Spellbound

Sameer Mishra just won the National Spelling Bee. I recently heard, on NPR, that they have opened up the Bee to competitors outside the US. That's fine with me, I suppose. After all, some of the best Scrabble players in the world don't even speak English, but have memorized word after word of English.

I know there are many, especially those with young children, that find spelling and spelling bees inane. English has no logic! The spelling doesn't make any sense! Why are words so hard to spell! Why can't it simply be phonetic?

Of course, having words that sound alike allows people to make jokes, saying one word, and subtly implying the meaning of the other word.

But I don't think the kids who learn to spell are doing something inane. In order to learn new words, most spelling champs will learn not only how to spell it, but what the word means, its word origins and so forth. Is it not the mark of someone intelligent to use the full spectrum of words available to them? Have you never struggled to find a word that captures the nuance of what you're looking for? You know there must be some word that conveys the feeling, the meaning you want, that replaces "unmitigated gall" with chutzpah.

Another interesting result of the Bee is the numerous Indian Americans that excel at spelling. Indeed, because there's a trend of Indian Americans spelling well, I'm sure there's many a parent that are into their kids spelling well. It also points to the sharp increase in Indian Americans in the US.

I'd say it's not a particularly American phenomenon. I've pointed out that the greatest export of India is Indians. There are countries that have had Indians living there for decades, if not centuries. Malaysia's Indian population is quite large and influences the cuisine.

One expects that, at some point, there will be a breakthrough Indian-American tennis player. Where Michael Chang was that breakthrough Chinese-American, it seems only a matter of time before an Indian-American succeeds. Having said that, Americans have struggled to reach the upper echelons.

Meanwhile, it's perhaps no surprise that Indians in the US have found spelling as a compelling competition, and one Sameer Mishra is now the spelling bee champ.

Is Gas Stupid?

With gas prices reaching four dollars a gallon, there are several things that may have made sense at the time, but are completely silly right now.

First, is there really any reason to have three levels of gas? Does anyone ever get the midgrade? You either get cheap or premium, and right now, the difference between the two is between 2 and 3 dollars on a full tank that costs you between 40 and 60 dollars.

The other bit of silliness is fractional cents. Remember when the gas stations would fool you? You weren't paying 98 cents a gallon (when did that last happen?). You paid 98 and nine-tenths cents, which was effectively 99 cents. 1 cent in 4 dollars? That's a quarter of a percent. And yet, gas stations still seem bent on this idea that they want to fool is in that last fraction of a cent.

There should be one gas price, one gas grade, probably premium, and no fractions of cents.

Why these things don't change, I'll never understand.

Are Republicans Democratic?

OK, finally a blog entry that's not about tennis.

The lengthy Democratic primary season has raised one important distinction between the parties. While Democrats favor proportional representation, Republicans favor, majority (or is it plurality) takes all.

The electoral college also favors this way of counting votes. In hindsight, it's not that democratic, is it? If you are in the minority, your vote doesn't count at all. When people claim that we live in a democratic society, where every vote counts, they're wrong. By saying majority takes all, it basically reinterprets all the dissenting votes and says they don't matter.

The electoral college was put in place to stretch the lead of the majority. The Reagan landslide in 1984 over Walter Mondale where Mondale won two states (his own state of Minnesota and Hawaii, which almost always votes Democrat) didn't reflect that 40% of the vote went to Mondale. Reagan still took more than 90% of the electoral college, and thus 30% of the voters had their votes effectively not count. Even if, in the end, the guy with the most votes wins, it can lead to unusual situations, like when Gore lost in 2000, where the candidate with the most popular votes loses.

Republicans hold their primaries like this, presumably, so a candidate will come out on top, and because the American public is stupid, they jump on the bandwagon of the leader, and let McCain win a nomination where a year earlier, everyone said he was dead in the water. The Republican primary has ceased to be meaningful, despite Ron Paul occasional reaching 25% of the disaffected voters who want a true libertarian to win, rather than some neocon wannabe.

In the end, the Republican primaries aren't very democratic, and that's with a lower-case "d".

Mirror, Mirror

In a famous Star Trek episode, Kirk, Uhura, McCoy, and Scotty are sent to an alternate universe where there's an empire, including a goateed Spock, and Chekhov (do you know there's a tennis player named Pavel Chekhov--no really!).

But that's not the point of this blog entry.

Of course, it's about tennis, as my blog used to talk about interesting stuff, and now it's mostly about tennis.

A little while ago, I bought a mini-DV camcorder. This was a difficult decision, because frankly, unlike digital cameras, there are lots of different mediums to pick from a camcorder. Should I get a DVD format? Or a hard drive? Or use the mini-DV cassettes?

Fortunately, I found a website that suggested mini-DV was at a good price point. Cheap, yet high resolution. I found a Canon camcorder for less than 250 dollars (the ZR-950) to be specific.

The goal was to record myself hitting tennis balls, and see where I could improve. One problem I ran into, rather immediately, was that the first time I used it, no one in my family (except my brother who wasn't in town) plays tennis. In particular, I couldn't have someone rally with me.

This meant I had to feed myself the balls. Since I had six tennis balls, I did this six times, from three different angles. Side on, from the front, and from the back.
I recorded this on Monday. I didn't look at the video until last night (Wednesday).

All I can say is that I'm surprised I hit that way. Shrini felt that it didn't matter how I did my windup, as long as I hit OK. I suppose, but no pro hits my way, and I figure that at the very least, I should try to look like most good players look, and see if that helps or not.

This is one of the major reasons I got a camcorder. The way I hit and the way I think I hit are two different things. Without something to look at, I would not make any changes to the way I hit. You could argue that many of the things we do, in particular, drive a car, rely on seeing what we're doing, and then making small adjustments to make sure we are on track. These adjustments are in reaction to what we see.

Similarly, without a good way to tell what I do, I don't realize what I'm doing, so I don't know how to make appropriate changes.

But now I do. Next step is to download the video to the computer and look at what I'm doing more closely.

Skill and Determination

I was once told, by an aspiring Ph.D. candidate, that there are two kinds of people who finish Ph.Ds. Those that love their topic so much that it doesn't seem like work at all, and those that work to get it done, no matter what. And most people fall in the second group. There are certainly many people who don't finish that are smart enough to finish. But due to lack of focus, or worrying about things that aren't important, they don't finish up. Some of that is the fault of the advisor who should carry some burden of pushing the student to success, but without the student motivating themselves, it can lead to problems in the future.

So now that I've hooked you with something that's not about tennis. I'm going to talk tennis.

Don't bail yet.

Many of the same things that can be said about Ph.D's actually apply to tennis players, and competitive athletes of all sort.

I was watching a match this morning, albeit briefly, between Rafael Nadal and Thomaz Bellucci. For a while, Bellucci, a lefty from Brazil, looked like he was controlling points against Nadal. He was efficiently holding serve. But then, so was Nadal. At 5-6 down, Bellucci was up 40-15. 40-15 eventually became deuce. Then ad to Nadal and back to deuce a few times before an error meant set 1 to Nadal.

And then?

Sets 2 and 3 easily to Nadal.

Nadal looked like he was in trouble, and yet held in the points enough. Once Bellucci lost the first set, I'm sure Nadal gained confidence and Bellucci lost confidence. Bellucci certainly appeared to hit shots that were pressuring Nadal.

The point is, many pros have the kind of strokes that, if sustained, can give the top pros a lot of trouble. Wayne Odesnik, who qualified through some odd tournament that put two of the top Jewish-American players against each other, has won two rounds by simply going for his shots. He's given more experienced players, Guillermo Canas and Hyung-Taik Lee, the heave-ho. Now he faces one of the favorites in Novak Djokovic, and is expected to bow out. However, he's likely to take his attitude and hard hitting strokes and try to knock out Djokovic.

It's true that players like Nadal hit the ball, on average, better than their opponents. It's also true that Nadal can concentrate better on big points, and avoid silly errors that bedevil lesser players. Part of this sport is mental toughness, which translates to being able to hit a tough shot under pressure. This means solid technique. I don't know if it's fair to say that "belief in your shots" is really what's happening, whether good technique leads to confidence and confidence leads to good technique.

But people seem to believe that mistakes are made due to lapses in concentration rather than in deficiencies due to technique.

Last night, Shrini and I ran into this problem as we were playing doubles, and unable to play as well as we wanted, opting for safer shots instead. I'm sure technique is part of our problem. We lack enough skill to hit the shots well under duress. Part of it is also confidence. Once we think we can't, we lighten up, and then we're in trouble.

People say that Hingis didn't hit much harder than her opponents, but she did hit smarter. She developed strokes, like the drop shot, like coming into net, like wrong-footing, that made her less powerful strokes more effective.

There's skill. There's determination. It's good to have both.

Boy Meets Grill

There's this website called Stuff White People Like, which, except for Justin, seems universally liked.

As this was Memorial Day Weekend, I have at least one more thing to add to the list. Grilling. White people like to grill. When I think of Memorial Day, I think of long weekend or increased gas prices. A few people might even think of, you know, the guys who died in war. But much like folks think of Easter as bunnies and eggs, folks also think of grilling.

Grilling is considered guy cooking. Guys cook outdoors, set up the grill, which involves fire, which is, alas, too dangerous for women (back off!).

My parents, not brought up in this tradition, despite decades of living in the US, did not grill, but that was OK by me. I was chilling mostly, hitting tennis balls against a wall, contemplating the mysteries of the flight of a little yellow ball.

Selective Knowledge

Once you've lived some place any amount of time, you gain familiarity with it. I've lived in Tennessee, hmm, maybe 10 years full-time, then part time another 2 years (mostly summers). I know the local area that I live near pretty well, though nothing much more than about 10 miles out.

