Ben's Journal

2:36pm: Looks like MS know about that issue. If your common buffer is > a page, you won't get a virtual address and logical address that match up. Oddly this is by design (because the virtual address isn't aligned), but there is no way to get a matching (unaligned) virtual address as far as I can see. Which is a pain. My workaround still stands, although a better choice will be

Allocate size you want + 1 page.
Read logical address. If it isn't aligned, add 1 page and mask it. this is you aligned logical address
work out difference between original logical address and new logical address, add this to the virtual address.

I think this will waste no more space than MS, and is far less nasty than my previous approach.

12:08pm: WdfCommonBufferCreateWithConfig alignment weirdness
(Using my livejournal as a place to dump things other people might one day search for)

WdfCommonBufferCreateWithConfig is a handy function in the Windows Driver Framework to create common buffers which are arbitrarily aligned in memory (overriding what you may have set elsewhere)

Except it doesn't seem to work (I'm looking at KDFW 1.1 BTW)

I can create a buffer. That works
I can read the logical address. That works, and is correctly aligned)
I can read the virtual address. Except the virtual address doesn't map to the logical address.

In fact, the virtual address maps to somewhere up to the number of bytes of alignment requested before the logical address.

What I guess is happening is, in order to map the virtual address, a buffer bigger than the one requested is getting mapped. It then finds a point within this buffer which _is_ aligned (very simple get pa, add mask, apply mask and you have your answer) and
returns that. Unfortunately someone forgot to recalculate the virtual address

my solution (which is horrid, but works better than the WDF atm)
pa1 is the common buffer's returned logical address
va is the common buffer's returned virtual address
pa2 is MmGetPhysicalAddress(va)
newva is va + (pa1 - pa2)
now use newva and be happy

Now, forget I ever said that, and hope that the nice Microsoft people fix things.

3:52pm: Fame (or people who know famous TV people know my name)
Today, for the second time in my life I have been imortalised by NTK, and this time it didn't involve the death of many many people in order for me to amuse a few geeks (see http://www.ntk.net/2001/09/14/dohsky.jpg). No today I got my name in lights and everything thanks tohttp://www.downwardspiral.org.uk/cgi-bin/orlowski.cgi (in NTK http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/22/ no, I don't no what it means for me to be DownwardSpiral's Ben Chalmers either... Downward spiral is just a URL I happen to own. FunFact: DownwardSpiral and Zokutou are actually the same shell account)

But anyway, yay! I have subverted the media and made fun of a journolist you probably havn't heard of in the process)

2:38pm: This isn't about me. I'm writing it because when I tried to find the words to this song on the web, they wern't there. Google only managed to keep up it's omniscience thanks to someone having posted the lyrics to uk.religion.christian in 1998

Anyhow, unless you were forced to sing a very particular type of hymn and were geeky enough to care about who wrote them all this will mean nothing to you. Move along please, nothing to see here.

Anyone can write a Graham Kendrick song,
Anyone can write a Graham Kendrick song,
You just make the words up as you go along,
Anyone can write a Graham Kendrick song.

Graham Kendrick leaves out all the [CLAP] crucial beats,
Graham Kendrick leaves out all the [CLAP] crucial beats,
So instead of singing you can [STAMP] stamp your feet,
Graham Kendrick leaves out all the [CLAP] crucial beats.

Take a verse from Psalms or a mi-nor prophet,
Take a verse from Psalms or a mi-nor prophet,
Make it so obscure no-one knows quite which bit,
Take a verse from Psalms or a mi-nor prophet.

Put it in a key the guitar-ist can't play,
Put it in a key the guitar-ist can't play,
I'll learn C-sharp minor seven in a day
Put it in a key the guitar-ist can't play,

The stress-ing of the syl-lab-les does-n't mat-ter,
The stress-ing of the syl-lab-les does-n't mat-ter,
Put some extra words in if the line isn't quite long enough for what you
want,
The stress-ing of the syl-lab-.........les does-n't mat-ter,

Graham taught us how to sing in harmony,
Graham taught us how to sing in harmony,
Even if it's very like the melody,
Graham taught us how to sing in harmony.

As you go throughout the song you get faster,
As you go throughout the song you get faster,
Pianist won't keep up, but who cares about her,
As you go throughout the song you get faster.

Anyone can write a Graham Kendrick song,
Anyone can write a Graham Kendrick song,
When you think you've reached the end, well that's where you're wrong,
Anyone can write a Graham Kendrick song.

