Fear and Loathing on the Learning Curve: Observations on Life, Tech and Web Design from a Slightly Misanthropic Mind

Bad Vibrations in 67

Another pearl of wis­dom I wish I had been handed last year: enjoy hav­ing your own space while you have it. I wish I had appre­ci­ated it that bit more.

The close­ness of this house is start­ing to grate. No mat­ter how good your choice of house­mates, con­fine­ment in a com­pact space is bound to amp­lify ten­sions, espe­cially when you end up with crazy cari­ca­tures like mine. Today was not a good day. Possibly because I was hung over from another Halloween party, or because it was another dark and grey day — about to get darker as the clocks go back. But those were really only ancil­lary issues.

The crux of it was an argu­ment about pet­rol, as we arrived at Sainsburys for our week­end shop. I drive a Suzuki Vitara, the fuel tank of which tops off at just over £45, which gets you between 200 and 250 miles. I drive to cam­pus at least 3 times a week, and if any­one is around when I leave or set off to come back, I take them. This hap­pens at least twice a week, usu­ally more. So you can ima­gine my sur­prise when I gently announced that the tank was nearly empty and in need of a fill-up, and that I would appre­ci­ate a con­tri­bu­tion of, say, £8 each towards it, and was met with not a small amount of dis­quiet and deni­als from two of the three that they rode with me more than “once in the last month”. And this, not to put too fine a point on it, is a crock of shit.

I’m sure you can do the arith­metic here: three con­tri­bu­tions of £8 is £24, mak­ing my share of the fuel a tidy £21. I freely admit to using more fuel than any­one else, hence the uneven split. But no, even this was not enough for the lifts to cam­pus, into town, and to the super­mar­ket a dozen times a week. Sadly, I was so enraged I failed to point out the irony that, as they argued about how little they made use of the car, we were stand­ing in the car park of the super­mar­ket that I had just driven them to (for the second time in 24 hours).

On top of that I had to yet again face the issue of how to argue with a man who refuses to listen to any voice other than his own, or take into account the feel­ings or opin­ions of any­one other than him­self. This is a daily struggle, and at times I won­der why I bother speak­ing at all. An impossible conun­drum; a man who sets rules then breaks them, and won’t be told; a man who, des­pite hav­ing a very tenu­ous grip on real­ity, will not be swayed in any­thing he does by such trifles as com­mon sense or the con­cerns of oth­ers. A man who con­siders him­self to be above any other human being, and does not enter­tain the belief that any­one else could pos­sibly have any­thing of any worth to say. And I have to share a house with the fucker.

Nothing I have done before has ever felt so much like hit­ting my head against a wall, for all it can achieve, and today was one of those days. And I lost my rag, prop­erly, for only the second time with him, and imme­di­ately regret­ted it, for it can do noth­ing but fur­ther worsen his opin­ion of and atti­tude towards me. Any dis­senter is a dick, no mat­ter how right they are. But what can I do? Nothing I say will have any effect. I won­der what shock­ing cir­cum­stances of earlier life could lead to this ingrained, fas­cist self-assurance.

wpStats — Download

Quite a few people are com­ing here from Joe Newing’s site look­ing for inform­a­tion and down­loads for the wpStats WordPress plu­gin. Joe has handed over devel­op­ment to me, and hope­fully I will be able to find time in between my other com­mit­ments to do some fur­ther work on wpStats.

In the mean­time, you can down­load the plu­gin here. The latest ver­sion is 2.11; I hope to post the changelog and other inform­a­tion that appeared on binslashbash.org soon. In the next few weeks I will aim to release 2.12 which will con­tain updated bot sig­na­tures, and fur­ther in the future 2.2 which will intro­duce some new features.

If there’s any­thing you’d like to see in wpStats please let me know — post­ing com­ments here is a good start. Let me know what you think.

