Results for February's project

Thanks to everyone who responded. There were six genuine voters and two virtual voters. Analysing the responses was not as straightforward as I had expected.

Kate voted for option 3. Kate's cat also voted for option 3 but I suspect this was just Kate's way of trying to wangle some extra representation and so I'm accepting only the one vote (sorry Kate's cat).

Cosmic Tink Tank voted for option 3 and included some interesting suggestions to enliven the proceedings. I won't be using the suggestions but, hey, what a creative mind.

Mille Vache voted for option 2, which I would have been delighted to run with but unfortunately Mille rendered option 2 redundant by publishing the recipe in advance of project selection and execution. Never mind - it was a good service rendered by Mille and I trust everyone will try the recipe (I certainly will).

Angie voted for option 2 but see Mille Vache above. Sorry Angie. At least you've got the recipe now.

Andrew voted for option 2. Yep, that's right. Sorry Andrew. Blame Mille Vache. Enjoy the honeycomb!

Su voted for option 1. I am counting this vote as valid even though I know for a fact that Su is voting that way only to try to put me on the spot. You don't believe I can do this number theory stuff, do you Su? I have only one thing to say: Tom Westerdale, Birkbeck College. He taught me everything I know about number theory, set theory, logic and computability. Although I'm a wee bit rusty, I've still got my notes...

Anonymous voted for option 1 but then disqualified himself/herself by voting twice for option 1. A bit harsh maybe but Anonymous could be anyone - perhaps even Su trying to inflate her representation. Anonymous did almost redeem himself/herself by suggesting that option 3 would be more fun but, in all fairness, if I'm invalidating this person's vote for option 1 then I must do the same for option 3.

So there we have it:

Option 1: one valid vote (Su).
Option 2: three valid votes (Mille Vache, Angie, Andrew) but option rendered redundant by early disclosure.
Option 3: two valid votes (Kate, Cosmic Tink Tank).

A clear win for option 3. I kind of thought it would go that way.

And here you are - the very can that's going to get it. The contents conform to European directives 76/769/EEC and CE 3093/94. I'm not saying that's good and I'm not saying that's bad but one way or another it will do no more harm to the environment than if it were deployed more conventionally, at a party for instance. The only difference is that my special party will be over in seconds. The only way to reduce impact is to ban this stuff altogether and that would probably be a good thing.

When is it going to happen? Well, I had planned on doing the deed later today but a friend of mine offered the use of his professional quality video camera in place of my humble mobile phone video capture facility. I must admit I couldn't resist the opportunity to capture some high-speed vid and render it in slow-mo for your delectation.

Do not try this at home. See you in March!

Your chance to vote on February's project

February has been a slow month for the Secret Laboratory. I have several serious projects on the go but there will not be any results until late March at the earliest. Therefore, as infill, I have decided to test the intellectual orientation of my readership. You may vote upon the following three last minute projects for February, the most popular of which will be published here.

1. Decidable Predicates. How to decide whether numbers possess a given property.
2. How to make that yummy honeycomb stuff they put in Crunchie bars.
3. What actually happens if you shoot an aerosol can of "Silly Party String" with an air pistol.

You may vote 1, 2 or 3 by responding to this post.

A mystery...

An unknown agent appears to be testing The Secret Laboratory. This morning a package arrived from an anonymous sender. The address was written in block capitals, so no handwriting clues. No return address on the package, no note inside and the package was franked with a "Royal Mail postage paid" label, so no postmark. Who could it be from?

Inside: two mugs of Welsh origin, each bearing a conspicuous dragon emblem; a small jug of Scottish origin; a brown paisley scarf of English origin; a newspaper clipping from The Wirral News reporting upon the activities of a certain rock band with whom I once had some association.

Sifting analytically through my portfolio of friends, I could see tenuous links to many among their number but no single friend satisfied all of the criteria. Those with a Wirral connection might know of my Welsh connection but not necessarily of the band in question. Those with the band connection might know of my Welsh connection but nothing of the Wirral. Those with the Welsh connection would know nothing of my Wirral or band connections. Those who might have judged that the scarf would work well with my tweed jacket and moleskin trousers might have known of the band and my Welsh connection but what were they doing in the Wirral? As for the Scottish jug, well, was this just a Red Herring? Or a Kilmarnock even - that's a plaice in Scotland.

I confess to being utterly stumped.

