Paradigm shifts (by alaric)

When I was a kid, I used to read a lot. I'd devour the technical sections of libraries for new things to learn about. Then I got an Internet connection, and tore into academic papers with a vengeance. Then when I left home and got a job, I had money, so I would buy a lot of books on things that I couldn't find in the library.

I look fondly back on when I read things like Henry Baker's paper on Linear Lisp, Foundational Calculi for Programming Langauges, the Clean Book. Or when I first learnt FORTH and Prolog, and when I read SICP or when I learnt about how synchronous logic could implement any state machine.

All of these were discoveries that opened up a new world of possibilities. Mainly, new possibilities of interesting things I could design, which is one of my main joys in life.

However, after a while, I started to find it harder and harder to find new things to learn about. Nearly a decade ago I all but gave up on the hope of finding a good technical book to read when I went into even large bookshops with an academic leaning. I started browsing the catalogues of academic publishers like MIT Press and Oxford University press, picking out good things here and there; that's where most of my Amazon wishlist comes from. But even then, most of the books I find there are merely ones that will give me more detail on things I already know the basics of, rather than wholly new ideas.

But, of course, the underlying problem is that my main field of interest - computer science - has only been pursued seriously for about seventy years. Modern computing (as most people see it) isn't really the product of current computer science research; industry lags far behind academia in many areas. The computer software we run today is primarily based on the produce of academia around the 1960s (imperative object-oriented programming languages, relational databases, operating systems with processes that operate on a filesystem, virtualisation, that sort of thing). This is for a number of reasons (some more valid than others; but, we are catching up, mainly thanks to the social effects of the Internet), but it means that there's little incentive for industry to actually fund more computer science. So the rate of new ideas actually being developed is far less than the rate at which I can satisfy my curiosity by learning them!

One answer is to try and come up with new paradigm-shifting ideas myself. I'm trying, but I'm not really good enough - I can't compete with proper academics who get to spend all day bouncing ideas back and forth with other proper academics; I can't really get my head deep enough into the problem space to see as far as they do. All I can really do is solve second-level problems, such as how to integrate different systems of programming so that one can use the most appropriate one for each part of one's program without suffering too much unpleasantness at the boundary between them.

Which is why, whenever I read something about some fun new deep idea, I have to stretch my mind to encompass it in the first place.

And that's half the fun...

Cake! (by alaric)

Sarah made me a nice cake for my birthday. It was quite an involved process:

It's really nice - it tastes of honey! The icing came out runnier than we'd expected and ran straight down the sides and pooled around the base, but that was only a minor issue.

Mental modes (by alaric)

Hmmm, it appears I have two mental modes when working.

1. Deeply focussed into something. I block out distractions to hold onto the focus. This is what I need when I'm programming. Once I get into this mood, I get a lot done, since I have all the pertinent information sitting in my head and all the correct windows open on my computer, but it can be an uphill struggle to get started.

2. Event driven. When I'm dealing with emails, phonecalls, broken servers, and that sort of thing, I'm in a very different mode, agily flipping between things. I come across problems that will clearly need some deep focus, and I have to put them off for later, since it takes me a while to get out of deep mode and into event-driven mode.

This morning I've been event-driven, catching up on email, dealing with a down server, and now I really ought to try moving back into deep focus mode to work on something else, and I'm finding it hard; my thoughts just keep jumping around!

I really want to decrease my dependence on lots of deep thought mode for earning money; part of this revolves around getting an underling to do more of the programming so I can be event-drivenly mentoring them while doing the considerably easier form of deep thought required to design software architectures for them to implement... which is a work in progress as we speak...

Christmas Party! (by sarah)

The Saturday before Christmas saw me and Al setting out on a fouly foggy night with tendrils of fog rising up like a living creature to ensnear the unweary traverler - mid winter suddenly seemed a very stupid time to be out and about. We where heading to Somerset to visit some fellow geologists laddened with engagement gifts, birthday gifts and Christmas parafanalia not too mention a little something for the house warming 🙂 The fog seemed to be exhuding a foul greasy dirt that was ssticking to the windscreen - we thought that our wind screen wippers had suddenly perished - but no they where fine - was it the road grit/salt as one astrophysicist suggested (namely olly) or some dark influence from beyound - like oil wells being burnt or volcanic eruptions ect...

Still it was a fun party though for some reason I appear to have only taken about two pictures :/

The Random Bad Luck of the Snell-Pym’s (by sarah)

Sunday was the day of our departure from Highgate back to the rural sticks of Gloucestershire and what happens? Al becomes ill - he is headachy and cant think that straight and felt a bit feverish. A few paracetamol sorted most of it out so that about 5 hours late we could actually set out for our trip to Essex to pick up the Jeany who had been visiting mum and dad as this week mum starts her radiotherapy so Jean has spent most of christmas etc... with them.

Once Jean was picked up we headed out onto the road once more and all was going well until....

We discovered M25 south to M4 west interchange was closed - arg! Never fear we thought there'll be some sort of way to loop back on ourselves so that we could go via Reading instead of Oxford or there'll be diversion signs and we'll be fine.... hahahahahahaha. Well there where diversion signs and they took us to a round about where it was obvious that we had to go round and double back on ourselves - easy right? Well it would have been except that it was one of those major ones that has lanes that spiral outwards and you have to pick the correct lane for your destination - except there is no such lane for doubling back on yourself so that we where having to guess and suddenly we where one lane too far over and before we could correct it a barrier divided us off and we had no choice other than to follow the route - to Heathrow Airport :/

We thought there must be some round abouts where we can turn around surely? Right? There's always round abouts - this is England.... no round abouts - we thought we'd found one with lots of glittering lights on short polls around it but no this turned out not to be a round about and took us into a one way system which lead us to a carpart - with barriers that had a minimium charge of £2.30 for half an hour. No way to reverse, no where to turn around - nothing so we paid our £2.30 and left.

This then took a turn towards the strange (especially as the previous night we had watched a Stephen King film) we where directed into a tunnel that looked like was too small for cars and was father long and square in cross section with a green circle lane right down the middle of it and signs sayng the cyclists had priority. Once in this system we had no coice of where to go so we entered this tunnel in the van and too our relief exited without any creepy horror movie antiiques!

We then resumed our journy on wards towards Gloucestershire only now Al was starting to feel sick again - combine this with our windscreen washer deciding to die and random greasy dirt appearing on the windscreen and we where stopping more than we normally would 🙁

We got home about 3 ish and pretty much fell into bed. I awoke in time for us to get Jean to nursery and for me to go to Cheltenham to do the mirade of things that needed to be done today but... it never happened becuase it turned out that I had slept through Al being sick and he was doubled uo with stomache cramps and weak and pasty looking. Not good. After some thought over why he was sick and I wasnt seeing as I am the one who gets sick not him we worked out that he had typed out the contence of the left over non-alchoholic mulled wine I had made on saturday. He had drunk a mug of the stuff with the dregs of the spices and CLOVES that I had used - and becuase time was short he'd downed the stuff including the sluge that contianed all the CLOVES I had put a brew for about 15 people :/

Can anyone else see where this is going?

Yes - I have managed to poison my husband with CLOVES - he says its not my fualt but mew :'( It took until about 4 this afternoon before he could contemplate eating anything at all and he still hurts. Of course this has put us realy teally behind for the week and doesn't feel like a particually good start to the new year :/