Curiosity

Hello all, and welcome to my blog. Jack was taken so I had to settle for James (Jacques in French that is).

The idea for this blog came to me last weekend as I lay curled up under the dashboard of an old banger. I seem to spend large chunks of my life repairing things. Some of this is necessity, some is to save large dollops of money. Over the years I've got pretty good at this. I think the twin reasons for this must be saving money and curiosity.

It has been said by people more illustrious (and rich :) ) than me that curiosity is what makes a good hacker. I think this is true. It is certainly what motivates me to take of most of the DIY projects which I attempt (and mostly succeed at).

There is a well know proverb "Jack of all trades, master of none". This has always irritated me since it seems to imply that generalists are somehow inferior to specialists. Although this may be true in certain cases (e.g. brain surgery) there are hundreds of situations when it is simply not necessary to be an expert and a novice will do fine. Furthermore, I have concluded than many of these, so-called, experts are really nothing of the kind. A small percentage (10%) are truly expert, 80% are no better than me, and the other 10% are a liability.

I have also concluded that it is not that hard to become an expert. In these days of Google and Wikipedia it is fairly easy to research a subject and make a bloody good stab at solving a problem. You can save a ton of money too. That should be popular in the coming depression.