Well, the packing hasn’t started yet, but the clearing out the room has already generated nine black bags full of rubbish. Along with copies of the Economist and old (half-inched) computer components, it’s mainly lecture notes and other course related stuff. I had been discussing with a friend who is just finishing her MRes course whether it was worth keeping them, but seeing as I doubt I’ll ever be doing Chemistry work (and doubt that I’ll desperately need something from a lecture course that I can’t either figure out or look up somewhere), they are heading for the bin. That only leaves me with some electronic copies of reports to add to my certificate to show for four years hard work. Well, four years of the course anyway.

There’s also been a bit of a giveaway going on – "It’s like a jumble sale, but you don’t have to pay anything" said Owain. There’s plenty of stuff that I haven’t used for a while, and I need to reconcile the ‘but it could be worth something’ with the ‘you wouldn’t have even remembered you own that if you hadn’t just found it’ attitudes. I’m leaning hard towards the latter, since being a natural horder I’ve ending up with lots of junk. Do I really need a P60 motherboard, and a 486 motherboard, when I have two other working computers? Really? What about the force-feedback steering wheel you haven’t plugged in for years? Have it, if you want.

But the giving things away seems strange to some people. If something has no value to me (or I’ve taken value out of it equivalent or greater than its cost), then I’m not losing anything by not having it. I could ask for something in return (like money, for instance), but why? I don’t gain anything by ownership, and I don’t gain anything by making it a scarce resource – if it was scarce (i.e. I kept it), I would only benefit relative to other people, not in absolute terms. So selling it would be kind of selfish, and fairly pointless.

You might notice that the economic philosophy of my moving house is broadly similar to the economics of Free and Open Source software. Except they are much more powerful and scaleable, since the ‘it’ in question can be possessed by an infinite amount of people simultaneously; because copying software has zero cost – it is information, not a physical object, which is being duplicated. So only by making restrictions on availability can you ensure earning money on the software itself. The problem with restricting availability of software is that it is completely unnatural – it has no incremental costs for duplication – and hence widespread piracy ensues. There are many companies pretending that costly software is quite natural; their existence depends on that fact, so their attitude isn’t surprising.

Imagine the food equivalent of software. Someone, somewhere grows an apple. They give the apple to someone, but the act of giving is instead copying, so both people have an apple. Each time they give someone else an apple, they still have one – the number of apples increases, and everyone wins. Just what price could you put on an apple? Sounds ridiculous perhaps, since everything you’ve ever been taught about the way the world works is based on the idea of scarce resources.

The only problem comes from the guy who grew the original apple. If it took him some time, or some effort, how can he make a living off of it? He can’t, directly. Perhaps he grew it in his free time. Perhaps he’s just generous. Maybe he is employed by a large company that wanted lots of apples for its staff, and the company doesn’t really mind if everyone else in the world has a free apple too – after all, they have their apples, and that’s what they wanted, so it’s no skin off their nose. But don’t be surprised if the non-self-replicating apple companies call foul, if they insist you get a better taste with their apples, if the new fangled apples are a danger to your security, your intellectual property, who do you sue when your free apple goes moldy, or other fear, uncertainty or doubt about this, that or the other thing.

Well, a really strained analogy, since Free/Open source software is pretty unique, and hence good analogies are few and far between. But it’s here to stay, and even if you look past the trees (wow, choice, better programs, better price) to the forest itself, you’ll realise it all makes sense.

Please, please, Virgin Trains, hire me to fix your website.

After trying to book a ticket from London to Glasgow, the website told me I couldn’t, and that it was likely that it wasn’t a valid route. Just in time I realised that I was in the Virgin Value ticket booking part of the website. Now I know a whole load about going from London to Glasgow, and I realised the problem – Virgin are pushing their Value brand of tickets, but you can’t get them less than three days in advance of the journey. Why I can’t just continue and buy a ‘normal’ ticket I don’t know – and how many people will either realise or care what’s going on?

Let’s take just one page of the many I’ve used, and I’ll savage it. After booking and paying, it tells you that a conformation is being emailed, or you can see the full confirmation by ‘clicking here‘. You then get a new window (bad), which is missing some of the toolbars (bad), and is a specific size (bad). The price is in ‘GBP’ (bad – I happen to know what GBP is, as probably do you, but still not something most people care about) and the booking reference number ‘is for Virgin Trains only’, not quotable at the station. This is again a facet of the company – web and telephone sales are a separate division from station ticket sales, and you can’t swap between them. I’ve ran into this before – I turned up to Glasgow Central to move my ticket back by a few days once, but it wasn’t possible for the aforementioned reason. Guys – deal with it. If it’s painted red and says Virgin Trains in big letters, it’s not my concern about your internal operating proceedures.

