07.09.11
I've been following
Steve Yegge's blog for about three years or so. It's one of my favourites, though these days he writes very infrequently.
If you've never heard of him, he's a Google programmer (and a very talented one, from what I can gather), and he's written a great deal of interesting stuff. In my opinion his entire blog is worth a read, especially 2007-09.
But the post that has always stood out for me is
That Old Marshmallow Maze Spell. I used to find it strangely comforting in some of the darker moments of the last few years.
So cheers for that, Steve.
Comments / Share / Permalink02.06.11
After some serious scrimping, I managed to save enough money to buy the parts to repair and improve my dual-core Athlon PC. With a little more saving, I might be able to put together a second dual-core machine, which I will then use as a development machine that I'll keep permanently off the network (the ultimate security in this hacktastic internet age is a non-networked computer.)
While I was pricing up the parts, I re-discovered something I'd forgotten. Today, mainstream computer manufacturers such as Dell or HP are producing computers that are almost cheaper than I can build them from new parts. That's a bit odd, and it wasn't always this way. The trend does seem to peter out at the mid-range-to-expensive end of the market, though.
Anyway, it would have cost much more to replace my broken computer with a new or reconditioned model, because so many of the parts in the old machine were re-usable. In the end, I'd guess my repairs cost about a quarter of the cost of buying a complete new replacement, and I have the additional bonus that I'll be able to create a second PC from leftover parts for only a little extra.
So despite whatever pricing shenanigans are going on with the major PC manufacturers, in the long run it's still much cheaper and more rewarding to build your own.
Happily, with my 'new' dual-core, dual-boot Windows/Linux PC I can once again watch iPlayer, Youtube and TV, so I've been catching up with what I've been missing. As an unexpected benefit, a game I bought on Steam months ago that didn't work on my old PC now works perfectly on the new rig, so that'll give me something to do when I'm bored. Since I finished the repairs I've been spending more time gaming in Linux than Windows, for some reason.
Comments / Share / Permalink13.05.11
Perhaps in this internet age it would be more accurate to say, "those who fail to learn from history are doomed to misquote people and then attribute the quote to the wrong source".
Try a Google search for the bits of the quote you feel sure about and see what I mean.
Having spent a few years carefully reading and sifting the news available online, I have come to the conclusion that critical thinking is a vital skill that everyone needs. I sometimes see comments on news websites calling for it to be taught in schools. It's a long time since I was in school, so I don't know what's being taught these days, but I
was taught critical thinking skills at school - in history lessons, for example.
All the required elements were there - think about the source of the information, and what ulterior motives they might have. Look at the way information is presented - what's being pushed to the front as important, and what is being omitted? Did the source have access to all the facts? What was the social background to the source?
In maths we were taught to examine statistics and recognise the tricks used to misrepresent data. In history, we even studied Goebbels - repeat a lie often enough and it becomes the truth. In English we saw how language can be used to persuade and beguile, though at the time I didn't even begin to suspect just how deep that particular rabbit hole went.
In general, my learning experience was a good one: I was lucky to have good teachers and the teaching methods employed in the late eighties and early nineties seemed to really suit my particular psychology. I found most lessons quite interesting, which always helps. But my point here is about what wasn't taught, and what went unsaid. All those valuable critical thinking skills I learned turned out to be useless to me, for the simple fact that no-one ever taught me (as far as I remember) that they needed to be applied to everything, all the time. Not just against history.
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12.05.11
Yesterday, technical tragedy struck once again.
The PC that hosts the CMS for this website suddenly had the computer equivalent of a severe mental breakdown, and stopped working. It became unbootable. It ceased to be. It is an ex-computer.
This is the second time this has happened to my CMS machine in the last few months. The previous machine, a nice dual-core Athlon machine, expired in a more dramatic fashion, with the power supply unit failing in a brief but spectacular fireworks display, taking out several important components as it went.
Each time, I have to fall back to an older machine that I have in reserve. I'm getting pretty efficient at re-locating the CMS. (If you're at all puzzled, the CMS software works independently of the webserver as a 'back end', though it can easily be combined into one machine.)
I'm writing this on a computer that saw its heyday back when Windows 98 was hot stuff. I no longer have access to modern conveniences such as USB2.0 ports. I can't even watch TV any more (I don't own a TV, I used to watch telly via a USB2.0 TV stick). (How am I going survive without my regular dose of Newsnight?) I suppose I could watch the BBC's iPlayer, but the ancient processor on this machine means that the visuals are reduced to a slow slideshow of still images. Not sure if audio is available, because I've never tried to get it working. Youtube is only usable at 240p.
So, much of yesterday was spent recovering data from the old harddrive, and restoring CMS functionality on this machine. As you can see, the CMS and the website lives on. I was worried for a while, because I hadn't made a backup for some time and it might have meant rebuilding the CMS database and file structure from the files on the webserver, which would have taken some time thanks to having to re-create lots of behind-the-scenes meta-data not present in the HTML files.
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