Rhonabwy

Specificity, pictures, and code

To continue a bit on my code archeaology stuff from earlier...

One of the reasons I see for not being able to go from pictures to code is the level of specificity that you get with pictures. Pictures are highlighting the features you see as interesting, and left assumed or hidden the ones you don't. Depending on why or for whom you're drawing the picture - the same code could have wildly differing pictures.

But it still nags at me - is there a place in the middle where the pictures could make up the bulk of the work, doing automatically a lot of the specific stuff that needs to get done but is generally a pain? Yeah, maybe that's the code generation function from UML ala Rational or something.

Birthday present is coming...

Yeah! I got the news via email that my birthday present from Jasper has been shipped. I'm looking forward to adding that to my collection of programming books. Course, at this rate, I'm going to need a whole shed to house this stuff.

Help Desk

For those friends of mine past and future who've worked with/on/at a Help Desk - you've got to read this page: http://chroniclesofgeorge.nanc.com/tickets3.htm

That didn't take long...

Well, the expected happened. I was wondering how long it would take.

code archeaology

I've been spending a bit of time lately doing code archeaology. I'm sure lots of folks spend their days doing similiar things, but it's sparked some ideas and concepts that I thought I'd write out to attempt to clarify from my head.

First, there's the problem of when you get code and are asked to "put it into production". I don't mean as a QA guy or release manager - but as someone who's been tagged to "finished whatever needs to be finished" and get it ready to go. And yes, if this sounds like I got some half-baked stuff thrown over a wall to me and told to run with it, you're right.

It's interesting stuff, but there wasn't really any documentation. Fortunately, I know what it's supposed to do. So I started my "digging". The first thing I do is look for tests. Yeah, I'm into the whole "unit test" thing, especially when digging into code to get an idea of what explicit objects are set aside to do. Well, there weren't any. There are now - I found an object that made a hell of a lot of sense to write tests for and did so. Took a lot of time I didn't expect, but it was excellent to verify I understand what it was supposed to be doing. Plus, I found and fixed two bugs during the process.

Somewhere in that process, I started just tracing the execution. The code is OO, but not hard-core OO (not heavy use of explicit patterns). So threads were getting created and spun off to do "things", and I tracked down the various bits to figure it out. Did I mention there wasn't any comments in the code? No guideposts, no javadoc, no examples of how to use an object or details of what was expected of it. Some folks brag about "the code is the documentation" - I've seen instances where that could work - this wasn't one. The code was heavily overloaded with functions and intercomplexity. Documentation would have been nice.

Well, I'm not even finished with this process - I've yet to grok what the various Maps are actually storing as well as plenty of little side methods that don't yet make sense to me why they exist. To be fair, it was easy to figure out that the Maps are storing Strings. But the strings are specific representations that aren't explicitly detailed, but there are definite expectations for those strings - ideally, they'd be objects so it was clear what they were representing - but oh well.

My biggest, bestest tool for this process? A notepad and a pen. Which is what all this babbling is getting down to. There's like this huge disconnect from the pictures I scribbed to get a sense of the code and the code itself. In written form, the code is explicit and detailed. The pictures are not - but I get a much better understanding of what the objects are doing (and not doing) from the process. I know there's been plenty of attempts to create "graphical code". I even owned a copy of Prograph for the brief time they were out and operating.

I've also gamed around in UML, but often haven't found it useful as a tool to do archaeology on the code itself (I like ArgoUML if anyone's curious). If the code is really heavily object oriented, it can make things a little more clear. But mostly I end up digging around to understand what's been composited into what, and where the references are being tossed around to keep track of all this data. I guess even Beans were an attempt to move into the graphical coding mode.

My intuition is telling me there's got to be a better way to lay out code quickly and in this general form - but like many people, I get confused with what's been generated from most of those products. Visual Studio, some of the Java GUI builder tools from a ways back - they all generate code that you can then go screw with - mostly from a UI point of view. Apple's Project Builder seems to kick all their butts (the idea of freeze dried objects instead of the code itself is darn powerful). I've never figured out, however, how to get the level of specificity in a graphical form without blossoming the size of the image to be larger than a football field. (If you've done anything with a complex data flow in Prograph, you'll know what I mean). I guess encapsulation could help - but there's lots of detail that isn't explicit even within encapsulation.

So I guess it's not clearer in the end, but you can see the twisted route my mind takes through the ideas...

random tidbits from the morning

Well, the continuing ranting and wild screaming of SCO as they die a painful death, all the while showing they too are willing to make wild and potentially fictious legal claims about IP ownership has both Byron's and Ryan's attention.

