Been catching up on bestofyoutube.com and came across this gem

It attempts to explain why money is not the only thing that motivates professionals and how linux, apache have come to the dominate or excel in each of their areas despite being products made available for free created by and maintained entirely by volunteers.

Norway is 1 of 3 countries that are in the European Economic Area but not part of the European Union is something I didn’t realise until today.

The terms Europe, the Eurozone and EU are not interchangeable and it is important to appreciate the different memberships within “Europe”:

Council of Europe – the council of Europe has 47 members (almost all European states), cannot make laws but among many other functions all members of the council are party to the European Convention on Human Rights.
European Union (EU) – 27 members not all are in the Eurozone
The Eurozone – States that have the Euro as the sole currency and hence the currency is controlled by the European Central Bank
European Economic Area (EEA) – 30 states – the EU is a subset of the EEA
European Free Trade Association (EFTA) – 4 states and represents countries who are members of the EEA but not the EU plus switzerland.
Schengen – 26 states – members of Schengen are allowed to cross borders to other Schengen states without the need for border control. Being within the EEA is not a requirement to be within the Schengen Area.
EU Customs Union – 4 states – effectively means that when travelling from another EU customs union state passage can be made through the EU channel rather than the Nothing to declare channel.
Agreement with EU to mint Euros – 3 states – these are states which are not members of the eurozone but are permitted to mint Euro coins because the currency of the state is one of a state that is now part of the eurozone and hence not attached to a monetary system.

This gives rise to a Euler diagram showing which countries are members of what:

So, there are:

17 States in the Eurozone
7 States in the EU without the Euro but within Schengen
3 States in the EU not in Schengen and without the Euro (includes the UK)

This is the 27 EU States

Beyond this are the European non EU nations:

Vatican City can mint Euros but is not Schengen nor EU Customs Union and is also not part of the Council of Europe. All other States mentioned are members of the Council of Europe.
San Marino and Monaco can mint Euros, is part of Eu Customs Union with Monaco also being part of Schengen
Andorra and Turkey can’t mint Euros but are part of EU customs Union
Switzerland is part of EFTA and Schengen
Iceland Lichenstein and Norway are part of EFTA, EEA and Schengen
12 countries: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia & Herzogovina, Croatia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Macedonia, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine are part of the Council of Europe

This totals 47 countries that are on the council of europe (48 if we add the vatican in to give the total countries)

“But I knew that” I hear you say… but did you know that there is also a list of special member state territories of the EU many of which aren’t in Europe and some of them have the Euro as currency?

There are about 50 territories which are covered by Article 52 of the Treaty on European Union and Article 355 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

So I hope that now makes the definition of the EU and the Eurozone clear yet seem not totally European. Even part of the members of the Council of Europe are not in Europe… French Guyana which is an overseas region of France (hence one of the 10 founding members) is in South America!

Was browsing through Youtube and I found a video i saw about 5 years ago and thought i had to post it as it is brilliant. Plus it will mean i’ll be able to find it again:

Indian Traffic
I was told that it is probably filmed in Hyderabad, but it could be one of several Indian cities.
It looks like complete chaos yet there are no accidents.
There are no traffic lights at a major junction where cars are turning in from all directions, interspersed with pedestrians walking along a tram track and vehicles driving on the wrong side of the road and doing u-turns. Pedestrians are nearly hit, traffic is stop start – yet all is generally flowing. And that’s before you mention the hooting which someone says there are at least 70 in the 2 minute clip. Am sure there is a horse and cart featured either in this clip or a similar one. If you see it let me know.
Anyway, check it out – should be a couple of minutes of entertainment

Janus Cat Youtube Video

Probably the most unsettling animal photo and video i’ve seen I thought it wasn’t a real photo.
But it turns out that the Janus cat (janus being the name of the roman god who had 2 faces with the ability to look into the future and the past) is a cat who suffers from Disprosopus or craniofacial duplication.
It gets a little more interesting after finding out that the congenital disorder is caused by a protein called Sonic Hedgehog Homolog and is where the Sega character Sonic the Hedgehog gets his name from.

But back to the cat in the video called “Frank and Louie” is 12 years old and has become the oldest of his kind. They don’t generally live very long and “Frank and Louie” themselves were to be put down before being rescued by their current owner. Is it one cat is it two?

