Mark Carroll's Journal

Recently, I got around to watching some movies:

• Donnie Darko (2001) had a twenty-fifth-anniversary screening, it was interesting to watch the theatrical cut. I'm not sure anyone with just that would have figured out much about quite what was happening and why (the conversation with the physics teacher may help) but I'm also not sure it really matters. The filming and nostalgia were good, there were some amusing exchanges, and at various points it felt quite relatable.


• Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die (2025) made for a nice change from typical Hollywood fare. It definitely needs taken in the spirit it was intended and, given that, it's a laudable effort. It reminded me of elements of Terminator, Brazil, and Black Mirror. Somewhat biting and irreverent, it asks to be taken seriously in some ways and not others.


• Wildwood (2026) made for another nice change, from the typical animated kids' stuff these days, more dark and real at times, with loving attention to the animation. Maybe not life-changing but came together nicely and gave us Portland, OR, through a loving lens, together with offering a fun side of recognizing the voice actors. I do like my villains to have a clear backstory.


• Forgotten Island (2026) was plenty more typically Hollywood but, though I don't get to live in the Philippines, I enjoyed the reminders of my time there, especially early in the film before we're off to the titular island. It's capably executed though R. was struck by their jarringly non-native pronunciation of Tagalog, she wondered if there are plenty of Filipino-Americans behind it to whom Filipinos will give something of a pass in attempting Tagalog as long as a mispronunciation isn't irresistibly entertaining.

We are doing okay with the passing storms so far, we generally do. It's nice to feel fairly snug and safe, a couple of floors up in a Victorian brick building. The power hiccupped but that's all so far. Some extended family is to visit from Lancashire tomorrow, I hope that their train runs okay.

I have mentioned that sometimes, with my software work, in bed I'll suddenly realize something about some detail: it is clear that my brain remembers and works on things when I am not.

These late realizations come about other kinds of things too. For instance, in an after-work quiz recently, one of the questions was the sum of the interior angles of a pentagon, which seemed like the kind of thing I ought to have a ready answer for but didn't. One can figure it out by drawing triangles in one, as the Victorians loved to do. A few mornings after the quiz, in the bathtub, I suddenly realized a different way of working it out, one which generalizes nicely to hexagons and suchlike. A wonderful thing about math is its consistency: whichever way one got there, the answer is the same.

Another was how yesterday I heard the start of a song on the car radio before we left to go into a store; it sounded familiar but I couldn't place it. This morning, I realized it was Supertramp's The Logical Song.

It's interesting how our brains realize things later given a bit of time to muse in the background.

A few months ago, I wrote disparagingly of ScotRail. I am no more impressed now than I was back then. In the end, I spent a good couple of months without being able to load their flexible season ticket flexipass onto my ScotRail smartcard. The three-weeks-ish turnaround from their customer service didn't help there. My smartcard remained full, their station staff no longer had ability to clear it, their ticket machines clearly still weren't, and the smartcard management wholly vanished from their website for planned maintenance. They also have a cellphone app with its own issues. Finally, I got their customer service to at least issue me a new smartcard, which mitigates the problem for the meantime.

The larger question is who should be fired first,

• whoever approved any kind of planned maintenance that leaves an important feature gone for many weeks from the website


• whoever approved a ticket machine interface that makes you pick one way to buy a season pass (because, er, it's a collection of one-way trips!)


• whoever allowed expired, useless tickets to block loading of newly purchased ones onto a smartcard.

Our Edinburgh office is one of those glassy tower blocks. I think the layout of each floor is about the same. There's an obvious men's toilet on each.

Sometimes, when I head to the restroom, I find it to be closed for cleaning, then ascend the stairs to the next floor, use the identical restroom, and forget I climbed the stairs. I come out to a vacant office where I expect mine to be (it's below), with strange symbols marked on the glass.

The abstract symbols run in a row across the glass and I presume are there to help people not walk straight into the glass pane. I walked into a pane of glass in a baptist church in Truro once and I don't recommend it.

Still, in the course of one's regular day, unexpectedly seeing all the humans gone, and a surprise run of strange symbols, is not the best experience for somebody like me who has dreamed many times of alien invasion and sometimes of infiltrating the aliens' facilities on Earth.

Yesterday involved plenty of shopping: B&M (best puppy training pads), Home Bargains, Aldi, Sainsbury's, and a poke around the Cancer Research thrift store. I tend to like Sainbury's except for their pâtés. After visiting various shops, I don't usually get much else done that day.

Today, we made various-bean chili and found that some of the red kidney beans in water that we thought we had purchased were actually red kidney beans in chili sauce. It worked out fine, they hardly dominated with everything else anyway, though R. noted that this sauce appeared to be more sweet than spicy.

Also today, I inspected a super veg and seed mix I'd picked up on discount. It looks rather more gray in person, yum. Fortunately, rather than just eating it like a premade salad, it turns out that one pan-fries it in a little oil, that might perk it up a bit.

A Sainbury's success was finding phenylephrine tablets. They've been weirdly unavailable around here for a while, though the drug itself is plainly available because it still appears in sprays and in name-brand combination tablets. I tend to like my drugs separate and solid though.

In B&M they played David Bowie's Golden Years. Bowie recorded so much good stuff yet all one typically hears is Let's Dance, like with the Eurythmics where half the time it's Sweet Dreams which is all very well but not head-and-shoulders above all the rest. Anyhow, I realized that Golden Years reminded me a little of the Loose Tapestries' Can't Wait for Christmas, not that it seems much of a stretch to imagine that Noel Fielding might have heard plenty of Bowie.

