Neil Mitchell

I got into work yesterday, to discover that someone had tidied my desk. They had shuffled paper into piles, moved some bits of paper around and generally tidied it up. It's kinda creepy - why would someone do this? My list of suspects (in no particular order):

1) My housemate, who has kind of cleaning OCD. I ask him, and he didn't do it - plus his desk is the other side of the building, so it would be rather random.

2) My desk mates, who might object to piles of untidy paper. I asked them, and they didn't do it.

3) Cleaning staff. But I can't see why they would have bothered - its not part of their job.

4) Someone looking for something I borrowed, such as a journal article or book. Possible, but they would have probably told me they if they took something back, or asked for it if they couldn't find it.

5) Nutcase ex-girlfriend, rummaging through my stuff. Possible, and it wouldn't be the first time, but it has been a while now.

6) Your idea here!

I just got this message from the computer services at York:

---

If you are leaving the University at the end of the summer term, your
computing username will be set to expire shortly after degree day in July.
For information about forwarding email, applying for an extension, etc,
please see: www.york.ac.uk/services/cserv/advice/desk/leavers.htm

If you are not leaving the University this summer, please ignore this
message.

---

I'm not leaving at the end of the summer term, I'm leaving three months after that - and I had to pay £120 for the privilege of continuing my registration until then. Of course, its not really relevant when I'm leaving, what's relevant is when the system thinks I'm leaving, which could well be the end of the summer term. So in essence:

1) Any email that starts "if" is poor. You have a big old database you grabbed my name out of, run a bit of a filter on it first.

2) Do not send emails saying "please ignore this message". It's the equivalent of knocking on someones door and running off.

3) How the hell do I figure out if they are going to kill my account before they actually kill it. I've been here once before (4 years ago), and despite filling in all the necessary forms, they deleted all my emails without warning.

I like croissants, typically with margarine, and ideally flakey and crisp. Unfortunately, a flakey croissant is difficult to butter, since the flakes usually come off with the marge. Yesterday my girlfriend solved this problem in a very ingeneous way - you apply spread to the bottom of the croissant. This is pure genius.

I have just been to visit various family members in Harrogate, with my sister. A common theme I got while there was that they think I am rich. Of course, having not had any income for the last year, this is a bit of an exaggeration. My sister was shocked to see that my TV was not a wide-screen brand-new plasma TV (as she had been told), but in fact a reasonable second-hand TV I'd bought for £10. All my relatives commented on how much money I had with my vast income, the money my parents were giving me, and the work I was doing. I haven't received anything from my parents for 4 years (and I am still owed 1 Christmas and 1 Birthday present). My income is fairly low, a little bit of demonstrating work.

Last year everyone thought I was just about to head off to America for a job. This year everyone thinks I am rich. I wonder what next year's misguided snipped of information will be...

I'm just finishing off the first draft of my thesis. It's nearly all there, but will require many revisions. The one thing I'm having difficulty on is my acknowledgements...

I am fairly certain that I have to acknowledge my current girlfriend (Emily) - that seems to be acknowledgement law. The problem is that I've only been with Emily for the last 6 months, so for a substantial portion of my PhD I was with my ex-girlfriend (Siti). By writing an acknowledgement to Emily, for something sappy like "support through my PhD", its kind of being a bit fraudulent, as it would be more accurate to acknowledge Siti. Of course, I much prefer Emily, and want to be with her for the future, but the acknowledgement is kind of about acknowledging the past, and the PhD. However, at the same time I pretty much loathe Siti, so have no desire to acknowledge her.

My current acknowledgements are:


While doing a PhD, I have appreciated the presence of many friends -- including all the members of the York University Karate Club, and the many residents of 232 Melrosegate. [Sentence here] Lastly, thanks to my parents, who have given me the freedom to make my own decisions, and an occasional email to check on my wellbeing.


Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write the [Sentence here] bit acknowledging girlfriend related matters.

Just a random musing:

Worthless: Lacking worth; of no use or value. (=0)

Worth less: Less worth than something else. (<n)

It's weird how one little space, which has no audible difference, changes the meaning so much.

(Of course, the context should make it clear, as you have to supply an n in the second case.)

I just tried to send a text message on my mobile phone using the percent character (%). Turns out, on my phone at least, I can't insert a percent - although I can insert a Yen, a copyright symbol, a registered trademark, a degree symbol and an enter symbol. Why not a percent? Is this just my phone, or are text messages restricted to exclude the percent character?

Fortunately the person I was sending to is a LaTeX user, so \perc worked just fine.