Band, Scarf, Scotland, Wales, Wirral; that's five factors. I should try drawing a Venn diagram to narrow the range of suspects but, on paper, Venns only work with three factors. Looks like I'm going to have to fire-up the multidimensionaliser tomorrow. It's been in the shed all winter - I hope it still works. Now, where did I put the 2-stroke oil?

The WHUMMMP of clean underpantlessness

It is the sound that every solitary male dreads. What begins as a subliminal thumping grows over the weeks to become a truly disconcerting racket, like unto a teenager learning to play drums in the garage. At last comes an Earth-shaking WHUMMMMP! and the lights go out all through the house. Silence. The washing machine is dead.

This would be distressing for either gender, of course, but the special (and most ironic) tragedy for the male is that calling for an experienced service engineer is like phoning the AA to change a wheel; an admission of extreme girliness. Even if the task has never presented itself before, one feels a masculine obligation to give it one's best shot and fail miserably rather than admit defeat at the outset.

The alternatives are even worse. It's one thing to be sitting in the laundrette in crisp white boxers with "Heard it on the Grapevine" going on in the background whilst your Levis whirl around the tub; quite another thing to be sitting in the laundrette in threadbare nylon paisley briefs with "Steve Wright in the Afternoon" for accompaniment. It doesn't thrill the ladies - trust me, I know about these things.



I would have been particularly upset to lose my Hotpoint Aquarius 1000M. After all, this was the rare edition that included the "Single Bloke" setting on the wash programme selector. No need to understand the intricacies of the other settings - just chuck all your stuff in, select "Single Bloke" and press "On". Everything comes out just like your Mum had done it.

Taking care to isolate the machine from power, water and drainage, I drew breath and heaved it from its lair beneath the fitted cabinets and the sink unit. An adrenalin rush, blood coursing through my wiry biceps, I felt alive.

Seizing a screwdriver, I considered which of the many screws were most likely to grant me access and which were likely to send some delicate internal component tumbling down into an unreachable abyss. Selecting three likely-looking candidates, the top was easily removed and the innards of the beast were laid bare.



As I gazed upon the wonders within, I noticed a spring where no spring should be, then a place where a spring should be but where there was no spring. It took a moment but then a rush of realisation, a "eureka" moment as all suddenly became clear: a spring had come loose. Not any old spring though - a very important spring - the one that holds the thingummybob (yes, thanks Gracie fans, we know...)

But why had the spring come loose? Closer inspection revealed that the hooky bit at the end of the spring had broken off, and this, in turn, was because a certain retaining plate had either never been fitted or had been removed by some rogue service engineer in the past. There was no trace of the missing plate within the machine but the evidence of slots and threaded holes (plus the presence of a retaining plate on an identical partner spring) gave the game away.

No hook, no retaining plate and me running low on clean undies. What to do?

The Secret Laboratory boasts a collection of pliers that would shame a light engineering workshop - 14 to be precise, each with a different purpose. Two of these were selected to fashion a new hook on what remained of the broken spring. The spring now in place, a new retaining plate was fashioned from an old PCI slot blanking plate and secured with a screw of exactly the right type found in my Dad's old collection of "everything you could possibly need". He died in 1998 but to this day he's never let me down. Whatever you need, it's somewhere in his collection - you've just got to work out where he put it (and sometimes this involves bizarre "visualisation" techniques, crystals, incense, chanting and all kinds of hippy shit).



Job done! I reckon that saved me a couple of hundred quid. Another work of genius from The Secret Laboratory!

Note: If you want to try fixing your own washing machine, please observe the usual sensible precautions. Turn off the water supply before disconnecting hoses. Have mops and buckets ready before disconnecting the outlet (you wouldn't believe how much gunk is sitting in the sump). Stick a cork or something in the thing the outlet drained to. UNPLUG UNPLUG UNPLUG! Don't trust the on/off switch or even the wall switch - they don't always do what you think. Remember, some electrical equipment can hold a potentially lethal charge even after being unplugged. If you see something that looks like a little tin can, just walk away and call an expert (one of those babies once threw me across a room and I'm lucky to be here). Finally, if you are of the Compensation Culture, do not under any circumstances attempt to fix your washing machine. In fact, don't try fixing anything. Don't even try staying in bed because I don't want to be sued when you get bedsores. Just close your eyes and try not to exist.