Meanwhile, Erik pointed out a link to ShaSha's blog (hadn't read it previously) where she grumbles and kicks at the folks who are doing this "QotD" and "One word" stuff. Yeah, we use charmin too. There's been a couple days when I haven't just babbled, but I'm typically coming up with my news from everywhere else. I guess that's different - seems like OneWord and Quote of the Day stuff might be an interesting starter point, but I don't get it - and it doesn't really illuminate much about the person writing when I've seen it. That's what I like to read - just "what are they like?" and "what do they think about X" sorts of stuff.

Some interesting code has hit the net, that I suspect may have some long ranging implications. The NullSoft folks have released Waste. If they really want to freakin' break into the world, they ought to get someone to wrap up a MacOS X and Linux client in GUI's for it. Although, I've got to admit - why did they rebuild the whole damn kit again when they could have layered up on Jabber (also open source) and done some additional cool stuff like using Chord (Chord home page) to widen it's influence.

Sourceforge RSS

I determined to spend the evening working on some projects, but Karen very successfully lulled me in to watching a movie with her. It's done now, so I'm free!!!

For those of you tracking the whole RSS thing, I learned about some nifty new/updated RSS feeds today. In an email from the Sourceforge folks, they're reporting they have a total of 14 feeds detailing out information about Sourceforge. Details are available at https://sourceforge.net/docman/display_doc.php?docid=15483&group_id=1

Generally, I've been convinced that the corporate edition of Sourceforge is slow and lagging where it really ought to be for the money you lay down, but I am very impressed with the adoption of technologies within it. RSS is just one of many...

open windows

While we were down visiting in Oregon, we slept with the windows to the room open each night. I've always enjoyed doing that, but the winters get too chilly for Karen that way. It was a nice reminder that the temperatures were getting pretty reasonable again.

So now we've got the windows open at home too. The cats are certainly loving it, but it also means I'm getting more noise, sun, etc - early in the morning. Today, for example, I appear to have awoken at 6am. Sort of stunning for me. Or maybe I'm just dreaming I woke up. That would really seem more like it. Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure I'm awake as I had to deal with some hairball noises and mess this morning too.

Breakfast and a shower are next on the list for today...

Rendezvous repeater

I guess Apple decided they had made things a little TOO easy for people to nick the songs they hadn't heard before.

The update keeps everything to the local subnet, but frankly I don't think it'll be all that long before we see someone coming up with a nice handy little Rendezvous repeater to enable that sharing transparently across the internet again. Ok, so it won't be built in as much as the last one, but hey - I rather expect it'll work.

I'm really mostly interested in seeing what the fallout is from this decision and update method - basically downgrading a feature using the update mechanism. A bit of spin, without doubt. Not saying anything from Apple PR is giving a lot of time for other folks to vent wildly. I wonder if it'll make any significant impact.

Acrobat reader 6.0

Well, Gus was ranting about the new Acrobat reader, so of course I had to go check it out myself. No plugin - exactly - but it does integrate reasonably well with the browser (external helper app), which I'm sure gives the application itself much more flexibility in dealing with PDF.

Adobe has implemented some really interesting features under MacOS X (10.2+) - autoscrolling (command-option-h) and read out loud (command-option-v for a single page, or command-option-b for the whole document). In terms of just usability improvements, these are pretty impressive little tidbits. I've enjoyed using an autoscroll on web pages that are really long (some SciFi stories), and I imagine it works reasonably well on ebooks (haven't bought one though). If they were really hip, they'd "read out loud" to a file and inject it into iTunes so you could listen to it on the iPod.

But hey, they ain't that hip.

Merlin, OR

So I busted out and unwired for the Memorial Day weekend - in Merlin, OR. Karen's aunt and uncle have a place on the Rogue river down there - a large tract of land at a bend in the river. They spend a huge amount of time keeping up the land - mowing, clearing, etc. So obviously, I had to go enjoy it to help make it all worthwhile.

Karen's folks, her brother and sister-in-law, and my nephew were there visiting as well - so it was a hefty accumulation of family in the immediate area for a visit. And it was really fantastic. Chatting, eating, hiking, and rafting were all on the ticket - but mostly it was just wonderful for relaxing. Sat out late one night chatting with Sarah (my sister-in-law) on the porch, watching the stars and just enjoying the night with the river doing it's thing a ways down the lawn. Didn't take advantage of the skeet, or the opportunity of the machine-gun shoot while we were there - but I figure we can always head down next Memorial Day if we're really wanting to do that and try it out.

The drive down was hideously long - took over 10 hours to work our way down there, but the road back wasn't too back. It ended up being about 7.5 hours (normal) on the way back, so we must have successfully outwaited the worst of the return traffic.

That particular section of Oregon is inside a line of mountains, and basically in the midst of a large number of valleys and crevices which drain some 80 miles down to the ocean. The strange thing, to me, is how arid it is. It's really quite dry down there, and significantly warmer. It got up to 90 while we were there - and here I'm used to 70 as a top of the scale right now. At least it wasn't humid, which made it easier to deal with - and there was the water of the Rogue - shocking in it's temperature (about 62), but really nice after baking in the direct sun for a while.

