Process Over Content

Musical Software Patterns

2009-12-15T09:42:00.000-05:00

Some links from the http://toplap.org mailing list. I'm putting them here for safe keeping. Might actually inspire me to read through them, too.

"Supercollider - A Practical Guide to Patterns" http://supercollider.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/supercollider/trunk/build/Help/Streams-Patterns-Events/A%20Practical%20Guide/PG_01_Introduction.html
"Dewdrop World - chucklib Patterns and Processes" http://www.dewdrop-world.net/sc3/tutorials/index.php?id=6http://www.dewdrop-world.net/sc3/tutorials/index.php?id=6
"Common Music 3 - Patterns" http://commonmusic.sourceforge.net/cm/res/doc/cm.html#patterns
"Supercollider - JITLib Patterns" http://supercollider.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/supercollider/trunk/build/Help/Libraries/JITLib/Patterns/
"Manipulations of Musical Patterns" http://retiary.org/ls/writings/musical_manip.html

Baltimore Networking

2009-04-13T11:57:00.002-04:00

I just sent an email to a friend and realized it'd make a good personal bookmark/placeholder/time capsule.

There's been some heating up of the Baltimore tech scene in the last year or so. One of the things that got me into the job switch process [from BDK to SmartLogic Solutions] was the first SocialDevCamp (http://barcamp.pbwiki.com/SocialDevCampEast) event last May. Since then I've gotten in touch with Dave Troy, who organized that event, another in Nov'08, is organizing a straight up BarCamp (http://twitter.com/barcampbmore) in June, founded Baltimore's first (that I know of) tech/creative co-working space (http://beehivebaltimore.org/), founded the Baltimore Angels (http://angelsoft.net/angel-group/baltimore-angels) angel investment group. I also got kind of hooked/volunteered into organizing / coordinating the organization of a Baltimore version of South by Southwest (http://baltimoreinteractive.org), but I expect to be dropping that in favor of getting involved with BarCamp Baltimore. In the last month or so I joined and then dropped (unique situation, long-ish story) a startup (http://livesqft.com) with a few other guys from the area. Finally, since the fall, I've been regularly attending Refresh Bmore (http://refreshbmore.org/) and Dorkbot meetings (http://www.bmoredorkbot.org/), both of which are new (in the area) since last summer. The past six months has also seen a Flash users group (http://www.baltimoreswf.com/), a programming language club (http://groups.google.com/group/bmore-hackers), and I'm trying to get a hackerspace going here in the city (http://hackerspaces.org/, http://twitter.com/mehuman/status/1446847638 / http://twitter.com/abachman/status/1495678380).

Too much on my plate? We'll see.

Alright, back to real job.

Big Ideas in Computer Science with Applications in Art

2009-01-11T14:22:00.001-05:00

rough notes and a presentation idea

The only way to keep it from being too dry is to work backwards from application. Consider a given topic and why it is computer science, maybe? No, then the focus is on an intro to computer science through the window of art. The goal of the presentation wouldn't be to teach people computer science (or art), but look at an area of computer science that can be applied to a thouroughly artistic endeavor. e..g, network diagram + anti-aliasing + color = pretty picture. (Ha!, trivialize their field while you condescend, that'd go over well)

How can established areas of computer science be explored with an artist's eye? To answer that one I'd have to be an artist. "Established" is too limiting, perhaps there are areas that would be better left to an artist. Areas that lie within (crossover into) the realm of common human experience. Relatable Computer Science.

But, isn't the purpose of (some) art to make difficult or enormous topics relatable? Human computer interaction for example, at the border of every relationship between man and machine. How we deal with technology has changed very little in the last 30 years. Exploring with art could provide new direction, an unexpected shift in method and result.

What must art do to successfully aid computer science? Imagine, Explore, Experiment, Investigate. Can art do these things where science cannot or has not? Computer Science doesn't seem like it would be terribly welcoming, art must invite itself to the party.

How can technology be presented to non-technologists? Inspire, ignite, spark imagination. Putting hands on art.

I propose the following tenets for guidance in the art/comp sci border lands. The product of exploration should be: Relatable, Manipulatable, Interactive, Impractical, Conceptual, Humane

Relatable

I must be able to grasp and synthesize the new idea with my existing world view for it to change me. It doesn't have to be easy, just possible.

