The Waiting Game

Saturday Night Live has often spoofed things that most people didn't realize could be spoofed. In the 70s, John Belushi spoofed Japanese samurai films. Since the viewing audience, outside of possibly those dedicated to watching the cinema, were largely unaware of Japanese cinema, it was a peculiar thing to spoof, yet, it was done. More recently, Will Ferrell, who was, at one point, seemingly in every SNL skit in an effort of Cal Ripkinian magnitude, was spoofing James Lipton in In the Actor's Studio.

This show is moderately obscure, and yet, being the movie geek that I am, I had seen this show a few times. New episodes were moderately rare. The show has been hosted by James Lipton, who Ferrell nearly captures dead on, for as long as I remember. The forum invites an actor--I remember Dennis Hopper, and then proceeds to go through the actor's history, his roles. It seems the goal is to pick a film or a role and have Lipton utter the name, and wait for the applause.

One time the show invited many members of the Simpsons cast. Hank Azaria, who voices Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, the owner of the local quickie mart, whose character himself being spoofed when someone noticed that many of 7-11's were being run by those from the subcontinent. Lipton utters the name Agador Spartacus which is a role that Azaria played to flamboyant effect in The Birdcage, and the audience starts to clap, in admiration.

And who is the audience? These are folks in film school who aspire to be actors or directors or some such. Most of them want to be actors (thus the name, Inside the Actor's Studio).

The SNL spoofing must have done something to increase the popularity of what must have been an obscure show. This coincided, I imagine, with the huge growth of cable. People who were curious who James Lipton was could simply turn over to Bravo and watch the show. Indeed, as I write, here's the link to the show. Tom Hanks is guest starring on the latest episode, for a second time.

There's a similarly obscure show for NPR types, and let's face it, were it not for the lack of news content, Inside the Actor's Studio seems very NPR-ish, a bit snooty, a bit erudite. That show is called Wait, Wait--Don't Tell Me.

Once upon a time, short of listening to late nite monologues, the steady diet of political humor came from Mark Russell, who would write songs that spoofed politics. His show would come out about once a month, and it was a one-man routine, with him standing in front of the piano, belting out tunes. I remember watching and finding it hilarious, and then, not so hilarious. I don't even know if his show is on anymore.

In the DC are, there are The Capitol Steps, who also make political spoof their part and parcel.

However, I'd say the king of these shows is Wait, Wait--Don't Tell Me hosted by Peter Sagal, who I thought was, at one point, Bill Maher. Normally, the show is hosted somewhere in Wisconsin or so (I think, though that would certainly limit the people who could be on the show, unless they work remotely).

Peter Sagal has a deadpan humor. Like many comedians, he's quick-thinking which allows him to say funny things. What helps, however, is that he has many co-hosts, who are into political humor, and they can feed off each other to funnier and funnier heights.

This weekend, and quite coincidentally, they had Tom Hanks as the special guest. Usually, with special guests, they make them take a political quiz and this week it was Tom Hanks. Now, Hanks has to be the biggest star the show has ever had. And it doesn't hurt that Hanks had a background in comedy, so even as they are making fun of stuff, he, too, can join along.

Sometime before this, they were talking about an incident that occurred to Bush. He had been asked what his greatest accomplishment as President was (one of the guys uttered "I'm President??") and he said of all the things he'd done, it was catching a 7.5 pound perch in his lake, which is what he said in an interview in the German newspaper, Bild.

Then, Sagal goes "but first, I tried diplomacy", then he thought "but who can trust the word of a mad fish", trying to invoke images of Osama while telling this joke. Then, someone, I think it was Paula Poundstone, goes "when it was caught, there was the huge sign 'Mission Accomplished'---it was hard getting the aircraft carrier in that lake", trying to juxtapose a real scene (when Bush declared "mission accomplished" in the invasion of Iraq) onto a different scene, and showing the absurdity, and thus mining humor out of this. Another guy interjects and said the sign actually read "Fishing Accomplished".

Of course, one thing that makes a show funnier is when you hear people laughing. It's easier to make people laugh, when there are plenty of folks who laugh with you. Recounting this scene is not so funny, but in the context, when everyone is cracking up is indeed funny. (I'm vaguely reminded of one of these viral videos where a dad of quintuplets is filming his babies, and is likely making goofy faces, and these babies just laugh. It's rather spooky, but shows how contagious laughing is, even at that age).

Tom Hanks was partly on the show to promote the film that's been hyped up this summer, the movie version of The DaVinci Code. Much of the commentary by Peter Sagal had to do with what a nice guy Tom Hanks is. He said they were surprised to find that Hanks is a pretty competitive guy, part of his upbringing with brothers who taunted him. They brought up his old films like "Turner and Hooch" and "Mazes and Monsters", a made for TV film that I vaguely recall watching, about some mystery associated with playing games like Dungeons and Dragons. At the time, parents were concerned their kids were getting into satanism and the occult, even though it was the precursor to modern MMORPGS.

So listen to Wait, Wait--Don't Tell Me if you're into political topical humor.

Some Like It Hot

Go to the restroom. Wash your hands. Go on. I'll wait until you come back.

OK, I know you didn't do that because shame and laziness prevented you from doing this. But imagine you had gone. Are there two faucets at the sink at the restroom? I never see one with this single handle that you see in a kitchen. I suspect the reason is that they don't look classy enough. If you're a ritzy place, it's better to have two classy knobs than one.

What do the knobs do? The left one is hot. The right one is cold. Tell me, why do you need both? The hot one is really hot. Why do you need really hot water in the restrooms? The only reason to have really hot water is to wash things or to get stuff to dissolve. You might need hot water in the kitchen, but you really don't need it in the restroom. And yet, there it is.

How many people feel that they really need hot water? The common case is lukewarm water, perhaps a little warmer than room temperature, but not much warmer. You probably don't even need cold water unless you like the way cold water feels. The question is why bother having both hot and cold water. It should be mildly warm water, and that's it. Now some places do have mildly warm water using a sensor.

This is one of those design decisions that seem to baffle. Sure, the building needs hot and cold water, but people in restrooms generally don't. OK, so you might argue that someone in that rarest of occasion needs hot water. Fine. Have a special location with a single faucet for that hot water, a little bit like the kind you find at a 7-11 near the coffee, with the red spigot. See how often that's used. It can be there for the once in a blue moon when someone is, say, washing out there lunch tupperware. I know. Those people do exist. But they aren't the common case, and having a special location for that would make it that much easier.

Say no to hot water in restrooms! Some like it hot. But all you all's weird.

Party Monster

On the surface, Dave Chappelle's Block Party has a rather simple premise, as simple as, say, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. Dave Chappelle wants to host a block party in Brooklyn and invites his friends to attend.

It turns out to be much more than that. It's a film about Chappelle reaching out to his youth, a guy who found success as a comedian, wanting to both to have fun, but also to go back to the town he grew up and ask people around if they want to go to his party.

As he goes around soliticing people to come to his party, it brings up the differences between the have and have-nots. Chappelle hob-nobs with musicians like Mos Def, Dead Prez, Erykah Badu, the Fugees, and so forth. Even if those names don't sound familiar to you, they are at least well-known among those who like this kind of music.

Chappelle asks black, white, young, old, hippie to come and join him at the block party. As the film moves along, it covers two to three timelines. There is a timeline heading forward from a few days before the block party to scenes from the block party, intercutting between the two. At times, Gondry intercuts between the live scenes and the practice that leads up to the scene.

For example, he shows Chappelle trying to do his best James Brown, asking his band to "hit him" at which point they blurt out a tune. Their first attempt is weak, but it follows up strong, and eventually he works out a mini-routine where he says it would be great to be able to say "hit it" at key situations, like trying to get a raise.

Chappelle convinces a college band to come to the block party. He asks some hippies if they'd come to the party (actually, their building is right beside where the aprty is held--he says the building could serve as a crackhouse). He goes to a clothing shop to try out pimp suits. There is a kind of absurdity to many of the things that happen, and it can be very funny in odd spots.

The film also serves as political commentary. Not surprisingly, the stance is anti-Bush and anti-war. There's a scene of a child of a black panther that is now an adult, and getting the crowd to join in a fight the fight scene.

Although you don't have to like rap to like the music, it helps not to be offended by it. At the very least, you can begin to enjoy the fun that everyone is having.

It's hard to say why the film works. Certainly, it's joie de vivre is key, but I think it's also about remembering one's roots, showing that famous folks are people too, showing that even a block party has to be planned, from what is said on stage to food and housing people, to the history of minority struggle, to bands that have themselves broken up, or to conspiracy theories about Biggie Smalls or Tupac. Michel Gondry, who directed Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind cleverly edits the entire affair, intercutting in time, overlaying music from another setting on top of what we're watching. Just seeing how the editing is done is a marvel itself.

I should say this film seemed handheld, but it didn't affect me nearly as much. Chewing gum and sitting at the far back helped a lot. I also recommend watching films at the Hoff at the University of Maryland, since it's real cheap (three dollars a ticket, and drinks and popcorn that aren't crazy priced).

Azn Persuazn

I can't say I'm into those typically Asian-American things, whatever they may be. At one point, it was going to clubs and dancing to house music (and techno before that). It was playing volleyball. It was hanging out with other Asians. It was correcting non-Asians (or Asians in the sticks) not to say Oriental but to say Asian, even if that meant picking up Indians and Turks along the way. Asian Americans would try to come across as Hong Kong cool. Chow Yun-Fat with sunglasses and cigarette, blasting two guns in both hands, as he fell sidewards, carrying a baby, with doves flying away in a church.

