WillWybrow.com

I figure I spend a bunch of time Googling syntax or functions in code if I can’t remember them. And sometimes I’ll even lift out a whole section of example code from a search result and try and change as little of it as possible to maximise the time I spend not doing work. These little shortcuts make life bearable.

So I’ve decided to invent a new programming language. Each line is a search query you’d type in to bring up a reference page and an example of what you’re trying to do. Then, at compile time, the compiler does the searches, lifts out the example code from the top hit and then builds the binary from the collection of sample code.

This past week, I’ve been (re)discovering the power of a well-structured to-do list.

I always get a surge of motivation just before bed time. I look back on my whole day, which has usually been wasted just trying to find little things to do on the internet to while away the obscene amount of free time I have, and wish I’d done something more productive. This leads to a regular occurrence, the ten minute long future-planning sequence where I’ll think fondly about how different things will be in the future, a habit that started off even before the whole deal with the altercation and the trial that between them have consumed my life this year.

Anyway, aside from a lot of far-off hopes and aspirations that take a form similar to New Year’s Resolutions (and have as much impact), I’ll also come up with some things to do in the immediate future. I might think of something I’ll need to go out and buy, something of mine that needs finding from my scattered and unsorted possessions or perhaps someone who needs to be emailed or phoned (usually before a specific time). More often than not, when I wake up in the morning, I’ll have forgotten, and failing that, I’ll be too apathetic to get it done. And occasionally I’ll oversleep and fail by running out of time in the day.

Enter the humble, hand-written to-do list! Harnessing my nightly dose of motivation when it strikes, I can put down a list of jobs to do the following day. So I tried it for a few days this week. I’ve had lots of little things to take care of as well as one big ongoing task that has earned me money for the two or three Christmas presents I am actually buying this year (it’s not real employment, more on jobs later). Building a list before I go to bed at night gives me a plan for the day, and it is easier to follow the plan than it is to remember all the things I’ve got to do and decide by ear which ones I should pay attention to. It’s also easier than mindlessly bumming around the house filling my face from the fridge while watching TV and refreshing Facebook. Just following the list requires the least mental effort, so that’s what I do. Having motivation strike just before going to bed is useless without being able to carry the motivation over to the next day with a hard plan.

Aside from letting me practise my film title parodies by naming each list as a sequel to its predecessor, having these lists means I have a reason to get out of bed in the mornings. Where, without a plan, I might optimistically aim for a 10am morning, this would consistently become noon or later as I’d stagger out of bed in that state of tiredness that comes from having too much sleep (which I think everyone gets?). If I ever had an ambitious attempt at getting even earlier (due to the reasoning that if a 10am alarm means I get up at 12pm, to get up at 10 I should set the alarm for 8), I ran the risk of not hearing my new phone’s pathetic attempt at an alarm sound or turning it off in my sleep and snoozing right on through.

Well, some of you may know that I’ve had a couple of job interviews this week. The first was at 4:30pm, so not particularly straining on my undisciplined lifestyle, but the second (same place, different day) was in the morning. Not wanting to run the risk of not hearing my alarm go off, I fished out my proper alarm clock, packed away in whichever box it came back from university in, way back in June. Not only is this alarm louder, it is less forgiving with the snooze button, only giving me four minutes of snoozing before piping up again with an even more annoying bleep each time. What’s more, it projects the time on the wall, which is pretty cool. So, thusly armed, I was able to make it to my interview on time. Good thing, too, because I did really well in this second interview, whereas I’d not done nearly as well in the first one.

One of the additional benefits to having this new alarm clock was that, in conjunction with my deferred motivation tactic of penning out some to-do lists, I could now reliably get up at a normal person’s time of morning. I was hitting the 7s and 8s in the morning that I’d almsot forgotten existed.