Manipulatable

The product must be plastic, and able to conform to shifting consumers. "Unchanging" must not be a requirement.

Interactive

Similar to the previous goal, product should be responsive to change. It doesn't have to be sound or video, but those are the easiest examples to demonstrate.

Impractical

To be different, I would suggested that artistic exploration doesn't have to produce something of immediate value. Instead of taking the professional software developer's approach of making things people want, we might try making things no one wants. That's too simple, though, it works more like this:

ignore everything everyone says you have to do.
think real hard.
type code that does something no one has ever seen.

Conceptual

Art cannot be afraid to tackle ideas bigger than a single person in a single moment can take in. But it also shouldn't be afraid to try to squish those big ideas into a form that *can* be taken in by a single person in a single moment. Layered, nuanced, fearless, might all be good adjectives for "Conceptual".

Humane

We shouldn't lose sight of the human condition, not that we ever really can. But approachable is not the same as practical. "Nice" may not even come into it. Richard Gabriel called it "conscientious software" [pdf], software that is considerate of the needs and limited abilities of its users. The product should address itself to humans first, machines second.

Feel free to follow the progress of this document at my jottit scratchpad.

Baltimore Food Makers

2008-10-28T13:33:00.000-04:00

Check it: http://foodmake.org just went public. I heard it's the bomb.

From the site:

Within Baltimore Food Makers, you will find people passionate about good food, people who want to know where their food comes from and who play a part in getting it from seed (or animal) to the table, people who are carrying on the important skills of growing and processing food for themselves and their families.

We want to trade, barter, and share our equipment, skills, and knowledge.

How do we make food?
Gardening, canning, dehydrating, fermenting, yogurt and cheese-making, baking, sourdough, home brewing, coffee-roasting, and that's just the beginning!
This group has three main functions:
    1. Connects people in Baltimore who have similar interests.
    2. Provides a forum for sharing resources, skills, and knowledge.
    3. Organizes monthly workshops to learn new skills and eat together.
If you haven't yet, visit our Google group Food Makers, for more information on the group and some local resources you might like to know about.

Baltimore Food Makers unite!

Cynicism and Hope

2008-10-22T15:23:00.001-04:00

From Facebook, via the scratchpad, a status-comment thread:

[My Brother]: has been feeling more cynical than usual. Maybe it's time to call Guinness?

Me: been reading reddit too much, I'll bet. perk up, l'il buddy. you know Obama's got it in the bag.

[My Brother]: The political things are just symptoms. I have increasingly been feeling like the accepted axes of value assignment that govern social, political, personal, and other matters are knocked askew. They don't span quite the right space. This makes everything less efficient and generally prevents our various cultural institutions and social constructions from performing well.

Me: You know it.

"It is the duty of a citizen in a free country not to fit into society, but to make society." (John Holt)

Johanna and I do not value what the schools in this country value, therefore we will not make our children subject to that cultural institution. We do not value what the established churches value (specifically the administrative overhead), therefore we do not submit to their authority. You don't have to become Unabomber2 to step away from the things you disagree with.

I would suggest you be critical of what you expect from the world. Note: "expect", not "hope for". Efficiency and performance are as much symptoms of a skewed framework for perceiving rightness as the current political climate is a symptom of the general brokenness that surrounds us.

Do keep hoping for and working towards something better, though. There's enough to be done to keep us all busy for awhile.

Thoughts?

Advice to a Friend Regarding a Stolen Bike

2008-10-18T20:59:00.002-04:00

I got a note from a friend today, and thought since I responded with a short novel, I might as well post it for posterity's sake. Just to give you some background, my and my wife's bikes were stolen off our back porch in June 2008--our suburban back porch, no less. We had relatively dingy mountain bikes, each was at least 10 years old and neither cost more than $400 at the time of their original purchase. Mine was a low end Giant, hers was a medium end Pacific.

This didn't deter the thief or thieves who cleanly snipped the cable lock we were using and--laughing maniacally, I presume--rode away into the sunset. My friend is aware of this, and so sent me a note on the occasion of his bike being stolen.

Hi Adam,

My bike got stolen today. Your bike shop friends wouldn't have any good ideas about recovering a bike in the streets of Baltimore would they?

