Sitting working today at a Starbucks with a of the airspace around KPDX, and it looks like the Oregon Air Guard are out flying about in their F-15’s today. It’s not quite exactly right as far as aircraft go, but it’s close enough. Time to get some work done to the Top Gun soundtrack and dream about the sky.
Category Archives: Personal Rambling
Blog updated..
I know, I never use it anyway. But here it is. Blog theme updated, WordPress version updated, all kinds of fun!
I really do plan to write more, but it’s hard to do when you can’t really talk about the things you’re working on or the fun things you’re doing. 🙂
PragProg’s take on the iPad…
An article in the latest magazine from the Pragmatic Bookshelf says pretty much everything I want to say about the iPad and what it is about to unleash.
I find the most compelling point about this to be the “bling arms race”. Looking good is the critical element in an app, the only important feature. (Notable exceptions such as Doodle Jump ? acknowledged, but go with it for now…)? Maybe that’s not so bad in some cases, especially on an iPhone where I expect to use most of the apps a few times and be done with them.
The use case on the iPad is going to be far different though. Fart apps aren’t going to cut it. I don’t buy apps for my computer without a demo to try first, and I don’t see myself doing anything different for a device like the iPad. Sadly the only pre-purchase info you’ll get for you apps are the usual review (highly suspect and probably fake) and screenshots. This is a high quality device, and we’re going to want high-quality apps to run on it. The apps store ecosystem isn’t set up for this. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.
The parable of the boat builder…
Once upon a time there was a man who loved to build boats. Building boats takes a lot of space, and his apartment just wasn’t big enough. He went to a local warehouse and asked if he could rent some space to build a boat. They worked out an agreement. He would build boats and sell them to the burgeoning local sailing industry, and in exchange for 30% of the profit from the sales the warehouse would let him use the space for free during construction.
“One small caveat” said the warehouse owner, “we have final say on the distribution of your boats. We may suggest certain changes we think will help their marketability.”
The man agreed. Surely allowing some oversight would be no problem whatsover. He knew the local market, and he knew his boats would sell! He began drawing the designs that very day.
The man worked 12 hours a day for two weeks! Over 150 hours of work later he had the plans for the first boat. He went to the warehouse and began to lay the forms for the keel. As he was laying the forms one of the warehouse managers came by and looked at his plans.
“Looks great!” said the manager, “However I thought we were getting a sailboat, and this appears to be a small yacht! Our company has recently decided that we want to be ecologically sound, so we can’t really support powered boats. Redesign it as a sailboat and then you can start building it.”
The boat builder agreed, but he began to think that perhaps this oversight agreement may not be as simple as he thought. Throwing away his last two weeks of effort he began again, this time designing an eco-friendly sailboat.
Two weeks later, plans for the sailboat in hand, the boat builder once again began construction. He worked uninterrupted for 2 months, day in and day out, until after over 700 hours of hard labor he finally had his boat completed. It was a beautiful solid wood boat in natural hardwood color, with natural white cloth sails. After admiring his handiwork he went to tell the warehouse managers to have them begin looking for a buyer.
The warehouse managers looked at his boat and seemed suitably impressed. After a few moments though one of them spoke up. “It’s quite a beautiful boat, no doubt about it. In the last month however, we’ve decided to try to sell carbon-fiber racing boats, and we want people to think of these boats when they think of sailing! So before we try selling this boat you need to paint it bright red and change the sail for blue nylon. That should make it acceptable to the current market!”
The boat builder was astounded! A classic wooden boat with natural cloth sails and they wanted to make it look like plastic! He would have none of it, and he told this to the owners in no uncertain terms! The warehouse owners were firm though. Carbon-fiber racing boats were what people should be using, they said, and if he didn’t comply then they were not going to be able to sell his boat. The boat builder said that he was fine with that, and he would just take his boat and leave.
“Not so fast”, one of the owners responded, “you’ve been using our space without paying rent, and we’re due a portion of the value with the boat. If you don’t change it the way we want and sell it, then you can’t take it anywhere. There is no third option, this is our warehouse, and partly our boat.”
