I guess I'm what you'd traditionally term a 'bit of a geek'. I enjoy physics, video games, statistics, understand how to read weather charts, and until recently spent a lot of my spare time learning how to program. 'Until recently' as I now spend most of my time doing that.
For all that though, I do break with the exaggerated American high school stereotype in that I'm quite a sports fan, most of all football. It's actually quite a weird one to explain when someone points out the dichotomy of finding the pacing of most TV dramas to be so slow as to be unwatchable (and TV in the main to be a fools errand) yet enjoying watching 22 blokes run after a bit of leather for 90 minutes, while very little happens.
Thursday, 12 September 2013
Tuesday, 10 September 2013
Into the unknown
So today I wanted to spill my mind about the last 6 weeks or so. I was going to do that yesterday, but my brain was crazy melted by the wonder of Sharknado so I wrote about that instead (seriously if you haven't seen it get some mates round and give it a whirl).
So anyway before I get hit by another wave ofB C D-movie delirium...
Anyone that knows me reasonably well in person will know that I started this summer as an advancing data-quality BA at a quite well known investment bank. The money was good, I'd been promoted in the winter and had been managing a team of three since the year before. Those of you who know me from my online persona only may be a little surprised to hear this, as I am quite an outspoken 'lefty'. Still bills gotta be paid and all that, I got a call just after getting married (with the previous company I worked for having gone broke) that there was an opening and I would be a good fit. Here we are three years later.
That was how I started the summer. I am now 'unemployed' and am in the comfort of my own home during the traditional 9-5. So what happened? Well first and foremost, this isn't some 'woe is me tale', I resigned and left in late July . But why?
So anyway before I get hit by another wave of
Anyone that knows me reasonably well in person will know that I started this summer as an advancing data-quality BA at a quite well known investment bank. The money was good, I'd been promoted in the winter and had been managing a team of three since the year before. Those of you who know me from my online persona only may be a little surprised to hear this, as I am quite an outspoken 'lefty'. Still bills gotta be paid and all that, I got a call just after getting married (with the previous company I worked for having gone broke) that there was an opening and I would be a good fit. Here we are three years later.
That was how I started the summer. I am now 'unemployed' and am in the comfort of my own home during the traditional 9-5. So what happened? Well first and foremost, this isn't some 'woe is me tale', I resigned and left in late July . But why?
Sharknado: the drinking game
I was planning to write something moderately self absorbed on here this evening, tracking the last couple of months of my life, plans for the future, all that jazz. That's going to have to take a back seat though, for today I arrived (late, as ever) to the party they call Sharknado.
Sunday, 8 September 2013
Just something....
It's weird talking into the abyss. Twitter, Blogger, Facebook. All these words and thoughts that spill (mostly on twitter in my case) onto social media, forums and the like that have barely even been committed to your own thoughts before they are part of the global conversation.
Talking on the internet is as if everyone is attendant at a giant party, but instead of hanging with the two people they turned up with (and *that* guy who thinks his every utterance is the funniest thing but strangely only you will listen to) everyone slinks over to a space and just talks. Some people talk loudly or compellingly enough to drag people closer and start a conversation, others provocatively enough to start an argument.
Then there are some that arrived late. That could only get a space on the dancefloor where the music is blaring so loud that they can't be heard anyway. Still they talk though, you know, just in case. Or even some that have an apparently handy spot by the bar, but are talking the most inane bollocks that all the drinks are being served in the other room.
Personally, I try and get involved, occasionally. Or I play the 'wallflower'. Watch, listen, try and learn. But there's no record of the thoughts of someone who just watched. Does there need to be a record?
Talking on the internet is as if everyone is attendant at a giant party, but instead of hanging with the two people they turned up with (and *that* guy who thinks his every utterance is the funniest thing but strangely only you will listen to) everyone slinks over to a space and just talks. Some people talk loudly or compellingly enough to drag people closer and start a conversation, others provocatively enough to start an argument.
Then there are some that arrived late. That could only get a space on the dancefloor where the music is blaring so loud that they can't be heard anyway. Still they talk though, you know, just in case. Or even some that have an apparently handy spot by the bar, but are talking the most inane bollocks that all the drinks are being served in the other room.
Personally, I try and get involved, occasionally. Or I play the 'wallflower'. Watch, listen, try and learn. But there's no record of the thoughts of someone who just watched. Does there need to be a record?
Monday, 6 May 2013
Anarchy - the flawed ideal
I saw a comment on twitter today that I felt needed a reply, however at the time I was in no position to do so and anyway it's the sort of reply that stretches the ability of 140 characters. The comment was as follows:
Bang, there you go, government and capitalism gone, sorted. I assume from that point on we are all free to play tennis or something like all those middle class families that smile just a bit too much in commercials. I feel pretty comfortable to state that the assertion is wrong but in this post I'm not going to spend time on the capitalism issue, which is a full dissertation on its own, and instead look into what may happen if we didn't have a government. Just to make it a light-hearted I'm going to borrow a little from the style of the brilliant what-if over on xkcd.
