Play - Darren James Harkness

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staticred — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 07:18:21 PDT

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Digital Humanities [Flickr]

staticred — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:16:18 PDT

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My first rock show

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:35:21 +0000

Heather's post got me thinking about the first concert I attended. It was a Sarah McLachlan show in Bellingham, WA, back in 1994. It was a genuine Experience with a capital-E, and really overshadowed any other concert since. Funnily enough, not so much for the concert itself, which was great, but for all of the events that happened around it.

It started with getting the tickets themselves. I saw a tiny ad for the concert in the Georgia Straight, saying that Sarah McLachlan was going to be playing at Western Washington University. I was a big fan of her music at the time (it was a Very Dark Period of my life, or at least so I thought at the time, and McLachlan's music Spoke To Me. I've since grown up a bit, though I do have a lasting fondness for her albums). I knew I Had to Go to That concert.

As a bonus, the tickets were not being sold out of Ticketmaster or any other agency. No, in order to get tickets for the Bellingham show, you had to drive to Nettwerk's office in Vancouver and pick them up there. It was A Pilgrimage! My friend Tim and I (I think it was Tim at least - it's hard to remember the details 15 years later) jumped in the car and drove to their offices on W 2nd. It was like heading to Mecca, as Nettwerk was the label behind a couple of bands I really liked.

It was a bit disappointing when we finally got to Nettwerk. I don't know what I was expecting - dancing bears, circus acts, or a lush interior dripping with musicians and awesome. Turns out Nettwerk was just an office with cubicles - albeit an office with cubicles right next to one of the best known recording studios in Canada. We paid some cheery intern for our tickets and started looking forward to the show, which was a couple of weekends later.

On the day of the show, Tim and I bundled ourselves into my car, and headed down to Bellingham. We wanted to get there a bit on the early side, because the tickets were general admission, rather than assigned seating. And my god, there was sure to be thousands of people waiting in line for the concert - how could there not be?

The drive to WWU was pretty uneventful (unlike the drive to Seattle I'd make a few months later where my car would catch fire), and we found parking near the concert venue pretty easily - which made perfect sense given that we were 8 hours early for the concert. There was, obviously, no massive line of concert-goers, and no teeming throng of rabid fans crowding the university. We were, quite literally, the first people to arrive at the venue. Including the performers.

So what does one do for 8 hours at a university campus, especially when you're wary of losing your place as first in line? We explored the immediate surroundings and buildings. We walked around buildings, went up staircases, got locked in backstage. Oh yes, we fumbled ourselves into the backstage, where Dave Kershaw was hanging out. Of course, we didn't know he was the traveling organist for the show, and just asked him how the hell to get out. Eventually, having exhausted places to explore within shouting distance of the venue, we just sat down in a hallway.

Funnily enough, it was when we sat down in that hallway that we actually saw Sarah McLachlan. Tim missed her completely, and I only caught her out of the corner of my eye as she walked right in front of us. She was way shorter than I thought she was - I'm sure she was no taller than 5'. By the time I realized it was her that had walked 2' in front of us, she had already turned the corner.

Eventually, we started the line for the concert, as it was apparent that people were starting to show up. Due to our arriving stupidly early, we were at the front of the line. One of the concert organizers was going around with a video camera, and somewhere in the McLachlan archives exists a video of Tim and myself acting like complete idiots excited about our position at the front of the line (I'm particularly proud on that video of the stupid t-shirt I was wearing at the time).

The concert was amazing. Because I was at the front of the line, it meant I had my choice of places to sit (there were no chairs, just a flat floor in an empty room). I chose center stage, right at the very front. It turns out that was the absolute best place in the house to sit, as it was 5' away from the band. I was so close I could read the set list taped to the floor. The energy in that room was amazing, in part because we were all packed so closely together, and in part because Sarah McLachlan put on a very powerful show. At one point I very uncharacteristically had a girl sitting on my lap swaying along to the music with me (being the social misfit I was at the time, of course, I had absolutely no ability to even get her name).

I attended a few other concerts after that, but I was never had another experience like it. I think, in part, it was because I've never been to a venue quite like it, but I think also it's that the first experience was so memorable that I never could replicate it.

BSG thoughts

Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:20:57 +0000

On the cusp of the Battlestar Galactic series closer, I had a thought on a very specific piece of BSG mythology, specifically the phrase "You are the harbinger of death, Kara Thrace."

What if this is a positive, rather than negative thing? One assumes from the tone of the series that Kara is being marked as an Angel of Death by the hybrids that utter that phrase. But harbinger has a second meaning, which is a forerunner. Starbuck died on Earth and was resurrected, this we know.

We also know that the First Five rebuilt resurrection technology in the final days of Earth, as a way of escaping death from their own Cylon uprising. Could it be that Starbuck is the forerunner of the colonists (and rebel Cylons) reobtaining access to resurrection? Perhaps instead of bringing death to the colonists, she is instead leading them through it?

