St John's Ambulance First Aid Course

I have signed up to do a first aid course courtesy of St John's Ambulance of Hong Kong. It will be at their headquarters in Hong Kong island. I previously learnt first aid whilst I was at Trinity and All Saints, when I took part in the Red Cross Society's "first aid at work" course. This time the course will be over five consecutive days instead of once a week over a few weeks.  The course fee here includes the book and a first aid kit.  I will let you know how I get on later.

Medal of Honor - veteran difficulty

I have completed the first 2 battle scenarios in Medal of Honor in the veteran difficulty. The main difference compared to the lower difficulty levels is that the CPU soldiers shoot with much more accuracy.

Medal of Honor - campaign completed on veteran difficulty.

After nearly a year of trying and many sore thumbs I have finally completed the campaign of Medal of Honor Heroes for the Sony PSP in the veteran difficulty which is the second or middle difficulty level.  Compared the Green or easy difficulty there are more enemy numbers and the time limit is shorter in some scenarios. I will now attempt to complete the campaign in the most difficult Elite difficulty and I will let you know once I have achieved this.

Fluent Python

In and around getting to grips with django and django rest framework, I have bought the Kindle version of 'Fluent Python' by Luciano Ramalho. It is a comprehensive guide to the inner workings of Python. After 3 weeks I am still on the first chapter which is about the base methods of the built in types such as lists, tuples, strings and dictionaries.  If you ever needed to over ride the basic string methods for instance, this is the book for you.  The paper version of this book contains more than 700 pages so I will be on it for a while.

Nintendo Switch

In the past few weeks, I have bought myself a Nintendo Switch along with two games - ARMS and Mario Karts. ARMS is a motion control boxing game similar to that seen on the Nintendo Wii or the Sony Playstation Move.  Whilst Mario Karts is the latest version of the go kart racing simulator.  Myself I am looking forward to the release of the Farm Simulator at the end of the next month.  Despite this, my Sony PSP is not yet consigned to the scrapheap.

ET - The Extra Terrestrial

Today I went with the family to see a screening of the 1982 classic film ET - Extra Terrestrial at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre.  The background music was provided live by the Hong Kong Philamonic Orchestra. I have watched the film many times before but never with an orchestra providing a live soundtrack. In some ways this harks back to the the silent era where an organist would provide the background music to a film. It was nice to see this film again and it brings back memories of days before smart phones, the internet and where children went out to have fun.

Python 2017-07-09 data science

Now that I finished my Django course I will now concentrate on my python and its application in the world of data science.  I shall be following my kindle book "Data science from scratch" by Joel Grus. 

Update: although the book's text mentions python2 Joel Grus has kindly provided a python3 version of the code in Github along some explanatory notes.

https://github.com/joelgrus/data-science-from-scratch/tree/master/code-python3

Django 2017-07-07

I have come to end of my  'Tango with Django' book and I won't be working on the final chapters to do with unit testing and hosting a django website.  I have thoroughly enjoyed the tutorial example in this book and I did come across a few bugs in the text which I was able to correct with my own python/html/django knowledge.  I like the fact the book provides links to different aspects of django for your own perusal rather than add extra content in a book that is aimed at beginners.  Thanks to this book I can create my own rudimentary django website and make it call various python functions in the back end.  I give this book 4 out of 5.

Django 2017-07-02

I am now at the later end of the 'tango with django' book by Leif Azzopardi.  The chapter I'm on now is dedicated to exercises on upgrading the website project.  The chapters afterwards deal with JQuery and Ajax which are not part of Django nor Python but extensions of Javascript. These items improve the look and feel of website rather than the functionality.  So basically the workflow in Django is as follows

Update the models
Update the view
Update the template
Update the URLs

Once I have finished this book I will probably buy another Django book before I am fully confident in building my own websites.

Python 2017-06-25 Data science

One of the increasingly popular uses of Python is in the field of data science.  Data science is essentially statistics and it is used in social media trends, social media analysis and marketing.  I am seeing it more and more often in job adverts involving Python.  I know a little about statistics myself thanks to my A level in pure maths and statistics.  To this end I have bought a Kindle book on the subject called "Data science from scratch" by Joel Grus.  This is a primer on the subject and it uses Python to demonstrate the techniques.  There is a short crash course chapter on Python, but don't expect it to be a Python tutorial. 

