2023: A Trilogy by The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu (Books 2018, 6) ššµ
This book could have been written for me. Seriously, during the first part it felt like it was targeted right at me.
I am, as you probably know, a fan and repeat reader of The Illuminatus! Trilogy. As clearly are Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, or the KLF, as they used to be known. This book is ā what, a spoof of, a homage to? ā Illuminatus. Explicitly modelled on it, referring back to it constantly.
Plus there are lots of Beatles references, and Iāve been into them for even longer. Then among the characters are Alan Moore, who (in this corner of the multiverse) is a member ā along with Cauty and Drummond ā of Extreme Noise Terror. Our worldās version of that band did collaborate with the KLF, but as far as I can tell they had no connection with Moore.
So donāt expect to get too much accurate information about popular culture out of this. Plenty of references, though. Other characters include Michelle OāBama, MāLady Gaga, Yoko Ono (two versions), Lady Penelope, and her chauffeur/hitman Aloysius Parker.
Itās a lot of fun. The downside is that itās not very well written, at least as far as the dialogue is concerned. Most notable is the complete absence of contractions. Which is fine for an odd thing, or maybe to give one character a particular voice, but when no-one uses them, it all gets a little strange.
The story is fun, though, and I finished it and immediately started rereading Illuminatus yet again, so thereās that.
Speaking of Spring…
(Error loading gallery)
Blossom, of course, and⦠paper boats on the canal? Hmmm. Iām assuming it was a promotion for something, but Iāve no idea what, so it didnāt work very well.
How the Seasons Change
2018-02-15
(Error loading gallery)A beach in Norwich in the middle of February.
2018-02-28
(Error loading gallery)A London Street at the end of February.
2018-03-08
(Error loading gallery)Itās looking a lot more springlike now, though.
This is a test of the Sunlit iOS app.
Professor Hawking told us to loook up at the stars⦠he probably didnāt live in London.
Aw, Stephen Hawking, man. Itās not exactly sad, because he had a good life, especially compared to the two-year prognosis he was given. But still.
His name will forever be written in evaporating black holes.
OK, so Iām watching Stranger Things, and in season 2, episode 8, it gets really weird. You need to know BASIC to reboot the security system?
But then I remembered: itās set in the eighties. So it almost makes sense.
Looks Like I Chose the Wrong Week to Start Working in Academia
What with the strike on, I wasnāt too keen on the idea of crossing a picket line, but there wasnāt really one. Nobody in the group Iām in was striking, as far as I could tell, and Iām not in the union (yet). And you know, the contract had a start date of last Monday. So one week into my new job, and Iām enjoying it tremendously.
Iāve been bashing bugs in a large and complex codebase. It was very satisfying to take the failing tests from 600 down to 490 with a single commit. Thatās 600 failing tests out of 800. And looking at whatās there, itās hard to see how some of them could ever have passed. I sort of get the impression that a whole lot might have been written but never run.
That big win involved nothing more than changing a class from being all static methods to being one that you can instantiate, and then passing in a test version of a ResourceBundle
, instead of trying to read a properties file which wasnāt there in my setup.
More importantly, the people are nice. The commute is shorter than to Croydon, by a good half hour. But itās a lot more crowded on the Circle Line than I remember from two years ago when I was at Misys.
Imperial Adventures
Just over a month ago I posted a brief note about job news, saying that more details would be forthcoming. I was, as I said then, just waiting for some paperwork.
It took longer than I expected to get that paperwork sorted out, but I received and returned the contract yesterday afternoon. On Monday I start work at the Small Area Health Statistics Unit (SAHSU), part of the School of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Faculty of Medicine at Imperial College.
Thatās quite a mouthful, but in short Iāll be working on programming something called the The Rapid Inquiry Facility (RIF), which is an open-source tool for studying health statistics.
Iām neither a medical researcher nor a statistician, but I am a programmer (or a software engineer, if you want to be fancy). Our job is to understand the needs of someone ā usually referred to as āthe business,ā but Iām guessing that will be different in my new job ā and translate those needs into actions in software. That basic definition doesnāt change according to the problem domain. Whether itās sending payments from one bank to another, checking a personās right to work on a government database, or doing something with statistical data about health issues, the programmerās job is to understand what the user needs and make things happen on a screen.
The big difference for me, I think, will be that in this new role Iāll have the chance to contribute to doing something good in the world. As I said at my interview, Iāve mainly worked in financial software, and while, sure, people need banks, it wasnāt the most socially-usefully thing. The last half-year working at the Home Office had some value, but I was a tiny cog in a huge machine.
At Imperial Iāll be able to feel that Iām actually contributing something useful to society, as well as doing what should be really interesting work.
Oh, and: Iāll be back in Paddington, which I know from my Misys days, and itās a much shorter commute than to Croydon.
‘A Special Way of Being Afraid’
I only know one other of Philip Larkinās poems; it is about parents and children. This one ā āAubadeā ā is the best poem about death Iāve ever read.
A sample:
That this is what we fearāno sight, no sound,
No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
Nothing to love or link with,
The anaesthetic from which none come round.
I should just mention that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is brilliant. Best film Iāve seen this year. And Iāve seen Black Panther. (Which, donāt get me wrong, is also great.)