I work in IT, computers, geeky stuff. Having been a programmer I now manage a team of them, building new systems and supporting old ones. Having a science PhD is quite a common background in my line of business. Not the best use of my scientific training perhaps, but at least I don’t work for an investment bank.

Computer programs are sets of instructions written by humans, who get things wrong. The instructions are then followed by computers, which are stupid. Throw into the mix the fact that the people who pay for software often don’t understand IT and sometimes don’t really know what they want and you get an explanation for the high cost of the average IT project. [Or so I’ve heard, obviously my current and any future employers are exceptions from this depressing picture *cough*]. A big part of the cost of software is testing it to remove bugs. Removing them all is nearly impossible (you’ve used software, so you know what I mean).  Simply removing the embarrassing ones is hard enough. Many bugs are where the person writing the code has made an obvious mistake. These are easy to diagnose and fix.

The bugs that the manager in me most fears (and the geek in me quite enjoys) are the hard ones. The ones where the fault is intermittent, strange and where you don’t even know where the fault lies.

In the old days, computers were big humming boxes in the corner of the room. There was only one set of code to go wrong. This old mainframe code is fantastically successful and is still running in many companies. If you perform a financial transaction it is likely that some of the code involved was written in the 1960s or 70s by a quietly spoken man with a beard and flared trousers.

Now life is more interesting. Imagine this web-page has gone wrong in some way. Where is the fault? It could be the blogging software, or the database software the blogging software uses, or the operating system of the server hosting this site. Or it could be a router, DNS server, piece of cable, piece of wire, internet cache or network accelerator anywhere between the server and your computer. Or it could be your browser, or your operating system, or you. Yes you! You might raise a bug saying this post should be more interesting: clearly nonsense, user error!

You take my point. Most of the applications my team supports are web-based. Often if a user raises an bug we don’t know where the problems lies. I work for a big company and our systems are much more complicated than my example.

Inexperienced developers when confronted by an urgent bug often dive into the code. They feel safe there, they feel like they are doing something. Wiser heads take a step back and start formulating hypotheses and collect data to falsify them. In order to fix a complex problem you must first understand it. This requires you to engage with a large and complicated situation, decide what you think is going on and then collect more information to see if you are right or not. A geological training is a good preparation for this.  We know that there are variety of ways of gathering more information: a literature search, mapping, thin-sections, microprobe, isotopic analysis and so on. Deciding between more logging, sniffing the network, finding out how many users the problems affects or getting details of a user’s desktop configuration is a very similar process.

With Geology, understanding something is the goal. When fixing a bug, this is only the first stage, but it is usually the hardest. If the problem is in your code, a fix may be easy, it may be hard but at least the solution is in your own hands. If you need a fix quickly, then there is always some dirty hack tactical enhancement available. If you are unlucky and the problem is in someone else’s code then having an explanation complete with evidence is vital. Getting someone else to take responsibility for ‘your’ problem is basically against human nature. The trick is to have compelling evidence and to use it to make your case clearly and concisely. Again, my geo soft skills come into play.

Just to close the conceptual loop, consider the ‘faster than light’ neutrino situation. The last I read the ‘impossible’ result has been traced back to a fault in a cable in a GPS device. Surely this is a case of scientists using the scientific method to find bugs in systems? To be fair though, I’ve never yet invoked Einstein’s theory of relativity to solve one of mine.

I’ve another quirky habit, picked up from years of field work that I’d like to confess to you all.

Picture the scene: I’m standing on an Irish hillside and I’ve just found the most glorious outcrop. It’s glacially polished, each feature beautifully highlighted by a layer of water from a recent rain-shower. Excitedly, I dump my ruck-sack and get out my notebook and pencil and start making notes. I decide this merits marking as a location, so I tuck the notebook under my left arm and pull my clip-board out. This holds a grubby piece of paper held in place by about 6 strong rubber bands. Why six? Well, the memory of sprinting down-wind after a map sheet is still strong. I keenly remember speeding after weeks of work, watching the capricious wind that snatched it away bounce it cheekily towards a big black lake. I smile at the rubber bands and then realise I need to move one to write on the correct spot. My hands are full, what do I  do?

Well, I could put the pen down on the ground, but it will be wet. Also I remember accompanying a student on a mapping project once. She put her pen on the ground only to watch in horror as a bored Irish sheep dog rushed over and chewed it up. It was a cute scene as the dog grinned at us, ink dripping down its jaws, but the pen was a £20 mapping job. Bad memories, so I put my pen in my mouth, gripping it gently but firmly, like a mother cat carrying a kitten. I move the rubber bands and then take the pen out of my mouth. Success!

Soon, holding things in my mouth becomes a habit; it’s like having 2 and a half hands. You can hold a lot of things in there: Pens and pencils – easy; compass clino too, but a notebook strains your jaw after a while. I once forgetfully tried to hold a hammer in my mouth, but only once.