Pick your favourite verse and sing it once again,
Pick your favourite verse and sing it once again,
That's the way you'll know when you've reached the end,
Pick your favourite verse and sing it once again

12:14am: Getting personal
I have just had a reply to the personal ad I placed on personals.uber.nu and mentioned below. Which is one more than I expected. I shudder to think what sort of person would find the me I described there interesting enough to write to. Really. Would you reply to a personal that mentioned slashdot slash fiction?

Come to think of it, the sort of person who would reply is probably the sort of person who would hunt down my livejournal and stalk me here too (for the lazy stalker, livejournal makes life so much easier - it avoids all the walking around and following that our stalker kin of yesteryear had to cope with). If so, hiya.

I fear that type of person. I also fear any club that would have Groucho Marx as a member.

Needless to say I replied. I laughed fear in the face. "Ha fear!" I said "Even now I have anthropomorphised an emotion evolved (or possibly designed - I say that in case creationist fundies ever take over the world and use livejournal to hunt down the heretics.) to keep me away from vicious predetors, I can laugh. Ha. Ha."

Fear did not respond. I don't think it likes me. It wants to hang around with the cool emotions like self-loathing and drunkeness.

Ethics prevent me from reporting my reply fully. Nevertheless it included a discussion of "Moonunit Zappa", a web of deceit and the fact I have at least one bookcase. I think it was rather good.

10:35pm: My Sex and the City.
It has happened.

Tonight I enjoyed an episode of Sex in the City.

I coped the first time I realized Ally McBeal was fantastic.

I could cope with my sudden fascination with teen romances.

I could even cope with the fact I enjoyed the adult equivalents.

But now I like Sex in the City. Which I suppose means I am actually a woman.

I should have guessed nine years ago when my hair first began to grow.

Fairly soon, I suspect I will start to notice that people are wearing jewelery and gain an interest in interior decoration.

On the bright side, I still fancy women, and hear that lesbianism remains chic.

11:22am: Oh? Canada?
Flying out today, not quite sure when I'm getting back (things like providing me with useful information don't bother those who have the power at work). The weird thing is my job isn't actually what I'm going out to do. So I'm going somewhere I've never been to do things I don't know anything about for an indeterminate amount of time.

Its a shame I'm not going to the US: Customs there would have been interesting!

If I'm unlucky this may be the last time I see the world-wide-global-hyper-interweb-networky-thing for the next week or so. What will all those web comics do without me? Who will delete the piles of septic tank and fine art spam I recieve? Will I ever get my open university essay done? Who cares about canadians trying to read american numberplates anyway?

11:03pm: I'm reaching out:

http://personals.uber.nu/view.pl?id=448

10:06am: Yesterday evening I went to a pub to celebrate a friends birthday. We enjoiyed ourselves and managed to win a pub quiz in the process. It was only when I arrived home, a little worse for wear because of the alcoholic nature of our prize (and the Carlton Arms serving damn fine beer anyway) that I realised I had spent the entire evening enthusing about things which really don't interest me much.

For a good proportion of the evening I was trying to explain what made football such an addictive spectator sport. Now, I have no objections to football, I even follow the fortunes of Charlton and go to the occasional game (very occasional), but when it comes to poster child supporters, I'm not one. It certainly wouldn't cause me any significant distress to learn I would never be allowed to see another game. So what was the point I was making about the atmosphere of a footie match crowd? No idea.

Later I had another conversation about cars, and about how Mercs and BMWs are really fun to drive. Except I don't have fun driving. I specificaly chose my job to be within walking distance from my house. A car is just a way of getting from A to B. I recently bought a new car: not a Merc, not even a BMW, but a skoda. It was cheap. It does exactly what it says on the tin. It isn't fun to drive, but I don't have fun driving, so that doesn't really matter. 3 months after purchase it only has five hundred miles on the clock.

So don't listen to me, I probably don't know what I'm talking about.

Except when it comes to pub quizes. Those I appear to rule at.

12:49pm: Euro-popular
Well, I was rooting for Spain (on account of Beth being the woman I will one day marry, and also because of the Gaudi architecture in the song's official video), but Turkey were my second choice. In any event the real purpose of Eurovision is drinking and listening to Terry Wogan, both of which I succeeded in. If El Tel is right and the voting was politically motivated, then perhaps we should have gone all out and worn these t-shirts http://www.luvya-dubya.com/ Sometimes the world scares me.

I went to see a small independent film that I hadn't seen mentioned anywhere about a man whos name is an anagram of "one" going into computers and hitting people. It was fun when he hit people. This philosophy made no sense. It was very pretty and I enjoyed myelf a lot, depsite the fact there were so many glaring problems. I will be going to see the third film in the trilogy.

