TMinusWizard

As if Christmas wasn’t bad enough by itself, a week down the line lies New Year’s Day:
Good news everyone, everything’s going to be better from today; go out and drink irresponsibly and tell yourself you’re going to visit the gym frequently. Why? Because today is the arbitrary day which someone decided marked the end of one year and the beginning of the next.

But it’s not the unjustified optimism that bothers me. It’s not even people missing the apostrophe in “new year’s.”  It’s the celebrations.
The number of times I have celebrated New Year’s Eve in any way (other than sitting at home ignoring the entire thing) can be counted on the fingers of one hand, one hand with only two fingers, in fact. Both times involved spending time in a nearby town which is supposedly renowned for its New Year’s Eve celebrations. Both times also involved large crowds of inebriated people pushing toward a central location in a zombie-like fashion. The latter of the two occasions involved a number of intoxicated individuals accosting me and telling me things which were frankly not their concern, and informing that my costume wasn’t very good (a relief, given that I’d not dressed up for the occasion – I can’t stand ‘fancy dress’).

The ‘fancy dress’ aspect of local celebrations reminds me of Halloween, another celebration which bothers me somewhat. What irks me the most is the way the ‘dressing up’ aspect of Halloween, for a lot of individuals, actually seems to involve wearing a lot less clothing than usual. This is a concept which troubles me since my understanding of the tradition is that it is to render oneself unrecognisable to spirits and other fictional characters – surely not wearing clothes is an ineffective tactic.
Given that everyone receives some sort of sex education these days, the (nearly) naked human form shouldn’t even fit the ‘frightening’ theme which runs through more traditional outfits.
Quite why one needs to dress up to celebrate New Year’s Eve I don’t know. I can only guess that it is to render oneself unrecognisable to anyone who might remember being told that they were ‘actually alright’ before having their shoes soaked with vomit.

The title of this post is not very good. My primary reason for disliking it is that it sounds like the name of a cheap Facebook clone, tying to get in on the social networking business. My second reason is that ‘Statusbook’ is what I used to (jokingly) call the MacBook Pro, due to the number of people who seem to use Apple products as a status symbol. (An odd choice, given their popularity and wide uptake.) That said, in a way, that makes the title seem relevant, since the subject of this post is people’s use of Facebook as a way of broadcasting their status.

I dislike Facebook. In fact, there are a number of unpublished posts, waiting on this blog, all discussing my various reasons for not liking the website. But, whilst I can compose lengthy lists of things I don’t like about it, most of those reasons are ultimately the same reason: the vast majority of user content is ultimately an attempt at a status symbol, or showing something off.

Whether it’s a picture of someone’s possessions, a description of their day or ‘liking’ the page of a business they want to be associated with, the majority of activity is clearly intended to boast about something. Not-so-hidden messages range from “Look how good I am at this” and “Look at this nice thing I own” to “Look how popular I am” or “I’m sleeping with them.” It’s usually obvious, and (rather insultingly) often wrapped up in some sort of excuse for feeling the need to post about it: “Just dropped my £100 sunglasses lol im so clummsy?”[sic] This sort of interaction reminds me a little of my first week at university, where every Computer Science student spent their time telling everyone else how great they were. It’s not really a fun conversation to be involved in, and (perhaps I’m just speaking for myself here) doesn’t really give a very good impression (especially when it turns out to be untrue).

I realised before I started writing this that it would seem rather hypocritical to anyone who had observed my Facebook presence recently – my current ‘cover photo’ shows an array of displays on my desk showing one word of “Still (primarily) a PC user” per panel. What is essentially an inside joke could, to an outsider, be viewed as an attempt to show off the contents of my desk. I’d like to think that anyone viewing what I post on Facebook would understand the point (I frequently remove any ‘friends’ whom I don’t consider actual friends).

I’d like to point out that this post was written some time ago, and only updated and made public recently, so any assumptions that this is aimed at anyone in particular can be assumed unfounded.

