Surfin USA

Sometimes I'm frightened by how little I know about the field I profess to be in, which is computer science.

It's a strange discipline, really. The kind of knowledge you need to know to be considered proficient at computers is rarely taught in schools, and you have to pick up elsewhere.

Once upon a time, and this was pretty recent really, I had no idea what an Ethernet cable looked like. And I'm not talking ten years ago, but like 2-3 years ago. Which isn't to really say that I had no idea, only that it was not intimately familiar to me. Now you might wonder, why on Earth would I not know about that.

Until recently, which really means until the last ten years, personal computers were expensive. Until computers broke the 1000 dollar barrier, it was considered an expensive luxury. Usually, computers were priced around 1500 to 3000 dollars, but for the common person to buy a computer, a cheap computer had to be around 700 dollars or less, and now, if you want to go bare-bones, you can get one for 300 dollars, and that's really good enough for most people, who only plan to surf.

But until recently, I had no need to get my own computer. When I was undergrad, lo those many years ago, they had plenty to go around. At the time, they weren't even networked. And when they were, I had no idea how they were hooked up.

And when I reached grad school, well, they had computers all set up there too. There was no need for me to figure out how they hooked it up to the Internet. That was some IT guys job, not mine. I just worried about logging on and logging off.

And even when I started to teach, well, there was a computer on my desk, so I had no need to get one for myself, which, at the time, was still pretty expensive.

Eventually, a friend suggested I get a laptop, and he suggested a Mac, and I bought an IBook. It was kinda expensive, being around 1200 dollars or so, but I got a discount because they were releasing one of the early Mac OS X's.

In those days, which was like 2002 or so, wireless cards were still not entirely standard. The few students who had laptops (and those numbers were growing) had a pluggable wireless card. Macs were innovative, in that the card stuck underneath the keyboard, out of the way, unlike other PC laptops where they jutted out, likely to break. Users had to remove them manually when they were put away, lest they be snapped like so much graham crackers.

The wireless card, which Apple dubbed "Airport", cost another hundred dollars, but wireless connectivity was a must have, because getting Ethernet and finding a connection was not that convenient.

Thus, I had no need to touch Ethernet, pretty much until I got a job, and there was more hardware than I've ever really dealt with.

I remember when I was teaching computer hardware, and I wanted to "build" my own computer, so I spec'ed out the parts, and paid for it. Total price? About 1300 dollars. This included a monitor, a motherboard, a case, a hard drive, a floppy drive, even a computer desk. Sad thing? I never used it. Not even once. Well, just once to set it up. I eventually let a friend borrow it, and that was that.

Still, I became aware of things that no computer class still teaches you. Such as USB, Firewire, what the typical amount of RAM was, the typical hard drive, the typical clock speed of a PC, and so forth. All these were numbers I simply cared nothing about. Why should I care? They seemed like so many random specs, like people who obsess over the acceleration of a desired sportscar. Why should I care about clockspeed? Why should I care about RAM? The computer did what it was supposed to, so I didn't care.

But it was one reason I was curious about how to build a computer. Though expensive, it was one way to learn the pieces.

And do they teach that to you? No. Name a course that talks about Firewire, USB, Ethernet. Is it an introductory course? No. Is it a course in computer organization? No. I know, because I taught that plenty of times. Indeed, for the non-techie, there's an exasperating amount of crap that you must learn, each technology being replaced by new ones.

Why are computer science majors expected to know all of this? Because they own computers!

Then, there are things people learn because they play computer games, or play with their TV, such things as component cable vs. HDMI. If you don't play video games of have an HDTV, these things are unimportant to you. For years, all anyone cared about with a television was an antennae, or a cable, a plug, and a channel changer. Now, your typical HDTV comes with a gazillion connections, as much to play video games or display photos from your digital camera, as it is to watch television. And you know what? Obsolete in five years. Some new technology will come out, supersede the current stuff. DVDs, which marked the replacement of the horrible VHS tapes, are now being threatened with replacement by HD-DVD or Blu-ray. It's back to Betamax vs. VHS once again.

So I don't feel like an idiot calling tech support to get my Internet set up, and fortunately, they make it easy, and in any case, I had to call them up to get it activated.

Eventually, it will be much like the phone service, I think (unless cities are high speed wireless all the time). You call to activate, you plug in, and voila, you are done.

And that is that.

So I'm back on the Internet again.

Hooray for me.

Fresh Eyes

Sometimes, when you stare at code too long, the assumptions you made, the decisions you made, which made sense as the time are hard to challenge. Rather than get into too much depth, here's an analogy.

At one point, people sat in front of what would now be termed, a computer. This computer was huge, and there was only one of them. And so a very limited number of people could use it.

Once someone had the bright idea (or more likely, several someones), then people could sit in front of a keyboard, possibly in a remote room, and essentially send their keystrokes to a remote machine. That machine could handle several users at once, by giving each user a tiny slice of time.

Users were said to use "dumb terminals", which basically used a computer as a kind of telephone to a computer. A key press was typed, the characters sent across a wire to the computer that would interpret it, then send back an echo of the key pressed, plus results.

Soon, people figured everyone could have their own computers, such as personal computers. Then, you can think of the Web as creating a remote computer, by which the browser is the local dumb terminal.

Often, there is the desire to put smarts near the person on the "computer" they sit in front of which alternates with the desire to put the computer remotely and having the local "computer" merely relay messages to a more powerful computer elsewhere, which is shared by many people.

Such was the case that happened today. Was it better to do a big computation now so that future results could take pieces? Or was it better to do smaller computations, whose sum total might take longer than the big computation, but be quicker. Tradeoffs go different ways depending on which way you go, and one way, which may have been dismissed a while ago may require revisiting if things have changed.

You never know til you try, right?

That's the thing with programming. There's so many ways to do things, so many tradeoffs you can make.

Remember, a bad solution in the past, might become a good solution of the future.

Genius Departed

Three men died in the last two days. None were particularly young. Bill Walsh, former head coach of the San Francisco 49ers, considered the innovator of the West Coast offense, a style of play that emphasized short passes and timing routes instead of running plays, passed away a day ago.

Two directors, Ingmar Bergman of Sweden, and Michelangelo Antonioni of Italy, also passed away.

This is perhaps, as most things of this nature, a matter of coincidence. Their names are well-known, and yet many others, far lesser known have also departed.

There's not that much more for me to say since I'm not particularly familiar with the film work of these two men, though it's making me curious to check it out.

Catitude

Flip Your Lid

IKEA does something rather peculiar. In fact, it's downright infuriating. They sell these plastic boxes called Samla, which you would think come with lids. And they do come with lids, but you pay extra. Not just a little extra but around 1/3 extra. So a box that looks like it's 4 dollars might be 6 because you want a lid.

What's the point? Why make it appear cheap then tell you, oh, it's really pricey because you need a lid too?

Unbelievable.

Movin' On

I haven't had to move in quite a few years, and since then, I've acquired even more junk. Yesterday, I had the "big move". This is where you get a bunch of friends to help you out. However, there are several keys to making this all work.

First, although you are getting lots of friends, you want to minimize the time overall, and the amount of idle time they have. They are doing a lot of heavy lifting, and that's what they should be used for. Thus, you want to avoid having them pack for you. Almost anyone you meet who moves will see this is "obvious". First time movers and folks who hate to plan ahead don't like this. They see a bunch of people, and would like friends to help pack.

Packing is laborious and slow. It simply is. You have to have several weeks to plan a move, unless you have next to nothing, which is ideal.

Next, when you pack, try to label stuff. Put a big number and/or letter, like A1, A2, etc. Maybe "B" for bedroom or books.

Also, I prefer many smaller boxes over few large ones. Depending on how strong everyone is (or the boxes are), big boxes with heavy items are bad. The box can't hold them, and the people can't lift them.

If you can, decide where you want everything to go. You can choose to label where you plan to put it, e.g. dining room, bedroom, living room. That's for those moving.

Although I had a reasonable amount packed, it was still not enough. Also, move things to a location where it's easy to get the stuff, which usually means you need a clear spot where to get things.

Also, if you have stairs, you may want to do a "fire brigade". Having people walk all the way up several flights of steps is tiring. If they only go one flight, then pass it to someone, this will be ultimately less tiring.

Have refreshments. I suggest doughnuts, water, Gatorade. If you can help it, have a large fan somewhere, that someone can stand in front of to cool down (unless you move during cold weather).

If you have good movers, they will move faster than you can manage. This is why it pays to be organized.