That's a lot of mail...

Got back from a weekend completely unplugged. Yeah, you know it. I get back, fire up the mail client and the RSS news reader, and whooosh - the deluge begins.

At work, it looks like some system was being cranky over Memorial Day weekend, as it generated hundreds of reports of this breaking, working again, breaking, and working again. Damn flap. I remember BB had some basic system of dealing with that. I haven't seen anything like that in Nagios (which we're using at the office).

God knows what I'm going to do with 322 email in my private inbox. Most of it from geeks on some lists that are, well, prolific. Pretty good signal to noise ratio too - which means I don't feel like I can just delete it all out of hand. I learn a lot from reading all that stuff...

It's been a good birthday...

Not quite a relaxing as last year - I didn't really feel like I could take the time off this year (last year I was working on Jen and JR's boat for my birthday), but it was pretty darn good.

Nate and Leah came over and we went out for dinner down at a place called Pandasia in the Interbay. Not overwhelmingly good, but it was a fun dinner with lots of food.

The morning actually started off with my mother calling me at 6:45am... "I let you sleep in for a whole extra hour!", she said. "You had me up and to the hospital at 5:45am, and then you made me stay there until the afternoon!". Took me a few moments to grasp what the hell she was talking about, but then it was pretty funny.

Afterwards, Karen and I went down to The Crumpet Shop in Pike Place Market for a "breakfast out". I do like groats with steamed milk...

So for the most of the day, it's been pretty much like any other. Spent the afternoon coding up tests for code that should have had those tests written months ago, went to a few meetings, had a light lunch. Other than the dinner, this evening has been back to work on my own projects too. I'm feeling good about where we are this year though. Not that it won't get rougher again, but right now it's lookin' pretty good.

Yikes!

Anyone know if Dave is still employed?

Digital Media

I suppose it's no real surprise that I'm interested in digital media of one form or another. I have my MP3's, ripped from the CDs in the house. I have my own collection of DVD's, a few older video tapes (VHS), and so forth. I work in an industry pretty closely related to the world of digital media - it's production, creation, and distribution.

So when I saw the link to William Gibson's Blog (yeah, read a lot of his stuff too - although not in digital form) and a Speech he wrote for the Direr's Guild of America (May 17, 2003) - you can bet I went to read it. And now here I am, recommending that if you're interested in Digital Media, you read it.

It's focused for the film makers, but it's really about media in a general sense. Yeah, and he talks about MP3's and the music industry too. It's a compelling read - and complex. Gibson is not about simple words - he overloads left and right, piling up meaning until it's overflowing. He even outlines an interesting version of the future - where digital media may be taking us, that sort of thing.

One thing he didn't address, which I thought was interesting, is the legal/economic aspects of the industry, which are being fully brought to bear in the example of digital music these days. Maybe he thinks it's silly to mention it, because the legal rule will fail. Or may he just wanted to avoid a political hot potatoe - who knows.

One day, I expect, books will be in this same problem too. I guess they have an advantage - for one, the book itself is a highly evolved piece of human interface that computers have only dreamed of matching. Not only is it efficient, but it's been embedded in our cultures for thousands of years. It's still a bitch to read off a digital screen too. EInk hasn't yet produced a compelling (to me) product with a high enough resolution and contrast. I keep waiting, hoping. You can bet if they ever get something off the damn production line, I'll be in another line waiting to buy it. And finally, EBooks are no longer new. Some folks are even trying some really different games on how to monetize the whole writing genre. Granted, I suspect that subscription business models probably won't work for War and Peace, but they may do OK for comics... I think, in the end, their advantage will be that they got to watch the mistakes of the others guys getting smacked first.

Or maybe, maybe I have it all backwards. Writing was the first one, and none of the rest have managed the transition into a digital media format nearly as well.

Flipster

So after beating on some Win2K machines at work yesterday, I thought "Wow, I wonder what Phil has been up to?".

Phil ran the email group at MU while I ran the unix group under Randy Wiemer. So, like all good impulsive things I just fired off a quick email sayin "Hey, wassup?"

So I got this great letter back, sort of outlining the current state of affairs and suchforth, and I found out that Phil maintains a Blog now! The really funny thing is the name: Flipster. It's a nickname that I think I dreamed up god knows when - maybe one of those 3am nights/mornings watching the tapes spin in the data center while a recovery was taking place. So lately he's been remodelling his basement...

So now Mary, Phil, Jim, and John all doin' the blog thing from MU courtesy of Blogspot (there's others from MU out there bloggin' - shoot, just look to the left of this and you can see the current links). I'm noticing that the Blogspot server is getting, well, spotty in terms of response. Anyone else notice that?