The boat builder agreed, there was nothing he could do. The owners went away and the boat builder sat and looked at his boat for a time. Then he went to his boat, puled out his lighter, lit the corner of sail, and walked from the building and never returned.
Where do you draw the line? ? Where should you? And what about the boating consumers and their ability to choose when the market is this controlled?
If you haven’t guessed, I’m not really for walled gardens, no matter how well decorated they are.
Bad day to be a target…
Shot 150 rounds through my G19 today. Really focusing on trigger control and grip. Here’s the result:
I Learned two major things today.
- My supporting-index-finger-on-trigger-guard ad-hoc grip doesn’t actually seem to make much of a difference if you’re careful. Several other Glock shooters at the range use this technique, it doesn’t seem to matter much. However due to the 2nd issue, I’m going to continue and try to keep my left index finger from drifting up onto the front of the trigger guard.
- I’m not using the right part of my finger for the trigger. Making sure the trigger is between the first and second joint of my finger seems to help quite a bit! Once again, this is confirmed by some other Glock guys at the range. Using the tip of your finger can easily cause you to push the muzzle to the left as you’re squeezing the trigger. Really feels weird to put that much of my finger through the the trigger, but it seems to help quite a bit.
Needless to say, I’m actually rather pleased with myself. This week’s targets look much better than last week’s. Almost all of these shots were made both-eyes-open. The first 50 were all slow fire, the second target mixes slow fire and multiple shots. All drills go from high-ready position to on-target and firing.
Warehouse 13. Welcome to the stupid zone…
We just watched the first episode of a new (?) “SyFy” show called Warehouse 13. Let me tell you what it is: Men in Black meets Eureka meets X-Files. With everything interesting from any of them taken out, a horrible special effects team (Look, when I *SAW* the green on the green screen you need to get a new job buddy), and writers who, based on their apparent belief that they’ve invented something new that nobody has ever done before,? may have just graduated 8th grade.
Beef #1: I don’t even NEED to watch the rest. I’ve seen it. After seeing this one episode I predict the following things will happen within the first few episodes: (I’m not including all the incredibly obvious “something bad happened in his past? HIS DAD DIED YOU MORONS” moments in the pilot.)
- One of the team gets kidnapped. This causes team bonding all around and further cement the team’s new assignments.
- Security issues. Someone sneaking around inside the warehouse, probably stealing stuff. It will likely be revealed later that they are exporting these artifacts as weapons, possibly to a competing government agency with some sort of cryptic (yet clearly nefarious) acronym for a name.
- We will encounter an artifact causing people to behave scandalously. Sex sells, and we’ve gotta get it in soon! This being a scifi (oops! “SyFy”) show “scandalously” of course will mean perhaps a bit of heavy breathing, possibly someone in a shortish skirt. C’Mon, when the alien artifacts make your brain lean toward the pleasure center you get naked and have an orgy in town square until nobody can move a muscle. Nobody ever takes these artifacts seriously enough I say.
- MOST likely, someone on the team will get into trouble somehow, once again causing lots of nice team bonding as everyone goes around trying to prove that their new best friend isn’t actually involved with nefarious-acronym agency stealing stuff. This is actually a re-hash of the kidnapping episode cleverly disguised. Sadly for the writing staff it’s an adaptation of the same script so they didn’t actually get paid for this one.
Beef #2: Is it really THAT hard to try and be a little original with your science/tech? My pal Big Frankie C commented on a recent post:
My beef is that writers always complain about how hard their job is, and it is a hard job, but they are very very lazy. Real science is every bit as entertaining as junk science, and is just a easy to film. The only place it is harder, is in the writing. If you’re writing a script, all you have to do is find a scientist (the internet works pretty good here) and you can get all the free advice you need.