If I ever get around to doing any more work on the imaginary movie database (http://www.solipsistworker.org.uk/ImMDB/) "Carry on up the Matrix" is one of the films on my list to add (I already have half of it written... then again I've had "Adapting Being John Malkovich" written for months now... its just getting aorund to making some images which is taking the time)

4:53pm: Oh... I didn't get quite as much money out of LloydsTSB as I expected either. But didn't do badly. No idea why that mixup happened...

4:49pm: Well, the sadness didn't quite spread to my lungs (http://www.wigu.com/?date=20020107), and now all I'm left with is a pounding headache. But a beer festival awaits me this evening, and alcohol mixed with unresolved melancholy can only lead to good things.

I'm told.

1:57am: Apparently I was being set up for a fall. The fans obviously just don't tune in if I'm happy. And, in a moment of drunken sentimentality, I have laid my soul bare, so that it can be stomped on some more.

In good news, apparently I have been paying twice as much household insurance as I was meant to... and LloydsTSB are going to refund all the extra money I've been giving them.

To summarize:

Evil corporations that exploit the third world : Good
Women and Romance : Bad

This has been a public service announcement.

11:35pm: Secretary
Go and see this film now. That is all.

Well, OK, it isn't all. But it's all you need to know. Secretary blew my mind, I was shaking, squirming an thrown through the whole gamet of emotions - including many most films won't touch with a barge pole.

Secretary will offend those who think sub/dom relationships are the work of the evil - but it isn't the kinky bondagefest the ads made it out to be... and yet I'm still raving about it.

James Spader is my new god. We will all grow orchids (lots of orchids in films this year - they were in this, adaptation and I capture the castle. Orchids are a sign of good films) and have little patches of grass in our house for no good reason. It'll be a beautiful utopia, only with more shaking.

11:30pm: McKey ex machina
Lately my life has seemed to be scripted. Too many happy conincidences at once, so much of what I'm doing seems to have been forshadowed by other activities... hell, I got some spam sent to me by a fictional creation of mine the other day (Really. What the random name generator came up with for the From: line was the name of a character in an RPG I run... and the message was appropriate too)

But today... today has just been one thing after another. I'm currently in the emotional high point of the novel that is my life. Everything is working out, everything is falling together into place. Either I've reached the end, and am getting rewarded for the last shit 25 years, or I'm being set up for a really big fall.

Which will it be. Find out next week, true believers...

12:10pm: "Slim is assisted in his evil ideas by Ben Chalmers (Ralph Sanford) but the arrival of the Lone Ranger and Tonto in Sunset Valley results in the ultimate arrest of Slim Gordon and Ben Chalmers and their confessions."

Best Laid Plans, Dec 25 1952, Episode #94

Apparently. If anyone knows where I can find a copy of this very special Christmas Day edition of the Lone Ranger, shout!

9:46am: Admirable Update
For what its worth, my fictional admirees did eventually get told someone with light hair admired them too.

Though I lost most of the emails in a spam filter related failure.

Still a fraudulant scam (which I found quite ammusing) though!

3:24pm: I have a secret admirer
Yeah. Right.

According to an email that arrived a few days ago I have a secret admirer, and all I have to do is go to a website to find out who it is. The website's address is www.whosyouradmirer.com I suggest you don't go there until after what I have to say.

Go to a website and enter the email addresses of everyone else I know in order to get hints as to who the admirer was.

I suspected it was spam. After all, the email was to an address I hadn't used for years. So I checked the email. I wasn't spam. It couldn't be. It had a message that told me

PS: Again, this is not SPAM. Someone who knows you really has identified you as
someone who they secretly admire. We have a very strict ANTI-SPAM policy in
effect, that includes a zero tolerance provision.

Still, I feel the correct way of dealing with my crushes is to use a cunning combination of ignoring people out of embarassment, stalking them and bottling up my feelings. At least I have no reason to suspect this is less effective than giving their email addresses to random companies.

So I came up with a plan. In order to find out who admired me, I constructed a sequence of phony admiriees in order to get hints. Thus a whole series of loves of my life (all sharing email addresses at bench dot demon dot co dot uk, which btw isn't a good place to try to contact me at - solipsistworker remains my preferred address) were constructed. And entered in.

I found out the following about my potential soulmate.

