Recently in the "Thoughts" category...
The way that “official” signs are worded, especially at airports, has always bugged me. Take this one from the gate at San Jose airport for example:
- All checked and carry-on bags are subject to search. - Ok, sounds good.
- All passengers are warned to control their carry-on baggage etc… - Errr, first up, am I being asked to do something, or am I being told that all passengers have been warned about something. And why “warned”.
- All passengers are advised not to accept items from unknown persons. - Are they? Cool! Oh, were you asking me to do something?
Maybe I’m being pedantic, but why not:
- All your checked and carry-on bags are subject to search.
- Please keep an eye on all your carry-on baggage etc…
- Please don’t accept items from unknown persons.
Seems better to me.
10:00pm: T-2 hours. A beer maybe? Maybe at the Wilde Rover. Everyone’s asleep. Not even the dog is stirring.
11:35pm: Herding Cats are playing. Rock on. Apparently their drummer tried out for Oasis and just missed out. Order a beer. Settle up the tab. Let the bar tender know that he served me the last beer of my third decade. “A shot? It’s on me.” No thanks…
I dunno why this event has bothered me as much as it has. It’s just a zero duration point in time. A milestone. Maybe it’s just that the notion of my mortality is finally coming home to roost.
12:01am: Tick Tock.
I’m always astounded my the number of people that use goto, my little ajax experiment from a few years ago.
Yes the number of seven day actives is only a few hundred, but the fact that it still runs, unassisted and with no real problems gives me the warm fuzzies :-)
It was a nice little project that solved a personal need and obviously solved the need of a few other people out there.
At that is reason enough to keep it ticking along.
Every month, check up on those stop orders to make sure that they haven’t expired.
Right then. As you were.
Joel Spolsky weighs in on the issues raised by the article I posted yesterday and comes up with a wonderful idea:
I think the solution would be to create a programming-intensive BFA in Software Development—a Julliard for programmers. Such a program would consist of a practical studio requirement developing significant works of software on teams with very experienced teachers, with a sprinkling of liberal arts classes for balance. It would be a huge magnet to the talented high school kids who love programming, but can’t get excited about proving theorums.
When I said BFA, Bachelor of Fine Arts, I meant it: software development is an art, and the existing Computer Science education, where you’re expected to learn a few things about NP completeness and Quicksort is singularly inadequate to training students how to develop software.
I’ve always said to anyone that will listen to me (which is not very many) that software is an art form. It attracts artists. Seriously. Just look at any software company and the amount of musicians, artists, carpenters, etc… working there that create code for a living and create other things in their down time.
Create.
Creation of something out of nothing.
Art.
There’s no real definition of art, but in my narrow experience, the creation of music and the creation of software are deeply similar.
An interesting article claiming that:
…Computer Science (CS) education is neglecting basic skills, in particular in the areas of programming and formal methods. We consider that the general adoption of Java as a first programming language is in part responsible for this decline. We examine briefly the set of programming skills that should be part of every software professional’s repertoire.
Another interesting quote:
It [Texas A&M] did [teach Java as the first language]. Then I started teaching C++ to the electrical engineers and when the EE students started to out-program the CS students, the CS department switched to C++.
Definitely worth a read.
I’ve have been worrying for some time that the core programming competence of candidates coming out of colleges has been dropping over the years as the “helpful” languages proliferate and the spectrum of languages that students are exposed to declines…
What’s a pointer, again?
Worrisome.
[Tip’O’Hat to Lambda the Ultimate for the link.]
Evel Knievel died today at the ripe old age of 69. I say ripe old age because I’m astounded that he was still around considering what he did to his body!
The first toy I remember having was an Evel Knievel toy…
All my real investments are managed professionally by someone I really trust and are doing very well, thank you very much. However, I also have some play money at eTrade where I get to play the bigshot dealer.
Over the past few years I’ve done pretty well with it, even though I’ve made some tragically bad decisions (err, you sold APPL at what price!?!).
A couple of months ago I got back into the game after having the cash languish in the money market and have been tracking it in Covestor, which is a lot of fun. I bought pretty deep into VMWare and Garmin.
So how am I doing? Well, VMWare is just outstanding and Garmin had a nice run-up, but got hit on the recent news that they’re looking at acquiring TeleAtlas. Personally, I think it can only be good for Garmin. Mind you, I love my TomTom GPS and you can pry it out of my cold, dead hands.
Anyhow, what do I know.