Yikes. I feel your pain, brother.

I don't really have any bike shop friends (everyone I've met at bike shops just wants me for my money ;), but in my experience, the best you can do is report it as stolen with the local police department and claim it on your renter's insurance if you've got it (after covering the deductible we got $150).

If you google a bit on "stolen bikes" you'll see that it's pretty much an huge unpunished crime industry. Chances of getting it back are slim to none since when the police pick them up they just toss them in the found property bin and the only time they pick them up is when they've been completely abandoned. What they told us was to call back every now and then to see if anything fitting our bikes' descriptions was returned. The way the system works is stacked against the owners. Police aren't going to "waste time" looking for your bike, and they aren't going to call you if it's found. Thieves know this, so as long as they're discreet it's a low-risk, high-reward crime.

If you're looking to replace, I'd suggest you check out Velocipede Bike Project (http://velocipedebikeproject.org/). It's pretty close to you all and you might be able to find a ride-able bike for under $50. When we visited there wasn't anything for me, but the way they work is fixing up found and donated bikes and selling them, so eventually something will come up. At the time I went, we lived about 30min away, so it was hard to be persistent. Bonus: a $50 bike is much less of a bummer when it gets stolen.

My other piece of advice is to invest in a heavy duty chain (at least 10mm, square cross section links) or a solid, reputable ULock. We bought chains and heavy cables, chain to lock to an object and cable to lock the other wheel (chain: http://is.gd/4kIZ, cable: http://is.gd/4kJ2). The combo means it'd be too much work to even get the wheel so most thieves will leave it alone. Also, make sure your primary lock has an anti-theft money back guarantee. Ours will supposedly cover $501 of bike value. If the company has no guarantee, they don't trust it and neither should you. Our setup--two chains, two cables--set us back about $75, but the increased peace of mind is worth it. If you're going to be parking it in the city, you may also want to look into seat post restraints. Maybe another lightweight cable lock (http://is.gd/4kJM) or unremoveable nut and bolt kit (http://is.gd/4kNU $60, http://is.gd/4kNX $107) for your wheels and seat.

Ultimately, you can only deter thieves. At least a good money back guarantee means you get some cash when (if you live in a city, it's *when* unless you don't ride) your bike gets lifted.

I know this won't give you warm fuzzies, but I do hope you're not afraid to keep riding. With gas at $4.00 and fuel efficiency around 20 mpg, I save $20 every 100 miles I ride. I've put around 440 on my new bike since June, so that's about 1/3 of my bike paid for. Note, this number doesn't account for the fact that my bikeable routes are more efficient than my vehicular routes. For example, my ride to work at Black and Decker is about 16 mi round trip, but my drive is about 35 mi round trip. That's nearly $6 a day. Non-trivial amounts of cash remain in my pocket and I get progressively thinner: win-win.

Simple Permutations in Python and Ruby

2008-10-08T13:13:00.008-04:00

A permutation is an ordered arrangement of objects. For example, 3124 is one possible permutation of the digits 1, 2, 3 and 4. If all of the permutations are listed numerically or alphabetically, we call it lexicographic order. The lexicographic permutations of 0, 1 and 2 are:
012   021   102   120   201   210
What is the millionth lexicographic permutation of the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9?

On the way to solving Project Euler problem 24 I came up with a simple recursive function for generating permutations of a simple list (or list-like) object. Check it out:

def permutations(li):
""" Return all permutations of a given list.  This function 
assumes every element of the list is unique. """
if len(li) <= 1:
yield li
else:
for el in li:
for p in permutations([e for e in li if not e == el]):
yield [el] + p

Usage:

>>>for p in permutations('abc'): 
...  print p

['a', 'b', 'c']
['a', 'c', 'b']
['b', 'a', 'c']
['b', 'c', 'a']
['c', 'a', 'b']
['c', 'b', 'a']

The most important thing to recognize is that this is a generator, so it produces only as many results as are required. That is, instead of a method that produces every permutation, perhaps accumulating to a list of results, and then displays all results at once, this function produces one result at a time. The huge payoff is that if I want to find the first n permutations of a long sequence, I don't have to waste time producing all permutations even though I only need the first few. Another bonus: because the list is passed to the function in lexicographic order, permutations are produced in lexicographic order. Just for fun (and to test my burgeoning Ruby chops) here's the rough equivalent in Ruby:

def permutations li
if li.length < 2
yield li
else
li.each do |element| 
permutations(li.select() {|n| n != element}) \
{|val| yield([element] << val)}
end
end
end