I suppose we'll find out in a matter of hours.

A Twittering Beacon

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:18:30 +0000

I thought, given the recent Day of Digital Humanities that posting the proposal I sent into DH 2009 would be appropriate. (Ultimately, the proposal was part of a panel that was turned down, so I don't think I'm offending anyone by posting it here).

A Twittering Beacon: using social networking tools to enhance digital humanities tool adoption.

Darren James Harkness
Athabasca University
darren@athabascau.ca

There is a common problem among digital humanities tools: they are not being used in great numbers, and get little attention outside of the conference and publication circuit. Innovative tools are being developed, but - with notable exceptions such as the Orlando Project - no user communities seem to form around them.It is a problem whose solution seems to be elusive amongst digital tool makers.As Dan Cohen writes,“most scholars have not yet figured out ways to take full advantage of the digitized riches suddenly available on their computers.” This paper suggests a possible solution, based on existing social networks and community formation in blogging networks.

The power of blogs and social networking tools to create communities is well documented. Social networks have been used within rural communities¹, ethnic communities,² and academia.³In my MA research, I found that communities regularly form in and around blogs and LiveJournal sites, and act as a positive force in the development of those sites.⁴ Furthermore, it develops a stronger sense of understanding between the blogger and her audience.

The sciences have adopted the use of social networking tools with great success.The most recent example of this is NASA’s use of Twitter to document findings from the Phoenix Mars Lander.⁵ The public response has been outstanding; MarsPhoenix has over 38,000 followers as of November 12, 2008,⁶ and inspired hundreds of its followers to create epitaphs for the lander when it finally shut down due to cold.⁷As a direct result of this success, NASA recently expanded their use of Twitter⁸ to include the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Landers,⁹ Mars Science Lab,¹⁰ and Cassini probe.¹¹

Aside from increased public exposure, one of NASA’s great successes in adopting social networking tools is that it has created a much better understanding of its projects. Lack of understanding, as Claire Warwick et al suggest, is a key in understanding why there is a lack of adoption among digital humanities tools.¹²I have found this in my own work with digital humanities tools, such as the MONK project; documentation is scarce, and information on a system is traded through emails with programmers and project managers. Lisa Spiro summarizes the issues well: “in my conversations with researchers who aren’t necessarily interested in doing digital scholarship, just in doing their research better, I learned that they weren’t aware of digital tools and didn’t know where to find out about them.”¹³

Entry into digital humanities tools is currently difficult for those outside the field (and often even for those within it) and serves as a roadblock for adoption. We can take a page from our colleagues in the sciences and make use of social networking tools to create a better understanding of how our tools work.

¹ Gilbert, Eric, Karrie Karahalios, and Christian Sandvig. (2008). The Network in the Garden: An Empirical Analysis of Social Media in Rural Life. ACM CHI 2008, April 5-10, Florence Italy.

² Byrne, Dara. (2007). Public Discourse, Community Concerns, and Their Relationship to Civic Engagement: Exploring Black Social Networking Traditions on BlackPlanet.com. JCMC, 13 (1). [Special Issue of JCMC on Social Network Sites, Eds.: danah boyd and Nicole Ellison.], Byrne, Dara. (2008). The Future of (the) 'Race': Identity, Discourse and the Rise of Computer-mediated Public Spheres. In A. Everett (Ed.), MacArthur Foundation Book Series on Digital Learning: Race and Ethnicity Volume (pp. 15-38). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

³ Hewitt, Anne and Andrea Forte. (2006). Crossing Boundaries: Identity Management and Student/Faculty Relationships on the Facebook. Poster presented at CSCW, Banff, Alberta., See also Academia.edu.

⁴ Harkness, Darren James. (2008) The Effect of adding a zero: the blog and identity.Master's Thesis. University of Alberta, Department of Humanities Computing.

⁵ MarsPhoenix Twitter Account. http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

⁶ Johnson, Bobbie. “Mars Phoenix: Nasa vows to carry on twittering across the universe” Guardian Online. November 12, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/12/twitter-phoenix-mars-nasa

⁷ Madrigal, Alexis. “R.I.P. @MarsPhoenix: The Twitter Epitaph Contest “ Wired Science. October 30, 2008. http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/10/rip-mars-phoeni.html

⁸ Terdiman, Daniel. “Mars Phoenix Lander completes its mission” Cnet news November 10, 2008. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/nov/12/twitter-phoenix-mars-nasa

⁹ MarsRovers Twitter Account http://twitter.com/marsrovers

¹⁰ MarsScienceLab Twitter Account http://twitter.com/MarsScienceLab

¹¹ Cassini Probe Twitter Account http://twitter.com/CassiniSaturn

¹² Warwick,C., Galina,I., Rimmer,J., Terras,M., Blandford,A., Gow,J., Buchanan,G. (Forthcoming). “Documentation and the users of digital resources in the humanities.” Journal of Documentation 65(1), .