Music to listen to...

Ever notice how it's hard to find just plain instrumental music in your average music store?

I personally enjoy Irish music, in quite a wide variety of combinations. From the traditional jigs and reels on a tin whistle to the more modern intepretations of a group like Boiled in Lead.

Lately I've been listening to Lunasa, simply because I could find it. I picked up three of their CD's at a local shop called Dusty Strings that sort of specializes in folk music and fine wooden instruments. They've got a wonderful sound, and there's no vocals to get all tied up and distracted within.

I've heard some really wonderful live tunes around the various pubs and places in Seattle. I wish more of that was recorded and available, chatter, clicks, screwups and all.

Foreign policy

Ah yes, that Ever so smooth foreign policy we have. He's just, just... so GOOD at it.

mixing java

for the record, mixing java 1.3 and 1.4 is a pain in the butt. I don't recommend it.

Another good one!

BBum announced today that as of 5/19/2003, he's working for Apple! That's fantastic! He's moving into or workin' in some way with the Database Access Tools group. A good place, if ya ask me, given his past experience and desire to see EOF back in action!

a year ago today...

It's getting pretty close to my birthday, so I decided that I'd take some time and read back to see where I was a year ago and what I was thinking and doing. Man, I gotta tell you - blogs are great for that.

I've been writing compulsively since Ober 1, 2001, sometimes quite a bit more than others. In fact, lately, I've been writing less than usual. Less of my thoughts are going online, less especially of details about my current office environment. I'm not sure that means my frustration level has been any lower, but my activity level certainly has been higher - so I'm just not finding much time and energy to write.

So that's actually sort of the theme - a year ago I was starting to get really frustrated with my job, really depressed about it. Well, a year ago exactly I was on a bit of an upswing, but it didn't last. Looking back across the past year, well - it was a pretty rough ride emotionally. I wondered if moving out to the pacific northwest was the dumbest thing I ever did. It all led to a pretty morose me for several months, until I finally picked myself up and pushed down a new path. So now I'm spending scads of hours after work doing this personal little project that I'm keeping completely separated from the net. A year ago I was stagnating, and now - well, I'm definitely not stagnating. Maybe learning a bunch of things I never thought I'd ever learn, but it's working. Stretching, trying, accomplishing in fits and coughs. It's been good. The past two months especially.

I still don't know if jumping to a foreign city 2000 miles from all the roots I set down for 15 years was the brightest idea I ever had, but it certainly wasn't the dumbest. I think the biggest benefit was that it really enabled me to move into a new "head space". I never would have gotten the chance/taken the chance to do some of the things I'm doing up here now.

Sailing? Hah - not even close. The water, frankly, just didn't interest me in Missouri - where commercial rivers and a nasty dirty (but large) lake were the opportunities. Now I've been sailing a year or more, and getting somewhat comfortable with it all up here.

The downside is that in two years I don't have built up the friendships and connections that I had over 15 years in Columbia. Can you imagine that? Karen and I actually put down some pretty significant roots back there. The good thing is that most of those folks are on the Net in some form or another. Weblogs for some, email for others. So keeping in at least semi-regular contact isn't completely impossible.

salmon, asparagus, and a bottle of vino

a great dinner, but the rest of the evening has been shot. I blame the wine, of course. It was a terrifically expensive bottle - after the second glass I called up nathan to recommend my newest "fine guzzlin' wine". It's really just a nice italian table wine that kept Karen and I amused through the evening.

The salmon (Copper River salmon is available now - fresh) was amazing. Pan seared - very nice. We started out with sushi grade salmon, and fortunately didn't screw it up with heat. Karen doesn't care for raw though...

There are definitely benefits to living in the pacific northwest.

too much electricity

Saw this link on BoingBoing tonight. Worth viewing - 5Mb MPEG4 file. Too much electricity...

microfines

I've had a new and somewhat dubious experience this weekend. Sanding the bottom of a racing sailboat. The paint they use on those things... well, ugh.

Sanding with 80 grit paper on blocks that were reminescent of wood planes (except flexible, so they could torque to the shape of the hull) dropped this cascade of black microfine particles all over the place. We all wore respirators and goggles (thank god!), but that crap was so insidious! There was a rough anti-fouling layer that was black - Jen and JR indicated it was primarily zinc based - so that was a rough surface. Once past that, you were down to a fairly thick brown layer, and then into a grey layer. The white layer under the grey was a "gell coat" (don't sand that off) and underneath that (don't ask how we know) is the yellow layer of glass (definitely don't get to that).

So three hours of it on Saturday (I'd originally offered more, but circumstances cut me short that day) had me covered head to toe with the black microfines. As I look at my arms, I can still see microfines in the pores of my skin - that's after two showers and 90 minutes of scrubbing. My hair was the worst. It's pretty long these days, and it was hideous to clean that stuff out of it.