For a while, I knew a few places in Ithaca, and then the places in Maryland near the University.

I probably know only a few other places somewhat well, but nothing beyond that. Google Maps added this street view idea, but until they have live video down every street you might imagine, it won't get close to approximating living in a new place.

Imagine you're interested in moving to San Francisco. Imagine you could get on some game or program that would let you drive, during rush hour traffic or during normal traffic from a place you might live to a place of work. OK, maybe you can skip through the real-time hassle of waiting in rush-hour traffic (which really should be named no-move-hour traffic). Then, you'd know the ins and outs of San Francisco before you even bother to move. When you get there, you'd have a familiarity that would otherwise take some time to develop.

Coming back to Tennessee, I knew of three places to play tennis. Well, two. There used to be this one place very close by, with lit tennis courts. Then, it went under disrepair, with grass growing everywhere. Those courts were eventually torn down and replaced by a baseball field. That left the high school courts, which had its courts doubled from 6 to 14 (more than doubled) and the one across town.

I hadn't played on those courts since I played a tournament when I was maybe 14. I don't think I played there with my friends. There are maybe 10 or so courts there, but more importantly, there's a tennis wall there. As tennis walls go, it's OK. It has a reasonably height, maybe 12 feet high (it should be 2-3 feet higher, but I quibble), and maybe half the width of a real tennis court. The surface is at least a tennis court surface rather than a blacktop surface.

There are two sides to this wall, one that faces a street, and one that faces some shrubs and bushes, where tennis balls can easily get lost.

The side facing the street at least has a fence to make it harder to hit it on the street. The other side, much to the lack of wisdom of the city, is missing a fence. Even a short fence that blocks the shrubs in the back, or having the shrubs dug up so tennis balls wouldn't get lost would be a great help. I spent some 15 minutes searching for a ball in the foliage. What a pain.

My latest goals are two fold. On the forehand, as usual, I am aiming to strike the ball more in front of the body. This, I suspect, is the new thing that both Federer and Nadal do, but it takes a while to train the body to want to hit that much more in front. I've been trying to do this for several months now.

In addition to meeting the ball in front, I'm still trying to keep the angle of the wrist and forearm at 90 degrees, and to use the full arm in the motion, and to use body rotation, and to keep the body relaxed, and not to clench too hard, and to be able to hit very slowly, reasonably accurately.

And one more recent thing. I've been trying to get my right foot to lift so I am on my toes at impact. This was a recent piece of advice I saw on a video. At first, I wondered, what difference would that make?

But then I thought about it some more, and I was thinking, what happens if I don't lift? Then, my right foot stays planted. When it stays planted, there's a greater inclination not to rotate the torso of the body. So that little bit of getting the right heel off the ground at impact allows you to rotate the torso more easily, or more precisely, it doesn't act as an impediment to rotating the torso.

Now, I know that's a lot of things to do, and I also forget to move my left arm parallel to the baseline too, but over time, I remind myself of this or that, and slowly, all the pieces come together.

I feel that when I'm not getting much power, it's because I shorten my stroke and hit a half-stroke, and that leads to a no-power shot. I'll have to pay attention to myself to see if I do that or not, but that might explain why I have issues.

I used to think hitting against a wall was kinda useless, because it wouldn't simulate a real person. And while that's true somewhat, I believe if you can hit against the wall, it will certainly not hurt your strokes, and probably will benefit. You could argue, for example, hitting against a ball machine doesn't help much because the ball machine stays stationary.

It may move the ball around, but if you hit down the line, the ball machine doesn't respond from that position.

Even so, because it hits so regularly (unlike real people), you are likely to improve a lot quicker against a machine than otherwise. It doesn't get tired. It doesn't hit inconsistently. The burden is solely on you.

And, for the first time in a while, hitting against the wall didn't force a lot of blood into my forearm making it to stiff and painful to hit the ball.

The other thing I'm working on is a transition to a one-handed backhand. As I've mentioned before, I used to hit a one-handed backhand, though that was like 20 years ago. Still, I was OK at hitting it, and it took me a long time to get OK at hitting a two-handed shot, as I made mistakes that I had no resource to correct (no web at the time, and certainly no tennis web resources like Fuzzy Yellow Balls). So I continually made mistakes with no one to suggest improvements. It's a slow way to learn.

The reason for such a big transition is because I feel I can hit a bit harder with a one-hander, and it seems more fun to hit it than the two-hander. This means I've totally abandoned (well, mostly) hitting the two-hander. I still read up on the shot just in case I decide to go back.

I still have yet to record my shots, but I hope to do so Sunday. I need to read up more on my camcorder and see what it can do.

Fourth Time's No Charm

Last night, the Disney Channel was showing the film Holes. Aimed at kids, it combines the worst of kid sitcom stylings with a peculiar storyline about a teen rehabilitation camp with kids digging holes to find some treasure, and then an action director in Andrew Davis, most famous for his modern retelling of The Fugitive.

Holes is also famous for being the first film starring Shia LeBeouf, who had for the most part been acting in television. Since then, Shia has been in Bobby, Disturbia, and Transformers, enough, apparently, to make him the new "it" guy.

This isn't the first time the Raiders series has opted to find young talent to augment Harrison Ford. In particular, in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, River Phoenix, looking every much River Phoenix, and not a whit like Harrison Ford, plays young Indiana Jones, in a flashback scene where he first learns to yield a bullwhip.

Early reviews suggested that the latest installment of Indiana Jones, with the lumberous title Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was a flop, and while any Spielberg-helmed film is going to have more than its share of clever bits, this almost feels like a favor to Harrison Ford, then a well-thought out plot.

The first Indiana Jones film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, revived a new idea to movies, the swashbuckling hero, except, being post-1970s, Harrison Ford didn't play a traditional swashbuckling hero. He wasn't the manly, full-of-confidence, wooden acting hero of the 30s and 40s. Karen Allen plays the tough-as-nails bartender-slash-daughter of an archaeologist, the kind of role women used to find more common in the pre-women's lib movement than now.

What made the first film successful, other than its vivid scenes of faraway South America and Egypt, there is a certain level of seriousness in that film, in particular, the rather creepy Ark itself and the rival Rene Belloq, who takes a fancy for Marion.

The second film jettisons the independent Marion for the ever-frightened "Willie" Scott played by Kate Capshaw, in the more traditional 40s-style woman (rather than someone like Kate Hepburn). While her character was more slight, the rather dark, claustrophobic scenes in the Thugee headquarters lead to a creepy effect. Among the three films, this is the weakest, and even still, the chase scene inside the railway leaves one gasping for breath.

The third film adds a lot of clever elements that make the story more interesting than the first. This time, unlike the first two films, there is a femme fatale, played by Alison Doody, Dr. Elsa Schneider is beautiful, smart, and ruthless. She is the dark mirror of Indy's characters.

But the real revelation in the third film is casting Sean Connery against type. Rather than play the James-Bond like character, who would be the natural father of Indiana Jones, Connery is a bookish sort. A key scene occurs when his father starts squawking with an umbrella, which causes a bunch of geese to jam up a biplane set on mowing down the intreprid Jones. Even the casual ride in the blimp is fun. And opening up the film with young Indiana Jones as a color that the previous films didn't get to.

The fourth film, coming nearly 20 years after the previous one, decides to jettison the Nazis. After all, Harrison Ford is also almost 20 years older too, and to keep setting the film during the 40s is to deny that Ford is not as young as he used to be (even though he's kept in remarkably good shape).

This time, the Communists replace the Nazis, and it's about the Red scare in the 50s. This too has some issues, because it's only dealt with rather lightly (mostly in early scenes), and then they become the generic bad guys. Cate Blanchett is vaguely unrecognizable as the vamped up Irina Spalko, reminiscent of a dominatrix more than anything else.

Part of the story involves the titular crystal skull and another archaeologist played by a bumbling John Hurt who stumbles on its secrets. Ray Winstone who had a good turn as Mr. French in The Departed plays Mac whose obsession with gold has kept him in the treasure hunting business all these years.

The problem with the fourth film is trying to figure out what the heck to do with Mutt. Since it's set in the 50s, a favorite era for George Lucas, Lucas gets to show off cars from the era, and Mutt as prototypical greaser. The problem is how to get Mutt and Indiana to have reasonable dialog with one another. Mutt's just not the same character as Prof. Henry Jones as played by Sean Connery, who at the very least, often coasts with his considerable charm.

Spielberg has a lot of clever bits in the film, from hinting at Area 51 and Roswell, to the clever devices shown throughout the film, to an echo of his early days with E.T. and Close Encounters. Yet, the whole story seems far less engaging than any of the previous outings, where some of the seriousness of the first films have been replaced by bubble-gum shenanigans. And, yeah, the CG effects, they could be better!

CG still has work to go. Even if models and puppets are also fake, there is more realism because they are made by physical objects. At times, if the story is good, like Lord of the Rings we can forgive the less than realistic appearances of castles and monsters because we are engaged in the story.

Is it awful? No. But over the years, we've expected a lot more from this very successful franchise.

JoAnne Russell

I grew up watching tennis in the 1980s. It was an era of transition. The 70s was a time of clay court players, the rise of Borg and Vilas. It was the time of Connors and Nastase and the start of new bad boy to succeed those two, John McEnroe. The way to win during this era was to get into rallies of 20, 30, 40 shots. It was amazing that tennis was at the height of its popularity with such a style of play.

The 80s was a transition to bigger racquets, to power forehands. Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker, Steffi Graf, and Agassi to close the era.

Although Martina was a sign of new power, she herself would be exposed for her groundstrokes, which was good enough for Chris Evert, but not good enough for Graf.

