Me: “Cheggidout, Chappelle is wearing a Haile Selassie shirt!”
Amy: “Honey, I think that’s Fred Sanford.”
Music: Madeleine Peyroux :: J’ai Deux Amours
Miles, Year Three
Miles turned three recently. It’s been an amazing family year, from all angles. He’s talking non-stop, figuring out his world, delighting us, testing us, teaching us. He’s started preschool, started counting beyond 10, started spelling, in a rudimentary sort of way. But it’s mostly about climbing, building, exploring characters, digging nature, inventing, throwing stones. It’s all about becoming.
It strikes me as I look over this album how many of the images show him being reflective, or seeming pensive. That may just be because those are the moments he’s easiest to catch on camera, or because Amy likes to photograph those moments so much. But we are starting to realize that he’s a very contemplative little guy, fascinated by emotions and the sensual world. But that’s not the whole story — his introspective tendencies are counterbalanced by frequent bouts of physical joy and verbal giddiness. He reminds me of someone.
Amy and I have put up an album of images from his third year on earth.
Music: Red Mitchell with the Herb Geller Quartet :: If I Were A Bell
WYSIWIG Inverted
Usability expert Jakob Nielson says the rise of WYSIWYG over the past 20 years has been useful, but may be reaching the end of its life cycle in favor of WYGIWYS (What You Get Is What You See)-oriented interfaces. The idea is that rather than starting with a blank slate (document) and issuing commands to reach a result (chipping away until you have your statue), WYGIWYS software will provide thumbnail galleries that display formatting states and sub-states, allowing the user to select results, applying it to their existing content.
The idea makes a certain amount of sense, but I’m having trouble visualizing how WYGIWYS tools could offer complete control — it seems that formatting results would be limited to the gallery of states built into the software by the developer. Sure, the galleries could be customizable, but then you’d be back where you started. I can see an increase in use of the “Project Galleries” built into current versions of Office and extended to options applicable at the paragraph or even character level, but I can’t imagine menus and toolbars going away, as Nielson predicts. There’s a whole lot more to software than formatting — to make this idea work, you have to be able to visualize presenting “results first” for things like word count, spell check, inserting database records or video clips, yadda yadda.
Total control is precisely what makes free-form software so empowering (and the command-line even more so). I’m having trouble visualizing how a results-first approach could do anything but strip control (i.e. empowerment) away from the user.
Music: Cowboy Junkies :: I Don’t Get It
Poignant Guide to Ruby
This incredible… thing is rolling off my printer, double-sided, at 12 pages/minute. Those who know me know how much I loathe printouts. But I’m making an exception.
Recently feeling like it’s time to offer the Rails development framework to hosting customers*. But it’s hard to do that until and unless I’ve at least dipped a toe into Ruby’s lean, sparkling waters. Stumbled on the Poignant guide and was immediately amazed. It’s got hand-drawn cats. It’s got surrealistic dialog. It’s got punk-rock collaged narratives floating in the sidebars. It’s got photos of car keys sticking out of apples perched on coffee mugs. It’s got clean, well-written, entertaining prose on learning Ruby. This is the rare tech book that doesn’t answer to corporate masters, that exhibits the full, unfettered creativity of a literate, funky programmer unbound by editorial constraint or preconceived notions of how a tech book should look, or work.
Not that I suddenly have time to master Ruby, but I am going to bed with this 126-page PDF right now.
* Actually I’ve already got the Ruby interpreter installed, as well as mod_ruby and FastCGI, just need to do some integration tests, and figure out the best way to offer this to customers in a reliable, consistent way. It’s such a different animal from Perl/PHP/Python, etc. Need to wrap my head around it just a bit before unleashing the hounds.
Music: Pinpeat Orchestra :: Klang Chanat
Connected or Addicted?
All those execs walking the beach with “crack-berries” in their hands, talking apparently to themselves through hands-free Bluetooth cellphone headsets? Business at the speed of light? Total responsiveness to customers and managers? Constant relationships with employees? The price of doing business in a connected world? In many cases, it may be something more like a pathological addiction to connectedness. So what’s the harm?