The most impressive long term effect, however, has been the muscle soreness. Sunday it became apparent that I'd managed to completely exhaust the primary muscles, and then taken a good shot at exhausting the core muscles too. Even my ribs are sore. I had to sneeze yesterday afternoon, and it hurt to breathe deeply as those muscles around my ribs expanded. I definitely didn't slack on the effort for the sanding. Good lord. All hand work...

I think maybe tonight I'll take a long hot shower and try to get the sweat going to clean out all this crap from my pores.

Monday, monday...

I noticed the tritium outage too - although earlier, before the whole box crashed. Saturday afternoon (PST afternoon anyway), I was completely unable to connect to the box from my home DSL. When I got back on, uptime was still 33x+ days, but I guess that hasn't lasted. Oh well - I'm glad it's come back up without issue.

I woke up early this morning, but it didn't last. Karen was headed up to Northgate to teach classes, and as soon as she left I dropped back into bed and pulled up the covers. Not that the cats minded. Finally dragged my butt out again a little after 9am and checked on the processes I'd started from home earlier. Going to take most of the afternoon to run them, I expect.

It was interesting reading Chuq's upgrade blog entry this morning, and I'm doing the "I wonder what he does..." mental dance. While at the same time, I know exactly what he's talking about.

First moving into managing other folks, and not just writing it all myself, was a hell of a transition. Some folks, I guess, move into that mode just working with other people on a team. I didn't have a whole lot of real positive experience in that respect, but a hell of a lot of learning from bad examples - so at least I had a pretty good list of what I was sure I didn't want to do. I was also incredibly fortunate to have some good management for my first real run at management - and thank god for it. We built a fantastic team. Didn't last, of course, but it was a time that I hold up in my memory thinking back and still being amazed at what we'd accomplished over a relatively short period of time. Hey, speaking of - anyone know where Ben Forrester disappeared off to? I presume he's somewhere down in Springfield, MO...

It's a shame that I've tended to see more examples of what not to do in this past year than positive ones. But hey, they're lessons all that same. And it's a different venue in being a small part of a very large corporation. I'm still pondering all the lessons there - probably will be for a very long while. Some really impressive lessons from an acerbic personality who happened to be a founder. It's amazing the damage that combination can do to staff...

Chuq - if you happen to be reading the trackback - keep at it, and keep building. My own personal biggest kick is when you can get 2+ people working in sync and accomplishing some really cool shit. In some ways, it's even harder when the diversity of the folks you're working with is greater, but the gains are even higher there too. And you're right to thank whatever gods for good management. It's rare.

Saturday night

damn, is it really saturday night already? that went fast...

I spent the day running here and there and back again. In the midst of it, I spent 3 hours sanding the bottom of the Manta Ray - a 30' Olsen 911SE on which I race. That's some nasty hard work! Fortunately, I'm good at sanding and made some really impressive progress in the short time I helped.

Karen and I ate dinner at Pete's Pizza - no pizza though. Not even a calzone. Just some garlic cheese bread and a greek salad. They do good greek salad there.

In reading my backlog of bloggish entries, I see that Apple is picking up some new talent. I don't have a clue who Alexi is, but I'm glad that Eric is happy about it. Good talent at Apple = Good things from Apple from my opinion.

This evening's sunset was spectacular, even if I only saw a bit of it. Night's goten quite chilly though - down to 50 or so I think. So we're curled up inside with our books and our cats.

As if you couldn't tell

As if you couldn't tell, I'm not a terrific fan of our current United States President. So it's not terribly surprising that I might link to this "George W Bush Resume" that I saw linked off BoingBoing.

It would be funny if it weren't so damn sad.

I would much rather have a president in the office getting blowjobs.

yep, saw it.

MATRIX

Last night, 10:15 showing (which became a 10:45 showing because AMC theatres screwed up their crowd control). I'd give it a B rating - it wasn't as stunning as the first, in some respects because nothing really stood out as "unexpected". Cinematically, there was a definate expansion of the virtual camera model, where shots panned and zoomed and did some really wild shit. As a plotline, it really felt like a part 1 of a 2 part movie. Not bad, sort of expected. The "love" scene was sort of weird to me - felt like it really didn't fit with the movie actually. The rest of the movie? One long action sequence punctated by serious conversation.

I'd go see it again though.

eclipse

Whim struck me to check out Eclipse again. I downloaded it onto Windows and MacOS X both - figured I'd check out both environments.

Well, it's smooth install for both, but I'm stuck with a nasty problem on the Windows side. I've snagged the Apache Lucene project from CVS using their built-in tools, and it built with Ant just beautifully under MacOS X. On the windows machine - with Java 1.4.1 _02 installed - it just complains about not being able to find "javac" in the class path - and suggests my JAVA_HOME environment variable isn't set. Only it is...

nano

Nanotech has been hyped, fictionalized, there's businesses making some real things, and it seems to keep hitting the news.