If I had to do my move again, I would do that. I would also tear apart items like bookshelves and box them or label them separately.

I tend to avoid awkward items. Large items like bookshelves, sofas, beds, and drawers are where the hard work is. If they need to be disassembled, do so ahead of time. Figure out somewhere you can place parts because you'll be hard pressed to find them again. If necessary, have large bright colors on the really important boxes, so you can access them quickly at the other end.

The best moves are people with nothing. The idea nothing person has the following items. Small table, small couch and chairs, clothes, a TV, a coffee table. I have plenty of books, and that's a big issue.

Also, if you have a chance, move awkward stuff ahead of time. I moved probably 40 containers ahead of time, and still that only put a small dent into things.

Oh yeah, it's good to get lots of people, if you can help it. Too few, and you will tire them out. And if you can, start on time. I had budgeted four hours for the move. It took two, because I had lots of people (plus half hour to drive over).

If it's hot, turn the AC way up on both ends. The money you expend will lead to happier movers.

And, typically, no matter what happens, there's still crap leftover, so the first move may not be the last. Ideally, you take EVERYTHING, and dispose on the other end. It may not work out that way, but it's helpful.

Finally, if you can, get rid of stuff. Some people are too attached to everything they have. Ideally, they would be told, everytime they move, get rid of half your stuff which will be tossed out.

Oh yeah.

Rental moving trucks totally suck.

More Comments on Sunshine

I read Wikipedia's entry on Sunshine where they explained the plot details.

When you watch a film, you don't realize the energy that goes into making it. Danny Boyle wanted people to live together, read books about the space mission, visit scientists, try to understand the science behind the story, and so forth.

(Spoilers ahoy!)

There's a summary in Wikipedia of the story, and from it, I realized I somewhat missed part of the story. The captain of the Icarus apparently acted like some religious leader, like some Jim Jones, and convinced the crew, somehow, to commit mass suicide. He somehow survived, though his skin was mangled, presumably by the sun, in some fashion, as he came to believe that the Earth did not deserve to survive.

But Danny Boyle makes an odd directorial decision. This captain is always shown as some blurry effect, as if he's dead or has evolved into some higher being, and that seems to fall outside what the film has set up as credible. Forget whether the science actually makes much sense. It's trying to give the plausibility of making sense.

Perhaps if the captain was filmed as is, or with only slight disfiguration, rather than this blurry effect, you might, just might, buy what was going on.

But since there wasn't a great deal of time spent on his character, he is added for what appears to be no good reason, when the film is doing a pretty decent job without his character essentially trying to kill everyone.

One idea does work out well, which is the fascination with sunlight. Two characters really get into it (the doctor, and the captain), and it is some kind of attempt to explain what is going on with the other captain. It's too bad that the execution of the idea just doesn't work out.

You have to feel frustrated for such movies that are on the verge of being really good, but end up not being that way.

Review: Sunshine

I have this problem.

Sometimes I get too curious.

I want to read about a movie, so I read reviews. Most reviewers can't help but spoil something or another about a film, which is a problem if a film relies on surprises to make it work. I suggest you don't read reviews if you don't want to know much going in.

So I read a review by Mike D'Angelo on Danny Boyle's latest called Sunshine, and he basically spoils something.

But he is right. The film, for the most part, is far more intelligent than its trailers let on. A key example is in the trailer, one guy (played by Chris Evans) says "If the Sun dies, we die. Everything on the Earth dies. There is no more important mission that this.", or something inanely obvious.

It's the kind of tripe dialogue that goes in movies where either the writer or director thinks we are total idiots, and thus need something terribly obvious like this, or because they want a moment where some character can yell something out, and that's the best they can do.

Except, when it is uttered, it makes a lot of sense, and the advice not to listen also makes sense. In particular, Icarus 2 is a mission sent to implant a bomb in the Sun to reignite it. It's called "2" because a previous mission sent seven years earlier had mysteriously failed, and there was only one more chance to get it right. But as the mission moves forward, there is a distress beacon from Icarus, which has managed to survive all these years.

The crew is deciding whether they should rendezvous with the previous ship, which is nearby or not. Chris Evans, who plays headstong Mace, then utters the aforementioned line, arguing against trying to rendezvous with the other ship. Another crew member, Searle, the doctor, gives a counterargument why they should make it.

For a while, you think Sunshine will draw more inspiration from Apollo 13 where brains saves what appears to be a disaster. Alas, it draws from two other sources. Most heavily, it borrows from 2001, from the look of Icarus, to the voice of the computer (cleverly, they chose a woman's voice, though it lacks the dispassionate menace of HAL, which would have perhaps been too close in imitation). They use exploding doors to propel people.

Unlike 2001, the film wants to have characters, though character development isn't the important part of the film. Of the seven main characters, two are almost insignificantly minor, one has a bigger role. The main character is the narrator, played by Irish Cilian Murphy, who plays a physicist that has created the bomb to reignite the sun. Michelle Yeoh plays a botanist of some sort who is in charge of making sure there's enough oxygen and food. There's the previously mentioned doctor. There's a woman, Cassie, and I suppose Chris Evans, who plays Mace is the second most important character.

The other source is the one everyone loves to draw from, which is Alien, where space is menacing.

Science fiction films have rarely been about mind-altering ideas like SF books have been. They are either adventures or horror, or some mix of the two, with an occasional comedy (like Hitchhiker's Guide) thrown in for good mix.

This film most reminds me of Event Horizon, which started off eerie and creepy, and ended up ridiculously stupid. Alas, Sunshine does the same, except it is far smarter, and creates a much greater sense of awe due to the mission. And the stupid parts, while astoundingly idiotic, still make for some excitement at the end.

The writer or director really struggled mightily to figure out an ending for the film, and came up with something so crazily bad, it's hard to believe.

But up until then, it's fairly compelling stuff. Sure, they fall for the usual science problems. Ships rumble. Outside space is freaking cold.

There are also problems with characters, who, with a frickin computer as their help, still make life-threatening mistakes.

The film looks pretty gorgeous, though. I wish they had more downtime to talk about their mission or had certain personality traits that would make them take a risk that means their lives.

Ultimately, this film would have been far better served in a miniseries format. They could have done several things. First, they should have spent a good deal of time on Earth, probably shortly after the failure of the previous mission. Second, they should have delved into the characters more, possibly interesting in deciding who goes and who doesn't. Then, they should have had their mission, but jettisoned the plot-point at the end, and possibly replaced it with something else.

Even though the characters aren't particularly deep, there is sympathy in what they are doing, and so, at a simple level, just caring how their mission turns out is indeed a success for me. It's more intelligent than most SF movies, which is to say, a bit above average.

Certainly worth watching, even for the mess of an ending.

Run To You

Bryan Adams is Canadian, and yet wrote songs that seemed quintessentially American, as if belted by John Cougar Mellencamp. Until you realize that, yes, Canada is America too! And "United States of America" just isn't that great of a name for a country. Germany, Germans. France, French. Japan, Japanese. United States of America. Americans?

But I used one of his songs "Run to You", which seems like a guy cheating on his wife, because of this article.

In it, there's a quote from Jack Kerouac, who I suppose I should read more about. What little I know is likely to be inaccurate. I figure here was a guy that was on the road, essentially hitchhiking and distilled his experiences, the freedom of not being tethered to a job, to a location, roaming the Earth (well, the US) and capturing a sense of adventure that came to represent what people wanted.

It's not surprising the sense of madness, of running, of going anywhere, doing anything, is compelling. Americans, especially this President, feel the need to extol the virtues of democracy and freedom. And yet, what is freedom? What does it mean to be free?

A friend said he recently watch Fight Club, presumably for the first time. I saw it about a year or two ago for the first time as well, though, by that time, its message of male emasculation, and desire to live and not be trapped by having that IKEA house (by the way, I still need to build my IKEA furniture--and Fight Club had it wrong! IKEA names are only one Swedish word, not two!).

That link serves as a touchpoint for me, because I had gone on a vacation by myself for the first time, off to Seattle, on the West Coast. Some people travel all the time, having been, with wealthy parents bankrolling the way. Their memories of jaunts to Europe, of irreverent evenings, of folks speaking a different tongue, are imprinted on their memories.

The diary, such as it is (being on Kuro5hin, after all), takes this sense of wild freedom, of simply dropping it all, and going, going, going, and realizing how much we escape through words. We read, and we are inspired, and instead of doing the things that the words are compelling us to do, we are compelled to write, to use the same words that move us, and craft our own words, words that imitate, words that evoke, and give birth to our own vision of running.