There isn't much good Asian American entertainment. There's Margaret Cho, the comedian, but no particularly well-known Asian American. If you want to have a star vehicle and you want to cast Asian American, who do you pick? Hong Kong stars have to do. Offhand, I can only think of Pat Morita (does George Takei count?).

But where there's a real dearth of talent is in the music industry. Remember, we're talking about Asian Americans. Hong Kong and India has plenty of its own home-grown talent. As much as African Americans have suffered, there are several places they've excelled: sports, music, and even politics. Most of modern American music owes a great deal to African American music from jazz to blues to rap, the contributions are fundamental to modern music.

There are some obscure Asian Americans in the music scene that aren't performing classical music. There's a guy named Jin who goes by "The Emcee". He's a Korean American rapper. Another guy who goes by Johnny Hi-Fi plays music that's reminiscent of Britpop. However, as a group, Asian Americans haven't produced music that's distinctly Asian American.

That may have as much to do with a lack of cultural commonality. It's true African Americans may have come from disperse locations in Africa (though I wonder about that, but my knowledge of slave trade is limited), but slavery created a uniformity in culture as people forgot their specific heritage. Among Asian Americans, there are Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Filipino, Indian, Cambodian, Laotian, and so forth. Do we all share that much in common?

If anything, the one thing that is shared is being quiet and working hard, the vision of the model minority that was popularly bandied about in the 80s, even as some Asians began to resent the term, especially those who didn't share in academic success for one reason or another. This lead to a lot of doctors and engineers, but few politicians, sportsmen and musicians (although many Asian Americans did learn classical music).

Asian Americans therefore rely on imitating popular culture, as inventing a new genre of music doesn't seem to be in the cards.

Now, one could argue that plenty of white folks have imitated African Americans, from singing styles (many teens now sound "black") to doing hip-hop (say, Eminem). However, there are genres of music that people tend to think as white, such as country music and indie music (though the second is, I'm sure influenced a great deal, just that many of those in indie bands tend to be white).

What this new Asian American style of music will turn out to be, I don't know.

There may be some better luck with films. The most successful Asian American film director is perhaps M. Night Shyamalan and even he never tells Asian American stories. Ang Lee almost doesn't count, although he was educated in the U.S. (he did his film study in NYU, although he was born in Taiwan). Wayne Wang had done a few films, his most notable, Joy Luck Club. But he seems to have disappeared, and in any case, has stopped making Asian American films.

Gregg Araki has edged over from independent pictures to somewhat-less independent
pictures, but has no movies about the Asian American experience. There are films like Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle that star Asians, though no one terribly famous, and the director is presumably white (Danny Leiner?).

There are many small independent Asian American films, but like many genre films, the stories are uneven and often not all that original. For example, although mildly entertaining, Saving Face had both little to say about being Asian American (except the usual pressures from parents to be successful) and even less to say about being lesbian. Even so, just the combination of the two genres make it a rare bird in the aviary of genre films.

The Asian American community is still seeking ground breaking talent, someone like Paul Robeson or Sidney Poitier or Spike Lee, heck, I could settle for Robert Rodriguez.

The Fiction of Documentaries

When cameras were first invented, presumably the early daguerreotype (had to look the spelling of that one!), there was a sense that we were now recording snapshots of reality. There were unlike paintings which merely sought to replicate reality, until some people felt that realism wasn't that important, which lead to impressionism, pointillism, cubism, and all manners of modern art.

We know, of course, that photographs can be set up, lit, and tell as artificial a story as something drawn or painted. I recall a striking picture of a woman, all dressed up, possibly in front of a large painting, with a white horse, up on its hind feet appearing ready to stampede on her. The contrast of fashion photography with the dynamism of a white horse created a good deal of drama, but was not a scene you'd pass by in real life.

Documentaries also have a sense of capturing reality, but even documentaries can shade the truth one way or another. Indeed, many successful documentaries have elements that they share with fiction. In particular, there are story arcs that measure a beginning, middle, and end. Rarely do we step in the middle of something and finish without drawing some conclusion.

March of the Penguins, one of the more successful documentaries, shows the harsh lives of penguins, who must trudge through miles of icy terrain to a fragile sheet of ice where they must attempt to reproduce, which means mate, find time to get food, and keep an egg warm enough so that it does not ice up and kill the baby penguin inside.

Even so, the story is told as a love story, as narrated by Morgan Freeman. This film has been criticized as anthropomorphism, the act of giving human like qualities to animals or inanimate objects. These are penguins bent on survival. Their wiring may cause them to mate with a sense much stronger than having common astrological signs, favorite movies, and dining preferences. Humans, having more or less lost or never had this sense of reproductive imperative, at least the kind that pulls a species to the same location year after year, don't understand how it feels to have to do this.

When it comes to making a documentary, the director has to decide what story to tell. It's not like training a camera into the middle of, say, a living room, and hoping to tell a story by incidentally hearing what's going on. While that may also be true to life, it would take a great deal of time to fathom who is who, their relationship to one another. Even shows like Big Brother often start off introducing each person, and then put strangers together, where they must interact with one another. The audience learns who is who just as the participants do.

About a year ago, Lerone Wilson was picked by Joel Spolsky (and gang, presumably) to film four summer interns at Fog Creek Software, chronicling the ups and downs of creating software that would eventually be Copilot, a tool meant to help computer experts help their computer neophyte parents or friends fix their computers at a distance.

Wilson must have wondered how best to present this stuff. He's a filmmaker and a songwriter. Presumably one thing that he is not is a software developer. Thus, one of the first decisions he must have made was to think "there's no reason I should really delve into the process of software development--I don't get it, and frankly, it's boring". Questions such as "How does Fog Creek develop software? Do they do anything special?" or "How does a bright software guy solve problems faster than an average Jos programmer?".

Instead, we're treated to the lives of the interns outside of coding. One guy likes to juggle. Several run. One plays the piano. They show an example of solving a problem such as "could we leap far enough to save ourselves were the building on fire?". At one point, the film takes this sharp detour as we're shown life with the kids working with Paul Graham, and the scene is nearly as abrupt as watching an X-Men movie that eventually meets up with Superman and Batman for a while, before heading back to the X-Men.

We also have a few talking heads. For example, the guy who invented Visicalc comes in and intones about software development process. There's Paul Graham. Betsy Weber shows up during a usability test.

Some of what happens is revealed as you listen to the "cast" commentary. They had two interns paired up to do two consecutive commentaries (four people in all). For example, none of them knew who the Visicalc guy was. They thought Paul Graham was a bit freaky. Lerone re-enacted some scenes showing the arrival of the interns.

In the end, while I learned a little bit of who was who, I didn't get any sense of how project development occurred. Did Spolsky and gang layout the project ahead of time in enough detail that only the details of implementation were required? How was it working with FogBugz? Any agile methodology at work? How was testing done?

Some documentaries have treaded the reality by doing re-enactments for a large part of the film. Touching the Void has actors playing the role of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two British climbers who, twenty years ago, while climbing Siula Grande in Peru were met with an awful decision. Simpson had broken his leg. Yates was letting down rope having Simpson skid down, then hold himself as Yates came down after him, repeating the process over and over.

Alas, one of the times, Yates was sent over a cliff hanging on a rope. Unable to lift his weight off since he was dangling in free air, Simpson had to wonder what would happen. Yates was unable to see down the slope very far due to the snow, and was puzzled why Simpson wasn't carrying his weight off. After an hour, with Yates slipping, he decided he had to cut the rope, otherwise, they would both die.

The story follows the miraculous attempt by Simpson to climb and crawl his way back on a broken leg back to the base camp, while losing a great deal of weight, hallucinating, and hoping the whole time, that Yates had not left the camp, which he hadn't.

The real climbers narrate the story, but actors play roles in flashback. It creates the kind of drama that you wouldn't get by just having the climbers tell the story, and yet, their storytelling also enhances the versimilitude of the story, which could have been completely dramatized and fictionalized.

Documentaries, I've discovered, tell stories too, and much of that is based on what kind of story that the director wants to tell from the footage available.

Tony Goes to the NFL

Ever since I started going to work a bit earlier, I've missed the Tony Kornheiser show. Now he's gone off the air, as he preps to to do Monday Night Football.

Kornheiser's the first guy since Dennis Miller to host Monday Night Football who's not an athlete, in particular, an ex-football player. He had tried out at the time Miller did, though obviously, they picked Miller over Mr. Tony.

That was a dismal failure. Miller's brand of humor flew over the head of most listeners, as his references went all over the place, often far outside football. When he decided to sprinkle his erudite jokes with football analysis, fans again cringed, wanting the analysis to come from football experts.

This isn't your father's MNF, however. ABC, which had hosted MNF since its inception thought they would do better with a swap with ESPN, to do Sunday Night Football. Thus, MNF is now hosted on ESPN.

Kornheiser will share the booth with Joe Theismann. Although Theismann was best known as a Redskins, he's often been highly critical of the team. When Theismann was on the radio program, although he tried hard to sound sincere, it just sounded like he didn't care for Tony being his co-host. To Tony's credit, he sounded genuine in his interest to be alongside Joe.

Tony, for his part, has been self-deprecating, pointing out how he can't stay up past 10 (which normally he doesn't) and how he is going to be so awful that he'll quit within a year or be fired.