At around 3pm on Saturday 13th August Kevin Pieterson took the catch off the bowling of Tim Bresnan and India were all out losing the 3rd test of the 4 match series. The outcome of this means that regardless of the result of the final test that starts on thursday at the Oval, England will be crowned the Number 1 test team in the world.
The rise has been remarkable. I remember stood by the pavilion in 1999 when England were officially the worst team in the world having lost the test series 2-1 to New Zealand at Home. Something had to change.
But the question that is bugging me is, how good is this England team? I think the stats can prove this, because simple measures such as winning percentage, batting and bowling averages have always been measured and cricinfo has a massive archive of this sort of thing.

However, the first thing to consider is how much cricket is being played today. It will come as no surprise to discover that we are playing nearly double the amount of tests now compared with 50 years ago. This is not only because of the number of teams, but also because of air travel. In the 1950′s England had 1 winter tour and you got there by boat. Today there are 2 or 3 to different countries.

We can still look at how many matches have been won, lost and drawn.
In addition, I am going to focus on the period from 1990/1991 to 2011 as this is 20 years of English cricket and highlights the lows and highs of their performance.

You can probably see from the charts that the number of tests in the last 20 years has stayed roughly constant while in the past it was less. Note the dips for the decade for the first and second world wars when less cricket was played.

In addition, the breakdown shows us in the blue bars where England have done well in a season. Note the winter tours are split from the summer season allowing us to see home vs away.
While looking at the blue bars shows us how few matches England won in the bad days of the 1990s, it is still absolute numbers and better represented as a Winning percentage

First we need to look at this over time

And then focus on 1990 – 2011

We can clearly see the decades and seasons that were weak.
I’ve used a 3 point moving average for the grouped years and a 5 point moving average for the last 20 years in all cases to give a sense of how performance is changing.
You can see the climb following the dreadful winter of 2008/09 where they lost in India and The West Indies
This is followed by a steady rise as the Flower/Strauss regime kicked in. This had the win at home for the ashes in 2009, a successful winter tour, another win at home in 2010, the first ashes away win since 1987 in 2010/11 and series wins against sri lanka and india in 2011.

The next thing I want to consider is batting average across all positions:

This shows that batting average has followed winning percentage over the decades.
We can focus in on the same 20 years:

Again we see the 2006/07 the thrashing england took from australia is highlighted by the dip along with a low average in the 1990′s.

Less telling, but worth noting is the highest score a side has achieved in a season, along with the lowest total in the same time period:

Focusing in on the recent times probably more interesting is the low scores where we see when england have been skittled out:

Of course we can’t look at a side’s performance without thinking of the bowlers, so we need to consider bowling averages

Again we see the bowling averages mirroring the win percentage, but it is a little more complex as you can draw matches without having a good bowling performance. It also suggests that while England’s winning is as good as it was in the 50′s the bowling of Tyson, Statham, Bedsor, Laker and Lock was something special. That said, the batting then wasn’t bad either with Len Hutton, Dennis Compton, Bill Edrich, Peter May, Colin Cowdrey.
However looking at the most recent years we see that England’s bowling has come on most in the last 3 years:

And again we need to see how many runs the team concedes when bowling:

It is a little misleading when looking at the current decade as the season isn’t complete and also it is only 2 years into the decade.

Zooming in we see the seasons where the wins are partly to do with a good low bowling average

This shows the current england team is doing well against it’s opposition in the same way that the great england teams have done in the past. What it doesn’t show is whether they are better than them or not as that relies on considering the opposition. When I look at the bowling rankings I don’t see the same quality as I did 10 years ago when Warne, McGrath, Pollock, Murali, Kumble, Harbhajan were in their pomp. Still, we have Dale Steyn, Graham Swann, Morne Morkel, Daniel Vettori but there are not enough members in the 300 club in the top of the rankings. So the issue will always be are england number 1 because australia are going through a lull, india don’t tour well, and nobody else is there to challenge them. Perhaps next summer will provide the best challenge when south africa arrive in england searching for that number 1 ranking.

The news of the moment in the UK is the News of the World Phone Hacking Scandal. With rumours that there are lists of 1000′s of celebrities, Government officials, criminals and victims who have had their phones hacked by journalists of the news of the world hysteria has hit the british press and the newspaper buckled under pressure and shut down.
Baffled by the reaction, I thought about the story, and suspect there is a fair amount of misunderstanding amongst the public. Especially when it comes to the question “What is Phone Hacking”. And the first thing to remember it is nothing like the underworld of computer hacking, virus writing, web page hijacking, or even phreaking to make free phone calls. No, what it is is simply playing off human lazyness and taking advantage of a functionality mobile phone networks introduced many years ago.
Almost every phone operator gives the option to check your mobile phone messages “remotely” ie from another phone when you do not have it with you. This is also the case for most modern answerphones for landlines.

