That Boy Needs Therapy

Nerd Surgery: Part 1

2007-03-13T02:50:52Z

Welcome to the first in an occasional series in which I'll present solutions to the very real problems faced by nerds today. Nerds, as we know, are the most important people in the world. They give us science, art and technical support. Behind every great man or woman is an unseen army of nerds. Often doing a wee in their coffee. But despite their vital role, the problems of nerds are often overlooked. Well, no longer! Fear not, my socially inadequate brothers and sisters. Allow me to offer the lessons learned from many years of dedicated nerddom.

Lesson 1: Getting caught looking at porn.

The internet is for porn, as they say. And since nerds invented the internet, it's only right that we should get first dibs on the good stuff. But whether you're at home, in the office or on the train, getting caught perusing the latest offering from MassiveArses.com can be potentially embarrassing. How do you respond to the cornish-faced gawks of your colleagues? Here are a few suggestions.

Blame typos: "Whoops, I meant to Google 'Symbiosis in higher plants', but accidentally searched for 'Samus Aran in only her pants'."
Notes: This might not work, but it's worth a shot.

Disown the computer: "Hang on, this isn't my machine! It must belong to some pervert!"
Notes: It adds to the effect if you then pick up the computer and throw it out of the window, but don't do this unless you were seriously considering upgrading anyway.

Pretend it's art: "It's common knowledge that Botticelli and Rubens routinely painted erotic scenes, often involving whips and wrestling in jam."
Notes: This isn't strictly true, but remember you're a nerd. Nobody is going to argue with you about Renaissance art.

Distraction: "Look out of that window! A dead body!"
Notes: If you're going to use this technique, then be aware that it's very difficult to distract somebody from porn, which is in itself the ultimate distraction. A dead body is one of the few things more awesome than jiggling naked people. If you can actually find a dead body, this technique should work all the better.

Appeal to their better nature: "I'm having a sponsored 'looking at porn' day. For charity."
Notes: This often works as well, as people will let you get away with just about anything if they think it's for charity. Tell them you're raising money for the Cute Injured Orphaned Guide Dogs for Cute Orphaned Deaf Children With One Leg and Tragically Hairy Knuckles Appeal, or something. If they seem to be buying it, ask for sponsorship. You could make a tidy profit.

Try honesty: "Yes, I'm looking at porn. I like porn. It is good."
Notes: Use at your own risk, but I can't deny I'm curious to see what would happen if anyone actually tried this.

That's all for today, kids. What will it be next time? Avoiding sport, or maybe nightclub survival techniques? There's only one way to find out: keep checking this blog for further updates! Alternatively, you could just put the whole matter out of your head and get on with your life. That's probably a better idea, actually.

Halophiles! Is YOUR neighbourhood safe from them?

2006-12-15T13:51:45Z

Today, I am writing from a new and exotic location. Well, it isn't strictly new as I used to come here quite often. And it isn't really exotic either, unless you consider a university campus on the outskirts of Coventry exotic. What I actually mean is that I'm not writing from my usual comfortable, dimly lit, messy bedroom, but from an uncomfortable, brightly lit, still quite messy computer room next to my old lab. It's been a while since I was last here at uni. So much so that my login has expired, so I'm currently using the internet via the user account of somebody called DPress. I don't know who this DPress is, but I do hope they appreciate the entertaining pun that their name encapsulates. Although it would suck if you were called DPress and actually suffered from depression. Imagine the therapists trying to hide their smirks. That wouldn't help at all.

Anyway, I digress. Or, rather, I haven't really started on today's topic yet. Today's topic is my PhD thesis, and my return to the university in order to get the accursed thing printed, bound and out of my sight.

The fact that I finished the thesis at all is sort of remarkable, to the extent that I keep re-opening the document to make sure that it's actually there, and I haven't somehow imagined it. Things were going fairly well earlier in the year, until I hit a great big wall of depression, and fell into a cycle of procrastination and apathy. The longer I left it, the worse it became, as the deadlines drew closer and my recollection of the facts grew fuzzier. I got a three month extension, giving me until the end of the year to finish. Frankly, it looked like I wasn't going to make that deadline either for a while. As for how I actually did it... all I can say is that the support of the one I love inspired me to press on and finish.

So, with the thesis done, all that remained was for me to make a brief return to the university in order to print out the required two copies, get them bound with soft covers, and hand them in to the appropriate university gargoyles. I set out yesterday morning, intending to turn up at uni, print them, hand them in to the binders and then pick up the finished products this morning. All that remained would be a leisurely trip to University House, the uni's hellish information-processing nexus, to drop them off.