And today, I saw it. I really saw it. It was incredible. Assemblers actively working, filtering molecules and processing them. What did I see?

A tree.

The oaks that I'm growing got me to thinking. Where exactly do you think all that mass comes from? Quite a bit of water (hydrogen, oxygen)... but the carbon? CO2 baby - filtering the molecules from the air, and using these freakin' kick-ass low-heat complex chemical reactions to assemble them according to the internal coding of the molecular structure.

networking in cocoa

I noticed a link from Ranchero to a not quite new Stepwise article comparing networking frameworks available for Cocoa. It's a nice overview!

Poppies and Oak saplings

When I did get home today, I was treated to an incredible vista of flowers. Our front yard is covered in poppies right now, and it's an incredible bouquet of color. Reds, Oranges, and a few beige sorta colored ones.

But the cool thing I saw was two oak saplings.

On a lark last year, I picked up two acorns from the pin-oak trees on 4th Ave near my office. I planted the two little guys into pots, and late last year some twigs had sprouted up, each with a leaf. Only they turned brown pretty early last year, and I was really afraid that the dry summer had beaten out my attempts at watering them enough to allow them to really grow.

And now, as I look closely, I've got the two stems going, one with 4 leaves and one with 5. The leaves are very characterisitcally pin oak, and Karen and I are talking about transplanting them into large pots for this growing season. God knows what I'm going to do with an Oak tree in a pot - fortunately they're sort of slow growing trees, but ultimately I'll have to land the suckers into the ground somewhere.

Growing an Oak tree from seed - shoot. These things will still be small trees when I'm on my death bed. Kinda cool though. The world needs more Oak trees in my opinion.

Insomnia redux

Well, I ended up only getting 4 hours of sleep last night, and unlike some people who appear to be doing that routinely these days, I don't function worth a damn under those conditions.

So I actually (in some fit of perversity) woke up early this morning and was in the office by 7am. In response to all this, and the fact that I was making incredibly stupid mistakes at the office, I bailed out at about 2pm to come home and get some shut-eye.

Only when I got here, I couldn't sleep. Isn't that just fucked up? I'm dead tired, exhausted actually, and I'm laying in bed unable to sleep.

Finally, I put on some low soothing music (gregorian chant actually) and I drifted off for a while, with my sweetie waking me up about 7pm. I'm glad I didn't go later, as I'm sure I would have gotten into some really fucked up sleep schedule if I had. Karen and I grabbed dinner, had a glass of wine (the Snoqualmie Chardonnay - which is really pretty good local wine), and then relaxed into the living room. I'm fortunately still feeling sleepy, so I'm hoping that actual sleep doesn't elude me tonight as well.

Who's blasting who? AI catfight...

Wired has a terse article online that's basically stating "Marvn Minsky is peeved at the state of AI today, and particularly the MIT AI Lab". God knows if the quotes are in context - but if they are in some degree (and not some version of fraudulant journalism), then it really just reads like Minsky is sort of peeved at Brooks' current fad with robotics and AI.

I don't know about the particulars of the lab, obviously - I just read the thesis and reports that come out of it (and from nearby areas - just as the Media Lab). I personally think Brooks has some really strong ideas on situatedness and embodiment that can't be easily discounted, and it's interesting (to me) that some of Minsky's conceptual children haven't shown up in the AI lab, but in the Media Lab's Synthetic Characters group - showing an essence of the blending of the two. The majority of their website hasn't been updated in a year, but they have some hints as to continued and updated projects: C5 and Dobie.

insomnia again

Yep, it's striking again. I've been lying in bed for the past hour, attempting to do something about going to sleep - only my brain seems determined to work on problems and issues, recreate catfights that never happened, or whatever. I was even careful not to have any caffeine this evening at all - but it appears that's not the critical far. At least for this night.

So random notes from this evening:

Studio Log pointed out James Gosling on the Apple Pro site (Science). Nothing Apple hasn't crowed about in the past, but sort of interesting anyway.

I keep thinking I should have delved more into Python by now. PyObjC being one of the more recent reasons, with their release of version 0.9 of the bridge. Commentary from Gus and Cole being another:
Gus says "I keep on finding excuses to learn it."
Cole says "Python is da bomb diggity. ;-)"

Word is there's a new and interesting virus spreading the Win* realm: Fizzer. I think it's interesting because it includes: a built-in IRC backdoor, a DoS (Denial of Service) attack tool, a data stealing trojan (uses external keylogger DLL), an HTTP server, and an autoupdate feature! Shit - you know how hard it is to NORMALLY install all those kinds of things on a PC? And this one does it in one show? Sure, it's vile in usage... but it's respectable for tight, integrated code!

