!markdown ( Read more... )

I've been on the antidepressant fluoxetine (better known as Prozac) for nearly a year now, and I thought I'd write about what it's been like. I've heard a lot of scaremongering about how awful antidepressants are and how they don't actually work and they all have terrible side effects ranging from permanent impotence to a constant emotional ( Read more... )

[Wherein we review an academic conference in the High/Low/Crush/Goal/Bane format used for reviewing juggling conventions on rec.juggling.]

High: My old Codeplay colleague Ally Donaldson's FAT-GPU workshop. He was talking about his GPUVerify system, which takes CUDA or OpenCL programs and either proves them free of data races and synchronisation- ( Read more... )

1. Start tracking my weight and calorie intake again, and get my weight back down to a level where I'm comfortable. I've been very slack on the actual calorie-tracking, but I have lost nearly a stone, and at the moment I'm bobbing along between 11st and about 11st 4lb. It would be nice to be below 11st, but I find I'm actually pretty comfortable at ( Read more... )

I don't normally make New Year's resolutions, but what the hell.

1. Start tracking my weight and calorie intake again, and get my weight back down to a level where I'm comfortable. This morning it was 12st 1.9 - not terribly high in the scheme of things, but it's almost as high as it was when I first started dieting (though I think a bit more of ( Read more... )

Previously on posts tagged with 'angst' (mostly friendslocked): our hero became depressed, sought help, and is now (mostly) feeling better. Now read on...

John Walker, in his excellent book The Hacker's Diet, distinguishes two approaches to tackling problems, which he calls the Manager's approach and the Engineer's approach. Management is about ( Read more... )

I was recently delighted to receive an email from someone saying that he'd just started a PhD with my old supervisor, and did I have any advice for him? You'll be unsurprised to learn that I did; I thought I'd post it here in the hope that someone else might find it useful. Some of what follows is specific to my supervisor, my field, or my ( Read more... )

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As seems inevitable these days, a load of my friends are doing National¹ Novel Writing Month this year. I won't be joining them: I have no particular ambition to become a novelist. However, I do want to become a better programmer.

To that end, I shall be participating in my own Personal Code Writing Month, the rules of which are

1. Write some non- ( Read more... )

Yesterday I finally crossed off a to-do item that's been bothering me for twenty-one years ( Read more... )