Complication number one was that I didn't actually arrive at uni until 3pm, largely due to my continually misplaced faith in public transport. Well, no matter. Those marvellous colour laser printers can spit out two 126-page documents in a matter of minutes! I'd have plenty of time to print out, chat with old lab-mates and make my way down to the binders by the time they shut at 5pm.

Enter complication number two. The colour printers are broken. Now, I don't deal well with stress, so I think it reflects well on my self-control that the library is in no way smashed up or vandalised. No, after scouring the building for another colour printer, we came up with the following solution: Print out the whole thesis in black and white. Then, using a key which we may or may not have been meant to have, I could commandeer the office of a holidaying professor and use his antiquated colour printer to print out the colour pages only. I did briefly consider using his printer to do the whole thing, but reconsidered after seeing how long it took to print out one damn page.

The last of my colour pages popped out of the printer at 4.40pm. It would take fifteen minutes to get to the binders. I could still make it! Except... I still had to substitute the newly-printed colour pages for their black-and-white equivalents. Twenty colour pages, and two copies of the thesis made forty sheets in total. I had five minutes to insert them. That's one sheet every 7.5 seconds. I didn't make it. I'm actually glad I didn't. If I did, I'd only spend Christmas worrying that in my haste I'd got the pages in the wrong order.

Instead, I dropped the documents off at the binders this morning. Apparently they'll be ready at 3.30 today. It's a long walk to University House, who, I have been informed, will be closing today at "about 4-ish".

Still, it'll be worth it. If all goes well, in a few months' time I'll have an actual PhD. Yeah, I'll get to put "Dr" in front of my name. And spend the rest of my life explaining to people that, no, I'm not actually a medical doctor. And then watching the disappointment in their eyes as they mentally reclassify me from 'noble saver of lives' to 'charlatan'. Yes, academia is fun!

The devil went down to Scunthorpe...

2006-12-05T10:08:22Z

Keeping a diary is hard. Writing the first entry is even harder. So, in lieu of any meaningful content, I will now talk about diaries that I have kept in the past. There have been, at my reckoning, four or five past attempts. I don't think any of them made it past the middle of January.

Part of the problem is what to write about. During these earlier attempts, I was still a child. And, to be honest, kids don't have the most riveting lives. Their problems are usually trifling, their grievances generally petty, and their use of expressive prose is, to say the least, lacking. Simply put, kids' diaries are crap. Well, Anne Frank's was pretty good, but then she ended up getting killed by Nazis, so I'd be wary of following her example too closely.

Trying to keep a diary was one of those tasks - like writing a CV - that only served to bring home what a dull and empty life I had. Entries such as "Today I went to school, came home and had my tea" were not going to have publishing houses competing for the rights in years to come. Of course, you could argue, keeping a diary should be primarily about personal reflection. It's not supposed to be a record of experiences so much as a record of thoughts. And this would have been fine, were I ever inclined to write my true thoughts down. There were two main factors stopping me from doing this. The first was the risk of them being discovered, and the embarrassment that would follow. The second was the prospect of rediscovering them in a few year's time and seeing just what a pillock I used to be. And in a way, I was right. I was a pillock. Hell, I'm still a pillock. Maybe nowadays I'm just more comfortable with that knowledge. I no longer hold delusions of becoming a regular, ordinary member of society. I'm a frail, anxious nerd, and always will be... and really, there are worse things one could be.

Returning to the first factor that I mentioned as frightening me away from diary-keeping: the risk of someone (read: my younger brother) finding my diary and doing the late-eighties/early-nineties equivalent of 'LOL' at my innermost thoughts. Well, on one occasion, I decided to circumnavigate this issue by devising a code. It was a simple substitution system... hey, I was only ten, after all... and I immediately began writing entries with a renewed sense of purpose and secrecy. But after a while... well, it became tedious. Mentally formulating an entry, then painstakingly converting it, letter by letter, into code was taking a very long time indeed. And frankly, it didn't seem to be worth it. The encrypted messages contained nothing of any real interest, even to me. My life was far too boring to merit encryption. It got to the point where I invented an attraction to a classmate just so I had something to write about. I tried my best to find her attractive but... well, ultimately the whole project was doomed to failure. Sure, Samuel Pepys kept an encrypted diary, but he was an MP who hung out with monarchs and had a ringside seat for the Great Fire of London, the plague, and various interesting wars. I was a small boy with an existence so boring that I had to invent a fictitious infatuation in a vain effort to make my life seem more worthy of recording.

So, I'd like to end this post with a message to future generations. If, by some twist of fate, future historians find my old diary, and carefully decode it in the hopes of gaining insight into what life was really like in the turbulent year of 1991, I'd like to apologise for wasting your time. I'd also like to reiterate that my friendship with Elizabeth Carter was entirely platonic.