PIMOM

 Well, a new acronym... PIMOM.

OCD has made me a Prisoner In My Own Mind (PIMOM) and it is very difficult to break out.

Never mind, tomorrow is another day.

 OK. so I'm diving deep into C++. It turns out I need to learn Linear Algebra and possibly other aspects of maths to get the most out of "Discovering Modern C++ (2e)". That is quite a challenge!

OK, so I've read broadly, now to dive deep into C++

So I.T. book reviews are being submitted, checked, and forwarded for publication. These past two weeks have been... challenging. Nevertheless, I have a couple of C++ books to delve into. It appears I am a bit of an optimist when it comes to thinking about estimating things. But I seem to get there in the end. Also, I am running the occasional Traveller game and that provides a break from everything else.

This my morning I managed to get nearly an hour of weeding done, suitably protected with sun cream and an Ubuntu beanie hat. Followed by doing some background reading about the Trojan Reach (a sector of space in the Traveller Charted Space setting), interspersed with chapters from "The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding Volume 2". Then rounded off by watching Matrix - Revolutions (the 3rd film). All in all, a good day.

Python 3

I've been reading Python stuff quite a bit, getting to grips with a Python 3 and Design Patterns book. I'm not so certain about the book, though. Time will tell. However, over the weekend I designed and wrote a Python program to create a quick reference table for the Mongoose Traveller 2nd edition Traveller game. It all boiled down to one key function:

def distance_km_and_thrust_to_seconds(distance_km,thrust):
    distance_meters = distance_km * 1000;
    result = 2 * math.sqrt(distance_meters/(thrust*10))
    return result

Covid-19

Well, on Friday 22nd, I felt like a train had hit me. So I didn't see people in case I pass on a nasty bug to them.

On Monday 25th, I tested positive for Covid-19, using a Lateral Flow Test. So I can't go out. Fortunately the Chapples have been dropping off groceries which is really nice of them. The symptoms are that of a bad cold but I don't even want to pass that on to other people. Paul Chapple recommended that I stay at home until I test negative for Covid-19. In the meantime I have been reading "Learning MySQL" and wondering about running Traveller games. I tested positive again this evening (27th April).

A bit of a surprise...

 ... apparently, the writer Philip K. Dick had schizophrenia, too!

family life (DVD, 1972)

Janice Baildon is a young woman living with her conventional, authoritarian parents. Her sister Barbara has already fled the roost. Janice becomes pregnant, is coerced into having an abortion and has a psychotic episode – resulting in being admitted into a Psychiatric Hospital. In there, she is treated. Initially by an experimental Psychiatrist who does not believe in over-medicating patients and has a very liberal approach. However, that Psychiatrist is told to move on by the Hospital Committee and Janice faces 1970’s medicine, crowded wards and ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy). ECT is now typically used for depression. Once discharged, she continues living with her parents and seeing her problematical boyfriend.  However, the stresses of life result in more psychotic breaks, triggering Janice’s descent from everyday girl to mute, troubled woman. I don’t know how accurately this film, directed by Ken Loach, documents its subject but it is definitely a case of “same schizophrenia, different century”.

2021. A retrospective.

This year was spent virus dodging. I met with friends, occasionally, going for walks with Margaret and sometimes Neil and Les. I socially bubbled with Richard, watching DVDs and the very occasional film. I keep in touch with some Contact friends either in person or on Facebook but, for privacy’s sake, won’t go into details.

It was the year of Zoom. The Tyneside Linux User Group met once a month on Zoom. Church services were run on Zoom. Even a Traveller session was run on Zoom.

I am the volunteer reviews editor for the ACCU’s CVu magazine which is published once every two months. Every time CVu is published, I send PDFs of it to my publishing contacts, who in turn contact me when they have titles they would like reviewed. I then arrange for ACCU members to receive review copies who in turn send me their reviews and I, in turn format the reviews correctly and send them to Cvu’s editor. Over the year, I have dabbled with Python, C, bash shell scripting, C++ and Makefiles. In particular, I was interested in how to learn programming languages and how to remain competent in them. I bought some blank revision cards from WH Smiths and created some revision cards for bash shell scripting. Late in the year I committed to reviewing “Learning PHP, MySQL and JavaScript”, something that I will be resuming after the Christmas break.

I continued to run the Computer Wombling Project, even though supply of unwanted computers was next to nothing. I’ve been helping Richard with his wombled PC that runs Ubuntu Linux and LibreOffice.

To counterbalance my I.T. efforts, I read at night. For quite some time I read about how to run roleplaying games. Then I read background material for running Traveller games. Then I started brushing up on particulars of the Traveller TTRPG (Table Top Role Playing Game). I have created a small library of fiction in my spare room, with the hope of returning to fiction one day.

October saw the publication of my technical article, “Stufftar Revisited”, in Overload magazine - available here - and I went on to experiment with the "tar" command. Throughout the year I reviewed these books:-

• “Thriving in a Crowded and Changing World: C++ 2006–2020.
• Software Engineering at Google : Lessons Learned from Programming Over Time
• Effective C By Robert C. Seacord
• Zero to One : Notes on Startups or How to Build the Future”
• How Linux Works: What every Superuser Should Know
• The Kollected Kode Vicious
• Odyssey: The Complete Game Master’s Guide to Campaign Management

The reviews are online and the main page on reviews can be found here. I also dabbled with coding. In December I wrote a brief (438 line, 14 function) program in the C programming language for handling some statistics in Traveller.

I hope you have a prosperous 2022!