During these days, NBC covered tennis. Bud Collins had yet to be relegated to the sideline, was still co-hosting with Dick Enberg. And JoAnne Russell was commenting on her childhood rival, Chris Evert.

JoAnne who? Yeah, I know. She played on the pro tour, I guess. But she would never hesitate to tell you that she played (and lost) to Chrissie long before anyone else was losing to her.

They were showing the 1984 French Open with Chris and Martina. They showed a brief recap of McEnroe-Connors (yes, Connors made the semis 5 times at the French) and Lendl-Wilander. As powerful as these groundstrokes were at the time, they are positively slow motion compared to today's tennis.

Either Nadal or Federer would be able to bully any of these players who in those days were mostly concerned with keeping the ball in play. Lendl may have ushered in the era of power tennis, at least, after Connors did, but they don't play at the kind of pace of today's players.

Still, players of this era would still easily beat anyone playing tennis now, perhaps even now, at age 40 and 50. Even slow and hobbled over the years, they can still hit a ball.

It's fun to watch these players from the past, even if everything feels like it's in slow motion. It was still an effective style for its time, and many a weekend player could only hope to be a fraction as good as these players were.

Why I Hate APIs

APIs stand for application programmer interface, or something like that.

For the non-programmers out there, imagine you have a programmable robot. It can take a limited number of commands. Move forward X units. Move backward X units. Turn left X degrees. Turn right X degrees. Blink lights. Stop blinking lights. These commands can be thought of as an API. It tells you want you can do with the robot in a nice, succinct way.

Programmers rarely write everything from scratch. The rely on code other people have produced. At a minimum, these other coders provide an API, i.e., a list of things you can do.

The problem is that sometimes all you get is the API, and it may not be obvious what convoluted idea they had in their head when they came up with it. Maybe they're really mathematical, and feel that everything needs to be expressed in terms of some elegant, yet frightfully obscure theory. To explain the theory would take a Ph.D., yet they can't be bothered to explain why.

I'm reading some API for some GUI (graphical user interface, stuff like menus, lists, buttons, etc). About 1/3 of the commands of most GUI widgets (a menu or a button or a list often gets a generic name like "widget") are useless. There aren't pointers to say "most commonly used method", or more importantly, what stuff you can or can't do.

Ideally, what you'd do is give a list of requirements (this is software engineering speak for "what should it do"), and the motivation behind it, plus anti-requirements ("the stuff it isn't supposed to do"), which is tough, because you are guessing at what you think users might want to see, but you don't intend to do.

Although seeing actual code is a little bit of an improvement, it still misses the motivation for what people want to do. This one code had a "mixin". Um, how was I supposed to know that I could use that? It's not in the API!

The lesson is that documentation often sucks, because people hate to write it. Coders believe in code, and not much else. If they believed in documentation more than code, maybe coding would be a little more fun.

Road Warrior

This is one of those journeys that happens at random.

I was at a reheasal dinner at a Chinese restaurant. I was approached by an elderly gentleman who told me that he was my father's (and my uncle's) cousin. I had no idea they had cousins in the US. I asked him where he lived. He said he lived in Montclair.

Ding, ding, ding!

Let me explain.

Maybe 13 years ago minus a few months, I was in year 5 of grad school, something that took utterly too long. It was during grad school I met Gabe who would go onto some minor fame as founder of his website. Gabe's slightly paranoid. He was reluctant to say which university he had gone to, but eventually said he went to Montclair State.

Now, New Jersey isn't known for its powerhouse universities, save one, and that's Princeton. Second place, I'd imagine is Rutgers, and I don't know what follows after that. Given the number of people who live in Jersey, it's surprising they don't have a more famous college system. Indeed, many Jerseyites go to New York or Massachusetts or Maryland or any number of nearby states to get a college education.

After checking it out on Google Maps, I realized good old MSU was only about half an hour away.

Here was my game plan. Eat lunch at a Malaysian place that I saw on the way back to the hotel. Then, head to MSU for an hour or so, then head back to the hotel to get ready for the wedding.

Although the morning was sunny, by the time early afternoon came around, it was rainy. I was trying to find the Malaysian restaurant despite the mess that is New Jersey traffic which isn't conducive to left turns. I asked my GPS to find the restaurant, Penang, under Asian restaurants, and the closest one it found was some 20 miles away, which I knew was untrue.

When I adjusted it to all restaurants, it managed to find it. Fortunately, I distrust the data that comes with GPS enough to do that.

The restaurant was pretty nice, looking initially like one of those Bugaboo, Famous Dave's, I'm in a Canadian hunting lodge feel. Stare at the back, and you could see the numerous chefs cooking in the back. I looked over the dishes and got some kind of roti with chicken curry. Malaysian chicken curry is the kind of curry that Indians probably laugh at, as not being quite authentic enough, yet the Brits and Americans love it. Still, it was good enough for me. The roti was particularly oily, but agai, that was fine with me.

I got a beef curry noodle dish, as Malaysia is one of those countries that eat huge bowls of noodles. This one had beef, with enough beef tendon or some other internal glue to make it taste authentic. The soup itself was swimming in coconut milk, though the taste of coconut was not that strong.

After being stuffed, I headed over to MSU.

Despite being only about 20 miles away, it isn't 20 miles of highway. I took a path that went through this place and that, and as I got closer, there was no indication that there was even a university nearby. It wasn't until I practically got on campus that I saw it. Not good for people visiting.

Alas, the weather was rainy and I had no umbrella. I was relying on maps nearby. The campus was pretty much abandoned. Graduation appeared to have happened at least days earlier. Few people were on campus. I went into some facility where kids were playing Suzuki songs, songs I recall since I played them as a youth. Amazing how resilient the Suzuki method has been.

So I was running hither and thither, seeing what little there was to see. It felt very much like an oversized high school, though I suppose many universities have that feel. Only the University Hall looked something more than blah.

This is one of those things where the last time Gabe was likely on campus, parts of it looked, I'm sure quite different. It seems, for example, the computer science department is only 10 years old, which means Gabe graduated after it opened up.

As it was, since I had to get back for the wedding (it's in 45 minutes from now), the 25 minutes back put me just before 5 PM.

Oh yes, oddly enough, as I was driving back, I was behind a very large SUV whose vanity plate read "Hamburg". The finals of Hamburg was just played this morning, with Nadal showing his mastery of Federer, winning in three sets. I thought it coincidental, yet fascinating.

Nostalgia Road

Twenty three years minus a few months ago, I was attending the inaugural Tennessee Governor's School for the Sciences. Other states like Georgia or Pennsylvania has created special summer programs so the brightest kids in the state could attend. The presumption, I'd imagine, was to convince the students to stay in-state. Little did they realize that, for the most part, money would convince most parents to choose the less expensive in-state option.

Tennessee did not go into this program so lightly. Three programs were set up, each with 100 students. One was in the sciences, one in the arts and humanities, and the other in music. I was enrolled in the sciences.

That was the summer of 1985. The program lasted a month, but it was the closest to a college experience we'd get until college, except unlike college, which drones on for months, then years, there was still some element of high school. The grades didn't count. We could spend the early evenings out on the tennis courts playing tennis. Some of the guys and girls were interested in making out.

That summer was also the summer that Tears for Fears came out with one of their few hits, Everybody Wants To Rule The World. This was one of those quintessential 80s hits. Even though Tears for Fears had maybe 2 other hits (Sowing the Seeds of Love and Head over Heels), this song still gets airplay everyone once in a while. Who would have though, as we approach the second decade of the new millenium, that music from the 80s, considered fun, the start of the MTV generation, the British Invasion lite, would have such staying power.

I was driving up to New Jersey today, and that's a four hour drive. To pass the time, I prefer to listen to NPR. There was a rebroadcast of Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, so I got to listen to that again. I'm sure there was some other interesting tidbit. Oh yeah, something about how to save money, using Roth IRAs.

It's been a while since I've driven more than an hour. Although the first hour was marred briefly by cops chasing down someone just a little ahead of me, which caused traffic to back up for five minutes, the long drive was something I enjoy, somewhat. Listening to radio during these drives is something like reading a good book. You're transported to some other place, as you see miles of road go past, as you go by cars.

Upon reaching New Jersey, finally finding the hotel after three tries, and making it to the dinner, I met a cousin of my dad and my uncle. He said he lived in Montclair. I realize Gabe used to go to Montclair, something he generally doesn't like talking about since it's not particularly glamorous. I'm curious to see what the campus looks like, perhaps get a shirt or something.

It's a Wong Kar Wai idea, where you share space with someone, even as that space is not shared in time. In Chungking Express, a woman, who is fascinated by a cop, sneaks into his apartment and cleans it. The cop, somewhat oblivious to it all, doesn't realize it's even happening.

Of course, years would separate the time I'd visit and the time Gabe had last been there, and his memories of the place would certainly not intersect that much with mine. Have you ever been to a place so often that it has a strange familiarity, but then show it to a friend who probably finds it pedestrian. Memories are what we, as people, infuse to a place, making the place more than just a place.

I think James Michener understood this idea. Michener wrote these tomes that were a collection of stories, and what united these stories was location. Location, that inanimate thing, that people live, build, and leave becomes the linchpin of memory.

I think, occasionally, as I go into a Starbuck's or a local grocery store, that I'm a visitor from far away, and that the people hanging out inside, who've probably been there, what, a year, two years, maybe more? Who have lived in the nearby area, so that the hole in the wall they work in is their hole in the wall, and here I am just visiting, and they have no idea.

