How the Seasons Change
h.
This was a test of the Sunlit iOS app, though it has long since been edited from that original version.
Aw, Stephen Hawking, man. It’s 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 I’m 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: it’s 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 wasn’t too keen on the idea of crossing a picket line, but there wasn’t really one. Nobody in the group I’m in was striking, as far as I could tell, and I’m 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 I’m enjoying it tremendously.
I’ve 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. That’s 600 failing tests out of 800. And looking at what’s there, it’s 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 wasn’t there in my setup.
More importantly, the people are nice. The commute is shorter than to Croydon, by a good half hour. But it’s 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.
That’s quite a mouthful, but in short I’ll be working on programming something called the The Rapid Inquiry Facility (RIF), which is an open-source tool for studying health statistics.
I’m 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 — usually referred to as “the business,” but I’m guessing that will be different in my new job — and translate those needs into actions in software. That basic definition doesn’t change according to the problem domain. Whether it’s sending payments from one bank to another, checking a person’s right to work on a government database, or doing something with statistical data about health issues, the programmer’s 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 I’ll have the chance to contribute to doing something good in the world. As I said at my interview, I’ve mainly worked in financial software, and while, sure, people need banks, it wasn’t 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 I’ll be able to feel that I’m actually contributing something useful to society, as well as doing what should be really interesting work.
Oh, and: I’ll be back in Paddington, which I know from my Misys days, and it’s a much shorter commute than to Croydon.
A Special Way of Being Afraid
I only know one other of Philip Larkin’s poems; it is about parents and children. This one — ‘Aubade’ — is the best poem about death I’ve ever read.
A sample:
That this is what we fear—no 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 I’ve seen this year. And I’ve seen Black Panther. (Which, don’t get me wrong, is also great.)
Twin Peaks: The Final Dossier by Mark Frost (Books 2018, 5)
I watched the new series of Twin Peaks in January, but haven’t got round to writing about it yet. In part, maybe, because I knew I wanted to read this. In part, because I want to watch it all again.
The series was amazing: an incredible, beautiful, challenging piece of art. But, as always with Twin Peaks,1 there was the question at the back of my mind: is he using surrealism to raise real questions, to investigate mysteries, to raise our consciousness? Or is it just weirdness for weirdness’s sake?2
In the end I lean towards the former. Maybe the whole thing is like a zen koan: if a portal opens in Ghostwood Forest and no-one is there to see it, what will come through?
Anyway, addressing the book at hand, what we have is quite a short volume which is presented as being a report from FBI Special Agent Tamara Preston to Deputy Director Gordon Cole (played by Lynch himself in the show, of course). Its ostensible purpose is for her to summarise what she and the Bureau have learned from the events that the recent series covered, and some other offscreen investigations. It follows on from, and comments on, last year’s Secret History of Twin Peaks.
Much of it repeats what was in the series, but it does add detail and help to clarify some things. For example it’s probably not a spoiler to confirm that the girl in the 1950s in the glorious nightmare of episode 8 was, indeed, Sarah Palmer, as Warren Ellis has speculated. (It was in his newsletter, which doesn’t seem to have a public archive.)
But it also follows up on what happened to most of the characters from the the original series that we didn’t hear about in the new one, giving us much-needed closure. Or at least convincing us that the creators didn’t totally forget about Donna, for example. Along the way it does what the new series failed to do, in that it answers the question raised at the end of the original series: “How’s Annie?”
It’s worth reading, but it doesn’t remove the need for me to watch the whole new series again.
Once again Carrot Weather shows how it’s tuned in to the Zeitgeist.
Sourdough by Robin Sloan (Books 2018, 4)
Strange one this. I think I learned about it from Warren Ellis, via his newsletter (which is well worth reading, by the way).
A woman takes a programming job in San Francisco. Chance leads her to gain possession of a sourdough starter culture with unusual properties. She learns to bake bread, and some other things happen.
It was OK. Quite fun. And if we’re comparing novels set in San Francisco tech culture, it was better than, say, Transmission, by Hari Kunzru which I’ve read and didn’t enjoy, but didn’t blog about; much, much, much better than The Circle; but probably not as good as All the Birds in Sky.
It’s amusing to see that this article, called ‘Why Decentralization Matters,’ is on Medium.
Where’s Alanis Morissette? (Sorry, ‘Ironic’ cliché.)
Oh, well done, Orbit. I salute not just the publication, but the use of weapons language:
We’re thrilled that the Estate has given us permission to publish the collection, and that owing to special circumstances Ken MacLeod has agreed to join the team working on it.
You can’t leave it there, Star Trek! I mean, you totally can; it’s a great place to leave it. But when’s season 2? 🖖
I’m on an Edinburgh-London train that seemingly has no power sockets (here in coach H, next to the café, at least). What?!? What decade are we in?
Luckily, phone, iPad, headphones, and Kindle all have enough charge for the journey. And I have the season finale of Star Trek: Discovery downloaded. Off we go, then. 🖖
A year ago today I was on a train to Edinburgh. It was snowing at Peterborough.
Today I am also on a train to Edinburgh. No snow, but it’s so crowded that I can’t get to the buffet car. Well, I could, but I’d have to push my way past so many people that I can’t face it. This is why you should buy your sandwiches before you get aboard.
Why is it so crowded, though? Is there something going on that I don’t know about? Or is it something to do with the fact that Virgin run the franchise now?
Marina Hyde has been on fire at the Guardian lately, but this headline is just something else: A-hole in a K-hole: Katie Hopkins’ ketamine adventures
Newspaper journalists don’t usually write their own headlines, but whoever came up with that one deserves an award.
I’m reminded by last year’s post (though really by Facebook: that’s one thing it’s good at) that Feb 7 is recognised by some as International Clash Day. Doesn’t feel like a year, etc. 🎵 #internationalclashday
Feersum Endjinn by Iain M Banks (Books 2018, 3)
The Great Banks Reread picks up again. I was prompted to read this, despite the pile of Christmas books next to my bed, because of Facebook.
I must have Liked the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction on there at some point, because a post popped up linking to the entry for Parks and Recreation. Whose very existence is surprising (the entry, that is), but it’s just because the last season or so takes place in the near future.
Anyway, the article refers to something called a ‘slingshot ending.’ This is not a term I had heard before, so I tapped through. To be honest even reading it again now, I don’t really understand what they mean by it.
But the article includes the assertion that Feersum Endjinn has such an ending. I’ve just finished rereading it, and inasmuch as I do understand what a slingshot ending is, I don’t agree that this is one such.
Which doesn’t matter at all. I still loved it. And as with many of these rereads, I was surprised by how many details I didn’t remember. Most notably I had totally forgotten that it is set at a time in the far future when Earth’s survival is threatened by an astronomical phenomenon (a dust cloud that will eventually occlude the sun).
The ending… well, that would be to spoil things. Just read it if you haven’t already.
I have job news. Or I will, soon, I hope. Just waiting for some paperwork…
(OK, Mr Mysterious, that’s enough.)