I hope it was not bad form to clarify a few points that were not quite right in Michael Miller's piece; I am not convinced that I would have done a better job if I had had to grapple with a) a long, complicated saga and b) the place where language breaks down.
Also - if you have a long history of depression and worse you realise that most people, mental health professionals included, can't deal with it. The people who can tend to be people who have been through a bad time themselves. I remember meeting someone I had known in London, Sara Jenkins (now Valentine); she talked about a time when she had had what she called 'bad thoughts', and the mind responded to the voice like a hurt dog. I think I imagined that Bill Clegg, who had been through a bad time, might be like that; he wasn't, but I don't know that his behaviour was abnormal.
In any case, I just wanted to thank the reader who recommended Learn Python the Hard Way. This looks like exactly the sort of thing I need (and in fact, if I had been able to work my way through LPTHW during bad times, they would probably not have been so bad).
2 comments:
I do not know if this site is well know or not, but complimentary to 'learn python the hard way' is:
http://codingbat.com/python
not necessarily the most practical stuff, but fun and simple way to practice python (and java section becomes not too much of a leap either with a little reference.)
LPTHW looks great and I will try to push it on those I've been trying to get to learn (unsuccessfully) for years. I find it so hard to try and get people to want to learn for some reason. Thank you.
One of my old professors wrote a textbook that could be another good Python resource (How To Think Like A Computer Scientist):
http://greenteapress.com/thinkpython/
And another one specifically on using Python for statistics:
http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats/
Both are free online. If they look useful, I'd be happy to spot you a paper copy -- just let me know how.
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