This was written, a week or two after I had visited Seattle, and at the time, I'm sure I misunderstood its significance, probably attributing more than what it meant at the time, though there's something fascinating about it being the only diary entry for this person, a solitary moment of creativity.

In many ways, it's typical of the Web, when people were suddenly inspired to creativity, crafting their web pages, putting their content up for the world to see, spending a few hours on a lonely afternoon or evening in a fit of activity.

Then, after a 15 minute of fame moment, they went to their lives, as ordinary as ever, and left their "under construction" sign back up, realizing it's hard to crank out creativity on a regular basis, especially when inspiration is the payment, not hard cash.

So occasionally, due to the history mechanisms of sites like Kuro5shin and Slashdot, I can occasionally read this entry.

Do you spend your days madly, wildly, without thought, without reservations, without inhibitions, without anything but life, pure sweet life which sweeps down through your feet and moves you and fills your throat with laughter and your ears with music and your eyes with beauty? Can you dig it? That's life, it's right there, it's going by, it's that train that's flying by you and you gotta run and jump on and ride it like the wild ride it is, whooping and hollering until your voice gives out and your fingers are sore. The wind whips through that train and makes you shiver and tear up and hug yourself, but it's tears of joy and a cold that doesn't chill you but lets you know you are human. All your logic and all your reasoning and flying behind you like the wind that's putting violent, mad waves on your shirt; you know it's still there but you can't pay any attention to it now. All you can do is cry out for joy, because the train is going off into the sunset and you don't know where it's headed, but you know you want to get there fast, fast, fast, whereever it is, and see it all, and drink it all, and have it all, and then make sure you jump on that next train going through because that's what it means to live. It don't matter where that train started nor where it's headed, but all that matters is that you're on it and you see everything rushing by in a frenzy of enlightenment and rapture. You can't hang on to it forever and even if you could it don't run forever, but you just want to hang on as long as you can, as long as your hands have some feeling and your lips have some singing you'll hang on, hang on, until you have to let go and then with all your strength left and all your soul you jump off and fly through the night in a mad, frenzied blur of motion and your spirit itself is leaping forth, letting out one last crazied, passionate, heartfelt cry until you vanish into the sweet, enveloping night.

And so the words, perhaps better than trite, perhaps better than that, resonate more for me than it might others, because it is a moment in time, capturing a sense of the past and nostalgia.

As Bryan Adams song was about a man who runs to a forbidden love, this running is to a period of time, to words, to a memory or an impression of a memory---a metaphorical run.

And occasionally, I find solace in this run.

Rocket Man

William Shatner is the rocket man!

A Matter of Taste

Sometimes I think, in fact, I feel I know that the programming languages we have now don't quite do what we want it to do. Ideas don't transmit themselves so easily through code. Beyond a certain length, the ideas behind what is going on is replaced by a morass of code.

Code is both a kind of expression, perhaps even a poem, lyrical, beautiful. No, it's far too purposeful to reach that. At what point, does the mundaneness of purpose win out.

Ask yourself the following questions. Does it bother you if a class has more than 20 methods? 30? Do you say to yourself "Boy, that's ugly", or do you not even blink twice. The class is what the class is. If I need to add something, I add it. If that is what the solution requires, I won't try to make it "nice".

How about method length? Does it bother you that it's 400 lines long? That it can't fit comfortably in two screens? Or three? Or ten? Or do you simply keep writing because to break it up into functions would be hard. Passing parameters is "hard". You prefer to leave your thoughts uncluttered by having all variables accessible everywhere?

Does it bother you that you class does two things? Three things? Ten things? That you tie this object to that object to the next object? After all, that's what the problem seems to require. Why not do it that way?

In many ways, writing a program is like writing a story with lots of constraints. You want a boy, and a girl. OK, maybe you make them related. Oh, now you need two more boys, and two more girls. They'll all be related. This will be like the Dukes of Hazzard, where you had five cousins and uncle and not a married couple in sight with the exception of Boss Hogg and Lulu.

Think about it. Bo Duke. Was he dating anyone? Nope. Luke? Nope. Uncle Jesse? Nope. Any of the police staff? Daisy Duke? Relationships are complex, especially since most episodes were devoted to cars leaping skywards on fake ramps, and general shenanigans.

Some code makes as much sense as the Duke clan.

Does cut-n-paste code bother you? How often do you find yourself preferring to cut-n-paste rather than consolidate a function?

Ultimately, most of us as coders, myself included, don't read enough code, don't read enough commentary about code, and so we code blind, doing what we think makes sense, whether it makes sense or not. We learn through trial and error, repeating errors thousands of others made. It's as if people taking a creative writing course had never read anyone else.

I don't buy the idea that avoiding the study of others will make you somehow more creative. For every person who can break the trend and produce something truly original, a thousand churns out utter tripe, and would be far better served by studying others, and mimicking the best they can. History shows that this works far better than trying to be completely original.

And in programming, there's no need, most of the times, to be truly original.

All it requires, sometimes, is a matter of taste.

Road to Nowhere

Last year's Tour de France still held some appeal to Americans. Sure, Lance Armstrong had retired in a sport he helped popularize in the US. That the popularity hinged on his citizenship and was therefore fleeting didn't stop many Americans who otherwise would never give cycling a second look, a second look.

OLN covered the Tour for Americans. More than any other sport, cycling allows fans to get up-close and personal. Fans line tiny local roads that wind their way through rural villages so close that they can knock a cyclist off their bike. This is a sport that's truly European, as American paranoia would have no fans within a hundred feet (er meters) away. Indeed, Eddie Merckx failed to win a Tour because a rowdy fan punched him.

Floyd Landis became a bit of a hero, an American most had not heard of. He was something of the anti-Lance. He seemed like a good old boy, not particularly photogenic (but then, neither was Lance), warmer to crowds than the bullish Lance. While he held the lead for a bit, he lost many minutes with only 3 days left, only to come back the next day and make up all the missing time, and hold his lead until the final.

That was before there was some testing, and Landis was accused of doping, trying to enhance his performance. Although a second test also showed evidence of doping, Landis continues to fight to this day to clear his name. One consequence was Landis did not bike this Tour. With his hip that needed impending surgery, Landis was willing to oblige.

In the intervening year, frequent rival Jan Ullrich, who could never quite beat Lance once he started winning, retired.

This year, no American looked to be the favorite, but perhaps it's all the better. Alexandre Vinokourov, who had been a strong contender last year, had to drop out, with accusations. Tour lead, Michael Rasmussen was also excused from the race. The two names together have made this one disaster of a tour.

Perhaps no sport so scrutinizes its athletes as does cycling. Even doping tests for baseball don't have the immediacy of cycling, where results are found as the arduous competition is still in play.

Of course, Americans don't care, once again. The NBA is dealing with scandal as a referee has claimed to fix games to alleviate gambling debt. The Feds are after Michael Vick for dogfighting. Baseball has to come to grips with Barry Bonds, who's on the verge of breaking Hank (Henry) Aaron's home run record, with the taint of steroid usage.

Sport is all about competition, but at the highest levels, people look for an extra edge to overcome deficiencies in their physique or training.

But no sport seems as close as cycling is to self-destruction, and at its biggest event. A tragedy, it is.

Cornstarch! In Japanese!

Yes, cornstarch!

The Future's So Bright

Danny Boyle's latest is about to hit the theaters. Danny Boyle, in case you didn't know, directed such films as Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, Millions, 28 Days Later. He has a pretty good visual style, and perhaps is similar in style and success to Brian DePalma.

Boyle has recently directed the film, Sunshine. I won't spoil the details that much. I will only point out that there have been abysmally few movies in the science fiction genre that can compete with 2001. As slow as the film is, as mediocre as the acting is, the film reaches for profundity while it asks the question "where do we come from" with an answer that doesn't resemble those given in Judeo-Christian-Islamic texts.

Kubrick did something absolutely amazing, so amazing that no one dares copy it. He made a film where the characters were barely that at all. Did you like any of the characters in 2001? Hal becomes the closest thing to either a rooting or hating interest. The rest are bland, bland, bland. But the effect of this is completely unreal when it comes to the final scenes that are surreal, to say the least.

Many directors have made some attempt at 2001. There were some movies about Mars, that didn't fare so well. The Russian film, Solaris, is apparently the closest. The remake by Soderbergh isn't even really a remake, though it does hint on science fiction, and of course, on relationships.