He claims he'll come back to radio once MNF finishes off, because he loves radio. Although Tony has always said he prefers writing over radio, he's always been far better on radio than in the written word. His rants are that much better when it bounces off others, where it be his co-hosts or frequent guest John "Junior" Feinstein.

These days, they've decided to move the "Sports Reporters" to the morning realizing Andy Pollin's still not ready to handle a show on his own, and generate his own entertainment. Stern appears to have disappeared.

Why is that great radio guys in DC, like Kornheiser and Derek McGinty, decide they need to off and do something else?

I can't figure it out.

Corrections

Yesterday, I wrote the album by The Concretes was called In Living Colour. I was mistaken: it's In Colour.

Band Aid

A few weeks ago, I attended a performance by a band called Might Could. This group consists of three physicists and a chemist. All are in the Ph.D. program or have completed it. They're completely instrumental. When I went to see them play it was three guitars. They interplay, exchanging who has lead.

The performance was held in Bethesda at a place called East Coast Music Production Camp, which seemed somewhat like Paul Green's School of Rock, the school featured in the documentary Rock School. One of the highlights is this kid, who's maybe 12, and is a virtuoso of guitar.

When I went to the performance, I noticed signs for a "battle of the bands" that was to be held a few weeks later, which turned out to be yesterday. The age groups range from elementary school (I think), to middle school, to high school.

I didn't expect to stay there all day. Indeed, I only went for about an hour, and paid five bucks for the privilege.

Since it wasn't that well advertised, the attendees were primarily friends and family of the performers.

Several things struck me. First, these kids are awfully young. This hurts the most in vocals. Since these aren't the next generation of Star Search kids, there isn't a Whitney Houston wannabe in the bunch. Thus, the kids who do sing, struggle to make their voices sound like their much older, more talented, more experience d counterparts.

Having said that, the kids try to take a liability and do the best they can.

Another oddity was the song lyrics. Most of the bands were performing covers of songs. These songs deal with subjects of love, which, while not foreign to kids of their age, should also be something that's they're not completely experienced with.

It reminds me a little bit of something I saw during the Wizards-Cavaliers, Game 6. These shows have a "fan" cam, where the camera roams around. One of the "highlights", if you can call it that, was this kid, who took his shirt off and began dancing. He couldn't have been much older than 10, but there he was showing all 60 pounds of him.

Later on, another kid was dancing too, and he lifted his shirt up. They went back to the first kid, who had put on his shirt, but then was going to take his shirt off again, when the camera zoomed away. What had been cute and funny at first was, I gather, seemingly exploitative.

Of course, this isn't unusual. Remember JonBenet Ramsey, the kid who was found killed? She was a beauty queen at some unusually young age. Although beauty queens are about beauty, underlying all of that is some kind of sexual tension, and to have this on young children just seems out of place, and yet, we have cheerleaders, who now learn to dance in a rather seductive manner, showing both attitude and allure.

Anyway, with these kids, there were these three girls who were screaming when a guy, who was maybe 18, was playing his guitar, and jamming with the drummer and such. This was an interlude as the teachers at this camp were playing, while the high school folks bands had yet to appear.

The middle school kids singing songs about love and such seemed oddly out of place. I know. There really aren't good songs for and about teens that are age appropriate. These bands generally have to sing songs written by and for adults.

The other thing that struck me was the noise. Bands are quite loud. I'm surprised that the kids didn't appear to be wearing any kind of ear protection, so far as I could tell.

I did notice how the kids keep performing even though there were difficulties. In particular, one kid, who played keyboards, waved to the people indicating he was having problems. As the older folks tried to fix the problem, the rest of his bandmates kept singing and playing. You could almost not tell there was a problem.

Although none of the kids were anywhere near the virtuoso level, they acquitted themselves reasonably well. I suspect these band schools, which seem really popular, are beginning to replace the traditional violin, piano lessons that kids used to take. While it may not appeal to more conservative immigrant families, it does seem to appeal to white parents.

One girl was African American, but the band members generally played rock, although there was some AC-DC, and some lighter fare as well.

After an hour or so, I left.

Later that evening, I was planning to head into DC to watch a Swedish band called The Concretes. I knew very little of this band except the one song I had heard on NPR's All Songs Considered.

The schedule said the doors would open at 7:30. I had thought this meant the first band would be ready by then. It had been so long since I had been to the 9:30 club that I had forgotten that you wait quite a while to listen to the band.

The first band wasn't scheduled to play until 8:30 or 8:45. Many regulars often skip the first band, and come in around 10:00, when the main act begins.

When I got there, there was maybe 4-5 people. I had seen another guy just ahead of me in line. When we arrived, we were just wandering, not doing a whole lot. I was wondering whether I should talk to the person, given that it was a random stranger.

Eventually, I decided to talk, and we actually had a decent conversation. It turns out that he had just quit his job as a reporter. He had wanted to do political journalism, but was unable to get that kind of a job. His boss was apparently a woman that was verbally abusive, and eventually, he quit because he felt he didn't deserve that.

This was the second concert for him at the 9:30 club. The other one he'd attended was a band called Sunvolt. Apparently, they're related to two bands called Wilco and Uncle Tupelo. One of the bands had split into two, and Sunvolt was one of the two.

I had heard of the other two bands, in fact, I had been talking to a coworker about it, so I was a little surprised to hear their names. The guy, Jeremy, had said he'd been a fan of The Concretes for a while.

I, on the other hand, had just found out about them two days earlier, while at NPR's website, then happened to check out the 9:30 club's schedule, only to notice they were performing on Sunday.

We spoke about politics, computers, and such until 9 or so (interrupted by a phone call of about twenty minutes on his part). The first act was late to get on stage.

The first act was New Buffalo. I don't know her name, but she is from Australia and is a singer-songwriter. She plays keyboards and a little guitar, and is generally good looking.

However, she did some rather uncomfortable on stage, even though she didn't sound uncomfortable. She seems reasonably talented on the keyboard, and a good singer. Her ability on the guitar was minimal, but she wasn't trying to play anything too fancy, and it seemed to fit with her minimalist style.

Since she was by herself, if she needed accompaniment, she would turn on her IPod, and play the background music for her songs. I suppose she could have had her own band, but maybe she wasn't ready to lead a band, or couldn't afford the cost of touring with anyone besides herself.

She finished just before 10. I had feared that The Concretes would run really late, and I'd have to leave early to catch the Metro. I had expected to leave by 11:30.

Fortunately, they were ready to come on stage after about 10-15 minutes.

After being on our feet for an hour, Jeremy and I walked to the back, where there were seats, and understood why people went to the second floor, where they could sit and watch the band.

I mentioned the other bands I had seen at the 9:30 club: Norah Jones with warmup band, The Gabe Dixon Band, They Might Be Giants, and Sigur Ros. He was surprised I had heard them there, since he had heard they were at larger venues. Clearly, he knew a lot of music, more than I did. I've relied on Phil to help me pick music, and so my tastes only seem that much more erudite among the cognoscenti.

Sitting was a nice break from all that standing, but when the band was ready to come out, we headed back to the front. It still wasn't all that crowded, but then it was a Sunday night.

The Concretes are a huge band. Apparently, they started off as a girl band. The lead singer, plus a guitarist and the drummer are all women. The remaining five are guys. Two of the guys play one of many brass instruments.

One guy played one of two trumpets and a tuba, sometimes in the same song. The other guy played the saxophone, but it looked like he could play clarinet, flute, and keyboard. The other keyboard was also playing xylophone. One of the women would play guitar, but sometimes bass.

With 8 members playing upwards of 12 or more instruments at different times, there's a hugely creative ensemble. Even though their sound is quite pop, it's quite enjoyable too. If you have a pop tune that's overlayed with tuba or saxophone or trumpet, it seems that much more OK to be that pop.

The band's first song was Fiction, which was the song I heard at the NPR site. If you read this more than a week after I post it, that episode may be archived. In that case, go into the archives, and locate episode 110. That song turned out to be one of the best they performed, although I was fond of the third song in their encore performance.

If you hadn't told me the band was Swedish, I might have pegged them as German. Many blonds.

For the first time being at the 9:30 club, I stood very close to the stage. Normally, I stand further back, partly because it can get very crowded, partly because it's so loud. Maybe it was me going deaf from the performances in the afternoon. Maybe it was because The Concretes simply aren't a loud band, either way, I could be that close and not have my eardrums blown out.

The lead singer was actually brunette, with broken English. The entire band were dressed in what appeared to be 60s clothing. The music even vaguely sounded like lighter fare from the 70s, like maybe Barry Manilow or Elton John. The women wore these dresses that seemed oddly fashioned, though recognizable. The guys looked like they were from the 60s as well. Maybe it's fashionable in Sweden, or maybe they just like that period of time.

The Concretes are very pop. Songs are sugary sweet, without being completely annoying. They know how to stand just on the edge, and make the performances quite enjoyable. I have to credit the multitude of instruments for pushing it beyond just ordinary.

I decided to order their new CD, which is titled something like In Colour. It appeared to be selling at Amazon for $24, which is really pricey. I should have realized something was wrong when I saw (IMPORT) since I've seen that elsewhere, and it usually translates to "expensive", and there's usually a cheaper (well, more reasonable) priced CD.

For some reason, I began to look at third party sellers, and then decided to buy it at NPR. It was only after I paid nearly $20 for the NPR music shop that I discovered there was indeed a $14 CD of the same album at Amazon, which I could have gotten both cheaper and quicker, since I have Amazon Prime. Oh well, I suppose I can feel good about helping out the NPR music store.