Update: I just got a reply from them, saying "Thanks, I didn't know how to insert a % into latex". So not only were they unaware of \perc, or \%, they also know how to add % to a text message!

Drastic times call for drastic measures. I intend to finish my thesis. This isn't something I've contemplated doing with much seriousness to date, but now I am getting towards the end(TM). As such, I have enacted a number of changes:

* In the office 9am-5pm. If I am late getting in, I stay that amount after. i.e. I got in at 9:35 today because my housemate was in the shower, so stayed until 5:35.

* Working on nothing but my thesis - no necessary tools, no programming at all - just thesis writing and arranging. All tools can be done at home after.

* No reading emails, apart from a 10 minute period after lunch. No responding to emails unless actually urgent.

* No newsy distractions, including Facebook, Reddit, Google Reader etc.

I followed these rules today, and got an awful lot done. I reckon that if I manage to keep this up, I may actually have an early first draft (complete with lots of todo annotations) of my thesis by the end of the week.

I've been working hard on writing two papers for ICFP, and on Wednesday at 9pm I submitted them both. For the last month, I've been working very hard, flipping between 2 different topics. On the last day, I probably flipped between the papers about 20 times, correcting one of them while discussing the other with my supervisor. Getting drafts etc.

Anyway, after 1 month of fairly deep concentration, a mild lack of sleep, plus brain switching at unhealthy levels, I've totally lost all concentration. Since Wednesday the only thing I've been able to focus on for more than about 20 mins is sleeping. My brain is wandering all over the place. To take an example, I'm writing this post in the middle of an episode of Peep Show, which is only about 25 minutes long.

Anyway, I am sure with a good weekend getting drunk, and plenty of sleep and trashy DVD's (next in line: Bachelor Party Massacre) I'll be back to normal.

A package recently arrived at my house, addressed to my girl friend, which was too large to fit through the letter box. So the package was returned to the central sorting office in York, near the train station, where it could be picked up. The little form you get when you are out advises that you will need ID in the name of the person the package is addressed to. They say a drivers license of bank card will do.

So down I go to the sorting office. My girlfriend is not in York, but I do have her Nectar card (supermarket loyalty card), so figure I might as well try with that. I get to the sorting office, get to the front of the queue, get asked for ID and drop the Nectar card on the counter. I realise that a Nectar card isn't the same kind of trustworthy ID as a drivers license, or a bank card, but I figure it might work. Then I look at the Nectar card on the desk, and alas, realise that while it is her Nectar card, it doesn't have any name on it! Doh!

Fortunately I also brought a letter from my estate agents with my name and my housemates on, addressed to the same address. For them that was sufficient. I didn't have to prove that the letter was real (it was on headed notepaper, but a couple of seconds work on a colour printer), I didn't even have to suggest that I was one of the people the letter was addressed to, I gave no ID that I was, or even knew, the person the original package was addressed to.

So, basically, I think they are happy to give the package to anyone who has the form they post through the letter box - which is fair enough, as if I can get that form I can probably get their mail anyway. However, they also want me to jump through one additional security hoop. The hoop is trivial to fake, and provides no additional security. I suspect one person decided additional ID was required, and a different person decided what forms of ID count. Random decisions with little basis in logic, yay!

It is amazing, but the least funny thing in Garfield is the big orange cat. Some of the comics, without the cat, and really funny.

http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

Of course, not xkcd funny, but Dilbert on a bad day kind of funny.

Computers are increasingly getting picky about the passwords people use. Earlier I spent 10 minutes trying to change both my undergraduate computer science and computer service accounts so a friend could access them, who has now graduated (I have since put the passwords back to their normal password values). I wanted to change both passwords to "David&1" - a nice secure password, with upper/lower, symbol, numeric, 7 letters long. So I try...

Computer Science: The password must be 8 characters or more. Doh. So I change it to "HiDavid&1" and it goes through fine.

Computer Service: It would be handy to have both passwords the same, so try "HiDavid&1". Now I get told that the password must be between 6 and 8 characters long! So I remove the "Hi" and try "David&1", but woops, now the password is based on a dictionary word. So "Davd&1" it is, which goes through.

The password checking routines are getting more and more ridiculous! If I want a common password between the two systems, my password must be exactly 8 characters long. Computers have become massively powerful at cracking passwords, and as a result, humans are being asked to create and memorize more elaborate passwords. Not only this, but the diverse range of algorithms checking these passwords means that even within the university systems, one password is just not enough. It used to be the recommended practice to regularly change passwords, but given the immense effort required to do that, its hardly a realistic possibility.