It can be called in essentially the same way:

>>>permutations(['a','b','c']) do |n| 
...  puts
...  print n
...end

abc
acb
bac
bca
cab
cba

The only real difference is that rather than passing a generator out of permutations, I pass a block of code in. In proper coroutine style, the external block is executed at every yield statement on the top level (on the original call) and the recursive block (line 7) is used to accumulate values from descendant calls into a complete permutation. Additionally, the Python version will accept any sequence that supports x for x in sequence style list comprehension and always returns lists. The Ruby version (as far as I can tell) only takes arrays and always returns arrays.

Enjoy!

A Mathematician's Lament

2008-09-27T21:00:00.000-04:00

Some quotes from "A Mathematician's Lament", an essay by Paul Lockhart from 2002

The first thing to understand is that mathematics is an art. The difference between math and the other arts, such as music and painting, is that our culture does not recognize it as such. Everyone understands that poets, painters, and musicians create works of art, and are expressing themselves in word, image, and sound. In fact, our society is rather generous when it comes to creative expression; architects, chefs, and even television directors are considered to be working artists. So why not mathematicians?

...

If I had to design a mechanism for the express purpose of destroying a child’s natural curiosity and love of pattern-making, I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as is currently being done — I simply wouldn’t have the imagination to come up with the kind of senseless, soul-crushing ideas that constitute contemporary mathematics education.

...

A complete prescription for permanently disabling young minds — a proven cure for curiosity. What have they done to mathematics! There is such breathtaking depth and heartbreaking beauty in this ancient art form. How ironic that people dismiss mathematics as the antithesis of creativity. They are missing out on an art form older than any book, more profound than any poem, and more abstract than any abstract. And it is school that has done this! What a sad endless cycle of innocent teachers inflicting damage upon innocent students. We could all be having so much more fun.

Two thoughts strike me instantly. First (and easiest to understand) is that this is another beautiful explanation of why my children will never set foot inside the doors of a school, as far as it concerns me.

Second, I'm troubled that it's difficult for me to think of the practice of math as an entirely creative act. Not because I have any objections to the idea, but because I have been so thoroughly schooled to think of math as the manipulation of rules to achieve a goal set for me by someone else. Why are the results of a child's (or an adult's) mathematical explorations not celebrated as creative endeavors? I wouldn't suggest we let a person tell us 2+2 is 5 and clap our hands in response, "Yay, art!". I would suggest, though, that the fact that correctness trumps the act ("if you're wrong you should stop, maybe you're just not a 'math person'") illustrates how deeply messed up our understanding of the place of math in society is. I'm not even troubled as much as I am frustrated at all the wasted years of brain-dead, worthless problem solving this broken system told me was "math". Never too late to start, though.

All thoughts of homeschooling aside, I strongly suggest you read the article.

iPhone interface design

2008-08-20T13:15:00.001-04:00

Ask E.T.: iPhone interface design

From Tufte's comments and criticisms on the iPhone interface: "To clarify, add detail. Clutter and overload are not an attribute of information, they are failures of design. If the information is in chaos, don't start throwing out information, fix the design."
Overall, he approves, but his comments have interesting applications to the reporting and data heavy interface I'm working on for my day job. The first step in "cleaning up" the interface may not be to throw everything out and start from zero, intending to make the simplest thing possible. That may have the benefit of producing a clean or attractive interface, but may not meet the goal of a more useful interface.

Hacker Spaces Everywhere

2008-08-11T10:28:00.001-04:00

The Last HOPE - July 18-20, 2008 - Hotel Pennsylvania - New York City

Building Hacker Spaces Everywhere: Your Excuses are Invalid

Nick Farr and Friends

16kbps
64kbps

Four people can start a sustainable hacker space. Whether you're in an urban area where space is expensive, in the middle of BFE where finding four people is hard, or just outside of an active war zone in Uganda, there are few excuses left for not joining the global hacker space movement with a place of your own. This talk will cover the ten most often heard excuses for not building a hacker space and how existing hacker spaces, fab labs, co-working spaces, and other tech-oriented "third spaces" have solved them.