2010 tried to compete, but made an interesting decision. They wanted to have real characters. They couldn't help it. How could they possibly make a film where the characters didn't matter?

So Boyle is likely to do the same in his film, Sunshine, about the Sun which is dying much sooner than expected. This is the second mission that is attempting to reignite the sun. Of course, given how important this mission is, you'd think that there would be spacecrafts sent out all the time to make this possible, rather than some Black Hole story of one craft sent out years ago, and lost, and a second sent out to complete the mission years later.

Instead of the black hole as menacing, it's the sun that's menacing. Obvious lines are spewed out about the fact that if the sun dies, then so do we, the kind of lazy exposition that is supposed to pound the impact to the lowest common denominator audience (us), as if the crew members didn't already realize how important this mission was.

Even so, the reviews have been pretty good, if not amazingly outstanding. We're not wow'ed by special effects like T2 or Matrix. No one seems to claim that it breaks new ground in SF. As profound as some SF writing has been, it can reduce to other genres, typically, space fantasy, space opera, space adventure, and rarely about the heady topics that SF writers address.

So hang on for a week, put on your SPF 1,000,000, and a nice pair of shades, because, baby, the sun's gonna be a bit bright.

The Future

Pack-a-touille

You know one thing I really don't like about myself. I'm a pack-rat. Not as bad as the worst, but bad enough. And the thing I pack the most? Books. Not only is it an expensive habit, it's a pain when I have to move. It's perhaps a rare perfect storm when there are two of us in the house that have tons of books, but to credit my housemate, she's probably read a good deal of her books, and if need be, her books would fetch more than mine would.

It's not that I read (or more precisely, buy) trashy stuff that no one else would buy. No, I buy stuff that goes bad quickly. I buy books on technology. Thus, I have a book on Windows Millenium (useless) and on XP (still OK) and on old versions of Java (useless). And I'm not often content getting one book on the topic. I need like every book on the topic. There's some kind of weird insecurity going on there, I have to admit.

How many books do you think a person needs on Python, a programming language? 2-3 tops, right? Perhaps some specialized Python books and one intro one. I'm sure I have a dozen on the topic, half of them intro.

What I'd really want, oddly enough, is a bookstore that I could just go to at anytime, that would never throw out books. I don't actually need the books at any point in time, and I'd like to get rid of them once their usefulness has declined.

But the painful part, as I mentioned, is moving. Let's say you have hundreds of books, as I do. You can box up maybe 15-20 books in a box. That's still, say, 50 boxes, if you had 1000 books, and I'm sure I easily have a thousand, possibly even two thousand books.

Insecurity, I think. If I don't know it, I want a book to tell me about it. I wouldn't mind using the web so much but there's something funny, don't you know? People seem to write far better stuff when it's for a book they intend to sell then when they will make no money off of it. Dave Thomas is a great writer of Ruby books. But does he want to make no money off it? Were people willing to lavish him with computers, food, and anything his heart desires, maybe that answer is yes. But for now, the books allow him to make direct and indirect money.

I was talking to the wife of a friend, who admonished me by saying that libraries have plenty of books for free! I decided not to engage her in debate saying that libraries don't have my books, and are likely never to have my books. They are so specialized, that it would be like having books on the classification of different Amazonian insects.

I suppose I wouldn't even mind if it was cheap, cheap, cheap to get someone to do all the heavy lifting, but in reality, it isn't. You can get some friends to help out, but they want to do it in one short burst of a few hours of time. They don't want to continuously help you like actors in a Stanley Kubrick film, who, in case you don't know, was famous for working on films for years, and getting actors to do a hundred takes.

It's so bad that I think I couldn't even sell the books for a dollar a piece, thus making the poorest return on my investment, but still better than nothing.

It's depressing really.

And so it goes.

Wimbledon: Women's Final

Saturday, I watched the women's final. Venus Williams vs. Marion Bartoli. Venus Williams has been hyped since she was like 12. Bartoli I hadn't heard of until, oh, Saturday.

Since the Williams sisters have been around for so long, all the animosity that they faced when they first came out seems to have disappeared. If you read what the Williams sisters said, you thought they were arrogant.

Well, I wrote this a while back (July 8 at 10:48 PM, it seems) and never got around to finishing it. I'll try to recall what I was thinking.

First, I remembered way back when, when the Williams sisters were criticized for their bravado. Some people didn't like uppity African American women strutting their sexuality, having confidence in their ability to win. I used to read a newsgroup in tennis where people made scathing remarks about Venus and Serena.

And yet, I felt there were many positive things. They valued education. They wanted to do other things besides tennis. Indeed, they talked about making clothes, leaving the tour, and so forth.

Venus was the star first, being the older sister, then Serena looked poised to be the better of the two sisters. Nowadays, both seem to suffer from injury and occasionally, boredom.

Venus loves Wimbledon, and even when she comes into it less than her best, as she did this year, she has some chance to win it all. Playing solid tennis to knock off former Wimbledon champ, Maria Sharapova, she came into the final a prohibitive favorite. She looked to be playing pretty good tennis.

Even so, it was Bartoli, Bartoli, Bartoli. How she swooned when she heard Pierce Brosnan, aka former 007, in the audience. How her father had weird, possibly abusive techniques to train her. How she had candies given to her when she did things right. How was this girl's stamina?

Personally, I had never seen her before. She seemed a full-figured gal, cut of a similar mold as Jennifer Capriati, but possibly the heft of Lindsay Davenport of old. In Mary Carillo's words, she's big babe tennis. Hits hard, move so-so. Her two-handed shots recall Monica Seles.

For the first 2 games or so, Bartoli looked like she could get toe-to-toe with Venus. She certainly hit hard, and Venus had a hard time keeping up. But at this stage, a lot of tennis can be mental. Given two players of seemingly equal skills, the one that stays in it mentally, hits good shots at important points, is the one that tends to win it. Occasionally, you have superior talent beating inferior talent as Graf did with many of her opponents.

Venus struggled a bit towards the end, as both she and Bartoli took a medical break, which smacked a bit of gamesmanship, though both colluded. Bartoli had blisters on her feet, but the thinking was she was tired, and needed the rest, and it was at that point, Venus looked like her hip was bothering her.

Even so, she moved around just well enough, and it was a matter of just hanging in there, just hanging in there.

And then she won Wimbledon. What was it? Her fifth? Somehow people rack up titles at Wimbledon, and the rest of the world doesn't notice anywhere near as much as when Borg won his fifth, or when Martina went for her ninth.

Now we head into the US Open, and see where the women take us.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

And on the seventh day...well, you know what happens on Sunday. It's a day of rest for Christians, except stores continue to be open on Sundays. You'd think, given that most people have their weekends free, that they would open late on Sundays. But, no...it closes early on Sundays.

Suppose you have birthday plans for Sunday, as I did a few weeks ago. Where can you go on a Sunday evening? Most places like to close by 9 PM or even earlier. Restaurants, alas, don't like catering to the late night crowd.

There are a few exceptions, of course. McDonald's and other late-night fast food places. There's diners that open up really late too. But other than that? Some Korean restaurants like to open up late too.

If grocery stores can do it, restaurants can too! The funny thing is coffee and doughnut places open up real early. They want to cater to the 6 AM crowd. It's assumed, perhaps accurately, that early folks are positive folks, and those prone to stay up til midnight or later are delinquents.

With the way jobs work, it may be so.

It's too bad, because it would be nice to get food of all sorts at whenever.

Cover Up

The creative folks that design movie posters and the creative folks that design DVD covers are somehow worlds apart.

Movie posters are imaginative, often leaving the subject of the movie as mysterious. DVD covers, by contrast, are often boring. A typical DVD cover always, always, always has head shots of the actors. The point, once you see it, is that when you wander the movie aisles in a Blockbuster, you pick movies based on actors. It's the lowest, common denominator.

This practicality vs. aesthetic can be pretty annoying. I'd love to say I observed this first, but I didn't, so all I do is point it out to you.

Next time you roam DVD covers, whether it be at Target or at Blockbuster, and next time you guy by your megaplex of movies, compare the two, and you'll find which one is the more artistically bankrupt.

Thrilla in Manila

(I'm patting myself on the back for this blog entry's title.)

Years from now, when more famous Michael Jackson videos have faded, from Billie Jean to Bad, the one left standing might be one whose concept seems so bizarre that its long lasting appeal is inconceivable.

