Seldom logical | Peter Renshaw

My Rules

2012-08-16T06:17:44Z

I have a code that I live by.[1] It's the result of observation, listening and making mistakes. Mistakes tend to have consequences, so I make mental notes, then move on. Unexplained, my rules might appear obscure, stupid even. The stories and reasoning behind them aren't.

#6 Got COM?
I hadn't seen Bill for years. I ran into him one morning on a crowded exit ramp of a train station. That week we organised to have a few drinks after work at a Pub in the city and talked shop until it was time to leave. Then he asked,

"Got COM?", "Got COM?",

then more insistently,

HAVE YOU "Got COM?"

I looked at him thinking, "Starship Troopers"? [2] He smiled and then looked at me dead seriously and explained it doesn't matter where you are, always have your COMS at the ready. It had been drilled into Bill to always be contactable, be it in the field at work or the Pub. Years later I'd forgotten this lesson. I was alone in steep terrain, stuck. I eventually climbed out. If I hadn't got out, I would have been stuck in difficult terrain, without COMs. So every time I go out the door, "Got COM?", is it charged up? [3]

#7 The 7P's
The polite version is straight out of IBM corporate America. I heard Greg use this when I was doing post-grad studies in the early 90's. But I'd heard a better, distinctly local version years prior in Kilcunda. Kilcunda is old coal mining country. I was with a group, doing some mapping of significant land marks. Inches of rain fell that week but I wasn't worried. I'd packed my rain gear.

Coming back after a long cold day in the rain and mud, Andy looked at me spit polishing my GP's. Took another looked at the lace-up and said,

"That's not how you do it. Don't cross the laces, 
 zip one up the middle to the top. Then lace the 
 other left and right to the top. That way if 
 you trip, sprain or break an ankle it only takes 
 one cut up the middle."

I proceeded to unlace, then re-lace my left boot.

"Mate, it's all about the 7P's...
 Prior Preparation Planning Prevents 
 PISS-POOR Performance"

Laughing, I continued re-lacing my other boot. The 7P's. [4]

#13 Pack your own kit, old over new
I was stopped at a security checkpoint at Melbourne International departure.

"Did YOU pack your bags Sir?"

Yes, I answer confidently.

"Can you OPEN your bag please?"

Yes. I'm a little less confident now. There's a que behind me. I'm thinking to myself, "whats in my carry-on that warrants a bag search?" Then I remember, I've packed my first-aid kit in my carry-on instead of my suitcase. I grab the red bag out and pull out the offending items. A tiny pair of surgical scissors and some tweezers. They are promptly taken off me and thrown in the contraband bin. I move on to the next station. Next time I'll pack a plastic set. [5]

I knew exactly where to look for the offending item because I'd packed it. It's the same first aid kit I always carry, modified depending on where I'm going. Only pack reliable items. Pack your own kit, old over new.

#18 CVS2BVS
When you're in the knee deep in shite, CVS2BVS is your best friend. That's what Ian reckons. [6] I'd attended a course on psychology and thinking called "SOT" for work. I was skeptical, a lot of the ideas appeared counter intuitive. But one idea Ian coined CVS2BVS is very useful. Ian made us repeat this, CVS2BVS, CVS2BVS, CVS2BVS just to drum it in. The translation?

Current View of Situation 2 Best View of Situation

How does it work? If you visualise not just where you are at the present, but where you need to be, you are free to concentrate on the path to a solution. CVS2BVS.

#38 Always carry water
It's first light, Moose, Colin and myself are already on the move. I've topped up, gulping down three mugs of water in quick succession. I can't drink any more. The early morning mist is leaving water droplets on my jacket but after a few kilometers, I start warm up and finish the first of many water bottles for the day. Every hour or so I'll drink another bottle and top it up. We move between five and six kilometers per hour. Thirty kilometers takes about 6 hours. That's a lot of water. After lunch we join up with a few others. Moose notices they aren't drinking enough and encourages them to start drinking. Even if they don't feel like it. He then explains the consequences if you don't.


First your blood volume drops, then you get 
dizzy and disorientated and your decision 
making is impaired. The first stages of 
dehydration. If you are dehydrated you won't 
be able to keep up. 

To guard against dehydration, you HAVE to drink 
at least one 600ml bottle every hour you're 
moving. A good check, at each piss-break get 
your mate to check for colour. Straw yellow is 
good, clear is best. That's how seriously you 
have take hydration moving these distances in 
this terrain.

The last bit doesn't go down well, a few odd stares. End of lecture. Everyone nods, we keep drinking. [7]

#42 The trained run towards trouble
It's a warm Friday evening and mums and dads are winding down after a hard week at work. Kids in club uniforms are waiting to compete. All eyes look in the same direction as the sound of the starter pistol cracks over the noise of the crowd.

Me, I've spent the afternoon cooking in a blur of sausages and hamburgers. The high pitch scream of a V8 engine grabs my attention. It's going fast, way over the limit. Not good in the narrow suburban streets decked with cars. Then comes the sounds you don't want to hear. Rubber loosing grip, metal on metal and the final crash as the car jumps the curb, smashing a fence, destroying a bus shelter.

It's silent as Hicks law kicks in and people are deciding how to react.[8] The first group remains silent and freeze. The second can't grasp what has happened are visibly shaken and loose control. Random women start screaming, instinctively looking for their kids. The third group react without hesitation and run with purpose towards the car. As I observe this, I adjust and ease off.

Half a dozen short back and sides swarm over the car. The driver has begun to get up. The first two on site, force the driver back into his seat. Others check around the car and bus shelter for survivors. I reckon a dozen calls to the emergency services were made in the minutes after the accident. If the callers had looked carefully, they'd have realised, first responders were already at the scene. [9]

This is a pattern you see time and time again. When there's a dangerous situation requiring attention, the trained run towards trouble.

Reference

[1] seldomlogical, "Rules and resolutions",
[Accessed Wednesday 17th, July 2012]
http://seldomlogical.com/2012/03/24/rules-and-resolutions

[2] In Starship Troopers - A 1997 film directed by Paul Verhoeven, based on the book of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein - you can hear the lead scream, "got Com?" just as the bugs over-run the FOB.
[Accessed Wednesday 17th, July 2012]
http://www.subzin.com/quotes/Starship+Troopers/Mayday

[3] Don't panic. At this point I could have panicked! Don't panic should be written in big letters across your diary. I didn't panic. I sat down, then stood up, had a cup of tea. This is how I took the shots. Then sat down again and thought carefully before I did anything. This is important because i was a long way up, trees where sparse, the ground wet.

[4] You can see the lace-up I describe and more clearly here. Kilcunda is a small seaside town around 120km south east of Melbourne, Victoria.
[Accessed Wednesday 17th, July 2012]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilcunda%2C_Victoria

[5] I was tired after a long climb up Bowden Spur, over a decade before this shot was taken. I knew Chris lived in the area so I hiked a few more kilometers till I got to his house for a much needed afternoon tea. It was here that Chris told me of a more serious packing mistake. He'd made arrangements to travel. He was in South America. A pretty wild place at the best of times, but Chris was cautious. He told his maid that he'd be away for a couple of weeks and assuming it would be local, the maid didn't think twice packing the Walther and a spare clip into a suitcase. But Chris wasn't traveling local, he was taking a direct flight to the UK, skipping Heathrow and flying straight to Manchester. The security wasn't as tight then. It was only when he got home that he realised what he'd done.

[6] wikipedia, Michael Hewitt-Gleeson, "PhD Lateral Thinking 1980 and SOT. Ian credits SOT with his training as a PO and service in 1st AFT, Vietnam."
[Accessed Wednesday 17th, July 2012]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hewitt-Gleeson

[7] The environment dictates "what type" of water you need? On hot days it's much easier to drink cooled water. Moving long distances in the heat? Add "Green Slime", my name for electrolytic additives such as Gatorade. Cold? I make sure I pack some "hot" water because that extra calorific boost can be the difference between good decisions and bad ones. As you might guess we carried our own water. This is one way to guarantee it's quality though not always practical.

[8] Hicks law is defined as the time taken to make decisions for given choices. In this case the response was around one second.
[Accessed Thursday 2nd August, 2012]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hick%27s_law

[9] The result: One person injured and thankfully nobody was at the bus stop or walking on the pavement. An arrest resulted for the driver. The charges, DUI, reckless driving and possession. A drug stash was discovered in the boot. The driver made a mistake crashing at a local sporting event. In attendance were at least half a dozen, off-duty Victorian Police officers.

White hand, black hand

2012-07-19T10:02:34Z

The bloke on the left is Moose, [1] the one on the right is Dave. Neither had met before but have more in common than most.

It's the morning of day nine. Each of the prior days we'd wake early, fuel up and start off. Dave despite his age has to be one of the fittest blokes I've met. While Moose and myself would leave very early and do a leisurely 5-6km/h for the first 15 to 20 kilometers, Dave and a few others would run. Over the course of the entire trip that's 8x20km running each morning. We'd stop, have lunch then set off to do another 15-20 km before the end of the day. Dave was only one of two runners not to carry injury. We'd spent the previous night at a Ski lodge in Perisher. There was nothing open on the mountain so we piled into the van and drove back the 30km to Jindabyne for dinner. Although late I made the effort to find a supermarket and stock up for breakfast and any supplies I might need for the last day.

So to this shot. We'd had the morning march. Dave has done is 20 for the morning. Moose and myself had split up as I'd tagged along with a nOOb who'd tagged along and was struggling at the back of the main group. I just made the main group at the car park and this is about 4 kilometers from the mid point. Ahead was the summit. Everyone else was forward of us and being the most experienced and level headed of the lot, we bought up the rear to check for stragglers.

It was around this time Dave stopped, dropped his kit and cracked it. The exhaustion of the previous 200 or so kilometers was starting to catch up. In the build-up to the last day I suspect most of the group was cast their eye on the routines and weird specialised kit Moose and myself carried around. I suspect none of them knew that most of it was required just for this last leg. I bent down, picked up Dave's kit, whacked it on his back; gave him a smile and just reminded him it was only a few kilometers more. He took that in and continued on.

When we got to the top Dave understood why. We turned the corner of the last curve and walked into a 50Km/h blast of cold wind. You couldn't see 5 metres in front. There was zero cover. If you sat down the cold ate into your bones. Even the act of breathing exposed you to the cold. The conditions continued all the way to and on the summit. Having said that it was the ideal day to summit. No rain, no snow, just a bit of wind. I got a cheeky smile from Dave at the top as he said, "so that's why you've carried all that shit all this way!!". [2]

This story starts with a Professor, an Analyst and a lost bet and ended nine days and 240 kilometers away at the top of Mt Koscuiszko. This trip made the New York Times. [3]

Reference

[0] seldomlogical, "Rules and resolutions", Rule #1 Nobody gets left behind [Accessed Monday 26th March, 2012]

http://seldomlogical.com/2012/03/24/rules-and-resolutions

[1] flickr, Images, stories, "Read more about Moose and 'Renewin' Strathewen'" [Accessed Monday 26th March, 2012]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157621928042355/

[2] flickr, Image, "Some of the specialist kit I carried (labeled)" [Accessed Monday 26th March, 2012]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4458703613/in/set-72157623445003205

[3] Meraiah Foley, New York Times, "Some See a Housing Bubble Down Under", April 14, 2010 [Accessed Monday 26th March, 2012]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/business/global/15housing.html (cached copy)

Rules and resolutions

2012-08-16T03:56:30Z

It's still summer, Christmas has passed and the new year is well on it's way. With some spare time I had the chance to catch up on some films and TV shows. Somewhere between "wax-on, wax-off" and laughing at DiNozzo being slapped on the head, I realised the distinction between resolutions and rules, why one works and the other doesn't.

Resolutions

At the start of each new year when anything appears possible, we resolve to ourselves to improve or change. We call these promises, resolutions. It's optimistic to think change will occur without effort. It's easier to think of making changes as being light and easy to achieve. Neatly resolved. I can just imagine some marketing campaign for 'new-years' resolutions a random smiling person stridently marching through a green park on a bright sunny morning grasping and catching feathers. Symbolically going through their lists of resolutions with ease.

A resolution is a promise to improve yourself. Resolutions are great in theory yet seldom work. Why? I like to think of a resolution as a lot like a feather. A resolution as a feather has lightness and simplicity. A simple purity that at first glance is attractive until the promise of resolve collides with daily life. Resolutions are easy to discard because they have no mass. A better solution is to find something heavier than resolve.

Consequences

A resolution is meant to spare you the pain of consequences, but can't. The very attractiveness of a resolution distracts you from the failure of not following through. If failed resolutions hide the consequences, maybe understanding the costs of inaction just might be the key to necessary changes? Can we encapsulate pain and lessons of failure for later use?

Rules

Rules aren't clean, simple or light. Think of rules as a path to navigate around sharp rocks. Rocks have weight. You stub your toes on them, you scratch your self climbing over them. Rules are lessons learned but not forgotten. Rules have greater mass than resolutions because they have real consequences. The downside? Rules may appear trivial until you observe the consequences breaking them. That's why if you intelligently follow rules, the appear to work. Rules are the lessons of someone else's pain.

Rules really are small hacks or recipes, on 'how not to stuff up.' Understanding the costs is the key lesson to making rules work. Rules work because you remember the pain and encapsulate it into words. Resolutions fail because there is no direct relationship to pain or failure.

Make

One of the best ways to make rules is to look at mistakes you have made in the past. If there's a more scientific way other than continually stubbing your toe, it's somewhere to be found at the intersection of scientific deduction and your own psychological blind spots. A more intuitive way might be to keep feeling pain, try to find the root cause and a reminder. The easiest way is to blindly copy someone else's rules. Copy at your own risk because you may lack the intuitive understanding the consequences.

My Rules

I have my own rules. Not all are listed. The ones that stick best are the ones I've learned the hard way. I might explain a few of them at a later date.

 1 Nobody gets left behind
 2 Do the hardest things first
 3 Don't screw over your mates
 4 Teams beat individual 
 5 Assume nothing, double check 
 6 Got COM?
 7 The 7P's
 8 Make bullets OR shoot bullets  
 9 Observation is look & REMEMBER 
10 Repeat instructions, twice, differently
11 Right tool for the job OR HACK
12 Visualise the result
13 PYK, old over new
15 Observe, listen, acknowledge
17 Know your current location
18 CVS2BVS
19 Learn new skills, master old ones
22 Never, never, never give up
23 Communication is less, not more
27 Fortune favours the prepared, brave & lucky
35 Your fortunes can turn on a dime
36 Near enough is sometimes good enough
38 Always carry water 
39 Speed, completeness or both?
40 What's your plan C?
41 When trouble strikes, pause before decision 
42 The trained run towards trouble
44 Secure the women and children first
45 Surround yourself with the people you would give your own life for
46 IFF
51 Sometimes it doesn't matter what you do, you still screw up
69 When you screw-up, what matters most is recovery

What's yours?

Reference

[0] ncis.wikia, "Gibbs Rules: A set of ad-hoc rules created by fictional character, Leroy Jethrow Gibbs."

[Accessed Wednesday 4th, January 2012]

ncis.wikia.com/wiki/Leroy_Jethro_Gibbs/Rules

Thanks to Todd Jordan for reading through the draft and wording on rule #2.

The Imitators

2010-06-18T00:27:52Z

The Internet is turning a world of scarcity into a world of abundance. Anything added to the Web by creators, artists and makers has the potential to be copied, reproduced and sold. Why? How do you turn this around?

Scarcity to Abundance

The Internet is turning a world of scarcity into a world of abundance. Abundance is a consequence of the Internet squishing the distance from creators to viewers. You no longer have to trek into gallery to find art or know that special connected person who knows where the best craft is found in obscure markets.

