Native Tongue
I was first exposed to programming during a Year 11 computer science class. I was at a disadvantage from the start: several of the students were already budding programmers, whereas I had never really taken an interest. In hindsight I’m not sure what compelled me to take computer science; I recall thinking it might prove useful as an engineer, but flippantly dismissing programmers as an entirely different faction of nerd. In the end, computer science was one of the most challenging classes of my life.
Pragmatism About the Future of Technology
There is a great deal of fear and cynicism about the continued acceleration of technology, accompanied by endless dystopian predictions of our demise. I sometimes imagine travelling through time to see the future for myself. I think making decisions from this perspective might prove helpful for future generations — playing on our own pride and selfishness to make life better for those to come. Realistically, we don’t need to visit the future to predict the consequences of our actions, but our level of certainty is vanishingly small after just a few short weeks.
Minimum Viable Human
A few of years ago I made a new-year’s resolution to write four lines a day, every day, for a whole year. I fully expected it to be a diatribe of incomprehensible dear-diary bullshit, but I didn’t care, it was a deliberate exercise with a singular purpose: I wanted to hone my lacklustre writing skills. People in STEM often dismiss arts graduates with disdain and cross-discipline snobbery, but I genuinely envy their ability to write and think creatively.
Masculinity in the 21st Century
We stood in a back-alley bar facing a wall of whiskey. The decorator’s brief was surely ‘build a shrine to manliness’, with an emphasis on luxurious beards. When asked which of the whiskies we wanted, we admitted defeat and sought the bartender’s recommendation.
Buffer Bloat - a microcosm of product development
As a post-grad, I developed a podcast addiction that included the wonderfully geeky Security Now. I encourage you all to listen to Steve, the ‘explainer-in-chief’, describe the inner workings of our connected lives, but I’d like to address a specific issue discussed in episode 345 called “buffer bloat”.
Human Instinct and Happiness
I find statements like “there’s more to life than raising children” infuriating, mostly because I surround myself with people who say such things with smug superiority, clueless about the absurdity of their sentiment. Having children is a basic human instinct; some might say the basic instinct — the root of our values. Do I admire intellect because it holds intrinsic value, or is the value hard-coded to optimise the survival of my offspring? The very intellect my friends lord over others is the product of instincts they berate.
Idealism Versus Pragmatism
While conducting research, I struggled with the notion that any data I collected at best offered support of a premise, never proof; it is difficult to isolate and control experimental variables, and harder still to avoid over interpretation of the results. The corollary is that despite the absolutist axioms and logic underpinning science, reality is more complex.
Problems with Scientific Research
I knew I wasn’t suited to academia within six months of starting a PhD, but this piece from the economist nicely encapsulates my frustrations
Domain Names
New companies increasingly launch with vowel-starved monikers to ensure unique domain names. This is understandable given that the internet is such a big part of modern business, but ask anyone outside the tech sphere about using ‘.com’ in a URL and they mumble something about ‘.com’ for companies and ‘.org’ for non-profits. How can something so poorly understood dictate modern commerce? In fact, URLs aren’t even ‘machine speak’ enough to be useful without domain name decoding, so why contend with machine speak at all?
Learn Git
I haven’t posted since I started a new job in February. Among the varied and wonderful things I’ve done since, I enjoyed using this web app to learn git branching.