They have dark brown hair
They are divorced. I can't think of many divorcies that I know - really - very few of them. In fact all my friends are getting married at the moment.
They don't want to tell me their zip code. Well, fine. They have secrets of a geographical nature. I can appreciate that. Not a very good hint though. it was probably a total waste of my sweatheart whosyouradmirer2's email address. Shame.
They have brown eyes. Brown hair and brown eyes, its like genetics is trying to tell me something.
They have cats for pets. OK this sounds more like my kind of girl. Cats are good, at least in theory. Plus if I ever get stuck in her house because of a snowdrift, there will be additional fresh food before we have to start on canibalism, which is always a plus in the early stages of a relationship.
Their body type is "a few extra pounds". Hey! So is mine. If by a few you mean a lot.
One of her favourite hobbies is theatre. Still good. Not complaining yet. Maybe she is a surgeon!
Her height is between 5'8" and 5'10". So quite tall.
She tells me she likes to mountain bike in summer and ski in the winter. Quite the athletic sort. So then, why the few extra pounds? Could it be she likes to eat during spring and autumn?
Her gender is unspecified. So, I've been saying her because I assumed a divorcee who fancied me was going to be female... but noone ever gave the reason for the divorce. Perhaps there is a man out there who likes me! I hadn't even thought of that one. Oh well, I like to think of myself as open to new challenges
Their age (see, I'm back to gender neutal pronouns...) is between 45 and 49. Hmm. It doesn't seem likely. But it could happen. I am famed for my maturity, and I suppose that if a homo-curious (is that a word? If not it should be) elder man wants me for his love slave / cook, then who am I to disappoint him? It isn't like I've made the correct choices in my love life so far. So bracing myself I clicked on the "find out admirer" button.

Apparently in oder to find out the admirer I have to pay 5 dollars. Well, since my credit card is on the other side of the room, I decided that it didn't seem like a particularly good idea. I might lose some weight during the exercise entailed by standing up, and that sort of thing might put my potential hunny-bunny off. I'm sure they want me just the way I am.

Instead I went to look in my email box, to find out if the secret admirer had also done the sensible thing of getting a hotmail account and sending the hints straight to me. After all, if you're going to secretly admire someone, thats the way to do it. It even avoids restraining orders (sort of. So long as noone finds out.)

In the box were lots of emails to a variety of very attractive women each of whom had the name "whosyouradmirer" clearly the site had decided to tell them that they had me admiring them.

But when I read the email I was in for a shock. Their secret admirer had dark brown hair. My hair is blonde. Someone else admirers the fictional women I love!

My heart is broken twice. Not only at finding I would never know who cared about me, but finding I have competition in my imaginary lovelife.

Pah!

1:03pm: Look at me, ma
Most people who haven't come from an oxbridge background don't realize the amount of stress and effort that goes into getting their MA. Sure, the BA was hard enough - exams, lectures, too much alcohol - but the MA required me to survive for another 3 whole years. Nevertheless, yesterday those 3 years came to an end, and having paraded through town in fancy dress, a woman looking something like father christmas conferred a meaningless degree upon me.

You may now call me master.

Yesterday was wonderful fun. Pretty much everyone from my year at college was around. I managed to get back in touch with several people who had disappeared off the face of the earth (turns out they were in coventry, whoda thunk?) Much beer was consumed. Then indian food was eaten, then more beer. Oh, I also drank beer while eating the indian food. But it was indian beer, or at least beer branded as indian beer. In any event, there was something of a trend that I followed.

Some friends (who had disappeared off the face of the earth, be reappeared 6 months ago, putting them ahead of the game... which if you know Kirsten means this is the first time she has ever been early for anything) gave me a lift home. I think. I seem to be home now, anyway.

It was a good day. Now I have to wait for reunion weekend in 3 years time before I can do it again. In the meantime there is also another 3 years of OU until I get to graduate to yet another degree. One degree every three years seems a nice way to live life. By the time I die (at the age of 58. Its a family tradition or something) I could have a total of 13 degrees. Thats 4 whole tribute bandsworth.

However, now for the reason I wrote this:

I capture the castle.

Such a funky film. Currently at number two in the "Ben Chalmers List of Best Films This year" list. I happen to be a bit prone to enjoying films about tortured writers (Adaptation is number on in the "Ben Chalmers list of best films this year" list. I doubt it will be replaced unless a film has a even more finely targeted demographic. Adaptation seemed to aim at a very small subsection of the population, a better film would have to aim at... well, just me I suppose. And I would have to get the girl.)

But in any event, its a wonderful parody on Jane Austin style novels, adding the sort of sparkling wit and self delusion normally only found in the higher eschelons of teen fiction. I laughed. I cried (well, actually I didn't cry. the last film that made we want to cry was Evolution... and that was nothing to do with it being sad. Chess moves... Arsnic... Selinium... head and shoulders... fuck I hope Duchovney redeems himself in Full Frontal.) I came out of the cinema happy and bouncy.