For those who have not been following the stories, have a look on google news

For mobile phones it is simple:
1) You phone your mobile phone
2) Wait for the voicemail divert
3) Press the * key
4) Enter your PIN code

And your messages are read out as if you were accessing it from your own mobile phone.
The vast majority of users are (or until now) were unaware of this as they had no use for it and therefore would never go into their settings to change the PIN code.
Therefore, for most people the default will work – and this includes celebrities.
Clearly, you can’t initiate this plan if the person you are trying to get hold of answers the phone, so the ususal plan is to work in pairs where one person phones and if the person picks up the 2nd person immediately phones from another line and will immediately get through to voicemail. Meanwhile the original person phoning who got through to the person will give some excuse such as claim to be a sales person offering products that will be refused or that they have dialed an incorrect number opening the way for the other person who has got into the voicemail to listen through the messages saved, find out any numbers left by people who have left messages or even delete messages.

This BBC news site story has more info.
The guardian has a whole section of their website dedicated to it.

Out of curiosity I decided to try and hack my own phone having done a bit of googling to find the default pin codes.
The first problem i found was that I had actually disabled my voicemail which would explain why I hadn’t had any messages recently – not that i use it much. Next, having enabled it after 10 seconds of ringing I got through, followed the process only to find the default pins did not work, suggesting i had in fact changed the pin code at some point and have no idea what it is so good luck phone hackers getting into my voicemail!!

There are many times when I wonder whether I am being musically snobbish especially after seeing some of glastonbury on BBC 2 this weekend when I have no interest in U2, Coldplay or Beyonce.
Of course I have my music vices but largely I like to think that the music i like is of a decent standard. This doesn’t help me in pub quizzes in music rounds when I have no idea what Adele song is playing or even that it is Adele because I have no interest in the artist.
That being said, the one thing that always reassures me is that there are people more snobbish than me and that is epitomised in a post i read on metafilter 7 years ago:

“We Built this City” is a great song with a great hook by a band that had no right have such a terrific hit that late in its alcohol-sodden, drug-dulled career. “Corporate” (Blender’s comment) my butt. How anyone could call “We Built this City” a bad song while there is the whole catalog of Wilco to draw from is beyond me — not to mention every song by Tom Waite, Randy Newman, every rap and hip hop singer who ever lived, the entire “alternative” and grunge movement, Nine Inch Nails, Supergrass, “Peg O’ My Heart,” the theme songs from “Friends” and every other sitcom, the symphonic output of Anton Bruckner, fully three quarters of Bob Dylan’s work, one-quarter of Bruce Springsteen’s, every song on the Outkaast album except “Ai-Ya,” “Wipe Out,” every song by James Brown, two decades of jazz-rock fusion, everything by Joni Mitchell after and including the album “Blue,” “Symphonie Fantastique,” Sting, reggae, any song that’s used in a car commercial, anything involving Brian Wilson after “Good Vibrations,” anything on the Beatles “White Album” (except “Oh-Bla-Di” which the bozos at Blender are not hip enough to like), any song by John Lennon after meeting Yoko Ono, any song (it goes without saying) by Yoko Ono, anything by Paul McCartney or the Rolling Stones issued in the last 25 years (except for “My Brave Face”), fully three-quarters of Elvis Costello’s recorded ouvre, all contemporary classical music since Stravinsky, anything by Andrew Lloyd Webber, anything by Fabian, anything by Philip Glass, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” everything by Prince except “Raspberry Beret,” I could go on…
posted by Faze at 1:53 PM on April 23, 2004

Parts of it I do agree with, but a lot of it is excessive, especially the part that says every song by prince except raspberry beret – can’t agree with that. On the other hand the classical stuff and andrew lloyd webber – have no objections.
It’s a shame the article on blender the comment relates to no longer exists, even on waybackmachine but hopefully the general gist comes through.

Finally, it sounds like the news is out on what the coalition is going to do with NHS Commissioning.
Following the post election promises that the NHS was safe from radical reform the government unleashed a white paper that had more change than had been seen in 20 years. The big change being that Primary Care Trusts (PCTs), the guardians of the funding used to treat patients would be abolished following a period where many were in heavy debt (millions of UK£’s), and would be replaced by General Practitioner (GP) Consortia. These consortia would be set up from scratch and represent several GP Practices, predicted to total more than the number of PCTs.

