Are the words in the Voynich Manuscript phonetic codes?

A good question, to which the answer is probably "no". But, like most questions that the Voynich provokes, it's fun to try to answer. I've detailed the approach and result on my web site.



The procedure is to take each word in a body of plaintext and convert it to a phonetic code using the Soundex and Double Metaphone algorithms. Then accumulate the frequency distribution of the phonetic codes in the plaintext and compare with the frequency distribution of word counts in the VMs. If the VMs "words" are phonetic abbreviations of plaintext words, then one might expect the frequency distributions to match in form and level.

More computational Voynich fun.

Man made Climate Change?

The climate change hoo-hah continues to alternately amuse and baffle me. The world's climate has been changing for millions of years, so why any change at the moment is so shocking is beyond me. Of course the media love it: they pitch the nonsensical idea that mankind is somehow responsible. This notion just doesn't stand up to common sense: the idea that we have any control over the climate is conceited and off-scale. Of course, if you live in a big city and notice the man made pollution you might be forgiven for naively assuming that everywhere else has the same levels of pollution. But if you've ever looked at a satellite image of the earth and seen how largely uninhabited it is, 2/3 of it covered by water, or looked out of the window on a transAtlantic flight, where you fly for hours and hours over desolate, completely uninhabited land, you see how pathetically insignificant a bit of pollution in a small area of a few hundreds of square miles is, and how ridiculous is the notion that our SUVs are affecting the global system.

So the climate is changing. Big deal. The latest article I read in the paper today had a title like "Arctic Ice Area at Third Lowest Since Records Began". It turns out that the Arctic ice has actually been *increasing* in area over the last few years, and also that records began only in 1979! The third lowest in 20 measurements, and we are supposed to be alarmed? And I read somewhere else recently that, in fact, global temperatures have been *decreasing" over the last years. Unfortunately such news is not as exciting as "We Will All Fry To Crisps in 2010!".



You can see from the graph that we aren't yet up to medieval temperatures (which the media then would probably have blamed on oxen farts and witch bonfires).

Man made global warming is a load of tosh, and I'd love to be proved right :-)

Why I Like Google Android

Android is so easy to write little applications for, and is a delight if you are a Java fan! With the Android Eclipse plug in and the decent emulator provided, and the easy integration with the phone itself, the whole package is just convenient and efficient.

To take advantage of some of the new features in the latest Android SDK (1.5 "Cupcake") I decided to flash my Google G1 Developer phone to the new release, earlier this week.

Since my phone was running 1.0, I needed to do this in two steps: first upgrade to 1.1, and then upgrade to 1.5. (I tried going directly to from 1.0 to 1.5, but it proved impossible - although it's not clear why).

The instructions I used are here:

HTC - Support - Flashing your Android Dev Phone with a Factory System Image

The first step is to place the new radio image on the sdcard in the phone, using "adp push" from the desktop. Then the phone is rebooted into the management console, and the new image installed. Then the new system image is pushed to the phone, and installed in the same way.

This all went without a hitch, after I realised that the phone should not be mounted as a USB storage device during the process (otherwise the adp push commands to send the files to the sdcard from the desktop will fail with "no permission").

I was surprised to find, after the upgrade, that all my installed application were still there, which was uber-cool.

Following the upgrade, yesterday I tinkered around with the Sensor API in the G1. In particular I was interested in the accelerometer, which provides real time measurement of acceleration in all three axes of the phone. It appears to be quite accurate. There are three or four built in interrogation rates for the sensor - I used "Normal", as I was interested in making a seismometer, which doesn't need very fast rates (I think the fastest is around 20ms per sample).

Over one lunchhour I was easily able to make the little app shown at the start of this post, and deploy it on the G1. It emulates a pen chart recorder, and shows three pens that plot the acceleration in X, Y and Z. The lines move from right to left. At the bottom of the screen is printed the latest measurement: time since start and X,Y,Z values.

After taking a look at Mani Chandy's blog I decided that I should really have my own blog. In contrast, I expect mine to be rather less erudite, and often concerned with what I ate for lunch - although I may occasionally use it as a formatted brain dump.

I shall give it a running start by adding some back material from my LJ.

Dangerous Hubble Repairs

Apparently a few chaps have endangered their lives, at huge expense, by bolting a new camera onto the Hubble telescope. If the old Hubble was no good, then we should send another one up, unmanned. Or send a robot up to fix it. We should not allow people to endanger their lives by sending them up to float around in spacesuits wielding spanners and tools. If there is no funding to send up a new Hubble, then so be it. If robotic technology is not up to doing those sort of repairs on equipment in space, then spend money on R&D so that it is.

The idea of sending people up to fix cameras, at incredible risk and expense, is simply ridiculous. And yet a lot of folks seem to think is it heroic and brave etc.. For a camera? Come on!

Commissioned Painting

A few years ago I built an analogue synthesizer following a design in Practical Electronics from 1973. I got in contact with the author of the design, a chap from Yorkshire who turned out to be someone of wide interests and a colourful past. He sent me a PCB and some of the rarer semiconductors I needed to complete the synthesizer. Since then, I have been in regular contact with him. His current pastime is painting, and he sent me links to some of the work he has done, and it looked great. In return for buying and sending him a rare art book, he asked me if I would like a painting done, and of course I said yes, I would love a painting of him working on his synthesizer. He was a little unsure about the subject matter, as he is used to painting scenery and so forth, but went ahead. Yesterday, the painting arrived and it is exactly what I had hoped.

Here it is. Notice the 'scope display, which is showing a trace from a VCF in the Minisonic (a very characteristic shape).

Jury Selection

Again I had Gilbert and Sullivan's "Trial By Jury" running through my head all of yesterday, while I was downtown at the LA County Courthouse. Even better: I had my MP3 player with me, so could listen to it :-)

USHER And when, amid the plaintiff's shrieks,
The ruffianly defendant speaks--
Upon the other side;
What he may say you needn't mind---
From bias free of every kind,
This trial must be tried!


The best bit about jury selection is hearing the vast range of occupations and backgrounds as each of the jurors are interviewed by the judge and then the defence attorney and the prosecutor.

A couple of very successful ways of being excused were demonstrated. The first was a woman who at some point was asked:

Judge: And could you carry out your duty by presuming the defendant is innocent until proven guilty?
Woman: No
Judge: No?
Woman: No
Judge: Could you explain?
Woman: Where I come from, he's assumed guilty until proven innocent.
Judge: And where do you come from?
Woman: Vietnam. When I was growing up as a little girl there, this was the way.
Judge: Could you put that aside and use the American way, and assume innocence?
Woman: I'd find that very hard

So, she was dismissed. Nice one. Perhaps I should work on my French accent for next time.

Another woman was articulate and intelligent during her questions. She held a senior position as a software systems designer. The questions finally went like this:

Judge: Do you feel that you could do your duty as a juror in this case?
Woman: Yes
Judge: Would you be impartial?
Woman: No
Judge: No?
Woman: (confidently) No!
Judge: You could not be impartial?
Woman: I would not.

After some puzzled looks all around, the judge rephrased his question.

Judge: Would you be fair to the defendant and not assume his guilt or innocence either way?
Woman: Yes!
Judge: Ah, I see. I think we have a language problem here.

It was evident that the woman was confused about the difference between "partial" and "impartial". So, she was dismissed, too ... since I suppose having someone on the jury who gets confused between such key words is a bit of a liability for both sides!