If you don't mind having your music a bit pop and sweet, I recommend The Concretes. You can listen to samples of their music at their website.

I had decided to buy a t-shirt and a CD of the band, shortly after I arrived around 7:30. This meant I was holding onto a t-shirt and CD for most of the evening, which is awkward. Jeremy bought some pins and a CD as well.

The performance was relatively quick. They were done around 11:20, so they were on stage maybe an hour. Still, for fifteen bucks, a short performance was fine. I decided I wanted to head back to the Metro. My feet were tired.

Jeremy, who thought the lead singer was cute, wanted to hang out afterwards to get autographs. I took a picture of him in front of the stage, because I figured there was a chance we wouldn't meet again, and this was one way to capture the moment.

Then, I headed to the Metro. Alas, the 9:30 club doesn't look like the most pleasant of neighborhoods, but I suspect it's mostly just panhandlers, and hopefully nothing worse. Indeed, just as I left a guy wanted some money, but I just kept walking.

When I got to the Metro, it turned out that I shouldn't have been concerned about being in a hurry. The train wasn't scheduled to show up for over 6 minutes, and another would have shown up in 15 or so minutes. So I sat, glad to get off my feet.

Just a moment before my train showed up, Jeremy dropped by to tell me that he hadn't seen the band members. His train had shown up too, heading in the opposite directions, so we said bye.

Fortunately, I'm only six stops or so from my stop, so soon enough, I was back at College Park. I dropped by the 7-11 to get a snack, then headed back home, to try to get to sleep and head into work.

All in all, a full day of music. Not bad. Not bad at all.

There's No I in Team

Have you ever thought about a genie who would respond to your commands if you would simply utter his name? You don't think that's possible? Ah, but I think it is.

I shall utter the genie's name and he shall soon appear.

Jared Richardson! Jared Richardson! Jared Richardson!

There, that should get his attention. Jared's on vacation I think, and so he probably won't read this until he gets back unless he's a weenie that has to check his RSS feed even when he's on vacation (but, but, I might be missing stuff!).

I just read Jared's latest blog entry (augh, how I hate to have to clip in links) about team building.

One question I asked during a question and answer session for the expert panel was "What job do you think will the software industry have ten years from now that they don't have now?". Crystal ball questions are tough to ask because many people don't look that far ahead. They care about next year at best. Ask them what will happen twenty years from now, and they'll joke about something like maybe enjoying living on a tropical island.

One group of people who, in principle, make it their jobs to look ahead are science fiction writers. This is why it's interesting to get a Bruce Sterling to speak to a tech audience, especially since he's asked to prognosticate only forty or fify years ahead. But I think it's a useful exercise to think about.

For example, I can think of several jobs that might exist depending on how code is developed. If you develop code rather cavalierly to gain speed in development, then there will soon be plenty of undocumented code, especially if you are like the typical developer who hates to spend any time documenting stuff. Some organizations, like Microsoft, now have nearly two testers for every coder. Might there be someone who's job, then, is to document and refactor code? You develop the code. It goes through testing. I begin to come up with a way of documenting stuff in parallel, realizing the changes may force me to keep up, just as changes in code forces testers to keep up.

It seems like a silly job. Cleaning and documenting code. But at one point, testing seemed like a silly job too. Even if you believed it was important (and it is), how do you get testers? Even now, it's a problem. Most computer science departments haven't realized just how important testing is, at least, as a discipline, and so they haven't worked it into their curriculum. If we're going to get better testers, part of the answer is getting computer science departments to realize they aren't just teaching syntax of languages, they are teaching software development lifecycles.

Related to cleaning and documenting code is something higher level, and that's the tech writer. The tech writer can present the code in a readable format so even people outside the team have some idea of what's going on. Hopefully, in clarifying issues, people will realize whether their designs make sense. Admittedly, some groups put their design up front, and spend lots of time in a rather formal process. It takes time to develop, but one hopes it leads to code that's been documented and well thought out. It may not be that agile.

However, there's one job I wonder if might become more relevant, and that's teaching. There are schools that teach nursing, say, and presumably know enough content to teach nurses adequately. However, it would be daunting to produce the software equivalent of that. Consider the frameworks, the languages, the databases, and so forth. How many people even know a fraction of all that? And how long is that information good for?

Even so, as folks involved in software, we have to learn to deal with the ever changing landscape of technologies and tools. This means keeping up with the tools and techniques that are out there, making a decision on whether to learn it, then learn it. Every software developer could stand to be better at what they do.

Jared points out, in his article, that he's in favor of the daily meeting, which tries to deal with problems as they come up. I've heard of this. I read a book on Scrum, which is considered part of agile methodology, but honestly, could apply to other displines beyond software development. They favor stand-up meetings where they deal with issues of what has been done, and what needs to be done.

Eventually, the answer may be, the guy needs more training in something. For example, we could all stand to be experts in CVS, but most of us do just enough to check things in and out and make comments. Forget about trying to branch and merge. Let the content management guy take care of that. Forget about running a command-line diff or patch UNIX style. That's black magic.

At what point should we decide to evaluate the skills of the people we have and teach them to get better at what they do. The company invests in the skills of its employees. This tends to run counter to what companies like to do, especially those like Microsoft or Google, who figure they have talented people who need little direction. Even some direction may provide a much better employee.

Ultimately, the goal would be for the person to get skills beyond the basics. For example, I could teach you, say, Eclipse. But then, could you take that and learn all you could about, say, IntelliJ? And how would you go about doing this? And how do you go about teaching people how to learn? Because ultimately, this is what makes people better.

Dave Thomas has pointed out that too many people in software are novices are just beyond that. They aren't very good at what they do. He says that while software may have had advances. Programming languages do more. Computers are faster. However, people aren't that much better.

I argue that it's harder in software development to keep up than other disciplines, though I'm sure any engineer says the same about their discipline (we're hard too!). We need the ability to evaluate what's going on. Fortunately, other people are in the same boat, so we can often let someone who has thought about it more than us do that decision making for us. Software architects, I've learned, must do this. Their job is to evaluate and pick technologies for developers to use, basing their decision, one hopes, on reasonable and accurate criteria.

Now it's easy to say "but these guys don't want to learn". I'd argue there's at least three categories of folks. There's those that learn it on their own, with varying degrees of success. Some dig deep to try to understand stuff like an expert. Most learn it just well enoug to do what they need to do, even it's not optimal or "correct". Others don't really want to learn much more especially if they have to go through a period of being an idiot.

One thing that's changing is the idea that you can master some tool and use it the rest of your life. These days, you master it long enough, and then throw it away, and pick up something new. Usually, there's enough overlap that you don't have to completely toss out everything you'd know, otherwise, life would be too miserable.

But, there are those in between that are capable of learning, but just not as fast as others, and perhaps not with the same vigor. However, in a controlled environment, where they are taught stuff, and quizzed on stuff, they would excel. I've had students who complain that they would do better if they were forced to learn the material. I think forced? Why must they be forced?

Because as much as we want everyone to love, love, love programming, many people find it a skill that they do. How many garbage men want to excel at what they do? How man sales clerks? People program because it's the one thing they got good at, but they don't have to be passionate about it. A bit of professionalism can help matters out.

However, it takes a special person to set up such a thing, especially in a company that may be tight on trying to get stuff built. The more you go on side projects like this, the more people might prefer doing them over doing their real work, because it's small and throwaway. Management might not care for that.

Still, there are places that have done interesting things. In order to keep morale up, Yahoo decided to have a "programming day". It was a day off. During this day, you could work on any project you wanted. Of course, if you wanted to do something interesting, you needed to recruit others to help out on your project. People had one day to get something to work, and prizes would be awarded at the end of the day.

Even some of the failures turned out to be good ideas in the long run, because they were often a bit too ambitious for a single day's worth of work.

Now suppose your company is a shop that does mostly Java development. You agree that three of you will learn a little about Ruby and post up tutorials on the Wiki. Then, on the special day, you'll create a project using Ruby on Rails and throw in some Ajax for good measure. At the end of the day, you list out all the stuff you thought were missing in the experience (say, Ruby was harder to pick up than expected). Out of this, you might decide to work on other individual projects on your own.

Google is famous for this 20% rule, which allows employees up to a full day to work on some other project, should they choose.

The question is how do we encourage people to learn and to get better. Having a corporate teacher who runs something like a class and can help people identify weaknesses may prove beneficial in the long run.

So that's my new idea, Jared. What do you think?

Rage Against the Secret Machines

My favorite band, as of late, has been The Secret Machines. I listen to them far more often than any other CD I have. Their heavy beats that sound a bit like Pink Floyd is often higher energy than the rest of the CDs I own, which seem to be mostly folk music, and some indie stuff here and there. I have a few Radioheads too.

Recently, The Secret Machines released Ten Silver Drops, their latest effort. It's quite good as well, and I've already listened to it five times today. I'm in repeated loop listening to it.

When I listen to music, I typically block out lyrics. I don't pay attention to it. They could be as inane as "The Final Countdown" by Europe or maybe something as thoughtful as Leonard Cohen. Doesn't matter. I'm not listening to it. I'll make out some words here or there, but for the most part, I just listen to the music, so I like The Secret Machines for the music.

My favorite song, so far, on the new album is I Hate Pretending. I just happen to like the way it sounds. I have no idea what the song is about.

