In the world of programming computers, one of the most common glitches that you can accidentally build into a system is the “off by one” error. This is when your code works exactly as you would expect it to, but instead of doing the thing you have asked it to do the number of times you thought you had told it to do it, it does it one time fewer. Or one time more.
The frustration this error causers is because of the surety that you have done something dumb. There isn’t really a mistake in the language or grammar of the code - it wouldn’t run at all if there was, and there isn’t really a mistake in the basic logic of what you are trying to do -it would do something completely unexpected if there was. No, you have just made some silly assumption, done bad maths, or forgotten that numbers start at 0, not at 1, and it is the mark of a good or a bad programmer how they fix it. If your programme always does the thing one time not enough, a bad programmer can just force it to add another one on the end. In one minute the programme is, for anyone who doesn’t look inside the workings of it, fixed. But a good programmer will always want to find out where the mistake was and correct it at the point of failure. Sometimes this can mean in a rewrite of almost everything you did, taking hours or days, at the end of which you it does exactly the same thing as the easy fix would have done, but you know that it is robust, bug free, and can be relied on whenever you need to build on top of it.
We are now very much into spring and forwards looking to the adventures we might have at the barracks this year, and curious to discover the learnings. But I just seem unable to ignore this troublesome feeling that in the background there is an off by one error somewhere in the fundamentals of it all.
You don’t need a background in computers to be able to recognise a feeling of having an easy-fix somewhere at the core of things. I just put it in computer terms because that was such a huge part of my waking hours for such a long time. The idea that a fundamental re-write might be needed can be pretty familiar to everyone, I think. And because everything is kinda working, it is mostly pretty easy to ignore. But I don’t like it, and I hope to figure it out sooner rather than later.
This week, I will be in the forest quite a bit. I have permission to clear out a couple of trees with bark beetle in them. Fortunately, they are quite close. Carrying a whole tree out of the forest on your back is not the sort of job you can do in one go.
I would love to try to get a cheeky row of peas into the ground, and also a couple of potatoes. They would both be ok to wait another week or two, but I am keen.
Otherwise, it’s the normal run of things. Oh, except I am now legal in Germany at last. In September last year, a helpful policeman uncovered some administrative glitch that meant I had been living in the fatherland as an illegal immigrant for the last 5 years. Fortunately, it was all relatively speedily and unproblematically sorted out with the good humour and ease that my adoptive county is famous for, and I am now an entirely legal immigrant. For either the next two, or ten years, depending on which side of my identity card you look at.
To celebrate, I shall have a cup of tea, some Marmite on toast and listen to the shipping forecast on Radio 4.
Be lovely to all things, and I shall return with another chapter of the Book of the Barracks in a week
Your loving Pirate Ben
xoxo
Having a glitch is not much fun!! Xx