Neil Hopcroft

A digital misfit

Living in a powder keg and giving off sparks

I never did give you an explanation for my going offline. Nor do I actually think this is the right medium for it, so I’m not going to. Not here, at least. If you want to hear about it, talk to me in real life. Suffice to say that my view of myself has changed significantly over the last couple of months – I’m not the person I thought I was (or perhaps not the person I was pretending to be). I’m not particularly proud of some of the things I’ve found out, while others have proven that some things I was deeply worried by are actually *completely* non-problematic.

This will be the last of the friends-only posts for the moment, though of course I might well have some further things to say that I don’t necessarlity want openly readable. I will be going through recent posts and, where appropriate, setting them publicly visible.

I would appreciate comments from all, those who know whats behind this bout of offline-ness and those that don’t. Comments on this post are screened, and, should you feel a desire to comment anonymously, the next public post will have anonymous comments screened.


Dammit, dammit, dammit, how did it get to be so late? I’ve got to be up early to get to RAL tomorrow.

…I’m well aware that you are owed significant amount of updateage, but thats going to have to wait. I’ve not forgotten you all.

12-Jul-2007: entry set ‘public’


“Software quality – as an industry we don’t half ship some rubbish, I’m doing my bit to make things better not worse.”

I’m considering adding this statement to my CV under a section entitled ‘Interests’. My aim is to make sure its not too dry, as CVs are wont to be, in the hope that a little appropriate humour might get remembered by the sort of people I want to work for. What do you think? Is this a good thing to say? Bad thing to say? Good thing in bad words? A bad thing in good words? Better ideas?

(also, anyone got any comment on whether that should be a comma or a semi-colon? Microsoft standard grammar says its a semi-colon but I never learned how to use them properly so I’m not sure whether I trust it)

12-Jul-2007: entry set ‘public’