All I do know is that my little selection is up 35% since it’s inception and I’m walking all over the S&P500…
Note that I’m an idiot in the stock market. I’m sure that both of these will crash and burn and the only reasonable advice based on my record is to buy anything that I’m thinking of selling, because it will undoubtedly sky-rocket at that point.
I had completely forgotten about this until tonight, but on Halloween night 1997, a British Airways flight from Heathrow landed in Seattle containing me. That in and of itself was nothing unusual - I’d taken the trip over two dozen times since RenderMorphics was acquired by Microsoft in 1995.
But this particular time was a little different.
I had no return ticket.
Why is it that everytime I look at an article in Wikipedia that I was even remotely involved with, I feel the need to correct gross inaccuracies?
The problem is that I don’t follow through on that need due to the the fear of being accused of changing things to “reflect my version of reality”.
To me though, said articles feel written by people who have observed the topic at a distance. The words feel only tangentially connected to the facts. I can definitely contribute, and do so in an impartial manner.
But I don’t.
I’ve heard too many horror stories.
I check my comments for spam pretty often, usually daily. Part of the problem I have is that sometimes I have no idea what the comment says, because it’s in a language I don’t understand.
As an example, I’m staring at the comment below, trying to decide if it’s spam or not. Some of the words relate to the post that it’s commenting on, but, well, I dunno.
Now, I’m taking a risk here, because I have no idea what this says. Here goes:
tu landscape es una mierda por favor putos de mierda vayanse con su landscaoe bien a la mierda
Google translate says:
your landscape is an excrement excrement well please putos vayanse with his landscaoe to the excrement
To put it mildly, this doesn’t sound like a complimentary comment, but is it spam?
Dunno.
Update: I had a friend translate it. It’s not spam, but it’s not pleasant. Obviously, the person that wrote it understood the post but then chose to reply in a different language.
Hmmm. Thoughts. Obviously this is an english language blog. Should I expect people to comment in english?
Or maybe I’m just being trolled.
Tonight I feel like I live in a community more than ever before.
Up until last week I lived on 8th Street South in Kirkland, right next to the Little League baseball fields - the street is part of a Kirkland known as the Everest Neighbourhood.
Recently, longtime neighbours of ours, the Aubrey’s, decided that it was time to downsize after living here since 1972 and raising their kids in their house on 8th. They applied to subdivide their land, but permission came with the stipulation that 5th Avenue South that connects 6th to 7th should be extended through to 8th - obliterating a footpath and lovely area of the neighbourhood in the process.
Not to mention the fact that commuter traffic generated by such a cut-through would destroy the quiet and kid-friendly street one block west.
You can read more about this at the Kirkland Courier’s site and this map will show you what I’m talking about.
An appeal was lodged and tonight a quasi-legal hearing was held at Kirkland City Council. It was quasi-legal in the sense that the council members were effectively judges and jurors on the issue and were not allowed to hear any arguments about the case beforehand. Arguments would be presented for and against and entered into the record and most frustratingly, audience members had to be quiet and respectful - no clapping and no standing up and shouting “WTF!”.
You can understand that I was sitting on my hands and biting my tongue throughout the whole proceedings.
There were many empassioned arguments including one by a neighbour who had done some severe homework, turning the city’s own planning policy against itself.
So many friends from the neighbourhood showed up. Many with kids. Everyone supporting the appeal. Did I mention that 7th Street has almost forty kids under ten years of age living on it? It’s an old school neighbourhood with young parents; kids playing on the street side of their houses with other kids; neighbours chatting and doing favours for each other.
Community.
A community that would have been destroyed by a short-sighted, follow the rules, planning policy.
The end result? A unanimous vote by the council1 in favour of our neighbourhood.
Surrounded by neighbours, I have never felt so much a part of a community.
Rock on.
1 Incidentally, there is a certain council member who urgently requires that a bureaucratic stick be surgically removed from their arse.
Most of my friends and all of my family know that I have an incredibly soft spot for that most wonderful of animals, the Elephant.
I’ve spent many happy days at various zoos and always manage to get to see the Elephants. As a kid, I loved being able to feed them. The gentle but rough touch of their trunks stays with me as an ingrained memory.
Which is why I was so sad to hear that Hansa, the six year old star of Seattle’s Woodland Park Zoo died yesterday.
So sad.
I’m touched that the enclosure was closed while the other Elephants were given time to grieve with the body, as they do in the wild.
The zoo has a memorial page here.