¹³ Spiro, Lisa. “Doing Digital Scholarship” Digital Scholarship in the Humanities (blog) http://digitalscholarship.wordpress.com/2008/08/11/doing-digital-scholarship-presentation-at-digital-humanities-2008/

No Subject [Flickr]

staticred — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:05:35 PDT

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Update to staticred.net main site.

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:03:31 +0000

If you came to staticred.net today and noticed there's been a change, you're right! I decided I wanted a central clearinghouse of my social networking, blogging, photo sharing, etc sites that I could point people to and sort of aggregate all the information in one place.

I originally tried using Tumbler to aggregate feeds from various places, and used Tumblr's RSS feed to populate the page on staticred.net. As it turns out, that wasn't the best way to go about it, for a couple of reasons. First, Tumblr didn't work exactly the way I wanted it to work with the Twitter feed -- it didn't direct people back to my Twitter page. Second, Tumblr only updated its imported feeds once an hour, which was driving me crazy to test. I ended up replacing this setup with Yahoo Pipes.

The Pipe grabs various RSS feeds and combines and sorts them into one master feed that I can then display on the main staticred.net page. This works much better and lets me easily do some regexp against some of the feeds. For example, I replace the staticred: in my Twitter RSS with a linked "darren" and a twitter icon. It also updates relatively live, which saved my sanity while testing. The page on staticred will only check against the RSS feed ever 5 minutes or so, caching the feed the rest of the time. I don't get enough traffic on the site to really cause problems.

The script on the staticred.net side of things is pretty straightforward and makes use of the Magpie RSS library. I won't reproduce it here, since it's so simple, but if you're really interested drop me an email and I'll send you the source.

If you prefer the old blog, have no fear - you can get to it via the links at the bottom of the page, or by clicking here.

No Subject [Flickr]

staticred — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 22:17:35 PST

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That so didn't turn out. [Flickr]

staticred — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 10:24:34 PST

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No Subject [Flickr]

staticred — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:54:55 PST

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Something I'm working on.

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:23:05 +0000

I was reading Dave Eggers’ A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius when I started writing this story.

I do that sometimes; I start reading a book and get totally inspired to sit down and write a story similar to the one I’ve just read. After reading a bunch of Michael Ondaatje, I wrote a story about Maggie Gillwood, a war widow living in Ottawa, coming to terms with rebuilding her life after the death of her husband, and the farmhand she hires who instantly falls in love with her. Echoes of Ondaatje reverberate through the writing, with metaphors of cinnamon and brief flashes of the past. I even included a Michael Ondaatje quote as an epigraph:

Trust me, this will take time but there is order here, very faint, very human.
- Michael Ondaatje

Sure, it was a moody piece, with lines like

oh, how he’d get himself worked up when his
team was doing poorly, screaming obscenities
at the helpless wooden cabinet
he was passion.

and an almost unforgivable scene with a prison guard weeping softly over his captive prisoner’s fate - “a small mark on a dusty floor the only evidence of compassion.” But it had promise and some imagery I really liked. I agonized over the story for months, tweaking this line and that until I ran out of steam. It ended up a weird hybrid of blank verse and prose, never really deciding on one or the other. And besides, I was young - what did I know about life, especially about the loss of a spouse? It’s probably for the best that I left that particular story alone.

After reading Neuromancer for the umpteenth time while I was working for a network security company, I wrote >_, a story about a hacker. I was feeling the high of having worked for a network security company, and being so close to actual hackers. The unnamed protagonist of the story was doing time in an accounting firm writing a small worm. He runs into an especially boastful accountant who leads him to Chase Strand (can’t you just feel the Gibson dripping from that name?), a reclusive but über-wealthy former hacker.

Unlike Maggie, which was moodily quiet, even sullen, >_ was brash and loud, trying to combine the styles of William Gibson and Neal Stephenson. I had some good plans for that story, with some impressive plot twists. I enjoyed writing it, but never really got around to finishing it. Like Maggie, the story just petered out, plot sputtering to a slow, rolling stop.
I stopped writing fiction when I started writing technical documentation. Something about writing procedures and conceptual documents stripped me of the ability to write for enjoyment. By the time I left that job, I’d even stopped blogging regularly, the joy of writing had traveled so far away from me.

So I guess what I’m trying to say here is bear with me. Having read something inspiring, I’ve decided to start writing a story that will likely fizzle out after a couple of weeks. But I’ll have fun doing it, and really, isn’t that the point?