I can’t even add to that. I KNOW your show is about paranormal, but can we perhaps just once try just one tiny little bit to have something plausible and/or possibly related to paranormal things in ways that we agree are not understood? Don’t use phrases like “pandora’s box” if you don’t want to look stupid okay? ONE well timed placement of the phrase “quantum entanglement” and I might be happy. Toss in a cat joke or two and heypresto, satisfaction. Pots that produce ferrets when you wish for something “impossible” bother me. If it grants wishes how can it be “impossible”? Hmmm? Schrodinger’s ferret? W.T.F?
In short: everyone involved with this show please quit your job and come become a homeless person here in portland for a year or so. Get some life experience, maybe a little perspective on the world. Stop pushing useless poorly created tripe on a public that very desperately needs a little bit of intelligence and original thought.
Look for my review of the movie “Moon” coming soon. I’ll give you a hint: it’ll be exactly the polar opposite attitude.
The next question, or: Robinson and Sturgeon! How could you go wrong?
The latest episode of Spider Robinson’s podcast (Spider on the Web) is a reading of Theodore Sturgeon’s story “Slow Sculpture”.
I really don’t know what to say about it, so I shall ramble. If I were ever to be half so wise as either of these men I would be happy.
It’s possible that I like it because I can easily identify with the main character . It’s also possible that I like it because it’s a very good story, told by a very good narrator. (And author of his own right.) It won the Hugo and the Nebula both, so that’s saying something!
Go listen. I’ll wait!
While you were listening we watched a show about the life and times of various medieval castes. It’s interesting how much people in those times argued and discussed issues, thought about big things. Minstrels as political rabble-rousers keeping people informed of the news is kind of fun. Interesting how involved the average person was though. This is somewhat relevant actually, so let’s get back to the story!
One of the things I love about this era of SciFi is the way they take the things that are happening (or will happen) and present them in a way that makes you question the world. Good stories should make you think about something and relate what you’ve just learned to your real world. You should be able to identify with the characters, understand the issues facing them, and bring something back to your real world.
How often do you get that on CSI eh?
Earlier today I was listening to some podcasts. The latest episode of Skeptoid and there were some ideas about why TV/Movie entertainment contains so much bad science. I agree with Skeptoid’s Brian Dunning. People just want to be entertained, and the people making the decisions about the entertaining are the ones who choose to allow thoughtless bad-science-filled tripe to become the order of the day. Don’t you think stories like Slow Sculpture are entertaining and interesting? Couldn’t we have stories like that as entertainment? I’m thinking of movies like Watchmen here, movies that actually may have some opportunity to make you think critically and analyze what you’re seeing.
Maybe I’m bitter and cynical, but it seems to me that people have no interest in what Sturgeon termed “Asking the next question”. Spider speaks on this issue often, including his indictment of humanities desire to return to space that you heard in this episode. (I highly recommend some of his other works on the topic. Look back through his podcast feed to the early episodes.) Why is it that people aren’t interested in things like returning to the moon? I would posit that it’s tied to the “just wanting to be entertained” issue. I shall try to write more eloquently on the subject someday.
Do you know that there was a monk (Eilmer of Malmesbury) who built himself wings, 900 years before the next manned flight? He flew 200 yards, and broke both his legs. But he said “It needs a tail!” and wanted to try again. Apparently his abbot forbade it. But he had it right! I find that amazing!
Ask the Next Question!
4 more days…
4 more days and I’m OUTTA here! It’s practically time to start packing!
I know for some people work gets harder the closer you get to a vacation, but for me it’s the opposite. C’Mon work, give me your best shot! Can’t hurt me, I’m almost freeee!
The Unusuals: When Bad TV Isn’t
If you haven’t seen this show “The Unusuals”, you should really check it out. Comedy detective drama where all the bad tropes are really called out and highlighted. So much fun.
The experiment concludes. Social networking: meh.
So, I’ve been usin Twitter for a while now, and recently added facebook to my arsenal. This was hearalded by those who know me as a sign of the end times, but it was meant merely as an experiment. In fact, the facebook portion of the experiment lasted only a week before I learned all I needed. Now the experiment has concluded, and I’m dumping twitter/facebook in the trash where they belong.