All the talks from "The Last HOPE" conference. This one in particular caught my eye.

Ahem, Baltimore, I'm looking at you...

Building the scene in Baltimore

2008-08-05T21:29:00.002-04:00

Nine Tips To Building A Local Tech Culture | How To Split An Atom

1. Meetups with local entrepreneurs. They don’t have to be big, elaborate affairs. Never forget that the focus in the beginning should just be on getting everyone in the “same room.” Like any other sweeping change, everything begins at home.

I just got back from the Refresh Bmore meeting and wanted to take a second to finally post a link to an article that caught my eye a few months ago.

Baltimore is a small town, but there are passionate people. The more I dig in, the more I run across small companies doing interesting work. I suppose more important than companies doing work (which happens everywhere), I'm finding people who are fired up to create software. Since that's what occupies most of my day, I know I'm in the right place for now.

One thing to like about the whole Refresh "movement" is that there's no end goal. From what I can tell, this is true of most semi-structured meetups and gatherings in the tech world. We have on the one hand people who want to share a passion for creating. They could be carpenters, writers, or quilters, the hobby doesn't matter. On the other hand you have geography defining where meetings can take place and how they must be scheduled to allow people access. The nature and quality of the people you are near will dictate the community that will grow. Guess I'm just trying to say Baltimore has good people, and I'm glad I got to meet some of them tonight.

Now we keep it up and see how far we can go.

topic for study

2008-07-17T17:00:00.001-04:00

I'm always looking at lots of problems in various areas. But in the last 10 years, the larger part of my work is on this new area, trying to understand the Internet and the Web, trying to understand the underpinnings. In computer science, we don't have great mysteries. We want to solve problems, but it's not like we have mysterious objects we don't understand. It's not like Physics, which has the Universe, or Economics, which has the Markets, Neuroscience has the Brain, and Biology the Cell. For us, the computer and its software are huge, complex, powerful, and fascinating, but we constructed them. Intrinsically, there's very little mystery.

In many ways, the Internet and the Web, we did not create them. They arrived, appeared, emerged. All these other artifacts, software, processors, and so forth, there was a designer, a team, an entity that intentionally built them. The Web emerged from an interaction of millions of entities on the basis of deliberately simple protocols. Thus the Internet and the Web are our mysterious objects. Computer scientists are looking at them the way other scientists are looking at their mysterious objects. We have to look at them using the scientific method: observations, measurement, experiments, verifiable theories, applied mathematics.

- A Conversation With Christos Papadimitriou (emphasis mine)

What a way to engage the web.

Best Food In All Sports

2008-07-16T16:58:00.005-04:00

You can read it in Velonews, talk to the Chipotle CEO, or take it from Chrisitian Vande Velde. And if they're good enough for him, they're good enough for my family. I hope that guy wins the whole thing. Wins the Tour de France that is, you can tell by the picture that he's already defeated most of the burrito.

I think the results are clear, the star of this year's Tour de France is not some wizzy nanotube bicycle or new electro-shifter. It is the humble burrito, power-mega-fuel to some of the most power-mega athletes on Earth.

[edited 2008-07-16 9:31 PM to shorten links]

Yeah, this pretty much describes why I do it.

2008-07-15T01:56:00.003-04:00

From Cory Doctorow's Little Brother:

If you've never programmed a computer, you should. There's
nothing like it in the whole world. When you program a computer,
it does exactly what you tell it to do. It's like designing a machine
-- any machine, like a car, like a faucet, like a gas-hinge for a door
-- using math and instructions. It's awesome in the truest sense: it
can fill you with awe.

A computer is the most complicated machine you'll ever use. It's
made of billions of micro-miniaturized transistors that can be
configured to run any program you can imagine. But when you sit
down at the keyboard and write a line of code, those transistors do
what you tell them to.

Most of us will never build a car. Pretty much none of us will
ever create an aviation system. Design a building. Lay out a city.

