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Fraser Speirs

I have a MAX_INT number of monkeys, but it's a good first-order approximation.


Time to Move OnJuly 7 2007
I've been blogging on LiveJournal for seven years now, and it's time to move on. I've overhauled my website speirs.org with a fresh new WordPress installation and, from now on, I'll be writing over there.

Seven years is a long time to be doing anything, so I'm not about to forget or stop reading and commenting on friends using LiveJournal. My friends page is still firmly stuck in my bookmarks bar, so I'll still be reading you.

Why am I doing this? Well, I just wanted more control over the way I present myself to the world. LiveJournal is what it is, and it's fine for that, but I wanted to freshen things up. As I said, seven years is a long time to do anything on the internet.

So, please head over to speirs.org and put the new feed in your RSS reader.





On HolidayJuly 5 2007
We've been having a great time on holiday here in Oban. Yesterday, we visited the Isle of Mull. The main town on Mull is Tobermory, where the famous Balamory kids' show was filmed. April adores Balamory and consequently had a great time.

I enjoyed the Isle of Mull Railway, and April got to help turn the train round at the far end of the line.

April the Engine Driver

Canon EOS 30D, Canon EF-S 10-22mm @ 12

1/125 @ f/7.1, ISO 400


The Mull railway is a 260mm narrow gauge railway that runs along a track of about 1.75 miles from Craignure to Torosay. They have a diesel engine (shown above) and a lovely little steam engine. Unfortunately, we didn't get a chance to ride on the steam-powered train. We didn't even really get to see it, except in passing, which was a bit of a shame. Still, great fun.

This is the first holiday we've been on with internet access in the accommodation. It's remarkable how much more relaxing it is, knowing that getting online won't imply spending time trying to find a hotspot out in the mi











Glasgow LatestJune 30 2007
Around 7pm I was out driving and I heard on the radio that the Royal Alexandra Hospital had been 'evacuated'. It turned out that only the A&E unit had been evacuated, but it's being reported on BBC News 24 now that the patient - the burned passenger from the car - was wearing a suicide belt.

Tonight, Alex Salmond said on TV that "terrorist actions are the actions of individuals". One has to wonder if that's actually correct. Of course, that's code for "don't hate Muslims" but it's not even correct, at least according to everything I've read about the operation of terrorist organisations. As an aside, it's amazing how much the Left like to emphasise personal responsibility when it's something bad done by members of a minority (or "communities needing particular reassurance by the police", as we're calling them tonight). Of course, whenever it's something that the government is responsible for, it's always "we all have a role to play" etc. etc....

Let's stop pretending that there's an equal probability that anyone in Scotland might have carried this out. BBC News 24 broadcast an interview with an eyewitness who said that the passenger, in flames, attacked a policeman whilst screaming "Allah! Allah!".

It's a bit embarrassing, though, for the worldwide Islamofascist Jihad that they got the seven bells kicked out them by a couple of Paisley taxi drivers. Losers.





Glasgow Airport AttackedJune 30 2007
Car Rams Glasgow Airport


A car, apparently on fire, has rammed the main door at Glasgow Airport. The driver and passenger were pulled from the car and then proceeded to fight off the police.

Of course, no assumptions can be made about the religious affiliation of the driver and passengers.



Dissecting an iPhone Crash LogJune 30 2007
Since we in the UK aren't getting the iPhone until October or so, I've been watching the frenzy across the Atlantic with some detachment. As a developer, though, I'm at no more of a disadvantage than anyone else, thus far. So, when John Gruber posted an application crash log from his new iPhone, it was easily the most interesting part of the whole coverage for me.

Here's the link to his 'first impressions' post, and this is the actual crash log file.

Here are some of the main points of interest:
  • Foundation and CoreFoundation are there.
  • New frameworks:
    • UIKit which, at a guess, is probably the iPhone's version of AppKit.
    • AddressBookUI, presumably some kind of shared contact picker.
    • MobileMail, which I guess is a mail framework.
    • CoreTelephony - phone functions, perhaps? It would be cool if this were made available, particularly to game developers.
    • CoreSurface, which I suppose is the multi-touch driver framework.

  • There appears to be a traditional file system - images and applications are listed by their slash-separated paths.
  • All the frameworks and applications appear to have a UUID associated with them. I suspect this might be part of the mechanism by which A