Time, skill and ability

Ubiquity might have replaced scarcity but at the same time it has not greatly increased the numbers of artists, crafters and makers. Creators use their imagination, time and skill to build new things. I suspect people underestimate the level of dedication and energy required to do this. Ability is a prerequisite. Creating things of beauty takes time and skill. Time especially.

Making objects just gets cheaper

There is another revolution going on aside from the Internet. It's happening in China and other third world countries catching up with the Industrial revolution. Especially China. China's ability to manufacture objects cheaply is resulting in opportunities for others to grab new ideas, transform them into a saleable product and hopefully profit.

Process not just product

You can't just make an object from scratch first time. Creation is a process. You take an idea, modify it. Experiment a bit. Create a prototype. Make mistakes. Then formulate a plan to finish the product. Some creators do this entirely in their head. From idea to finished product is their single vision. There is a market for finished products. The traditional way is a gallery, a market or even a shop. Internet companies like Etsy have transplanted that idea into a supermarket. Acting as the middle-man introducing consumers directly to creators. Mostly this is the final product. But what about the process? The steps you take to build a product. Again the traditional solution is a book. For creators it describes the creation process from idea to final product. A book is something physical. It scales and is a great way for makers to capitalise their skills.

Opportunity

If making things is so time and skill intensive, it doesn't take a genius to work out the motive behind people seeing one persons creation as an opportunity to mass produce copies for commercial markets. The Internet helps accelerate this. The self organising nature of the Web means groups of people who create, join together and show off their wares. This makes things easy for people, companies to take. This dispenses the need for the messy world of design and innovation. Skipping the creative means the middleman has one less step to negotiate. One less payment to make. Where does this leave the artist, crafter, creator? In the market place it really means one thing, they miss out on the financial reward.

Disrupting the creating/copy cycle

One way to disrupt the creation/copy cycle is to change the creative perspective. The old way of thinking means you create a final product and the product is the the item of value. This pattern has served us well for a long time. But it's failing in a world where making copies of objects is getting cheaper. The final-product pattern is also failing where retailers and wholesalers see the Internet as a supermarket for creators who build one-off items and don't see the need to support. Creators can fight back if they realise the process is just as saleable as the end product. The transformation of idea to product has a lot of valuable steps. Yet few creators explore beyond the traditional approach.

Moving beyond Information to knowledge

There is a new wave of innovation creative people can really shine. The Internet is maturing. You can, with the help of Internet search and find information on wide varieties of topics. But if you look carefully, when it comes to creating things, the information resides with individual people. This could be another to unlocking profit: creators using the expert skills and processes filling in the long tail of knowledge. The how is the subject of another post.

Reference

[0] Pip Lincolne, meetmeatmikes, "Does anyone know much about copybots?"

http://twitter.com/meetmeatmikes/status/11238407244

Objects as printouts

2010-06-18T00:12:58Z

Yesterday I spent some time listening from my extensive collection of music and talks. [0] I like music. I listen to it a lot but today instead of music I chose to listen to Bruce Stirling's excellent talk at Reboot in Copenhagen last year. [1] [2] I suspect Bruce Stirling makes compelling listening due to the quality of his ideas, no doubt, due to his writing background. He thinks carefully before he speaks. A rare commodity indeed.

Stuff
One particular idea that caught my imagination is the idea of objects should be thought of as "printouts". It's a compelling idea because it a) makes you think about physical objects and their properties and b) how you relate to the stuff you have now or might get in the future. There are a number of reasons you might want to think about the objects you collect around you. If you live in the first world you suffer the dilemma of too much stuff. [3] An unfortunate consequence of the Industrial and consumer revolution.

We can accumulate objects cheaply even if there is no apparent need. Stirling went on to explain the properties of objects, how to think of them in terms of "space and time" and ways to classify objects. All of this with the end goal in mind of reducing the amount of stuff we own. But this is where I'm going to diverge from Stirling. I want to think about how we deal with new objects. Stuff we are going to accumulate in the future that hasn't been created yet.

Objects
We intuitively understand what objects are. Objects take up space. Objects exist in time. Objects also can have social meaning. Objects have to be cared for, repaired and if they are no longer working or are unwanted, thrown out. Discarded. We have a profound relationship with the objects we use. Now I would like you to think beyond the use of objects to their improvement. It's not hard. I'm not asking you to consider design of objects just improvement.

Consider a cooking recipe for your favourite cake for instance. If the recipe is in your favourite cook book it's possible to annotate the recipe to your own taste. A substitution of your special supply of ground whole wheat and baking powder for self-raising flour in that Chocolate cake for instance. Real dark Chocolate instead of the compound stuff. This of course means a few additional lines in the recipe to make sure you don't burn the chocolate over a raw flame, heating water then placing the bowl of broken pieces instead. The recipe is really just a set of instructions to build an object, not just any object by the way but a edible cake modified to your taste. You can do this with cook books.

What would a world look like if you could do this with other everyday objects that you might have in the future?

Printout
What exactly is a printout? The term "printout" is computer slang for "instructions" or a print out of the instructions programmers write to control computers. Programmers write these instructions using human understandable languages, which when translated into machine understandable instructions, instruct a computer to do things. A printout is really a set of tasks to do something. So the best way to think of a printout is a design to do things. A recipe is a print out. You follow the instructions to build your cake. Of course it's not the stock standard cake in your favourite cookbook but a modified version suited to your taste. This is another way to think about objects. Objects as instructions. If Objects are printouts, the printouts can be modified and improved over time. The value has now shifted from the object to the instructions to build the object.

NewFab
Why are we talking about computers, computer slang and printouts? What do they have to do with real world objects? In the not too distant future we will have the capacity to use printouts to modify and create new stuff. Objects created from raw materials. We already have a hint of this. The quality of the objects at the moment would be considered toy-like but that's not necessarily bad if you are a kid. [4] What kid wouldn't love to create one hundred copies of their favourite Tyrinad to build their own Warhammer army? [5]

But for us grown-ups, new forms of fabrication are still not up to the job. While the current crops of Gothic high-tech corporations spit out shiny seamless experiences, we will gobble them up no matter how many slaves die in the process. This will change though. The new revolution in manufacturing will be just as profound as the Industrial revolution. Another tweak in the creation of objects - the ability of personal customisation. "Me" objects. But I'm getting a bit ahead of myself. It hasn't happened yet. Until NewFab technologies are adopted our ability to customise and improve our everyday objects are limited. Possible, but limited.

Continual improvement
But as I've shown, I can improve the quality of my everyday objects like me my favourite Chocolate cake. What makes this possible is the idea of the printout and continual improvement. The printout is the instructions needed to build the object. The real value is in the ability to make continual improvements that let us increase the quality and usefulness of our objects. [6] This can only be possible if we have access to the printout.

Sharing
It's no good making improvements if we can't share them. If there is any lesson to learn about the Internet, it's a place that lets you share your printouts. Sharing begets use. Usage begets improvement. Programmers who share their code notice that not only does the usage of their software objects increase when they share but there is a benefit in the quality of their printout (code) improves as well. [7] So if we think of objects as printouts, if we share them the likelihood of improvement is higher than by not sharing.

Thinking about stuff as printouts instead of objects is useful for creators. Printouts are the instructions to make things. The object is result of following the instructions. I think too often the value is seen in the object but not the printout. We value hand made objects because they are made and designed by people. They have social significance. There is a story behind them. They can be things of beauty and may also have practical use. There is nothing wrong valuing objects in this way. But in doing so we have forgotten the importance of the process, the instructions to build objects, the printout.

I suspect as the revolution in fabrication approaches and the resolution of the fabrication tools increases we will wonder if the real value of our stuff is not in the object but the printout.

Reference
[0] All 1339 items, 15Gb or 13 days, 9 hours and thirteen minutes worth. All are legally mine.

[1] Dave Winer, Scripting.com, "Bruce Sterling at Reboot" [Accessed Tuesday June 15th, 2010] www.scripting.com/stories/2009/10/21/brucesterlingatreboo...

[2] You can also watch the talk. It goes for about 43 minutes and is a 155Mb download in mp4 format. "Bruce Sterling - reboot 11 closing talk", 43 min, mp4. [Accessed Tuesday June 15th, 2010] video.reboot.dk/video/486788/bruce-sterling-reboot-11

[3] Paul Graham, paulgraham.com, "Stuff: I have too much stuff. Most people in America do. In fact, the poorer people are, the more stuff they seem to have... It wasn't always this way. Stuff used to be rare and valuable." [Accessed Tuesday June 15th, 2010] paulgraham.com/stuff.html

[4] bootload, flickr, "2009MAY052009: At Trampoline 1 held in Melbourne, Saturday 28th of March, 2009, Pete Yandell (@notahat) talked about open source fabbers, 3d fabrication, 3D printers and materials to rapidly prototype stuff. An exciting idea because with the right type of materials and blueprints you can reproduce complex products that could not easly by reproduced. Three dimensional objects can be recreated from digital designs by a photocopy like process where layers of material are deposited until the entire object is created. Pete also specifically mentioned making copies of kids toys.", [Accessed Tuesday June 15th, 2010] www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3503485267

[5] Tyrinads, wikipedia.org, "Tyrinads are a fictional race of warrior creatures from the Warhammer 40K board game." [Accessed Tuesday June 15th, 2010] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyranids

[6] As I was writing this article I stumbled on a quick example of this kind of improvement. The master of Gothic high-tech corporations has released a new product that doesn't handle one particular edge case viewing an object. The author decided to modify the recipe to view the object and released a copy for other people to benefit from. An improvement of the object experience using the printout: @tlrobinson, Tom Robinson, "Worst part of lack of hover events etc on iPad: I can't read the XKCD tooltips. Solution: gist.github.com/438642" [Accessed Tuesday June 15th, 2010] twitter.com/tlrobinson/status/16196920383

[7] Pete Warden, petewarden.typepad.com, "There's still going to be some tumbleweed blowing through the long tail of open-source projects, but Github is a massive step forward. I'm eagerly anticipating lots more people pointing out my mistakes, the world of open-source will be a lot more productive with that sort of collaboration." [Accessed Tuesday June 15th, 2010] petewarden.typepad.com/searchbrowser/2010/06/an-end-to-th...

Hacking People

2010-06-18T00:08:50Z

The talk was divided into three parts: a) "Know your Enemy, Hacking humans"; b) "In the field: real life examples"; and c) "Hacking Bullies". In this, the first part of the talk I identifying bullies and their modes of attack. The second will possibly never be written up for public consumption but it illustrated how bullies operate using using personal anecdotes. The last part of the talk I have already written up. It explains how you might go about Hacking Bullies [7] using network science concepts.

Preamble

My name is Peter. I'm a programmer. One of those gen-X slackers you hear about. My second computer was an Apple 2e clone shipped from Singapore in parts and hand assembled. I'll be as lo-tech as you can get and read from sheets of paper. My talk is on bullies and what happens when they discover computers. I'm not a psychologist, I'm a technologist with crap social skills. I'm interested in how bullies are adapting to computers and network, how to identify and neutralise them. The idea I want to explore, "Is there a better way to identify and disrupt Cyberbullies?". To do this we first must understand bullies and the mechanics of bullying.

Introduction

The effects of bullying is enough of a problem for the United States Secret Service to carry out a threat assessment [8] to understand why so many school kids carried out "targeted violence" [9] in American schools? One of the findings: Bullying was identified as a major contributor in shootings in the United States secondary schools. [10] The number of reported bully attacks in lower level schools in Norway 1983 was 1 in 7. In the same country the number of reported attacks in lower schools in 2001, increased by 50%. And more worrying statistic, the number of students in the most serious forms, up 67%. [11]

Bullying has serious implications and it can be quantified. So what and who are these bullies?

Know your enemy

First some terminology. I want to use the word ATTACKER and TARGET to describe a "bully" and their "victim". I choose these words carefully to redefine the problem. People who are attacked, shouldn't be thought of as being helpless as the term "victim" implies. Neither, should bullies be described in favourable terms.

When I say ATTACKER, I want you to think "bully" and "looser". When I say TARGET I want you to think, "could this be me?".

What is bullying?

Bullying is any negative action that is intentional, systematic and repeated. The majority of bullying is by two to three ATTACKERs. [12] The TARGET is chosen for a number of reasons, but mostly because of some in-balance of social power. [13]

Recognition

The key to recognition, is realising an ATTACKER is someone who has a strong need for power and negative dominance. Recognition relies on understanding the psychology of the ATTACKER, not just their appearance. This makes recognition difficult.

Fighting style

When it comes to attacking men, women, girls and boys each have their own particular style. The simplest explanation I can think of is "Men attack like paratroopers. Women, special agents". Males are aggressive and physical. Why bother talking, when you push, shove, kick and punch your TARGET. As a rule, males tend to be regressive and overt. Males attack their TARGET directly just like Paratroopers. Violent, fast, no retreat, no prisoners.

"Men attack like paratroopers. Women, special agents"

Females are less physically able than males but can be just as aggressive and have a uniquely adapted fighting style. They excel at indirect attack. Indirect attacks are concealed and subtle, something males can't quite comprehend. This is why females are special agents. They can get in under your guard and deliver attacks just devastating as the male, undetected. Do not underestimate the arsenal female ATTACKER have at their disposal.

Males might take things from you, be physical, be overtly verbal, make threats and force you to do things. Female use of social exclusion, spreading rumours, lies and sophisticated use of language is relatively undetectable in comparison to crude methods used by Males. [14]

Hacking Humans

Why do ATTACKERS try to hack humans? How do they find their TARGET? Why do they engage an audience?

Weakness

How does an ATTACKER select a TARGET? It's not difficult. An ATTACKER will select a TARGET by identifying and exploiting weakness in certain individuals. An ATTACKER will try to ascertain if a person is more vulnerable than others using a wide variety of criteria. Is the person socially excluded? Are they introverted? Are they different? Some common ways to access weakness include: Gait, [15] blind spots [16] and asymmetry. [17]

An anatomy of an attack

When an attack occurs the ATTACKER and TARGET engage in a sort of choreographed dance. ATTACKER, TARGET, HENCHMEN and OUTSIDERs playing a defined but changeable role.

SCAN The ATTACKER views the battlefield scanning for TARGETs. [18] Them things happen fast.
SIGNAL The ATTACKER has signaled the TARGET. At this point if the battleground is public, onlookers are now involved.
ATTACK The bully can now joined by HENCHMEN, followers of the bully who actively join in on the attack. The TARGET probably has no idea this is going to happen because of blind spots and will be stunned. Unable to respond. It's at this stage OUTSIDERs, people who happen to be in the battleground become involved.
CHOOSING SIDES The ATTACKER needs OUTSIDERS to join in to re-inforce their social status. An OUTSIDER has multiple choices. They can support the ATTACKER and actively join in or remain passive. An OUTSIDER may choose not to get involved and watch. An OUTSIDER might choose to actively DEFEND or potentially DEFEND.
OUTCOME The ATTACKER has bullied the TARGET. Depending on the circumstances HENCHMEN may have also joined in.

Intervention as a solution?