Those are complicated machines, those things, and they're off
limits to the likes of you and me. But a computer is like, ten times
more complicated, and it will dance to any tune you play. You can
learn to write simple code in an afternoon. Start with a language
like Python, which was written to give non-programmers an
easier way to make the machine dance to their tune. Even if you
only write code for one day, one afternoon, you have to do it.
Computers can control you or they can lighten your work if you
want to be in charge of your machines, you have to learn to write
code.

I'm finally getting around to reading Cory's book, which has been sitting on my desktop in PDF form for the last couple of months. I just got to this chunk at the end of chapter 7 and thought I would share it. By the way, the book is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license, that means you can go download your own copy, I highly recommend it.

He even mentions Python, only the second time I've seen it come up in anything nearing pop culture. That is, if you count XKCD as pop culture.

make your own juggling clubs

2008-07-09T12:27:00.001-04:00

added some photos to my flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16913236@N04/

Oak dowel rods, four two-liter bottles, four 16oz bottles, two tennis balls, four rubber furniture feet, four screws, four washers, a dozen staples, yellow is electrical tape and gray is duct tape. Bing, bang, boom, you've got clubs.

Took about an hour and 20$ to make, but the next batch should be 5 to 10 dollars cheaper, as I'll be redesigning a bit to take better advantage of recycled materials. So far they've worked very well for me and seem to be holding up. I have to believe that while ugly, these things could compare with the higher end clubs since they use the same three piece design as clubs that cost three times as much or more. They're a bit light at around 170g per club, but next time around I plan on upgrading from 5/8" dowels to 3/4" and possibly going up from 18" long to 20". That should add the 50g needed to bring them up to the same weight as the pro clubs.

The plastic wrapped handle is the most significant difference between this design and other homemade clubs I've seen on the web. It's probably also the most important step to get right when building. Balance may be a bit off, but since I've only juggled with "real" clubs once I couldn't say for sure.

Check out http://kingstonjugglers.org/gcp/ for the original instruction page or http://www.scribd.com/doc/3876105/The-Green-Club-Project if you just want the document.

Incredible design process.

2008-06-30T10:57:00.001-04:00

Bang & Olufsen design team avoids meetings/process and "sculpts" products little by little - (37signals)

David Lewis, Bang & Olufsen’s chief designer, discusses the company’s unusual approach to design with The Wall Street Journal.

Along the way he reveals the pioneering B&O design team only spends 2-3 days a month at B&O headquarters and works externally the rest of the time, they never meet, they have no fixed process, and they build initial versions of products out of cardboard and paper.

It's amazing to me that a company netting more than 927 million USD in revenue having more than 2500 employees could work this way, but it's becoming less surprising the more I learn about creative companies.

The line from the interview that stuck out to me was this:

This is not just my way of working. All designers for B&O — not
just me and my team of six — are external. The company believes in it.
My six-member team aside, designers for B&O don’t ever meet, we
don’t have any cooperation with one another at all.

Wow, when developers do it, they call them cowboys or lone wolves (with negative connotations), but how much richer would the product be if we approached it as designers crafting something lasting instead of carpenters building something functional? Software can have style in a major way and that style can effect uptake, just look at the beating Apple is giving to Microsoft in the small/independent/open source developer world. There's room for indie, even in the corporate world. Big business doesn't have to mean traditional business.

Not to get too off track, but I've got to point again to Richard Gabriel's admonition that developers be writers of software, not merely coders. An amazing idea if you have a moment to read it. Beauty is possible in code as in life.

claiming the prize. ignore this.

2008-06-13T21:55:00.002-04:00

Technorati Profile

Misdirected attention or misdirected teaching?

2008-06-13T21:26:00.003-04:00

Response to The multi-tasking virus by Nicholas Carr

But it was the audience's reaction [to Columbia professor Dennis Dalton's lecture] that left an even greater impression on Waitzkin:
Over the course of a riveting 75-minute discussion of the birth of Gandhian non-violent activism, I found myself becoming increasingly distressed as I watched students cruising Facebook, checking out the NY Times, editing photo collections, texting, reading People Magazine, shopping for jeans, dresses, sweaters, and shoes on Ebay, Urban Outfitters and J. Crew, reorganizing their social calendars, emailing on Gmail and AOL, playing solitaire, doing homework for other classes, chatting on AIM, and buying tickets on Expedia (I made a list because of my disbelief).

