September 30, 2004
presidential debate rules
file under: thoughts about things
there has been a great deal of discussion in the media about the impending presidential debates, specifically regarding the 32 pages of rules that govern the debates. i have found some media commentary on these rules to be highly biased (in one direction or another).
for your reference, the following link leads to a PDF containing the 2004 presidential debate rules (as posted on john kerry's web site, but apparently scanned from the original document):
2004 Presidential debate rules
for further reference regarding the selection criteria for the debates, please refer to the following:
Posted: 09.30.04 at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
September 28, 2004
(un)reality TV, part 27
file under: my life
reality tv, meet laguna beach high school (my alma mater).
i don't want to talk about it. if you want something that perfectly captures my raging, depthless hatred of reality TV, i suggest you read tom bissell's americans are all simulations in The Believer.
Posted: 09.28.04 at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 27, 2004
arcodology
file under: technology , thoughts about things
arcodology (n.): the black art of code examination and analysis, performed during software upgrades and/or web site refreshes. arcodologists sift through tangled code fragments, often (but not always) of unknown origin and authorship, in search of meaning, enlightenment, or any shred of code that can actually be re-used. See also frustration, laziness, and cruft.
...
i spend a fair amount of time writing code, and often have to re-write stuff that someone else has written. it keeps me awake at night, thinking about all the terrible code out there (including my own). it reminds me of one of my favorite computer geek quotes:
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.
– Weinberg's second law
the code you can't touch is the worst
here's the scenario – you're working on a web site redesign, and you've got a week until launch. you're only supposed to touch these pages (not those), and don't change any of the nav framework, ok?
ok. no problem. only a few pages to code? easy. until you look under the hood and see HTML riddled with more font tags than MicroSoft FrontPage from 1996 <shudder>. and let's not even talk about using single-column, single-row tables to do god-knows-what.
c'mon, people. it's 2004 (almost 2005). let's at least get rid of the font tags. please.
or is stuff you can change worse?
the code you can change might even be worse, because if you're an anal retentive code snob like me (i can see the comments already...), you just have to change it so you can sleep. time never permits, of course, so you struggle through the night, tossing and turning, thinking about those crufty CSS files still sitting around that you just didn't have time to fix <shudder, again>.
so what about this site, mr. code weenie?
the HTML for this site sucks. so does the CSS. i should know – i wrote it. it's not standards-compliant, it doesn't validate, the CSS is inelegant, and a lot of it is just a plain HTML–table–hack job. i want to rewrite it, now that i've read Zeldman's standards book. he has inspired me to make the time to do it.
it takes time. it takes effort. it's worth it.
Posted: 09.27.04 at 5:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
being the hydrant for technology's dog
file under: technology
some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant.
this piece of wisdom was passed on to me some time ago, and i've found it a useful mantra. it helps remind me about life's little ups and downs.
for the past few days, it's been technology that's the dog, and i've been the hydrant. so i'm just gonna vent the old spleen a bit, and move on to smaller and better things.
...
ansgt part I: the woes of software upgrades, aka "it used to work"
in my job as web [insert vague, new economy adjective here], i use a lot of software. sometimes it uses me, too, but we won't go into that. one tool that i use all the time is BBEdit, a great piece of text editing software if ever there was...
now, bbedit upgraded recently. they added some really essential, neato stuff (like a document drawer to mimic tabbed browsing), so i plunked down my upgrade dollars and bought the new version (my second paid upgrade this year, i might add). with a flutter in my heart and bumble bees in my fingers, i installed and started bbediting, and boy was i happy.
until i realized it doesn't quite work the way it used to. in fact, it's sort of broken. ok, let's call it the way it is – at least one major feature appears almost completely broken, downgrading me from a sledgehammer to a spoon.
i bought it last week, and there's already an update (read: patch). i'm suspecting there will be several others. fortunately, these will be free for awhile until we get beyond the we-rushed-to-release-a-product-and-didn't-QA-enough stage.
it just makes me mad. i know software development is hard, but don't break stuff that already worked...
ADDENDUM: i submitted a bug report to Barebones Software, and not only did they respond promptly, but they fixed the bug, came out with a new maintenance release (8.0.2), and then notified me. now that's what i call service!!
angst part II - the saga of the sick mac
i upgraded my mac recently. it's pretty swell, except for when it crashes, or when all my Apple applications stop working for no apparent reason.
the culprit? i have no idea about the crashes. i'll take that as a total mystery and just live with it (for now). as far as the apps, i have yet to discover the true problem, but i know what fixes it – dumping my font cache. now there's a logical connection if ever there was one: applications won't open? clean your font cache!! grrr.
deal with it, or....??
that's the only resolution i can see: deal with it.
i work with computers all day, every day, and can deal, for the most part (present rant = part of dealing with it, thank you). but what about people who don't? it's no wonder my mom won't get a computer – she's terrified of doing something wrong. look at your computer sideways and over the edge to meltdown it goes.
computers have come an amazing distance in the last 20 years...unbelievable, actually. one might think that over time, things will get more stable, more solid, and nothing will go wrong. one might be right, but i suspect one is more likely wrong.
computers (and home-computer environments, in general) seem to be systems with emergent properties. it's impossible to imagine (and test for) all possible permutations of computer hardware and software (built with very little quality control or standards). let's not even talk about all the possibilities for user behavior. as a result, crazy things happen that no one can predict, and this often means that things crash, applications stop working, bad (and often expensive) sh*t happens.
programmers at the application layer can try to build fault-tolerant apps that can handle exceptions and errors, but they can't control anything that happens with the hardware. similarly, some guy at Intel designing a chip can only do so much when it comes to stopping programmers from writing bad code (another post coming about this soon).
my personal prediction is that computers will remain fragile as they get more and more complex, and as we ask them to be more powerful, more central, multifaceted tools. it's pretty hard to imagine don norman's invisible computer, or the time when we come to think of computers like we do the telephone.
don't get me wrong – computers are transformative tools, and our lives are enriched because of them. but they still really piss me off sometimes.
i think i'll go read a book.
