2a, a reStructuredText conversion website. I basically wrote a reST to PDF converter in two phases: reST -> LaTeX, LaTeX -> PDF. I'm going to expand and condense and fiddle until I have a real reST -> whatevaTheFckYouWant converter. It shall be cool. So, that's it.

Oh, I did a Biology past paper and some other stuff, a Lit past paper, and got this really cool essay called 'Notes on "Camp"' by someone. Name escapes me like a backslash.

Enjoy So spaced right now heehehehee.

This is a quick blog post before I head to bed.

Firstly, Facebook are going through all this other shizzle about stealing names, ideas, people, places, etc. It’s too much for me to deal with right now. Google are doing really well (go you!), and the Microhoo tango is going to stop at some point soon. Google are just so ahead of both of them, it’s not even funny.

School’s OK-ish. I have a Biology and an Englit exam tomorrow, and I’m not even in bed yet (I don’t know how I’m going to function tomorrow). I need to do some revision, some coursework, etc…

I’m helping my Biology teacher with her PhD in Bioinformatics. I’m helping her set up her ORM (using SQLAlchemy, it’s the nicest in my opinion), and some other bits and pieces. She’s doing it all in Python, so I’m helping her learn the cool features of the language. She says I’m really good at explaining it, which makes me kind of proud to be honest.

And, some general boredom with life, moving soon (damn eviction notices), lack of love life (as usual) and twitter desolation. I can’t remember the last time I updated twitter or pownce. I am, however, going to add Six Apart’s blogging app to my facebook, to facilitate some sort of cohesion.

Just mysterified, to be honest. A nice program idea would be one which can take a blog entry and turn it into a microblog entry. Even cooler would be a dissociated presser which could do the same. I think I’m going to have a go at doing so. See you later, peeps. Good Night!

Who agrees with me when I say that I think ISO to be a joke for approving OOXML?

They can approve it all they want, I’m not fucking using it. I’m sorry for swearing, but it’s true.

It’s bad enough that Microsoft control the whole fucking world already, could they please leave standards alone!?

UGH! I’m absolutely LIVID!!

I think I’d very much like to set up, or join, a group of people and companies who refuse to believe that OOXML is a standard. Let’s screw ISO! I never really liked them anyway.

What’s that smell? OOXML!

OK, this concludes my rant. I’m not half as angry now as I was before. Back to nice things.

Microsoft and Yahoo’s merger is going to help Google, or at least the fact that people are saying “Microsoft and Yahoo’s merger is going to help Google” is going to help Google, or the fact that people are saying “the fact that people are saying ‘Microsoft and Yahoo’s merger is going to help Google’ is going to help Google” is going to help Google, or…(and so on). It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy, pretty much.

Psystar’s website is experiencing a DDoS (probably), after people caught on to the fact that they were selling Macs for much cheaper prices which weren’t really Macs. Apple haven’t done anything yet, but they probably will do.
The technological singularity is most definitely coming.

In an asynchronous message passing system (i.e. Actor model), the messages are the things which are alive, not the agents.

I need to do my friggin’ Hamlet coursework, but can’t be motivated at the moment. I’m stressing over a problem which I totally can but don’t want to solve right now!

I’ve recently managed to get hold of the DVD and CD of Madonna’s Confessions Tour. It is possibly the most amazing thing I have ever seen. One of my favourite parts of the concert is her performance of a beautiful remix of Erotica. I’m listening to it now as I’m writing this; it’s definitely something.

That concludes this small blog post about a wonderful woman and her music.

My latest project in programming is ClassAct - an implementation of the Actor model in Python. I’ve decided to approach this problem in a very systematic way - I’m following the process of Identify, Analyse, Design, Implement, Test, Document, Evaluate, Repeat. This is the way I did it in school, only I’m building upon this foundation and extending it, using the google code-provided wiki.

I’d really appreciate developers helping, or even providing feedback, on this project, as it’s a pretty big experimental undertaking with no definite roadmap or any sort of long-term planning; I just want to see how it goes really.

The new buzz phrase of the blogosphere seems to be ‘cloud computing’. If you don’t know what it is (and you probably should by now), it’s the practice of outsourcing all your processing and storage to be handled by a remote company who operate a server farm at some location somewhere around the world. A load of big companies are seriously buying into this; one of the most successful providers of cloud computing is Amazon Web Services, a collection of services which people can buy on a pay-per-use bases for their site. I believe that cloud computing is definitely not the way forward for the computing world, for several reasons.