What about the OUTSIDERS? Why didn't they DEFEND? Why did some join the ATTACKERS side? The sad truth is most OUTSIDERs are of no help to the TARGET. [18]

Why don't OUTSIDERs choose to help a TARGET? The most common explanation is OUTSIDERs are fearful of loosing status or worry about getting hurt or can't decide and choose to remain passive. The ATTACKER asymmetrically takes control of a larger group even though OUTSIDERs potentially have numerical advantage. This is called the "Bystander Paradox". [19]

For the TARGET there is no easy way out of this situation. It is up to the OUTSIDERs to intervene. By taking a stand, OUTSIDERs have a chance to reduce or circumvent the cycle of bullying. How do you do this? Counter attack the ATTACKER. The single point of weakness an ATTACKER is lack of numerical force. If you can turn enough bystanders back onto the ATTACKER and HENCHMEN you may be able to blunt and reduce the ATTACK at the SIGNAL phase. [20]

What about the bullying on the Internet? Bullies have now discovered the Internet. Can you start Hacking Bullies. [21]

Reference

[0] Peter Renshaw, Trampoline 2, flickr, "My Trampoline 2 flickr set: Trampoline was an informal day of sharing ideas in Melbourne, Australia, Saturday 24th of October, 2009." [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009] http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157622667018586/

[1] Peter Renshaw, Melbourne, Australia, flickr, "My Melbourne Flickr set showing images from around Melbourne CBD.", [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009] http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600195992630/

[2] Peter Renshaw, seldomlogical, "Hacking Bullies: 'is there a better way to identify and disrupt Cyber Bullies?'"., [Accessed Saturday, 13th March 2010] http://seldomlogical.com/2010/03/13/hacking-bullies/

[3] At the time, I didn't mention the focus of the talk. I was thinking about what might happen when you try to replicate "social networks" on-line exclusively for women. This was unintentional and might have turned a few listeners off. Wikipedia defines "social networks" as "... a physical description of how people organise themselves. The self organising nature of social networks appear to follow the rules of network science which allows the study of networks to be done using various mathematical techniques.", [Accessed Saturday, 13th March 2010] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_network / www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/4501255443/

[4] Looking at bullying from a specific gender viewpoint is interesting, because I suspect the more verbal culture women exhibit captured online can now more easily be analysed for signs of bullying. I tend to write about these ideas to look for new insights into problems. Bullying is a problem. I've experienced it first hand but not on-line. I see bullying on-line as an bigger problem. We are now in a period of time where "social software" is growing quickly and worth exploring further. See point [2].

[5] Paul Graham, paulgraham.com, "What you can't say: 'It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise.'", [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009] http://paulgraham.com/say.html

[6] Peter Renshaw, flickr, "2009AUG251053: SBS INSIGHT: girls, relationships & cattiness: Computers are powerful amplifiers, so small spats between individuals can become front page news. Tactics used by Women that might work face to face, have the potential to back-fire big time on the Internet. Anywhere computers come into the conversation, the resultant data can be stored, searched, retrieved and with the advent of social software this can now be done real time.", [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009] http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3854522410/

[7] Peter Renshaw, seldomlogical, "Hacking Bullies: The idea, a simple hypothesis, 'Is there a better way to identify and disrupt Cyber Bullies?'", 13 March 2010, [Accessed Saturday, 13th March 2010] seldomlogical.com/2010/03/13/hacking-bullies/

[8] Fein, R.A. Ph.D., Vossekuil, B., Pollack, W.S. Ph.D., Borum, R. Psy.D., Modzeleski W., Reddy M., Ph.D., "Threat Assessment in Schools: A guide to managing threatening situations and to create safe school climates", United States Secret Service & United States Department of Education, Washington, D.C., 2002. (pdf, 754Kb), [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009] http://www.secretservice.gov/ntac/ssi_guide.pdf

[9] Fein, R.A. Ph.D., Vossekuil, B., Pollack, W.S. Ph.D., Borum, R. Psy.D., Modzeleski W., Reddy M., Ph.D., "Threat Assessment in Schools: A guide to managing threatening situations and to create safe school climates: 'Targeted violence' any incident of violence where a known or knowable attacker selects a 1 particular target prior to their violent attack.", P 3., Ibid, [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009]

[10] Fein, R.A. Ph.D., Vossekuil, B., Pollack, W.S. Ph.D., Borum, R. Psy.D., Modzeleski W., Reddy M., Ph.D., "Chapter III - Key findings of the safe school initiative's study of targeted school violence: '... Many attackers felt bullied, persecuted, or injured by others prior to the attack ...'", P17., Ibid, [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009]

[11] olweus.org, FAQ, "Question: How Common Is Bullying?", [Accessed Friday, 16th October 2009] http://www.olweus.org/public/faqs.page#Answer_numberCbQ7

[12] Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, colorado.edu "Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (BPP): 'In the context of school bullying, the victim is usually a single student, who is generally harassed by a group of two or three students, often with a "negative leader." A considerable proportion of the victims, 20-40 percent, report, however, that they are mainly bullied by a single student.'", [Accessed Saturday, 13th March 2010] http://www.colorado.edu/cspv/blueprints/modelprograms/BPP.html

[13] Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, colorado.edu "Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (BPP): Prevalence of Bullying" Ibid, [Accessed Saturday, 13th March 2010]

[14] This is a gross generalisation but for the purposes of the talk it worked. It is interesting to read what Olweus has found looking at this issue. This is some of what he had to say: "... This shows that it is boys who are more likely to be the perpetrators of what Olweus calls "direct" bullying, that is, bullying which involves direct physical or verbal attacks. He has concluded that girls are more likely to use indirect, subtle, social means to harass other girls. He refers to behaviour such as social exclusion, manipulation of friendship relationships, spreading rumours, etc. ..." (Olweus, D. 1993, Bullying at School: What We Know and What We Can Do. Oxford UK: Blackwell Publishers.)

Sudermann, Jaffe, Schieck, Watson, Lehmann, Greer "A School-based Anti-Violence Program", 1996, [Accessed Friday April 2, 2010] http://www.lfcc.on.ca/bully.htm

[15] The study of Psychopaths has revealed interesting insights into possible ways TARGETS can be exploited for weakness by ATTACKERS. Weakness comes in many forms. One in particular is gait or the way people move. This helps explain how Bullies can scan for TARGETS so easily. "Psychopaths target anything weak. They assess voice, gait, circumstances, height, weight, etc. Yes fam with gait studies"

Joe Navarro/@navarrotells, [Accessed Wednesday, 7th April 2010] http://twitter.com/navarrotells/status/11069087171

Interested in spotting Psychopathic behaviour? Here are some further references:

Joe Navarro, "How to Spot a Psychopath", (Kindle Edition only), ASIN: B002TX70G8 [Accessed Wednesday, 7th April 2010] www.amazon.com/How-Spot-Psychopath-ebook/dp/B002TX70G8/re...
Ian Walker, Fibro Majestic Film, "I, Psychopath: A 1hr documentary available on DVD who documents scientific testing 'Sam Vaknin' to see if he is in fact a Psychopath.", ASIN: B002W6ZI1Q, 2009. [Accessed Wednesday, 7th April 2010] http://www.magicreal.com.au/filmandtv.php?film=4 www.amazon.com/I-Psychopath-Ian-Walker/dp/B002W6ZI1Q/ref=...

[16] The ATTACKER simply exploits a vulnerability in how individuals view themselves. We may be able to understand how others view some of our personality traits, but not all of them.

[17] ATTACKERS will exploit a TARGETs disparity in size, strength or social status. ATTACKERS use superior force and peer pressure.

[18] Read through reference [15] to understand how ATTACKERS can achieve this.

[19] Bystander paradox How can the TARGET decide what the roles OUTSIDERs choose? Are OUTSIDERs supporting the ATTACKER?, helping the TARGET?, or remaining neutral? The TARGET cannot tell. If you fight back and take on an ATTACKER and OUTSIDER can you justify both? This is the bystander paradox - the ability to justify the response when attacked. The ATTACKER has no such problem.

[20] Larry Abramson, NPR (National Public Radio), "Hit Back At Bullies? Not At This School", "That's why the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program tries to turn anti-bullying efforts into part of the school culture, rather than just the topic of an occasional assembly. The concepts are simple: Don't bully, help those who are being bullied and tell an adult what's going on. Pearre tries to reinforce the idea that the bully doesn't act alone. The community can take away the bully's power by refusing to cheer him on, by telling an adult, or perhaps the ultimate step: stepping in to help the victim." [Accessed Saturday, 13th March 2010] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125137071

[21] Peter Renshaw, seldomlogical, "Hacking Bullies: 'is there a better way to identify and disrupt Cyber Bullies?'"., Ibid. [Accessed Saturday, 13th March 2010]

Hacking Bullies

2010-03-13T10:26:35Z

Several months later

This is an edited talk I presented at Trampoline 2 [0] in Melbourne [1], Australia, Saturday 24th of October, 2009 entitled: "Hacking People, Hacking Bullies".

"Is there a better way to identify and disrupt Cyber Bullies?". I know for example the current best detection and prevention systems we have, the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program (OBPP) [2] by Dan Olweus [3], manually identify bullies by peer association in their social networks. [4] Could this technique be extended to on-line social networks? I wanted to explore the idea of using network science techniques using maths and computers to identify hidden bully clusters in social networks.

The talk was divided into three parts: a) "Know your Enemy, Hacking humans"; b) "In the field: real life examples"; and c) "Hacking Bullies". The first part of the talk involved identifying bullies and their modes of attack. The second, illustrated how bullies operate using using personal anecdotes. The third, explained some network science concepts and discussed how you might disrupt bullies using these techniques. At some later date I will write up the two sections the talk.

In retrospect I probably could have just presented an extended talk on "Hacking Cyber bullies with Network Science". At the time, I made the decision to go into detail to define the way bullies behave, and give examples of how I've seen them operate. Boring but necessary to find a solution. The first part of the talk where I described bullies and how they operate appeared to turn a lot of listeners off. Is it because it's something you shouldn't say? [5] I don't know? I tend to write about these ideas to look for new insights into problems I see. [6] Bullying is a problem. I've experienced it first hand. It is the prime motivation for exploring these ideas. Bullying on-line is an even bigger problem and in an age of "social software" worth exploring further.

Preamble

My name is Peter. I'm a programmer. One of those gen-X slackers you hear about. My second computer was an Apple 2e clone shipped from Singapore in parts and hand assembled.

I'll be as lo-tech as you can get and read from sheets of paper. Occasionally I'll digress from the script. I tried to Kevin Bacon to stand in but he was busy and suggested Derek Zoolander and as soon as I mentioned to Derek there would be lots of big words and no cat-walk - Derek bailed, so you're stuck with me.

My talk is on bullies and what happens when they discover computers. If you want to use twitter and hash tags try #hackbully [7] I'll probably read the comments later. I'm not a psychologist, I'm a technologist with crap social skills. I'm interested in how bullies are adapting to computers and network, how to identify and neutralise them.

Hacking Bullies

The Internet is a big network. Bullies now have a much bigger playground and audience to choose from. So lets look at some real world examples. Some people collect stamps, others prefer spore, moulds and fungus mine is on-line behaviour.

Here's a few examples of cyber-bullying I've found. Gretel was on live national television and Will Anderson (ATTACKER) [8] decided that Gretel Kileen [9] was good TARGET and posted live insults on twitter taunting OUTSIDERS to join in on the fun. Gordon Ramsey, a known ATTACKER gets lots of attention these day when OUTSIDERs look for images of "fat, Gordon Ramsey", [10] for fun. Is this a case of OUTSIDERs fighting back? Erin Andrews, [11] a news sports reporter in the US was ATTACKED by having video footage of her walking around after coming out of a shower posted on Youtube. Then had trouble convincing police she was a TARGET. [12]

Bullies have discovered computers and networks. Even Mika [13] uses the power of song writing to asymmetrically attack bullies from his childhood. I think it's time to use our powers for good.

What can we do?

Network science 101

Now we are almost up to the fun bit, where we use out knowledge of network science [14] to hack bullies. But first a short diversion into network science theory. Understanding networks allows us to understand markets, societies, species, corporations. Networks can be biological man made or social. There are four ideas that make hacking bullies possible:

Small world networks
Hubs
How information spreads
Mapping networks

If we understand the rules of networks it give us the theory to create tools to hack bullies.

1) Small world networks

Steven Strogatz [15] and Duncan Watts [16] are both mathematicians who succeeded in understanding the properties and structures of small worlds. Strogatz and Watts started asking basic questions about connections and relatedness of nodes in networks and realised understanding the "relatedness" of nodes and how each node is connected to another node is an important problem.

Strogatz and Watts, first tested their ideas on a network model of Hollywood actors and their relationship to "Kevin Bacon". They had a theory but no confirmation. The problem to solve? If an actor plays a part in a film, what is the chain of actors to reach Kevin Bacon. How many links are there in the chain? Lets try an example. How is Derek Zoolander (Ben Stiller) related to Kevin Bacon?

"Ben Stiller" was in "Tenacious D in the Pick of Destiny" 
(2006) with "John C. Reilly" who was in "The Wild River" 
(1994) with "Kevin Bacon" [17]

Strogatz and Watts discovered two structural properties of what we now call "small world networks". [18] The first, there are relatively few related nodes in a small world. The second, small world systems tend to cluster together closely. The cluster close enough to find another node in a distant small world via minimal hops.

2) Hubs

Albert-Laszlo Barabasi [19] looked over the results of Watts/Strogartz data and made an interesting discovery, networks are not connected randomly. Barabasi found the mechanism that lets small world link together. The idea he observed is that some nodes in a network have many more links to them than other nodes. We call these super nodes, hubs. The two most important insights Barabasi has made: a) Networks are robust. If individual nodes are knocked out, the network survives. b) The hub is the weak spot. Knock a hub out, the network is severely interrupted. [20]

3) Spread of information

Alessandro Vespignani [21] is a physicist who specialised in understanding how disease spreads in biological systems. By reading Barabasi work on networks, Vespignani observed transmission of disease in a network is not random. Diseases moves quickly and spreads far via hubs. [22] Conclusions: Small changes in the network have an effect on the whole system because the network is inter-related. But a virus, disease or information will not be eradicated in a network unless you take into account hubs. Understanding Hubs is the key.

4) Marc Vidal and genetic maps

Marc Vidal [23] is a geneticist interested in looking at the inter-connectedness of cells. After reading the research by Barabasi decided to look at disease as a network. Instead of looking at the connected cells one by one Barabasi suggested to Vidal to look at the connections of disease and genes to create a map. A map of related diseases and genes. [24] This idea is significant. It means you can now see how diseases are related. An idea made possible because it was redefined as a network science problem. Now we come to our ultimate aim. Can we hack bullies who inhabit our electronic networks? Can we use network science for example in the same way terrorist cells are identified and disrupted?

Predicting behaviour

Could we use network science to predict where bullies might be operating? If so, how might we go about this? Lets think about what we know about bullies.

bullies inhabit small world social networks online and offline
bullies have identifiable negative behavioural characteristics
bullies attract followers who attack,defend or remain neutral
bullies exhibit hub like behaviour
bullies have victims

What would happen if on a social network service we looked at reported behaviour and people at the same time. Just like Marc Vidal and genetic maps. What if we mapped the behaviour of social networks to look for related behaviour and hubs? What we would be looking for is the hubs of bad behaviour. Could we identify bullies by their associations to HENCHMEN, OUTSIDERs who observe an ATTACK? We know from Barabasi that if we ignore the hubs the problem remains.