There's a very strong possibility that the real takeaway here is not the malaise and malady of multi-tasking and attention direction disorder[1], but a classroom from 20 years ago be reenacted for the benefit of students today.

I can't defend any of the students' actions, what Waitzkin describes is rudeness and wasted tuition for sure. But, I think there is also fault to be found in the situation itself. The same lecture hall style classrooms have been in use for hundreds of years, but only in the last 10 have computers become ubiquitous. I finished college in 2003 and even then there were maybe 1 in 10 students with laptops and no wireless on campus.

There's an opportunity here. I've heard--and it sounds reasonable--that new business thrives at the boundaries. Where there's turbulence and change, there is also opportunity. The image from this story that sticks in my head is a forlorn professor at the edge of retirement looking out at a sea of rectangles where 10 years ago he saw a sea of faces, or at least a sea of tops of heads. The more appropriate maxim (rather than "kids these days") may be "things are changing, and they're changing faster."

Maybe the problem is just with students getting dumber. But maybe the problem is that the screens only have one side. Maybe the problem is that everyone is looking at something different on their personal screens. Maybe the problem is that instead of experiencing the history the teacher is describing in any of the dozens of interactive ways the technology each student obviously had access to allows, they are expected to listen to a single person somewhere down in front talk about it.

There is no silver bullet, the answer is not simply, "make it a video and put it on YouTube." There is however an opportunity here to try out a lot of different answers. My personal vote, is get the heck out of the classroom. However it goes down, I'm excited to see how the world will be different for my children.

[1] quote from the comments: "That's not mind-wandering, it's attention -- just aimed in another direction."

tags: secure, security, guns, concrete,

2008-06-04T12:30:00.001-04:00

Switch | NAP - SECURITY

WWBSS (What would Bruce Schneier Say?) about this setup? I would love to hear the first hand account of the pen test team that gets the first crack at this place.

please note: if you are a quasi-governmental, overly militaristic, self assured, mega-data center operator, your customers are still only as secure as the fat pipe that connects them to the outside world. More bullets != more secure. All eggs in one basket may not be the best idea.

just, wow. also make sure to check out the video of the super datacenter itself.

changed feed location

2008-06-04T10:44:00.001-04:00

for my, like, one reader. I've moved my feed over to http://feeds.feedburner.com/ProcessOverContent . Gives me some stats, and whatnot. update your readers accordingly.

that is all.

It's about people

2008-06-04T10:42:00.001-04:00

ongoing · Not an OS

I: It’s About People Not Technology · The “Web OS” meme is harmful because it’s about technology. But the Internet’s killer app is people, has always been, will always be. Every single step forward has involved finding new routes and patterns and tools for people to use interacting with other people. No exceptions.

I dropped a comment on this post. I agree with tim so hard it hurts and it seems like a lot of the other commentators were missing the point.

I've heard a glimmer of this same idea in the statement that the internet is not for anonymity (stated in response to some inane comment on reddit). It works very well when you're anonymous, but only because it works very well when any brokenness creeps in. A better explanation might be that even the anonymous seek community, but I prefer to think of anonymity as small scale censorship and we know how well that works on the internet.

We're in a funny place right now with internet technology. It works, many in the know and I'm sure a lot of academics would probably say it could work much better, but it goes. Could this be another case of worse is better? Someone asked the other day why we can't get over Twitter. Why, in the face of it's technical shortcomings and nagging inefficiencies, can't we move to a better platform? Because it's good enough and the people are there.

I don't think "network effects" or "it's viral" are complete enough in their explanation of why these highly connected things become and stay successful. As explanations go, they're still too technical, they kind of make it sound like the reasons for success are new. They're not. The answer is still people. Has been for a really long time and will continue to be when we're all dead and our children (or our robots) are running things.

The moral of this rambling? Don't neglect the people you interact with. Don't neglect the relationships required for your or your company's success. Don't think you are above or outside the need of human contact or cooperation. Right now my wife and I are pondering starting something like a non-profit or foundation to support the kinds of things we're interested in seeing happen in Baltimore. Bread baking/food prep coop and hacker space are the big two and the wall we keep running into is that we're pretty much introverts (INTJ and INTP, respectively). That wall will come down sooner than later, though...

