It’s sad news time: John Peel is dead. I’ll let the news tell the details, but time to show a little respect for a man who championed countless bands and did more than most for the British music industry. He shall be missed.

A year on from my last birthday (as tends to be the case with these events) and a lot has changed. Some good, some bad, some just plain odd.

I look different, I act differently and I feel changed.

For the first time in three years, I’m writing. A lot. While the continued work load at university has cramped this significantly, I’m still writing when I get a chance. Most of it is garbage, and much of it ends up getting deleted. The point is that I got over a three year writer’s block and it feels good.

A lot feels good these days. 21, an interesting age, I’m sure it’ll be a good year.

Never write for anyone but yourself. If you do so the words won’t be heart-felt or interesting; they’ll be staid and contorted. Write because you can’t not write.

Never play for anyone but yourself. If you do so the games won’t be fun or engaging; they’ll be dull and ineffectual. Play because the games engross you.

Never dance for anyone but yourself. If you do so the moves won’t be genuine or rhytmic; they’ll be flailing and empty. Dance because you’re moved to dance.

Never live for anyone but yourself.

There are a lot of rules when it comes to writing credible English. If you happen to be in high school you will almost certainly be penalised for breaking them since it will be assumed you don’t know the rule in the first place. Sometimes, however, it is entirely appropriate to do so.

The idea of never splitting infinitives should almost certainly be ignored. Dating back to when Latin was a useful language, it was common to force Latin grammar rules onto English. Now while it made sense to keep the infinitive together in Latin (for reasons which someone versed in Latin would be better explaining) it was entirely arbitrary in English.

While arbitrary decisions are inherent in all language (language itself being capricious in origin and development), those which make the language or syntax uglier should be avoided. “To truly understand” is far cleaner and easier flowing in natural language than “truly to understand”. In general, never splitting infinitives tends to create more ambigous language, and contorts perfectly good English.

There are a multitude of other rules that should be broken, and common traits which should be purged, but more on that another day.

Note that “TAR file smart CR/LF conversion” in WinZip is only smart if you happen to know it exists and aren’t doing cross platform development which is being screwed up by said conversion. Hours wasted.

Tool developers: if your tool isn’t supposed to mung the date in some way, leave it alone.