Rhonabwy

Since I had Jury duty the past few days, I picked up the book Dreaming in Code and read it through. It goes pretty quickly, actually. (Actually, I tried the online access at the jury waiting area to bide the time, but it was kind of shoddy and very unreliable)

The book stirred up a bunch of thinking in my head - not sure how much that’s worth or not, but it definitely got the juices flowing.

Before I started it, I’d heard “It’s a horrible rip on the OSAF”, so I half expected to see some kind of nasty commentary along those lines. The reality is that it’s a long, example laden story that’s is an expansion of Knuth’s quote “Software is hard”. Yeah, I cringed at some of the examples, and the way they were written, I think I was supposed to in some cases. I was one of the avid OSAF watchers early on, and recall the whole time through the repository (or not) development with David/Rys McCusker, and his now-gone “treedragon” wiki/blog thing.

One of the most interesting little sidelines (chapter, really) goes into this sort of scoot-around-it topic that never quite asks the question of “should we have not followed the von neuman/turing programming metaphor all this time?”. In reading through it, I wonder if our (that’s a grand global “our”, for the record - not something specific I’m doing) forays into web services are the initial stabs at learning to code to somewhat different metaphors. Certainly multiprocessors have pushed things a touch, but the real kick has been moving into the world were multi-systems are reasonable and expected - even if each of those individual systems is a more classic “von neuman” style compute setup.

There was also some extended half-chapter about Alan Kay and Smalltalk - hinting that his expectation of “object oriented programming” was something significantly more than we’re seeing today. The quote that made me think this was something along the lines of “I never quite envisioned C++” (thank god! I think), but the verbiage around it actually made me think a little more of that poor-bastard technology of Apple’s OpenDoc. “Data and everything you need for it all together”. Not quite, I know - but maybe something conceptually more than properties and methods.

I’m sure there’s more piled up in my rear-brain, waiting for a good night’s sleep to come pounce and give me ideas. It’s a pretty decent book, and a good read for an in-depth understanding of “why software is hard”. Like anyone else, I’d love to say “Yeah, well I’d have done it differently” - and in some cases I think that’s true - but I would have just run in to other problems too. Maybe as bad, maybe worse, maybe not so bad. Certainly it leaves me thinking that small teams and one-person shops can really do the most in programming, when it comes right down to it. And I think I know a few good examples, too.

Here are some of the pics of those rocks - taken with a digital camera instead of my built-in iSight.

This is where I found these guys - this is at the top of one of the low mountains (maybe 1300 ft elevation?) around this point on the maps (basically above the Galice river, and just to the north).

A few better pictures of the rocks, at least I hope a little better. I don’t have good color settings, so I’m sure the color correction is off a bit from the reality of these guys. The pictures are taken against my black (and now quite dirty) sweatshirt.

If you can shed any light on the geology that I’ve found, I’d appreciate it!

Well, I’m back - just published the post I wrote before I left, and I have a picture from the trip. We took some ATV’s back up into the hills/mountains of Oregon, and while up there I found some really cool rocks. I’m not even an amatuer geologist, so I’m hoping that maybe one of you know what this is.

It’s shiny and has a greenish cast, almost avacado in coloration. We found it in a pile of shattered rock near the top of one of those hills.

For the record, driving ATV’s up the sides of mountains for a good 6 hours is a lot more physical effort than you might think. Maybe not as much as riding a horse up there, but a hell of a lot more than driving a car.

Yeah, I’ve been quiet of late. Nothing bad going on, just keeping voraciously busy and things are dropping off the end when I can’t keep up. Posting here, unfortunately sometimes, is one of those things.

For all that things have been crazy-packed-busy, everything’s going pretty well.

Day to day is trucking along nicely, and this weekend we’re taking a break and heading down to Oregon to visit Karen’s aunt and uncle down on the Rogue River near Merlin, OR. Check out the link if you’re curious. Some beautiful country, but a tad unfortunate distance down there.

40 years ago, I was born.

I just heard that Lloyd Alexander died two days ago. He was the first author that I remember reading, and I still enjoy his books today. To say that he was influential in my life is a tad of an understatement. His books incited a fascination with folklore that I never quite left, specifically the tales from Welsh traditions rewritten for children. His series The Chronicles of Prydain are a standard gift I give to kids learning to read, in hopes that they’ll spark a little something in them as well.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who recognizes that domain name that I’m still enthralled with Welsh mythology.