Years later, the habit remains. I try to be discrete about it, but various of my belongings do have faint teeth marks in them. One day, absent-mindedly I’ll find myself, smart and besuited, walking from the sandwich bar at work with a cup of coffee, a sandwich and a packet of crisps dangling  from my jaws.

I wasn’t consciously inspired by the image of WW2 British Commandos holding a knife in their teeth as they crawl under barbed wire, but it was probably in the back of my mind, a relict of boyhood comics. Drifting off-subject, the term ‘going commando’ has other connotations. It is used to describe the popular pastime of wearing trousers without under-garments (wearing pants without pants, to be transatlantic about it). A doctor friend in the army tells me young soldiers (‘squaddies’) do it a lot. They come into her surgery with a bad knee and are then asked to take their trousers off so she can see their leg. The look of shock and worry on their faces as they realise they’ll be showing her a lot more brightens her day up no end.

I have an odd habit. My wife mocks me for it, good-naturedly, but I am slightly embarrassed about it.

No, not that! What it is, I always stand on one leg while tying my shoelaces, like a mad boot-wearing flamingo. To be precise, I rest one ankle on the opposite knee, like a Buddhist monk frozen in the act of jumping up to answer the phone. As if this wasn’t daft enough, I’m not very good at it so I sometimes fall sideways onto the wall, or hop around gracelessly.

This is something Geology did to me, since I picked the habit up in the field. An Irish field, to be precise, which is always, always damp. I wore boots and the laces came undone. When I knelt down to do them up, in the traditional fashion, I got a wet knee. I didn’t like getting a wet knee and so developed my odd habit.

Now I mostly tie the shoelaces of my shiny shoes by the front door, where the only risks to the dryness of my knee come from my potty-training son. Standing on one leg is therefore a kind of atavism, like calling CDs tapes, (or using CDs for that matter). I still carry on doing it though, as it would take conscious effort to change and I rather like a bit of randomness in life.

Do other field geologists do this, or is it just me?

I’m a metageologist, trained as a geologist but cast adrift amongst normal folk. I sometimes notice ways in which I’ve been marked by that training. Some are trivial, some not so much. I feel the need for a theme of quick whimsical posts so I’m going to talk about them a bit. Here goes…

Geologists like beer and have beards. It’s a cliché, but has a lot of truth to it; it certainly applies to me. I’m from the north of England so the beer thing came naturally (my dad buying me discrete half-pints in the pub from the age of 14). My beard I grew as an undergraduate studying Earth Sciences, so we can call this something Geology did to me.

Why did I grow my beard? Well, there were a lot of role models with beards – a good proportion of the teaching staff were beardies. My college tutor sported a fine specimen, wispy and slightly crazed. It definitely told you this man did a lot of fieldwork in Greenland; you weren’t surprised that he seemed to positively enjoy not washing during two months in the wilderness. Even some geophysicists, people ignorant of the pleasures of letting yourself go when in the field, were bearded, albeit they had neat goatee beards.

Why geologists and beards? Well, they are in keeping with the scruffy-chic cultivated by academics and people who don’t work in an office. Wearing a suit in my Geology department was definitely a sign of low status, marking you as a supplicant, looking for a job or selling something. Conversely taking no interest in your appearance marked you out as someone with no need to impress others. Not shaving fitted nicely into this.

Fieldwork is of course another excuse. It fits in with my beard’s birth, a rather fabulous summer of Geology where I stopped shaving as it ‘would have been too much trouble’. First I spent six weeks in Ireland doing my undergraduate mapping project. Next a month trekking in the Indian Himalaya, passing past Gumbarajon in Zanskar where the equivalent area of granite I’d laboriously mapped in Ireland was gloriously displayed in a massive vertical rock face. As well as the usual Indian tourist illnesses I discovered I had an allergy to my malaria pills which meant I didn’t eat for a fortnight while walking in the Himalayas. If you are looking for a weight loss programme, this I can recommend.

For the last event of this summer I arrived in Switzerland for an undergraduate field trip so fantastic that it was never run again due to excessive cost. I was not recognised by some fellow students, since as well as burning off my puppy fat, I had grown a beard. I found the contrast of the Himalayas with the Alps very stark. I really disliked the Alps as too tidy, too neat, too Gemütlich compared with the ramshackle majesty of the Himalayas. Switzerland consisted of neatly scrubbed rocks, above some manicured grass with cows, each with their own cute bell, with a public infrastructure that made England’s look shabby and chaotic. I hated it and took perhaps too much pleasure in being forced to dive behind trees and leave little bacterial mementos of my trip to India. Perhaps I was inspired by the shaggy majesty that now hung from my chin.

I still have a beard, as you can see from the photo to the right of here. It is slightly grizzled now, also a lot neater; trimmed and shaped, fit for the office. In my minds-eye though it really looks like this:

From Richard Thompson on Flickr. Used under Creative Commons via eng.letscc.net