* * *

I am a normal person to whom abnormal things sometimes happen.   It started when I was 4, learning to ride my green Schwinn with training wheels. Dad was working the garden of their little house on Merlin Drive - a choice of homes that might have contributed to my lifelong love of all things wizard - when God yelled at me. I can’t remember what he yelled, perhaps he was mad at me for venturing down to the ravine behind our house, which I wasn’t allowed to play in. But it scared the Hell into me, and I ran into the house. It occurred to me years later that it wasn’t, in fact, God who yelled at me, but rather it was the CF-101 Voodoos flying overhead as part of the annual airshow in my home town.

The abnormalities continued through a childhood fascination with extraterrestrials and conspiracy theory. I remember vivid dreams of a giant moon outside our kitchen window, and opening the door onto our patio to a 3-foot-tall slug-like alien. I spent much of my adolescence convinced that not only were aliens real, but they were living just on the edge of my existence. Alongside the aliens lived the ghosts and creepy things that go bump in the night. For my 12th birthday, my parents bought me a copy of Mysteries of the Unexplained, a book that still haunts my bookshelf.   I lay awake wondering if tonight was going to be the night a little grey face appeared in my window, or if I was going to spontaneously combust.

You couldn’t keep me away from the paranormal. I sucked back books about ghostly possessions and cryptozoology, memorizing facts about the Loch Ness monster and Ogopogo. I knew the different types of UFOs and the difference between telekinesis and telepathy.

I was an odd kid.

It may have had some effect on my popularity in school. See, I was never really that popular. I was socially awkward, never feeling all that comfortable around other kids and not sure how I should interact with them. I talked about weird things, gravitated towards the other social outcasts and malcontents, and had weird interests like computers (it was the late 80s). I was an easy target for bullies and they knew it. I know now that nobody had it easy growing up, and even then I knew there were kids that had it a lot worse than me. I was lucky enough to have a relatively stable family with a decent enough income; I wasn’t incredibly ugly or plagued with acne and only worked because I wanted to buy my own computer and car.

But this isn’t so much a story about my childhood, though I’m sure we’ll take some unavoidable side trips there. This is a story of abnormal things. I used to collect them, these little tchotchkes of absurdity. Like >_ and Maggie, their chronicling was inspired by something I was reading at the time, Harvey Pekar’s American Splendour. Pekar was an oddity in the comic world when he first started writing. He didn’t write about superheroes, teens in Riverdale or little rich kids. No, Harvey Pekar made comics about the mundanities of every day life in working class Cleveland, Ohio. He didn’t even bother with the artwork, trusting it to a different artist every issue. I loved it, and saw the potential to do something very similar with the people I ran into in Edmonton.

Puppy nose [Flickr]

staticred — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:43:54 PST

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Cutest dog ever.

Sleepy puppies [Flickr]

staticred — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:40:26 PST

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Sisters [Flickr]

staticred — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 09:40:14 PST

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There are no two dogs that are as close as these two.

Thoughts on the iPod touch

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:10:51 +0000

K ended up getting me an iPod touch for Christmas this year (which she has since dubbed the stepford wife). Of course, I'd been going on and on for months about how much I wanted one... ever since the iphone came out really.

Now that I've had it a few weeks, I thought I'd write down a few thoughts about it.

Typing

I'm a big fan of the typing correction included in the touch OS. Although I'm getting better at typing on this thing, I'm not 100% there yet. I was never a big SMS person, so I never got used to typing with one finger. I don't mind the lack of tactile response at all - I'd type just as poorly on a blackberry.

Cut & paste would me nice, but in truth there has only been one or two occassions where I really needed it and couldn't get around it another way.

App selection

One of my initial concerns with iPod apps is that they'd end up creating the same giant collection of crap that the palm ecosystem created. I'm a bit sad to say that they did. Although there are many good apps out there, there's a tonne of garbage too. Granted, I've avoided the pay apps, since I don't want to start getting into those.

Battery life

I can't complain at all about the battery life, since I basically use this as a small, more portable version of my laptop. The laptop only gets four hours of battery life - the touch lasts pretty much a full day.

Email

Again no complaints, really. About the only comment I have is that it would be nice to have a unified inbox instead of separate inboxes for each account.

Browsing

So nice, especially since I've experienced the suckage that is cellphone browsing. The only time I dislike the experience is when the site reverts to a mobile version (I'm looking at you food network).

So overall, I'm loving it. One of these days I might grab the iPhone SDK and build an app of my own.

Hi! I'm a blogger!

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:08:13 +0000

It's no secret that I haven't been all that visible here over the last year or so. I've been averaging one or two posts a month and haven't really been all that focused on updating the content of this site. There's a couple reasons why:I just haven't had much to blog about, especially since I have self-censored the things I put on this site, and I just haven't had the energy to blog what I can let myself blog about. Does that make much sense?