Django 2017-06-25

I am now midway through my Django book "Tango with Django" by Leif Azzopardi.  I can now create simple interactive packages to reflect what I have in my data layer, allow the user to create accounts, login, logout and determine what a logged or logged out user can see or not see depending on whether on the login status.  For practice I created extra data items and displayed in pages on top of what is required in the book. 

Django 2017-06-17

I am a third of the way through my 'Tango with Django' tutorial book and I have passed a major psychological milestone thanks to the wonderful explanations and exercises in the book.  

I can now create models(internal database tables), populate them and present the data on a web template page at will.  I think the reason for the easy pickup is that the author does not spend too much time on the fancy html tags.

Django 2017-06-04

Despite some wonderful free online tutorials on Django(I especially recommend the newBoston Youtube Channel)  I have found the take up of it to be slow going.  I think part of this is my lack of expertise on html and CSS.  This is despite dabbling in php and perl CGI a number of years ago.  Therefore  I have bought an e-book called 'Tango with Django' by Leif Azzopardi.  This book is aimed for beginners and I will let you know how I get on with it later.

Python 2017-05-22

After a few struggles, I have put a GUI on my Python enigma machine using the Tkinter package.  You can now key the message you wish to encrypt or decrypt.  My next task is to create a web GUI using Django.

Python 2017-05-18 Tkinter

I am using this webpage to learn Tkinter for python. For anyone interested this is a very good introduction to Tkinter for python but be careful the tutorial uses python 2.

Python 2017-05-18 Write a GUI

My python enigma machine has been re-written in object-oriented code and successfully tested.  My next phase of development is to write a graphical user interface(GUI) for it.  I have chosen the built in package Tkinter to do it so I would not have to bother with downloading other packages.  This will take some time as I need to learn how to use Tkinter first.

Python 2017-05-17

I have finished coding and testing my python Enigma machine and the results are correct.  Now my next task is to write the same thing but in an object-oriented manner.

Python 2017-05-16

I have started my first major programming project in python and it is a python version of the WW2 Wehrmacht Enigma machine.  For the spec I am using the paper version as shown in the video below.

General election 2017

After Tony Blair won his landslide victory in 1997, I wondered if the Tories will ever get elected again.  Twenty years later I am asking the same question to myself but this time it is whether Labour will get back in.  I think we are seeing the death of the Labour party in front of our very eyes, which is sad because weak oppositions lead to bad governments.

Python 2017-05-14

I have been learning and practicing my python for a few weeks now and I find it it quite an enjoyable activity.  It has taken up the time that I would usually spend on Empire Total War. 

As someone who knows perl very well, I have picked it up very quickly, especially the objected oriented parts of the python.  I have even got a grasp of the multithreaded capabilities of the language, which is easier to use than perl's offering.

My only gripe with python and I think alot of users would concur is the use of tabbing and spacing.  Python does not use curly braces '{}' to block subroutines, ifs and loops.  Instead it uses a set number of spaces.  Failure to do this properly results in interpretter errors.  This can be annoying when copying and paste code examples.

Python

I have decided to take use my spare time to learning the wonderful object oriented language of python.  It has been on my to do list for a long while and yesterday, I downloaded the language, tools and interpreter. It will be a welcome alternative to PERL and I hope to use it in my work.

Empire Total War - 2017-03-26

I am at the point of conquering all of the Indian subcontinent but in Europe Hungary has declared war on me.  So I have to divert troops to deal with them from my war with Poland/Lithuania and Russia.

The Hitler Options: Alternate decisions of World War 2 - A review

I have finished reading 'The Hitler Options: Alternate decisions of World War 2' by Kenneth Macksey. A very interesting alternate history book, which explores the usual 'what ifs' - Nazi invasion of Britain, D-day failure for the allies and Axis victory in the battle of britain, but it also looks at ways in which the allies could have shortened the war by attacking from southern France rather than through Normandy and also a strategic bombing campaign bringing the Wehrmacht to sue for peace.  The scenarios and possible options are quite plausible and I recommend this for any alternate history buff.

Empire Total War 2017-03-11

Tonight I have achieved a significant milestone on my campaign as I have just captured Warsaw.  My next target is Moscow therefore going one better than Napoleon and Hitler.

The Hitler Options: Alternate Decisions of World War II by Kenneth Macksey

Today, I bought The Hitler Options: Alternate Decisions of World War II by Kenneth Macksey on Amazon Kindle and just started reading it on the journey to work.  It is another alternate history book containing essays by different military historians on the different decisions that Hitler could have taken at key points during WWII and the effect of those decisions.

