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The Most Serene Republic of Theremins

Just got cajoled into creating my own country at NationStates, an online game that lets users explore the ramifications of political decisions on economies and social structures within a country whose parameters you establish and modify by making hard-core decisions. NationStates is no Sims knockoff — more of a text-based petri dish you can use to see how your political ideals might play out in the real world, if actually realized.

The Most Serene Republic of Theremins is a tiny, environmentally stunning nation, notable for its absence of drug laws. Its hard-nosed, intelligent population of 7 million are fiercely patriotic and enjoy great social equality; they tend to view other, more capitalist countries as somewhat immoral and corrupt. The government — a sprawling, bureaucracy-choked, socially-minded morass — is mainly concerned with Law & Order, although Healthcare and Education are on the agenda. The average income tax rate is 41%, but much higher for the wealthy. Private enterprise is illegal, but for those in the know there is a slick and highly efficient black market in Cheese Exports.

Game play consists of deciding one issue a day, with brief pro/con arguments there to help you find conviction; my first was whether to enforce compulsory voting on my citizens (lord, no). Looking forward to seeing how this evolves.

Music: Unknown Instructors :: Where You Find It
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One Nation Under a Groove

I knew there was a reason we’ve been Tivo-ing Independent Lens — jumped out of my chair tonight when it turned out we had caught a new documentary on Parliament-Funkadelic, Yvonne Smith’s One Nation Under a Groove. Solid hour of interviews and archival footage, from barbershop days to the descent of the mothership. Concert clips much too short, can only imagine the torture of the filmmaker trying to decide how to balance the mix of interview and archival material. Mind-bending stuff, took me back to a former, funkier life. Nice discography on the site, too.

Flattered to find a link to my old P-Funk article from PBS.org! (in the “Learn More” section).

Music: Funkadelic :: Can You Get To That
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Juicy Fruit

A bunch of suits sit around a boardroom table, asking what they can do to attract young people to their site. Grapevine says blogs are hot! No idea what one is, but they’ll build one anyway. A swirling splash page, insipid, faked daily entries, each one locked in a tiny Flash text box dwarfed by extraneous gew gaws. Oh, and be sure we make the site go ‘Ding!’ each time user navigates between entries.

Juicy Fruit has ensured that the weblog as a form has officially jumped the shark.

Music: Madeleine Peyroux :: Lonesome Road
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Miles, Year Three

2.jpg 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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)