So one day we wake up and there's no government anymore. No-one is quite sure what has happened or how, but the government has simply ceased to be. Everything else is as before but the entire organisational machine of government has disappeared, no councils, no parliament, just Nick Robinson looking blankly at the palace of Westminster sure there was a reason he went there, but clueless as to what it was.
For a while things continue as normal, people habitually pay their taxes, even though it's to no one, everyone turns up for work when one day the company that owns the electricity contract for a council gets no payment on a bill. The following week, all the streets in the town go dark every night leading to confusion and a slight increase in opportunistic and sometimes violent crime.
Similar minor administrative things happen up and down the country, people lose their jobs and head down the job-centre only to find that there is no-one to authorize the payment. Railways halfway through building stop because no-one is sorting the funding. potholes on main roads aren't prioritised for repair causing more accidents.
In one little pocket though a group of citizens have spotted the problem and are at great pains to sort it out as fairly as possible. It's only a small town so posters went up for everyone to meet in the town hall one day. There they decide that each evening they would meet, discuss the town's collective business that needed to be done that day and all vote on who should do what, and which issues should take priority. It's tiring, but it works so they keep at it.
Word gets out to the neighbouring town and a few others who adopt a similar system, though in the first town attendance is dwindling, not by much, but noticeably with some who realise that things will be sorted anyway. But still the system spreads and word gets round about issues that effect groups of towns rather than single ones. Of course this will need to be discussed, but no town has a room big enough. After some thought at one evening's meeting it is decided that each town should send a few representatives and the attendees can discuss on behalf of everyone in their town.
The meeting goes swimmingly (this is rather an idealised scenario, but all of the other thought experiments I did with anarchy left quite a lot of people dead) and more towns are picking up on the process and inviting all inhabitants to discuss. In the home-towns of the early adopters though, less than half of people are turning up to make the decisions and everything is still getting done.
One bright spark somewhere decides, why not formalize this? If everything can be sorted with only the input of a few people, why not let them get on with it in our best interests and have another couple of representatives to discuss matters with the other places that have this system.
The idea spreads. Why have everyone busy every night, when we could vote for certain people to represent us and then carry on with our lives?
Well. I guess you can see where I'm going with this convoluted tale. Most of the things that the government and politicians do is just the boring stuff that we can't be bothered to do so we get someone else to talk about it. Every so often we impart an opinion as to what direction we'd like to take and let the government deal with it from there.
We have a representative democracy, because it's simply not convenient for us to all sit in one room and try and flesh out the issues of the time. We couldn't get by without one. Now the debate about what sort of government we should have, what their scope should be, how we should select them. All of that is up for debate. But the concept? It happened because it worked. Anarchy would at the very best settle back into representative democracy. At worst? Have you seen Mad Max?
... remove the gov and we don't have the problems and remove capitalism and we r free..(Name and pic removed at composers request)
Bang, there you go, government and capitalism gone, sorted. I assume from that point on we are all free to play tennis or something like all those middle class families that smile just a bit too much in commercials. I feel pretty comfortable to state that the assertion is wrong but in this post I'm not going to spend time on the capitalism issue, which is a full dissertation on its own, and instead look into what may happen if we didn't have a government. Just to make it a light-hearted I'm going to borrow a little from the style of the brilliant what-if over on xkcd.
So one day we wake up and there's no government anymore. No-one is quite sure what has happened or how, but the government has simply ceased to be. Everything else is as before but the entire organisational machine of government has disappeared, no councils, no parliament, just Nick Robinson looking blankly at the palace of Westminster sure there was a reason he went there, but clueless as to what it was.
Similar minor administrative things happen up and down the country, people lose their jobs and head down the job-centre only to find that there is no-one to authorize the payment. Railways halfway through building stop because no-one is sorting the funding. potholes on main roads aren't prioritised for repair causing more accidents.
In one little pocket though a group of citizens have spotted the problem and are at great pains to sort it out as fairly as possible. It's only a small town so posters went up for everyone to meet in the town hall one day. There they decide that each evening they would meet, discuss the town's collective business that needed to be done that day and all vote on who should do what, and which issues should take priority. It's tiring, but it works so they keep at it.
Word gets out to the neighbouring town and a few others who adopt a similar system, though in the first town attendance is dwindling, not by much, but noticeably with some who realise that things will be sorted anyway. But still the system spreads and word gets round about issues that effect groups of towns rather than single ones. Of course this will need to be discussed, but no town has a room big enough. After some thought at one evening's meeting it is decided that each town should send a few representatives and the attendees can discuss on behalf of everyone in their town.