Oh - and the new sonar that the navy is using? The really high powered on? Yeah. It's safe. Sure. I'm wondering how long under they peg a human diver with it and rupture something a little more tender than eardrums.

movie of the opening

Bryan sent me a link to a movie of the opening - gives a better idea of the size of both the crowd and the store. Big crowd, small store. Heh - you can even spot me if you know where to look, but he pans kinda fast for making that easy.

Bellevue Apple Store opening

Waiting for the Apple store to open in Bellevue.

I'm the guy just past the lady sitting down.

Drew Hamlin took a number of pictures (from which I absconded with this one) - all online at his website.

Oh - and this is the little skeecher who was friends with Drew and cut in line.

and the weekend went where?

Actually, I had a pretty decent weekend. Saturday I spent the morning out in Bellevue to witness and participate in the expected throngs of folks attending the opening of the first Apple Store in Washington state! I guess I'm not suprised it took so long, as there's some significant resellers up here. I haven't been very happy with their service in the past, so I'm personally very happy to have an Apple branded store around to go pester.

Anyway, I got there early, enjoyed chatted some fellow mac advocates (and a few fanatics). Got a chance to play with one of the new iPods while I was waiting (they are nice, although the new solid state "buttons" will take me some getting used to). Ancedotally, the opening line was larger than at the SOHO store - I must admit to some curiousity on how many people actually DID show up.

Saturday afternoon was spent lurking about Jen and JR's place puppy-sitting. Zoe is a cute little thing, and we had a good time playing, sleeping and reading. The race never finished (lack of wind), so Jen and JR didn't get home until 8:30 or so that night. I foolishly forgot to get their wireless key, as I'd taken my laptop, but I got some good writing done anwyay.

Today was quieter, with the morning taken up with the expected Mother's Day phone calls and a breakfast for two at the 5 Spot. The afternoon I spent visiting with friends, and later doing more writing on my own. A nice day.

porting to MacOS X

There's a nice technote now available on porting Unix code (command line stuff) to MacOS X. I glanced through it this evening, and it looked pretty well laid out. Nothing earth shattering, but a lot of good notes. I caught it (and several other announcements) in the latest Apple DevNews.

Bookstores

Spent the later part of yesterday evening scouring bookstores. While I don't have much trouble reading computer science papers (well, PDF's really), it's sometimes just a hell of a lot easier to get the layman's intro before digging around to find all the detailed stuff I'm hunting around for.

Barnes and Noble is my current favorite haunt. I used to love Borders, but since I've moved away from "The Library, Ltd" in St. Louis, I've realized that most Borders aren't as good as I thought - and that my favorite bookstore wasn't a "Borders" creation, but a holdover from their previous existance as an independent bookstore. Unless they've finally sucumbed to the corporate culture completely, they're probably still a great bookstore if you happen to be in St. Louis.

So we grabbed a bite to eat and I spent the evening reading between the shelving... Pretty much found what I was looking for, but as usual I've mostly just realized how much I don't know. You can never know everything, but somehow I feel compelled to flit around trying to capture it all anyway.

Driving Dogs!

Cool!

Gus' dog (Stevie) has decided to start driving cars now instead of just being hit by them! Go Stevie!!!

no race

Well, looks like no race this evening. Jen was in about the same mood I was, which quickly spiraled down into just going home. Of course, I'm sitting here at work still, cleaning out my registry to stop some demo software that I thought I'd installed from bugging me endlessly with errors.

stunned

I'm feeling stunned and melancholy, and I don't even know why. As I sit here, scripting a little perl and RRD, I'm wondering why. We've got sailing tonight - a race out on the sound. Wind looks good - 10 to 15 knots out of the south. Maybe it's just something about the time before racing - I was really out of it last wednesday afternoon too.

transparent society?

Is Jay Walker working to implement a Transparent Society?

late dusk

It's one of the small things about living in the northwest that I dearly love. It's 9pm and just now getting to late dusk. A sunset dinner was between 8pm and 9pm for us tonight - wonderful.

Karen's got a head cold, and hasn't been feeling all that well. I've been playing nursemaid on and off today, and ended the day with taking her out for some chowder since that's what she felt like eating (yeah, like it's hard to twist my arm into going out to eat). She's spent most of the day sleeping, which both cats have significantly enjoyed. I worked from home and just kept peeking in on her to make sure everything was going Ok. Even made a simple lunch for her today.

Gus got some very favorable words on OReillyNet yesterday, which was really cool. I'm glad other folks are seeing the neat possibilities that Gus has coded into existance as a desktop app. Oh - and he said that I had to attend the opening of the Apple Store in Bellevue Square Mall, if nothing else than for the commentary from the really darn funny Crazy Apple Rumors site. Yeah, you can pretty much bet I'll be there. And at the one that'll be heading to UVillage at the end of the year too.

a very pleasant rain

Which is what Seattle had today and this evening - in stark comparison with the rather unpleasant weather that appears to continue to pummel most of Missouri and several surrounding states.