One other thing I should mention about the faithful handwritten list is the satisfying ability to cross things off it. What’s nice about the analogue system of pen and paper is that you can cross an item off really vigorously when you complete a tough task. It validates and amplifies any sense of accomplishment you get after doing a job to be able to scrawl a huge tick across the words.

So now I am back in practice with regard to motivation and hitting the early mornings, even when still not going to bed until 2 or 3am. What use is that especially to a man whose only time is free time? Not much, you might think. That is, until you find out that nailing the second interview for that job seemed to counterbalance the less successful first interview and has secured me the job title of ‘junior engineer’ at an electronics company. That’s right, your favourite layabout Facebook-jockey, Will Wybrow, is going to be a productive member of society again, and you can attribute it all to to-do lists.

The sequel to the original list, which I had titled Shit to Do.

The third in the series was a flop.

Set years in the future, Shit to Do 4.0 was created with a contemporary theme to appeal to the shifting demographic its predecessors couldn’t ever target.

There are so many charities, these days, offering so much. How are you supposed to know which ones are the best to give to? Well, using this handy ranking list, you’ll be able to tell.

1. Cancer

As we all know, anyone can get cancer at any time and for any reason. Something this serious and devastating really is the epitome of bad luck for lots of people, so being struck down with cancer is reasonably unfair. Fixing (and eventually preventing) cancer is probably the most important medical breakthrough we’re working towards. The sooner it’s done, the better, I say.

2. Heart Disease/Alzheimer’s

People like the British Heart Foundation, who work towards helping rid the world of heart disease, are slightly less important than Cancer Research, but still pretty decent. Same with Alzheimer’s research.

3. Deaf/Blind/Disabled Help

If you’ve got no option to give to a decent medical research charity, the next best thing to look for is some other way of helping people who are in trouble who don’t really deserve it. People who are blind or deaf or physically impaired in some other way should be the next in line if you’re deciding to give money away.

4. Overseas Aid

Sending your money to a less-developed country might feel like generosity, but if you ask me, the practice is largely fruitless. If your donation manages to save a third-world life, so what? They’re still going to be poor and basically useless, so why bother? Your paltry three pence at the end of the checkout in the supermarket isn’t going to develop third-world Africa into a bustling metropolis where everyone has a suit and a job and an apartment. It’s really not in the scope of casual and small donors to help with problems so far away. If you’re a billionaire, though, and you are looking for something to do, you can go over and build some schools and hospitals and houses. Otherwise, don’t bother.

5. Children

Poor children, retarded children, abused children. Forget them. More important people than children have bigger problems than children. This money should go to law enforcement, if anything, to track down incompetent parents and lock them up. If it’s not the parents’ doing that makes the child so-called “in need,” then it’s certainly well within their power to have prevented it. Children don’t develop being retarded, they’re born with it, and before a child is born you can find these things out and abort it if it isn’t normal. No sympathy here.

6. Aged/Hospices

Fuck hospices. Any donations to hospices should immediately be rerouted to euthanasia clinics. You are old, you are definitely going to die. You can do it at home without care or your can go on your own terms at the clinic. Those are your choices. Any rational person at that point would choose the painless clinic death over rotting slowly at home whilst their family cares less and less. Anyone afraid to die in the clinics get to suffer at home for being cowards.

7. Churches

Fuck churches. This one, I think, should be obvious. Anyone who gives to a church instead of any of the charities ranked above is a misanthrope of the highest order and shouldn’t get to be so fucking wasteful.

8. Coastguard/Lifeboats

Coastguard, lifeboats, mountain rescue: what do these things have in common? I’ll tell you. They all exist to pull morons and the children of morons out of dangerous situations that they’ve gotten themselves into. If you go out to sea when the current is strong and you are a poor swimmer, tough. If you go up a mountain and get stuck there through inattentive climbing or poor planning, tough. You knew the risks when you did those things. You don’t see the Down Pillow Emergency Response Squad who patrol skydiving drop zones waiting for the emergency call that a parachute didn’t open for the same reason: people know the risks of jumping out of a plane, and they shouldn’t be afforded a safety net for their idiocy at our inconvenience. Fuck lifeboats.

