Jim Henderson wrote:
>>> was interesting to see David Prowse outside the Darth Vader outfit -
>>> and to hear why Lucas had to use James Earl Jones to do the voice for
>>> that character in the Star Wars films.
>> *grin* I reckon Prowse's broad west accent sound is about the least
>> suitable voice for Vader I could possibly imagine!
> 
> Eddie Izzard in his routine where Darth Vader orders Penne Arrabiata. :-)

Indeed.

("broad west accent sound"? Proofread, Bill, proofread!)

>>> But Mark Wing-Davey nailed the role in the radio version and the TV
>>> version.
>> Completely. "Hand me the rap-rod, plate captain!"
> 
> "Sheesh, you guys are so un-hip it's a wonder your bums don't fall off".

:-)

>> He was very different. It didn't really spoil it for me, but I did have
>> trouble linking him in my mind to the character.
> He was different, no doubt about it.  But he brought the right amount of 
> everything Simon Jones brought to the role.  It probably helped that 
> Simon Jones was available to coach him on the character as well. :-)

He even appeared, too, as the voice of ancient Magrathea... but of 
course you knew that.

Bill

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On 22-2-2009 20:47, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> 
> Heh. My mum's first reaction was "and what are you going to do after 
> that?" Not that my mum's opinion is especially important. I was just 
> wondering how much she'd freak out. ;-)

Wrong question. If you know that there is no need to do the PhD because 
you already know what will come out of your studies. It is precisely 
this where a PhD differs from a e.g. a BSc.

>> It doesn't matter if you finish or not, any more than running a 
>> marathon is about whether you come in first.
> 
> I never understood this... The ENTIRE POINT of a marathon is to finish 
> it! How is not finishing it still OK? Weird people...

With a PhD, people know you have been trough the process. Just as with a 
marathon the only important thing about having finished one is that that 
signifies that you have run an entire one. The actual moment of 
finishing itself is actually not important.

>> That's fair.  Part of the fun is living in a different country, mind. 
>> (Not that I did, but ...)   I can completely understand if it isn't 
>> fun, tho. Do take advantage of the fact that you speak one of the 
>> languages that ran rampant all over the world not too long ago, so you 
>> can get by language-wise pretty much anywhere. China was the only 
>> place I've been that people generally didn't know enough English to 
>> get by.
> 
> Ah. Is *that* why every country in the EU speaks English, but the 
> English can't speak any damned language except English? :-} I often 
> wonder about that...
> 
Well, there are the French of course as a counterexample.

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On Sun, 22 Feb 2009 22:57:15 +0000, Bill Pragnell wrote:

>>> He was very different. It didn't really spoil it for me, but I did
>>> have trouble linking him in my mind to the character.
>> He was different, no doubt about it.  But he brought the right amount
>> of everything Simon Jones brought to the role.  It probably helped that
>> Simon Jones was available to coach him on the character as well. :-)
> 
> He even appeared, too, as the voice of ancient Magrathea... but of
> course you knew that.

Oh yes, that was one of the high points of the film for us. :-)

Jim

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>> Heh. Not so much. It's more... I'm held responsible for a bunch of 
>> stuff, but other people like to change it around without asking me 
>> beforehand, or telling me afterwards. :-/
> 
> Do you have the authority to prevent them from doing it? If not, then 
> you don't have the authority.

I have no power to prevent them changing things (either through 
technology or politics). I don't even really have the ability to detect 
changes when they happen. But I definitely *am* held legally responsible 
for this.

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> I have no power to prevent them changing things (either through technology 
> or politics). I don't even really have the ability to detect changes when 
> they happen. But I definitely *am* held legally responsible for this.

I don't think you would be held legally responsible if they are changing 
things without you knowing, any half-decent lawyer would get you out of that 
one.

If you want to be on the safe side, then draft a document that states any 
consequences of changes made without your consent will not be your 
responsibility.  Then get your boss to sign it, if he refuses announce that 
therefore you must take measures to prevent physical and electronic access 
to all the systems you are responsible for.  Then disconnect the internet 
line to the US and see how long before he agrees to sign it :-)

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scott wrote:
>> I have no power to prevent them changing things (either through 
>> technology or politics). I don't even really have the ability to 
>> detect changes when they happen. But I definitely *am* held legally 
>> responsible for this.
> 
> I don't think you would be held legally responsible if they are changing 
> things without you knowing, any half-decent lawyer would get you out of 
> that one.

It's more that when auditors walk in and demand to know why X happened, 
you're not really allowed to say "well that's because some idiot who 
doesn't know the correct authorisation procedure decided to change it 
without bothering to notify me". Because, see, these people are our 
customers, and we *want* their business. So I can't actually admit to 
them that the company I work for is completely incompetent. So the net 
result is that they walk away thinking *I* am completely incompetent. 
This makes me very angry.

> If you want to be on the safe side, then draft a document that states 
> any consequences of changes made without your consent will not be your 
> responsibility.  Then get your boss to sign it, if he refuses announce 
> that therefore you must take measures to prevent physical and electronic 
> access to all the systems you are responsible for.  Then disconnect the 
> internet line to the US and see how long before he agrees to sign it :-)

Cute, but I suspect they'd simply summarily fire me.

OTOH, Fathead will probably sign anything... Hmm, maybe I should hand 
him a cheque?