For the staff, it creates a constant dependence on the presence of the manager. This kills their desire to take initiative. They become much more concerned with carrying out the boss’s orders than with meeting the goals of the organization. If you can’t disconnect the electronic bands of connectivity for a couple of weeks or even for a few hours, you need to rethink your management approach. Hyperconnectivity could be a symptom of an important problem. Great managers create organizations that are resilient enough to keep moving ahead, no matter who is out of touch.
Sometimes I feel grateful to work in a place where even simple PDAs would be regarded as alien/unusual, and cell phones are uncommon. Haven’t seen a crackberry on campus yet, though I suspect it’s only a matter of time. I used to lament the limited amount of technology in the hands of faculty and staff, but lately have come to appreciate the mental health benefits of working in a less-connected environment.
Music: Stiff Little Fingers :: Suspect Device
Blow-Dart Dolphins
Dolphins have been used for decades by the military for underwater/undercover operations, but who knew that some of them were equipped with dart guns? Or that several dozen such-equipped dolphins could be missing since the recent flooding in the Gulf? From The Guardian UK:
Armed dolphins, trained by the US military to shoot terrorists and pinpoint spies underwater, may be missing in the Gulf of Mexico. Experts who have studied the US navy’s cetacean training exercises claim the 36 mammals could be carrying ‘toxic dart’ guns. Divers and surfers risk attack, they claim, from a species considered to be among the planet’s smartest. The US navy admits it has been training dolphins for military purposes, but has refused to confirm that any are missing.
Music: Medeski Martin & Wood :: Strance Of The Spirit Red Gato
Into Thin Air
Miles cuts through the crap, dodging a philosophical bullet:
“Miles, where do you think a balloon goes when it pops?”
“Into the garbage!”
Music: Sufjan Stevens :: Flint (For The Unemployed And Underpaid)
Uncle Jam Wants You
Sounds like the premise to a South Park sub-plot, but apparently true: The Army National Guard is experiencing its lowest volunteer signup rates in quite a while. To remedy the situation, they’re giving away three — yes, three free iTunes music store downloads to all comers. All you have to do is hand over your contact info to a recruiter. Fear not for your life, lad — music conquers all!
Music: Dead Can Dance :: Cantara
37 Signals
Amongst the perennial flotilla of product launches and buzzwords (anyone still using Orkut?), every now and then you stumble across a product that really gives you that tingly “Ah-Ha!” feeling. Organizing forces for the J-School site redesign, experimenting with various online collaboration tools, came across three {Ruby-on-Rails plus Ajax} products from 37 Signals: Basecamp, Backpack, and Ta-Da Lists. Basecamp for project management, Backpack for organizing your personal life, Ta-Da List for dirt-simple online to-do lists. All are optionally private or shareable.
It’s not like 37 Signals is the first to do project/life management online. What sets this stuff apart is the incredibly elegant simplicity of their interfaces. Something about them just reaches out and screams “Use me!” And so I am. Choosing between Basecamp and Backpack was tricky, because both include features I wish were present in the other — e.g. frustrated that Backpack only allows for a single to-do list (crimony!), and that Basecamp doesn’t include the Wiki (Whiteboard) module. Ultimately settled on Basecamp, and am up and running with a team. Add in the fact that you can subscribe to project changes via RSS, and publish project milestones to iCal format, and it all just clicks. A thing of beauty.
For the first time, starting to see Ajax in action in ways that are genuinely useful, rather than just buzz. Being able to drag and drop list items around on a web page (without resorting to Flash), you start to see the first real glimmers of why Microsoft has always been worried that web services could make Windows irrelevant. Google buying and integrating a product like this would push them into that futuristic space where the operating system matters less and less.
Will probably port some of my home and work tasks and schedules to 37 Signals stuff soon — the free versions are more than adequate for most purposes.
Music: Mekons :: Fantastic Voyage
Wu/Mu
If a bit can be flipped on or off, what state is it in when the computer is powered down? Clearly “On” is incorrect, but “Off” is also not quite right. Wu. The proper answer to a loaded question such as “Have you stopped beating your wife?” Wu. Does a dog have Buddha nature? Wu. When language fails to provide mechanism for a logically adequate response, Wu. Accounting for the subtle distinction between “not” and “no,” Wu. Or, if one prefers, Mu.
Music: Everton Blender :: Who Cares