A network of bad behaviour is stable because the hub remains intact. Can we knock out hubs and interrupt bad behaviour? There is nothing to stop any of the big social software site doing this. We now have enough theory to create the tools to disrupt bullies in networks. We know from Vespignani that small changes in the network make a difference and that if we redefine the problem and think of bullying and bad behaviour as a network science problem, we can tackle it successfully with maths instead of ignoring it.Reference

[0] Trampoline 2, flickr.com, "my images of Trampoline 2 taken on the day on flickr"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/collections/72157622546767967/

[1] Melbourne, flickr.com, "my flickr set of Melbourne"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157608350016296/

[2] olweus.org, "Olweus Bullying Prevention Program"

http://www.olweus.org/public/bullyingpreventionprogram.page?menuheader=2

[3] Dan Olweus, clemson.edu, "History of Dan Olweus"

http://www.clemson.edu/fat, olweus/history.htm

[4] Olweus Bullying Prevention Program, "The Olweus Bullying Prevention Program Overview: (Research_OBPP_Effective.pdf) Black, S. A., & Jackson, E. (2007). Using bullying incident density to evaluate the Olweus Bullying Prevention Programme. School Psychology International, 28, 623-638."

http://www.olweus.org/public/document/obppeffectiveresearch

[5] Paul Graham, paulgraham.com, "What you can't say"

http://paulgraham.com/say.html

[6] seldomlogical.com, "Don't read this: Don't think I write for anything, other than for my own selfish reasons. So stop reading, right now. Stop!"

http://seldomlogical.com/2009/08/27/don-t-read-this/

[7] #hackbully, "a twitter hashtag" for responses on the talk. I was interested to see what kinds of responses I would get on the back channel. There was no response.

http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23hackbully

[8] Paul Sheehan, smh.com.au, "I married an Ascham bully, Sydney Morning Herald, May 11, 2009"

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/i-married-an-ascham-bully-20090510-az4l.html

[9] Sean Nicholls and Emily Dunn, smh.com.au, "Night of knives for Logies host, Sydney Morning Herald, May 5, 2009"

http://www.smh.com.au/national/night-of-knives-for-logies-host-20090504-asmz.html

[10] bootload, flickr, "2008MAY191647: I used an image from the Age newspaper green guide with Gordon Ramsey. Some of the tags defining the accompanied article included "fat", "fatfree", "gordon", "ramsey", "gordonramsey" so the image pops up in google for people curious to see how heavy Gordon used to weigh."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2504982146/

[11] bootload, flickr, "ESPN reporter complains of harassment in call, AP wire, The Age Newspaper, 21 June, 2009. I get a lot of hits on this image despite the fact there are no tags."

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3773256687/in/set-72157621892203204

[12] "ESPN reporter complains of harassment in call", et.al. The article describes how much trouble ESPN reporter Erin Andrews had with police trying to convince them a serious privacy breach had been committed.

http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dms/bbs/fac/vidal.html

[13] Mika, contactmusic.com, "Mika: Mika's bully motive, (uncredited) 22 September 2009: '"We Are Golden" singer Mika draws on being bullied when writing songs, saying he always hoped his insulting words would stick in their heads through his catchy melodies."

http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/mikas-bully-motive_1116736

[14] Network Science, nap.edu, "Network Science, Committee on Network Science for Future Army Applications, National Research Council, 978-0-309-10026-7, 2005: It is the organized knowledge of networks based on their study using the scientific method."

http://www.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11516&page=26

[15] Steven Strogatz, wikipedia, "An applied Mathematician Professor at Cornell University. Interested in biological mathematics. Teamed up with Duncan Watts to work on 'mathematical theory of small world networks'."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Strogatz

[16] Duncan Watts, wikipedia, "A research scientist at Yahoo in 'Human Social Dynamics group'. Worked with Steven Strogatz on the 'mathematical theory of small world networks.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DuncanJ.Watts

[17] Based on the game, Six degrees of Separation. You can read about it in the wikipedia article, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SixDegreesofKevinBacon

[18] Small world network, wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-world_network

[19] Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, wikipedia R. Albert, H. Jeong, A.-L. Barabasi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert-Laszlo_Barabasi

[20] Albert R., Jeong R., Barabasi A, "2000, Nature #406, pp 378-402., 'Error and attack tolerance of complex networks'", (pdf 249Kb)

"... error tolerance is not shared by all redundant systems: it is displayed only by a class of in-homogeneously wired called scale-free networks, which include the World-Wide Web, the Internet6, social networks7 and cells8. We find that such networks display an unexpected degree of robustness, the ability of their nodes to communicate being unaffected even by un-realistically high failure rates. However, error tolerance comes at a high price in that these networks are extremely vulnerable to attacks ..."

http://www.barabasilab.com/pubs/CCNR-ALBPublications/200007-27Nature-ErrorAttack/200007-27_Nature-ErrorAttack.pdf

[21] Alessandro_Vespignani, wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessandro_Vespignani

[22] Balcana D., Colizzac V., Gonalvesa b., Hud H., Ramascob J and Vespignani A., Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, "Multiscale mobility networks and the spatial spreading of infectious diseases"

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/51/21484

[23] Mark Vidal, "Biological & Biomedical Sciences, Harvard Medical School"

http://www.hms.harvard.edu/dms/bbs/fac/vidal.html

[24] Vidal M.; Barabasi A-L., Cusick M., New York Times, "Mapping the Human 'Diseasome', New York Times, 2008MAY05"

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/05/05/science/20080506_DISEASE.html

Credit: Thanks to Trace for corrections and the attendees at Trampoline 2 who listened to the end.

A benevolent social hack

2009-09-13T08:21:27Z

Today I witnessed a social hack by a UK hacker who in the space of a month turned around 60 years of history. What did it take? A simple idea, a measure of determination, some imagination and a bit of luck. What did he achieve? He persuaded the government of the United Kingdom with the help of fellow citizens, to acknowledge the maltreatment of a deceased fellow Hacker.

What is a Hacker?

You might have heard of Hackers in the media. [1] Those pesky 12 year-old boys and their computers at it again, breaking into Government computers and causing millions of dollars damage. If you believe the media, Hackers are also responsible for numerous other electronic sins when the most likely explanation is probably a poor choice of operating system. [2] Hackers have something of an image problem. In fact the term Hacker has been hijacked and misused. It used to mean a person who playfully enjoyed puzzles, reveled in understanding complicated and building new technology. Hackers tend to be benevolent. Less interested in exploiting for gain [3], more interested in mastery and exploits to show amongst their friends. [4]

Malevolent vs Benevolent

Instead, the media cottoned onto the term Hackers to describe malevolent behaviour and the broken understanding has persisted ever since. [5] So Instead of using the correct technical term Cracker, the term Hacker has now become synonymous with bad. Here is a simple way for you to correct this. Whenever you hear the term Hacker in the media, ask yourself, "is the behaviour benevolent or malevolent?" If it's malevolent substitute Hacker for Cracker. If the behaviour is benevolent you are getting a definition closer to the original idea describing a Hacker. So to summarise, Hackers are curious and benevolent by nature, enjoy understanding the and mastering the complex and creating new technology. [6]

A social hack

Just as Hackers enjoy creating new technology, sometimes malevolent Hackers, Crackers, try to engineer people for information. [7] Exploiting the cognitive biases of humans for personal gain. [8] I can only think of a few instances of social hacks being done for good instead of evil. [9] But today, I witnessed a benevolent social hack. An example illustrating how Hackers are positive. An existence proof of a "social hack" for good, not bad. But first a short detour into computer technology history.

If there is a birthplace of modern hackers you might be tempted to think MIT. [10] But you'd be wrong. Modern computer technology had it's birthplace in the United Kingdom. First there was Charles Babbage. Babbage created a mechanical calculating device, Ada Lovelace supplied the software programming. The first hardware and software development team. [11] Babbage and Lovelace might have supplied the early inspiration but it took the Second World War, another 83 years [12] to encourage the theoretical framework and a complete working example of what we now know as Computers to exist. And at the centre of all this was one man, Alan Mathison Turing. [13]

Alan Mathison Turing

Turing is the original Hacker. He excelled as a mathematician, code breaker and computer scientist and had a measurable effect on the infant science of computers with the creation of the "Turing machine" [14] and the thought experiment, "Intelligent Machinery". [15] Turing also designed calculating machines, part electrical, part mechanical to crack the German Enigma and numerous other algorthyms to help crack encrypted messages vital for the German war machine. [16] In the mid to late 1940's, Turing continued to apply himself to the big problem of the time, outlined in "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" [17], software for the Manchester Mark 1 [18] and developed the "Turing Test" [19] as a means to test if a machine is in fact intelligent.

Turing was clearly a man of his time, able to influence the future course of computer technology for a better world. But Turing was also a man born into the wrong time. Turing's crime was his sexuality. In a time where sexual orientation was not a choice but law, Turing was persecuted. Turing was subject to unethical medical procedures by the UK Government. The same Allied government who turned to ordinary people like Turing to help to defeat Germany. To defeat the Nazi regime and put a stop to the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and anyone else who didn't fit the plan for a master race.

The idea behind a social hack is to somehow change the way people behave, perceive and judge. A social hack is much harder to achieve than a playing around with technology. A social hack relies on being able to persuade other people to do something they might not originally think of, want or imagine possible. A good social hack is done to improve some aspect of society for altruistic reasons.

Recognition, gratitude, apology

Almost a month ago a UK Hacker and nerd, John Graham-Cumming, wrote about [20] a petition [21] he was organising to get the UK Government to formally apologise to Alan Turing. An apology for the mistreatment he received on behalf of the government. Well almost a month later after many emails, blog posts, twits later, John persuaded the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown on behalf of the government of United Kingdom to publicly apologise to Alan Turing for his maltreatment and recognise the importance of Turing's technical and scientific contribution to the war effort and science and technology in general. [22] The most rewarding surprise is the discovery of existing members of Turing's family who now get some closure on the matter. In 2012 it will be the centenary of the birth of Turing London on June 23. [23] For nerds and people who work in computing, the Turing year is going to be big. Maybe not as big as Y2K, but big enough.

So thank you John for this benevolent "social hack". A reminder that Hackers do good things. A reminder that in a just society, people and Hackers alike should be judged by their achievements and not their race, religion, sex or orientation.

Reference

[0] ABC News, Reuters, "Brown sorry for code-breaker's 'appalling' treatment", [Accessed Saturday, 12th September 2009] http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/12/2683906.htm

[1] mit.edu, Bruce Stirling, "The Hacker Crackdown", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.mit.edu/hacker/hacker.html

[2] Wikipedia, Storm botnet: In 2007 a Storm botnet controlled by criminal gangs estimated to total between 150,000 to 1 million PC's to enable a distributed denial of service attack. It was reported that up to 80% of the machines involved used Microsoft Windows operating system. [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storm_botnet

[3] It has been known for Hackers have exploited their knowledge to gain access and excessive CPU access and I suspect the fascination for lock picking probably has a very practical reason behind it. Historically this was a necessity as access to precious processing time was limited. Limited enough to hack a solution. You can read more about early Hackers here by "Eric Steven Raymond", "A Brief History of Hackerdom", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/hacker-history/index.html

[4] Woz.org, Steve Wozniak, "Letters-General Questions Answered (Woz on hacking)", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.woz.org/letters/general/59.html

[5] The confusion between Hackers and Crackers means to use the word Hacker means Bad to most people.

[6] catb.org, Eric Steven Raymond, "The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them." [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html#what_is

[7] Scientific American, Herbert H. Thompson, "How I Stole Someone's Identity", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=anatomy-of-a-social-hack

[8] Wikipedia, "A cognitive biases is a hickup in rational thought that can be used by Crackers to socially engineer a human for malevolent (bad) reasons.", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

[9] Dashes.com, Anil Dash, "Bill Gates and the Greatest Tech Hack Ever" I have a bit of trouble with this one but it's worth looking at despite the involvement of Microsoft." [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://dashes.com/anil/2008/06/bill-gates-and-the-greatest-tech-hack-ever.html

[10] mitadmissions.org, Michael Snively, "Hacking/Snively's Blog: If you've never seen "Hackers" then you're depriving yourself and should make a point of getting on that train.* I get asked about hacking at MIT a lot, which is natural;" [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/life/hacks_traditions/hacking.shtml

[11] Wikipedia, Ada Lovelace, "She is mainly known for having written a description of Charles Babbage's early mechanical general-purpose computer, the analytical engine. She is today appreciated as the "first programmer" since she was writing programs-that is, encoding an algorithm in a form to be processed by a machine-for a machine that Babbage had not yet built.", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace

[12] computerhistory.org, Charles Babbage, "1849 is the year Babbage is reported to have created a version of his analytical machine." [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http:www.computerhistory.org/babbage/

[13] alanturing.net, "Born 23 June 1912 in London, died 7 June 1954 in Cheshire, United Kingdom. Computer scientist, mathematician and cryptographer.", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.alanturing.net/

[14] Wikipedia, "Turing machine", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine#Informal_description

[15] Wikipedia, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence. A paper written in 1950 for 'Mind' in which Turing discusses artificial intelligence, proposes the 'Turing test' of intelligence and asks important questions such as, 'can machines think?'", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computing_Machinery_and_Intelligence/

[16] Wikipedia, "Cryptanalysis: Where Turing works at Bletchley Park during the Second World War in order to crack German cryptographic cyphers." [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Cryptanalysis

[17] abelard.org, A. M. Turing, "Computing machinery and intelligence" [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.abelard.org/turpap/turpap.php

[18] computer50.org, "Manchester Mark 1: By April 1949 was generally available for computation in scientific research in the University. With the integration of a high speed magnetic drum by the Autumn (the ancestor of today's disc) this was the first machine with a fast electronic and magnetic two-level store. It in turn was the basis of the first commercially available computer, the Ferranti Mark 1, the first machine off the production line being delivered in February 1951." [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.computer50.org/mark1/MM1.html22

[19] Wikipedia, "Turing test", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing#Early_computers_and_the_Turing_test</p>

[20] jgc.org, John Graham-Cumming, "Alan Turing deserves an apology from the British Government", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.jgc.org/blog/2009/06/alan-turing-deserves-apology-from.html

[21] number10.gov.uk, John Graham-Cumming, "number10.gov.uk: E-Petitions: Submitted by John Graham-Cumming - Deadline to sign up by: 20 January 2010 - Signatures: 31,172" [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/turing/

[22] number10.gov.uk, "Treatment of Alan Turing was 'appalling'" [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.number10.gov.uk/Page20571

[23] cs.swan.ac.uk, "THE ALAN TURING YEAR", [Accessed Friday, 11th September 2009] http://www.cs.swan.ac.uk/turing2012/

Don't read this

2009-08-27T06:56:11Z

Still reading? Feeling distracted? I often think about this process when I read articles on-line, only to get distracted. The repeated mistake I make? I ask the question *after* I've read the article. If I write for my own selfish reasons, do others? What makes something worth reading might not be the same for you as it is to me, but I think good writers successfully combine three things at once. They A) solve a particular problem well, B) they solve a problem that is applicable to you. And C) they write in an entertaining way that makes you want to read more.

If you think about this for a minute, the chances of finding writing that combines the union of these three characteristics is pretty low. It reminds me somewhat of the problem deciding where I can simultaneously eat, read and program code. Where do you go? Do you stay at home? Do you go to a Cafe'? Is the travel worth it? Some destinations have great food but are too noisy to work. Others have great couches and natural light but no power plugs. It's a rare place where the quality of the food is matched by the Wi-Fi bandwidth and coffee.

So that's my reading mantra now. No more bad food and coffee, saggy couches, intermittent Wi-Fi and noisy cafe's. I only want to read things that solve particular problems I'm working on. Most important it has to make me laugh. [0]

It's a tall order, but that's what I'm sticking to. I'm sick of reading equivalent of "repair manuals for tractors". [1] Now don't get my wrong, I like tractors as much as the next person but I'm not going to waste any more of my time reading articles inspired by cutting edge "Russian industrial design". Which brings me to the number one reason why I write.

Why write?

I write for my own selfish reasons mainly to get "new ideas", I also write for a multitude of other reasons. Do you think I wrote about JSON and sausages [2] for the technical merits of plain text data formats alone? Wrong. I was probably just hungry at the time watching cooking shows on television and I just happened to be thinking about the best way to transport data users could edit.

What about GTD with nothing? Did I write this exclusively with the intention to explore ways Startups can move forward in difficult circumstances with few resources? Or was it to inoculate myself from the horrors of Black Saturday? [3]

Ten signs of failure was a quick article looking for clues leading to failure. I wrote this because I can't seem to finish an article I'm writing on Failure. [4] How about Girls, relationships and cattiness?? [5] I wrote this not specifically to understand why bullies gave my a hard time at my last year at High School but more to see how Queen Bee behaviour [6] might impact users in a Startup idea I've been working on.