PEE CEE WOOORLD!!!

Hm, I got back earlier from a friend’s house. CJ messaged me telling me his laptop screen was broken, and he had an essay to write. I took my spare 15-inch TFT monitor over to his house to help him out, but it turns out that more than the screen wasn’t working. Never mind. We’re going PC shopping soon!

It was a passing suggestion that we check out some actual shops. While I don’t mind browsing shops (in fact, looking at a shelf of toys is better than an index page where you click, go back, click and go back), they are dreadfully… expensive.

As a little example of how badly computer shops rape you on the price (because they know if you’re in the shop, you probably aren’t interested in/able to shop online), I bought two kettle leads today (the standard shape power cord that goes into the back of your PC or kitchen kettle) on eBay for 99p each. Free postage.

Some years ago (and I struggle to remember how long exactly, but in the vicinity of four or five), my dad and I went to see one of my dad’s former colleagues to give her (she was an older lady) her first home PC. It was excess to requirements at home. I think it sported a 233MHz Pentium processor, and 3GB of hard drive space. Windows 98. Anyway, we either didn’t have spare power cords or forgot to pack them up, so we drove to the nearest computer shop (this was many miles from home, impossible to go home and bring them back in a reasonable time) to pick some up. One for the base unit, one for the monitor. How much did we pay? I’ll give you a moment to guess. Go on, think about it.

When we left the shop (a PC World), we had parted with fifteen pounds and ninety-eight pence. Each of those 99p cords set us back £8. Now, assuming this eBay user is making no profit (false, but for the sake of argument, let’s suppose). This means the PC World markup was 700%. Now obviously this doesn’t hold for everything; if you were paying eight times the internet price for a laptop, you’d be forking out thousands, and nobody would buy them. But on the little things where nobody necessarily knows better, such as USB cables or blank CDs, the price difference is alarming.

I picture the markup of computer components as somewhere in between the staggeringly large and relatively small differences I’ve described. Probably not as ridiculous as eight times the going online rate, but certainly enough to make me never even consider buying from them, or anyone like them (Maplin are just as guilty).

Before any of you leap to the defence of these money-grabbing bastards with claims of more costs than online businesses, don’t forget the inferior service places like this provide. People employed to give advice are thick as shit, because the clever ones will say “buy from online.” A related anecdote: I knew a person who was offered a job there after answering the following phone-interview question: “what brands do you know that PC World offer?” giving a list of brand names with “Dell” nestled discreetly in the middle. Just take any remotely technical query to some of their sales staff to see what I mean. An internet favourite is the classic “how much more does a hard drive weigh when it’s full compared to when it’s empty?” Not my idea but I don’t have an original source. Google it if you want. So yeah, even if PC world have higher operating costs, it’s not nearly worth it. You’re paying to propogate false knowledge and sustain idiocy in a field that’s understood badly enough as it is.

To round things off, if anyone knows a place that’s good for cheap LCD monitors, you’ve got to hook me up. I’m all for saving energy and that, but unless someone can get me a reasonable (as in, reasonably priced) replacement for my two 19″ (a bit vague there, they’re dual 1280×1024 resolution) CRTs (we’re talking in the mid 20s for size), I’m going to have to proceed with destroying the planet. Or steal some.

Interesting fact for the day: there are thirteen pairs of parantheses in this post (including this one).

…but Relentless prices up?

It’s a bit of an economical mixed bag. I was enjoying it when a can of Relentless was cheaper than a litre of petrol. Fuck petrol! Though the fact that it’s getting cheaper is probably a good thing. It’s less than 94p per litre at my local supermarket, but they put Relentless Inferno up about 10p just a few days ago! Nightmare!

But I went to 24 hour Tesco on campus yesterday night and bought some where it was still under £1. It’s good.