Social Inclusion and Open Source Enabling Technologies

No matter how hard our beloved ICT providers try, there will always remain individuals within our community who resolutely defy any attempt to welcome them into the age of the Internet. You might imagine I am speaking of the elderly, but no - most members of that demographic group are keen to become involved, if only to impress (and possibly scare the pants off) their grandchildren with their intergenerational skills set. Who wouldn't want a techo-savvy grandparent? Hey - some of them even drove the movement in the early days of interconnectivity.

No, I'm talking about people of any age who, for one personal reason or another, have decided not to become part of the revolution. Is it a strongly held belief in the evil of the technology or is it just an irrational fear of change? A fear of failure to perform in a new environment? These are just conjectures and I could be barking up the wrong hill of flying bananas.

Anyway, I have several very dear friends who have slipped through the 'Net and so they have no means to visit YouTube, Facebook, Flickr, MySpace or whatever to view material that I am sure they would enjoy.

How to include them? Of course! Drop it all onto a DVD and post it to them for Xmas! Surely they have a DVD player? Thereby hangs a tale...

If you are the kind of person who just buys retail and bugger the expense, fine. Your posh retail PC or video camcorder possibly came with all the software necessary to burn DVDs that can be played on a typical domestic DVD player. If, like me, you build your own kit from OEM components (or if you're trying to upgrade old kit), you might find that any software bundled with your components is of the "30-day trial" variety. It is all too easy to install the software and forget the T&Cs until months later when you try to use it.

Knowing that I had DVD burning software, I began such a project for a techno-refuser friend of mine. After an hour of work, the software informed me that my trial period had expired and that I would have to pay £39 to acquire the licence to complete the burn. Fair enough, payment-wise, but they could have told me at the start, not after an hour's work, surely? That's just a sneaky and underhand way of attempting to secure a sale. Had they told me at the start, I might have considered paying the £39 (maybe yes, maybe no) but after an hour's work? No way. Deliberately waste an hour of my time and they owe me £39 in my book. Lost sale. Indeed, lost sales, for I will never purchase any of their products at any time in the future, nor recommend them to my clients.

Oh dear, what to do?

To the rescue! Open Source software! After a brief hunt on the Net, all recommendations pointed to DVD Flick as being the solution, and it did everything it promised (Google it). This free package gobbled up every media file I threw at it and turned them into a playable DVD that worked even on my budget domestic DVD player. Deep Joy! The authors invited an optional monetary contribution and I will be making that, just to support the great Open Source initiative. So many times the Open Source guys have got me out of a hole when the Big Boys didn't really care about my predicament.

Priority assessment:

Open Source: enabling and friendly (if a bit geeky)
Big Boys: money and trouble

Which would you support?

Whatever you want to do with your computer, take a look at Open Source software offers before handing money over to the bread-heads. A great recommendation from The Secret Laboratory...

Bring on the Flying Trappists!

This month, the Secret Laboratory gets all metaphysical and investigates what happens in the brain during those early morning moments before full wakefulness.

If you have ever woken with what you thought was a deep insight into the workings of the Universe, which later proved to be utter bollocks, add a response to this posting and we'll discuss it through December.

You see? The Secret Laboratory is not just about "exploding test tube" shit, although there is some of that...

Hairs in the bath - a solution

As we approach the end of November I note that the Secret Laboratory has been rather quiet this month (demonstrating to my critics that I have not got too much time on my hands). With time running out, I decided to pull something random out of the hat by addressing the problem of hairs in the bath.

We all know the problem. Whether you're a gent such as myself who finds facial shaving more comfortable following a totally immersive long hot soak, or a lady pursuing the ideal of the silky smooth leg, once you pull that plug you know there is going to be some troublesome debris that just doesn't seem to want to go down the plughole.

The Secret Laboratory has investigated the dynamics of in-bath-shaving-related-debris (IBSRD) and has come up with the following observations and a solution:

As the bath empties, the temptation is to try to sweep the debris towards the plughole. As the wave rushes down the slope of the bath, some debris may disappear down the plughole but most will return with the (now very energetic) wave reflected from the end of the bath and is deposited as the returning wave loses energy on the incline. These are the very same dynamics that are responsible for sand deposition upon beaches.

The solution is to avoid sweeping the water towards the plughole. Instead, with your hand, keep injecting energy into the waters, even in the upper-reaches of the bath, with a constant stirring action, round and round. So long as you keep all of the water moving, it will continue to carry the debris and eventually disappear down the plughole of its own accord. You may find you don't even need to clean the bath afterwards.

I don't know - I really ought to charge for this kind of practical research...