Do you see the pattern?

What's bugging me?

I write to solve problems that bug me and in the process of writing I also generate new ideas. Sometimes potential solutions to questions I haven't thought of before. I write and the solutions just seem to appear.

"Where do you start?", you might ask? For me it's a simple question of asking myself, "what's bugging me now?". Intelligently applied this seems to be enough to kick-start writing. Write down a key idea, then work out exactly what is bugging me. Then try to find a solution in words.

Solve a problem

Solving a problem through writing is the fun part. I think the hard bit is asking the right question. It takes a certain suspension of reality to ask yourself, "what is it that is bugging me enough to write about fixing it?". It will probably not come as a shock though that writing about "solving a problem" isn't really solving a problem at all. For that you have to work hard. Not writing work, but real work. Why bother then? Well to better understand why writing is good for solving problems you should probably look at the world of Art and portraits.

Writing is a starting point of ideas much like the inspiration you get right before you put charcoal to paper for a twenty minute warm-up of a nude model. The quick thought you have before you start. It's not really solving the drawing problem as much as it's a derivative of an investigation. It won't produce a drawing but provides the necessary inspiration to start. [7] A mental sketch before the physical sketch of a potential oil painting. That's why writing about solving problems is fun. You gain insight into your problem then promptly forget about the hard work ahead.

Entertain

Writing about something should first solve a problem, your problem. But making it entertaining shouldn't be a planned goal. The only reason I can think to make writing entertaining is so I don't get bored reading it. [8]

Around the world each year, millions of people are tortured into reading "official government" forms written by highly imaginative accountants. Substitute "on-line articles" for "forms", "Bloggers" for "official government accountants" to get a better idea of my problem.

If you read on-line, a lot of what you read is "accountant" approved. Accurate but dry and totally unremarkable. It's hard work, but I feel much better reading and writing about something I really enjoy. I'd hate to think, that what I write makes me feel the equivalent of Marty Feldman at Tax time. [9] Let alone others.

The discerning reader

The point of this quick diversion is to remind myself two things. The first: Recognise that a lot of what you read is probably at best a distraction and at worst it wont solve any problems you have and wont be funny. The second: Realise a good way to solve your own problems is not to rely entirely on what others write, but write yourself. Write about your problems and make your own discoveries. Realising that writers write for their own selfish reasons makes for a more discerning reader.

Hence the warning, "don't read this".

Reference

[0] Of the four lessons Roald Dahl recommends this the one he places great emphasis on. 1) Make up ridiculous rhyming words, 2) always have conflict between good and evil characters where good always triumphs over bad 3) Have have characters do ridiculous things and 4) make it funny. Most of all make things enjoyable to read. [Accessed Wednesday 26th, August, 2009] www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2837817764

[1] I once worked at a place where raw materials came in unpacked off containers. The boxes all stamped with labels saying this particular box was made at "Stamping Mill #13" made at such and such location and country. Utilitarian design at it's best.

[2] seldomlogical, "Fat-free data alternative: I'm building a new product. I want give users access to their own data. Do I let them have it with the lot? Or offer a fat-free alternative?" [Accessed Wednesday 26th, August, 2009] seldomlogical.com/2008/05/13/fat-free-data-alternative

[3] seldomlogical, "Getting stuff done with nothing" I retitled the talk on the day to "Kick-starting Volunteers". It not only made the title shorter but placed the talk into a bigger context. The ideas I used to solve problems on Black Saturday could just as easily be applied to volunteers or Startups. [Accessed Wednesday 26th, August, 2009] seldomlogical.com/2009/04/21/getting-stuff-done-with-nothing

[4] seldomlogical, "10 signs of failure" While writing up an upcoming article on "failure", I realised I'd come up with a mini article on failure. Here is a list of warning signs indicating, you might be about to fail at a given task. [Accessed Wednesday 26th, August, 2009] seldomlogical.com/2009/08/12/10-signs-of-failure

[5] flickr, 2009AUG251053, "SBS INSIGHT: girls, relationships & cattiness" What is it about girls that can make their relationships troublesome and catty?" [Accessed Wednesday 26th, August, 2009] www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3854522410/

[6] Amazon, Rosalind Wiseman, Three Rivers Press, 2009 "Queen Bees and Wannabes" [Accessed Wednesday 26th, August, 2009] www.amazon.com/Queen-Bees-Wannabes-Boyfriends-Realities/d...

[7] Having done years of drawing in studios, warm-up sketches, the 5 minute and 20 minute sketches mean you have to work fast and capture the essence of what is there. You don't have long before you start. That first idea before you start really translates a good sketch to a great sketch depending how well you think it will go.

[8] Who knows if other people like my sense of humour or story telling? I write to keep myself amused.

[9] Marty Feldman, the great English comic, writer and actor with his bulging eyes. I love his work, but never quite know where to look at face. [Accessed Wednesday 26th, August, 2009] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_Feldman

Digital doppelgangers

2009-08-20T01:00:02Z

I wrote this up last night as a reply to an article on digital identity: "Truth or dare or warts or spin". This morning I read "Why" has pulled the plug on his digital self. For Why.

Doppelganger

I'm an analogue person who lives on the Internet. [0] Online you see a copy of my analogue self, a "digital Doppelganger" [1] if you like. It's a data shadow cast by myself. Similar, but not quite the same and at a much lower resolution. My double is a subset of my analogue self, devoid of many of the subtle cues of a person. So what happens when you view a double online? To give you an idea, choose a sunny afternoon and go outside. Then look to see how the sun casts a shadow of yourself. See how your shadow is distorted? You get taller and you can only see your outline. The hairstyle is gone. Nobody can see the crumpled shirt and daggy runners you happen to be wearing. Your shadow gives only a hint of the real you.

Your digital double is a bit like that distorted shadow you cast on sunny days. Viewed online the information available means you have to squint your eyes to see the person leaving your mind to fill in the gaps. Of course you can enhance the resolution of your double with photographs, video and audio but you are only replacing the shadow with something akin to a two dimensional cut-out. [2] A bit more realistic, but not that convincing that a two year old couldn't tell the difference. One place to observe this first hand, is the three dimensional version of the Internet, Second Life.

Facelift

A famous cartoon published in the New Yorker, pre-Web that showed 2 dogs around a computer with the caption, "Nobody on the Internet knows you are a dog" [5] illustrates why a digital persona might be enhanced. You really can project who or what you want to be online. I got my first hint of this visiting Second Life [6] when I tried to retrace Wagner James Au "Great Expedition" journey across Second Life on foot. [7] The place was pretty deserted, much like a shopping mall late on Monday nights. The people I did bump into where certainly not the type you'd bump into in a real shopping centre.

Despite the fact the software used to create your digital self encouraged you to upgrade yourself I bet most people would choose a better self over their existing one anyway. [8] You can really see this by comparing the passport photograph of Wagner James Au in Second Life shots against the reality. [9] The double always seems to get the better deal.

Why?

Bits

There is a line in "The Matrix" [3], where Neo is in the Dojo being instructed by Morpheus on the finer arts of "Kung Fu" when he makes a point about the illusionary nature of the Matrix with the line, "Do you think that's air you're breathing?".[4] That one line really gets to the heart of your digital online double.

Your digital representation is really just data. Bits of information represented as numbers. You can fundamentally re-arrange your double self, any way you like. Once you understand this you should realise that you can make improvements to your analogue self without the scars. And so people do. If only it was that easy.

Fist

In the days before the Internet, television and radio when communication consisted of dots and dashes Morse code [10] operators used the Telegraph key [11] to send messages. Operators would tap out messages long hand representing the alphabet in a series of dots and dashes. Experienced operators receiving messages could even identify individual operators sending messages by recognising subtle changes in the timing and rhythm of characters being received and decoded into messages. The word used to describe this is an operators "fist".

I suspect people who know you could recognise your by your digital fist. No matter how much you try to improve your double, you are probably going to have a hard time fooling those you know you. But what about those who don't know you? Good luck. I don't think you can game your double to improve your real world image that easily and I can think of a simple test. Try posting a fake double to a dating site and see how you go. The illusion will probably be broken the first time you make contact.

Humans look more carefully at your digital fist for the subtle cues of authenticity for reasons of compatibility than in real life probably because there is less distraction. What parts of a "digital self" do people like? What is the minimum amount of information needed to accept someone online as a real person? For the answer to that we have to look at the world of Hackers. [12]

Presence

Hackers have inhabited the digital landscape a lot longer than the rest of us. So if you want to see how you can define your digital presence, this is the place to start looking. In a time just after punch cards ruled, Hackers lived in the land of ASCII [13] (text) writing software to run their creations on personal computers. Computers with less computation power than some mobile phones.

Hackers communicated to each other via cutting edge technology like email and updated their micro-blog equivalent, "dot plan" files. [14] You didn't need a real name to participate and be accepted. Sure everyone has a name but you didn't need one for a digital presence. You probably don't need one now. A handle or nick name would suffice. What about a photo of yourself? Nope. Don't need that either. In the days before images on the Internet, you couldn't show a picture of yourself easily. It was possible, but way beyond mortal users. [15] So I'd say the minimalist version of a digital presence is probably a handle, some text your have written and maybe, just maybe an email address. That's it. An email address is the computer equivalent of a phone number. What's the use of having a presence if you can't talk to someone? [16]

I reckon that's enough to be recognised online. But probably not enough to be really accepted. To be recognised online, you probably have to create something useful. It doesn't have to be a compiler or an operating system. [17] For some, a simple story or a photograph will do. All it requires is some trace of human like interaction in a digital system that other people value.

The more useful or meaningful the interaction, the more you are recognised. In fact as I write these very sentences a rather well known but unidentified Hacker [18] unplugged himself from the Internet. Deleted all his accounts, software, writing, images. Most wouldn't know his real name or identity. Recognisable only by the software, artwork and writing. Enforced by photographs and appearances at software conferences. The simple fact of unplugging has prompted a sort of digital eulogy. A expression of loss of an anonymous online presence. [19]

Atemporality

The whole sum of your digital self is just ones and zeros. Should you use the opportunity to do something radical and improve yourself? Edit out the bad bits? Model yourself as you do in real life? Or use it as an extension of your real self? I loathe to make suggestions and my perspective on this is somewhat slanted by the fact my double pre-dates the Web. My double began as text and is still evolving.

So just be yourself. You don't have to identify yourself, but it helps others to accept your presence. Remember your digital double is low resolution and no match to your real self. But it has a measurable effect. And if you pick an avatar take some time to think about "atemporality". [20]

Reference

[0] With no desire to be "a LIVE node on the network" as discussed by Linda Stone when describing Continuous Partial Attention. Linda Stone, "Continuous Partial Attention" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] www.lindastone.net/

[1] Wikipedia, Doppelganger , "A double or 'any double or look-alike of a person'" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelg%c3%a4nger

[2] It's hard to fool a four year old that a sock puppet is not real person. So it's probalby just as hard to convince someone that your double is a real representation of yourself.

[3] Wikipedia, The Matrix, "A Wachowski brothers film about simulated reality" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Matrix

[4] Youtube, "The Matrix: Morpheus and Neo in The matrix training in the simulated reality Dojo" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] www.youtube.com/watch?v=oM0pQd0XyIU

[5] Wikipedia, Peter Steiner, "'On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.' A cartoon in 'The New Yorker', July 5, 1993" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet,_nobody_knows_you'r...

[6] Some screencaps I took of travels through SL (SecondLife) in 2006 after reading about Wagner James Au's expedition across SecondLife. [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/secondlife

[7] New World Notes, Wagner, James Au, "NEXT THURSDAY, HIGH NOON: THE GREAT EXPEDITION, REDUX!: Embedded reporter in SecondLife" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] secondlife.blogs.com/nwn/2004/02/next_thursday_h.html

[8] New World Notes, Wagner James Au, All about my Avatar, "A Second Life Odyssey: refers to the 'Molotov's Dispatches in Search of the Creator' film about avatars which can be found here: www.imdb.com/title/tt1100132/ " [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] nwn.blogs.com/nwn/all_about_my_avatar/index.html

[9] New World Notes, Wagner, James Au, "Man in the Mirror" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2003/04/man_in_the_mirr.html

[10] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morse_code

[11] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegraph_key

[12] Hackers is a much misused term. When I use the word Hacker I mean a user of a computer that is benevolent, not malevolent.

[13] Wikipedia, ASCII, "'American Standard Code for Information Interchange' is a way to store the roman alphabet and other characters commonly used in printing, digitally" [Accessed Thursday 20th, 2009] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII

[14] HackerNews, "Secret blog published in robots.txt file", "Back when linux was new and lots of servers started popping up, .plan (dot plan) files ~ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_protocol became the blogs of that era. Easy to read, quick to load you get a heads up of what was going on via text - a lot like HackerNews. And the best .plan files to read had to be iD & John Carmack." [Accessed Thursday 20th, 2009] www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2799948080/

[15] Wikipedia, "Uuencoding (Unix-to-Unix encoding): is a way to encode binary information as text. This is the technique is used to send images via email or view images via IRC and usenet." [Accessed Thursday 20th, 2009] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uuencoding

[16] This sort of reminds me of authors. You can write a book have it published and all you really know about the author is their name and the contents of what they have written. The name the author published under could in fact be a pseudonym.

[17] The most well known being RMS who wrote the GNU C compiler, GNU toolchain and GPL license. And of course Torvolds who wrote the original Linux operating system.

[18] HackerNews, "_why is no more" [Accessed Thursday 20th, 2009] news.ycombinator.com/item?id=773106

[19] John Resig, "Eulogy to _why" [Accessed Thursday 20th, 2009] ejohn.org/blog/eulogy-to-_why/

[20 Twitter, William Gibson (author of Neuromancer, 1984), "Your bleeding-edge Now is always someone elses past, Someone else's 70's bellbottoms. Grasp that and start to attain atemporality" [Accessed Wednesday 19th, 2009] www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3568643491

10 signs of failure

2009-08-12T06:30:33Z

10 signs of failure

Here is a list of warning signs indicating you might be about to fail at a given task. I define failure loosely as the "inability to complete a do-able task in a reasonable amount of time". Often we fail without realising why. Recognition of one or more signs of failure might give you the time needed to triage the problem before it becomes fatal. The 10 signs of failure include:

Discomfort

Not failing requires working hard on a regular basis. It's uncomfortable because you have to do things you don't want to do. If you try to avoid all discomfort, you might be limiting how hard you can work. If things are too comfortable, it could also mean you are beginning to fail.

Distraction

If you can't focus on a given task, you are by definition distracted. Distraction can be the result of interruptions [1] or trying to do many things at once. It can also be symptomatic of being demoralised or lacking motivation. Take a mental note of how many times you are disrupted in thought or action. Distraction is a measure of not working. Not working is a precursor to failure.

Poor morale

Low morale colours your thinking. Small problems becomes an insurmountable hurdles. The trick is not to get demoralised in the first place. If your moral is low, don't let declining morale become a downwards spiral failure. [2] Being demoralised is a key indicator of impending failure. Be on the lookout for low morale.

Motivation

You have to really want to do something to get it completed. Not having enough motivation to stick to a task leads to distraction. Lack of motivation means the hurdles you face [3] take longer, than they should. A lack of motivation is a warning sign for poor moral. If you detect lack of motivation it's time to inject some energy back into the system to get things moving again. Motivational energy can come in many forms, one quick hack is to try and find a "fresh inspiration". [4]

Fear

What we fear, be it perceived or actual can result in poor morale and lack of motivation. Fear causes you to fail because it replaces action with in-action. Controlling fear is a difficult problem. It often manifests itself irrationally for this reason it's difficult to control. [5] Understanding what makes you fearful is a sign of potential failure. Understanding the warning signs of fear may help you conquer it.