Couple of core problems with the social networking scene as I see it:
- It remains a wasteland of self-centered indulgence. The very framework is designed not to encourage any sort of truly social behaviour, but to allow narccissistic indulgences (such as this?!) to proliferate with no regard for relevance or content. The utter banality of it amazes me. I want to have interesting conversations with people, not constantly watch comments about how someone’s cat just took a shit fly by. In traditional blogs people are at least somewhat encouraged to write interesting things because nobody will read or comment on them if you don’t! You have to keep the readers interested! “Social networking” has none of this. They’re going to be reading, if your content is good or not. I won’t completely discount Facebook as a way to have substantive discussions, but in my observation they seem to be more the weeds than the flowers.
- Social networking attitude. “why don’t you want to be my friend” is the only encouragement towards any sort of cooperative behaviour. Blackmail and guilt are a great basis for interacion and friendship, sure! “Be my friend” only extends so far as the little tag showing the number of people you’re friends with though.. Being someone’s “friend” grants only rights, without any accompanying responsibilities. You get to watch your “friends” fill out quizzes, talk about what they’re doing, maybe toss an “LOL” at other people once in a while, and it seems to encourage this shallow level of friendship. People may feel less alone by having 100+ “friends” that they chat about trivialities with. This also has the side effect of requiring less work than truly having and caring about even one single person. Also, when someone does something you don’t like you don’t feel like you have to fix the relationship, after all, you have over a hundred other friends to talk to.
- The overhead required! How do you balance what goes on facebook status, what goes on Twitter, what deserves a full blog post, and what simply doesn’t need to be said? I really don’t like the idea of having to maintain profiles and data on all these various sites either, especially when I have my very own location right here! For me I think this is the biggest issue. I like keeping track of what my friends are doing, but when you have to spend so much time spreading yourself across so many places, it really loses something. The problem goes both ways as well. Say I have a “friend” on Twitter who I follow because we have a bit of a shared history, and both like programming. He doesn’t tweet much about programming, but maybe he has a programming blog somewhere that I’m just unaware of because he doesn’t talk about it on Twitter. Because he has no centralized identity it’s difficult for me to see all the things he’s doing and choose what I’m interested in. (Turns out he also does some music stuff that I want to follow that he doesn’t tweet about much.)
- Eavesdropping. Yes, I’m guilty of it! I like to see what people are doing, and that’s the whole point of these sites! But what about when it turns out to be your boss, or someone looking to hire you? Twitter is all-or-nothing on the privacy issue, so you either lock yourself completely out of the crowd, or you’re completely open to everyone. Facebook has pretty good privacy capabilities, but is trending towards being more open.
- Walled Garden. This is very similar to problem 3 I suppose. I know I’m a geek but “Information wants to be free” is a guiding principle! I don’t care if you want to use Facebook. My problem is that in order to read your blog Facebook forces me to have Facebook as well! If you’re going to write interesting things, do it in a way that’s either public, or uses well-accepted security technologies to restrict access. I would love to add your blog to my Google Reader, honest! Use a tool that lets me! The Walled Garden issue is one of the primary reasons I don’t like Facebook, but am mostly okay with Twitter.
Or maybe, just maybe, the problem is completely different. Maybe I’m doing it wrong. “Josh is a socially retarded super-genius who doesn’t play well with others” is always a good fall-back position. 🙂
In truth, this may not be far wrong. In the end, I just have so very little interest in how things work on these sites that I’m not really interested at all in working with them. Maybe they work for some people, maybe I really am just that socially stunted in the real world that even the internet can’t help me.
What to do though? There are people who I know who I only really stay in contact with through either Twitter or Facebook. I’m going to miss them. As far as Twitter goes though, I’m adding people to my Google Reader feeds, so I can at least see what they’re doing and remember to shoot them an email once in a while. I would very much like people’s real blog addresses as well. Anything I can RSS, or add to my “blogs” bookmarks is great! And I’m going to try and work on blogging more here so anyone who follows me can say hi too. Feel free to comment, It doesn’t even require registration! (And OpenID is here too if you’d like to login as “yourself”!)
Now let’s see what we can do to do this the right way!