John Landis directed Michael Jackson in a werewolf like transformation from mild mannered Michael to freaky dancing Michael. There's something about not being human, whether it be a robot, or some monster, or some animal, that touches us in some way, allows us to become, well, not heroes really, certainly not superheroes, but simply different.

I've seen a Bollywood (really Tollywood) version of this, as well as participants in a wedding. If there's one video and dance people seem to like, it's Thriller.

And that a Filipino prison, complete with man dressed as victimized woman, could organize their homage to Michael, it adds lustre to this very strange history of a song called Thriller.

Pottery

In fifteen minutes, at least on the east coast of the US, millions(?) will eagerly begin their quest to read what has becomes perhaps the most successful fantasy novel ever. Harry Potter feels very much like an outcast in the world of genre, who went on to become far more successful than the niche genre made famous by one J.R.R. Tolkien.

Harry Potter doesn't even follow the usual genre tropes that Tolkien created in his Lord of the Rings trilogy. There is no (as far as I know) quest, no journeying to and fro. I suppose Voldemort counts as evil. No ancient maps. No foreign tongues.

J. K. Rowling has come from a woman on the dole, to one of the wealthiest writers in the world. Her books have sold millions, and have lead a worldwide fervor of fans eagerly awaiting their copy of the book so they may sit hour after hour reading the book. Indeed, a couple, getting ready for their honeymoon, plan to pick up two books and read it during their marital bliss, which is to say, they intend to read the book, instead of engaging in marital bliss.

I'm not one of those who wonders why this phenomena has occurred. I don't scoff at those who choose to indulge. Indeed, it amuses me that so many love this series which owes very little to Christianity, and more to our fanciful desires to live our lives in special ways, to go beyond the petty views of the "muggles" who are narrow minded, boorish, and unenlightened.

If there's an appeal to Harry Potter, it may be that he starts his life unloved and lacking in a bit of self-esteem, and turns it around to become a wizard. My brother has said the key lies in who is who. Is Snape good or not? Is Hagred good or not? Are the people we meet really who they are? Clearly Rowling doesn't believe in that Blink moment. First impressions can be misleading.

I had taken a few minutes to observe the crowd, in downtown Silver Spring, near Border's and the restaurants that surround it, as the familiar maroon and gold scarves and witches hats and wands and lines of people waiting for their copies, as a band played Britpop, while onlookers listened, and milled about.

I've learned, having now been in a few crowds, the appeal of a common desire, the need for community, to bridge folks together through some event, some shared sentiment, in this case, the last book of Harry Potter, and to be swept up in something that feels bigger than any one person.

It's a few minutes to midnight. A few parents have decided to let their kids dress up, as they wait eagerly for their copy. Harry Potter has become this generation's Star Wars. George Lucas has given up his movie mantle to a new literary queen, and her name is J. K. Rowling.

And his name is Harry Potter.

Walk the Walk, Guys

Tony Kornheiser did something pretty clever during his run as a columnist. He attached his name to Michael Wilbon. He'd refer to Wilbon by name, and Wilbon would occasionally refer to Tony. Eventually, someone came to the bright idea, what if we put these two on a sports show together. Thus was begotten Pardon the Interruption, or PTI, for short. Despite its awful name, that apparently invokes gentility in a field of conversation better known for its religious fervor. It's Charles Barkley, being a gentleman.

Despite a gig at ESPN doing Monday Night Football, and a radio show which Tony leaves when he does the ESPN gig, the Washington Post still likes to claim these two as their own, even if Tony writes little columnettes, his talents better suited to the radio format, where his exasperation and story telling find solid footing.

Even so, WP created this You-Tube like video format where, for 6-9 minutes, Tony and Michael do a mini-version of PTI, with Cindy Boren, a sports editor, as moderator. Some days Michael is by himself. Others days, Tony. Sometimes both show up.

While this is a fun distraction, there is an issue.

Brightcove, which handles the video distribution for the Post, is simply not up to the task. I was at a hotel with pathetic Internet. But YouTube knew how to buffer the result so I could finally watch the thing. Brightcove wheezed and coughed and froze the video. You couldn't control how it played. You couldn't tell if it was buffering. And of course, you're forced to watch insipid commercials before being show the main course.

You would think, in a day and age, where knock-off competitors to YouTube can do a credible job of handling the bandwidth demands of viewers, that Brightcove could manage as well. But quite often, it is simply painful to use it, as it whines "please, your bandwidth is too low", as if some lolcat, mewing "halp!" and "oh noes!".

Find another alternative Washington Post. We like Wilbon and Kornheiser, but don't make us have to have high-speed Internet to allow us this entertainment.

With Interest

Bricks and mortar banks have one problem. They require people. Which means, they require heat, electricity, A/C, salaries, and so forth. It's expensive to run a physical bank. This means, when you save at a bricks and mortar bank, you get little interest.

With the trend to more Internet banks, banks like ETrade, ING (Orange Savings), and to a lesser extent Citibank (which has physical banks) have begun a competition to offer high interest savings/checkings/money market.

Where you might expect 1% or so with a bricks and mortar bank, these Internet banks can dangle nearly 5% interest in your face. Compare that to CDs in a bank, and you realize that 5% in savings that you can access whenever you want, vs. 3% in a CD you can only access once in a few months, and it doesn't take a complexity theorist to tell you that the convenience of Internet bank pays off.

One of the highest interest accounts I've seen is Etrade, which has accounts over 5%. They've been advertising it a reasonable amount. ING and Citibank are about 4.5 and 4.25 respectively. Citibank decided to up the ante, and offer two new accounts: Ultimate Savings Account and Ultimate Money Account.

The second account has more interest, but here's the catch. You have to spend money. They require two payments for bill pay (a month) before you can reap the high interest. That doesn't sound so good to me, so I went with the Ultimate Savings Account which only has a minimum combined balance.

Given my druthers, I'd rather just leave it in one bank that I like, and not worry about it. But if banks want to compete for my money, I should pay attention.

Doggin It

Leave it to NPR to try to investigate this issue.

Sports shows on radio, almost nowhere ten years ago, have blossomed, giving patient rush hour drivers something to listen to when they trudge along, wondering if turtles can move faster than they.

And the topic of the day? Feds are likely to go after Michael Vick for dogfighting. Dogs are set to attack one another, presumably, like gladiators of yore, until one remains victorious, and the other remains, well, dead.

As one sports pundit after another claims disgust, they show why they are merely pundits, filled with opinion, and not journalists.

People do many things that can be considered disgusting, and others pass judgment, figuring no amount of reasoning could ever justify this disgust. This is, in effect, demonizing, making demons of others, and closing ears to any sensible argument.

Has anyone ever asked themselves why would Michael Vick, or his friends at the very least, like dogfighting? What thrills them about it? Has anyone ever investigated it? Do they fear, once they attend, they will be consumed with the excitement of dogs fighting to the death, much like fans of boxing can enjoy two guys pummeling each other?

Even those who purport to make news, like ESPN, avoid the topic. How many sent reporters to find out what's going on? To do a modest amount of digging?

But it's the kind of thing NPR will do, to find out who are these people. It wasn't so long ago that people wondered what the thrill of auto racing was. Or who had once thought of gambling as evil, but find themselves engaged in Texas Hold'Em poker, once respectable people were doing it too.

I don't claim to understand why dogfighting is popular among some niche of public, but it's worth finding out why people enjoy it so much, before condemning Michael Vick. Otherwise, we pass judgment with little information, assuming our quick assessment, our "blink" moment is sufficient to decide what is right, and what is wrong.

Why Good Programmers Are Rare

There are a few jobs out there where you learn skills over time, and then you're set. I'm over-simplifying, I'm sure. There's the folks at the McDonald's selling you food. The postman (or woman) delivering mail. The inspirational speaker cheering you on to success.

How many people would think that college teachers you everything? If you think of college as teaching you a set of skills, rather than a set of meta-skills, you might still get a job as a programmer, but would you be any good?

For example, you may learn how to set up a database in MySQL, but could you transfer those skills to Postgres? You may have learned Java, but can you handle C#? For some, these differences are trivial. It's easy to pick up one, or another. You don't need a class to teach you this stuff.

Which begs the question, why not? It's assumed that, having learned one thing, you will have the ability to learn something else. And yet, if you pay attention to the classes, they almost never teach you these skills about learning. Indeed, a programming class in Java covers Java.