I'm planning to watch The Concretes at the 9:30 Club tomorrow night. They're a Swedish band I just heard of on NPR's All Songs Considered. Prior to Friday, I had never heard of them. I went to look at the upcoming performancs at the 9:30 Club. I was hoping that Sufjan might be touring. Low and behold, I found they were performing tomorrow. We'll see how they are. Live performances have a tendency to be loud, loud, loud.

It's been a while since I've been to the 9:30 Club, and this is the first time I've gone by myself. I suppose I'd rather go with someone. In fact, I did invite a friend who does go to concerts a fair bit, but he was busy tomorrow.

I want to close by commenting on something interesting. Have you ever recommended music or a movie to someone? It's funny. Most people can make recommendations, but you can tell if someone is interested in those recommendations or not if they counter-recommend. If I recommend that you should listen to X, and you counter by recommending Y, then I have to wonder if either of us will try to listen to the other person's suggestion? We're both in the same boat of trying to convince one another to try something new.

But what one person likes in music, another may dislike or hate. My tastes run to indie music, but I find there's only some music I can listen to over and over again. I've stopped listening to Sufjan, for the most part, after listening to him for a while. I like Sufjan, but at times, I want something faster paced, which is why I like Secret Machines.

Some people prefer their music to be a relentless beat, so they have rap, or techno, or heavy metal. I suppose others prefer something more mellow. One of my coworkers is that way. He likes folk and stuff that seems relaxing. I can go either way honestly, though I started to listen to music far more recently, when about 9 months ago, someone suggested I try listening more often. It helped keep me awake, so I've listened to far more music.

However, unlike many folks, I get all my music legally, meaning I pay for it all. Thus, my collection is far smaller than others, and far less varied. The advantage of downloading all the music you can is that you're willing to try more stuff. Why not? If you have the disk space. Thus, my coworkers list of songs often cover the gamut from pop to rap to music from the 60s and even the occasional classical song.

What I've noticed is that the people around 30 or younger have embraced some form of rap as part of their listening experience. Admittedly, even the indie music scene, which is stereotypically angst-ridden white guys looking for new stuff post-grunge can often find folks like Kanye West or Gorillaz or a few other groups that go beyond the misogynistic lyrics that typify rap.

Those older than that who aren't African American seem to think of this music as black and no-talented. I remember back in college, I knew a suitemate who'd listen to bands like Led Zeppelin, Kansas, Yes, and Pink Floyd. He didn't particularly care for rap, and even saw Beastie Boys as something of white guys making fun of rap. If white guys can make stuff just as good, then it must not be any good.

Much like reality tv shows, hip hop isn't going away, and shows signs that it's being far more widely embraced.

I'm still not sure where I fall in the range of music out there. I just listen and see what I like.

Something Fishy

I was talking to my brother on the phone today. This is not too uncommon. We tend to call one another when we're bored on the road. I know. It's not the safest thing to do. On the other hand, being bored doesn't seem all that safe either. He mentioned that he was just about to head to a place to eat sushi.

I knew a place that some of my coworkers like to eat called Hakuba. We also like to go to Kimo Sushi. It's hard to say whether either place is super authentic, but that's the way Asian food is in the U.S. There's some nod made to making it more palatable to Americans, or at least, an Asian's perception of what is palatable to American.

Even sushi places that don't create sushi with names like Boston roll, spider roll, Vegas roll, and all other manners of rolls that most likely never graced a serious Japanese sushi place often have California rolls, which has to be something like the chop suey of Japanese food. It's vegetarian. It's got avocado. It's a California roll.

Sushi became popular in the 80s, most famously associated with yuppies, the name given to young upwardly mobile professionals. These were the new rich, the so-called bohemian bourgeouis. Sushi seemed a way for the newly wealthy to flaunt their wealth. It involved something exotic (Japanese), it cost money, and required a certain kind of bravery to eat it for those who were used to having their food cooked.

Sushi is also quite a different experience. To eat the best sushi usually means eating the fish freshly killed, often minutes before. Most American sushi places aren't that authentic, but the fish still has to be pretty fresh. If the fish is going bad, not only will it make you sick, it will begin to smell.

Americans that don't like sushi often complain not only that it's raw, but that it's flavorless too. Those who like sushi could point to a more enlightened approach to eating, one that emphasizes visual appearance and texture over taste. That kind of Zen thought made those who eat sushi seem positively academic. Of course, you could punch up the blandness with a dash of wasabi and soy and pickled ginger.

I ate sushi for the first time as I was about to graduate from Cornell, some 15 years ago. A restaurant, called Kayuga, meant to look Japanese, but really a stylized spelling of Cayuga, a nearby lake, with Native American roots for its name. Since then, I've eaten sushi on and off. It's not so convenient to find sushi where I live, though there are a few offerings where I work.

I was searching for Hakuba. A while ago, we attempted to eat there, but it was closed due to a fire. Another restaurant owner was out soliciting people to try his food. He ran another Asian place, and it seemed decent enough.

Today, I decided to find Hakuba. It's on a road called Kentlands off of Great Seneca Highway. The problem is how it comes off this highway. Go left, and it's called Kentlands. Go right and it's called Orchard Ridge. That's terribly confusing, and rather infuriating.

I drove and drove and drove, waiting to see this road, not realizing I was miles and miles beyond it. The only solace was that I found the Amish market. Here, the Amish run a meat market, a crafts market, and freshly baked pastries. They seem to use electricity for business. Sad to say, the only knowledge I have about the Amish comes from the film Witness. If that film did anything, it put the Amish firm in the nation's psyche.

Without that film, would there have been a Kingpin? Would Weird Al have made a parody of Gansta's Paradise called Amish Paradise?

Who's in Witness? There's Kelly McGillis who then went on to make Top Gun. There's Danny Glover. There's Alexander Godunov, the Russian ballet dancer, who plays Amish in an unusual piece of casting. There's Lukas Haas who is still acting. He's recently playing "The Pin" in Brick, the kingpin of the teen film noir, who's mother is as wholesome (and naive) as apple pie.

After trekking that far, I turned around, low on gas, and eventually found Kentlands, then had sushi. I ended up getting something that really amounts to pieces of raw fish. It wasn't rolls. It wasn't sashimi. Just pieces of raw fish. That was different.

Then, just as I was about to head back, I noticed a shop called "Crepes a Go-Go" where they make crepes. It's a bit unusual to find a crepe shop anywhere, so I had to go and get a crepe. There are "savory" crepes (savory, in this context, appears to mean "not sweet" and usually contrasts with something that is sweet). They have sweet crepes mostly filled with fruit and nutella. My housemate would drool over the thought of eating here. I got a crepe with spinach, cheese, and an egg.

The crepe itself is made on a large circular flat plate of steel. The guy pours the batter on top of this plate, then uses what appears to be a mini-rake, though rather than have prongs at the end, it is flat, almost like a mop, except it's all wood. He would spin his hand, in a circular fashion making the crepe larger and larger. When it was as large as it was going to be, he would quickly spin the excess batter over the top so that it was clumped in any one spot. It was much like a painter trying to leave an even coat.

Seconds later, he'd take something that looked a bit like a pastry knife, the kind used for spreading icing on a cake, and pried the crepe off, flipped it over, and let it sit a few more seconds, then folded it in half, and moved it in the next plate over, where it would sit being warmed. He had three warming plates. One to do the cooking of the crepes, two others to place his crepes once made.

He could put up to four crepes on the remaining two, since they were folded in half.

I took my crepe and left, pumped gas, and headed back to do a little work.

Now, I bloggeth about this food. Ah, why am I so beholden to food?

Flight Plan

Fifteen minutes after I walked into the theater to watch United 93, I walked out.

But it's not for the reasons you're thinking.

Let's step back and see what you'd be thinking anyway. Forget the movie. What's the first reason anyone walks away from a film? It sucks so bad or is so completely offensive or sickening that you walk out. Most people will sit through a bad movie. We've all seen plenty. It's easier to walk out of a film that you can't stand for one reason or another.

There are people who won't sit through horror films or blood splatter fests because the visceral image of people being killed or maimed or bloodied is too much. To be honest, that's why I don't go see horror films either. I knew someone who couldn't deal with blood if it were real or stylized. For example, before Lord of the Rings, Peter Jackson directed Dead Alive (also called Braindead) which is meant to be humorous, even as it spatter fakish blood all over. I knew a friend who bailed because of this. She couldn't take all that blood, even as it was fake.

Then, there are films like Irreversible, with its nine minute rape scene stuck right in the middle, that tends to drive viewers away, who feel that they are somehow participating in the rape by being a bystander who can do nothing about it.

I can deal with both. I can watch splatter-fests, even if it's not my favorite kind of film. I can deal with tough films like Irreversible.

I suppose there are other reasons to walk out on a film. It hits phobias that you can't deal with. It deals with emotional trauma you're not ready for.

However, I read the reviews to United 93 and I had heard it was tastefully done.

Living in the DC area, you'd think I should have been more sensitive to the attack on the Pentagon, and yet, there was hardly any footage of it. For some reason, you just don't see much. So despite the proximity of this event, the attack on the twin towers resonates that much more, because there was footage that was repeated over and over and over again.

Still, I don't live in New York City. I didn't pass by the twin towers. I don't know people who worked there. I wouldn't have had the same kind of emotions as the people in New York City.

So emotionally, I would have been fine to watch it, I imagine.

That eliminates most reason why anyone would walk out of a movie. Short of a wife giving birth, a fire in the theater, the movie disintegrating, an emergency call, etc. what would make me walk out?

Handheld camerawork.

