Almost 15

oday is a cloudy day and it looks like I’ll be leaving while it’s still rather dark. We’re not even in October yet!

I recently realised that my bicycle turns 15 in a matter of months, maybe about 19 months. It still works OK. It’s a German brand, but I think it’s built and assembled in Taiwan based on a German design.

I need to inflate my tires again today. There are particular things we need to buy and some of them are quite heavy.

I believe this bike can turn 20 and still be used. That’s better than many ‘modern’ cars.

Don’t do that

think I was about 3 when I was in a particular place and time and can still vaguely remember that place and time. I also think that psychologists deem this to be normal, based on the belief people cannot have any vivid memories of them being 1 or 2 (belief; we cannot “read” brains). I don’t know why, but it’s something to do with memory retention in the brain as it ages. I also think that recollection requires rehearsal, so in order for me to remember some moment from age 3 I’d need to recall that at age 5, then 7, 10 and so on. It reinforces that memory.

The same is true for adults in their professional lives. Without exercising some skill regularly, that skill will be lost.

This is one strong argument against using slop, either in a business (collective skills/retention thereof) or as an individual.

Also see this new blog post: If you don’t have the factories, you lose the expertise

Ignore how he uses for slop for images (hypocrisy when it comes to LLMs for code, too). To quote: “If you have the factories, sooner or later, you get the designers. If you don’t have the factories, you lose the expertise. Or you never get it. There aren’t that many people left in the Silicon Valley capable of working on silicon. You can design a chip from California. Making one is done where the fab is. You can get a PhD in robotics in Quebec City, but you won’t be designing robots unless you fly over to where they are made. Zoom calls won’t cut it at scale.”

We’re drowning in seas of words

‘ve been typing and keeping personal stories since around 2002. It started when I sat at my office in Manchester Computing with plenty of time to pass, not much to do. Some of those stories predate that habit by a year or two. I thought to myself, one day I can turn those notes into publications, even though books were still more common at the time.

The world has changed somewhat since then. Quantity of text does not matter because of serial sloppers who do not value quality and who conflate plagiarism with “intelligence”.

People’s stories that are authentic still have real value; a high quantity of computer-generated garbage ‘stories’ will be culled and put in the digital ashtray sooner or later.

Looks like something big and important

t is very nice and sunny today (clear blue skies, unlike what the foolish forecasters said) and it seems like the official opening of the coffee shop at Mayfield is happening, so we went to feed the birds there and enjoyed the sun after a hazy start.

The work on the gardens seems finished now, so after the official openings (and subsequently removal of fences) we will sit there to relax.

There were large cameras and giant microphones there, along with large speakers, pavilion, and what seems like press people. Maybe the opening is broader than just the coffee shop’s. There was recently a Banksy exhibition there.

Photos from an hour ago in that area.

Restaurant no more

oday we went to many places and ended by going to our much (or most) cherished restaurant, only to discover that it is no more. It did not exactly shock us, knowing the owner must be approaching 80 and is belatedly retired (by all odds). We used to meet her in town and in parties over the years. I went there on my 32^nd birthday with Rianne, who took the photo above.

This day out was for our anniversary. We’re now in our 15^th year.

On the way back home we had snacks instead (didn’t try another restaurant; many are expensive) and suddenly saw almost 500 birds near the road. So we disembarked and left for the roadside, where we fed as many of them as we could. There was even a swan there! Some elderly women nearby were watching. Now we’re back home and catching up with news.

think that based on my records, I started my Ph.D. on “Tuesday 23rd September, 2003″ or maybe that was just my first meeting (21st September was likely my first day). I wrote this report a week later. Prior to that I had met or “interviewed” – if that’s the right term – 3 people in that department regarding a project and/or supervisor (I think that was Jim, Sue, and Chris).

I’m glad, in hindsight, that I chose Chris. Despite him being a demanding perfectionist (months later a student of his, Gareth, committed suicide), he did inspire or encourage certain traits I still have. I remember a prior student, Kate, complaining about his attitude in a dinner, saying he’s “always right” (cynically, something to that effect), but his track record or credentials compensated for this attitude.

Having high expectations can be a burden on others.

23 years later Chris is still alive (in his 80s) and shows up in fairly new videos of the same university where he studied and worked for about 60 years. He’s still professionally active, at 80 or above. That part of him I really appreciate. I hope that I too can do the same things 40 years from now.

Chris was always a heavy drinker of coffee, who clearly didn’t get enough sleep. This seems not to have shortened his life. He did what he loved.

IRC was created 38+ years ago

t would be absolutely impossible for me to know when I began using IRC unless I somehow, miraculously, manage to have found the receipt for my modem purchase. My mom bought it for me. She probably won’t remember it anymore (I spoke to her in length yesterday, I still love her even if she has scarce understanding of what I do, she says I am “activist who focuses on battling corruption”).

I am pretty certain that it was a 14,400 bps (14.4K) Dynamode modem and I think my mother discarded the PC that I personally (manually) installed this on. I think I was 13 or 14 at the time (after I had begun programming). I will never forget how awful I felt when I tried to install a hard drive (I think it was a year later) and caused it to blow up/burn (rancid smoke) due to stupidity/sloppiness. It wasn’t new, it was just about 50 megabytes in size (compared to my 170 megabytes main drive), and I paid not much for it (a friend sold it to me at school). I didn’t ask for a refund, I think I paid only about 10 pounds, maybe 20+ pounds in today’s money.

I think this was the first time I installed hard drive using my bare fists and a screwdriver. We didn’t “google it” (this predates Google and you’d need a modem to read the Web) and there was no YouTube. Cable television had no show in the programme that said, “watch how to install a hard drive or modem.”

The modem installation was a lot easier (fewer bits to plug in) and they say you only ever learn from errors. At age 19 I fixed my own laptop; it cost me 1-2 pounds (components from RS Components) instead of over 200 pounds at the repair shop.

IRC was one of the first things I used once connected at home and about 32 years later I administer IRC at a fairly large network.

I still love IRC. It’s not perfect. As a grownup, last year and this year I got to explain to High Court judges what IRC is and how it works.

Thanks, mom, for buying me that modem. I’ve been on the Net since then! And that no longer hijacks the phone line at home.