I am doing okay. I figured my remaining leave from work for the calendar year and booked the days. They are flexible about how many we book, I try to fit in with what I'd get from a fairly decent British employer for a similar role. The previous plans were adjusted by the summer dog-sitting then getting a puppy. I don't know what our plans might be for the coming year. I'd like to visit Lindisfarne Priory and Furness Abbey, also to visit Galloway Forest Park after dark (so perhaps this winter) for stargazing. My last good view of the Milky Way was out in the Sonoran Desert near Tucson, AZ; I loved it there. Perhaps with my time off work later this year I'll make more progress with our telescope.

Last Sunday, I hung out with my kids and we went to a Korean barbecue where I ordered the kimchi stew. Then, on Tuesday in the office, I got a kimchi poke bowl for lunch. All of a sudden, I seem to crave kimchi. There is also a new Shakedown near work, they appear to sell burgers and milkshakes and such. I was puzzled to see their menu advertising cheesecake from Manchester, as if Manchester is particularly noted for its cheesecake. Things like Eccles cakes, maybe, if that's near enough, not Chorley cakes, that's way too far. Anyhow, I was informed that Shakedown is a chain that originated in Manchester.

Last Wednesday, coming home from the office, my subway journey is toward Ibrox stadium to where it turned out that many were going for a 19.45 kickoff. I'll check the fixtures in future, it also turns out that the same probably happens on December 2nd. Many get onto the train at each station and unfortunately, as a little sardine in the middle of the carriage by then, I want to get off before Ibrox. Being loud and polite worked well but perhaps better to try to avoid that situation in future.

I am annoyed to be aging, it feels wrong. I don't feel old. Now in my fifties, I am certainly starting to look older, though, various skin imperfections and suchlike. For years now I've grown used to having younger colleagues and, often, younger line managers, even back in my thirties. It's not like I'm middle class with a nearly paid-off house and much pension accumulated, I need to keep earning for a long time yet but my body and eventually my mind, and employers' impressions of such, will age me out of things rather inconveniently. I'll land somehow, though, I suppose I have to.

I hadn't realized that the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11 would be so newsworthy here. I lived in Columbus, OH, at the time, we found out on the way to the gym, I had the radio on in my beloved Ford Crown Victoria, driving on Ponderosa Drive about to turn left onto Dublin-Granville Road. Later that day, I believe I saw Air Force One pass overhead. My then-brother-in-law was on a business trip at the time and ended up renting a car for a long multi-state drive back home. Fortunately, I wasn't close to anybody who was deeply affected. Later, in defense contracting, I found that the military was interested in businesses that could sell them things to help find things in caves and such. Even without losing somebody in the event, 9/11 seems to have changed so much for so many people all over the world, including in R.'s Moro community in Maharlika Village. There's such a chain of interconnected events both before and after 9/11, a rich and tragic tapestry indeed.

R. had observed that our dog L. very much likes to meet other dogs so reasoned that what he might like is to have another dog at home too. So, we now also have E. in hand, a small leaky dog, bold and clumsy. She is opinionated so it is good that she is also endearing. In a few weeks, she will be enough vaccinated to roam outside safely. L. remains an excellent fellow and certainly gets a bit more stimulation for having her around, especially when we are all working. Apparently, we now have enough dogs. Right now, L. lies near E. while she squeaks a toy.

My latest work-week went well. I feel as if I am fairly on top of a variety of things and sometimes able to give colleagues useful tips. AI coding assistance continues to be a considerable boon, albeit one requiring my close supervision. My in-office days have me sleepy in the afternoon but I can still make useful progress even then, and dodging the tour groups wasn't too bad, let's see how it is next week with the Fringe getting into full swing.

R.'s sibling returns home tomorrow, then the household's back to only the regulars. I lost weight last month, when everybody was away; before our next larger grocery shop I should figure how to continue that in normal life. This afternoon was certainly a warranted exception because R. made us the Filipino variant of adobo.

I have some domestic things to catch up on, the larger being to finally get around to further progress on my US taxes. Thank goodness extensions are for some months. Now that I'm back with R., I have more energy in general again. Our marriage makes me feel very lucky.

I've written here about my background fear of AI coming after white-collar jobs, the technical work people do from their desks. The skilled trades are doing better, at least for now; it may still be a good time to train as an electrician.

I've also written about wrestling with what's worth doing in my own time. There are things I'd like to do, though I keep getting older before much getting around to them. I don't want to put much time into something myself that some AI agent will be able to do in a few minutes. If I show that I can build interesting things without AI assistance, does anybody care?

I can't easily use AI agents myself to do much because they cost money to use. I could self-host but there's a shortage of GPUs, TPUs, fast memory. It's not much of a stretch toward realizing that the wealthy have the means of production: the hardware shortage impedes democratization of the ability to create software. Sure, a modest, targeted model might still accelerate what I can do at home but it's outshone brightly by what the expensive agents can do given the scarce wherewithal. There is no way that at home I will be spending what I cost my employer in AI budget in the typical week. So, I get plenty done at work, not much at home, and it's the cost of modern AI that magnifies that divide: the monied can avail themselves of a powerful accelerator to pull further ahead, the rest of us do what we can with what we have, which is much less.

Thirty years ago, a reasonable PC with a Linux installation was sufficient means for doing impressive work. Now, it takes money even just to gain marketable experience in orchestrating agents to much effect. It being the people with large AI spend budgets who can achieve plenty, relatively speaking, seems like the kind of thing that would greatly bother Marx. Something tells me that the fruits of what can be achieved by employing expensive productivity accelerators aren't about to be shared out equally. I find myself fearing the kind of dystopia described by Kurt Vonnegut in Player Piano.