I have had some weird eureka moments in my life, but late last night takes the biscuit.

I have been doing some very ambitious technical computer software design for iz2u for the last few months, and I had been struggling with a particularly complex problem all week. I had wracked my brains and tried everything I could think of to try and solve it, and I was nearing the point of giving up…

To test that things are working as they should I normally display pop-up messages like “Hello world” or “Here!” at specific points to prove that the computer program has got to a place where I need them to get to. For some reason, last night, to prove that the program reached this particularly troublesome section, I decided to use the word “Hallelujah!”. I honestly do not think I have written down or typed this word in my my entire life – it is simply not normally part of my vocabulary. I even mis-spelt it! The exact debug code I used was: alert(“Hallaugha!”);

The implications of the program reaching this particular piece of code rates as probably being one of the most enabling and significant in my 25+ years of computer programming and design. It would open up so many doors of opportunity, capability, and flexibility. It is not quite on the scale of inventing the wheel or the spiral, but I hope this conveys the concept.

Anyway, I struggled on, hoping, hoping, hoping, to see the message “Hallaugha!” pop up. I carried on trying all manner of things, with interjected research on the internet. The television was on and at some point in the evening, flitting through the channels I happened on KD Lang performing in concert in London. I am a fan of hers and as I had never seen her perform before I obviously wanted to listen and see what she looked like. So while KD was singing I carried programming.

Over the course of half an hour my concentration flitted from programming and testing to watching KD. In fact it was at the beginning of this KD performance that I actually added the debug step alert(“Hallaugha!”);

It was late, I felt very tired, and I decided that this next attempt was going to be my last before going to bed. I was in deep concentration and trying something new when a strange feeling came over me. I wasn’t conscious of the start of a new KD song. I started the process of testing – something which takes about twenty steps over about one minute to complete – when I became mesmerised by, and aware of, the song KD was performing. It was sad, lovely, yet uplifting, and reaching a creschendo when I was clicking through my application to get to the critical test. I was being taken in by the song – on a kind of “high”. When I got to that final it-succeeded-or-failed(again) test button, the message “Hallaugha!” popped up! I couldn’t believe it! It worked! It worked!

My relief was was like getting to the summit of a long hard slog up a mountain. My curiosity was aroused because the song KD had been performing was called “Hallelulljah”, I honestly had never heard it, nor heard of it, before; it was her last song of the concert and the end of the program; and that was definitely going to be my last attempt of the evening… Hallelulljah! (Look out for iz2u version 2…)