Month: September 2019

Today has been an absolutely awful day, so I’m not going to write much. Personal downsides aside, the server (heroku) that ran Tabbycat, the software we were tabulating on, crashed. Right when we generated the draw for our second round. Now I’m not sure if this makes any sense to a non-debater, but we essentially lost one round of scoring and data on the internet, thanks to my reliance exclusively on the internet.

I feel awful, and although we’ve now created a plan for tomorrow and we’ve rebooted the tournament on a software that is designed to work offline, and is a software I am extremely comfortable with, I am scared, and feel horrible at the moment.

One day to go. The OLT’s are coming here, and they’re coming hard and fast at us. We’ve just spent the evening with the beautiful tabbycat, setting up for what should be an excellent tournament for everyone in my batch.

To everyone that made it through 5 editions: congratulations. We’re here.

I took a day off from University today to understand the intricacies of a tabbing/tabulation system I wanted to ensure I got to terms with prior to the beginning of our annual debating tournament. I really love numbers, and participating in tabulation/scoring activities have given me the opportunity to go through my time at University fully immersed in statistics. Of course, it isn’t the same as having the opportunity to study Math everyday, but the limited engagement I get is enough for me to sustain an interest in its academic study.

Subreddits on the beauty of data, and following sports in general add to that engagement. I do really miss numbers in my daily life. They used to be so integral (see what I did there) to my daily schedule every single day at school. Not only because of the number of hours we spent with them – through all my Sciences and even a bit in Economics, but also through the hours I spent poring over past papers and question sets. It’s no wonder I attempted to convince my parents to allow me to study for a BSc somewhere in the middle of my second year. I’m glad they showed me reason at the time.

Eventually I do hope I get the chance to return to working with numbers one day. Till then, tabbycat, you are my only friend.