Baltimore DIY Fest

2008-06-01T19:01:00.001-04:00

Here's an event that might roust up some Baltimore makers and hackers: The Balitmore DIY Fest hosted at 2640.

I'll be there with the fam' from 11 till about 3, cutting out at noon-ish for lunch up the street at Chipotle (near 32nd and St Paul). I want to catch the MIDI instruments workshop, and my wife is hoping to see the bicycle repair session. Stuff that's bordering on relevant for us.

Unfortunately we found out about the event a bit too late to get our act together, but next year we hope to have ready a DIY home foodstuffs guide for sale or gift. For goodness sake, tables are only 5$ for the whole day. We do some of our own canning, coffee roasting, sourdough bread baking (all my wife), and beer brewing. "coffee canning beer and bread" has a nice ring to it.

The space is a very cool old (old) church in the midst of refurbishing. I saw a friend's theater company (Run of the Mill Theatre) put on a play there and was very impressed. Right now I'm out in the 'burbs but looking for a place in the city so it'll be easier to get involved with things like this... not that we should let location be any excuse for talking but not walking.

Simple tree using a Python dictionary

2008-06-01T18:23:00.004-04:00

What I already have: table with rows containing (NodeId, ParentId, Title) values.

What I need: a simple tree structure mapping Nodes to their parents.

Solution:

# simple tree builder.

# (node, parent, title)
els = (
 (1, 0, 'a'),
 (2, 1, 'b'),
 (3, 1, 'c'),
 (4, 0, 'd'),
 (5, 4, 'e'),
 (6, 5, 'f'),
 (7, 4, 'g')
)

class Node:
 def __init__(self, n, s):
     self.id = n
     self.title = s
     self.children = []

treeMap = {}
Root = Node(0, "Root")
treeMap[Root.id] = Root
for element in els:
 nodeId, parentId, title = element
 if not nodeId in treeMap:
     treeMap[nodeId] = Node(nodeId, title)
 else:
     treeMap[nodeId].id = nodeId
     treeMap[nodeId].title = title

 if not parentId in treeMap:
     treeMap[parentId] = Node(0, '')
 treeMap[parentId].children.append(treeMap[nodeId])     

def print_map(node, lvl=0):
 for n in node.children:
     print '    ' * lvl + n.title
     if len(n.children) &gt; 0:
         print_map(n, lvl+1)

print_map(Root)

"""
Output:
a
 b
 c
d
 e
     f
 g
"""

This works well for my purposes because I want to be able to go back and refer to an element by id without having to write the code to traverse the tree and find it. Keeping a copy of a tree structure and keeping a reference to each element in a dictionary, I get the best of both worlds. Deletions are difficult since I'm not keeping track of parent nodes. But, since the use case is a menu on an ASP.NET page that rebuilds on every load, I'm not storing a copy of the tree in memory long-term (i.e., deletions and insertions are irrelevant).

Unfortunately this is just a sketch to wrap my brain around the idea. In real life I had to implement it in VB.NET. (see http://pastebin.com/f8e9c672)

Time for another break.

2008-05-28T11:45:00.001-04:00

I'm was going through my personal site and doing some cleanup this weekend when I noticed something; all the sketches shown in this image come from one part of last year. Around the end of summer in 2007, I made a commitment to break my internet habits and stop all non-essential browsing (pretty much any browsing immediately necessary for programming). Right around the time, that is, of one of my longest bursts of technical creativity.

I talk a lot about wanting to create more. Games, art projects, arduino and physical interfaces, financial modeling and automated trading, adapting ideas from software writers I respect and admire (see Richard Gabriel - Conscientious Software [PDF])... Gah! It doesn't get done when my browser is filled with eight tabs of Reddit articles and blog posts.

I've produced some things I'm proud of but right now I've got ideas languishing for want of the time and motivation to give them life. It's time to back out again. Not so much quit internet cold turkey, because there's some value in knowing what's happening in the world and in the community I'm trying to get into (which spends a lot of its time on the web). I am ready to turn off the "show me something interesting" news, however. I am in an attention deficit situation, and that must be rectified.

What would I do with a summer sabbatical from distraction? Let's hope it can last.

2008 05 25

2008-05-26T00:00:00.002-04:00

Itinerary for Sunday, may 25:

ride bike

eat burrito

watch spaceship land on mars

eat ice cream