Ciaran’s Random Writings

My collection of pictures taken with digital cameras, which dates back to 1996, has recently got large enough to become an issue in its own right when it comes to storage and backups. I decided to investigate further, and used JDiskReport to create this graph:

This covers the entire 12GB of pictures, and shows that the majority of the data is contained within the last year. The cause is obviously higher resolution images, more memory on the camera and an increasing inclusion of video as well as still images. This means I can expect to be adding to this data at a rate of at least 11GB per year from now on, even if I only continue at the current rate. I seem to be doing ok with not losing it for the first decade, but I need to get a bulletproof backup system in place for this before it gets out of control.

This weekend I finally had some success in an ongoing battle with MediaWiki running under IIS. The problem was the automatic thumbnail generation, which I’d never managed to get working on previous installations. As far as I can see, it just doesn’t work with ImageMagick, no matter what settings are applied. In the end, the solution was to abandon ImageMagick and install GraphicsMagick seperately. With that in place, I enabled the relevant PHP5 module (php_gd2.dll) and it all works perfectly.

The working setup is as follows:

• Windows Server 2003/IIS 5
• MySQL 5.0.27
• PHP 5.2.0
• MediaWiki 1.8.2
• GraphicsMagick 1.0.5

Now I just need to go back and set up the others to use GraphicsMagick.

This is really a bonus all round. The ImageMagick solution wasn’t optimal anyway, since the interface was calling via the command-line. As well as requiring an uncomfortable level of permissions granting to the MediaWikia PHP scripts (i.e. execute anything!), it’s not a nice solution performance-wise. GraphicsMagick is a fork of ImageMagick, and is apparently supported natively by PHP5 (via the module). I think it might be a COM interface, but I didn’t stop any longer to read the docs than was necessary to get it working.

I’m going to have another little ramble about When You Were Young, following on from my earlier one here, where I claimed the song was in B Major, without much in the way of justification. To recap, the chord progression throughout the song is this:

E F# Gm B E

At first glance then, it’s not unreasonable to assume the song is in E, making the progression I II iii V I. The only spanner in the works there is the II, which from a basic harmonisation of the major scale you would expect to be a ii, i.e. F#m and not F#. Why? Because the F# chord contains the notes F#, A# and C#, whereas F#m has an A instead of an A#. The A# is not part of the E major scale.

In itself, this isn’t enough evidence to decide the song isn’t in E. There are a couple of reasons I can think of to explain the ‘out of key’ chord. Firstly, it’s not unusual to ‘borrow’ a chord from the parallel minor scale, i.e. E minor. I ruled that one out because on the second of the scale it would be a diminished chord. The other option to my limited knowledge was a secondary dominant, which in this case would make the F# V/V, i.e. it’s the fifth of the fifth of the original scale. I can think of a lot of examples where that’s used, but on the simplest level you would expect it to resolve to the V itself, i.e. the next chord would be the fifth, a B, which it isn’t.

Another thing to look at would be the melody, but I don’t think off the top of my head that he ever sings either an A or an A#, so there’s not going to be anything conclusive there.

Other evidence then - the descending line that leads to the bridge goes E D# C# B A# G# F#. All notes from B major, with the A# again being not a note from E major. In fact, with the exception of the initial E they’re all also notes from F# major, which suggests we might be modulating to that key for the bridge, but I’ll leave that for another day and just note that the evidence is still pointing towards B major.

Yes, moving horse, not moving house. Although the horse has been moving house, so the title could have been Horse Moving House. That’s taken up most of the day today, one way or another. She’s gone off to Harewood, so she’ll no longer be outside biting chunks off the hedge.

In other news, Mia has turned into a mountaineer. You only have to turn your back for 5 seconds before she’s balancing precariously on top of a table, chair, or whatever else happens to be around. It’s very frightening for us, but not for her apparently. I’m going to book her in for some lessons in the art of being scared before my heart packs up.

I had a pleasant surprise today, when I wanted to access the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. They apparently wanted £195+VAT (per year) to let me in, but just as steam had started coming out of my ears, I noticed I could just type in the number off my newly acquired library card. The same thing works at various other useful places as well. Three cheers for the library. I would say I’m glad I paid my council tax, but I joined the library the county that a portion of our garden is in, rather than the one where the house is.