It's ironic for someone who positions themselves as a blog scholar that they'd shy away from posting to their blog, and I can't say exactly why it is I might be doing so. I just don't have an urge to communicate through the blog, even though I have stuff that I could talk about. Like work, where we're working on some really interesting projects and I'm feeling like I'm exactly where I need (and want) to be. And some interesting stuff has come up with those projects as well, such as the work I'm doing with Moodle and Elgg. Of course, maybe it's only interesting to me, and there's aspects that I can't (or probably shouldn't) talk about in order to maintain some distance from the more sensitive parts of the job.

Part of the problem is that I don't have a clear idea of what I want to do with this site or this blog in general. I'm not freelancing on a regular basis as I have in the past, so there's no real need to maintain a professional site (though I do still have the studio page up just in case). But I don't want to keep a personal blog, since K isn't comfortable with me talking about her online -- which makes perfect sense, given that she is a public figure as an instructor, and has to have control over her online presence -- and I'm not comfortable with sharing my life online as much as I have in the past. Never mind the fact that my life just isn't all that interesting lately, especially with K living in BC -- there's just not much to write about, unless you want stories about how I spend my evenings watching old episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and avoiding looking at the basement or the kitchen (or the dining room and upstairs office, which have piles of stuff from downstairs in them).

There is some interesting stuff I'm learning in my job that I want to share though, like my last entry about code reviewing and project management. I'd also like to share some of the things I've been looking at outside of work as well, like a topic I suggested to Dr. Martha Nell-Smith for inclusion in a panel at Digital Humanities 2009 on using social networking tools to better promote and increase usage of digital humanities tools (and likewise, a paper I've submitted to Digital Humanities Quarterly railing against how the tool makers haven taken over the field and need to move aside and let the humanists in to play).

Another part of the problem is that I know that most of the readers of this blog, the few that there were, have gone away because it's been so long since there was any compelling content here. The people that I would want to keep in touch with through the blog I already keep in touch with via other means, such as IM, email, or Facebook. So I'm not writing anything for them. Of course, there's no other audience. I haven't built a strong online persona that would bring people to the site, and the work that I do has more of a local, offline influence (funny, since I not only work for an online university, but also research online culture).

Were I to go back to my thesis on online identity, I'd say that the audience isn't necessarily important; the blog could be used as a mirror for my own identity to help me work thoughts out. But then we get back to not wanting to share my life online, especially where it intersects with K's life.

The end result is that I just can't visualize who my audience is, or would be, and that leaves me in a sticky position as to what to write here. If you're still reading this site, what are your thoughts? Do you still blog (I know a couple of you do), and if so what/why? What would you want to read here? What have I written in the past that has caught your interest and made you want to come back (I assume it's been a long while since there's been something of interest).

Code reviews

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 02:18:44 +0000

Ive been thinking quite a bit about the development process lately. There have been a couple projects I've been following at work that haven't gone exactly as I'd like them to; the developers were left to their own devices, and little guidance was given to their work.

One method I'd like to put in place for a couple of these developers is to strengthen the project scaffolding around their work. The projects they were working on had little or no rrquirements; those that were defined were weak and ill-defined, and weren't given great importance by the developers. We've been trying to put a more effective project documentation process in place, especially in departments outside of our own that have been running a bit loose. It's funny though - if you had told me three years ago that I'd be enforcing a project management process of m own free will, I'd have definitely looked at you funny. The benefit of it has definitely come clear to me though, and I can't imagine running a project without it now.

A big part of the problem is that these are junior developers placed in senior positions - they really should be paired with a senior developer. Of course, resources being what they are, that's not always feasible.

So how do I ensure these developers are successful in their work? The solution that occurs to me is to have their work go through a peer review process. This means that before their work can go to testing or production, it needs to be read and critiqued by developer.

Overall I think the code review process is a valuable one, and not just for junior developers. Senior developers can benefit as well. Indeed one of the most important activities for a developer of any experience level is to keep working. Having someone comment on your code and suggest more efficient / standard / new ways of doing things can be extremely beneficial.

What do you think? Is a code review a valuable exercise? Can you think of other peer activities developers should be engaging in?

So Much For A Snow Free December [Flickr]

staticred — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:39:48 PST

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Coalition of the willing

Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:31:07 +0000

So wow. If you somehow hadn't heard, the Liberals and the NDP have created an agreement to form a coalition government with the support of the Bloc Québécois, and are planning to take the current government down in a non-confidence vote on December 8th. It's due to the opposition's general belief that the Conservatives are not acting responsibly with regards to the worldwide economic crisis, yet are taking advantage of it to make some bold political moves, such as cutting public funding for political parties. The two parties have agreed to support each other in a coalition for 30 months, and have divvied up cabinet positions roughly based on the number of seats each party has, giving the NDP 25% of the cabinet positions. I had actually hoped for this move at the end of the last election, when it was clear that Canada wasn't interested in a Conservative majority.