Speed

Some things are required to be done in a measured amount of time. If you are not fast enough, you will fail. If the task is do-able and you are slipping, are you working hard enough?; are you distracted or have poor morale? Do you lack motivation? Are you fearful? The lack of progress could be any one of the above. It could also be your response to stress. You could be choking.

Choking

For any given task stress, can cause neutralise competence by forcing you to revert back to implicit (learning) rather than explicit (learnt) responses. [6] By any means choking occurs more with the competent and seasoned rather than the beginner. If you become aware you are taking more time to do things or having difficulty you could be choking. [7]

Milestones

Achieving milestones requires effort. At the end of a milestone a small amount of energy is required to be input to start the new milestone. If you don't you lose the momentum of completing the milestone and replace it with lethargy of starting from scratch. [8]

Stubbornness

Flexibility is an asset. If you are too stubborn and refuse to be flexible it can result in poor decisions or an unrecoverable mistake . Stubbornness can be thought of as another form of fear. The inability to take another course of action because of the unknown result. It could also be an unwillingness to work hard. Stubbornness might also be a sign of stress and choking.

Mistakes

It's entirely possible to fail because of circumstances beyond your control. Sometimes things go wrong through no fault of your own. Are you flexible enough for a "plan B" alternative? Will you be unable to correct the mistake due to fear? Will you choke? Will you find an alternative solution in time?

No doubt there are more signals of failure. Some of the signs of failure might seem obvious,others you might not even be aware of. So if you feel things are not quite right, make a quick mental check of the "10 signs" and avoid failure.

Reference

[0] I'm looking at individual failure, not team failure which involves a different set of problems. I'm fascinated by the topic of failure because in high-tech software Startups 19/20 will probably fail. Why? The "10 signs of failure" is one of a number of articles I'll be writing on the "dark side" of Startups. The image I've used is from the film of the William Golding book, "Lord of the Flies". The original image is located at www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/2576325005/ and is also part of a flickr set called "Taming the dogs of code". [Accessed Wednesday, August 12, 2009] www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157605526601670/

[1] The kind of distraction I'm thinking of here is "Continuous partial attention", (CPA) coined by Linda Stone. You can follow @LindaStone on twitter at twitter.com/LindaStone or read more about CPA at www.lindastone.net/

[2] A downwards spiral failure often happens when people get lost in the bush. They get demoralised, give up and wait to die.

[3] And there will be hurdles to overcome.

[4] Just should think of motivation as a force to keep you moving past hurdles. Just as you add energy to push a marble up a slope to overcome potential energy hill, you should use motivation to push you through hurdles to avoid poor morale.

[5] One solution is to be aware of the physical signs of fear. Then act quickly when you are at your most rational. Understand that fear gives you an edge because you can use it to "temper" overconfidence.

[6] A twitter message I sent to @jonoxer (John Oxer) twitter.com/jonoxer "... "Head + brick wall = pain" is it hacker choke? ~ www.gladwell.com/2000/2000_08_21_a_choking.htm #gladwell #art #failure ..." In the article Gladwell explains the neurological reasons for choking and the difference between panic and choking. [Accessed Wednesday, August 12, 2009] twitter.com/bootload/status/3170939361

[7] @jonoxer (John Oxer) replied when sitting for 5hours and not getting anywhere: "@bootload Fascinating distinction between choking and panicking, I hadn't thought of it that way. I think I choked." [Accessed Wednesday, August 12, 2009] twitter.com/jonoxer/status/3175473665

[8] I suspect adding a bit more motivational energy is required to overcome the post-milestone slump.

Thanks to Pip Lincolne (@meetmeatmikes) for reading over the draft.

Getting stuff done with nothing

2009-08-27T07:13:53Z

Quick Intro

I presented this quick talk to an audience at Trampoline on Saturday, 28th March, 2009. Before I started I read out a few key words and explained the format of the talk. You can also look at a manga version of the talk.

Hello, my name is Peter. My talk is called "Getting stuff done with nothing". Before I begin I'll tell you something about myself. My first computer was a ZX-80. I don't get out much and I haven't been to a meeting for a long time. I'm one of those Gen-X slackers, I went to school for almost 20 years and worked mostly in Startups and software. So you could say I'm a bit of an expert on the topic. Well at least one.

We (my brother, sister, her bloke, myself and a good mate) undertook two distinct operations. The first, Operation Genny. The objective: to deliver power in the form of a generator. The second, Operation Shutz. The objective to deliver clean water supply tanks up to 3000 litres with 1 tank capable of being put on a ute. We completed both. We had feet on the ground within 48 hours of the fire occurring for the generator. The water supply following some 2 weeks later.

None of this would have been possible if emotional sister and determined brother used speed to the fire zone within couple of hours. The reward, a pass to move through the police road blocks. Had it not been for this quick thinking. Nothing we planned would have come to fruition.

Getting stuff done with nothing

Why is it that some individuals adapt to change faster than others? How is it that people with no authority, few resources can make such a difference? The ideas I want to explore has its roots in the slow decline of volunteering, the unfolding financial crisis and the 7th February 2009. A day we now know as Black Saturday. How do you avoid sabotaging yourself trying to help?

How do you get stuff done, with nothing?

Black Saturday

It was 46 degrees that day. I'd thought about going to Dads about 60 kilometers from where I live. But with a total fire ban and hot conditions I chose the pool instead staying close to home. It wasn't till I got home about six o'clock that evening that I got a call from a distressed sister saying Dad was fighting off fires at his property at Kinglake West and his phone was going flat. Later I got another call at around 8 o'clock to say the house had survived but he was still fighting. [0]

I was 60 kilometers away, it was getting dark so I drove to the nearest place I could see the range, snapped a few shots and uploaded them to Flickr. My brother and sister who lived closer shot up to Whittlesea trying to get into the fire-zone to help. Foolish maybe, but it was to have positive implications later. [1] I knew that if Dad survived the first two hours with house intact - as long as he kept his wits about him, he would survive. So I started planing, writing and collecting any information I could to see if I could help out further down the line.

49 days later

It's now forty nine days since the fire and work is still going on. A casual comment by a CFA volunteer on my Flickr account [2] suggested that for the next major fire a site might do exactly what I was doing - collecting information and acting as a clearing house. This was going to be initial idea for my talk. "How to apply technology and solve the communications and logistic problems" I encountered with the fires. Maybe it could be applied to other relief efforts. What about the recession? Could it help people who loose their jobs to re-train? Get new skills?

But thinking about it more, it turned out to be the wrong question to ask. I don't think technology is the problem. [3] I think the real problem is much more fundamental. I think it's people and how they tackle obstacles. I don't want to get bogged down in theory. What I want concentrate on something practical. How to apply some quick hacks that anyone can master in times of need.

1) Controlling emotion

Emotions effect the way we make decisions. Emotions come in many forms as we react to stress. Each person reacts slightly differently. Limiting your emotional reaction, lets you move forward to make decisions. It's a trait that only you can control. Some sort of control is an advantage over none. No control over you emotions can let fear control you. Fear is by far the most damaging emotion I can think of. Fear paralyses you into in-action. In-action is not only counter productive but it's also the fastest way to sabotage yourself. Fear is also contagious. If you are fearful, it has a nasty habit of rubbing-off onto others. I don't know the solution to avoiding or controlling fear but I do know you should be aware it exists. You should try to negate it's side effects. The better control you have over fear, the more effective you can be. [4]

2) Listening

How well you listen greatly effects any outcome to try to achieve. Not listening is one of the quickest ways to fail when you encounter external hurdles. Not listening you miss details. Details that could mean the difference between knowing what is required or taking a risk and guessing. A requirement achieved is a form of measurable success. Guessing simply wastes time. If in doubt ask someone "on the ground". They know things you don't. Listen now and you save time and effort later.

3) Mindset

If you have a rigid mindset. If you cannot adapt quickly enough. You risk not only failing to achieve the things you set out to do. You will also be susceptible to blunder. A blunder is when the action you take, results in a worse situation than when you start. Blunders have many causes. But the most likely culprit is a fixed or rigid mindset. Mindset is the combined effect of "how you react emotionally to current events" and "the decisions you make as a result". So ask yourself. "Are you undermining yourself because you have a rigid mindset?"

4) Empathy & imagination

Can you walk in the shoes of another person? Can you identify their problems and solve them? Empathy and imagination are an effective antidote to blunders, rigid mindsets and cognitive traps in thinking. [5] Don't just try and blunder your way through a solution. First put yourself into the situation you are trying to improve. Then use your mind to to project how you might make the current situation into a better or best situation. [6]

5) Communication not Info-mania

An "info-maniac", is someone who misuses information. If you hold onto information, shun or avoid the source or nature of information. You are self sabotaging yourself. You need to collect enough of the right type of relevant information. Don't worry about the having too much information. You will be surprised what people might be looking for or find. [7] Working as a team has its own challenges. When communicating to more than one person make sure they have the right mindset and ensure they are communicating together to get the job done.

6) Thrift and resources

Up till now, the focus has primarily been on the how. Little thought has been given to cost. If you have few resources and need them quickly it is up to you to work out how important they are. Weigh the costs of buying verses loaning. Don't buy if you can help it. The time honoured "Beg, borrow and ask" works, well some of the time. A simple solution is to hack what you already have and see if it can fit the purpose. A roll of fencing wire and duct tape may work wonders, but not miracles.

This is where you have to get creative. A good resource can be friends or people you know. It may even be complete strangers. In some cases you will have to pay cash. Before you do check with people on the ground if they really need this item. If you pay cash it might be better to accept a higher price for a receipt instead of trying to negotiate a discount. This avoids disputes. Pay a bit more to avoid potential conflict. [8]

7) Speed

We are often told to do things "fast". But saying and doing are two different things. Where do you start? Well start at the basics. The basics of life are "food", "water" and "shelter". So for a given situation concentrate first on the basics. Be able to say with certainty you have reliability. Day in, day out. Every day. Speed is also about getting real results without wasting unnecessary time and resources. Any lack of the above qualities will hinder your efforts. So I think the measure of speed is about delivering the basics. Then using a combination of listening, empathy and imagination you can move your way forward.

But speed alone isn't good enough.

It's a constant. What you really want is acceleration. What forces can you use to increase the accelerate the rate you do things? Well the answer to this and a potential road-block is probably a more information, not less. Collect enough information on problem at hand and you get a data glut and as long as the relevance of the information is high someone can probably find the right information. The trick is then to get the right people to take notice.

We got "feet on the ground" to Dad in less than 48 hours. Delivering a generator and essentials. Yet I was shocked took another 48 hours for support teams to touch base in Flowerdale a mere 26 kilometers further north. [9] This changed quickly when Pete William started writing the "helpflowerdale" blog. Things sped up when the information flow, sped up. [10]

8) Search for simplicity

KISS or Keep it Simple Stupid. Easy to say, much harder to do in practice. The advantage of simplicity is it helps keeps you focused on what is achievable. Focusing on simple outcomes is also cost and time effective. Complex things consume resources. How do you find simple solutions in real-life complexity?

I have no real answers. But I did get a few valuable insights trying to work out how to solve the problem of water. After the fires, I knew delivering the basics was going to be a big problem. And the most important basic is water. But how do you source, deliver and maintain a clean water supply more than 60 kilometers away?

How did I simplify the problem? Well first I had the right mindset. I knew in the middle of summer in remote areas that damaged water tanks, no pumps and when the power is down there will be no reliable water. I also knew speed was of the essence. The simplicity hack I applied was knowing that water being a basic was required quickly. I confirmed by ringing up people on the ground that water storage was a problem. Then spread the news around this is what was required. It just so happened that other people where already thinking along the same lines pre-warned because of the information I spread, "empathised" and offered help. The actual situation itself is complicated and I couldn't tackle this problem myself but I got a call from a good friend who is an expert in logistics and just happened to have a water solution in the form of a Shutz. By chance I also got access to various forms of transport.

Is this a case of good luck or searching for a simpler way? I'm not sure. I do know that by knowing this was a priority and using resources I secured the water containers and got them delivered. [11], [12]

9) Follow through, re-evaluate

What you start you finish. Don't leave loose threads. Then quickly re-evaluate. Do you really need to continue? Communicate together. Is someone else doing this? Check with someone on the ground again. Then continue. If you promise to do something, do it. No one else is going to do it. It is up to you.

Are you going to let your mates down?

10) Motivation, "the mongrel factor"

The final personal quality is how much of the "mongrel factor" you have. No, it has nothing to do with "Blue Heelers" (the TV show) [13] but the mongrel breed of dog. How hard do you "snap" and "snarl" [14] to extract that last 5 percent effort required to complete a task? The difference between those who give up and those who succeed can partially be explained to how hard they are willing to push themselves. [15]

The future of Volunteers

I don't think technology alone can solve the types of problems. You need intelligent application of technology. Instead we should look at how we as individuals respond using technology to amplify results. I also saw a complete change in community attitudes to 'volunteering'. Before the fire, volunteering was a dirty word. After the fire people felt guilty not helping.

The fires may be over. But your chance to make a difference begins now. Black Saturday might be the fractal training run for the current recession. Lots of people, young people especially are now going find themselves without the opportunities to work and no path to improve themselves.

What are YOU! going to do? Are you! (point to individual) going to let your mates down?

Reference

[0] Bootload, flickr, "You can read a summary and view pictures of the fires first hours here", [Accessed Thursday, 26th March, 2009] http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/3260244634

[1] We (my brother, sister, her bloke, myself and a good mate) undertook two distinct operations. Operation Genny: objective to deliver power in the form of a generator. Operation Shutz: objective to deliver clean water supply tanks up to 3000 litres with 1 tank capable of being put on a ute. We completed both. We had feet on the ground within 48 hours of the fire occurring for the generator. The water supply following some 2 weeks later.

[2] miniopterus, Flickr, "I should have said, good job tracking the events. I imagine that next time we have fires, we might see something similar to your Flickr diary.", http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/3298613958 [Accessed Thursday, 26th March, 2009]

[3] To technologists who forge and yield hammers every problem can appear to be a nail. In this case I don't think a technology solution is applicable as tackling how people deal with decision making. You need intelligent application of technology. Instead we should look at how we as individuals respond using technology to amplify results.

[4] Fear is there for a reason. Men may perceive women to be inferior when it comes to emotion. But like the second law of thermodynamics, all that built up emotion is going to leak out some time in the future. So in the long run, I think women have an edge over men dealing with emotion. But in the short term it is men who edge women out with self control. There is a downside here. Apply too much control and you might emotionally overheat and become brittle when you cool down leaving yourself open to cracking. Hard objects become brittle and crack under stress.

[6] google, "enter 'from: kinglake west to: Flowerdale VIC, Australia' and view the maps tab. This reveals the distance from Kinglake West." [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[7] ITConversations, Tech Nation, Zachary Shore, "Why Smart People Make Bad Decisions: Professor, Naval Postgraduate School" http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4007.html [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[8] Sourcing the Shutz (ruggised 1000 Lt, portable water container) I negotiated a price by quoting a friends name in cash. Then I get a phone call asking for more money. A quick call back to my referring mate sorted this out. But had I got a receipt I could have avoided this. In the end it worked out. But the risk was there. You can read more about sourcing the Shutz here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157614178152108/ [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[9] google, "To find the distance from Kinglake West to Flowerdale enter 'from: Kinglake West to: Flowerdale VIC, Australia' into google and click the maps tab.