Posted: 09.27.04 at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 19, 2004
sky captain and the world of tomorrow
file under: movies
there's just one thing i want to say about sky captain and the world of tomorrow: wow. it's been a long time since i left the theater grinning from ear to ear, breathless from an exciting journey to another world.
my friend andrew said everything else. :-)
Posted: 09.19.04 at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 15, 2004
explain this
file under: thoughts about things
the advance of scientific knowledge is a process largely characterized by slow, incremental improvements punctuated with bursts of innovation and insight. in many cases, these spikes of activity are paradigm shifts catalyzed by the explanation of nagging exceptional phenomena that don't fit within the extant framework of understanding, or with the abject failures of existing theories (e.g., the ultraviolet catastrophe).
explaining exceptional phenomena is an important part of scientific progress, and provides insight into the scientific method itself. this process can also lead to apophenia when it comes to resolving other open questions (i.e., people attempt to establish relationships between things when there are none).
john harris has written an illuminating analysis of these 'unprecedented phenomena' and their relationship to scientific progress, using the Oklo fossil reactor as an example.
while i think he's hit the nail pretty squarely on the head, there are a few things i'd like to add...
...
unprecedented, or unexplained?
it is a semantic distinction, to be sure, but i wonder whether the term 'unprecedented' is the right one...for example, when eric cornell and his team at NIST created the first Bose-Einstein condensate, their creation was surely unprecedented, yet it could be explained perfectly well (assuming one was conversant with this particular branch of statistical physics and quantum mechanics). crop circles, on the other hand, are unexplained, and yet are certainly not without precedent.
my point is that whether or not something has occurred in the past, or whether it occurs again in the future, has no bearing on whether it can be understood within the framework of scientific knowledge. for this reason, i think it is 'unexplained' phenomena that often lead to the paradigm shifts to which john refers.
unexplained phenomena and the scientific method
by an odd coincidence, an article was written about unexplained phenomena and the scientific method in the most recent Wired magazine. the article is a fascinating (if abbreviated) account of the quest to unravel the Voynich manuscript, a mysterious document that has perplexed cryptographers and linguists for centuries.
the Wired article describes the efforts of Gordon Rugg, a British computer scientist and psychologist, who has been looking at how scientists come to an understanding of things (or fail to, as the case may be). dr. rugg has devised 'the verifier approach,' a method of approaching scientific problems that have evaded solution despite intense efforts. he used the Voynich manuscript as a test case for his 'enchanced' scientific method, and came to a very interesting conclusion: the manuscript is a hoax (ha!).
scientists often talk of 'solution spaces' (where one can find the solution to problems), and while 'hoax' was certainly within the solution space for the Voynich manuscript, it's not a solution that appears to have been pursued in any depth (after all, where's the fun in a hoax?). indeed, it appears that a thriving community of Voynichologists have been avidly chasing various theories for years. rugg's verifier method appears to have pulled the rug out, so to speak.
the implications are....huge? insignificant? unknowable? perhaps large, unexpained problems in science will yield to dr. rugg's verifier approach. the unfortunate thing is, with many of these problems, there is no way to empirically verify the correctness of the proposed solution. in other words, you could do an analysis of all the scientific literature and come to a conclusion about the origin of life and the universe, but there would be no way to verify your assertion(s).
some things are just better left as mysteries, i suppose.
Posted: 09.15.04 at 1:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 9, 2004
the king is still alive
file under: thoughts about things
i was at Safeway today and discovered, much to my surprise, that the King of Rock and Roll is still alive and well (what would we do without 'The Star'). they used a double in his coffin when he was buried, apparently. imagine that.
50 years from now, i wonder if the king will still be alive, slightly grey around the temples, seemingly unaffected by the forces of time and space. i mean, if anyone was going to be immortal, i guess it would be Elvis, yeah?
Posted: 09.09.04 at 1:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
September 6, 2004
desolation wilderness, one year later
file under: thoughts about things
last year, my friend trevor and i went to desolation wilderness and had a fantastic experience (despite some fairly ravenous and determined mosquitoes). so good, in fact, that we're going back this year (friday, to be precise). in anticipation of the forthcoming adventure, i finally got off my butt and finished putting together the photos from our last trip.
so, without further ado, check out my desolation wilderness pictures from late july 2003.
NOTE: for any backpackers interested in where we stayed, our camp site was nestled right next to Alta Morris lake. we had it all to ourselves for 4 days in the middle of july...
Posted: 09.06.04 at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
September 3, 2004
groundhog day
file under: my life
i feel like a groundhog coming up for air after a long winter – only it's summer, and i don't have fur.
Posted: 09.03.04 at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)