True, many programming skills you pick up aren't particularly Java specific. Loops, recursion, object-oriented programming. But there are plenty that are, such as JARs, classpaths, WARs, and so forth. These hardly translate to other languages. Indeed, many programming courses like to skip the things about a language that make it specifically that language, feeling it won't carry over, and thus depriving the student of what they need to know, which is the ability to learn something new, something specific to whatever they are learning.

If you learned UNIX, you may complain that you know nothing about Windows. And indeed, there's nothing very specific you can do. No one book covers the useful things you need to know in Windows. You pick it up over time. To be fair, I think UNIX is better, and that the stuff you learn, provided you get past the usual ls, cd, and so forth of UNIX, and hit some of the advanced topics (environment variables, shell programming, tty, sockets), there are books on the topic.

Of course, the web has now become the preferred way to pick this information up. Java was nice because java.sun.com was a nice resource. But teachers who taught programming weren't used to thinking of the web as a resource, and indeed, I think many books on Java don't even discuss the web as a resource to find information.

The way to find out how good programmers are good is by following them in their footsteps for some time and asking questions, and alas, knowing what those answers mean.

The rare skill is finding information and knowing where to look, and then trying it out, and seeing if that works, and seeing if something else works. Indeed, much of this is like playing a video game, which is why, I suspect, good programmers and video game playing co-exist. It's not to say that a person who hates video games can't be a genius in coding, but that video game playing has those skills (in a very general way) you need, such as persistence, just trying stuff out, that you need to solve problems.

In the end, some level of brute force is needed.

And this bothers some people. They wonder why this information isn't simply taught. Why is brute force needed? And it's not pure brute force either. You need to know where to look, or several places to look, then to interpret the results, and then use that to guide you to new things.

And then it helps to remember the answer you found. Otherwise, you retrace back and figure it out again.

I know, there's the simple part of being "smart", to understand deep concepts such as concurrency, or algorithmic analysis, or some such. But there's also simply diving deep.

Hard as that may be to believe.

Anyone Can Cook...Indian?

I'm taking the plunge and moving closer to work. I'm hoping the reduced commute time will mean I have time to learn how to cook. And I'm hoping to learn a cuisine that is distinctly different from the one I grew up with. I want to learn to cook Indian cuisine.

To be fair, Indian cuisine is as varied as it comes, much like Chinese cuisine. There's the difference of north vs. south, with chapatis and breads of the north, and rice and coconut of the south. There's vegetarian cooking favored by many a Hindu, and there is meats, the staple of Muslim cooking.

I had a Muslim Indian friend who would invite me over for dinner. This would often by 8:30 PM or later, and he said he'd prepare dinner, and I could help. I had no idea, initially, that it would take so long. His primary dish was a beef dish, made with ginger, onions, and various spices, and start to end, it would take an hour and a half.

Refrigeration has meant many a thing. Perhaps the most important is that meat doesn't go bad so easily. Remember all the fuss that was made by Europeans going to India? It was to get spices, presumably to cover the taste of rotting meat that they could do little to prevent. Once you could stop rotting (or slow it down), you didn't need so much spices to hide the taste.

Even so, people soon began to appreciate the taste of spices in their food, and Muslim Indians, in particular, discovered they wanted to get rid of the natural taste of meat, and have the flavor of spices infused into meat.

I've had several Indian cookbooks, but many have been far too daunting to follow. An authentic book might have a recipe containing a dozen spices.

But somehow, recently, I stumbled on a book whose title seems like a gimmick. It's called 5 spices, 50 dishes. It limits Indian cooking to only 5 spices, which may seem ridiculous given the number of spices that go into Indian cooking. Just off the top of my head: turmeric, coriander, cumin, cinnamon, mustard seeds, fenugreek, cilantro, ginger, chilis. OK, OK, some of these aren't technically spices.

The book is written by Ruta Kahate. No idea who that is. I assume it's a "she". In case, you're curious, the five spices are: coriander seeds, cumin, mustard seeds, cayenne pepper, and turmeric.

I've long known that what the Brits (and Americans) refer to as curry is not a spice at all, but an amalgamation of several spices, which Indians refer to as masalas. And to that extent, masalas often do not taste anything like what we call curry. Indeed, the Vietnamese come closer to using that kind of curry in their cooking than Indians. (There are curry plants and curry leaves, but this isn't the kind of curry that typifies Indian cooking).

I have no idea how the recipes will turn out. I tried Indian cooking once, many, many years ago. However, back then, I hadn't really eaten as much Indian food as I have now, so I wasn't sure what things were supposed to taste like. I suspect that's still true even now, though I figure if I'm happy, then it should be OK. (I recall making dal, which is lentils, and really having no idea how dal was supposed to turn out. At least I've had some since then.)

I do have a Chinese cookbook, which I'll also try (indeed, I own 100 cooking books, many of which I've never tried a single recipe). We'll see if this works out. I hope it does, because I'd like to cook a lot better than I do now.

Code Critique

Many years ago, I went to college with a friend who was/is Jewish. I suppose, like many people, we have the need to classify folks: African American, tall, short, fat, ugly, German, and so forth.

In this case, the religion is worth pointing out because he would, on occasion, read a book written in Hebrew. It wasn't just a religious text, but it was also a commentary on that religious text, by various Talmudic scholars over the centuries.

Recently, I was reading this, as well as the followup commentary at the bottom of the page.

Here's what I find interesting. One of the reviewers noted that critiquing code worked well for seasoned developers, and not so well for those students coming out of college.

I understand that the "real-world" is supposed to teach you something. I also understand that college doesn't always teach you real-world stuff. It's theory and all.

But computer science is a little weird. As a discipline, it is still figuring out how to do what most people do, which is program. Oddly enough, many of the older academics seem to think of programming as a throwaway thing, a mean to an end, and believe other topics to be of more fundamental interest.

It's hard to compare this to, say, learning English. You could say learning a language is more fundamental than learning a programming language. Two things most people need to master is a spoken language and mathematics (and reasoning).

Many academics feel that math and English are good enough, and don't particularly care for the programming aspects.

So imagine what they must think when the beliefs of how one should program are changing over time. The ideas that people espoused in the 80s aren't the same as the ones they mention now. For example, the Rails guys (most notably Dave Thomas) like the acronym "DRY" which means "don't repeat yourself". When people were teaching Pascal in the 80s, they probably didn't think of this, and would wonder why it's worth teaching at all.

My point (finally!) is this. If code critique is important to get hired, then why isn't it important enough to teach? Why aren't there books on the topic critiquing code? Understandably, code critique is a matter of opinion, and people disagree. That's fine. I think folks need to understand why people disagree, so they can begin to form their own opinions.

I think as the critique grows, we begin to understand the limitations of a programming language, why we do things a certain way to overcome those limitations.

If you think about it, programming languages evolve far faster than human languages. Human languages give a great deal of power to the speaker, but demands much of the listener to interpret shades of meaning. Even though programming languages are far more precise, they still don't seem to capture what we mean to say.

So I challenge those who say we need to learn to critique to start critiquing code and give their opinions. Let a thousand flowers bloom (I know, that's terribly Maoist, especially since he backed off on that opinion).

It's an Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad World

I was driving on the Beltway, recently, looking at the back of someone's car.

Mostly, people put their own ads on the car. The occasional person, having gone to the dealer, might have a dealer name on a license plate holder, letting other people know where you got your car, say, at a local Sport Honda.

It got me to thinking.

We've got ads on television. What if companies paid people to have ads on their cars? Would people do it? Given the amount of traffic, and the amount of time it takes to get to work, would people put ads on their car?

Right now, we think of our car as an extension of who we are. Are we willing to put ourselves out to the highest bidder.

Of course, it would increase the eyesore on the road. Already, people spend a lot of money on a car that they want to be proud of. Would they shamefully put ads on it?

Remember, you heard it here first.

Is it Hot or Not?

I was listening to NPR where some German was extolling the virtues of riesling, which, I believe is a sweet German dessert wine. Someone had asked why it works so well with Asian foods, and the guy replied that riesling had less alcohol and therefore, doesn't cause spicy foods to feel even fierier. If there is such a word.

Normally, I wouldn't have a good opportunity to test a theory, but it came upon me by accident. I had eaten something spicy, can't even quite recall what it was. Then, I was home, the spiciness still with me, when I rinsed my mouth with Listerine, which seems like it has a fair bit of alcohol.

Man, that burned!

So, I conclude that, at least with high enough alcohol, that burning on your tongue can feel even hotter!

Futon You!