My other concern is that the restrictions on passwords may actually be reducing the entropy available in passwords. When asked to randomly insert a number into a password, what percentage of people choose 1? What percentage put the number at the beginning/end? When asked to add a capital letter, how many people capitalise the first letter? When asked to pick a symbol, how many people put ! at the end? These all seem fairly possible human defaults. When combined with an exactly eight letter password, starting with a 1, followed by a capital, and ending in an exclamation mark, the search space is starting to get rather small.

A couple of weeks ago, I bought an audio splitter from Curry's. It's a little electrical thingy that plugs into an audio socket, and gives two audio sockets. Not very complex, only really electrical in the sense that it is made of something that conducts electricity, but very useful all the same. While I think the technical "wizardry" probably takes about 5mm, the device is in a rather weird and bendy grey plastic enclosure which takes up a good 7cm. But its still very handy - uses so far include:

1) Listening to music/dvd with someone else on a train, both having a complete set of headphones. This enables you do move your head away from theirs without being attached at the ear.

2) Plugging both my headphone+mic and my computer speakers into the computer, enabling me to just change volume dials to go from listening to music to gtalk'ing without scrambling around behind the desk.

At £5, it was way over priced. At 7cm, its just trying to look big to make up for the price. But it is so useful :-)

I demonstrate for the ADS course in Computer Science. It's basically a simple introduction to programming, using the Ada language (not one of my favourites). Students ask me questions, which I have to answer, but often they forget to include the question, or only place it at the very end of a rambling overview of their code. A typical interaction with a student might go along the lines of:

* Restating the question: "Question 1.2 asks us to calculate the fibonacci sequence recursively." (hint: I know the question, I actually did them 8 years ago, and have been demonstrating this course for the last 4 years. Plus its rarely relevant for actually helping)

* Explaining their approach: "I decided to implement a recursive function I'd use a function which calls itself." (hint: I know how to answer the question, its fairly simple, and there only is one answer)

* Explaining code in excruciating detail: "I use an if statement to test whether the value is less than 2. The if statement first tests the condition, then if the condition is true it does the first thing, otherwise it does the else thing." (hint: I know how an if statement works, but I can actually indent them properly)

* Me telling them to hurry up and cut to the chase. Sometimes accompanied by taking their mouse and flipping to the console to see the error message.

* Them showing me the compile error: "Line 2, Ada.Txet_IO is not a valid package" (hint: The error message says what's wrong, they aren't usually that hard to figure out)

If you call someone over to help you, there are two options: (1) they are clever enough to fix your problem and will know all this ridiculous explanation that you might require; (2) they are as stupid as you and playing on facebook would be a much better use of you time. I like to think I'm in category 1, and would like students to start all technical queries with "my code doesn't compile, here's the error message", or "my code gives the wrong answer, here's the test case".

On Sunday, I was sat in the Charles, playing Jenga, with three others. We completed the game. We reached a state where all rows had either only one block in the middle, or two on either side, apart from the very top row. We weren't playing cooperatively, and the tower was rickety as hell, but it did stand up until the end. I've never accomplished this before, and I doubt I ever will again, but it is certainly something to be proud of!

Photos were taken, and I'm sure will be appearing on facebook in due course.

I realised I haven't posted here for ages. Today I was going back through my old stuff, looking for my post about XSL and Haskell, and realised that I actually kinda enjoyed writing about my life, and it was actually kinda fun to read back through. So, that means I probably should do it some more.

Some basic updates:

* I am writing up my thesis, you can track my progress here: http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~ndm/thesis_words.png

* My sister is in Derby doing a degree in Radiography, basically training to X-Ray people. She works a lot harder than I do, and gets no money.

* My brother is off to Australia to do a pre-masters next month in drilling holes (they call it geosomething-or-other).

Life is fine.

PS. Help! I'm in a nutshell! How did I get into this bloody great big nutshell? What kind of shell has a nut like this?

James Blunt annoys me. A lot.

However, watching this video made me like him. If you haven't seen this video of him singing Triangle, then you should do.

But alas he was on T4 yesterday, singing his songs, and annoyed me once more.

Very funny: http://xkcd.com/c276.html

While I was reading this, I was also writing a parser, and had just decided that instead of using OpenBracket/CloseBracket, I would use OpenBracket/ShutBracket, so the text lined up.

Googling for "Neil Mitchell" on Google.com with personal search turned off and signed out of all accounts, http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=neil+mitchell - I have 7 out of the top 10 places!

The places I occupy are: 1 2 5 6 7 8 9

Go me! Out of 2 million Neil Mitchell hits on the internet, Google has ranked me the most important :)

http://www.meish.org/vd/