Month: January 2017

Learning Fortran – a blast from the past

Intro to Fortran – are you tolerably familiar with BASIC?

Over the weekend, I was clearing out some old paperwork and I found the notes from one of the assessed practical sessions at University.  Although I was studying biochemistry, an understanding of basic programming was essential, with many extra optional uncredited courses available.  It was a simple chemical reactions task and we could use BASIC or Fortran to code the solution.  I’d been coding in BASIC since I was a child1 so decided to go for the Fortran option as what’s the point in doing something easy…. Continue reading Learning Fortran – a blast from the past

Creative writing – harder than it looks

Procrastination while writing is easy… Cartoon by Cathy Thorne.

As a child I wrote a lot of stories.  I think my English teachers were disappointed that I chose a Science route rather than literature.  However, just like art, creative writing is something I’ve continued to pursue throughout my technical career (when I’ve felt creative enough!).  I wrote a novel during my PhD that I’ve not yet revisited to see if it’s worth publishing1 and have always jumped at opportunities to write articles and blog posts about the things that interest me.  However, I have had one idea for a book bubbling in my mind for the last twenty years and I have never really had the time to focus on it properly. Continue reading Creative writing – harder than it looks

Writing for other websites

Some of the websites that have published my postsTowards the end of 2016, I didn’t post as much content as I usually like to on here.  While there are all the usual excuses of free time, the main reason was that a lot of the ideas I had were being written for other websites.  So here’s a collection of my posts from the last few months of last year that didn’t make it on here. Continue reading Writing for other websites

Debate the idea, don’t attack the person

Over the past few days, my social media timeline has been full of angry people, predominantly in the UK and predominantly attacking people of note within the UK1.  This is, sadly, nothing new.  However I have noticed a further decline in the quality of debate, perpetuated by the strong emotions of what has happened in the world.  People whose opinions I respect and who normally make reasoned arguments have posted some pretty vile language that is literally “[person] is a [expletive]” in regard to Brexit, the NHS, Southern Rail and a whole host of regional issues.  If this was directed at someone with whom they agreed, then there would be, legitimately, outrage.  Name calling someone is never a valid argument.  Didn’t we all grow out of this at school? Apparently not. Continue reading Debate the idea, don’t attack the person

Review: Microsoft Sculpt Ergonmic Keyboard

Microsoft Sculpt keyboard
The Microsoft Sculpt keyboard

Anyone who has to sit near me in an open office for any length of time usually comments on the punishment that I tend to give keyboards.  I type (both general text and code) very quickly.  When my fingernails are in good condition (i.e. I haven’t spent the weekend with power tools) this fast typing can make a sound like heavy hail on a conservatory roof.  I’ve worn out keyboards before with one work laptop having to use ascii codes every time I needed to type s, n, j or i1 until a replacement arrived.  It’s not that I’m a heavy typer, just that I do a lot of it, especially as a  hands on manager over the years, I’ve had to write reports, documentation and code, so I’ve learned to be very, very fast at it. Continue reading Review: Microsoft Sculpt Ergonmic Keyboard

Anything you can do AI can do better (?): Playing games at a new level

Robot hands dealing cards
Image from BigThink.com

Learning to play games has been a great test for AI.  Being able to generalise from relatively simple rules to find optimal solutions shows a form of intelligence that we humans always hoped would be impossible.  Back in 1997, when IBMs Deep Blue beat Gary Kasparov in chess1 we saw that machines were capable of more than brute force solutions to problems.  20 years later2 and not only has AI mastered Go with Google’s DeepMind winning 4-1 against the world’s best player and IBM’s Watson has mastered Jeopardy,  there have also been some great examples of game play with many of the games I grew up playing: Tetris,  PacMan3, Space Invaders and other Atari games.  I am yet to see any AI complete Repton 2. Continue reading Anything you can do AI can do better (?): Playing games at a new level