Just A Summary

The weather recently has been remarkably muggy, so I’ve been keeping my office window open while I’m working. Which is all very well, but we’re trying to keep the cats in, so I have to keep the office door closed. Of course, it shouldn’t be too much of a worry, we’re on the first floor (2nd floor if you’re American) and surely the cats wouldn’t be so stupid as to go leaping out of the window. Still, best to keep the door shut.

You can tell where this is going can’t you?

Spurred on by the forthcoming adaptation on ITV, I’ve finally got round to reading Christopher Brookmyre’s first novel, Quite Ugly One Morning

Wow.

If you can make it past the (quite disgusting) first chapter, then you’ll be in it for the long haul. Great characters, spiky dialogue, twisty plot, worrying prescience and some fabulously gruesome set pieces and comeuppances.

So, in summary. Buy this book. Then do what I did and buy the other Parlabane books too; they’re worth it for the titles alone.

Once upon a time, when the world was young, I sat my O levels. I passed 10 of the blighters. That was 20 years ago and, as these things are wont to do, my examination certificates have been mislaid. For strange reasons I have a bit of paper to prove that achieved grade 3 at the flute, and another to prove that I could swim 100 metres at the age of 9, but if I have to prove that I got an A grade at O level maths, no joy.

For most of my life, this has not been a problem; I went on to get A levels and a degree in mathematics, and since about my second job even these qualifications have been pretty much irrelevant—employers were far more concerned with my experience and references.

Except now, I’m about to start training as a teacher. For some reason, being in possession of a degree certificate from Nottingham University proving that I have a BSc in Mathematics (which, amongst other things required me to have passed O levels in Maths, English Language and a modern foreign language), the rules are that I must prove that I’ve got appropriate qualifications (GCE O level in my case) in Maths and English by presenting an official piece of paper to that effect.

So, after quizzing my parents closely in case they’d hung onto said pieces of paper, I racked my brains to remember which board I’d sat my exams with - The JMB - got in touch with the AQA in Manchester and sent them a cheque, photocopy of my passport, and an application form and, after nearly four weeks, they sent me back a statement of results. Very nice it is too. Except that it appears I didn’t get my Maths O level from the JMB.

Bugger.

I got it from the AEB; I could have sworn it was A levels that were AEB, but apparently not. So now, I have to get in touch with the AQA in Guildford; send them another cheque, photocopy and application form; and wait four weeks. Which is all very well, but my course starts on the 13th of September.

So, kids, if anyone ever tells you that your GCSE certificates are next to useless once you’ve gone on to further qualifications, don’t believe ‘em. Hang on to them. Okay, so it’s unlikely that you’ll ever need them, but it’s far easier just to present a piece of paper that you have handy than it is to dredge up memories from 20 years ago and still get the examination board wrong.

Oh yes, as part of the interview process for the teacher training course, we potential maths teachers all had to sit a copy of last year’s GCSE exam. Which was a shock since I’d done no revision whatsoever. It’s surprising how it all comes back though; I answered every question and I presume I didn’t commit too many howlers or I wouldn’t have the problems I’ve got now.

Originally uploaded by pdcawley. In the garden of my parents’ house is a big old willow tree. Attached to a branch some 30 or 40 feet up is this swing, which swings out over a tiny stream. Because the swing is actually attached to a block and tackle, it’s possible, once you have the knack to keep it swinging (and indeed increase the swing’s amplitude) by judiciously shortening and releasing the rope.

This is, truly, the swing of the gods.

One day, when my nephews Bert and Wilf are older, they’ll realise this. Until then it’s just the best fun ever.

Oopsie! I managed to misconfigure the name of the comment script.

Which is one way of stopping comment spam I suppose, but not my preferred method. Comments should be working now.

Here’s one of my photos from Eurofoo. I appear to have caught DJ Adams at a particularly gormless looking moment.

After a certain amount of swearing (mostly caused by my own utter foolishness) we’re now running under MT 3. Time to go hunt handy plugins…

Mmm… Eurofoo. At what other technical conference could you spend an afternoon in an improvised comedy workshop, marvel at the bandwidth of five guys from Fotango toting a terabyte from London to Amsterdam in 45 minutes, gasp at the audacity of the BBC’s Creative Archive project and rave about a favourite tech book before discovering that said book’s editor is sat next to you?