The problem with this is that many GP practices did not want the responsibility of holding the purse strings, whereas others were keen. On top of this, the coallition government are very keen that the patient’s best interests are represented. The new U turn has yet another radical change to the commissioning of health care. Meanwhile, the PCTs are consolidating their debt by merging – something the former labour government recommended as part of their proposals. And while they do so more money is being spent on organisations which appear to have a limited shelf life.

We await to see what the full proposals will be and what they will yield.

It frustrates me at times when I hear the news that I’ve been anticipating for some time
Anderson injury causes England concern

Why is it frustrating? Because the ECB coaching system doesn’t seem to want to embrace technologies such as biomechanics to prevent this sort of thing.
Ever since I saw James Anderson bowl first in 2002 when making his ODI debut in Australia I have just thought stress fracture.
What happened in May 2006? Anderson hit by stress fracture

And his rehab began after a year out of the game. It was treated by remodelling his action. The bowling coach at the time was the rather inept Kevin Shine who tried to turn his mixed action into a side on action. While this would’ve maximised the swing he could generate I believe that his natural action is a chest on approach and it is only his delivery stride in the landing of his back foot that is causing him problems.

It took me quite some time to track a photo that demonstrates this but here’s one from 2009 after he had ignored the rehab following the recovery:

The key thing to note with this is that if you are bowling side on the front arm (left in this case) should be inside the line of the head. Jimmy clearly has his outside. The next thing to look at is the head position – this is falling to his left hand side. This is because his back foot is landing parallel to the return crease. He then pulls his left arm outside the left hand side of his head which causes his head to fall away to the left. This has the effect of pulling his left side down, twisting the back which will over time cause a stress fracture as the force after bowling as many overs as an international cricketer does wears away at the back.

Kevin Shine, the england bowling coach at the time, attempted to get his left arm inside the line of the head to straighten it up – the problem with that is that you have to turn yourself into a side on bowler. The solution in my mind and one that many bowlers who use technology come to is change the position of the back leg to be perpendicular to the return crease.

A good example would be Shaun Pollock who did exactly this to avoid injury:

Compare this to Anderson’s landing:

Having said all this the ECB really needs to consider papers like this one from the australian universities when advising bowlers early in their careers. It is far easier to change a bowling action when you’re 18-21 than when you’re over 30 as became increasingly obvious with Andrew Flintoff – his problems were different, attempts were made but in the end his career was brought to an early end because of a flawed bowling action

It’s been nearly 2 years since I last did any blogging – this has been largely due to a lack of time.
However, I’ve missed it and decided to get back into it.
So, I’ll begin with The Domesday Project:

This was begun between 1984 and 1986 to celebrate the 900th anniversary of the Domesday Book which for those not familiar was a book commissioned in 1086 by the then King of England, William I (More commonly known as William the Conqueror) in order to determine what land and property existed in the United Kingdom and who owned it. This was for the purposes of tax collection, but also served a useful piece of information from a social history perspective. While it is not fully clear how long the collection process took it is suggested that it took the best part of a year to collate this information into the book.
To celebrate the 900th anniversary the BBC asked schools across the country to create their own version and a snapshot in time named The Domesday Project. Being done by children and teachers they gave themselves 2 years to record the information. Created in association with Acorn Computers, all the data was entered electronically onto a purpose built computer system. Cutting edge for its time it was able to collect text, photos and videos but also would become the google street view of its time.
It’s biggest flaw was it was too cutting edge and the times weren’t ready for the technology.
The data was catalogued on a new storage medium – Laser Disc. Using a scsi controller, the player could be attached to a BBC Master Computer and when combined with a tracker ball (precursor to the modern trackball or trackpad). All in it cost the best part of £5000 which at the time was the price of a small family car. Therefore, sales were low and the project went into obscurity.

This week, The project hit the news as word came through that a part of the BBC had, 25 years on, managed to convert the data into a format that would be accessible to all for free on the web. The concern had come that not enough of the laser disc players existed and that the discs themselves had become corrupted because of a flaw in their design.
Several previous attempts had been made – firstly using emulation of the original BBC Master software on windows PC’s, then a version which did not require the emulation as the software had been re-written for windows PC’s. But finally, the ultimate which does not require any software be installed on the end user’s computer other than a web browser. The domesday1986 blog documents this while the Beebmaster Website shows the technology used to create/play the original discs.

The link for the successfully restored data can be found here:
Domesday reloaded