Congratulations to Facebook for realizing that, contrary to popular opinion, it’s all about the platform.
Let the developers in and you win.
Apparently Kirkland is about to annex a whole chunk of unincorporated King County, which would almost double the population of Kirkland.
The insane thing is that the citizens of Kirkland, whose resources will get spread thin, don’t get to vote on the issue - only the citizens in the area targeted for annexation!
Oh, and being a ten year (high) tax paying non-US citizen, I don’t get to vote anyway…
No taxation without… Oh. Whatever.
Everyone says that moving house is probably one of the most stressful things you can do, especially when you’re trying to sell your existing house in the process. Our plan is to move into our new home, get our current home ready to sell and then sell it.
I indeed tend to agree, but I’ve been saying to myself “I refuse to be stressed about this”, so to this end I’ve been trying to put as much of the process in online and do the “GTD” thing of getting as much of it out of my head and written down as possible.
As Nabila and I are sharing the workload, putting everything online helps immensely with the “who’s doing what?” and “Steve, that slacker, I bet he hasn’t called the contractor yet!” questions…
So, we’re tracking all our moving expenses and various documents in Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets, and all the work items, todo lists and milestones in 37signals’ Basecamp.
This all appears to be working a treat so far!
There are milestones for “House is ready to sell”, “New House Closes”, etc… and todo lists associated with each.
Notes for each contractor we’re getting quotes from are being tracked as are dates and dependencies, etc…
As an aside, having a really good real estate agent is another piece of the puzzle that keeps you from going insane and we’ve found a really good one in Kathy Magner. From being told what we need to do when to helping us get our current house ready for sale and generally making our lives easier, she’s a bit of a star…
This year will be the 20th anniversary of the release of Fish! from Magnetic Scrolls.
Fish! was the first game and first real live commercial software project that I worked on and the first product that I really argued for the inclusion of an exclamation point in it’s name :-) Somehow the exclamation point disappeared from the packaging for the US release…
Released towards the end of 1988 was Fish!, a more light-hearted, surreal adventure game, where the player assumed the role of a dimension-jumping goldfish. Written by John Molloy, Pete Kemp, Phil South and edited by Rob Steggles, Fish! would prove to be the last of Magnetic Scrolls’ traditional commercial releases.
I loved Fish! It was weird, different and totally odd. I also loved working for Magnetic Scrolls which was Unix-centric - everything was developed on a MicroVax and cross-compiled and the guys were way overboard on the intelligence level which led to very interesting pub discussions.
Stories around working there mostly involve great coding, fun problems and south London pubs. In fact I remember that when the UK went to all day licensing hours (i.e. the pubs were open all day), we decided to “extend” our lunch hour. We all came back to the office fairly “happy” to the chagrin of our boss, Anita Sinclair, who’d been schmoozing a potential investor who’d been hoping to meet the team :-)
Alumni from the company are pretty well known in the computer graphics space - two of the guys, Doug Rabson and Servan Keondjian (both now at Qube), went on to form RenderMorphics, which I joined in 1995 shortly before it’s acquisition by Microsoft and Richard Huddy went on to work for ATI and NVidia.
Ahhh, reminiscing… I am, indeed, an old fart.
Update: Oh, and yes, I know the quote and US reviews say 1998, but it went out in 1997 to the world at large…
Has it really been 25 years since the ZX Spectrum came out? I cut my programming teeth on that thing…
Anyhow, the Beeb has a nice little retrospective which includes an interesting video.
Man, I’m having flashbacks.
Many of today’s video game luminaries cut their teeth on Sinclair computers, among them Dave Perry, who runs Shiny Entertainment, and Tim and Chris Stamper, who founded Rare.
In 1967 Sir Cive Sinclair pioneered the miniature TV
“Sir Clive Sinclair gave so many British people an incredible step up into the videogame industry, which in a few more years will be bigger than the music industry,” said Mr Perry, who began writing games as a school child on the ZX81 and became a professional programmer thanks to the Spectrum.
“Clive is a national hero,” said Mr Dickinson.
“He loved looking for technology ideas and often had an idea and had to wait for the technology to catch up.”
I completely agree with this.
The fact that the three 3D graphics API outfits (RenderMorphics, Argonaut and Criterion) were based in London and that so many of the games companies in the eighties were from the UK (e.g. Rare) is completely due to the fact that as kids, we had access to a bunch of cool, low cost tech that other countries missed out on.
