Nothing But Time: Exploring in C

Originally written in early February

Half Recovered Photo of Buddhist Monks

This is a bit of a tangent essay.

Just a few short hours after deleting my vacation photos, I wrote on here, as well as on facebook, bemoaning my stupidity.  Well, on facebook several friends were kind enough to point me to PhotoRec, a freeware program that recovers your lost photos.  I will not get into the specifics of how it works.  But after I got back, I downloaded the tar file for it.  Unfortunately Archive Utility would not unarchive it.  I would keep getting told “Error 2- no such file or directory.”  The best thing about freeware is that you can fiddle with it yourself.  The worst thing is that if you don't usually fiddle around with your computer, you can be more than lost with no customer service.

I would say my computer literacy is maybe a little bit better than my Chinese, though not as good as my Japanese.  That is to say, I've done some cool things in conjunction with classes where teachers would do the hardest parts and I could always double check to make sure I was doing the right thing.  It's been over six months since I've done any kind of programing, and I've forgotten the syntax for C.  I don't remember how list the files in a directory, but I know how to get to understand the contents of the help manual.  So right now I am spelunking through C, trying to see if I can unpack my tar file.  I know I have done all of this before once, but only once.

I will say, one of the great things about liberal arts is that you have the chance to try some crazy things unrelated to your major.  My last semester I took a class on data compilation for Physicists which involved learning the basics of C (a language not too different from Java, which I studied in high school, one of the basic languages many people start out learning).  C is a little bit less pretty and user friendly, and unlike Java, I don't think it can quite flow in a way that English speaking brains can intuit.  But it works.

I've found that I don't have the motivation to learn programing as an end to itself – I have to have some sort of goal, something I want to make.  Similarly, I don't think I would have the patience to learn a dead language – something that can't communicate with live people.  I admire people who can, I just don't think I could do that myself.

When I stop worrying about how much I've forgotten, and what a newbie I feel like, I learn quite a bit.

Though at times it can feel like you are just bashing your head against the wall.  Would that be .bash?