There's a store on Route 1, very close to where I live, that used to sell futons. I recently looked at it, and the sign is gone. And I wonder if the same can be said of futons.

Futons were the bed (I mean, mattress) alternative of the 80s and 90s. Goodbye old-fashioned box springs and mattresses. Hello to transformer style bed or sofas, which is it?

You'd sleep closer to the floor. It was square in shape. It looked (kinda) cool, and for those lacking in space, it could convert to a couch.

But futons, in order to transform to the couch shaped, were not filled with springs, that long-time staple of mattresses. Some people simply could not adjust to spring-less mattresses, and found futons to lack in comfort. They couldn't bounce up and down as they did when they were a kid. And they said it hurt their back.

So, many folks, who tried the futons abandoned it, returning back to a familiar friend. Perhaps it says something that mattress companies never seemed to embrace the futon market, and played a patient game, outwaiting those who used futons.

It's usually tough to track a trend that's starting. By the time it's around, you were probably too late. For example, when did people stop wearing oversized shirts, and decided to move back to small shirts, form-fitting, possibly even suggestive? When did silver become popular as a car color? When did goatees make a comeback?

It's a little harder to know when a trend is falling out of favor, and fewer people seem to care. Classic "what's hot, what's not" trend.

So, futons, happy to know you. Sorry to see you go!

Buh-bye!

You're So Vain

Today I saw something I don't see every day.

Vanity plates.

And not just any kind of vanity plates. The first one said "Vijay", presumably, the owner was a pleasant, though possibly vain Hindu.

The second was "Rani", which, I admit, is more obscure, but stands for "queen" in Hindi. Thus, two cars, two vanity plates, and likely, two Indians.

In India, I noticed that most license plates were hand-made (or perhaps store-made), but did not allow the user to pick their own vanity plates.

Does this sign of individualism ring more for Indian Americans than other citizens from other countries, or am I more sensitized to this than most, or was it mere coincidence?

I wonder.

Rivera Unleashed

Words don't do adequate justice to how frightfully bizarre this is.

Coffee Confidential

I was at Starbuck's today, the Microsoft of coffee, the evil empire. But I give it credit for getting people to go to coffeehouses, a concept that might have been suitably obscured otherwise. And when you're desperate, there's a Starbuck's everywhere.

Now, many a place hire folks that just don't drink coffee, and so little things like "Is this decaffeinated or not?", a huge deal for customers, seem silly to these folks. Coffee's coffee, isn't it? Ridiculous!

Imagine a game company where the employees didn't actually play video games for fun. This almost never happens. Yet, there are plenty of professions, especially in the food industry, where you get non-experts trying to do an "expert" job, when they simply don't care.

You'd think Starbuck's wouldn't have this problem. But, they do. Starbuck's had bold and regular coffee. But plenty of times, I see the server just grab one coffee or the other, as if it didn't matter. In reality, it doesn't matter much, but it certainly shows a lack of care, when they decide to have two coffees, and don't care which one they get.

So I'm allegedly drinking Italian Roast, instead of the house blend, which is fine. A little strong. Perhaps I should have ordered it the first time.

But perhaps I should be the one figuring that out.

Textbooks?

I was reading an article about how Richard Feynman, famous physicist and bongo drum player, where he explained why textbooks were so awful. He had been on a committee to help select textbooks for a state, and discovered many of his colleagues barely read the books and made decisions that had little to do with the quality of the books.

I suspect we still have textbooks, but it feels like we should be able to use the Internet, and use virtual books. For one, it should cost a lot less. You don't have to make physical books. You have virtual ones instead. To be fair, web pages typically make lousy books, because far less care is taken, and because most web pages weren't designed to be high quality. HTML doesn't give you high precision for laying out content. It merely describes content.

Is there a reason why we should use textbooks, at least, in pre-college? I wonder.

Hana-bi

I've read that hana-bi is the Japanese word/phrase for fireworks, though apparently, the literal translation is fire-flower, which evokes both beauty and danger.

Fireworks are most closely associated with the fourth of July, which is Independence Day in the United States. I don't feel a particular need to go see them, but they have served as a kind of temporal touchstone in my life. There were several times that I was at the A.V. Williams Building, staring in the stairwells out through the windows to catch a glimpse of the College Park fireworks. Usually, I was trying to get some work done on the holiday.

Today I was at work again, trying to get a few things done for some other folks depending on my stuff, and stared out at the distance, the fireworks a mere flower in the night landscape, fiery entrails, squirming in sperm-like glee upwards, before exploding, then fading back to Earth. I'm sure this wasn't the DC fireworks--we're a bit too north for that, but they seemed to have spent enough money on it.

A few summers ago, I was in Seattle, near the water, where my cousin, his then-girlfriend, and my uncle and aunt, sat watching fireworks. It was crowded, I recall. We struggled to find a place to sit, and had to wait til it got dark. I remember we went to someone's house, a friend of my cousin, who was out of town, and he was looking after the place, in exchange for using the place from time to time. He grilled some tuna, which, I suppose, is the cool thing to do.

I've been in DC twice for fireworks. It's crowded to go, so I don't generally like going to see them there, though it's nice to say you've done it. Of course, it's a reminder of how time passes. As you get older, the years go by faster. Remember when you were a kid, and a year was forever? You couldn't imagine that you'd spend four years in high school. Then, four more go by like that in college. Then, ten years, then twenty.

Even though the fireworks last maybe half an hour, I get mildly nostalgic. You'd think they'd have fireworks for New Year's except it's usually darn cold outside. So, the summer is as good as anytime.

Wimbledon usually happens during the fourth. I watched Maria Sharapova get woman-handled by Venus Williams. Once upon a time, women didn't really grunt as they struck the ball. Not exactly lady-like, you know. But Seles had her two beat grunt. Venus occasionally does it too.

But Maria Sharapova--she's the queen of loud noises. She's replaced Anna Kournikova as the dream-babe of sportscasters and sports males who don't watch tennis much, but like ultra short skirts, and blond Russian women. And Sharapova wins too! But I'm sure the thoughts wander away from the courts, as they hear Sharapova yelp, making some men weak in the knees for an athletic, moody Russian girl. Sharapova's in charge, and she's liking it!

She generates fireworks of a different sort for her fans, who may not quite know that she even plays tennis.

And so, July 4 eventually becomes July 5, and the heat that eventually comes back reminds you once again, that it's summer.

Bed Head

Occasionally, you encounter some ideas, some concepts, so different, so surprising, that it rocks the view you had irrevocably.

And so it was with "beds".

For a long time, perhaps nearly all my life, I equated beds with mattresses. After all, when I want to go to bed, I mean the mattress. I suppose the bed could be technically thought of as the supports, what prevents it from sitting on the ground itself.

When you're cheap, like my parents, the metal framework that supports the box springs is what keeps it off the ground. I remember these things being tall enough for a kid to hide under.

I'm thinking of this because I'd like to purchase a bed, which means, in this case, both a mattress and supports.

The last time I tried to do this was horrendous. I went to a local Mattress Discounters, and it was like going to a car dealer. They wanted me to get a bed that day. I couldn't get out of there soon enough. Pressure tactics from a bed salesman.

I'm not even sure what to get for a bed/mattress. I want it to be queen sized, since I've been using the same twin/full size bed for years. It's fine, just a bit small. I remember spending about 60-70 bucks on a mattress, having it tied to my roof, and using that for a few years. The mattress simply sat on the floor.

Bed advertisers like to tell you that you spend 1/3 of your life in bed, so it's worth spending lots of money on a really good bed. Having said that, if a "cheap" bed feels pretty good to you, why spend more?

I don't know what I'll get, but for now, as long as it's not too pricey, and it feels all right, then I think it will be fine.

Review: Ratatouille

It's been said that Pixar, for all its computer generated wizardry, invested its money where it really counts: the storytellers.

Based on the reviews, it seemed Ratatouille would be about a rat that loves to eat. But instead, it becomes a story about a rat that wants to be a great cook, inspired by a cookbook "Anyone Can Cook".

Like many of its Disney cartoon predecessors, it's about a child rebelling against his upbringing. I wonder where this theme is uniquely American. Many cultures place a premium on parental authority and parental love. The kids do what the parents say (in principle) because parents know best. In such societies, elders are held with a good deal of respect.

Once upon a time, before Pixar took over, Disney cartoons often featured a female protagonist, typically wide-eyed and dreamy, but tough and independent, with a disapproving father who eventually realizes the daughter can do whatever she wants, and that's not such a bad thing after all.