You will too.

12:12pm: Don't wanna say
It occurs to me that all my thoughts, at the moment, are on a variety of subjects I don't want to talk about out over the ether - or even with my closest friends. My life is being shaken about quite a lot - and not in a particularly bad way, just not in a way I feel particularly keen on talking about.

Which is why I haven't been here recently.

Of course, writing this sort of disproves what I've said.

I wonder just how many live journal entries are members of the set of Russell sets?

Perhaps it would be easier if I just lied about what I was thinking about, then I could be here and people would believe I was deep and meaningful.

So, here goes: I spent yesterday wondering if I might in fact be a tree who was just convinced I was a person. It would explain a lot, like the funny look I was given by the person in the polling station. Though if I was a tree, I would probably like standing out in the rain more. Perhaps I'm a tree with an eating disorder.

Hmmm, I'll stick to quiet and mysterious. It suits me better.

X-Men 2 review notes coming soon.

11:31pm: Welcome To Collinwood
I didn't have high hopes for this film. Or rather I did, and I expected them to be dashed. The cast was great, and there was something about the trailers which evoked an "Oh Brother Where Art Thou" sort of a feeling (probably George Clooney)

Well, George Clooney wasn't in it very much, but the film was really quite watchable. Its the type of caper film where you know nothing is ever really going to work - but also that nothing will go terribly wrong. The characters are good, well defined caricatures, which is exactly what you need. The plot is an excuse for quite a bit of slapstick, followed by a hurriedly tagged on moral about love being more important than money.

I came out perfectly happy with having spent a fiver watching it, and some good memories. Probably best to wait for TV if you're not like me and don't feel the need to spend half your life in the cinema.

In other news, I had Egg Mayonnaise for tea tonight. The homemade mayo was good and worked perfectly. You should, however, not always trust Delia, for sometimes she lies like a turny button thing. the boiled eggs were undercooked. I can't win.

9:16am: Burning Food
I consider myself a good cook. As part of my oh-so-middle-class existence I often host dinner parties and get complements, and, more tellingly, return visits.

So why, for the last two nights in a row have I burned my dinner? On Wednesday I was roasting lamb shanks, so it was all a bit of trying to get the timing right (and failing). But yesterday I was heating up a prepackaged chinese, I just totally forgot about it.

So, thats another skill I seem to have lost. Fairly soon all I'll have left is "will one day be able to make a quick couple of quid from a wig maker". Hmm, now I've said that, watch the Male Pattern baldness descend.

(and thank god it's work take-a-way day today, so I don't have to eat whatever blackened lump of charcoal I would have otherwise come up with this evening)

3:03pm: Move over Nostradamus
Apparently the band "TLC" came up with a song called "No Scrubs" on an album in 1999. Either someone involved with the Richard Griffis/Tim Brooke-Taylor/Lofty/One-of-armstong-and-miller-you-know-the-one-that-wasn't-in-Johnny-English BBC sitcom "TLC" knew what it would turn out to be like, or TLC have strange psychic powers relating to precognition of light entertainment.

4:18pm: My brain has turned to mush
All afternoon I have been staring at a monitor trying to determine wether a bunch of black squares do or don't look like letters of the alphabet. In doing this I lost the ability to understand and reply to simple sentences like "Are you OK to talk about the new project in 10 minutes". Really. Its quite scarey to realise how hypnotised (or whatever) I managed to become.

It occurs to me that were I to put all the images I'm trying to categorise up on the web, and display a league table of who categorised the most correctly, people all over the blogsphere would take to it and do my work for me almost instantly. Unfortunately my brain is now too mushified to even think about writing cgi scripts...

And I'm only at the letter 'F'... 19 more still to go.

12:54pm: Intacto
This is a must see film, about 50% english, 50% spanish (subtitled), its a thriller about people who have a form of supernatural luck. Certainly, I managed to forget I was reading subtitles (Which was pretty spectacular given that a ticketing fubar left us sitting in the front row and I had to physically turn my head to read them).

At the beginning I thought I was watching a no-lycra superhero film... something I enjoy. Then I came to realise it was actually a modern vampire flick (which I think was the intention). By the end of the film, my mind had settled on the theory it was actually a film about a high stakes collectable card game.

Nevertheless, it is very gripping, visually beatuiful, and if you are prepared to overlook the implausibility of the plot one of the best movies I have seen this year from prety much every angle.