I was thinking about how I’ve changed the way that I use the internet over the years and how over time I’ve gotten a lot better at using the net for what I need. Through informal interaction with other technical people and on my own I’ve been exposed to different tools, sites and applications that have made me a lot more productive than I would otherwise be. A few of the many tools I like are Delicious, Google Reader, Firebug, Firefox, and Wikipedia. The point is that it has taken me years to really learn how to be as productive as I am today and a lot of what I’ve learned has been accidental. I think that the evolution of internet has begun to stabilize a bit to the point that some best practices should be emerging in terms of its use but I wonder if school curricula are keeping up? I wonder how kids learn to use the internet? When I was a kid we had classes that taught us how to use a library to find information. It seems like today internet skills are much more important than library skills were when I was a kid. I know that there are classes kids can take on internet research but I have to wonder how relevant they are. I can’t help but think how tough and time consuming it would be to start from scratch and learn how to use the internet. In effect this is what every child has to do. How do they learn internet skills? What’s the best way to teach someone to use the internet? What things do they need to know?
I hate them. I am especially annoyed when a library that exposes some sort of API requires it’s own configuration file. So, not only do you have a configuration file for your application, you also have to have another for this stupid library you integrated into your application. Wouldn’t it be nicer for the API to expose some methods, structures or something so that the data needed by the api could be set from the consuming application? That way, if you insisted in persisting these settings in a file you could do so in the application config file, giving you a single config file instead of two. I suppose one might make an exception and have a separate config file for a something that is so pervasive that is canonical like the log4XX logging libraries.
In the Midwest this occurs at about 5:31 PM Friday, February 13! Coincidence? I don’t think so. If you are on Facebook there is an event dedicated to this auspicious occasion.
Defensive Programming is usually thought of as a software quality technique but I have another use for the term. Defensive Programming happens when you are dealing with two or more modules of code that interact with one another in some way and the modules are written by different developers. That’s the programming part. The defensive part happens when something is wrong and each of the developers blames the other for the as yet unknown problem because they are covering their ass, have low self esteem, are lazy, are arrogant, you fill in the blank. This drives me nuts. Let’s just collaborate to solve the problem. Software has bugs. It’s fundamental. If the defensive programmer spent half of the time they spent pointing the finger at someone else fixing bugs in their own code we’d all be better off.
I work for a big corporation. Well I don’t know if its really big when compared to other corporations but its much bigger than the little company that I used to work for that was bought by the corporation that I now work for. Be that as it may in the past I’ve made disparaging remarks about the corporation that I now work for and corporations in general. It’s kind of fashionable to do that kind of thing if you’re an OSS Linux tech geeky kind of guy. Corporations Evil!!! Just read about Microsoft on Slash Dot and you’ll get this gist of what I mean. Lately I’ve been appreciative of the corporation I work for. There are several reasons for this change of attitude. One of them is that I am still employed. I’ve got an open position in Jersey and I see stacks of resumes from people that just a few months ago were working at big investment banks and hedge funds that have imploded. Comparing these pedigrees to mine is like comparing a Westminster Dog Show Best of Breed to some mutt in a dog pound. Suffice it to say I am glad I still have a job. The other reason that my attitude about the big corporation has changed is largely philosophical. I think that in an increasingly crowded world the ideal of individualism is outmoded or maybe it would be better to say that the priority placed on individualism is excessive. I think more priority should be placed on utilitarianism. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. The big corporation is comprised of many individuals working together for the good of the corporation and it’s shareholders. In return for this work the individuals are rewarded. Some individuals are rewarded to a disproportionate degree but all individuals are rewarded. Sometimes a few individuals are discarded but this is generally done for the benefit of the corporation as a whole. The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. Sometimes dealing bureaucracy in the big corporation is a bit frustrating when compared to doing things in a little start up but it stands to reason that one has to be more collaborative when dealing with many more people. As long as the bureaucracy doesn’t become a reason for people to not do things or to delay doing things or to shift responsibility it’s really not much of a problem. So I try to be a good little worker bee anonymously doing my part for the greater whole. I get my allotment of honey and all is good.