So how do you feel about this? The Conservatives are running a fear campaign against the idea, claiming it's a power grab, or that it's undemocratic, that it gives the Bloc too much power, or that it's not the will of the people.

I want to address that first point right off the bat. I think that in giving the Conservatives a minority government, it's very much the will of the people that all of our political parties work together to run a responsible government. We explicitly did not vote in a Conservative government - if we did, they would have a majority. No, as a majority, the Canadian voting population would rather have a Liberal/NDP/Bloc government working together. It discounts the undemocratic issue as well, since nobody's MP is being usurped or replaced -- the people we voted for are still represented in the House of Commons, and will still push for the best interests of their constituents (or at least they should).

As for giving the Bloc too much power - they already have a significant influence over the current government, with 49 seats. The Conservatives are reliant upon them to balance any non-confidence vote from the Liberals and NDP. Likewise, the Liberal/NDP coalition is cognizant of the divisiveness of a Bloc contingent in their ranks, which is likely why the Bloc is not officially a part of the coalition, but rather brought into support through an accord with them.

Finally, the power grab. Is it a power grab? Most definitely it is. You just don't get into leadership politics if you're not interested in power - either for your own ends or for the betterment of the population. Is it any more of a power grab than Stephen Harper breaking his own fixed election laws and calling the 2008 election, when, while high on positive polling results, he thought he could get a majority? Of course not.

The DH Cruiser

Tue, 04 Nov 2008 15:55:00 +0000

It's been a long time coming, but K & I decided to buy a new (to us) car this weekend. We've been talking about it for a long time, because frankly it was an expense that we weren't keen on making. However, with K out of town, I was a little uncomfortable with not having my own set of wheels.

Building a list...

We had a price in mind, and so I started looking through the Auto Trader, Craiglist, and the Buy & Sell websites a couple of weeks ago to see what we could find. As it turned out, there wasn't a whole lot... but there was if we raised our limit a little.

So, armed with a list of cars to look at, and the assumption that I could negotiate the price down, I started going to dealerships. I'd lined up a few candidates: a 1996 Volvo 850 sedan, a 2004 Pontiac Grand Am, a 2003 Chevy Cavalier, a 1998 VW Passat, a 1998 VW New Beetle, and a 2001 Chrysler PT Cruiser. The Volvo was taken out of the running quickly, as I discovered that the dealer was notorious for selling previously written off cars (that he repairs). I discounted the New Beetle the moment I sat down inside it, as it was cramped as can be. When I researched the 98 VW Passat, I discovered they are quite unreliable and problem-prone. That really only left the Grand Am, Cavalier, and PT Cruiser, which I decided to test drive even though its windshield needed replacing. I planned on visiting the dealers on Saturday morning.

Why it's important to pay attention to your gut

On a lark Saturday morning, I decided to drop by the local Chrysler dealer and hit up one of the salespeople. I didn't expect anything to be in our price range, but figured it was worth a try. As it turns out, it was. I explained to the salesperson what our all-in, taxes and everything price was, and asked if he had anything on the lot that might fit. He took me to three cars - a 2003 Grand Am, a 2002 PT Cruiser, and a 2001 PT Cruiser Touring Edition. I started looking at the Grand Am and took it for a test drive. It was okay, but a little uncomfortable, and felt really low after driving the F350 I've been borrowing from K's dad. I wasn't too keen on it, despite the fact that I've liked the looks of a Grand Am for quite some time. It just wasn't comfortable for me.

The next one up was the 2002 PT Cruiser. It had some slight damage to the front grill and a couple of dings, and was the base model without any options, so I put it aside and went to look at the 2001 Touring Edition he had on the lot. It was a plucky little thing, white with a grey cloth interior, and in very good condition. I took it for a spin and it felt extremely comfortable. I'd read that the automatic, with its 4-cylinder engine, suffered from a lack of acceleration, but I didn't notice. The one I test drove was a standard, and it had plenty of get-up-and-go. I was a bit rusty on my clutch skills (though no stalls and no lurches - yay), but the car handled well and was smooth to drive.

After the drive...

When we got back to the lot, the salesperson started into "let's make a deal" mode. I was definitely interested in the car, but I also a) wanted to take a look at a couple other lots to see what else was out there that I might have missed in my online looking, and b) couldn't stand the idea of sitting in his territory while he "talked to the manager". I told him to work the numbers on the best price he could give me, and to call me on my cell when he had it. Regardless, I had to talk to K about it before I could do anything anyways, and getting pressure in the sales office wasn't going to help that.