The one thing that makes it almost seem familiar to me is the bland generic look of all places in the United States, the desire of branding, so that all McDonalds look basically the same, all grocery stores look basically the same. The names may not be familiar, but the layout is, and so it makes it distinctly American.

I know, if I were back home, I'd probably be lounging on the couch, waiting to see Federer and Nadal in the finals at Hamburg. Instead, I'm 200 miles away, in a hotel, with limited channels, waiting the hours between now and a wedding ceremony, and another four hour drive back. What would it be like to spend life on the road, looking exploring, wondering why different states don't have their own personalities, observing the folks in the stores, in the restaurants, even as I would hardly know them.

Once upon a time, in San Diego, I lost a cell phone that also doubled as my clock. I walked down to a store, maybe a Discovery Store, and bought a clock radio, with gaudy colors. Once I used it, I realized it wasn't all that pretty, and it was bulky, and I didn't want to carry it back with me, so I went downstairs, where a woman attendant guarded the entrance to the small gym at the basement of the hotel, and told her she could have it as a gift. Surprisingly, she said she was happy to have the clock.

Does she still use it? Does she remember how she got it?

It's late on a Saturday night. I could have been at a bar, but the drinks I had this evening are tiring me out, and all I'm thinking about is getting some sleep, some sleep in a hotel far away.

Sliced and Diced

I really should have called this entry "Wrong Footed".

Oh before I tell you what that's all about, I was watching this old, old match between Bjorn Borg and Rod Laver. Most people recall that Laver played in the 60s. But his career lasted long enough that he was still playing in the mid 1970s, and Borg started getting attention in 1973. So there was still some overlap between the two men, and they did play one another.

During the match, Pat Summerall, veteran sportscaster gets to play the tennis noob. Once upon a time, tennis commentators, especially on CBS, felt their audience had no clue about tennis, so they had to explain every little thing. The other pro commentator sounded like Pancho Gonzalez.

Summerall asked the "dumb" question "What does it mean to wrongfoot someone?". Pancho dutifully replied that it meant to hit the ball behind them as they are trying to go to cover the open court.

I can only imagine how this would sound if this were college football. What is a flea flicker? What is offsides? What is false start? What is holding? You could go on and on and on, because there are a ton of rules in football. Tennis, by comparison, is pretty simple, or at least, far less numerous.

Anyway, lately, my slice backhand has been rather poor. I come too much underneath the ball, and it lacks pace.

Now, when I worry about a stroke, I generally think from the waist and up. It didn't occur to me until very recently (today) that maybe my legs were the problem. As I was trying out my 1HBH, I knew I had to cross my front (right leg) in front of my left leg creating a closed stance.

I had not thought that this stance would be needed for the slice backhand too. I suspect that I was hitting my 1H sliced backhand with a neutral or even an open stance.

Something I can try the next time I get out on the court.

Suit Yourself

Most geeks don't like getting dressed up.

I have to admit, I don't like getting dressed up.

I'm supposed to attend a wedding, and I need something nice to wear. I figured I could find a blazer for about 80-90 bucks and then a shirt and tie for another 30 bucks. Perhaps I should have gone to Sears, but instead I went to Macy's.

The blazer was nearly 130 dollars, and I couldn't really find a cheaper price. The shirt was about 30 dollars, and worse, the tie was that much too. Ridiculous.

All to wear for one day.

These companies really take you to town when you get dressed up.

The Joy of 1HBH

Yesterday, I played with Adam. It's been a few weeks since we last played. He was in the process of moving, and then he got ill. Last time we played, he destroyed me. This time, the story was much the same.

Since the last time we played regularly, which was probably over 10 years ago, Adam's gotten a bit smarter as a player. He uses his slice more effectively. He can punish short balls. His serve is steady.

After a 6-1 drubbing in a set, I figured, rather than go through that again, it might be good to just hit around. Adam offhandedly mentioned whether I wanted to work on my one-handed backhand (nice abbreviated to 1HBH) or serve and volley or whatever.

When I first learned to play tennis, I used a 1HBH, and probably played that way for a year. After that, I learned to hit a two-handed backhand (2HBH), and pretty much hit that way ever since. Despite the switch to a 2HBH, my 1HBH was always OK.

Lately, I've played with Ravi and Shrini, both of whom have been trying to hit a 1HBH, so it had occurred to me that maybe, in order to give them advice, I should try to hit more 1HBH, but up until recently, I hadn't really checked out how to hit a 1HBH.

One thing I did know what that the 1HBH and the 2HBH are very different shots. A 2HBH starts with a sideways neutral stance setup. In other words, you start with your shoulder parallel to the side fence. When you finish, your shoulders will be parallel to the net.

The 1HBH requires you to step in front with your right leg (for a rightie) in front of the left leg, in a very closed stance. This facilitates getting your back completely to the net. When you are done hitting a 1HBH, the result is that you are sideways to the net (i.e., shoulders parallel to the side fence). In other words, you end up where the 2HBH starts off.

Anyway, about two days ago, I began looking at what Federer does with his 1HBH. Although I had seen his forehand many many times, I had not seen his backhand very often. Again, the idea was to pass on what I was observing to those trying to master the 1HBH.

Somehow, the comment that Adam made rather nonchalantly made me think, why not? Why not try hitting a 1HBH.

I will say, after half a lifetime of hitting with two hands, it took a little work to try hitting the 1HBH at all, but it felt a lot more liberating. A 2HBH, to me, always feels a bit constrained, that you trade stability in awkward positions for the wild abandon a 1HBH potentially offers.

I had no big objectives for my 2HBH, as I had been fretting my forehand for a while. But transitioning to a 1HBH meant that I had to relearn the backhand, and it has now changed my focus to my backhand, which ironically, is making me a bit more relaxed on my forehand.

The biggest difference with a 1HBH and 2HBH, other than the second hand, is the grip change. I find I have to think about the grip change a lot more.

One place that seems to have benefited from the change to one-hand is my return of serve. Where I tended to blunt back my return of serve on both sides, I feel like I can occasionally drive the shot. I don't know how long I'll keep doing the 1HBH. I know my brother gave up two hands on both sides to go to one hand on both sides a long time ago. I find it interesting that I might be ending up the same.

I'm sure it will take a while before I get decently consistent on the backhand, but for the first time, in a long while, it feels, for lack of a better word, freer, hitting the 1HBH.

Bengali Blues

Playing on public courts has its risks. Since you're not paying for the court, there's a desire to keep the court as long as is reasonable.

If you go often enough to a court, you see some regulars, people who are there time and again, day after day.

In the courts, near Hard Times, Shrini and I are the regulars, but we see a bunch of other regulars. There is a Taiwanese doubles group of elderly women and men, uttering Swee-uh (basically, "beautiful", but with more passion). There are two Asian guys who hit well while one girlfriend (presumably) stands on the side. There are two older white guys that hit flat, but have power, and volley well. There is the Vietnamese American who occasionally coaches.

Then, there are the Bengalis. There are five of them, so that makes it awkward.

These guys are in their forties or fifties. And they hate to wait.

To be fair, many people hate to wait, but they tough it out.

Not these guys. They complain if you're wearing the wrong shoes. They complain if you're playing singles. If they have to wait more than 15 minutes, they want to explode.

Imagine their horror when they were still waiting for an hour, and no one was budging off the courts. Was it possible that they had come at the worst time possible? That everyone on the court had arrived minutes afterwards?

In this case, yes, that's what happened, except for the Taiwanese group.

Now, the question is, how long would you expect to stay on the court. Many people would, if pressed, want to play at least an hour and a half, and if possible two hours. Tennis isn't so tiring that you couldn't play for two hours.

However, people also hate to wait for more than half an hour to get on the court.

So these guys, having arrived shortly after we got on the court, were pacing. And pacing. And pacing. 20 minutes became 30. 30 became 40. Why won't anyone get off the courts.

Eventually, after they had waited an hour, they decided to take action. They were simply going to go on the courts. They would warm up in between the courts, and insist you leave.

Indeed, because they were waiting, it seemed we were on the court much longer than we were. When I checked the time, we were on the court together for an hour fifteen minutes.

The Bengali guys would find some reason they could stay on the court for two hours. They're playing doubles. They're old. Some reason.

The funny thing is that the first group of people they're likely to harass are Indians. Why? Because they are familiar with them.

They sometimes like to ask the Chinese group when they are leaving, but the Chinese tend to distrust everyone anyway. They will say "We just started playing sets!", so they can get at least two sets in. The Chinese also don't want to give up the courts. They want their two hours too. One hour not enough!

Of course, the real solution is more courts. But somehow, no one wants to build 10 tennis courts. 3-4 tops. And lights? Maybe, maybe not.

And if you're regular? You feel the courts should be there for you each and every day. After all, you've been loyally playing for years. And even if you haven't improved a lick since 4 years ago, it doesn't matter.

And so with the utterance "You must leave now", I was faintly aware that they felt the spirit of Gandhi, and we were the British, treading on the lands that rightfully belonged to them. In the spirit of non-violence, we stand on the courts, until you realize the folly of your ways and leave, because 100,000 British can not stop 5 angry Bengali men wanting to play doubles if they refuse to cooperate.

The Backhand

Suddenly, as I write "backhand", I have a flashback to Vic Braden, as he would utter "fore-hond" and "back-hond", which sounded vaguely Canadian.

Lately, I've been trying to master the one-handed backhand. I use a two-handed backhand, and have used it for a long time. However, I used to hit a one-handed backhand, when I first learned the game. If I were coaching (and were I a capable coach), I'd start someone with a one-handed backhand, even if eventually, they learn to his a two-handed backhand.

Although I've come to understand the two motions are very different, I feel the one-handed backhand serves as a good foundation for any backhand. By one-handed backhand, I should point out that I'm talking about a drive or topspin backhand, rather than a sliced backhand.