I don’t think I am being affected very much by the, ah, “credit crunch.” Things still seem to be costing the same as they always have. And, as usual, it’s easy to spend too much. Especially with my housemates; they don’t really realise that students aren’t meant to live in comfort and luxury. They’re supposed to buy all the cheapest things possible and barely live on them. It’s a nightmare when other people come back from shopping and ask for my money. They didn’t ask what I wanted to put my money towards…

Oh well, got a little bit of cash coming soon enough (in time for the holiday season, in fact), and maybe a little pocket of cash as gifts from Santa. Money is a bitch, but it’s the only path to true happiness.

They say that a bad workman blames his tools, but I think that’s a little unfair on the workman.

Sure, if he unfairly blames them, the saying still holds. If the tools are in full working order then he has no excuse. Should have practised more.

If he’s got a shitty set of tools but has every opportunity to get new ones, the saying also still holds. He has only himself to blame.

If, on the third hand, the workman has no choice but to be supplied by a third party and cannot do anything to improve the quality of his broken hammer or blunt saw, he can’t exactly take responsibility for doing the best he can with what he’s given. I think there is a minority of unfairly blamed metaphoric workmen who are struggling along in silence, unable to point out the flaws in their shoddy equipment because everyone jumps to the conclusion that he’s projecting his own faults onto his stuff.

My best wishes go out to them, wherever and whoever they are.

Some professions just look like a really good time to me. They don’t necessarily have to be the most prestigious or well-paying jobs, nor do they have to last forever. But these are a few things I would love to at least try, and why.

Train Driver

This one might sound weird, but I love travelling on the train. Not only would I have the perks of being the one who announces stuff on the train, but I’d get the added bonuses of: free (or discounted) rail travel so I could go all over the country; a really good working knowledge of rail lines, so I can seem really useful when people are casually wondering about train times and distances and prices all around the country; and, if I’m feeling vindictive, the chance to utterly nuke people who haven’t got the right tickets, like I saw one woman doing once. I don’t remember her name, but she looked like my old Biology teacher who loved nuking kids who didn’t do their homework, to the fullest extent she could, so I will call her Zoe. I’ve been on two of her trains (I remember what she looks like), and on one of them, there was this Chinese guy in my coach who had bought a ticket using a Railcard discount, but only had some vague paperwork in place of an actual Railcard; it might have been the application form, but he was really far away. Anyway, the outcome of it was that he was absolutely buggered, and had to pay over £40 to get the proper ticket. Boom!

Astronaut

I never really “had” this when I was a child. That is, I never really wanted to go into space like it is stereotypical of children to want to do. But recently, the idea has been appealing to me more and more. It’s ever since I started obtaining all the Futurama episodes and wrote that Biomars article. So I am a late bloomer, maybe they all are? Space is getting more attractive these days. Maybe it’s subconsciously metaphorical for escaping?

Film Editor

All that slicing and splicing of film into itself… it’s only going to get more digital in the future, and digital is what I do best. Imagine how good the computers are that those guys have… With all that raw digital footage in really high definition, they must be some machines. That would make me happy on a day-to-day basis. Also, I’d get to see films in the making.

I love films. I would love to be involved in the filmmaking process. I think it might be a bit farfetched to set my eyes on the director’s chair. I have the visions for films sometimes, but I’m not sure they’d be sustainable enough to make me a good director, who has to manage the whole feel of the film, made up of all the bits, throughout the filming. But if you shoot it, I can put it together, I guarantee it.

Plus, holy fuck, I bet these guys get to hang around on set on all the best films. They get to see all the bits that might not make it in and get to see bits of movie before everyone else does. And I’d bet they get invited to the premieres. With all the stars. And when you go and see the film at the cinema with your mates, you can look at it and think, “yeah, I put that together.”

These are some of my thoughts for stuff I would like to do one day. It’s a nice and varied list. In an ideal world, I’d get to do all of them at some point. That would be great!