 

I’ve always been keen to criticise Apple and their products for a multitude of reasons: from making things too easy to their use of the phrase ‘inches thin’. I’ve made my hatred of Apple quite clear for a long time, so my friends were understandably quite surprised when, during a lecture, I retrieved my shiny new MacBook Pro Retina from my bag.

So what made me change my mind about Apple? Well, actually, I didn’t. Allow me to present my unresearched, uninformed and probably slightly biased view on the state of the laptop market:

A few years ago, it was possible to buy a ‘good’ laptop from a number of companies. By ‘good’ I mean powerful hardware and good build quality and small and light enough to carry around without the use of a fork lift. Then Apple became popular. Like… Really popular. In a desperate attempt to claw back sales, every computer manufacturer started producing cheap, plastic MacBook Pro replicas and, unsurprisingly (due to having less experience of being Apple than Apple had) they did a pretty poor job of it. From that point on, buying a non-Apple laptop meant choosing between good specifications and good build quality. Other companies had essentially been pushed out of the market.

Not wanting to compromise on specifications or build quality (as a software engineer, I feel it reasonable to want both of these things) I found myself buying my first Mac.

The gestures are nice, the aggregated notifications are nice, the attention to detail is nice. However, having run OS X, Windows and Linux on the machine in the less-than-two-weeks I’ve had it, I reject the notion that buying an Apple product affects whether or not I am an engineer.

I also still hate the phrase ‘inches thin’.

My first week at university involved listening to a lot of staff talking about how great an achievement getting into “one of the best universities in the country” was and how we were all CEOs, innovators and success clichés of tomorrow. Personally I found the pointless congratulations and praise rather dull, though it seems that some take it on board in the form of an ego inflation of epic proportions.

However, when it comes to lectures, you’d be right to expect constant “you’re so great” speeches to be off the menu. What you might not expect, though, is each lecture starting by telling you that you don’t know about something.

Personally I don’t like it when I walk into a room to be told by a (rather pompous) lecturer that: “You don’t know how to do this, but it’s okay because I’m going to tell you how to, you precious little snowflake-failure.” Especially when ‘this’ refers to something I’ve done many times before or have been employed to do in the past. To add insult to injury, the information which follows is frequently purely someone’s opinion, or actually incorrect.

Whilst I don’t particularly care for repetitive motivational speeches about how great getting to university is, I think there’s something wrong when the most memorable (and extended) part of a lecture is the part where I’m given a list of things which I apparently don’t know.

Imagine, if you will, a proud Isaac Newton holding a feather and a stone next to one another, at equal heights.

“Now watch carefully” he says, “see which one hits the ground first.”

Onlookers are far from surprised to find themselves watching the feather float lazily toward the ground where the stone landed several seconds previously.

“Well theoretically they land at the same time” says Newton, “your physics must be broken.”

“Should have bought a Mac.” Sniggers Robert Hooke.

Now notice how this (probably) didn’t happen. That’s because ‘theoretically, in this simplified model’ tends not to be much use when it differs so greatly from reality. Yet within Computer Science, nothing ever has to work; one merely has to say “Well it works in theory” and their unfinished work is instantly a work of pure genius. And you wonder why people say CS isn’t a ‘real’ subject.

I’m not saying simplified models aren’t useful, but there’s got to be a limit – there’s a point when a model is so naive that it ceases to be useful and starts to be ‘cool and interesting’. It seems that Computer Science is interested almost exclusively in the ‘cool and interesting’.

When you’re having some sort of software issue, perhaps the least useful remark anyone can offer is “Well it works at my end.” This particular remark is about as helpful as “it works in theory” and is basically the same thing. The fact that it’s a valid response to any problem is surely indicative of a larger problem with the attitude of software developers: if you write software, it’s not your users’ fault (and it certainly shouldn’t be their problem) if you failed to anticipate their hardware configuration or operating system version; it’s your fault, for not anticipating it. This is a concept which few developers seem to like, possibly because the Computer Science attitude to making things work (i.e. not making them work) is far easier than doing a thorough job.

And that, is why I prefer to think myself an engineer than a computer scientist.

“Hi Jack, how’s it going?

