The structure of network protocol suites (by alaric)

It's always struck me as odd that IP routes a packet to a transport-level protocol such as UDP, ICMP, or TCP and then lets that protocol handle routing it to an application process.

Since an application is likely to require a few different types of service for different parts of its operations, shouldn't the specification of the target application be more important than the transport mechanism?

Wouldn't it make sense to be able to send a UDP request to 'port 80' just as easily as you can send a TCP request, rather than requiring the web server to bind separate UDP and TCP listener sockets?

These chains of thought led me to design the MERCURY protocol.

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Protected methods (by alaric)

In Object-oriented programming, things defined in a class can have one of (usually) three access levels: public, private, or protected. Public things are accessible to all users of the class, private things are only accessible from other things defined within the same class - and protected things are accessible from within the class and its subclasses.

However, I have noticed that protected methods are often rather insufficiently documented.

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Photos from the Party and Christening (by alaric)

There's been rather a lot, so here are some of my favourites from the ones I've seen:

And here are some links to online photo sets various people have put up:

My cousin's photos Charlee's photos on flickr

Ugh (by alaric)

Well, I survived the long bank-holiday weekend on very little sleep, but I started to become so tired I kept dozing off in chairs...

Then on Monday I began to feel the beginnings of my immune system getting busy with something; shivering cold even when wrapped in duvets, no appetite, endless thirst, coughing, aching, and so on.

I seem to be over it, but I'm still rather weak and I seem to be needing an awful lot of sleep!

Eyes (by alaric)

As I've mentioned before, I have a lazy eye.

To recap, this is because I have really bad vision in my left eye - I'm astigmatic - and have been that way since I was born, so my brain didn't properly develop to use the blurry vision that eye gave; it just focussed on my right eye. Having very different vision in each eye is called Anisometropia; when this causes a lazy eye, it's known as refractive amblyopia.

Anyway, we are of course concerned that my eye badness might be a genetic trait, so we want Jean checked for it so that if she is also anisometropic she can be treated and not develop amblyopia.

So we raised this concern with the health visitor, and she arranged an appointment with the orthoptic screening clinic. A letter duly arrived telling us to attend the "orthoptic service filter screening clinic" at Stroud general hospital this morning.

Sarah and Jean (with Sarah's father driving) set off this morning, only to find that Stroud General Hospital has an orthoptic filter screening clinic every third Friday of the month - last Friday - but their database knows nothing of Jean anyway.

Bah.

This makes me inordinately sad. I'm a bit prone to rolling in self-pity about my eye - I know it's only a minor thing, I can see and drive and stuff, but for whatever reason I'm easily upset about it. And I'd hate hate hate to think that I might pass it on to Jean.

However, while researching it for Jean, I come across:

To quote Dr. Leonard J. Press, FAAO, FCOVD: "It's been proven that a motivated adult with strabismus and/or amblyopia who works diligently at vision therapy can obtain meaningful improvement in visual function. As my patients are fond of saying: "I'm not looking for perfection; I'm looking for you to help me make it better". It's important that eye doctors don't make sweeping value judgments for patients. Rather than saying "nothing can be done", the proper advice would be: "You won't have as much improvement as you would have had at a younger age; but I'll refer you to a vision specialist who can help you if you're motivated."

Every amblyopic patient deserves an attempt at treatment.

Treatment of Amblyopia

And:

Anisometropic amblyopia: is the patient ever too old to treat?

I've spent years having opticians take one look in my left eye, shake their head sadly, and tell me nothing can be done. 🙁

Anyway... enough wallowing. We need to find out how to get Jean tested, that attempt having failed! Prevention is better than cure.