Why am I trying to learn to hit the one-handed backhand? I know a few folks that are trying to hit the shot as well, and the one-handed backhand, much more than the forehand, seems to give people a ton of trouble. In particular, many people find it really hard to control the racquet face.

Either it opens up too much (it angles upwards) and the ball hits the opposite fence, or it goes into the net. With the forehand, the error almost always seems like the player hits way too high (and uses too much arm).

OK, let me go through the one-handed backhand, even though I'm not particularly good at it.

First, I want to point out a common mistake that happens on the forehand. This is the wrist-forearm angle. As in the forehand blog entry, I want you to stand up, arms stretched out wide, as if you are a cross. Thus, your outstreched arms form a line, from the tip of the fingers through the shoulders to the other tip of the fingers.

Now imagine holding a racquet this way, so that the line formed is even longer.

Notice there's no angle between the arm and the racquet. (That angle being about 90 degrees).

Wrong!

The key to the serve, volley, forehand, backhand, is maintaining an angle, and keeping this angle throughout contact.

There are at least two more mistakes that occur when hitting the backhand, and they come from a reasonable idea. The more moving parts, the more you can whip the shot (wrong!).

In particular, some people when hitting a backhand, hinge at the elbow. That is, the elbow is bent, around 135 degrees and sometimes as severe as 90 degrees. The thinking is that as the ball approaches, the arm will straighten out during impact, thus giving another degree of freedom to really whack the ball.

While this is a good idea in theory, and might work with a robot arm, the human arm is likely, in the process, to absorb some shock from the ball, and thus reduce the power. Furthermore, even if you don't reduce the power by luck of good timing, your chances of hitting a repeatable shot is lowered.

Having said this, somehow, in racquetball, people appear to be far wristier with their shots, but even there, I don't think they use the bent-to-straight elbow much.

Second mistake is not using the left arm (for a rightie) much. The left arm plays a much bigger role in hitting a backhand (and even in a forehand) than most people realize.



Pay attention to Roger Federer's one-handed backhand setup. He creates a squarish "U" pattern with his arm in the first frame. That is, his upper arm (from elbow to shoulder) is at right angles to the forearm, which is at right angles to the racquet itself.

Now I know that I said your elbow shouldn't bend, but that's at contact. This is setup.

In the second frame, Fed has raised his racquet higher (and still, he uses his left hand to hold the racquet).

In the third frame, he drops the racquet behind him (notice his eyes, focusing on the ball). Again, he's still holding the racquet with his left hand (it's being obscured by his body), but the elbow is nearly straight now (not quite).

With only six photos, you miss a lot. An ideal photo study would have maybe 20 photos covering the same span of time. 6 photos really doesn't pick up enough details.

Basically, as the ball gets closer (after the second frame), Roger's arm begins to straighten out (not fully). The elbow is no longer 90 degrees. Meanwhile, his left hand is starting to drop the racquet behind his body.

The racquet drops to just above waist height, but is parallel to the ground, with his arm somewhat straight. His right foot is crossed ahead of his left foot, so he is in a closed stance (that is, right foot left of of his left foot, if you're facing the net).

As it gets even closer, the arm begins to drop down to waist level, again, with the racquet mostly parallel to the ground behind Roger. His arm is even straighter now.

Finally, Roger will begin to flip the racquet from behind him, to in front of him, with the butt briefly slowing (unlike his forehand), and impact the ball with the racquet aimed slightly down (for a higher ball).

There's a ton missing between the second and third photos.



In the fourth frane, Fed's arm is straightened out. There are several points to make. First, when he hits the shot, the wrist and forearm are at 90 degrees. Second, the plane of the racquet is perpendicular. Third, his racquet is basically parallel with the ground. Fourth, as he his the backhand (there aren't photos to show this, unfortunately), his arm rises up, and so the racquet moves upwards (towards the sky) and forwards (towards the net), all while the racquet stays parallel. This motion is kept until the ball has been hit, and for sometime afterwards.

Keep the racquet parallel as long as you can, moving up and forward for as long as your arm will allow. You want to be underneath the ball before impact, in the center at impact, and above the ball (were it still nearby) after impact.

The last two photos appear to be reversed. The last photo should be the shot he hits next, and the middle photo where Roger finishes. Notice that he has hit a very low forehand, which is why he's crouched to the ground. If you watch Roger's backhand in full motion, you'll see his backhand is far more elaborate (big follow through) then is pictured here.

Also missing is a picture where the butt of the racquet points to the ball.

Here's a video showing his backhand, alas a little faster than I'd like:



Roger has a monster follow-through, by the way.

To end, I want you to repeat this with me.

If you hit the ball long, you've opened the face of the racquet. If you hit the ball long, you've opened the face of the racquet. If you hit the ball long, you've opened the face of the racquet.

That means, the racquet face is pointing up, even if ever so slightly.

Indeed, Roger often has the racquet face tilted down, ever so slightly (and it is slight).

Several wrap up points. First, 90 degree angle. Second, arm straightens out sometime when the racquet his behind his back. Third, racquet is parallel from behind his back to when he hits, with the exception of a brief moment where it dips just a little as he is about to make the forward motion (getting topspin). Otherwise, it stays parallel behind him, just before impact, just after impact, and only after the ball is long gone goes he bring it up and back behind him.

The Forehand

I'm going to link three videos from Fuzzy Yellow Balls, also known as FYB. FYB is a collaboration between Will Hamilton and Adam Sieminski. Will is the frontman of the videos. He presents the material and does the talking. Adam handles the photography, and is behind the scenes. You also see Frank and Oliver, who serve as additional examples, but don't have speaking roles.

Here are the links:
Step 1. Pivot and Shoulder Turn

Step 2. Shoulder Turn

Step 3. Swing Forward to Contact

Although Will, having played college tennis, is far more skilled than me, there are a few things he doesn't point out, which I'll add to augment the videos.

First, I want to point out perhaps the most common "error" in tennis, and it affects forehand, backhand, and volley.

To illustrate the idea, which is difficult in text, I want you to do the following. Stand up, with your arms to the side at shoulder height. If someone were to look at you, you'd look like a cross. Now imagine holding your racquet in your dominant hand and having that racquet also point to the right, thus making your arms seem another two feet (plus change) longer.

Notice that the racquet is an extension of your arm. In fact, some people like to point out that pros act like the racquet is an extension of their arm.

But that's all wrong.

Pros create an angle between the racquet and their forearm that's almost 90 degrees, and this angle is maintained pretty much from the time the begin to swing their racquet forward.

There's another thing a lot of pros do, though I don't know how important it is.

Pay attention in the first video to how Frank prepares his forehand. His racquet face is tilted down before he begins to take it back. If you look at Safin, Monfils, Federer, and Djokovic, they have the racquet pointed straight up. Thus, if their racquet were like a mirror, and you were facing them (the net would be at your back if you stood between the net and the player), you'd almost see your reflection in the racquet.

Frank, meanwhile, points his racquet mostly down, so the mirror would reflect the court.

The purpose, I believe, is to get the player to think about the 90 degree angle between racquet and forearm.

The second thing that Will does, but doesn't point out (he may do so in another video), is what happens to his non-dominant hand. Since Will is a lefty, the non-dominant hand is his right hand. For me, it's my left hand.

The left hand is used to cradle the throat of the racquet. By having it there, as you pull the racquet to the side, you will turn your shoulders.

The other point I want to make is in the third video.

This is the swing up to the hit. Again, Will demonstrates it, but I believe it's not quite said out loud.

You want to rotate the body just as the racquet is dropping down. Your arm is going to be very relaxed. As you rotate (counter clockwise or to your left for a rightie, and the opposite for a leftie), the racquet is going to move in the opposite direction.

To illustrate this (again in words). Imagine your arms out at your side with the racquet point out in your right hand, like the cross I mentioned earlier. Now imagine rotating counter clockwise (to your left). If your wrist were relaxed it would begin to bend backwards, and the racquet would start to bend backwards as well.

To give a better illustration, imagine you were holding some streamers or a thin strip of cloth about three feet long. As you turn counter clockwise, the streamers would be following your arm, but behind it. Although a racquet is rigid, you can think of it doing the same thing.

The torso turn from sideways to the net, to facing the net initiates the middle part of the swing. As you drop the racquet down, your body should rotate, causing the racquet to drag behind you, and then you should begin to pull your arm forward as the ball gets closer to you, as a reaction to dragging it.

That is, initially, as you rotate, the arm is relaxed and the racquet arm is now trailing a bit, but as you continue to rotate, you will begin to pull your wrist forward and accelerate to the ball.

Most pros, for a very long time, have the racquet at a 90 degree angle. Another way to picture this is to aim the butt of your racquet to the ball. Even pros back in the day (Chris Evert) who hit flat strokes, did this. The butt of the racquet is at the bottom usually with the company logo at the bottom.

You want to point the butt of the racquet towards the ball, and start to accelerate the wrist (and butt) towards the ball. Meanwhile, your torso is still continuing to rotate.

At some point, when the ball is near, your arm will cross in front of your body, and the racquet will quickly move from pointing to the back fence to pointing to the side fence which means the face of the racquet is now parallel to the net.

This is starting to be part of the windshield wiper movement so many pros use. You want to initiate the windshield wiper motion as the racquet is starting to go from pointing to the back fence to pointing to the side fence, and continue on, ultimately with your forearm in front of your body, and eventually the racquet wrapping to the left side of your body.

Will has pointed out to me that the windshield wiper movement is not tacked on at the end, but initiates a bit earlier so that it flows naturally.