12

Week’s Quotes

“In five years time, most of you will prob­ably be pro­ject man­agers.” –Software Engineering Principles lec­turer, in a slightly sad, yet bit­ter tone

“Some of your pre­de­cessors last year chose to deface that page” –Relational Databases lec­turer, on the Wikipedia art­icle about him

“I don’t care what you’re doing this for, just fuck off.” –Plainclothes police­man to Dom Joly (dressed in snail cos­tume and crawl­ing across a London street), from 100 Greatest Funny Moments this even­ing on Channel 4

Initiation, Round 2

And so it begins, the second year of the rest of our lives. It’s been another inter­est­ing week, segue­ing into the start of term before we had a chance to catch our col­lect­ive breath.

The last seven days have been spent get­ting the house geared up for life, buy­ing second­hand fur­niture and being har­assed by util­ity com­pan­ies. Highlights from the begin­ning of the week include the pur­chase of ten large inflat­able beach balls, the infla­tion of said balls and their inser­tion into Elias’ bed­room while he was out; a shock­ingly bad hangover from last Sunday night; and the start of our household’s Mario Kart Double Dash addiction.

In the inter­ven­ing time Internet sub­scrip­tions and phone line have been ordered, gold­fish pur­chased (one defect­ive, one not — one still with us today, the other’s death dis­covered after an unknown amount of time motion­less in the bowl) and large amounts of money spent. And today was the start of 2006-07, Year 2, where the fun dwindles and the work mounts, or so we are told. In true slacker style I was up at 10am, my timetable being con­spicu­ously free of any engage­ment at all, and set to going through the morning’s mail instead. And what a happy bag it was — dis­con­nec­tion threats from both Gas and Electricity util­it­ies, appar­ently in spite of my phoning two weeks earlier to inform them of the change in ten­ancy and demand that out­stand­ing bills be charged to the land­lord — and being told that this had been done. So I phoned again; the help­ful agent could find no trace of any account in my name, so the pro­cess was repeated, and I was told to ignore the notices. So if the lights go out some time this week, we will know that British Gas have done their job once again.

The remainder of the day was spent on cam­pus, sort­ing out my loan for the term and watch­ing the thou­sands of Freshers milling about in vari­ous states of ter­ror. In that vein I went to tonight’s Top B, the reg­u­lar Monday night Union event, as it was the first of the term (and the first Union night for most Freshers) and a good time was sure to be had by all. And if I was there to sample the wierd feel­ings, there was much to sample, as we saw things from the other side — no longer the Fresher still wet behind the ears, we had been there and seen and done it all, and this even­ing we could look back on a new set of kids doing it anew, and twist­ing out and mak­ing the mis­takes we did.

Many of them got it right, but it was those who didn’t who provided the most enter­tain­ment — the ones who dressed like grand­par­ents or formal ball­go­ers or those who didn’t dress at all, or those who by 10pm were already two sheets to the wind, lean­ing back against the walls with their eyes rolling in their sock­ets and three hours of debauch­ery still to go, or stum­bling around in the Gents’, piss­ing and vomit­ing at the same time, or tak­ing the “easi­est place in the world to get laid” advice to heart and grind­ing up against some hor­ri­fied lass while bowel-shaking trance blasts in the back­ground, or cluster-bombing four people with the remains of a kebab and salad. It was truly a spec­tacle, but the strongest vibe was that of polite sus­pi­cion, as every­one watched every­one else — try­ing to guage the mood; or like us “seasoned” types, watch­ing the whole thing unfold in quiet deja vu. And of course we (myself and Dave, at this point) had to put on a show of our own — shake the poor kids up a bit — scream­ing obscen­it­ies, dart­ing around the crowds and whoop­ing at everything, dan­cing like tor­tured pup­pets — and I wasn’t even drink­ing. But they lapped it up. When it was over I drove Dave home and we soberly reflec­ted on what it all meant — yet another thing we wouldn’t quite exper­i­ence in the same way again. And then I got home; someone had help­fully set the chain on the door so I couldn’t get in; a housemate’s rude awaken­ing later and I was inside shav­ing next to a bar of soap with teeth marks on it, and won­der­ing whether it’s us that are the real freaks this time around.