I got my results - if you really want to see them, they’re here.
I didn’t realise I’d messed up Core 3 or Chains and Rings, but oh well. Didn’t mess up on large scale.
Getting nice people at OpSci to write me references.
Pax
AS level exams soon. I am really, really going to have to revise. I don’t know any chemistry. Maths is okay but in my case (I’m not particularly intelligent), understanding without practise* means nothing. Some parts are very easy. Some are tricky. Computing will be the easiest if I can pin down Module 2 (it’s full of hand-wavy definitions and irritating database terminology) to the algorithmic process I have going for Module 1 (which has worked pretty well so far). Physics is again okay but as everyone who sits near me frequently reminds me with looks of disgust and horrified comments (I can’t tell if they’re simulating them to belittle me - they don’t really use insults which I suppose is designed to give the impression that they’re trying to help me and therefore suppress my urge to request forgiveness). Essentially, I can’t intuitively understand basic physical concepts. Things that people just “know” seem to evade me. The pressure in a hydraulic system is uniform? It’s obvious NOW. Braking distance proportional to the square of initial velocity? Obvious once I’ve gone home very confused and derived that by rearranging v2 = u2 + 2as.
The social climate offends me. Apart from computing, in which either Mr Rokison xor [sic] Erroll crushes any sort of retardation, there is almost no social punishment (or it’s unreasonably deferred) for the usual transgressions (showing off, being annoying, cheating etc.).
What makes me slightly worried is that almost everyone from this school will probably “succeed” in later life. Not really something to rely on, but, you know, a reasonable hypothesis.
What am I going to do? Revise hard, get good A levels and gloss over some terrible problem in my understanding? Yes, probably. I suspect people will be loath to tell me how stupid I am in order to make themselves seem like better people. It’s quite difficult to get people to recognise just how terrible they are when this … terrible …ness … is the accepted norm. What to do?
Life is awesome.
*Brit. variant
Pax
Well, would you look at that?
Pax
Today, Elliot, Hugh Emerson, Oliver Jones and I went to the “Camden International Cadet Sabre Competition 2008″ (snappy name). The free t-shirt was similar to last year’s but with an “8″ in place of the “7″ and an exaggerated, hammer-and-sickle-esque sabre guard taking up more space than last time.
We met Mathieu there again (he left for France after a while) and Jim refereed some fights. Last time I came 64th out of 71 and this time I came 57th out of 85.
My poule went fairly badly - at the beginning I feel I fenced quite well and kept distance nicely but unfortunately after my first two fights, I fenced someone much better than me, lost the match and my concentration and lost all subsequent fights in the poule. I was seeded 58 and then beat Niall Dowse (seed 71) 15-11. I then lost to Stanislav Konopatskiy (seed 7) 15-2. That’s a slightly better result than last year.
The full results are here.
I’ve been jumping through hoops for so long now. Hmm.
Pax
Ted Nelson gave a talk at school today. It reminded me of two things:
Prof. Nelson handed out some copies of ZigZag and Xanadu and demoed XanaduSpace. Having heard about it for ages and seeing demonstrations in other videos scattered across the web, it was great to see it right there. I think a combination of seeing it materialise despite the rather long-lived smear campaign against it (it was like a Googlebomb of “Xanadu” for “vaporware”, but in print) and hearing Prof. Nelson talk about the concrete concepts behind it (C++, OpenGl and Python backend, next platform will be iPhone, Flash version soon) really solidified the concept in my mind. I think I’m ready to believe that with fine-tuning, the computer world can be turned on its head (in a good way).
The basic premise of the talk was that technology was really just “packaging and conventions” and that we had learned to use kludgy solutions rather than good solutions being engineered (this was blamed on techies). Nelson believes that the web’s infrastructure (one-way links, unsourced quotations etc.) is severely lacking, and that 1984, when Xerox PARC gave us the desktop metaphor, was when “it all went wrong”.
Another thing that struck me was the sense of activity and understanding. Age 70, having been ridiculously ahead of the curve for so long but never really achieving the maximal recognition he deserves, Nelson continues to pursue his original projects with zeal and an apparently very perceptive mind. Listening to his anecdotes and analogies reminded me strongly of interviews with Richard Feynman.
The subject of Lain remained fairly suppressed, although people now frequently tell me how often I mention it even when I don’t (…).
Of course, the best thing about Xanadu would be sourced or transcluded quotations - as people may know, I have a thing about blockquotes [1, 2]. With Xanadu I will finally get my wish! FINALLY! OH YEAH!!
On a rather insane note, I think I read somewhere (probably New Scientist or Wired but I really can’t remember - I should really find the source and, y’know, transclude it) that the Google generation is actually very bad at processing and finding information in most scenarios because of their (no, not me - it’s them!) ridiculously short attention spans and inattention to detail.