The meeting goes swimmingly (this is rather an idealised scenario, but all of the other thought experiments I did with anarchy left quite a lot of people dead) and more towns are picking up on the process and inviting all inhabitants to discuss. In the home-towns of the early adopters though, less than half of people are turning up to make the decisions and everything is still getting done.
One bright spark somewhere decides, why not formalize this? If everything can be sorted with only the input of a few people, why not let them get on with it in our best interests and have another couple of representatives to discuss matters with the other places that have this system.
The idea spreads. Why have everyone busy every night, when we could vote for certain people to represent us and then carry on with our lives?
Well. I guess you can see where I'm going with this convoluted tale. Most of the things that the government and politicians do is just the boring stuff that we can't be bothered to do so we get someone else to talk about it. Every so often we impart an opinion as to what direction we'd like to take and let the government deal with it from there.
We have a representative democracy, because it's simply not convenient for us to all sit in one room and try and flesh out the issues of the time. We couldn't get by without one. Now the debate about what sort of government we should have, what their scope should be, how we should select them. All of that is up for debate. But the concept? It happened because it worked. Anarchy would at the very best settle back into representative democracy. At worst? Have you seen Mad Max?
Thursday, 25 April 2013
Programming a copyrighted dice game 1
My most recent missive was about the torment of learning, or at least of not learning when attempting to. It was borne entirely of frustration because I'm trying to learn quite a few things at the minute, and getting stuck on any of them feels like time wasted.
One of the things I'm trying to learn at the moment is c++. It's not the easiest thing to stick at when it's going badly, but is so rewarding (as if I'm honest, is any form of programming) when it's going well. I am quite a sharer though, in that I like to talk about what I'm up to, but with this I find that I only get 5 or 6 words into what I'm trying to say before a glassy look appears in the eyes of whoever I'm talking to. As a result I thought I'd share it here.
Firstly I haven't started from scratch; I've made some rudimentary flash games before and as a result knew all about the basic programming concepts. So having learnt the syntax specific to c++ I decided to test my knowledge by trying to code a simple game. In this case Yahtzee.
The target is firstly to create a console version of the game. This means that the game will be entirely rendered in text and as a result absolutely dreadful to look at. It will however have all of the functionality of the real game, enabling the user to 'throw' 5 dice, hold those that they would like to keep for the following throw, throw any unheld dice, repeat and then score appropriately. If that goes well, I can then look to install a graphics library and make something that looks a little less 1980's.
So far it's going OK, I've had a lot of success this evening writing some functions to test the users input and throw the dice. I haven't though really made any sort of game out of it, and I'm frankly dreading the scoring bit.
I'm a little bit unsure if I want to keep this as a progress log, or if I should also throw in a tutorial as I go. For now I'll just talk through the class that represents the in game dice, and if (laughs to self) there's any demand I'll add more code snippets through my write-ups.
So on a line by line basis:
Line 1 - Tells us that we are creating a new reusable object (class) called 'dice' and that everything between the '{' on this line and the '};' on line 11 is the definition for the object.
Line 2 - Creates a new variable called 'held'. Every instance of this class that we create will have its own copy of this variable. The 'bool' tells us that the variable is of type 'Boolean', that is it can only have one of two values; true and false.
Line 3 - Creates a new variable called 'pips' which is of the integer type, that is it can only hold whole numbers.
Line 4 - It's a little awkward to describe the 'public' keyword to an audience that may not know programming. In short it says: 'let other objects see everything from here onwards'.
Line 5 - This is a function (or method) definition (as are lines 8, 9 and 10). It defines something that can be done to any instance of the dice class we create. The void means that we should not substitute the function call for anything when we use it later in the program. The function ends with the '}' on line 7.
Line 6 - This is the body of the function defined in line 5. It sets the variable 'pips' to a random number between 1 and 6. Remember this is a reusable class, so 'calling' this function will only effect the 'pips' variable in the instance the call took place. This will make more sense when seeing the call on a later date.
Line 8 - The classic 'getter' function. We can use this later to see what the value of 'pips' is for an instance of this class. The reason we need a function is because the variable 'pips' is defined before the 'public' keyword. The 'int' means that when we put this in the code later on, we can treat it as an integer.
Line 9 - Very similar to line 8, except we are expecting a Boolean value back this time.
Line 10 - This is the inverse to a 'getter' in that we are using it to set the variable 'held' from outside the class. Notice that the brackets aren't empty this time, but have 'bool dec' inside. This means that when we write the function in the code later, we have to include either true or false inside the brackets. This tells the class what to set 'held' to.
Seems that language tutorials (even very basic ones like that) take a lot longer to write than I thought! I shall at the very least keep this going as a progress log, and maybe post little code snippets up every now and again. If you have any questions please let me know.