The water made the day a tad chillier than before, but it was really pretty good for all that. Karen got some yard work (replanting, etc) done today, and when I wasn't hacking around on the PC, I was out running errands with her to get some new pots or what-have-you.

My current obsession has released me from this evening at the moment, but only because I can't really focus well on the screen again. Pooka is happy about things, as I sit her drowsy eyed, because I'm spending more time giving him scritches tonight.

My sleep schedule has been really screwed up of late, so I think tonight is a night I can switch it back - so I'm off to bed at a reasonable hour tonight, in hopes of not sleeping until 10am tomorrow.

MacOS X Advanced Development Techniques

Received my copy of Mac OS X Advanced Development Techniques in the post today. Took the afternoon off for a long walk with it and my iPod - a nice combination.

The book is pretty darn good. I'm not sure there's any snippets of details in there that aren't buried somewhere in what I think of as the Stepwise Tome Of Knowledge, but then it wouldn't surprise me if those details weren't in there either. An interesting thing about the book is it's layout - all the source code for the examples is in the back of the book as opposed to embedded throughout the chapters. I'm not sure what I think of this yet - it didn't seem particularly icky, but it was different from almost all the other books I've hit recently.

Obviously, I haven't explored this volume in depth - just sort of the light preview for the whole thing before I go back and plumb it's depths further, working through all the details and trying things out. But from what I've seen and read, this book is the BMW racing bike version of learning programming - dense, compact, and really fast input. The kind of thing where you know you'll miss something - potentially critical - if you don't pay really darn close attention to all the details. It's definately not a "wordy" book in the classic Que style from the "Special Edition: Using ..." series (the one series I wrote for).

While the details are super cool, they're not the essentials of coding either. You don't need this book to grok the hidden inner details of making your standard application. But there's lots of tidbits that could make you application more compelling. There's a particularly good section on writing plugins that I know I'll be refering back to in the future.

It'll probably be a while before I dig into this guy in depth, but I'm glad I have it on my shelf for thorough digestion later.

insomnia and some freakin' lunatic

it's been a while, really, but we're back to being friends - ole insomnia and me. Tonight's just one of those nights. I was lying in bed, attempting to be asleep, and I keep hearing these noises outside. Sounds like metal hitting the ground. Sure enough, it was.

I got up to investigate, and it turns out some freakin' lunatic has yanked up some of the less well posted street signs and pitched them into the street. I called the police and let them know, then started picking them up. They're just mounted on 4x4's, so it's not all that hard to lift and drop back into place. The temperature is fairly pleasant outside, and if I've got a cold, it's not showing itself at the moment.

A squad car drove by a few minutes later, and I chatted with them to see what I could find out. Suspect is white male, mid thirties, jeans and pale blue tshirt, thin. Well, that about knocks me out. Starting with that whole thin thing and quickly moving to black sweat pants and green sweat shirt. There's apparently five more signs yanked out down the street - lord knows what the fellow had in mind. I dropped the two from my verge back in place and slunk back inside for the evening.

Well, at least it's nice to know the neighborhood was quietly watching even at that hour. The guys in the car said they'd gotten several calls about this fellow, and it looks like he started just around my street.

So now I'm wondering when sleep will catch up with me again.

sneezing and sniffling

dagnebit, but a cold is the last darn thing I need right now. Yet it seems I'm fighting the edge of one pretty hard at the moment. I think tonight and tomorrow will be massive vitamin C days for me, trying to knock this thing out as fast as I can.

Worked from home this morning to catch a bit more shuteye, but ended up spending so much time responding to email and requests for assistance that I didn't actually get any additional sleep. For whatever reason, our workflow system just decided to be pissy and not cooperate. Filling disks, hangs for no reason, missing direries, etc. all plagued the system from 9pm last night until about noon today.

Got the notification that my copy of Mac OS X Advanced Development Techniques shipped from Amazon. So hopefully I'll be seeing it here in the next few days. Some folks I respect a great deal are pointing at this book and saying "It'll likely be pretty darn good", so it seemed worthwhile to pick up.

Spent the night before last messing around with my Cisco 678 DSL router at home. All the little fun things you can do with NAT to make protocols work like you've got an open internet connection. God knows when IPv6 will actually hit the streets - but I expect we'll still be messing around with NAT at home even after it's out. You gotta admit though, the idea of an IP address for every blade of grass on earth is sort of appealing...

Oh, and I stumbled across this technical detail about the iPod from apple the other day. Apparently notes within the iPod can have internal links on them - including to music! Makes for a nifty little UI interface to some of the songs for instance... I think Gus oughta make his VoodooPad app export this set up - that would be awesome!