Let me summarize a few of the points I've made:

• Imagine the racquet is like a mirror. With the aid of the left hand, you want to show your opponent his or her reflection. The racquet should be held in front of you, slightly to the right (for a rightie).
  
• As you turn the shoulder, your non-dominant arm will move across the body parallel to the baseline. Will points this out well in the video. This emphasizes the shoulder turn.
  
• Eventually the mirror that you showed to your opponent begins to move to the back fence and reflect that (Djokovic in particular, likes to do this). The racquet head from the first three steps goes from about head height to a little above head height (your head, that is).
  
• Then, the racquet begins to drop down from behind, and starts to point face down.
  
• Before the racquet is all the way down, start to rotate counter clockwise.
  
• Your relaxed arm will start to drag behind.
  
• The butt of the racquet begins to point to the ball, with the racquet and forearm at 90 degrees.
  
• Begin to accelerate the racquet butt towards the ball, again continuing your body rotation.
  
• As you accerlerate and turn, the ball will be fairly close, and the arm will start to move forward and arc as part of the windshield wiper movement. The racquet is still basically at a ninety degree angle (actually closer to 120 degrees), but because your arm (and in particular your forearm) is starting to point forward, it still manages to contact the ball perpendicular.
  
• Continue the motion until the the racquet ends up to the left side of your body. At this point your shoulders will be pointing somewhat to the left. Note that your feet will have to adjust to allow this entire movement to take place.
  

Key things I feel I've added. Major point is the 90 degree wrist angle, and the torso leading the swing of the racquet as the racquet swing reaches the bottom, and also the butt pointing to the ball. Minor point is holding the mirror to your opponent, and keeping the butt pointed to the ball for as long as you can, before starting the windshield wiper movement. Finally, relax, relax, relax.

Like I said, Will's videos are fantastic, and learning these strokes is really hard, and requires a lot of element come together in concert, and lots and lots and lots of practice.

Different Kinds of Smart

If you ever watch a college football game, there are actually two groups of people out there that wouldn't normally be together. No, I don't mean the fans and the players. I mean the band and the players.

The band is made of musicians. Generally, musicians and jocks don't travel in the same circles, except, in this odd case, the two are together.

Football players are "smart" about their physical skills. Some comes from natural athleticism developed over time that allows them to run so fast, jump so high, and coordinate hands and feet. Some come from football smarts that allow them to read the defense, run certain routes, judge tendencies, fake people out.

Musicians, on the other hand, have different skills. Over time, they've learned to move their fingers and blow based on notes written on a sheet of paper. They must learn timing as well, so that the whole band sounds unified, rather than groups of individuals separated ever so slightly by the music they are playing.

You can be book smart, which itself is broken down into book analytical smarts (say, studying history) to a technical smart (more math-y or science-y). These smarts are related to one another, though math smarts, due to its abstraction, seems far away from book smarts, which is about words, and analyzing cause and effect.

College students can be book smart, but lack, say physical awareness. Their brains can even tell them what they should do, and yet the body does not react. It's strange, isn't it? These different kinds of smart.

Federer vs Stepanek (Rome)

I was watching some of the match between Federer and Radek Stepanek, a match that Stepanek won 7-6, 7-6. Federer is having, for him, an off-year. He's already had 6 losses without being halfway through the year. This is usually far more than he usually has.

You would think that Federer had a bad match against Stepanek, but he looked in control of both tiebreaks, especially early on. In the first tiebreak, Federer was up 3-1, but eventually fell back 6-4, meaning Stepanek had 5 points while he only had one. In the second set tiebreak, his lead seemed even bigger, with a 5-2 lead.

Stepanek hit a few good shots, coming into net effectively, and Federer was just a hair off. This probably says something about how the top pros stay so focused.

The beneficiary at Rome was Djokovic. While Nadal, not being 100%, lost to Juan Carlos Ferrero, Djokovic rolled to the finals. He seems to have a knack of winning tournaments where the number 1-2 seeds fall. It's unusual to have such a solid number 3, which means that he is knocking on the door of number 2 and number 1.

Meanwhile, Federer has to spend sometime soul-searching, trying to get his game back to where it once was.

Face and Vase

There's this famous optical illusion, where you see two profiles of a face in, say, black, and a white vase. It's the positive and negative space.

Today, I both took a lesson and gave a lesson.

Last night, that is, Saturday night, the day, which had started off rainy and gloomy, a day I spent driving to Reston, taking an advanced Ruby course given by Chad Fowler and Dave Thomas that lasted until 4:30, which then gave way to a few hours of sun. When I got back up 270, I spent some time hitting against the wall.

Adam told me about the handball walls at Cabin John. Handball appears to be like racquetball, except that instead of four walls and a ceiling, there is just one wall, the front wall. This wall is about the width of a tennis court, which is apparently 27 feet wide. However, what's key is the height. The wall goes up about 15 feet high.

Tennis walls, if you can find them, often don't extend to the ground. Often, it's up maybe a foot or two from the ground, and extends maybe 4-5 feet above the "net" (it's just a painted line). Clearly, such a setup is meant to be low-cost.

Due to the lack of popularity for handball, these walls make better tennis walls than real tennis walls, with the only problem being the lack of a line demarcating the net. Although it takes about 15 minutes to get there, I like to play there since few people seem to use it to practice tennis (when I went there this morning, three guys were practicing kendo).

I called the guy up about the lesson, and it seemed like he had just woken up, so I delayed the lesson for half an hour. That was good because it allowed me to hit against the wall for more than the 15 minutes I would have had otherwise.

The problem, I find, when hitting against a wall, is that my arm gets engorged with blood, due to repeatedly hitting the ball at a pace faster than I would hit against an opponent. I need to hit a few, then rest a few, otherwise my arm because like a rock, and it's painful to boot.

During the lesson, Sharat and I went back to playing mini-tennis, with the goal of getting me to slow down my shot, and hitting it relaxed. His point, and it makes some sense to me, is if I can't hit the ball relaxed hitting it slow, then I'll be even more tense when I try to hit it hard.

Since I had been practicing this shot somewhat in the last week or so, it was better than it was before. It was such a good thing to think about, I decided it was worth taking a second lesson.

This time around, we hit from the baseline, and I was hitting more of the wrap-around forehand that you see Federer hitting. The one suggestion I was given was to not use so much wrist on follow-through, that my arm needed to follow through too.

Now, this is the kind of advice that I know because I stare at a lot of tennis video, but is really helpful, because while I may intellectually know this, I can forget this when I actually hit.

The funny thing is that I've played tennis longer than Sharat has been alive. Obviously, the quality of my tennis training has been rather inferior to his. In particular, the tennis advice you could get from more than 10 years ago didn't hit all the advice you can get now. In any case, during the last 10 years, I hadn't learned that much about tennis. Only in the last 6 months or so have I started going back to relearn tennis.

Sharat's approach is based on Wegner's approach, which is to reduce the number of things a player thinks about so they can focus on hitting and relaxation. My personal approach is very technical. I want to know where my arm, legs, waist, etc. are supposed to be. I look at videos a lot.

But videos can be deceiving.

For example, when Federer hits his forehand, he has this one odd movement. At one point, his racquet is faced down. To visualize this, imagine standing between Federer and the net, looking at Federer. When his racquet is face down, it points not quite to the fence.

If you were to draw a line between Federer, yourself, and the net, that would be parallel to the sideline. His racquet would point a little to your left of that line.

As Federer moves his arm forward, the racquet starts to point to the right of that line. It looks odd, and I was trying to imitate that little movement.

It took me a while to realize why this movement is there. It's not that Federer is changing the direction of the racquet. What's happening is that he is opening up his shoulders (i.e., moving from being parallel to the sidelines to parallel to the net).

This rotation of his torso causes the racquet to move backward, in that Newtonian, every action has an opposite reaction, effect. Once you understand that, you realize he isn't purposely moving it that way. His body rotation is causing this motion.

I only realized that on Friday.

Anyway, after the lesson, where Sharat gave me some advice on serving, I headed to College Park to teach Jeff how to play tennis.

Jeff is not an athletic sort. The extent of his athletic skills is basically ping pong. He prefers anime and video games.

Ironically enough, I thought he might make a better person to teach tennis because he wouldn't have all these other sports skills that would interfere with him learning tennis. Staney, for example, has played cricket and table tennis. He has a peculiar way of holding the table tennis bat. When he started tennis, he combined the two together.

He hit his backhand like he was playing a cricket shot, and he played his forehand like he was hitting a table tennis shot, most notably, sticking his index finger straight up on the racquet.

Jeff appears to make the kind of errors many beginners in tennis make. In particular, he tends to "arm" the ball, that is, hit the shot with his arm, rather than use his upper body. He tends to stop hitting after he has hit the ball. He tends to come underneath the ball, causing the ball to sky upwards.

Now, Jeff is an intelligent guy, who has a degree in computer science and finishing up a law degree. However, being intelligent works the brain. The body reacts differently. To learn a sport, you must train the body to move in a way that is not intuitive.

And, for most people, their body will not react the way they want it to. You tell them to hit the ball a certain way, and they hit it completely different. For a sport like racquetball, it doesn't matter. That's the kind of sport that you can have the worst technique in the world, but can play it competently and enjoyably.

Tennis, on the other hand, requires a lot of training. If you play, say, squash, you might translate the skills over. I've seen people who play table tennis that manage to translate the skills of hitting. Even people who play baseball don't do so badly.

To teach Jeff, I had him play some mini-tennis, which is where you hit from service line to service line.

Here's the issue I had. First, if I teach him part of the stroke, then he's likely to just master that, get it ingrained into his head. Therefore, I would have to teach him to add something else to his stroke, and he has to unlearn the first thing I told him, and learn the second thing I told him. The longer he spends hitting one way, the harder it is for me to try to reteach him. A video would be ideal.

