Category: Ramblings

Ah, summer. Wimbledon. Glastonbury. Strawberries and whipped cream.

But also, gardening. I hate gardening. It is a lot more fun than it used to be, though, because Alex enjoys playing outside so much. And when he sees me working, he wants to come and help. Today he was using a small garden fork as if it were a spade, pushing it into the ground, and stamping it down with his foot.

Also, no matter how much I dislike doing the garden work, it is quite satisfying to see the end results. Our jungle is slowly being transformed into something a bit more civilised…

Am I the only one who uses the cross-eyed method of comparing lists? I mentioned this to someone at work today and they looked at me like I was a space alien.

The way it works is this: you take the two lists you want to compare, and line them up side-by-side. You can do this with sheets of paper, or on-screen with columns of data in spreadsheets.

Next, slowly cross your eyes so that the two lists are superimposed. The hardest part of this is crossing your eyes and keeping them focussed at the same time. But if you can get the two lists exactly overlapping in your cross-eyed view, it becomes very easy to spot any differences. Items that are identical will overlap precisely, and will look normal. But items that are different will never properly line up, and so will look strange.

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I’ve been selected for Jury Service at the High Court, starting 25th June.

Apparently, just because I’ve been selected doesn’t mean that I will actually have to sit on a jury. The court calls up a pool of jurors, and then selects individuals from this pool on the day a trial starts. So there’s a chance I’ll just be sitting around, waiting to be called. Or I may end up making a decision about someone’s innocence or guilt. Who knows. It might be interesting.

I was over in Glasgow today, on Philip’s stag party. After some warm-up drinks at the Hogshead pub, we went bowling. I’m blaming my poor scores on a mixture of alcohol and an over-enthusiastic throw in the first frame, which hurt my thumb. After that, my I couldn’t find a comfortable grip any more. The thumb is still swollen and ouchie.

After bowling we went for dinner at TGI Friday’s, where we ate an obscene amount of food at obscene prices. I came home soon afterwards, before they progressed to the strip club. Noisy Rangers supporters were screaming aggressive sectarian football chants all the way back, and smoking. The lone conductor never stood a chance of subduing them, but kudos to her for trying anyway.

I don’t remember when I first came across a reference to John Perry’s essay on Structured Procrastination. It’s an Internet standard by now.

“Structured procrastination means shaping the structure of the tasks one has to do in a way that exploits this fact. The list of tasks one has in mind will be ordered by importance. Tasks that seem most urgent and important are on top. But there are also worthwhile tasks to perform lower down on the list. Doing these tasks becomes a way of not doing the things higher up on the list. With this sort of appropriate task structure, the procrastinator becomes a useful citizen. Indeed, the procrastinator can even acquire, as I have, a reputation for getting a lot done.”

Every now and then I go through a spell where I am reminded that this is exactly how I allocate my own time. This week, for example, I have floored another chunk of our loft, cut the grass and done a big tidy-up of our front garden, and started work on the next version of the AmphetaFrames templates.

What I should have been doing is catching up on my correspondance. So if you’re one of the people I owe an email…sorry! I’d like to say that I’ll get round to it soon, but realistically I’ll probably end up tidying our garage instead.