Pixar has had a very tough time with that idea. When guys dominate an industry, despite being married, despite having daughters, they invariably write stories with male protagonists, mostly because they observe themselves well, but not women so well, and thus, presumably, they'd write a story that lacked truth or at the very least some verisimilitude of authenticity.

Thus, Toy Story, two male leads. The Incredibles, a male lead and a male enemy. A Bug's Life, male lead. Finding Nemo, two males, and one female. The female is, unusually enough, a kind of comic relief.

Pixar films generally succeed on two fronts. First, they are fabulous to look at. They look realer than real. Even if you aren't engaged in the story, it's fantastic to watch. Second, the stories are fun, because they often appeal to childlike fears and hopes.

Given how most of these films seem to suggest that child knows best, parents love it, perhaps because they can relate to it like a child.

Ratatouille covers a bunch of themes. There's the big one: anyone can cook, even a rat, which is more generally, you can do anything you set your mind to, or more properly, genius can come from anywhere. Second idea is: be good to your friends, no matter who they are. Thus, Linguini, the hapless kid, who can't cook a lick, eventually gives credit where credit is due. Third idea is: family matters, even if they don't understand what's going on. Finally, you're going to suffer setbacks, but persevere.

Oh yes, then there's art, and there's art! Art is meant to be surprising and a revelation, and true to theme number one, anyone can do it (meaning, of course, anyone that's a genius can do it).

Beyond the themes, there's the need for a romance, though romance has never been a Pixar strong suit. Cars is the closest to being a romance, but really, it's about a hotshot kid that learns how to respect elders, and the female lead seems much older. That would be, nonetheless, an intriguing suggestion (young guys liking older women), but usually, the romance is a side story to the goals of the male lead. Indeed, the male's often have a purpose with their lives, and romance ain't it.

In Ratatouille, the only female falls for the gawky male. But really, this is mostly because we need someone who roots for the gawky male, besides Remy, the rat. You see, if it really were a romance, Colette might decide she and Linguini don't have that much in common. Linguini really can't cook, and it was a rat the whole time! But given that premise is so off-the-wall, it wouldn't fit in a normal romantic comedy plot.

Ultimately, what makes Pixar films work is they are so darn clever and thought out. When you work on a movie for years, you can figure out details that a quick movie, written in a few months, filmed in a month, often misses. From early scenes that lay the groundwork for later scenes, to the scenes of rats scampering up and down, to using the gauze effect of the chef's hat, to hair, rat fur, and so forth. There's a lot crammed into a film, and yet, if you're not paying attention, you can simply bathe in a fun story.

The one criticism I've read that's interesting is a comment about accents. Indeed, despite being in Paris, only the real cooks sound French, and fake French at that. Remy, Linguini, the rats, all have American accents. Even so, the critic is British (voiced by Peter O'Toole).

Ratatouille is a dense film, filled with lots of stuff, even if perhaps it's not a particularly deep film. Indeed, most of the characters, other than Remy himself, are basically caricatures. That's where animation can generally be lazy: characterization. Of course, it's for the kids! We're not about to do a Lone Star, John Sayles, multi-character, fare.

This is a idea driven story, and although the characters are likable, they aren't particularly deep, not like, say, Finding Nemo.

Even so, the newness of it all, the desire, like Anton, the critic, to be dazzled, often leaves senses aglow, making you think this was the best one yet, when indeed, it was just a passing fancy, lovely to behold, but fading as time passes.

Juice

Ah, Gabe, how did you get stuck doing this interview?

I suppose it's already over a year old. I think I like the hair better in this interview than other ones.

Mailing It In

When you work in the software industry, you think that anything can be fixed quickly with code. This is often true. A dedicated programmer can change the behavior of a program dramatically, adding features that were not there, provided he or she can get access to the code.

But many other disciplines seem pretty content with the status quo. They figure, stuff works pretty well, why bother? One advantage with the status quo is that once you figured it out, that's it. It's not changing much.

Most apartment complexes have these very tiny mailboxes. The idea is for the postman to open 6 mailboxes simultaneously, and shove the mail into the tiny compartment. Of course, anything larger than a Pringles can would not fit in, so any large package you might hope to receive has to come to you a different way.

Heaven forbid that the apartment complex actually has someone that maintains a mail area 24 hours a day. We can have groceries 24 hours a day because, well, because people are going to buy something. There's no gain for an apartment complex to have this incredibly useful service for you.

But even that wouldn't be necessary if mailboxes were actually a suitable size. Enough to hold, say, a big breadbox. Houses have it a little better. The mailboxes for most houses are bigger. Even so, it's still not that huge.

And yet, despite the proliferation of larger packages being sent by Amazon and other overnight delivery companies, what has been done about handling these packages?

Nothing.

The closest thing you get is paying a place like Mailboxes, etc. to get large packages for you.

In software, this wouldn't happen. Someone would have come up with a solution (which doesn't mean that every solution has been figured out--note that despite UNIX being older than Windows and Windows having been around for years and years, it does not support soft links, using something far inferior--the shortcut).

Oh, you know how it is. It would be so expensive for apartment complexes around the country to actually fix this up. They want to put their big cost down up front, and then never spend a penny again if they can get away with it.

Someone told me about toilets getting backed up. How about that? It's similar to this automatic coffee maker at work. It dispenses a fixed amount of hot water, as having a sensor to know when it gets full is way too complex. So, if the water that's dispensed is wrong, it just flows over. Surely, if we have a bunch of engineers, they can think of a better toilet? But has the design changed much?

The biggest change that I'm aware of is the low-flow toilet, which was meant to conserve water. In, what? Fifty years of toilets? How much has really changed?

To be fair, the nice thing about simple designs is that they are simple. Once you start writing programs to run this or that, then someone has to maintain it, and so forth.

We're in the midst of a computer revolution, that's affected how we get our information, and yet, many things in our lives are still the way it's been since forever. Ultimately, it's money. Software, being easily copied, is often much more malleable than any physical structure.

And speaking of some forms of mail? Why bother? Maybe these companies should merely send PDFs. I could dispose of them more easily, and I wouldn't lose the material if I didn't want to. It's amazing we still use as much paper as we do, because people still can't use computers.

Next time you look at what's advanced, think about all the things that haven't changed in a while, and ask if they're really as good as they could be.

Breakin'

Oldies, but goodies.

Eminem Set to Ragtime

Who knew?

Name of the Rose

There's a Star Trek (TOS) episode titled By Any Other Name, which is a reference to Shakespeare's quote "A rose, by any other name, would smell just as sweet".

Most of us, in the US, take for granted that we have a surname, passed from the father's side down to children. It's so ingrained that it takes a moment to realize that this wasn't always the case. People's surnames, say from England, were often picked from their profession. Thus, Baker, Shoemaker, Taylor, Smith, and so forth.

Scandinavians followed a different tradition, often naming a person by his father's first name. Thus, you might be Jonas Andersson, which would mean, Jonas, son of Anders (or Ander's son). Indeed, the prevalence of names like Anderson came from Swedes that immigrated to the US (and why they're apparently far more common in the US than in, say, England).

The tradition of naming a person after their father is still common in India. Indeed, there are two ways that people pick up a "surname", which I put in quotes, because surnames are not always passed father to son (at least, not in the way you're familiar with). Another common naming tradition is to pick the town or village that the person was born in. I suppose there are names that are based primarily on religion. Many a Sikh has a surname of Singh. I believe those that are Jains (an offshoot of Hinduism) often have a surname of Jain.

Clearly my knowledge of surnames in India is lacking, but the point I want to make is this. Since surnames don't necessarily last more than a generation, there's a premium on the given (first) name. This may be why Indians, who have immigrated to the US, don't adopt Western names. Chinese and Koreans often name their kids with American names (some would say Christian, but Koreans are Christian, but do not name their children Mark or Paul). The Japanese, intriguingly, often do stick with Japanese names (thus, few Bob Watanabes).

Furthermore, where a typical American chooses to abbreviate their first name, as in, B. Smith for Bob Smith, Indians, by contrast, prefer to write Bob S. After all, the last name is the father's name (not sure what women do), so why would you emphasize that? On the other hand, if you are passing a surname generation after generation, you may wish to emphasize your heritage.

If you ever get email from someone Indian, you may notice that it's the surname that's abbreviated, thus, Rajeev Motwani might be abbreviated Rajeev M. Of course, if the person has lived in the US, they may adopt American traditions (but why?) and say R. Motwani.