Thanks for reading.
One of the things I'm trying to learn at the moment is c++. It's not the easiest thing to stick at when it's going badly, but is so rewarding (as if I'm honest, is any form of programming) when it's going well. I am quite a sharer though, in that I like to talk about what I'm up to, but with this I find that I only get 5 or 6 words into what I'm trying to say before a glassy look appears in the eyes of whoever I'm talking to. As a result I thought I'd share it here.
Firstly I haven't started from scratch; I've made some rudimentary flash games before and as a result knew all about the basic programming concepts. So having learnt the syntax specific to c++ I decided to test my knowledge by trying to code a simple game. In this case Yahtzee.
The target is firstly to create a console version of the game. This means that the game will be entirely rendered in text and as a result absolutely dreadful to look at. It will however have all of the functionality of the real game, enabling the user to 'throw' 5 dice, hold those that they would like to keep for the following throw, throw any unheld dice, repeat and then score appropriately. If that goes well, I can then look to install a graphics library and make something that looks a little less 1980's.
So far it's going OK, I've had a lot of success this evening writing some functions to test the users input and throw the dice. I haven't though really made any sort of game out of it, and I'm frankly dreading the scoring bit.
I'm a little bit unsure if I want to keep this as a progress log, or if I should also throw in a tutorial as I go. For now I'll just talk through the class that represents the in game dice, and if (laughs to self) there's any demand I'll add more code snippets through my write-ups.
1 class dice{ //represents the dice of the game
2 bool held; //is the player holding this die?
3 int pips; //what is the score on this die?
4 public:
5 void throwd(){ //Throws the dice object
6 pips = rand() % 6 + 1;
7 }
8 int getPips(){return pips;}
9 bool getHeld(){return held;}
10 void setHeld(bool dec){held = dec;} //Tells this die if it is going to be thrown
11 }; //again
So on a line by line basis:
Line 1 - Tells us that we are creating a new reusable object (class) called 'dice' and that everything between the '{' on this line and the '};' on line 11 is the definition for the object.
Line 2 - Creates a new variable called 'held'. Every instance of this class that we create will have its own copy of this variable. The 'bool' tells us that the variable is of type 'Boolean', that is it can only have one of two values; true and false.
Line 3 - Creates a new variable called 'pips' which is of the integer type, that is it can only hold whole numbers.
Line 4 - It's a little awkward to describe the 'public' keyword to an audience that may not know programming. In short it says: 'let other objects see everything from here onwards'.
Line 5 - This is a function (or method) definition (as are lines 8, 9 and 10). It defines something that can be done to any instance of the dice class we create. The void means that we should not substitute the function call for anything when we use it later in the program. The function ends with the '}' on line 7.
Line 6 - This is the body of the function defined in line 5. It sets the variable 'pips' to a random number between 1 and 6. Remember this is a reusable class, so 'calling' this function will only effect the 'pips' variable in the instance the call took place. This will make more sense when seeing the call on a later date.
Line 8 - The classic 'getter' function. We can use this later to see what the value of 'pips' is for an instance of this class. The reason we need a function is because the variable 'pips' is defined before the 'public' keyword. The 'int' means that when we put this in the code later on, we can treat it as an integer.
Line 9 - Very similar to line 8, except we are expecting a Boolean value back this time.
Line 10 - This is the inverse to a 'getter' in that we are using it to set the variable 'held' from outside the class. Notice that the brackets aren't empty this time, but have 'bool dec' inside. This means that when we write the function in the code later, we have to include either true or false inside the brackets. This tells the class what to set 'held' to.
Seems that language tutorials (even very basic ones like that) take a lot longer to write than I thought! I shall at the very least keep this going as a progress log, and maybe post little code snippets up every now and again. If you have any questions please let me know.
Thanks for reading.
Monday, 1 April 2013
The plateau
I love learning. Always have. Not just the facts and figures bit or the book smarts, but skills, physical abilities, so many things that it's possible to do I like to try. See if I'm good at them. If I'm not I try and get good, if I am I try and get better.
I'm a bit like a magpie though. A new idea crosses my mind and it's like a shiny trinket to be chased to the detriment of whatever I'm currently improving at.
I can accept this. When I'm into something for a while I normally come back to it. What really bugs me though is what I call a plateau. This is when despite all my best efforts an improvement seems elusive. Like trying desperately to stakeboard up a steep slope, all the effort seems to be for nothing.
It may be no more than an illusion, and I've no idea why I'm committing it here, it just bugged me today and I hope expressing it will rationalise it a little. I probably expect results too quickly, but here is the magpie issue. If I get bored I worry I'll drop what I'm doing, but I don't want to. How do people keep the motivation going when success seems a distant dot on the horizon?
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