I don't know who's brilliant idea it was to use handheld camerawork. It's been the practice of directors to do handheld work with a quivering hold to give a sense of "you are there" as if it were filmed by an epileptic. This shaking affects few people. Some never notice it at all.

For a few moments, I was fine. Still, it usually takes about fifteen minutes of this before nausea sets in, and I was feeling some of the effects. Had I decided to brave it out, I would have been miserable in another fifteen minutes. Coincidentally, Peter Jackson movies do that to me too. Jackson likes to have his camera dive, he likes to swirl his camera very fast. The motion isn't like handheld, but its effect is the same.

I can generally watch these films on the small screen. They take up far less of my peripheral vision, and so they affect me much less.

Still, this would have been a perfectly watchable film had the director simply decided to keep the camera still, and not film it as if he were on a pogo stick. It's good that most films don't use this much, or I'd be unable to watch most films.

It's too bad, because I think this would have been a film worth watching. I've wondered what it must have been like to be aboard. I wouldn't obviously want to have been aboard, but the details of what happened are something of a mystery to me.

Some people aren't ready to deal with the emotional stress of a plane being taken over and knowing that death is likely imminent. Yet, think of a film like Titanic. How many people watch the film and think about the disaster itself? How it must have felt to go down with a sinking ship?

And unlike United 93, where the events leading up to the end probably occurred in the first hour of flight, the Titanic took some two hours or so to sink. And some of the people could be saved, while many could not. Still, the Titanic didn't evoke those feelings because it was a love story, and thus a melodrama. The life and death of Jack is something of a movie plot element. Emotional perhaps, but not realistic.

Maybe it's the documentary like approach that convinces you that you could have been any of the people aboard, whereas the Titanic was set a hundred years ago, and most people know that modern ocean liners are relatively safe. Even the sinking of the Titanic lead to better designs for ships to make it less likely to sink. (It's ironic that trying to miss the iceberg likely sank the Titanic. Had it simply crashed headlong into the iceberg, the passengers would have had a huge jolt, but the ship would like have stayed afloat. It was because it tore a gash along the side that the ship sank.)

I will say, of the few minutes I watched, there were all these small cues to make you realize this is a film, and not a documentary, such as how the terrorists don't look nearly as anonymous as everyone else, how they show the airplane being fueled up, how the boxcutters were set up.

So I walked out, but the thing was, were it not for a directorial decision---to use handheld camerawork---I might have walked out for a different reason.

Or not.

Wizards Of Ahhs

Game 6. Wizards vs. Cavaliers. The Golden Child. Verizon Center. Do or die.

LeBron James has been in the league three years now. He was picked number 1 by Cleveland right out of high school. The hype was unbelievable. This was the new Jordan. People had been calling him "King James". And people were waiting to see him fail. No one's that good right out of high school. Kobe, Kevin, Tracy. All these guys took a little while before they were that good.

His first year, he averaged 21 points a game. This was just under what Michael Jordan averaged when he played with the Wizards. That number went up to 27 points a game, and this year, it was 31 points a game. He was only behind Kobe Bryant and Allen Iverson.

In game 5, played in Cleveland, Washington looked poised to steal a game. After being down a bunch of points at the end of the game, the Wizards clawed back to tie it and send it to overtime. In overtime, Arenas hit two free throws to put the Wizards up by 1, with 3 seconds left. Surely, a win for the Wizards.

LeBron sliced and diced to make a game-winning layup, which some felt sure was travelling. With less than a second left, rather than call time out, the Wizards decided to go with the play, which lead to desperation heave by Arenas that missed. A time out would have meant inbounding the ball at half court. 0.9 seconds doesn't seem like a lot, but in basketball, people know exactly how long it takes to get a shot off, whether you can dribble or not. 0.9 seconds is enough time to get a decent shot off, admittedly hurriedly. You're not going to dawdle, but it's within the bounds of reason in basketball.

Somehow, with a lead of a few points going into the final minute, the Wizards couldn't make plays, and soon found itself down by 3 points with 5 seconds left. I went to watch the game with a group of about 8, including myself. Surely, I had the cheapest seats in the house. We were as far back as you can possibly be. During time outs, they were releasing mini-parachutes with gifts. Needless to say, these come nowhere near the second tier, and we're on the fourth tier up.

No one sat behind us, that's how far back we were. I had to identify players the old-fashioned way. I had to look at the numbers. LeBron's 23? Oh, yes, like Jordan. Arenas is 0. Which one is Brendan? Did he really score that many points?

By the final minute, we were standing, hoping the Wizards could somehow stay in the game. But with five seconds left and needing a 3-point shot, it didn't look that good. In college, where players are far less accurate, that would generally be a win. Even in the pros, it's usually good enough for a win.

Arenas took a shot, it seemed ten feet behind the three point arc, and we saw it loft, and hit its mark, the net whipping after ball made contact. The crowd was in a frenzy. We were chanting "MVP", "MVP", "MVP". Arenas was going to push it one more game.

And it went to overtime. And it seemed that the Wizards would at least push it to a second overtime. Arenas was fouled. The Wizards were up by 1. He would have two chances to push that lead to 3. That third point would guarantee, short of a freak foul on a made 3-point shot, that there would, at worth, be overtime 2, and at best a win. Cleveland had yet to show they had the same kind of clutch long-distance throwing that typifies Arenas.

Arenas, an 80-percent free-throw shooter missed the first shot. James then came over and told him if he missed the second shot, they were going to lose the game, a bold statement given the Wizards were still up by 1.

Seemingly baffled, Arenas proceeded to miss his second free throw. As they came back to the other end of the court, the Wizards tried to force someone else besides LeBron to win the game as he had twice in the series. Double-teamed, he whipped the ball to ex-Wizard Hughes, who then passed it to Damon Jones, who had been in the game all of 14 seconds, when he lofted a 2-point shot that found its target. The Wizards brought the ball the other direction, and was unable to make another shot.

And it was over.

Just like that. Three games decided on last minute shots. Two games decided in overtime by a point. Three games to the Cavaliers. The Wizards could have won 4-1. As it was, they lost 4-2. And so the Cavaliers have the honor of playing the Pistons.

The Pistons are no longer coached by Larry Brown, who had a fallout and divorce with the team when he had been interested in interviewing for the Cleveland president, given his health problems, which might leave him unable to coach. The Pistons braintrust didn't care for this disloyalty. Brown's always been criticized for being antsy at whatever place he is, wanting to go elsewhere.

Brown eventually found himself a new job as head coach of the Knicks, and lead them to an abysmal season, perhaps the result of the players not buying into Brown's coaching, despite his success with the Sixers and Detroit.

Flip Saunders took over the helm and the Pistons were better than ever. In the early parts of the season, it looked as if the Pistons might challenge the Bull's gaudy 72 game win record in the 1995-1996 season. Detroit finished 64-18, some 8 games short of this record.

It's expected, unlike the Wizards, that the Pistons will play defense, and the free-wheeling high scoring excesses of the Wizards-Cavaliers series will give way to a slower paced, lower scoring game. The Pistons are heavily favored to win this series (as they would have been against the Wizards, despite the Wizards having a great record against the Pistons).

We walked down the many flights of stairs, and headed with the rather subdued mob of fans. At the bottom, we hung out for a few minutes, talked a little about the game. Then, I took the Metro on a rather long ride back up to the Shady Grove Metro. The new warnings were being used. After years of hearing "Doors are closing, please step clear of the doors", there's a harsher warning, more beeps from the door. We were stopped twice as they were on a single rail in both directions.

I got back to Shady Grove sometime past midnight, then spent a little while at work, then drove back, and didn't get home until 2 AM. It was late. The game was over. It was time to sleep.

Stand and Deliver

I was talking to Jared about public speaking. By talking, I really mean chatting, as talking seems almost too personal in real life, like you're invading someone's space. Not that chatting doesn't do that too, but chatting protocol allows you to quickly ignore the other person.

Jared pointed me to a blog entry he'd written about public speaking.

I've been doing public speaking of a sort for over ten years. I was a teaching assistant for five years, was a summer instructor for two summers, and taught for five years.

I've not really been formally trained to speak. I suspect this is a mistake on my part, but American education, as a rule, doesn't seem to emphasize rhetoric and debate, at least, not as much as British education, which is perhaps why Brits always sound more educated.

Despite this, I've learned to pick up a few things I do that have helped me. Generally, I try to be impromptu. I want to be able to lecture off the cuff without having to think too hard. One way I do this, and you have to be careful about it, is to practice as I drive. The reason you have to be careful is that talking to yourself is much like talking on a cell phone. It's easy to distract yourself from paying attention to the road.

Having said this, it's worked for me. I present a lecture while driving. As I listen to myself, I notice when I'm meandering off-topic, which is a lot. I've even gone back, after five minutes of blabbing to restart the talk I'm giving, especially if I don't like the direction it's heading.

Useful advice I'd give. Hmm, have a good story to tell. If you're giving a tech talk, it can be useful to tell an anecdote, which, on the surface of it, has nothing to do with the point you're making, but indeed, it makes the point.

I noticed that all the speakers at these tech conferences did avoid some topics. For example, we didn't have anyone talk about, say, Iraq or Bush. I suppose many alpha geek types don't care that much about politics or have been told that people in the audience want you to stay on-topic. Going off topic sometimes has some advantages as it may get people to viscerally react.

For example, there was this case against this guy who's name I don't even want to attempt spelling, for his involvement in the 9/11 attacks. He's been given life in prison with no parole. There are some, most notably the family members of the victims, who feel this is not enough.