I will write a review when I have finished it.

In praise of.......... Sports Champions on Playstation 3

I only own a handful of PS3 games and one that I keep playing over and over again is Sports Champions, a sports sim with a twist.  It uses the Playstation Move capability so it feels like you are playing the sport for real to an extent.  The sports featured include table tennis, disc golf (frisbee), archery, gladiator duel(sword fighting) and my favourite, bocce, which is a variant of the French game boules or bowls.  I like the realism of the game and the fact it can be enjoyed as a single or multiplayer.  In each sport there is the 'campaign' mode where you take on players of ever increasing difficulty or free play.  Sports Champions was the flagship game of the PS Move but Sony has not made great use of the Move technology with only a limited range of games.  Both the Move and the PS3 are now defunct but the enjoyableness of this game prevents me from investing in a PS4.

Barbara Ntumy and Jack Buckby

In the past week, there was a notorious Channel 4 News debate featuring right wing activist Jack Buckby and Momentum member,Farage confronter and student activist Barbara Ntumy.  It was notorious because Buckby pulled out a sheet of paper and asked Ntumy whether she would fill it in and accept refugees into her home.  He then followed up with the comment 'I hope you don't get raped' which made him come out looking rather bad even though he had a reasoned argument in that piece.  To her credit Ntumy did say that she accept refugees into her home if she had the means.

During the discussion, Ntumy said that Buckby objected to her existence several times and which he denied strenuosly.  What Buckby objected to were those who were a drain on society which in closer analysis is actually a reasonable point.  He also said he hated Ntumy's politics rather than Ntumy personally, in particular her faux outrage when IS are committing atrocities. Ntumy then brings up the British colonialism that happened in her birth country - Ghana.  Its strange Arab colonialism is ignored and black on black colonialism is also ignored.  It is clear that Buckby cannot be defined as a racist in this instance.  Instead he is making very reasonable points about immigration and also cultural differences between the hosts and newcomers.  Time and again the left has failed to deal with this and any discussion of this is set within narrow limits lest one is accused of being a racist.

On a later Youtube video, Ntumy supports the idea of 'no platforming' whereby those whose views are not acceptable to Guardian readers are not allowed to speak in public. In the age of social media, the no platform is being rendered obsolete.

Empire Total War - 2017-02-12

I've have been rather quiet on the ETW over the past weeks due to the Chinese New Year and various other family commitments.  I have moved on to 1824 on my game calendar and the conquest of Poland-Lithuania and the Maratha Confederacy is in full steam.  The Marathas should capitulate in a few more turns and one of its regions(Punjab) has already rebelled against its rule.  However I have lost a region, Wurtenburg, to a rebellion but I shall get that back in due course.  Once Poland-Lithuania has fallen I am considering a campaign against Russia.

Simon Singh:the code book - review

As I posted earlier, I have been reading Simon Singh's 'The Code Book' and I have now finished it, in fact I have re-read some of the more interesting chapters again.

This is a brilliant book charting the history of cryptography and its opposite number cryptoanalysis.  It is no wonder that some computing degree courses use this book as a course text book.  It gives a thorough explanation of how the Nazi Enigma codes were broken and the brilliant work done by the Bletchley Park experts in achieving that.  It also goes into the deciphering of ancient scripts of extinct languages such as the Linear B tablets of Bronze Age Greece.

Empire Total War 2017-01-08

I've had enough of the Maratha confederacy and I started my invasion of India yesterday. This region will be the hardest to conquer.

Empire Total War 2017-01-07 possible glitch

One of my favourite artillery weapons is the howitzer.  Unlike a cannon it fires a projectile up into the air which then falls down on the enemy, particularly useful is the carcass shot option where the projectile explodes over the enemy and rains burning shrapnel and quicklime over them.  This is particularly useful when besieging fortifications, where it is possible to kill the defenders of the walls without destroy the walls.  However therein lies the problem, if it was me defending I would move my troops off the walls to a position out of range of the howitzer.  However when the computer unit is defending it refuses to move its troops off the walls and if an unit is destroyed it moves another one in to replace it.  So after I have destroyed enough defending units I will move my infantry to scale the walls and take the citadel with minimal loss of life.  I wonder if other players have come across this.