Small•Hadron•Collider

Just to let you all know that my new site, Small•Hadron•Collider, is finally up and running. I'm currently developing a few iPhone apps as well as a referencing app for the Mac. Also available for web and graphical design. As mentioned in the previous post, this is also the home of my new blog.

Small•Hadron•Collider

Change of Address/Focus

In an attempt to unify all of my internet goings-on I will be moving my blog to my new Small•Hadron•Collider site (http://smallhadroncollider.com/blog/) in a few week's time. I will keep Neo-Sophistry up for prosperity's sake, but I will no longer be writing to it.

The new blog will be very similar to this one, with a slight change of focus to reflect the fact that I won't be doing philosophy anymore. I hope to make it a bit more professional also.

Thanks for reading, hope you can join me on my new blog

Tumtetum

Not done a post in about a month. So to keep anyone that's still reading entertained I thought I'd post a book I wrote when I was younger. So here it is: Pete - A Story (in Words). It's only about 50 pages. Takes about ten minutes to read. And, most importantly, it's all true.

Addendum

I'll continue to blog after I leave the philosophical fold. It may get a bit more computery, but it'll still just be me waffling in my usual kind of way.

It's Been A While

Hello.

I've not written anything on here for a couple of weeks; I would like to say that I've been busy, but I've mostly been procrastinating (a word that's horribly overused by students – and only students).

So, I've decided that I'll more than likely be giving up philosophy. At least for a while. I hope to go into the indie Mac software business – although I'll need to get a real job while that's taking-off. My bibliography program is going well, and I hope to have proper betas out before Christmas. I'm going to call the company 'Fake Barn'.

If someone had told me a few years ago that I'd be giving up philosophy to try and start a software company, well... I guess they'd be psychic or something. But I'd also have been quite doubtful. I really wanted to get into teaching philosophy: I think philosophy's greatest use (perhaps only use) is to get people to think more clearly. But you can't just teach undergraduate philosophy. And, to be honest, I find philosophy conferences pretty hard work. Even going to one talk. I'm normally the guy at the back looking out the window.

Of course, the great thing about academia is you can come back to it whenever you want. Maybe my mind will have changed in a few years. Maybe it won't. Maybe the software thing will take off. Maybe it won't. I've gone from having the next ten years planned (PhD, lecturing, etc.) to not knowing what I'll do in a couple of months time.

It's kinda exciting!

Jerks

I'm a bit annoyed that Federer lost Wimbledon – I really wanted him to get the record for 6 times in a row for some reason.

But I'm more annoyed about an e-mail I got this morning. Here's the backstory: I was having trouble with the Bibliography program I'm making – couldn't get the saving to work – so I joined the Cocoa-Dev mailing-list and sent an e-mail out explaining my problem. I got lots of helpful replies back and it soon became apparent what the problem was (something really basic, as always). Fixed the issue and everything worked great. I was highly appreciative. Should have stopped there.

But then this morning I got an e-mail from one of the people (who I'll call Mr. X) who had replied with:

Not to harp on the point, but this [i.e. the working fix] is exactly what I was suggesting you should do in my first message, and exactly the result I was suspecting you would discover [...] And I also had my suspicions as to the cause. But I couldn't get you to perform the test I was asking you to perform.

This was after someone had suggested inserting a particular piece of code to see if such and such was the problem, and, as it turns out, it was. Now apparently Mr. X was trying to get me to do this in the first place, but I misunderstood what he meant (he had only given an ambiguous description, not code) and I tried something else which didn't work.

But Mr. X couldn't just be happy that the combined effort of various people had led to a solution. Instead he had to send me an e-mail telling me how he knew what was wrong but that I was unwilling to do the right thing to get my program to work. How silly I must be.

Now, I appreciate all the help I got from people who, frankly, have better things to do with their time (including Mr. X). But I don't appreciate being treated like an idiot. I'm new to programming Cocoa; I said as much in my first e-mail. So obviously I'm going to get things wrong sometimes or misunderstand what is meant. Everyone else on the list got that. They had patience. They explained in more detail. And as a result of their effort I now have a program that works as it should.

You can't be arrogant if you're trying to help someone learn something. There's not point: it's presupposed when you ask for help that those you are asking are more knowledgeable than you. Yet on forums and mailing lists you always get these people that just have to show that they knew all along what the problem was and how much better than you they are. There's a name for such people: jerks.

This Will Never Get Old For Me

Prepare to be shocked: oil prices reach new record high!!

Conservative Science

An interesting article featuring some of my favourite topics: Conservapedia, evolution, science, and funding.

Shocking News

Shocking news: the price of oil hits new record of $2 over the previous record from last week!

BibTex Program

I decided that instead of spending my time doing, you know, work I would rather make a Mac program that converts BibTex files into nicely formatted bibliographies that I can use in Pages. Finished the 0.0.1(alpha) release today: you copy the BibTex text into a box and it produces a nice looking bibliography.

Want to make it fully drag-and-drop though: you drag and BibTex file or text onto the output box and it automatically appears as a bibliography. And the output box needs to be fully editable. Lots of work still to do then.

I would put up a complied version, but it still needs lots of work before even the alpha version goes public.