I think this is the other extreme that I’ve been waiting for; people generally have this rather idealised view of internet-savvy folks being greatly intelligent data processing machines, churning through some huge number of articles on RSS feeds, tagging hundreds of links every week etc. while the minority believe that people are now just dumb keyword filters. I think both of these views are inaccurate. Yes, there’s a danger that people may deactivate their higher thought and just sift through pages of Google results but intelligent reading and data processing is not dead.
When I did our first Module 1 past paper last week (unashamed boast: 95%), I applied the rules that I generally apply to webpages (not consciously, mind you. I had to really think hard about what I do) :
Repeat for every page.
Then finally, check every page in detail.
It’s kind of like modular programming or drawing something starting with a basic sketch and refining it (but not both at once. I should have said “xor” instead of “or”). You can either choose random bits and focus down on them or get a general outline and keep refreshing your knowledge with slightly higher information resolution. Eventually the answer crystallises in your mind, like an infinite function tending to root 2 or a sign becoming readable as your camera desperately focuses and refocuses.
Yeah. It’s all good, basically. It’s crazy about Taniyama, isn’t it? Man.
Mr Smith covered the talk in a slightly less haphazard way…
Pax
* Mr Smith has told me that there are in fact better alternatives.
Camden Sabre is coming up soon, as is the Public Schools and the Club Sabre. The latter two will both be interesting in that I did well in both last time but this time I’m going to be in a higher age bracket - and close the bottom of it. Oh well. Such is life. I enjoy fencing. I dislike most people. Thus fencing most people is a compromise. Semantics! OH YEAH!!
I’ve randomly done this - take a look at the source to see what I did. It’s not terribly exciting, useful or even technically awesome. Oh well.
Ted Nelson on Tuesday. Awesome. I regret not tracking Baudrillard down before he died.
Pax
Adam Zethraeus provided useful linkage which helped me upgrade my WordPress thingy. I wholly recommend the WPAU; it’s totally awesome.
Storrs Kegel (case of fractured virtual identity, hence Googlage) put me onto Coda which is possibly the greatest app I have ever used. It’s also the first thing I’ve used my debit card on. Yeah, I’m a real man (…I also think wtf at this).
I spoke to Elliott Katz about computer science at Cambridge (he’s been offered a place there to do that) and he seemed very modest and repeatedly claimed that he had simply “got lucky” (regrettably, I’m getting Americanised, I think: I kept trying to type “gotten” for “got” back there). In any case, awesome. I need to know more stuff.
Everybody loves subnet masks. The internet is serious business.
I’ve attempted another rather weak redesign of the main site but it’s ultra-clean, so, you know…
In CompSoc today, I realised just how retarded some of the things in Mac OS X really are. The ability to remotely control the GUI (not just background processes and stuff) via the shell and stuff… urgh… it’s like… whatever. And then being able to (re)set the root password by having the install disc: this makes me nervous.
However, it was entertaining to use the following sequence I devised to annoy family, which caught on pretty quickly at school too:
user$ ssh loggedinuser@x.x.x.x
Password: ******
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ osascript -e "set Volume 10"
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ say -v Zarvox
I AM WATCHING YOU
YOU ARE UGLY
^Z
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ ps -x
[A bunch of processes and their numbers are displayed; too lazy to type them out properly]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ kill [pid of something like web browser]
[actual loggedinuser now tries to open System Preferences to disable remote login]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ ps -x
[pid of System Prefs displayed]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ kill [pid of System Prefs]
loggedinuser@x.x.x.x$ sudo shutdown -h now
Password: ******
SYSTEM GOING DOWN NOW or something to that effect
And then I win! 
Pax
My to-do list for this web stuff:
The front page of disinformatics is the only bit where there’s markup that serves no semantic purpose (the glider). Adam2z is the ultimate fusion of form and content, while Blue Eye Labs is mostly form and disinformatics is mostly content - a shame that there isn’t even really much content.
Anyway, I don’t know where these thoughts belong so I’ll leave them here.
Pax
I’m still here. The blog survived a year (kind of). Computing is interesting. The age of the high-performance individual is upon us (Putin?).
I need more storage space. I need a haircut.
Pax
I just watched it and it wasn’t really very good. Sure they acted fine and there were CG zombies and a hint of survivalism and everyone laughed at “AUUGH! I WAS SAVING THAT BACON!” but the heart of the book was notably absent.
The book was a masterwork. The crippling paranoia and dark humour were gone from the movie. The phrase “I am legend” becomes devoid of meaning without the context of the book.
If you see the film and come out thinking “Meh.”, you must read the book. It’s not long. It is, however, awesome. I haven’t given details here but if you feel like the movie has no plot at all, you are correct - the plot was apparently left inside Mr Matheson’s book.
Pax
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