Anyway more on this one page – "We successfully reserved seats for some or all of your journey for this booking" – so which is it? Some or All? Do I have a seat from London to Glasgow, or just from Motherwell to Glasgow? You are giving me a ‘PIN’, not a ‘PIN number’ to use in the ticket machine, and if I need my ‘debit/credit card’ (it was a credit card I used, and the website should know that) why do I need an eight digit alphanumeric string as well? I have a ‘SUPER ADVANCE SINGLE ticket’, but what the hell is that? Why was I offered the choice between a ‘SUPER ADVANCE’ and an ‘ADVANCE’ ticket anyway – how often do I want the more expensive one? I might well be able to travel by the ‘AP ANY PERMITTED’ route, but where can I find out which routes are permitted? The service provider is ‘VIRGIN TRAINS’ – but can we please, please stop putting all the text entries in your database in FRIGGIN CAPITAL LETTERS? And finally, since you’ve already told me that I need to pick up the tickets from the machines in the station, should I really phone customer services if they haven’t arrived by post 1 day prior to my journey? I think not.

All said and done, to book the cheapest single from London Euston to Glasgow Central on Wednesday morning took me forty minutes, and it’s not like I’m either a web novice or a train booking novice. I can appreciate the complexity of the system that they have created, but I’d rather not have to appreciate it through a godawful website.

There’s someone with a sense of humour working for Virgin Trains website. I’m simultaneously reading a User Interface book, making a critique of my own website, and trying to book tickets (again) so it’s not really the train ride that’s occupying my attention. After managing to find how to book tickets (yeah, it’s the big logo thing saying ‘click here’, but have you seen the ‘Do Not Trust This Man’ sketch by Dom Joly – sometimes things are too obvious), I eventually get to the first bit of booking a ticket.

Where would you like to go?

If you haven’t decided, leave blank and let us suggest a destination for you

What? You’ve gone to book a ticket, logged in, and you don’t know where you are going? Still, I’m tempted to use the feature – saves me having to plan where to go travelling. Perhaps I should just keep buying singles and see where I end up.

Well, I didn’t have a viva in the end, but I got a First anyways. Which cheered me up a bit, since I didn’t really expect it, and certainly not what with the lack of work that I did in my final year. But hey, now it’s all over, and I can move on to other things.

The end of term was cool, with the end of term carnival being somewhat stunning. Kudos to those involved (including me, of course). I’m still shattered from it, and really need more sleep at some point..

Day One of the world tour saw me travelling as far as Tooting (hey, it’s a start), for Nia’s barbeque. Twas very nice, as was the walk home – the highlight of which was watching a recently-arrested man sprinting down the middle of the road, with his hands cuffed behind his back, being chased by two policemen. Walking past every flat I’ve lived in in London (except for Halls) brought back loads of memories, and with plenty of time to mull things over made it a pleasant wander.

Well, if there was ever any reason for me to never do anything else related to academia, and especially academic chemistry, then today would be it. I have missed a degree classification by less than 2%, and as a result, have the possibility of one last, final chance to sort it out and get a better grade. A free chance even – an unexpected opportunity; a bonus, if you like. But it’s just pissed me off – I’ve moped around (as is my want), avoided doing anything, and avidly watched the tennis, whilst not actually doing anything constructive. If I was going to spend the day not doing any work, then I could be not doing work in the pub, round at a friends house, or (more likely) in and around DramSoc.

Instead, I’ve had a fantastic time here, feeling pissed off. I’ve been at this crap for seventeen and a half years in a row now, and I’m finished with it. The (possible) viva is just a dying gasp from a fatally wounded animal, and it’ll be a blessed relief when it gives up the ghost. The only reason I’ve stuck it out this long is for the concept of ‘having a degree’, a seeming necessity for future careers. Other than that, I’d have given up years ago – I’m wasting my time here. Or not – I try very hard to make sure that I waste as little time as possible on my degree, but it has, over the last year or so, got to the point where I resent every hour of my time that I spend on it. At least I’ve got plenty of other things to keep me occupied, or else I really would be wasting my time.

Well, I guess I just need to listen to the sock. And if it’s not something that makes me happy, then there better well be a damn good reason for me doing it.

"In this paper, we blah blah blah, blah blah blah blah…"

Hmmm, let’s try that again.

"In this paper, we examine the blah blah blah, blah blah…"

Not quite getting there. Again.

"In this paper, we examine the methods used for the simulation of blah blah blah blah blah blah blah…"

I might as well give up, and be glad I don’t really care how well the viva goes tomorrow.