Interview meme
Mar. 9th, 2007 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenFive questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
izhilzha
1. What's the most beautiful thing (person/event/whatever) that you have ever seen?
Sunsets. Awesome. Especially ones with feathery clouds. I love feathery clouds, they're my favourite.
2. If you could ask any author, living or dead, a question, who would it be and what would you ask him/her?
Hmmmm. G.K. Chesterton, I think. And I'd ask him how he could compare his defense of tradition ("Tradition is the democracy of history") with the traditions of the Pharisees...
He would then proceed to demolish my argument very wittily, and I would retreat in embarrassment.
3. How did you get interested in programming?
My first fun introduction to programming was due to my interest in art. No, it wasn't computer graphics (that came later) but because I'd signed up for an Art camp that was running alongside a Computer camp... and when I turned up I found out they'd cancelled the Art camp because not enough people had signed up, so there I was, willy-nilly, spending a week being creative on computers instead of being creative with art. And because it was a holiday camp, they had to make it fun, rather than serious-boring-hard, which is probably how it gets introduced to most people. And then the following semester I had to do Computer Maths -- for most people it was elective, they could choose to do Computer Maths or (I forget what it was). But anyone who was doing Maths II as well as Maths I, we'd already done the whatever-it-was in Maths II, so we had to do Computer Maths. That was the usual tedious kind of stuff where you write programs to calculate factorials (what are factorials actually used for? They obviously were invented before computers, but the only times I've ever seen them used is as an example computer program...)
Then I had to decide what to do at Uni. Well, I'd already decided I wanted to do Science (despite being under pressure from my peers to do Medicine "because you're smart") but I didn't know what branch of Science to pursue. I eventually decided to go for a double-major in Chemistry and Computer Science, because I liked Chemistry in high school, and I'd liked the programming I'd done, and because, pragmatically, it was better to have two strings to my bow. So I did both computing and chemistry subjects in first year, but I decided at the end of that, that programming was more fun than chemistry. My programming assignments were the first time I'd ever actually enjoyed working on assignments, wheras Chem labs were kind of stressful, you had to be so careful, and things didn't always work, it was... messy. Well, of course, things don't always work with programs, but they're fixable; you track down bugs like a detective tracking down clues. With chemistry, if you messed up the lab work, that was it. Or do it all over again.
4. What was your "first fandom"?
Blake's 7. It was AH who introduced me to fandom and B7 fanfic (she'd written a magnificent epic, which was the first piece of fanfic I ever read, and I suspect I might not have had so high a standard for fanfic if that hadn't been my first exposure to it). Chronicles (the longest-running B7 fanzine in Australia) was the first fanzine I contributed to, the B7 mailing list was the longest-running internet fan group I've been involved in, yeah, it's B7 all the way.
Not that I didn't like other shows earlier, like classic Trek and Doctor Who, but Blake's 7 was my first fandom.
5. What book do you not currently own that you would really like to?
The early-edition versions of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, because of the lovely colour illustrations. I was most dissappointed to discover that our family copies of these actually belonged to my sister, who took them away with her when she got married.
izhilzha1. What's the most beautiful thing (person/event/whatever) that you have ever seen?
Sunsets. Awesome. Especially ones with feathery clouds. I love feathery clouds, they're my favourite.
2. If you could ask any author, living or dead, a question, who would it be and what would you ask him/her?
Hmmmm. G.K. Chesterton, I think. And I'd ask him how he could compare his defense of tradition ("Tradition is the democracy of history") with the traditions of the Pharisees...
He would then proceed to demolish my argument very wittily, and I would retreat in embarrassment.
3. How did you get interested in programming?
My first fun introduction to programming was due to my interest in art. No, it wasn't computer graphics (that came later) but because I'd signed up for an Art camp that was running alongside a Computer camp... and when I turned up I found out they'd cancelled the Art camp because not enough people had signed up, so there I was, willy-nilly, spending a week being creative on computers instead of being creative with art. And because it was a holiday camp, they had to make it fun, rather than serious-boring-hard, which is probably how it gets introduced to most people. And then the following semester I had to do Computer Maths -- for most people it was elective, they could choose to do Computer Maths or (I forget what it was). But anyone who was doing Maths II as well as Maths I, we'd already done the whatever-it-was in Maths II, so we had to do Computer Maths. That was the usual tedious kind of stuff where you write programs to calculate factorials (what are factorials actually used for? They obviously were invented before computers, but the only times I've ever seen them used is as an example computer program...)
Then I had to decide what to do at Uni. Well, I'd already decided I wanted to do Science (despite being under pressure from my peers to do Medicine "because you're smart") but I didn't know what branch of Science to pursue. I eventually decided to go for a double-major in Chemistry and Computer Science, because I liked Chemistry in high school, and I'd liked the programming I'd done, and because, pragmatically, it was better to have two strings to my bow. So I did both computing and chemistry subjects in first year, but I decided at the end of that, that programming was more fun than chemistry. My programming assignments were the first time I'd ever actually enjoyed working on assignments, wheras Chem labs were kind of stressful, you had to be so careful, and things didn't always work, it was... messy. Well, of course, things don't always work with programs, but they're fixable; you track down bugs like a detective tracking down clues. With chemistry, if you messed up the lab work, that was it. Or do it all over again.
4. What was your "first fandom"?
Blake's 7. It was AH who introduced me to fandom and B7 fanfic (she'd written a magnificent epic, which was the first piece of fanfic I ever read, and I suspect I might not have had so high a standard for fanfic if that hadn't been my first exposure to it). Chronicles (the longest-running B7 fanzine in Australia) was the first fanzine I contributed to, the B7 mailing list was the longest-running internet fan group I've been involved in, yeah, it's B7 all the way.
Not that I didn't like other shows earlier, like classic Trek and Doctor Who, but Blake's 7 was my first fandom.
5. What book do you not currently own that you would really like to?
The early-edition versions of Andrew Lang's Fairy Books, because of the lovely colour illustrations. I was most dissappointed to discover that our family copies of these actually belonged to my sister, who took them away with her when she got married.
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no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 10:50 am (UTC)Factorials are used for lots of things, especially where probabilities are being calculated that involve permutations or combinations. A simple example: if you draw five playing cards selected at random from a pack, what's the probability that all five will be red?
no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 07:47 pm (UTC)I'd forgotten about probabilities. And I did that in maths courses too!
(thwaps self in head)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 06:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 07:49 pm (UTC)I'm currently reading "Manalive" for the first time. 8-)
no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 09:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-09 10:00 pm (UTC)