Alas, the media has presented the face of mourning that says that the only just reaction to the murder of a loved one is to seek the death of the person who caused this, and this sense is so strong that even when mistaken identities have occurred, those reacting to the tragedy can't shake their fervent belief that someone..must..pay.

One movie that does a very good job of talking about the death penalty is Dead Man Walking. It's mostly the story of Sister Helen Prejean (Susan Sarandon) who has been asked by Matthew Poncelet (Sean Penn) to give comfort. He's been accused of murder of two weens along with his friend. He claims his friend murdered them both, and he was a bystander.

Prejean meets the parents of the girl who was killed. They tell how much they loved and missed her. Then, they discover she's there to support Poncelet, who they know has been accused of the murder, and in their minds, he is guilty. She tries to suggest that forgiveness is appropriate (i.e., the Christian thing to do) and the father rebuts saying that if he has to forgive these murderers, he'd rather give up Christianity.

At least, that's how I remember it.

But that's exactly the attitude that the media has fostered. How many local news outlets would find a parents who would say "he should live, and I forgive him (or her) for this act, but I will not do the evil on those who have committed evil". Like never. I'm not saying this is an easy reaction to make, because it isn't. For most, there's no hurt greater than losing a loved one, and no baser reaction than wanting to inflict that hurt on someone else.

I remember visiting a website that had a video short by Ava Lowery, a 15 year old who is anti-Bush, anti-Iraq. In this knockout of a video, there are scenes of the Iraqi dead. Children maimed. Houses bombed. Overlaid on these searing images is a song with lyrics approximating "Jesus loves me so".

I'd imagine, for a Christian, that this would start off as something completely offensive. As it is, many Christians feel that liberals bash them for being Christians. Even as a non-Christian, it's powerful stuff, and I'm wondering where this teenager is heading with this.

This was reminding me of some song, which starts off with a young kid who is, I believe praying, wondering about the misery of the world. Then, it heads into the main part of the song, sung by the lead singer, and he lashes out against the ills of the world, the suffering done in the name of religion, and in the end, it's back to the young kid singing again. It's riveting stuff because it's about the loss of faith, and that has to be, for someone who believes, something approaching blasphemy.

That's where I thought this video was heading, trying to rile up as much anger as possible. However, it heads in a direction I wasn't expecting. It ends with "WWJD", i.e., "What Would Jesus Do?". Admittedly, thoughts of "What Would Chuck Norris Do?" flitted through my head.

And that makes the message that much more resonant, because it suggests the actions in Iraq are not particularly "Christian", that Jesus would not advocate the killing of enemies. Again, I'm no expert, but that seem to jibe with my knowledge of Christianity.

Now, how engaged are you?

Politics, religion. They can stir the pot. I've digressed to present an example that can viscerally impact.

Admittedly, it's a bit of a cheap ploy. It's like comedians who swear. So much easier to be funny if you swear. So much easier to make people pay attention if you digress on hot-button topics.

And pauses.

That's also good.

Use it sometime.

Fluff N Stuff

I just attended the No Fluff Just Stuff (NFJS) tour, hosted by the Northern Virginia Software Symposium. This is a tour of speakers that talk on the following topics: Java, Java server technology, Ruby, Ajax, JavaScript, agile programming, new programming languages (like Groovy).

This is the second time I've attended the talk. I go partly to learn new things, partly to get a sense of what the non-.Net industry is up to, and partly to see how good people give talks. Unlike, say, ETECH, which tends to have weird rules for how they invite speakers, which leads to uneven quality of talks, though often bigger names attending, NFJS generally have pretty good speakers. Speakers have to try out and get rated well to be allowed on a tour that is something like the Lollapalooza of geeks.

Speakers go anywhere between 6 and 12 different cities which is usually held on a Friday afternoon, and a full day on Saturday and Sunday. Speakers typically on two of the days, so they never have to be there the full time.

What makes an effective speaker? Some speakers are excellent at injecting humor. Of the regulars, Dave Thomas is really good at this. But it's hard for most people to be funny. One of the lessons you learn as a speaker is that if you're not terribly funny, then don't try. It really is painful to listen to jokes that simply fall flat. Scott Davis, by contrast, doesn't tell many jokes, but gets so into the subject matter he's covering that you're engrossed in what he has to say.

Some of the secrets of good speaking came out in one of Dave Thomas's less technical talk. He talked about "herding racehorses and racing sheep". In this talk, he gives levels of expertise from the complete novice to the expert, and how each level of expertise (he gives 5), and how you have to talk and treat a person at each level differently. A novice, for example, wants painstaking detail and a good chance of success.

Dave points out a family recipe whose ingredients are given in approximate terms (a pinch, a handful, etc). He says this is basically an expert talking knowing how much they mean by these approximate terms, but how inappropriate this is to a novice who doesn't know whether a handful is small or large or whether it depends on a person's hand.

He also illustrates his point as he recounts learning how to fly a plane. His instructor told him that he would end up doing something wrong, and told him what that wrong thing was, and how to compensate once he knew it was happening. Dave thought, for sure, he'd not make that mistake now that he intellectually knew what was coming, and yet, when it came time to fly the plane, there he was, making this mistake, even though he knew to be prepared for it. And he asked the instructor "how did you know?" and he said "it happens to everyone".

Now, as he's doing this demo, he's jerking his body, making faces, trying to demonstrate the physical nature of what was happening to him. Good speakers can involve their listeners by more than just words.

Scott Davis doesn't do any of this. His approach is more pure. He knows that the way to entice someone to listen is to provide them something they couldn't easily get from a book. He needs enough details about what he's doing so he isn't spouting platitudes ("make sure to comment your code---other people have to read it!"). Instead, he'll have code examples that go from cool to very cool, but all quite do-able.

Here's an example of a talk that would work well in NFJS. How many people say "don't prematurely optimize". Plenty, right? They say, profile, then decide what to optimize. And yet, I've never seen anyone profile in a demo. How does that encourage a novice to learn about profiling? It doesn't. They decide it's too much work, and don't want to bother.

A good talk on profiling would show two or three different ways to profile, the advantages and disadvantages of each, and explain the pitfalls of the various kinds of profiling. For example, in one of the talks, the guy said that people sometime to microbenchmarks because that's what people did in C, and it doesn't work in Java, because of what the JVM does.

Now where can you get this kind of information? Can you pick up a book and read about this? Maybe soon, but not right now. And it's just the kind of insider information you want to hear at something like this. That the intuition you've used for so long is wrong.

Amazing, programming languages have traction at NFJS. For example, I've heard talks about Ruby, JavaScript, and Groovy. You want to hit all the weird things you can do in the languages, not just hash over how to write a loop. For example, in the JavaScript talk, Glenn Vanderburg talked about how you could implement single inheritance in a prototype-based language. He covered closures. He showed the JavaScript object model. Even if you're familiar with Java, this is a completely different language, and more than simply popping up alert buttons.

Glenn's speaking is neither as funny as Dave Thomas, nor as enthusiastic as Scott Davis, but he has good examples, and he's pretty clear in what he does.

I attended a talk by Andrew Glover who talked about Groovy. For the most part, he did reasonably well, but he was incredibly self-conscious about talking. He kept saying things like "I'm going to get dinged on the reviews for that". That's just the kind of thing that you shouldn't say. It's trying to get sympathy from the audience. I understand that live demos are hard to give. It can slow you down, and they are prone to errors. I was reasonably happy with the live demos he was giving, though I can see how they tend to disrupt the flow of a really good presentation.

Andrew would also occasionally do something with his wrist, as if he were wearing a watch that was too loose, and had to keep adjusting it. That was mildly distracting. Aside from these issues, he hit some of the more unusual features in Groovy, something that makes it worth trying out.

Before I talk about Jared Richardson (now that I've mentioned his name, his Google RSS search) I should mention one guy who hung out to the end (other than me). Jared had just finished his talk on Cruise Control and how to set it up. The talk had wandered a bit, but I don't think too many people minded. He had said that when the build fails, the alerts could be emailed or sent via RSS or any of a myriad number of ways that Cruise Control has built in. (I had wanted to say he should tell a joke that Oprah wish she had this product---she needs Cruise Control, all right).

This guy comes up and asks about RSS. Apparently, he had never heard of it. And this is, I think, key to something that's very interesting about the software community. It is incredibly large, and a small, rather devoted percentage, spends a great deal of time trying to keep up with industry.

To illustrate what I mean, suppose you were a math major. Would you decide to work on math outside of class? Perhaps a person wanting to get a Ph.D. would do exactly that. After all, it's their life work. But maybe if you're not that inclined--a job as an accountant will do just nicely, thanks---you wouldn't bother.

Among those who major in computer science, there are some that are avid about computers outside of the major. They install Linux on their machines, even if there are myriad details that make this painful, which is why Mom and Dad won't touch it, even if they use computers. How many people have spent a few days hacking at their installation so it would get all their drivers to run, so their configuration and packages are just so? This is the kind of time most people would say is a waste. And yet, avid computer science types do this.

I once asked a class how many had built their own computer? More than half the class said they had done this. These days, especially in the last few years, it's easier than ever. You probably can't do too much that would fry the motherboard anymore. And even if you're too scared to do it yourself, you could probably find someone to help you out. It's no longer as cost-efficient to do it as it used to be. A comparable Dell is likely to cost less and have a warranty. But it's a great way to learn how a computer "works".