Jeff had this tendency to hit the ball up, and after my short drills, he had a tendency not to pull his racquet back to the fence, so I had him shadow-stroke the shot, plus I had him finish with the racquet face pointing down. This seemed to, for the most part, help him avoid flipping the racquet up so it would sky upwards.

For the most part, other than hitting the frame of the racquet, he did all right, hitting a shot that didn't look horrible, and a motion that looked reasonably acceptable. For less than an hour's training, it was decent.

I noticed that I am far more technical when I teach someone, trying to get them to correct this shot or that shot, hold the racquet this way or that. It's a contrast to the way Sharat teaches. Now part of that is impatience on my part.

Jeff isn't that serious about learning tennis, and so I would very infrequently teach him how to play. He's likely to forget everything I said (or at least, his body is), and I'd have to go over it again.

Now, I'm sure, if I were to ask Jeff how long it would take him to learn a musical instrument, he'd say a very long time. It would take a lot of practice. Indeed, one might argue that, at least to a first degree, it's easier to learn to play a music instrument than tennis, because the instruction is there already. What's hard is to master the difficult songs.

But what is similar is the amount of time it takes, and the time it takes to learn how one should hit the shot. That kind of commitment is hard to get from folks, which is why most people learn to play sports when they are young, when they are willing to spend insane amounts of time. As an adult, they'd rather spend their time in other ways. I've only met one adult who was this kind of insane learning to play tennis, and got to a good degree of proficiency.

It probably says something that he studied martial arts and learned about discipline and body awareness, and applied these ideas to tennis.

So, that ended the day, when rain fell, and I had both been the student and the teacher.

Twisted Idioms

Have you ever heard of the phrase "couldn't see the forest for the trees"?

It means that a person is so focused on the tiny details that they fail to see the big picture. For example, maybe someone is trying to use coupons to save money here and there, but always has the air-conditioning on full blast, which is consuming a lot of money. Or some such.

You can twist it the other way, and say "Couldn't see the trees for the forest".

In this case, the idea is that someone only focuses on the big picture, and never checks out the little things. Of course, trees and forest sound so close to each other, that reversing it sounds nearly the same.

I was thinking about some of the phrases that appear in Indian English, much of which sound strange to Americans, but have a better internal logic.

For example, what's the opposite of postpone? For Americans, there isn't a good opposite. You might say "move up". But if "pre" is the opposite of "post", then prepone makes sense.

Yet, we don't use it, and laugh at folks who use it.

How about this one.

We say "this morning", "this evening", "last night". But we say "tomorrow morning", "tomorrow evening", "yesterday morning".

So it seems like we have two axis. One is "yesterday", "today", "tomorrow", and the other is "morning", "afternoon", "evening".

You'd therefore say "today evening", "today morning". And in Indian English, that's what you say. Americans find this odd, but it has more logic to it. "Tomorrow morning", "tomorrow evening" makes sense, right? Why does it become "this morning", "this evening".

The funny thing with all the variants of English is that people prefer their own variant. Thus, many Indians visiting the US prefer to use the English they use in day to day speech, rather than treat American English as a foreign language and speaks that instead. Indeed, some Indians find it distasteful to imitate the American accent (more so than British, I'd say) too closely. Their pals will make fun of them for speaking American-style English with an American accent.

Surprisingly, many folks learn new languages by translating phrases from their native language to the language they are speaking. Thus, phrases like "small small" to mean "very small" appear. They are translations from the original language.

Of course, there are regionalisms of English too. Thus, certain phrases the British use (and even variants within Britain), Australians, southerners. Some folks use "pop" instead of "soda", some even use "coke" (as in cola).

I find the use of language fascinating, especially as spoken by "non-native" speakers for often it reveals the oddness of the language as spoken by natives.

Time after Time

Until people had watches, time was less precise. In particular, until people had synchronized watches, time was less precise.

Because of this lack of precision, people may have worried far less about being timely. That is, coordinating their activities, and being very precise about it. Often, the less technical a culture, the less they care about time.

Although you can be timely, timeliness, in general, requires a collection of people that value timeliness. Fortunately, official entities worry about timeliness more than the average person. Thus, it helps that trains, buses, and airplanes are on some kind of schedule. Even as people routinely complain about the tardiness of plane schedules, people can plan around that. If a plane schedule was off even by a day or two, you might not consider using a plane to get around.

What does it say about a culture where being on-time is valued, or where it's not valued?

Suppose I tell a friend I plan to meet them at 6:30. They live 10 minutes away. It's 6:15 and I have just reached home. I might decide that I need to do something in one or two minutes, and immediately head back out.

Another person from another culture might not like this kind of constraint. Some people find freedom in not doing things. You want me at 6:30? Maybe I'll be there. Maybe I won't. 7:00 is fine. 7:30 is fine. Maybe I don't even show up.

They might decide they are home, and they want to check what's on TV, or fix something to eat. They don't like the idea to have to get out in a minute.

I remember I'd want to pick someone up to go out and do something. I would generally drive to her place, and expect she'd be out there waiting.

Except, culturally, she might think that most people, possibly including herself, would never be on time. That if a person say they'd be there at 6:30, then that didn't really mean 6:30. 7 was fine. If that's your view of the world, you won't sit outside waiting for half an hour or more.

Instead, you'll just carry on, generally getting prepared, but otherwise, doing what you might do otherwise if you had no other plans. Then, when the person shows up, ok, maybe then you'll really get ready.

But of course, now you're making the other person wait, but then they made you wait too, so you decide to be gracious, invite them in, and then prepare. After all, why the rush?

And it all comes down to timeliness.

A culture that values timeliness would perceive this differently. The Germans are known for being prompt. When you value timeliness, you view the world differently. You expect the world to be timely too. The buses, the trains, etc. have to be on-time. You value being on time. More importantly, if others are not on-time, you are angry at them. You decide to punish them. If they aren't there on-time, you will wait only a minute or two, and then simply leave.

Traffic? You should have anticipated it. You should have called. You should be willing to come half an hour early.

I recall hearing about a professor who went to Brazil to teach from the US. He found the students would routinely come in half an hour late. But then they'd expect to talk to the teacher up to an hour after the class ended. He'd be itching to get out of there.

Another person told me that one day, he ran through the pouring rain to teach African kids. When he arrived, no one was there. When the rain let up, all the kids arrived. The rain was considered enough of a hindrance that the average kid would stay indoors. Maybe there was a safety reason. Maybe it was simply discomfort of rain. Regardless, there were excuses of why people should or should not show up.

Usually, timeliness means that certain events occur rain or shine. There are races that are held outdoors, rain or shine. Why? Because people travel from out of town. Because people have made other plans. Because it's too hard to continuously reserve a location until the weather improves.

It might be argued that certain events can't occur if such constraints don't occur. If you get lax about when an event happen, then certain other things can't happen, and eventually, the idea of the event itself becomes ludicrous.

Is timeliness important for a society to excel? I suppose it depends on what is meant by excel. Often, we trade off time with our friends, time with our family, for getting things done that society wants done, i.e., having stores open, having technology made, and so forth.

If you're the kind of person who shows up on time, what do you think of people who don't? If you find yourself routinely 10, 20, 30 minutes late (isn't it strange how people who are routinely late claim they are less late than they usually are, and if they show up on-time once in three times, they think they only infrequently show up late?), what do you think when others complain? Do you feel in control by being late?
Is lateness overrated?

Reach Out

AT&T used to have this ad "Reach out and touch someone". This was back in the 80s when they were much more dominant.

I was supposed to meet up with some folks last night, and that didn't work out. Why? Because I didn't have my phone. It was in my car. And I didn't know that until the next day.

Indeed, even when my phone is my apartment, I find it a pain. Usually, I'm sitting on the couch, and I have the phone elsewhere, which means I have to get up, and go get it.

In the old days, a home would have several phones because phones weren't portable. This would allow you to minimize the walking. You would think that portable phones, especially lightweight portable phones, would mean people would carry them everywhere.

Except when I'm at home, I find it a pain to have to carry a phone. I'd rather be in something more comfortable, say, a pair of shorts. If I'm sitting on the couch, I don't want to have to worry about crushing my phone. If I'm in the bedroom, I don't want to lug the phone from the living room to the bedroom.

I'm surprised there isn't a better way to handle this. Either, there should be a secure wireless way for my phone to go to other phones that stay in my home, or maybe, since I use my laptop a lot, it should go there.

Since my phone was in my car, and I didn't realize it was there, my friends were unable to contact me. That was partly a mental block. Sometimes you are trying to reach someone, and the only way you think of reaching of them is by phone.

But I'm the kind of person that prefers to be online a lot. So the other way to contact me is through IM, and less often, through email. That means a person ought to contact me in alternate ways.

Except that it doesn't occur to most people to try that. If the assumption is that you are always near your phone, but you're only at your computer every once in a while, then sending email seems like a very slow way, or using IM seems like a slow way. But for me, that's one of the possibilities.

And some people have the problem that their status is not accurate. Part of that is the problem of the IM client, which doesn't always detect that you're away. Part of that is because some people always say they're busy. They don't want other people to know what's up, or they know their friends would bug them if they weren't perpetually busy.

This busy/available status is called a person's (or their avatar's) presence.

This suggests that people want multiple ways to be reached. If I'm at home, there should be a way to send a message that is basically to the phone and to something in my home that doesn't move (like an electronic alert board) so if I'm at home, and I don't want my phone near me, people have a way to reach me.

Of course, some people don't want to be reached, but if you do, then you know.