[10] Pete Williams, blogspot, "Flowerdale - Survivor Spirit", "A cry for help from the forgotten people of Flowerdale" "... The final straw for my sister in law came at 6.00am today (12/02/09) when those left fought to save one of the remaining houses that caught on fire overnight. They fought with no water, no fire trucks and no support from the Army that was in the area. They lost the fight. ..." http://helpflowerdalenow.blogspot.com/2009/02/cry-for-help-from-... [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[11] bootload, flickr, "flickr set: 'Shutz IBC 1000L' where I order and collect the Shutz water tank" http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157614178152108/ [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[12] bootload, "flickr set: 'Eltham to Kinglake West' where we deliver the tanks" http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157614178001242/ [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[13] IMDb, "Blue Heelers, The Mongrel Factor" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0527723/ [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[14] Australian Sports Commission, "Participating in Sport: Predicting sports suitability", "... Coaches who observe such testing sessions are assessing the "mongrel factor" which athletes show a doggedness to continue when the test becomes hard?" http://www.ausport.gov.au/participating/got_talent/overview/pred... [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

[15] Simon Britton, "Mongrel Nation", http://culturenow.com/site/item.cfm?item=24814 [Accessed Friday, 27th March, 2009]

For Andy, James, Kev, Mum and Trace. They know how to get things done with nothing. Thanks Trace for reading the article and advising on the talk.

Banking on a Startup loan?

2009-02-06T04:00:42Z

Would you think of using a Bank as a source of credit for your Startup? This idea surfaced recently on the Silicon Beach Startup[1] newsgroup. Why?

Why is this question being asked?

Funding for Startups is a hard problem. The task of securing funding involves both time and effort. A distraction from the task of creating. Why is raising capital so difficult? One word, risk. New companies without a financial track record are unknown quantities. Avoided by all except for the most adventurous of lenders. [2] First-time finance is to Startups what drink-driving is to newly licensed drivers, trouble. [3] For inexperienced Entrepreneurs, even searching for funding is an alien skill. New Startup founders show about as much skill in hunting for finance as 21st century man suddenly thrust back into early Africa. Hungry for food, they sometimes see prey, but have no idea how to trap and kill it, let alone know how to look for spoor. A Bank loan may look like an easy kill. But inexperience has it's downside where knowledge means survival. A lack of the right kind of knowledge can mean a quick financial death.

Harsh financial environment

Founders also have to contend with harsh environments a partial product of local conditions. Geographic location, culture and business climate all play their part defining the quality and sophistication of funding. If you happen to be lucky enough to live in the Amazon Jungle equivalent of finance, Silicon Valley, finance is difficult, but the money is there. If you live in Australia, the financial equivalent of a desert, finance is almost impossible because money is scarce. [4] So the act of questioning all potential sources of finance strikes to the heart of the local funding problem. Asking the question, "What do people think about NAB's young entrepreneur program?" makes absolute sense.

Why are Banks lending now?

"... NAB's Microenterprise Loan for Start Ups - Learn more about a Melbourne Florist whose business is blossoming with the help of a NAB's Microenterprise Loan ..." [5]

The real reason I think Banks are targeting non conventional companies right now has less to do with "social justice" [6] than traditional higher yield customers shedding debt. [7] Debt is now a four letter dirty word in business circles and Banks know it. Banks still have to invest money and small business at the moment, with its lower finance requirements are probably the only types of companies that might show promise of growth. With growth, profits may follow. What is a Startup? Startups come in many different shapes and sizes, are they all the same? What kind of Startup are we talking about?

What kind of Startup?

The idea to "start up" a traditional small business say a hair dresser, a book keeping firm or newsagent is not the same as "Starting up" a new technology based company like Google did or Scribd is in the process of doing. [8] The definition of a Startup for someone not working in technology appears to be a woolly interchangeable label applied to any entrepreneurial or small business activity. By contrast, technology Startups are made up of two essential ingredients, new ideas and technology with the caveat of smart people working at the core. What makes technology Startups different and so appealing is the idea that not all Startups are born equal. Not all Startups are born equal because small teams of smart engineers, can aggressively attack hard problems to create new technologies, productively. Technology Startups have the advantages of leverage and barriers of entry, that traditional small business can never emulate. [9]

When Corporations shed staff and shrinking economies weed out financially weak businesses, more people are exposed to the idea of combining new ideas, risk and effort for profit. Creating wealth at the forefront in peoples mind. But the language used to describe the mechanism to create wealth is still playing catch-up. How do Banks describe such activity? Banks like to use loosly defined, catchy words like "Young Entrepreneur", "Start Ups", [10] "Micro Enterprise" and pepper their documents with terms like ENYA. [11] But don't be fooled by the MBA-speak. Indecipherable terms describing what is really a simple set of ideas.

How not to fund Startups

So lets get back to the problem of Entrepreneur funding and Startups. I'm not going to explore "How to fund Startups" because the existence proof has already been written up. It also comes with the added benefit of dozens of "guinea pig" technology companies field testing these financial hacks, real-time. [12] I'm more interested in why "taking money from a Bank is not the best way to fund your Startup". To illustrate this idea, I went through the documents supplied by the Bank [13] and conducted a quick "thought experiment" into the potential dangers you might face.

The three Amigos of funding

In this "fictional scenario", you the founder are put into a room with three potential suppliers of finance. You have to decide which is the best source of finance for your Startup. For the lender, the job is to determine the risk to return ratio. Are you worth it? Lets start. First there's John, formally dressed and business-like. A representative from the local "Big" Bank. Next is "Fat Tony" the local "loan shark". Immaculately turned out in an expensive foreign suit. [14] Finally Joel, a successful technologist turned Angel Investor. Casual in both dress and manner.

John breaks the ice...

JOHN "So I hear you are interested in the 'Microenterprise Loan for Start Ups' our Bank is offering?"

FOUNDER "Yep. Funding is so hard to do. Where do you start?"

JOHN "Lets go through the steps required. Are you eligible for 'ENYA'?"

FOUNDER "That Celtic singer my mum listens to in the car?"

JOHN "No, the 'Enterprise Network for Young Australians'?"

FOUNDER "'Shite... thinking to self, 'MBA speak'. Danger Will Robinson... Danger!"

JOHN "Tell me about your 'Microenterprise'. Do you know Where your customers come from? Who they are?"

FOUNDER "Yes, no idea."

JOHN "Do you have a reliable and steady income stream?"

FOUNDER "Ramen profitable just this week."

JOHN "Ramen profitable? Is that a global economic indicator like the McDonalds Index?"

At this time both Fat Tony and Joel have been silent. Then Tony pipes up...

FAT TONY "Suit-boy over there is going to... how shall we say, 'compromise your dignity', filling out forms and jumping through unnecessary layers of bureaucratic hoops."

FOUNDER "Forms, hoops... compromise?"

FAT TONY "We on the other hand at the 'Legitimate Businessman's Social Club' have less formal requirements. No forms, just a quick shake of the hand and a big bag of cash. We pride ourselves in only getting involved in your business if you fail..."

Fat Tony pauses for dramatic effect...

FOUNDER "What? Broken knee-caps, knuckle dusters?"

FAT TONY "No. We are strictly legit. We do everything a Bank does - take all your worldly good and possessions, but over a short-black and some Penne al'arrabiata." [15]

FAT TONY "John and the 'Big Bank boys' on the other hand want you to self assess, be Australian, young and take a minimum of 5 monkeys up to 20G's. Wait there's more, not to be a bankrupt"

Becoming increasingly annoyed, John replies...

JOHN "Hang on Anthony. To be absolutely correct, that's only stage one of four. First you have to talk to ENYA, devise a business plan in conjunction with our fully trained business advisors.

FAT TONY "... and listen to their advertisers, I mean advisors for 12 months."

JOHN "Every thing hinges on the business plan and any support issues we identify. You cannot progress to the 'Loan assessment interview' until we have the plan and support letter."

FOUNDER "You mean there's more? ... just for 20 gorillas?"

JOHN "The terms are pretty generous. An unsecured loan from as little as $500 up to $20,000. An interest rate of around 9.95%, a three year repayment period and 90 days interest free."

FOUNDER "The interest rates are pretty high. Can I spend it as I see fit? Can I get GuitarHero for the team? What if I fail?"

JOHN "Thats why we pre-screen you. You have to follow the process. Most of it's online but..."

FOUNDER "So I have to waste my time with some crappy online application, then attend meetings?"

JOHN "No ENYA, no business plan, no support letter, NO Finance."

FOUNDER "But that will take too long. I need to build the product now. Not next week, month"

JOHN "The process will take some time to approve."

FOUNDER "What? Do any of you blokes create, code?"

JOHN "IT? no we outsource all that kind of typing stuff. Bottom line and all that..."

Pregnant Pause as the reality sets in...

FAT TONY "Tell 'em about the interview John. Tell 'em about what happens if the founders don't meet the conditions you'll roll them over to a business loan..."

JOHN "Well there is the final hurdle to make sure your not getting into a worse position. You are taking out a loan. We need to ensure, check, access, confirm, search. We have to be careful and do our due diligence."

FOUNDER "So let me get this right. I have to assess myself, go through ENYA, business plan, go through a loan assessment and all I get is access to a lousy business loan from a Bank?"

Fat Tony "Johnny. It's a pity you didn't do you the same due-diligence on all those housing loans."

John "Look who's talking. I see your business associates taking a hit."

FAT TONY "A Hit?... You and your firm thinking on taking a contract out on me?"

WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, WHACK, #$@$, THUMP...

Some time later the ambulance leaves with John. Fat Tony is speaking to the local Police. Joel speaks for the first time.

JOEL "How about if I make you an offer over some coffee. You've been recommended by colleague at 'The HIVE'. I've use your App. It's the best in the market. I've seen the changes you made with user feedback. Growth looks good."

FOUNDER "You mean no ENYA, no MBA speak. I don't have to eat meatballs at the Social club on Wednesdays?"

JOEL "I've been where your going before. Are you 'Ramen profitable' yet? [16] I'm a hacker/founder made good. I mostly do strategic investments, Angel stuff. Even though the market has crashed I'm still on the lookout for Startups that have potential and are starting to make money. [17] Shhh."

FOUNDER "Mums the word."

Back to reality

Letting a Bank evaluate your idea, bash out a business plan and then audit your finances might be financially prudent from the Banks point of view. But predefined strategies like business plans hinder Startups more than they help. Time bound, rigid processes punish fast moving Startups, crippling the advantages they have over normal business. [18] Startups need flexibility. Is it really worth your time to be told you by a Bank, you are too young or too old? That your business plan needs working on? Only to be offered a business loan if you fail to meet their set criteria?

Startups have different financial needs

Do you expect Banks to understand that the idea you propose is a question, not a business plan? A starting point that evolves over time from listening carefully to what customers want and willing to pay for? Limited funding opportunities and the lack of Angel investors who understand and fund technology, hamper local Startups. But short of uprooting to Silicon Valley, the most sophisticated funding environment in the Startup world, the best Startup financial hack is still to build a demo, release it informally to users and continually modifying your product to make what users want... and will pay for. Then hit the local Startup events with your demo. Tell by showing.

Ramen profitable?

Are you "Ramen profitable" yet? If not, get "ramen profitable" fast. Be frugal. If you can get away without borrowing funds, all the better. If you can't, find alternative sources of finance. [20] If your idea flops, or if you can't make any money or simply fail, you avoid serious debt. Avoid debt. [21] Especially at a time where the costs to execute an idea and informally introduce it a community of users are at an all time low. Needing money from anybody other than your customers also weakens your position as an Entrepreneur in future negotiations. And it's not like Banks are currently the best at evaluating financial risk. Just think sub-prime.

References

[0] Silicon Beach Australia, "An online discussion list to 'create a more unified supportive Australian Information, Communications and Technology sector.'
http://SiliconBeachAustralia.org

[1] Elias Bizannes, "Is 20k from NAB a good idea?", Silicon Beach Australia.
http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/browse_thread/thread/248cd19e3dbc66b4?hl=en
[Accessed Wednesday, 21 January 2009]

[2] Banks requesting Startups to demonstrate financial stability pretty much kills any idea of investment to Startups. The risk of not knowing if the original loan can be repaid is simply to great. This didn't stop Banks lending 100% finance to home owners on the assurance they have a mortgage on properties. Even if the property is over valued. For this reason alone I think the current risk analysis industry is to some degree broken.

[3] Dave McClure, "Great Entrepreneurs are PASSIONATE about Customers & Products, NOT about being Great Entrepreneurs", I got this idea from Dave McClure where he talks about first time Entrepreneurs: "first-time entrepreneurs are just as friggin' dangerous as drunk teenagers behind the wheel of a speeding automobile". The description is apt.
http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2009/01/great-entrepreneurs-are-passionate-about-their-customers-products-not-about-being-great-entrepreneur.html
[Accessed Wednesday, 4 February 2009]

[4] The funding pipeline for Startups in Australia is much less understood and clearly defined than Silicon Valley. Thats why events like, "The Hive", http://www.thehive.org.au/ and "Silicon Beach Australia", http://siliconbeachaustralia.org/ are so important. They act as a ground up movement to funding as apposed to top-down "The Churchill Club", http://www.churchillclub.org.au/

[5] I was worried that I was confusing the term, "Entrepreneur" with "Startups" but I found reference to the term on the Banks own site. So I think I'm on the right track. Here is an example of the NAB (National Australian Bank) using the term, "Startup", http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3214408943/ And another example while randomly reading up on US based small business classes http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3214408947/. In the images, notice the misapplication of business terms.

[6] NAB (National Australia Bank), "Young Entrepreneurs", "... NAB's partnership with ENYA is recognition that an organisation which supports and promotes the active participation of young people in enterprises is the best way to reach young entrepreneurs. ..." is The NAB claim but read in conjunction with "... NAB's partnership with ENYA is recognition that an organisation which supports and promotes the active participation of young people in enterprises is the best way to reach young entrepreneurs. ..." it reads more like marketing.
a) NAB , Young Entrepreneurs
http://www.nab.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/nab/nab/home/about_us/4/3/2/2/
[Accessed Wednesday, 4 February 2009]
b) NAB MicroEnterprise Loans, Young Entrepreneurs (18-29 Years)
http://www.nab.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/f95aac004bc636b1818e932345045098/MED_young_entrepreneur.pdf
[Accessed Wednesday, 4 February 2009]

[7] ABC News, "Figures show Australians continue to shed debt"
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/01/19/2469106.htm
[Accessed Tuesday 20 January, 2009]

[8] The greatest source of confusion is the use of the term Startup in what is two entirely unrelated fields. To label a dog-washing firm a Startup might be technically correct but it misses the point. The greatest gains are made by technology Startups because of the way new technology is adopted. Not because of some arbitrary label. Another source of confusion I see is non technology Startups mimicking every Google business practice in the hope they will somehow replicate Google's growth. Google is far past it's Startup stage but Scribd shows the type of growth possible in technology Startups. TechCrunch, Erick Schonfeld, "Scribd Had A Blowout Year, And So Did the Web Document",
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/12/31/scribd-had-a-blowout-year-and-so-did-the-web-document/
[Accessed Tuesday 3, February, 2009]

[9] Technical Startups have better leverage than small business because they create new technology. The leverage comes from lots of people using the technology. Business not creating new technology miss out on this leverage and the wealth it generates. A good article to read (and one I re-read) to help explain the relationships between Software Startups, small teams, hard problems and wealth can be found in "How to Create Wealth" by Paul Graham. Read the section on "Technology = Leverage".
http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
[Accessed Thursday 22, January 2009]

[10] I was worried that I was confusing the term, "Entrepreneur" with "Startups" but I found reference to the term on the Banks own site. So I think I'm on the right track. Here is an example of the [Big Bank] using the term, Startup. http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3214408943/ Here is another example I found randomly searching for US based small business classes http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/3214408947/. Notice the confusion of business terms.