Still, it's something you don't learn in a computer science class. You have to pick that up on your own. People have learned how to work with MySQL and PHP and set up their own Apache web servers. Covered in a CS class? Nope. At times, the people teaching computer science are mired in the past, unwilling to keep up with the technology as it charges breakneck pace through.

How many people read Slashdot? Or Kuro5hin? I never cared for either, but I'm somewhat addicted to Reddit. It's nice and simple and always has a few articles I want to read. Occasionally I peer over at Memeorandum, mostly because I know the guy who created it. How many of you have set up a photo account at Flickr? How many tag? How many feel that you have to learn about this? Learn Ruby on Rails? Learn Ajax? Are you ready to write a Groovlet? How about a Zimlet?

You can get on perfectly well in the computer industry doing the job you do and never have to think about any of this, and yet, the industry expects you to know something about it. It's as if we were a bunch of writers, but had to keep up with new writers out there, and new technologies that make writing easier.

So here was this guy who knew nothing about RSS. Perhaps he knew nothing about CSS either. They sound the same, but are quite different. We explained to him what it was and how he could try it out. Some people are addicted to their RSS feed. They value it more than their email. I could never quite get into it. Perhaps I should try it again. But notice the kind of behavior I have to pick up, how I'm being compelled by the computer community to do this because it's the latest, hip thing to do.

Should you blog? Do you tag? Do you have an account on Myspace? Do you host your own site? Do you have a domain name registered? And you know there's something coming up on the horizon. Is it mashups? All these open APIs telling us to make our own maps, build our own Google Map for whatever we want (a particularly odd mashup locates sexual predators).

People like that attending conferences make you realize that, even within the software industry, there are technophiles, alpha-geeks, people who love, love, love the new stuff.

And this, ultimately is why we can never be like the nurses in Dave Thomas's example about novice learning, who can mentor new nurses, educating them to be better nurses. It's simply too easy to write software. You can always ask someone "have you heard about this software tool, or that social networking website" or something and at least once, they're going to say no. I doubt there are nurses that are coming up with novel nursing techniques so prolific that not even a handful of nurses won't somehow know it.

As a computer technologist, I have to decide what's worth learning, and what's not. I've always been aware of much of what's going on without knowing it extremely well. I remember when the design patterns book came out, but it was many years later before I really got some of the ideas. I've heard of Ruby for a few years now, much before Rails. I've heard of Perl for 15 years, Python for over 10.

Still, plenty of people say "why?". Computer science professors, especially those that are really mathematicians, utter the same. It's what Paul Graham refers to as hackers. Hackers are technologists. They have the desire to create from code. Many computer science academics don't. Programming is a mere tool. They see it as functional. They don't approach programming like great writers approach writing.

I remember a professor, who taught data structures, relating a story of how his colleague complained about having to learn Java to teach data structures. He had done plenty well teaching data structures without every learning object-oriented programming. Did the data structures change? (No, its implementations did). Indeed, some teachers I know don't bother with the language details. They draw pictures and let the students figure out how to translate that to code. It's not worth expending brain cells figuring out what exceptions are in Java and why they should care.

OK, back to Jared. Jared's fairly new to the NFJS tour, but he's already had a book out called "Ship It!". He's now had about half a year's experience giving talks.

I think he has potential, though I'd advise him on the following things (alas, he and ten other people might read this, if even that). He used to work for a company called SAS (I think), which apparently was a mess before he showed up, and fixed things up. As he likes to point out, it's not so much he was a genius as they were really the pits.

I'm sure he's gotten comments to the effect that this is the part of his presentation that he might eventually want to drop, or now that it's going to be in the past tense, then refer it that way. It always seemed like this weird plug for the company. Few of the other speakers seem to mention their job that much, and it sounds a bit better, in my opinion.

The other aspect I think he should work on is figuring out a good catchy subject to cover. I've seen several of Jared's talks. He's done several on tools. I saw Glenn Vanderburg's talk on tools too. They both struck me as not having a great deal of useful take-away. Both talked about the need for version control, continuous integration, bug-tracking, wikis, and so forth. That's all fine and dandy, but really, that's not so interesting.

What is more interesting is to find mistakes people run into when using these systems. How are wikis abused? How can they get out of hand? What can you do about it? What makes a good bug report? How do you avoid over-reporting the same bug? How can testing make you a better coder.

I've wanted someone to talk about unit test by opening up Eclipse, and then showing different ways to set up the unit tests, from sharing the same package, to creating parallel src and test directories, to having completely separate projects. Then, run Corbertura and see the results it produces. Run a profiler to show me how bad things are getting. Tell me that I need better functional tests.

Then, run it in IntelliJ. See how it works there. Maybe I'll think, hey, that's much cooler than Eclipse. Even a good Eclipse vs. IntelliJ would be really cool because (I suspect) both IDEs are so far above and beyond emacs and vi that you want it to do the work. Many people, once they master Eclipse (or even get minimally competent, as Eclipse is a beast), swear they'll never go back. It makes them that much more productive. How could I write a plug-in for Eclipse? How can I run other languages like Ruby in Eclipse?

Eclipse is a great talk in the making.

Sometimes a good talk brings up ideas you've never though of. For example, people have said that you should write software with low coupling and high cohesion. What do those concepts mean? How do I do that?

Jared has a background as a test manager. What makes a good tester? How can a developer learn to be a good tester? How can testing lead to better written code? Show an example of code that's hard to test and hard to read, and show how to make it easier to test, and easier to verify.

Jared has a talk on mock objects. It takes a general approach to how one would use mock objects. In and of itself, it's pretty good, but he doesn't actually build anything from it (well, he does do a password thing). It might be interesting to think about how you could build a simple online store to sell t-shirts, and show how to go about using mock objects to make this work. If there are enough details, a person could go home and set it up themselves.

Perhaps he could then point to a website with the remainder of the information so they can try it out without having to introduce the idea to management.

In summary, I think there are several keys to a great technical talk. First, a person should learn something new that they may not be able to find easily in a book. This may challenge previously held assumptions (i.e., how to test code in Java vs. C). It may compare and contrast against something familiar (Ruby vs. Java). Key to the talk is figuring out what you think your audience knows. Some people assume way too much, some not enough. Finally, it can help if there's something a person feels they can use in the workplace that puts them a little ahead of their coworkers, something that makes them think it was worth giving up a weekend for.

Close Yours!

Since I've read about programming languages on and off for 15 years, I've heard of the term closures, but never quite understood it. It's odd that I would learn about this at a No Fluff Just Stuff tour as part of the Northern Virginia Software Symposium.

This is a tour of speakers that talk about topics related to Java and the open source community. The speakers talk about topics ranging from new features in Java, server side technology, agile development, new languages, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Ajax, and some topics like semantic web and rules engines that are somewhat more AI-ish.

I was listening to Glenn Vanderburg giving two talks on JavaScript. He mentioned closures, and was describing what they were (and how they appear in Java). After that explanation, I think I have it.

Basically, in OO terms, a closure is an object that represents a function whose free variables have been captured at the time the function was called. Let me illustrate a simple example.

function foo(y) {
   return function(x) {
      return x + y;
   }
}

Let's look at what's being returned. It's a function (or function object). In a functional language (i.e., a language that has functions as first-class citizens, and that generally does not allow for assignment, languages like ML, Haskell, O'Caml, etc.), I'd use the word lambda which refers to an anonymous function.

Before I continue with my explanation of closures, think of the following. What is a variable? It's a name for something. In Java, I can declare a variable of a certain type and assign it a value. For example, I can declare the variable x and then assign it to a value like 3.

What if I wanted to declare a variable and have its type be a function? Does that seem weird? For example, I might want to have a function call addTen which takes a value as argument and adds 10 to that and returns it. Can I have a variable called addTen? And what should I assign it to?

I want to assign it to a value. For example, I just assigned 3 (an int value) to x. I want to assign a function value to a variable. What is a function value? It's a function without a name. I just happened to call it function, but that doesn't mean you can call that function by saying function(3). It's not the name of a function, but a keyword that says "I'm defining a function value".

Now, when I write something like:

function add(x, y) {
  return x + y;
}

this is the equivalent of saying

var add = function(x, y) { return x + y; }

meaning assign the variable add to an anonymous function that takes two variables. That function returns the sum of x and y.

Notice the right hand side starts with function but is not followed by a function name.

Thus, add is a variable that represents a function and I can call it like: add(3, 5).

I could assign add to other functions, say one that multiplies or one that divides. That wouldn't be good naming practice, but it could be done.

So, let's go back to the example I started off with:

function foo(y) {
  return 
    function(x) {
       return x + y;
    }
}

What does this function return? An anonymous function (value) which sums x and y. This function takes one variable, x. What about y?

Where does y come from?

This is where the closure comes from. y is a free variable within the function. It's not a parameter in the function. It's not a local variable within the function. However, there is a y defined in the outer scope.

Suppose you call foo(7). At the time you call that function, the parameter y gets bound to 7. In the return function, that y gets bound or closed. It "remembers" the value 7 (or really, the environment at the time it was called).

Thus, if you have foo(3), you create a function that adds 3 as a result. If you call foo(10), this adds 10 to the value.

Thus,

var adds3 = foo(3);
print adds3(100); // Prints 103

var adds10 = foo(10);
print adds10(100);  // Prints 110

Thus, a closure captures the value of free variables at the time the function gets constructed, and allows us to make new functions without having to recompile new code. Basically, we get flexibility on the unbound variables (variables that are neither local variables in the function, nor parameters passed in) to customize a function.

And that's a closure.