So I left the dealer, and hit a few more in our area to see what else was out there. I'd already knocked the Grand Am out of the running because it wasn't comfortable (and I do make at least one trip down to Vancouver a year, so comfort is important), and I've never liked the Cavaliers, so that got knocked off the list as well. The cars I found at the other dealers that were in my price range were generally in poor condition; there were dings and scratches, rust, missing body parts, etc. Nothing was in as good condition as the PT or had under 150,000km. My mind was made up as far as what our choice for a car was, and I went home to await a call back from the salesperson and talk to K about what I'd found.

And now, we wait...

It was one of the longest weekends I've had for awhile. The salesperson didn't call back - I finally had to call him near the end of the day to find out what price he could come to. As it turned out, he was able to come in a fair bit under our price limit, and quite a bit under the sticker price of the car on the lot. It was definitely a good deal, but I still had to talk to K to make sure we were both okay with the purchase. There were a couple of reasons why it wasn't a done deal. First, it was a big purchase to begin with - it's not every day you're spending money on a car, and we'd just bought the washer and dryer. More important, however, was the fact that the car was a standard. K doesn't feel comfortable driving standard, and so it was a negative point against the car from her point of view - it effectively means that she can't drive the car, whereas if we were to purchase an automatic, either of us could drive. Likewise, although she thought it was "a very Darren-y car", I'm not so sure she liked the styling. So we talked, thought about it, talked and thought some more, and decided Sunday afternoon to go ahead and get it.

Introducing the DH Cruiser

On Sunday I wandered over to the dealer and signed the papers. They ran it through a last mechanical check on Monday, gave it an interior detailing, and I picked it up Monday night.

Here it is from the front. One of the things I like about the PT is that they haven't fundamentally altered the appearance over the years -- a 2001 looks a lot like a 2007. It's a nice bright white, and it's in great shape. It even has a luggage rack (though interestingly, it's suggested that the rack be stored at the back when not in use to reduce wind noise). You can't really see it in this picture, but it has some pretty spanky chrome mags.

One of the things that has really sold me on cars like the PT and the Chevy HHR is the vintage styling. I love the look of an old De Soto, Studebaker, Merc, etc, and I've wanted something like that for a very long time. That being said, De Sotos and Mercs don't come with fuel injection, shoulder harnesses and airbags, and aren't really meant for frequent driving. The PT gives me the styling of those cars and the safety/performance of something newer, and that makes me pretty happy.

Here's a shot of the interior (through the windshield, sorry for the glare). The interior has some minor quirks (like the window controls being mounted on the center console), but is roomy and comfortable inside. It also has a fun round shifter knob that is very comfortable in the hand. Aside from the window controls, everything is laid out nicely inside.

K likes to name our vehicles, so I started thinking what we could name the new car. K suggested we name it the DH Cruiser, partly because of my initials, and partly to celebrate our involvement in the digital humanities. I like it, though I may secretly replace the DH with a great '40s name like Darcy Hawk or Dora Hess. :)

How to tell you're getting old.

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:09:41 +0000

K & I celebrated our tenth anniversary this weekend. It's hard to believe sometimes that we've been together that long, but the proof is there. K flew up from SFU for the weekend, an although she had to work on lecture notes and paper proposals, it was great having her up here. We didn't do a lot to celebrate the day - Kirsten made a wonderful meal of Romanian dolmades the day before, and I made our favourite 40 clove garlic chicken the night of - it was enough that we were together.

Also, we had an expected, but not really wanted, purchase a couple days earlier:

Yup, that's a new washer & dryer, to replace the washer that has a broken cycle select dial and has started chewing tiny little holes in our clothes (ours are white though, as there was a sale on floor models at our local appliance store). It was hardly the sexiest purchase we've made this year, but probably one of the most necessary. It also marks the last two appliances in the house that were original to our purchase.

And here's the proof that I've officially come into my own as an old guy - I'm goofily excited about the new washer and dryer. The new washer has Sanitary Mode! And is Front Loading! And look! It analyzes the size of the load! And has a "soil level" setting! And the dryer turns off automatically when things are dry! Woohoo, I'm living the high life, and I can't wait to do my first load of laundry - in fact, I'm waiting to do laundry until it comes on Saturday!

Best to just put me on an ice floe, and push me off to the suburbs.

What's the deal with the Canadian Election?

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:08:06 +0000

So yeah, we Canadians just collectively spent $300,000,000 on an election we didn't want that in the end changed pretty much nothing. As a commenter to CBC's Ormiston Online said, it was like a bad Seinfeld episode.

Although I'm delighted by our own local victory, I'm disappointed by the election as a whole.

First, there's the issue of the voter turnout. It's the lowest in Canadian history, and even lower than the mostly apathetic US. CBC estimates a 59.1% voter turnout. That means in a room with 10 Canadians of voting age, 4 of them didn't bother voting. In more real numbers, that's 9.6 million registered voters that didn't bother showing up to the polls yesterday. I understand the frustration of the unexpected election call, but think of what real change could have been made if those 9.6 million people had cast their vote.