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scott wrote:
>> SELECT *
>> FROM EventRecord AS X, EventRecord AS Y, EventRecord AS Z
>> WHERE
>>   X.ExperimentID = Y.ExperimentID AND
>>   Y.ExperimentID = Z.ExperimentID AND
>>   X.EventID = 0 AND
>>   Y.EventID = 2 AND
>>   Z.EventID = 1 AND
>>   X.EventDateTime < Y.EventDateTime AND
>>   Y.EventDateTime < Z.EventDateTime;
>>
>> Or similar. (It's been a while since I did SQL...)
> 
> Oh cool that helps a lot, I'm copying and pasting that to a file 
> somewhere for reference, thanks.  I still need to order myself an SQL 
> book...

Out of curiosity... does this work?

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>>> SELECT *
>>> FROM EventRecord AS X, EventRecord AS Y, EventRecord AS Z
>>> WHERE
>>>   X.ExperimentID = Y.ExperimentID AND
>>>   Y.ExperimentID = Z.ExperimentID AND
>>>   X.EventID = 0 AND
>>>   Y.EventID = 2 AND
>>>   Z.EventID = 1 AND
>>>   X.EventDateTime < Y.EventDateTime AND
>>>   Y.EventDateTime < Z.EventDateTime;
>>>
>>> Or similar. (It's been a while since I did SQL...)
>>
>> Oh cool that helps a lot, I'm copying and pasting that to a file 
>> somewhere for reference, thanks.  I still need to order myself an SQL 
>> book...
>
> Out of curiosity... does this work?

Hehe haven't got anywhere near needing to implement that algorithm yet, I'm 
still working on parsing text files to populate the database automatically 
(lots of RegExs).  But I am getting the hang of how the SQL stuff works now.

One thing I thought about your code which might not work, is if you have a 
sequence of events stored in the table like this:

EvenDateTime,EventType
0,Turn on
1,Turn off
2,Overheat
3,Turn on
4,Turn off

Then wouldn't your query pick up event 2 as being between an "on" and "off" 
event, but obviously the system is in the "off" state when it overheats.

Maybe I need to store the state of the equipment (on/off) in each row to 
make things easier, but there are more states than just on/off (more 
speicifcally, there are several different sub-parts than can be on/off) so 
hmmmmmm.

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>> Out of curiosity... does this work?
> 
> Hehe haven't got anywhere near needing to implement that algorithm yet, 
> I'm still working on parsing text files to populate the database 
> automatically (lots of RegExs).  But I am getting the hang of how the 
> SQL stuff works now.

Mmm, yum. :-S

> One thing I thought about your code which might not work, is if you have 
> a sequence of events stored in the table like this:
> 
> EvenDateTime,EventType
> 0,Turn on
> 1,Turn off
> 2,Overheat
> 3,Turn on
> 4,Turn off
> 
> Then wouldn't your query pick up event 2 as being between an "on" and 
> "off" event, but obviously the system is in the "off" state when it 
> overheats.

Hmm, good point. I had assumed a sequence like that wouldn't appear.

I guess you'd need to find all the overhead events, and for each one, 
perform a sub-select to determine the latest turn-on or turn-off event 
preceeding it, and filter it out if it's a turn-off event.

I'll see if I can figure out the correct syntax for this. (Gail probably 
knows in a heartbeat...)

> Maybe I need to store the state of the equipment (on/off) in each row to 
> make things easier, but there are more states than just on/off (more 
> speicifcally, there are several different sub-parts than can be on/off) 
> so hmmmmmm.

Yeah, probably not such a hot idea to denormalise the data like that...

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>> One thing I thought about your code which might not work, is if you 
>> have a sequence of events stored in the table like this:
>>
>> EvenDateTime,EventType
>> 0,Turn on
>> 1,Turn off
>> 2,Overheat
>> 3,Turn on
>> 4,Turn off
>>
>> Then wouldn't your query pick up event 2 as being between an "on" and 
>> "off" event, but obviously the system is in the "off" state when it 
>> overheats.
> 
> Hmm, good point. I had assumed a sequence like that wouldn't appear.
> 
> I guess you'd need to find all the overhead events, and for each one, 
> perform a sub-select to determine the latest turn-on or turn-off event 
> preceeding it, and filter it out if it's a turn-off event.
> 
> I'll see if I can figure out the correct syntax for this. (Gail probably 
> knows in a heartbeat...)

OK, here we go. Using a sub-select, you can find the "previous" event in 
the log something like this:

   SELECT *
   FROM EventLog X, EventLog Y
   WHERE
     X.ExperimentID = Y.ExperimentID AND
     Y.Timestamp =
     (
       SELECT MAX(Timestamp)
       FROM EventLog Z
       WHERE
       Z.ExperimentID = X.ExperimentID AND
       Z.Timestamp < X.Timestamp
     )

In other words, for each row in X, perform a sub-query where you find 
all the rows belonging to the same experiment as X, with timestamps 
earlier than X, and then find the latest timestamp. Return that, and 
find the row in Y belonging to the same experiment, having the same 
timestamp.

If you *now* apply some filtering conditions and you're golden. 
Specifically, X must be an overheat event, and Y must be a power-on 
event (but Z is still unconstrained to be *any* event). If the previous 
event was a power-off event, Z will find it, and the "Y=power-on" 
condition will fail, so that row will be excluses. :-D

The trouble starts if there are many possible events, not just on, off 
and overheat. But all you really need to do is constrain Z to match only 
power-on and power-off events, but nothing else. Then Z (and hence Y) 
will end up being the most recent power-on or power-off, and you can put 
a condition on Y demanding that it be a power-on.

...if that makes *any* sense at all?

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