Thursday, September 21, 2006

"Out of memory!"


When one sees a message like this appear in his terminal window, two things may be happening. One, his code is seriously full of bugs or Two he is probably trying to decipher all the hidden messages embedded in the human genome, the Bible, the jewish Torah, the books of Prospero and James Joyce's Ulysses ALL AT ONCE!
Well, I am not really sure my work does not imply the second one, but it is highly likely that my arrays are a bit overflowing, or to put it in a simpler way, my code is a bit sloppy, maybe even crappy.

After spending almost all of today trying to bypass the memory problem I am finally getting something out of it. Not the truth hidden in the Torah but something at least presentable in next week's group meeting. The method was the usual. After having been fed up with error messages on my screen, I took a big breath, went out on the balcony, had some chocolate (that's really optional in the method but it helps), went back in, put Tool's latest record on the headphones and started debugging. Now, my eyes are all sore with small red veins popping out but it is worth it going home.

All of the above is part of our daily routine but I have to admit it is a rather pleasant one. We are now in the new building of the PRBB (Parc de Reserca Biomedica de Barcelona). From our office in the fourth floor we can admire the Mediterranean and the inside of the building is quite interesting from architectonic point of view. It is not at all bad working here. The company is very good, the whole environment is quite inspiring and the weather is not bad either.

Looking out of my window, I can say that "out of memory" messages will be quite memorable in this place.

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