I suppose I could coin a term and call it reachability, which is perfectly nerdy. But there should be tools to determine your own reachability, and to increase this through a one-stop method.

Being There

Once upon a time, if you wanted to get someplace you weren't familiar with, you needed a map. That required skill. You had to be able to read a map, which meant you needed to know where you were, then where you wanted to go (the street, the location on that street), then you had to plot a route between the two places, keeping in mind major roads, traffic, and the like.

Now route-planning can be complex. It may require taking notes, and if you're new to the location, you're simply guessing. You have no local domain knowledge.

This was the state of things for years, until the Internet came out, and maps could be put on webpages. Thus, places like Google Maps and Mapquest gave you the two locations (the start and the end), and it figures out a path. Of course, if you wanted to avoid toll roads, and sometimes I do, it wouldn't help out. Google Maps now lets you adjust routes.

This works fine if you get the map before you leave. What happens if you want to figure stuff out on the fly?

How do you get a computer in your car?

You use GPS.

And that's a completely different technology. It requires rather cheap (preferably free) accurate locations and quick.

The great news with GPS is that it can find you mostly whereever you are. The bad news is that it's terribly local, and the reason for that is because a GPS screen is tiny. It's a little bigger than a cell phone, but it's not a laptop screen. That means you can't see the level of detail of Google Maps which means although you know, to within a street, where you are, you have no idea how to re-navigate at a macro view.

Yeah, some GPS's are pretty good and give you a big map, but it's not as good as Google Maps, so you can't do planning the way you want it to.

So here I was, trying to go to a place to eat, and found my way to a Silver Diner. I had already paid a toll to get Reston, but no toll to get to the diner. On the return trip, the GPS insists I go back on the main road, and back to the toll. It took quite a few contortions to avoid this, and mostly by accident. I had no way to tell the GPS to avoid the toll. The best it does is to re-route to avoid traffic, and even then, it's completely guessing because it has no idea where the traffic is.

Clearly, the next step, and most expensive GPS have some support for this, is to use live traffic data, and let you know that this is what's happening.

And the step after that? Let the user tell the folks where things are happening. It's social networking on the road. This would allow auto-correction of wrong directions, which are typically wrong at the very last step (I was told to make a U-turn where one wasn't needed) or on new streets that aren't in the GPS.

I'm sure that's coming along too.

It's just amazing how a navigation method that hasn't changed in years, has now undergone a revolution in a matter of ten years.

Pwned

Lately, I've been thinking of this phrase "taking ownership of X". This usually means that you have some responsibility for a task, and you are to treat it with some degree of seriousness.

But where did this phrase come from? I'm a packrat. When I "own" something, I get vaguely dissatisfied with it, and want something better. To take ownership, I'd imagine, would mean that I'd get vaguely dissatisfied and want something better, right?

Of course, the idea is that being the owner, you'd treat it with more respect. For example, if you rent a car, maybe you're more prone to not care how fast you drive. But if you own it, you might think it's your baby, and you don't want a scratch on it. It depends on what you own, right?

Ownership doesn't quite get approximate what is meant. What people mean by "taking ownership" is akin to treating it like your baby. This presumes you actually want your kid to be successful (and happy--let's not forget happy), and will do whatever it takes to achieve this. In reality, many people do not afford this kind of care for their kid, partly because they aren't particularly successful, and sometimes, they have much more mundane reasons for having a kid, such as they were horny one day, or they need kids to help out with the farm.

Ownership may have to do with what you would give up to get what needs to be done. For example, I know some folks, given a long programming project that would require an all-nighter to complete, would simply punt. They value their sleep more than they value their grades. Others would continue to work on it, even if they were tired, even if they were sick, even if they had promised to do something with someone.

That could be considered a form of dedication or pure folly. It might also be considered a form of ownership. You care enough to get the task done, no matter what, and you care to provide a minimum level of quality, which is pretty high.

Ownership is still a strange word for the concept.

Race For Hope 2008

487 62/105 7396 31:18 29:49 9:36

The numbers above are how I did on the race this morning. This race was called the Race for Hope and is raising money for the cure to brain tumors. Frank suggested I try out for this race since 5K is something I'm willing to run (he prefers the longer races).

Let me briefly explain the numbers. I was 487 among all men that participated. There were 854 men that participated and completed, so I was about in the middle. The second number means I was 62 out of 105 for my age group. 7396 was my bib number. 31:18 was the time from the gun shot starting the race til I finished. 29:49 was the actual time I ran, which meant the time between when I crossed the start time (thus, I took about 90 seconds working my way to the front). Finally, 9:36 was the average time per mile (despite being a 5K, they prefer giving the average time using miles).

Unlike the previous race where I had maybe 3 practice runs, I managed to work in about 15 practice runs, including 7 in the two weeks leading up to the race.

Unlike the day of the Cherry Blossom 5K, which was cold and blustery, this 5K was moderately warm and very sunny. Being warm is problematic, because you have to deal with the heat. My goal was to run a moderate pace and keep it up the entire run, not trying to run too fast, nor too slow. The entire last mile was rather painful because I felt some sharp pain in my spleen.

OK, maybe it wasn't in my spleen, but it was some internal spot. Fortunately, after I stopped running, that pain disappeared. Hopefully, this doesn't mean anything serious.

My goal for the run was to average under a 10 minute mile. When I crossed at 31:18, I had thought my previous run (back at the Cherry Blossom) was 31:30, so I was suddenly depressed that after all that training, I had only improved by 10 seconds. But then I realized the time wasn't when I crossed the line, but when the race officially started. Given the large crowd, I was hoping that at least a minute had elapsed before I had started, and so my time was really 30:18.

As it turns out, my Cherry Blossom race was 32:30, so I was at least a minute faster than that, and as it turns out, almost two minutes faster. I cut my time from 10:28 a mile in the first run to 9:36 in this run.

I think it's somewhat reasonable to push that down to a 9 minute mile. I expected somewhat big jump between the last race and this one, mostly because I didn't have the time to train in the previous one.

I find that I still lack the stamina to run 3 miles. The last mile, in particular, simply felt very long. The heat was also an issue. At the end, I felt I was overheating. To save time, I skipped getting water at the halfway point. Rather than getting water for free at the finish line, I bought cold ones at the CVS and drank them.

I checked my time, and would have finished about 300 among women, of which there were about 1000 women running.

One thing that was different about this race is the number of really young kids, some who did spectacularly better than me. I console myself that they were much lighter than me. Fortunately, in such a race, I tend to just care about my own time, and so do most other folks. Unless you are blazingly fast, such egotistical ideas of being faster than the women or some kid or some octogenerian isn't likely.

Oh, I have to really bitch about the main website not featuring a link to the results. It seems the results are hosted at: Run Washington's searchable site, which probably means the results have been up a while. Although the main purpose is to raise money, these people should be aware it is a frickin race and that some people are running it as such, and want to know their times. Indeed, all the information is everything but the final results of the race. Quite disturbing, I'd say.

These races tend to take a lot out of me for the day, so I think I'd prefer to run no more than once a month. I might try an 8K, but I do need to train up to that length. 8K is about 5 miles, and right now, I struggle at 5K (which is 3 miles).

Boys With Toys

Iron Man is practically the anti Spiderman. Where Spiderman was about a brainy kid who struggles to keep a job, pay his bills, and discovers his newfound superpowers, while trying to woo the girl next door, Tony Stark, aka, Ironman, is Marvel Comic's answer to Batman.

Like Batman's Bruce Wayne, Tony Stark is a wealthy industrialist whose company sells weapons to governments, including his own. Unlike Bruce Wayne, whose motivation is vengeance for the death of his parents, the origin story of Tony Stark isn't quite the same. Indeed, this film decides to take a modern twist on the origin story.

In this case, Tony Stark is held hostage by a terrorist group. But in this modern day of PC, it's not a good idea to demonize all people with brown skin. In this case, he is held prisoner with a middle Eastern fellow who has been educated in the west, and is willing to sacrifice himself so Tony Stark can see what his vision has done.

When I first heard that Robert Downey Jr. had been cast to play Tony Stark, I didn't really see him as the superhero type. However, Downey is such a versatile actor, that he can play the drunken playboy at one moment, yet be a believable remorseful person the next, and even convince you that, yes, he's an engineer.

Of the superhero movies to have come out, Ironman seems the lightest, playing up comedic bits far more readily than say Spiderman or the vastly darker Batman. And much like Spiderman, Ironman's Tony Stark realizes that the woman of his dreams has been working for him all along, the efficient Pepper Potts, played by Gweneth Paltrow.

Ultimately, it's these smaller bits, rather than the Obadiah Stane story (which gets rather comical towards the end, being a bit too cartoony) that make Ironman. What these Marvel movies do is to not focus on the teenage comic fanboy view, but to have something the women can get into as well, whether it be the relationship of Peter and Mary Jane, or between Tony Stark and Pepper Potts.

Jon Favreau, the director, gets to the root of what you want a fabulously rich man to have. Toys. And lots of it. From fast cars, to the Iron Man outfits, to artificially intelligent robots, Favreau presents a nearly fetishistic obsession with technology, but he balances this with humor throughout, which means that Downey, far from being a bad casting decision, seems the perfect choice.

Favreau, like Spielberg, also employs grossness to get reactions from the audience, from a tube inside Downey's nose that seems way too long, to Paltrow reaching inside Downey to pull a mechanism out.

By pulling together so many elements, Favreau presents an Iron Man that's a lot of fun, even if it isn't particularly deep. It lacks some of the emotional resonance or the satisfaction of a Pixar film, which, to be fair, often take years to craft, but is still a pretty good yarn for the start of the summer blockbuster season.