EuroFoo was the European iteration of the Friends Of O’Reilly Camp first held at the O’Reilly offices in Sebastapol last year and jolly good fun it was too. On the evidence of this conference there’s a good deal to be said for getting a bunch of smart people into a conference centre and divvying up the program on the first night. The improvised comedy workshop got on the program because, as we went round the room introducing ourselves a couple of people mentioned that they did improv and a bunch of us yelled out for a session. I missed them, but everyone who went to the lockpicking session really enjoyed them (and, owing to a slight cockup with a car key, a Guildford Perl Monger’s pocket and the train to Schipol. Well, let’s just say that the acquired skills came in handy—last I heard they were stalled at the steering lock).

As anyone who’s read almost anything I’ve written about the practice of programming in these pages knows, I’m rather keen on the underlying idea of deciding things as late as possible; many of the talks had a freshness to them that I don’t think you’d get at a conference where talk proposals got submitted 3 or 4 months earlier. Also, because there were all of 140 or so delegates, the bar track was rather more laid back; when I went to OSCON last year, the choice seemed to be between running around like a blue arsed fly trying to network with all and sundry all the time, or to form up into a relatively small circle of acquaintance and just hang out with those guys. I ended up playing a good deal of Zendo, and had a few games of Go with Holger Krekel, who, at 3 dan is a good deal stronger than me and trounced me in all three games, but who taught me a good deal in the process. Thanks Holger.

Oh yeah, and Python and PHP types aren’t evil. Who’d’ve thought it?

This is probably my last Just a Summary post before I begin the slow morph into a teacher; if I can work out how to continue blogging my teaching experiences here without compromising anyone’s privacy I hope that those of you who are still looking in on this blog despite the ongoing lack of posts for the last n months will enjoy reading them as much as you’ve enjoyed my wibbling about programming.

At twelve minutes past noon today, my stepdaughter Iona gave birth to a 7lb 2oz son, Isaac Stamper.

I never expected I’d be a grandfather by 36…

I’ve been reading Simon Winchester’s The Meaning of Everything, a history of the Oxford English Dictionary and, whilst I find his style somewhat annoying, the story is fascinating. In the first chapter, Winchester discusses the history of earlier English dictionaries (a subject which is covered in far more detail in the excellent Chasing the Sun if you’re interested). One thing I find strange is that it took so long for dictionaries to progress from lists of ‘hard’ words to becoming the all inclusive things we know today. Early dictionary makers were happy to simply list and define the kinds of words that I imagine you’d find in a Readers’ Digest Word Power column whilst ignoring the nuts and bolts of the language. Maybe they just assumed that everyone already knew them.

But it turns out that dictionaries become really potent tools when they are complete; perfectly good, commonplace words fall out of use, others that were once pure jargon become current (If you’ve read the Jargon File (or the OED) you’ll know that ‘emailled’ once meant ‘embossed (with a raised pattern) or perh. arranged in a net or open work’ though I doubt it was ever a commonplace word back then), other words change their meaning over time and a good dictionary like the OED will trace these shifts in meaning.

A good dictionary isn’t afraid to state the obvious, if only because it’s not always obvious which words are obvious.

Nor should we be. Which brings me, by a somewhat roundabout route to my point. All too often I’ve seen books on the practise of programming that I really respect (Refactoring and The Pragmatic Programmer are two good examples) dismissed out of hand because they are “just stating the obvious”. Christopher Alexander’s books on building receive flak along the same lines; architects dismiss A Pattern Language, arguing that many of the patterns are obvious and that, anyway, such a collection can’t really generate a beautiful town/room/building.

That Alexander now agrees with them on the latter point doesn’t detract from A Pattern Language’s greatness. It’s a great book because it states the obvious with such clarity and focus. It gives the reader names for things that were once nameless intuitions and it enables meaningful discussion about those ideas because it provides a shared vocabulary. The same thing can be said about programming books; Refactoring is a classic if only because if gives us a new vocabulary. The Pragmatic Programmer is a great book because it collects those gems or coder wisdom that we’ve all come across between two covers, and because it expresses them so well. Bentley’s Programming Pearls did the same thing years ago, but we’ve learned a few things since then…

Stating the obvious isn’t a bad thing. Doing so poorly, without due attention to your audience is the only sin. So don’t be offended when someone tells you something you already know. Think about what’s been said, maybe the other persons’s perspective will improve your understanding. Maybe the confirmation is good. Or maybe it’s unnecessary. So, politely let on that you already know this stuff and let the conversation move on.