[11] ENYA stands for 'Enterprise Network for Young Australians'. It's also a name for a Celtic singer
a) http://www.enya.com/
b) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enya
[Accessed Tuesday 20 January, 2009]

[12] Paul Graham, a) "The Hackers guide to Investors" and b)"How to fund a Startup". Both articles provide ample evidence on how best to fund your Startup. The only complaint is the location bias. If you are not in Silicon Valley your chances of funding are reduced. However a word of caution. The ideas suggested are not a perfect solution to funding but more of a clever-financial hack. Like all hacks they are subject to failure. The experiment is still underway and funding results may change in the recession market. In fact the latest change to c) "Make something users want" is "... to pay for".
a) "The Hackers guide to Investors"
http://www.paulgraham.com/guidetoinvestors.html
b) "How to fund a Startup"
http://www.paulgraham.com/startupfunding.html
c) "Paul Graham, YCombinator recommends Startups make something people want... to pay for"
http://startup2startup.com/2008/11/25/paulgraham-ycombinator-recap/
[Accessed Tuesday 3, February, 2009]

[13] I downloaded and went through the following documents:
a) NAB MicroEnterprise Loans, Young Entrepreneurs, Ibid.
b) NAB Terms and conditions (PDF, 332kb)
http://www.nab.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/c1edfc804bc6170eb56fb72345045098/NAB_Microenterprise_Loan_Terms_and_Conditions.pdf
c) NAB's minimum requirements for a business plan (PDF, 256kb)
http://www.nab.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/ec5af5004bc61a4182bf932345045098/NAB_minimum_requirement_for_a_business_plan.pdf
d) NAB Microenterprise Loan Application Form (PDF, 249kb)
http://www.nab.com.au/wps/wcm/connect/e4ebe8804bc60dbf98e79b2345045098/NAB_Microenterprise_Loan_Application.pdf

[14] Fat Tony, "Fat Tony is know by various aliases as William 'Fat Tony' Williams or Anthony 'Fat Tony' D'Amico, even Marion."
http://simpsons.wikia.com/wiki/Fat_Tony
[Accessed Thursday 22, January 2009]

[15] BBC Food, Penne al'arrabiata, "Penne al'arrabiata ia pasta with a tomato and chilli sauce"
http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/database/pennealarrabiatapast_83813.shtml
[Accessed Thursday 22, January 2009] [16] Events such as "The Hive" Ibid. and online resources such as "Silicon Beach Australia" Ibid. allow informal introductions than attending more formal VC/Angel events such as "The Churchill Club", Ibid.

[17] "Ramen profitability" is the ability to (barely) cover living expenses from your Startup revenue. The idea is a play on the idea of spending so little you eat nothing but "Ramen Noodles". The idea was originally described by Paul Graham in "A fundraising Survival Guide",
http://www.paulgraham.com/fundraising.html
[Accessed Tuesday, 3 February, 2009]

[18] New York Times, "Claire Cain Miller & Brad Stone" "Angels Flee From Tech Start-Ups"
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/03/technology/start-ups/03angel.html
[Accessed Wednesday, 4 February, 2009]

[19] Rigid processes punish fast moving Startups, crippling advantages they have over normal business because they restrict speed and flexibility, ie: the ability to create new technology by working in small fast teams on hard problems and profit levering new technology.

[20] Paul Graham, "How to fund a Startup", Ibid.

[21] You might be able to do this working on an obscure idea but if you are in a race to build something where the idea is already in the public domain, your competitors might accelerate past you with the aid of funding.

Fat-free data alternative

2009-08-27T07:06:04Z

Ambition
Last year I finished up running a BBQ for a local sports club. Four years of Saturday morning planning and preparation. [0] Wake up, pack my kit. throw it in the car and drive to the local oval oval. Then ready myself and a volunteer team to prepare and cook. And cook we did. From early in the morning we cooked Hamburgers, plain and with the lot. If customers didn't want a Hamburger then it was hand-made sausages from a great local butcher. We worked like dogs from nine in the morning till two o'clock in the afternoon. From the cool mornings of spring through the heat of summer. Preparing, cooking, selling, cleaning up. Repeating this pattern until we either ran out of food or time. Effort paid off and we made more money than we spent. [1]

The next year we got a bit more ambitious. Enthusiastic after a long break we decided to add a raft of new additions to the menu. Bacon and eggs until we run out. Usually before 10 o'clock. Hamburgers with the lot would now include onion, bacon, cheese, lettuce, tomato. You could even order pineapple and beetroot. Instead of plain sausages you could choose from spicy Italian, beef or plain. Nothing was too much trouble.

Complication
Then an unexpected additional constraint. We moved venues. Changed days from Saturday to Friday. Now instead of mornings we had twilight. Instead of feeding people who skipped breakfast, we are feeding people coming home from work, hungry.

Nightmare
Right about then we, I should have realised it was not going to work. We created our own twilight zone. A nightmare combination of heat, fading daylight and hungry crowds. I'm pretty sure if Chef Gordon Ramsey [2] was to pop in, it would have gone something like this ...

GORDON So Peter. I finally got some of those sausages. Great stuff. Local produce, plenty of onion, selection of sauces. Then I had a Hamburger with the lot. Well cooked. Cheese under the meat. Good meat. Lettuce, onion, eggs. I noticed you'd even put beetroot on the menu.

PETER We are working our legs off but everyone wants their food now! (So far so good. He didn't order the pineapple? Hope he didn't notice the wait. It's an awfully long queue!)

GORDON These bl@@#! people haven't been served? Why? Customers, customers, customers. Service is too slow. You're loosing customers to the F@$!#% re-heated dim sims and Hot Dogs over there. Talk about going to the dogs ...

PETER We're being slammed ... (We are pro's. Everything under control. Too many customers at once)

GORDON Why did I wait a bl@@#! hour to get a F@%$#! feed? It's too complicated. Simplify the F@%$#! menu. Reduce the load on the cooks and service staff. What do you think?

PETER Ahhh, "yes Chef" ... (Oh he noticed)

So what just happened?

We made what customers wanted. The price was right. We made a good profit. The consumables, high quality. But I made a classic mistake. The overly complicated menu with it's combinations and additions was not workable. The front-end was stressed taking weird orders. The back-end cooks could not keep up with demand. Hungry customers waited in winding queues. Add to this a change in venue and increased demand. Chaos reigned. The menu was too complicated. Unsustainable.

GORDON Now what I suggest is. Stream-line the menu. Cut the extra Hamburger additions. Let the customers have the cheese, onions. But for F@%$#! sake, get rid of the beetroot and pineapple.

And so we did. As soon as we simplified the menu, the stress disappeared. The simplified ordering made it easier. We still had the crowds. We sold even more, made more money and sold out early.

Simplify
What has this got to do with technology, software and making product? Well, I've been doing some research for a new product I'm working on. I want users to have the power of access to their data. But before today, I fell into the complexity trap I just described above. I'd forgotten the hard earned lessons of simplicity.

Make something users want
Maybe it was because it was dinner time and the smell of the Sunday roast bought back memories of those sausages and hamburgers on the BBQ. A more likely reason was the article I happened to be reading at the time by the "Gordon Ramsey of the programming world", Douglas Crockford. The paper compared the merits of encoding data in JSON to XML. [3] Reading the article I realised my stupidity. I could still give users access to their data. But without spending the extra three months working on a "ground breaking" standard to achieve the same aim. Earlier in the day I had also read how the Microformat design process really works. [4] The only way standards succeed in the open source world is through a consultation process. Preferably with users who know through experience what problems they face. How can you solve users problems if users themselves are left out? Skip a step. Make a mistake through lack of consultation or insight and failure will follow. Worse still, you might be trying to solve a problem that does not exist. So to I'll repeat it again. If you want to build a standard the right way make sure you at least look at the recipe of successful standards. A recipe something like ...

problem statement ----> research/discussion ----> proposal/draft ----> standard [5]

The standards cooking process takes time, effort and participation. But the outcome is worth it. But I don't have the time to build a standard. I don't even know if users really want it. Once I realised I was biting off a bigger problem than I could solve. I quickly simplified my approach. Why not kick out the complicated XML, DTD's and schema's? Why not give users access to their data without the cruft?

GORDON So Peter. I've been away 3 months now. How's the choice of technology going? Has it worked? Will it move your product closer to demo?

PETER We've stuck with the much simpler JSON instead of the complicated XML schema. The users will be happier because they get the data they want without the extra fat. I'm happier because it means I can get on with building the product instead trying to build a standard nobody will understand, use or want.

GORDON Well that's gone down well. Simplifying the technology means it's lighter, with a faster development time. Customers still get to edit their data. I'm really impressed with the flexibility in thinking. Developers can use JSON libraries with lots of other languages allowing them to build their own data processing tools. F@%$#! me. I think it's the smartest choice because, "While there are transformations which allow XML to express these structures, JSON expresses them directly"! [6]

So I chose the "Fat-free" technology alternative. JSON instead of XML. Giving users direct access to their data not some overly complicated format.

References
[0] I twittered about my last day. Looking back it was a lot of work: "After three years, 22 meets per year, I've sourced, moved, cooked (along with others) approximately 660Kg snags (sausages), 3,300 hamburgers, 3960 buns, 10,560 slices of bread, 132 Kg bacon, 42 tins of beetroot, 132 Kg of onions, 3,200 slices of cheese, 44 lettuces, 66 Kg of tomatoes, 70 litres of tomato sauce and approximately 2000 eggs. It's getting a bit rough. I've only missed 2 meets in 66."
http://twitter.com/bootload/statuses/9910271

[1] The idea behind doing this was simple. With some resources, a bit of effort make something and sell it to people and see what happens. I made a lot of mistakes. Had some success.

[2] It's interesting watching the slew of Ramsey shows on TV. It shows the step up required from technician to entrepreneur.

[3] json.org, Doug Crockford, "JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML" [Accessed Wednesday 14 May 2008]
http://www.json.org/fatfree.html

[4] Microformats.org, "So you wanna develop a new microformat?" [Accessed Wednesday 14 May 2008]
http://microformats.org/wiki/process

[5] Microformats.org, "So you wanna develop a new microformat?", Iterate, et.,al.
http://microformats.org/wiki/process#Iterate

[6] This is great quote lifted from the "JSON: The Fat-Free Alternative to XML". There is a postscript. I posted the article to HackerNews and had a nice discussion on the merits of JSON vs XML.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=187124
A couple of days later this article, "XML: The Angle Bracket Tax" at Coding Horror appeared. No "angle bracket tax" here.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001114.html

colophon

2008-05-10T06:46:30Z

Rationale

I have previously described how I named Seldomlogical. I'm going to quickly discuss the technology behind it. The codename for this project is nextgen [0]. It has a few simple aims:

Data is more important than the technology
Let me save all that data I enter into the web
Allow raw data to be exported as feeds
Give me back control of my own data
Where possible use my own technology

So while the technology may have changed the data remains in re-usable formats that I control. Enough of the ideas what about the technology?

Technology

The latest incarnation of nextgen is built using:

Python [1]
Webpy [2]
Google App engine [3]
data is stored using Datastore api
admin authentication using google Users api
Feeds are valid Atom 1.0 [4]
Feed syndication is via Feedburner
Templates are XHTML Transitional [5]
The valid css is homegrown, based on this article [6]
Images are from my flickr site
The sitename and byline are discussed here
Inspired by Bret Taylors appengine blog [7]

I have been hacking python, webpy, django for quite a while but unable to get code working with a host. That is until appengine. I signed up in the first 10K users in the preview release. A bit of hacking, a domain name, the rest you can see. The simplicity of nextgen means there is no real compelling reason for me to show how. [8] Access to the data is more important.

Reference
[0] I have been thinking and hacking on this problem for a while. You can read more about nextgen here http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/sets/72157600015450188/

[1] You can read more about my Python hacking here http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/python

[2] Using webpy as a development server was a no brainer. Googles appengine is based on webpy and webpy has less moving parts than Django. You can read more about my webpy hacking here http://flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/webpy

[3] Google appengine has just changed the face of web hosting. Consider the costs. At the moment it is free but shaped. Now if I was to get a host in Australia that could a) have a python account, b) work with webpy it would be in the order of AUD$500 to $1000 dollars per year. Domain name and email hosting another $100.

[4] The Atom 1 feeds are valid. I am also adding meta-data into the feeds. For example geospatial information in the form of geo.lat, geo.lon per Atom.item. The intention is to add useful meta information for general consumption. More so than the marked up pages. The data is more important than the presentation.

[5] The templates are valid XHTML transitional.

[6] maxdesign: CSS Centering - fun for all!, http://www.maxdesign.com.au/presentation/center/

[7] In the article Bret explains how the appengine is based on Webpy.

[8] Teh, the minimal blog is written by Pradeep Gowd using Google appengine technology. The source code can be found at http://github.com/btbytes/teh/tree/master

Seldom logical

2009-08-27T07:02:34Z

I live in a nice home. My web equivalent is not so lucky. Nothing more than a cardboard box lying in a muddy ditch in the middle of the road. It's time to name a new home.

I guess I could do the logical thing and use my own name. Ask yourself, "is naming a site after yourself the only way others can find what you create? How many times have you read something and successfully located it the next day? Next week, next year?" You could wrack your brains trying to remember. With a persons name you might misspell it the first time. But the second time? Next time you would probably use Google. Google will remember and find it for you? ...

All 10,000 of them.

Sure this is an unrealistic example. Names might be unique in your home town. But on the Internet everything changes. On the Internet, everyone has the name equivalent of a John Smith.[0] It really is better to choose a unique name. Besides, why would I want to name something using someone else's choice? I didn't get a say in my own name. So that brings me to the title, "Seldom logical". I stumbled on it as the title sort of suggests. Not by using my inner Spock-like logic, but through human blunder. I didn't use grep on /usr/dict/words as Andrew Tridgell did with Samba [1]. Instead I ran through fortune [2] in a bash shell a few times and stumbled on a Star Trek quote:

"Life and death are seldom logical." "But attaining a desired goal always is." -- McCoy and Spock, "The Galileo Seven", stardate 2821.7 [3]

By chance I happened to watch this episode earlier in the year. Spock, Bones and Scotty and a boarding party are marooned on the surface of Murasaki 312 after loosing contact with the Enterprise. Spock is in command. And only by the skin of his teeth successfully escapes the planet with crew intact. But not before blundering through various scenarios using pure logic. Succeeding in the end only by making one final illogical, but human choice. The idea that we are all illogical beings, trying to be "totally rational" is nicely captured in the title. [4] It neatly sums up what happens when I try to write down some problem. The journey might not be a logical one. But the search for clarity is.

Reference
[0] Google returns some 23,200,000 when searching for John Smith. I chose John Smith because it is a common generic name. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Smith

[1] Samba: Tridgell wanted to distribute his new software as SMB Server but a product already existed with this name. Instead he tried ... grep -i 's.*m.*b' /usr/dict/words and the result was "salmonberry samba sawtimber scramble" http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/samba/chapter/book/ch01_01.html

[2] Fortune is a simple UNIX based program that displays random witty messages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune

[3] Star Trek: "The Galileo Seven", season 1, episode 16, first aired January 5, 1967 http://www.tv.com/star-trek/the-galileo-seven/episode/24901/

[3] I butchered the title and quotation for my own byline, the title stays.

contact

2013-06-15T07:40:08Z

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay

Peter Renshaw
twitter.com/peterrenshaw
facebook.com/peter.renshaw
news.ycombinator.com/...bootload
flickr.com/photos/bootload
peterrenshaw at seldomlogical dot com
goonmail at netspace dot net dot au

about

2012-03-27T08:56:06Z

This was my world. Few fences, lots of space & plenty of trees. Summer being chased around the backyard with a hose during the "Great water fight". a scanned print from a Kodachrome 35mm slide. Building and hacking things together is in my blood. My contact details are here.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay

Books in 20 years
The illusion of anonymity
What is the morphogenesis of startups?
Don't beat yourself up
Say it, "as it is"
Why Australia needs its own Chilcot Inquiry
Why RT is a dirty word to some
I hate Disco
How I hacked the site together
A quick site name hack
Want to see more pictures?