Firstly, the idea of cloud computing (or Service-Oriented Architecture, as some people refer to it) is one which focuses around centralisation of resources and processing. As we have always seen in the past, the world of technology tends constantly towards decentralisation of resources; P2P networks are currently booming, and more and more people are using their home computers to host web, email and other servers as it becomes easier and easier, and as broadband becomes faster and faster. The power of home computers is quickly increasing, to the point where a slightly above-average home computer today can be more powerful than a server was only two years back. With all of this processing power becoming cheaper, there is simply no need to pay someone else to do all of your processing for you.

Secondly, both worlds are currently entering into a pretty bad recession, people will no doubt agree (some would say we’re already there). It’s taken a while for technology to get there, but the saturation of the social networking, video hosting and blogging service provider market is beginning to take its toll. There are just so many friggin’ startups, each of them offering only one or two features extra in comparison to their siblings, and all of them vying for a huge valuation, such as Facebook’s $15 bn (or something like it) which seems to be made of hot air and promises. It’s a bubble which has been waiting to burst for some time now. Anyway, these big tech companies’ revenues are starting to fall a bit too much below the safety line, and so they say “Hmm, if people are willing to give us the job of managing their social lives, maybe they’ll also give us the job of storing all their data and carrying out all their processing.” Hence, SOA and cloud computing are born. They are, essentially, the same thing, but every new money-making concept must have both a buzz phrase and a technical phrase.

So, I’m definitely not buying into cloud computing as a concept. As far as I can see it, I have enough power in my home computer, thank you very much. I don’t want to pay some already-affluent company a gazillion dollars per bit to have all my processing carried out for me. If some drone of a startup wishes to outsource all their hard work to Amazon, that’s their choice, but I don’t want to be a part of it.

The UK Government, later this year, plans to release its ‘Youth Alcohol Action Plan’, a document which lays down guidelines on how to tackle underage binge drinking. An editorial states:

“Unless the UK government bans alcohol advertising, substantially raises taxes on alcohol, restricts its availability and seriously debates increasing the legal purchasing age to 21, an opportunity will be lost.”

Here’s why this won’t work.

Firstly, let’s look at what binge drinking is. The British Medical Association says that, while there are several different definitions, it typically means either continued self-intoxication over a period of two to three days, or the act of drinking to get drunk, usually stated as drinking five or more drinks in two hours or less.  So, binge drinking is consuming unsafe amounts of alcohol; quantities which may cause long-term damage to a person’s body.

Secondly, let’s look at what this document claims is the way to deal with underage binge drinking. The editorial clearly proposes a complete and utter clampdown on drink. This has several unintended but assured consequences. Firstly, it will give police a huge number more crimes to deal with: people over eighteen who are currently drinkers will have to give up and may have to wait three years before they can drink again. Clearly, most people will not comply with such a loss of civil liberties, and will continue to drink, meaning police will have to go to extra lengths to stop underage drinking.

This is not the only problem, as a raise in alcohol tax will only mean people are more willing to spend their money on beer than food, and so the government will end up taking more money from those who have dependencies. Since when has an increase in tax ever stopped a problem? Can you remember?

Now, the biggest problem with this idea. The reason why people take drugs is half recreation, half experimentation and ‘barrier-breaching’. If you interviewed people, you’d find that an overwhelming number of them started taking cannabis, for example, because it was illegal in the UK. Make alcohol a taboo, and you run the risk of doing exactly the same thing. Not only that, but by flooding people with ideas that alcohol is a base and immoral thing to be drinking, and you only succeed in instilling these people with anxieties about drinking; anxieties which may manifest themselves as neuroses, possibly leading to a host of other consequences.

What is needed to stop underage drinking then? Well, education. Not the kind of ‘alcohol is bad’ education, but more letting people find things out for themselves when young. Letting 15- and 16-year-olds drink red wine with dinner. Allowing younger children to know what the term ‘drunk’ means, and explaining the science behind it. Why do you think that a huge number of teenagers drink to be ‘cool’? Because ‘coolness’ stems from breaking laws and rules. By making alcohol a horrible breach of moral rules, it instantly becomes a target for children trying to assert themselves as cool.

Something which we must, however, protect ourselves from, is politicians publishing reports on things which they don’t know about. Talk to psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists. Find out what makes people tick before trying to tackle problems which, essentially, are people problems. That is the way to stop underage drinking.

People who read Python magazine can expect to see my article “Diving into the Gene Pool with BioPython” in the April issue. I’m just saying, it’s a pretty cool article, especially for a 15-year-old. I don’t like to blow my own trumpet though. Just read it.