Yeah, I’m a friend of Steve’s – you remember Steve, right? He’s that guy who sat next to you on the train three years ago. Some of my friends have friends in common with you on Facebook so it’s so weird that we’ve never spoken before.

So I hear you’re studying Computer Science, I guess that means you’d know how to fix my laptop hahahaha lololol lmao roflmfao.[sic] … But seriously.”

Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration, but anyone who spends a significant amount of time working with computers or who is studying a computer-related subject has almost certainly been approached by someone looking for some sort of technical support. Now I don’t mind giving a friend some advice, or taking a look at a laptop once in a while, but when I’m contacted on Facebook by someone I’ve never heard of, then questioned relentlessly about how to get rid of the fake antivirus software  they inadvertently installed whilst ‘downloading some – err – music and stuff’ I feel less inclined to help.

What amuses me about the pleas for help from people I barely know is that the conversations invariably start as… conversations, that is, as if I were considered a human being rather than some sort of lifeless I.T. monkey. Typically the friendly conversation lasts a few seconds before some sort of computer issue is mentioned. This not-so-subtle way of asking for help is, quite frankly, insulting, and asking for help by insulting someone’s intelligence rarely yields (good) results. If you approached me and said ‘good evening, you brainless oaf, fix my laptop’ you’d probably hopefully not expect a great deal of help (it’d also be quite impolite). Since it’s basically the same thing, I can’t imagine why anyone who tries the ‘pretend we’re great friends’ approach to getting help expects anything more than the worst advice I can compose.

Below is a diagram explaining how to ask me for technical help:

 

 

 

How does one start a blog? Probably not with the words “how does one start a blog?” but it’s too late for that now.

My name is Jack McCrea and I’m a Computer Science student at The University of Bristol. Once upon a time I might have considered myself a stereotypical computer scientist, but if university has taught me anything thus far, it’s that I lack the qualifications for such a title – mainly due to my hatred of Star Wars and inability to say things like “I compiled all the HTML into the PHP file then, like, injected it into his server with these protocols and firewalls and stuff!” without dying a little inside. I do however feel obliged to follow the crowd and write a blog – which is why you are reading this now (or not).

One might assume that my blog would be about programming or mathematics, but I realise that a mass of articles about functions and data types doesn’t make for an interesting read (not that I think for a moment that what I am writing now is a significant improvement). In order to explain what I do intend to write about, allow me to go into the dull, uneventful tale that is the back-story behind my blog:

Around two and a half years ago I found myself with an awful lot of time on my hands and, being a programmer, I spent my time writing software. Notice how I said ‘programmer’ and not ‘designer’? When I found myself wanting to write a blog I wrote a blogging application but when it came to designing a layout, I rejected each one I devised on the grounds that it didn’t look like a ‘real website’. Needless to say that my blog, lacking any real layout, sat on my web server exhibiting my finest debug lines for a year and a half before I gave in and accepted that an existing blogging application may be the way forward. Planning to talk about the joys of being a Computer Science student (or lack thereof), I installed WordPress shortly before leaving for Bristol, then put off writing anything on it for the entire year. The reason for this is that writing an initial post is a daunting task; not only does an initial post set the tone for all future writing, it also requires that one justifies the existence of their blog and makes one’s self seem interesting (two things which I am seemingly failing to accomplish). After finishing my first year at university I decided enough was enough and bought the domain name ‘TMinusWizard.com’ and installed a WordPress instance to point it to, before setting about the task of writing a first post. Now that you’re up to speed (and none the wiser about what this blog will be about) allow me to briefly state what I think I’ll write about in future, whilst this chunk of text makes me feel like I’ve explained it in great detail.

Whilst I am, of course, interested in programming (and in Computer Science in general), I rarely feel like writing about the joys of programming. I do, however, often feel like writing about various other things which interest me in everyday life: be they music, politics or misplaced apostrophes (I shall endeavor to keep talk of grammar to a minimum). With that said, expect the typical musings of an average geek pretending to be a CompSci.

All in all, don’t take this post to be representative  of anything to come – even I can’t keep up this level of mundanity for much longer.