What to say. I’m going on the infamous Bike Ride to Rippey aka BRR on February 7 with my girlfriend.
Other than that bit of insanity I’ve been doing a lot of software optimization at work, ice skating, running, playing guitar and not blogging. I really wish I had something profound to say but I don’t. Sometimes I think of something profound to say but when I do I’m not around my computer and by the time that I am I forget what the profound thing was. Oh well, c’est la vie.
I got a nice long weekend in NYC for my birthday. We went to August: Osage County, MoMA, went to the top of the Empire State Building at midnight and walked around looking at Christmas lights. Here’s a bunch of pictures from the trip. New York is nuts around Christmas. The sidewalks are just packed with people and it’s fun just hanging out people watching. Some of the store window displays are amazing and in general the street life just can’t be beat. We hooked up with Lisa’s cousin and ate at a fabulous vegetarian restaurant called Candle Cafe. Oh, one thing that was really cool was how useful the maps application on my iPhone worked to navigate through the city using public transportation. As some of you may recall, my Android submission was an application to do just that, help people use public transportation to get from place to place. With iPhone update 2.2 the maps application will not only show you the best way to drive from point A to point B, it will also show you the best way to get from place to place using the subway, bus or walking in many major metropolitan areas. I know it works in New York, and Minneapolis, but it doesn’t work in smaller cities like Ames Iowa. Anyway, it works great. When I needed to get from where we were staying down in the financial district to any place we wanted to go to, I’d just use ‘Current Location’ and type the street address to where I wanted to go and the maps application would show me the best way to get there by subway. It would also include how to walk to the nearest metro station, and how to walk from the station where you get off the train to your final destination. If all you type in is the street information, neglecting to supply the city, state, etc, the application is smart enough to fill in these details for you. It really is one of the most fabulously useful applications I’ve ever used.
Last Tuesday night I went up to Manhattan to visit my friend Dmitri. Later when I was taking the train back to Princeton Junction they announced that Obama won the presidential election. The train erupted in applause and cheering. I don’t know that there were any McCain supporters on the train but if there were they were keeping a pretty low profile.
If there are lines of people waiting for something I’m going to pick the slowest one no matter what. It doesn’t matter if it’s waiting to check out at the grocery store or waiting to go through security at the airport, if there is a line I’m going to be in the slow one. Case in point I just got through security at Newark Liberty Airport. It’s really early here and they just opened up a security station so there were only a couple of people waiting to go through. I headed over to the short line thinking that fewer people in the line would translate to a shorter wait. Silly me. As soon as I got in line the guy at the head of the line started stirring up shit with the TSA people staffing the gate. I don’t think the guy spoke English and he evidently hadn’t been to an airport before so he didn’t think his luggage would be searched or something I don’t know but he was really upset which of course caused the TSA people get upset and the whole thing was a huge CF. Needless to say what I thought would be the fastest line became the slowest line so it took forever to get through. If this was an isolated incident it wouldn’t be a big deal but this sort of thing happens to me all the time. I’m like the Odysseus of lines. I’ve pissed off the line god and he’s not letting me through. Anyway, it’s time to wait in line to get on the plane so I’d better be going.
I’ve been spending some time in Iowa the state where I grew up. I was driving to the airport in Des Moines taking back roads feeling nostalgic. All of the corn is dry and ready to harvest the ditches and gullies of gray dead grass hiding deer and pheasants. This used to be my favorite time of year. The time of hunting dogs, shotguns and early mornings in the field. My eyes are still programmed to see certain motion patterns that indicate a duck, a deer, a rabbit. I think of passing on the unspoken things that my father passed on to me. Quiet masculine companionship, hunting, breath fogging the cold air, love of nature, life and death.