Second were the parties. They all fumbled this election, plain and simple. The internal divisions within the Liberal party have poisoned it and made it completely ineffective. Although I have no doubts that Stéphane Dion is an intelligent, well-spoken person, he's no political strategist. He ran this election on the principle that his policy would win out at the end of the day, and came off poorly in his responses to the Torys' attacks on the Green Shift plan. He couldn't connect or communicate with the Canadian population at all - I have heard more than one person talk about how they couldn't possibly vote for Dion because he was the tax bogeyman. The Tories had no election platform - they ran on their previous record. Ultimately, it appeared to let them keep most of their seats and gain a couple extra, but it was a weird, paradoxical attitude. They called the election because they felt Parliament wasn't working, but once they hit the campaign trail they took the attitude that everything was fine, so there was nothing to change. It really left one to wonder why an election was called in the first place. The NDP, although they have my heart and vote don't get off easy either. Jack Layton, bless his heart, was too much the bulldog and not enough the social democrat. I think the many ad hominems against Harper and his blue sweater in the debates really took him down. He also has to fight the prevailing western Canadian attitude of the NDP as a "bunch of commies" (an actual quote from a conversation K had with some people in BC). Nobody really had anything to say in this election, because nobody really wanted it at the end of the day.

Finally, is Stephen Harper himself. It was absolutely reckless of him to call an election on the eve of a recession, when the government and anybody with eyes and an Internet connection can see that we are entering into a difficult financial time. Think of what the $300,000,000 we just wasted on a useless election could have done. Think of how it could have shored up EI benefits, which are sure to take a hit as manufacturing and industry jobs dwindle. Think of how far $300,000,000 could have gone towards training doctors and nurses in Canada. Think of how $300,000,000 could have been used to provide a budget surplus to act as a float against recession. Or provide help to the homeless. Or provide more federal academic grants.

Despite all his talks about being fiscally conservative and bringing ethic back to Canadian politics, of being an economist and how we're doing okay, at the end of the day, he broke his own election law and wasted taxpayer money. Stephen Harper wasted our money because he thought he was doing well enough in the polls to get a majority government.

He wasted our money on vanity.

Postscript: The only person I can't find myself to lay criticism on is the Green Party's Elizabeth May. She held herself exceptionally well this election, and in my opinion is the only real victor. Although I personally still wouldn't vote for the Greens because their social policies are a too right-leaning, May did an exceptional job outlining the Green platform and displaying that the party had positions on more than just the environment. Ultimately, if the Greens (or hey, just Elizabeth May) could be persuaded to join with the NDP, I think she could do some real damage against the Conservatives.

Coda

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 00:00:35 +0000

I've started getting a little more serious about using my laptop for web development, and as part of this, I've been looking for something a little nicer to use than Textedit. I've never been a fan of WYSIWYG editors like Dreamweaver, Frontpage or GoLive (that should show my age a little), so those were out of the running right away. But 'bare' editors like the one included with OS X, or TextWrangler (the freeware version of BBEdit) never really struck the right chord with me either. I use PSPad at work, but it's never really felt like a good solution for me.

Awhile back, I read about Coda [archive.org link], a "single window" web development application made by the fine folks at Panic software. I heard about it before I had my Mac, and it seemed like it might fill most of the holes I was finding with the development environment I had. I liked the idea of the single application development environment, and I thought it was a great idea to include a terminal application within the development environment. It's not that Panic was bringing anything new to the life of the web developer; rather, they were just putting all the tools that we use on a daily basis into a single application. About the only real criticism I had of the application (other than the fact I was on a Windows machine both at home and work at the time) was the somewhat goofy visual metaphor used for the Sites panel.

When I got my Macbook, Coda was one of the first applications I installed. It was exactly what I had hoped it would be - a good editor with some nifty added features. There were still some holes, however, and they were relatively glaring for my own development process. Possibly the largest one was the lack of Subversion support. I started using Subversion as a technical communicator at GE. And although it wasn't very useful for word documents (can't really merge a binary file), I immediately saw how powerful it was for web development. I started using it at home, and I've since put it into great use at my new job, who already had it in place. I can't really fault Panic for not putting it in the first release; even they admit it's something that should have been there.

Part of the problem is that - at least the last time I looked - there wasn't really many good solutions for integrating Subversion as a client into the Mac without resorting to a console (since I looked, Versions has come out, but as a standalone application, it doesn't so much integrate as facilitate). It was always a break in the development process to stop working in the editor, open up a console, navigate to the working directory and svn commit -m '' filename.

So imagine my delight when I saw that Coda 1.5 had come out and had integrated Subversion support. It's now even easier than using TortoiseSVN on windows. Here's an example. I've been working on a visualization for a colleague of mine, and storing the files in one of my repositories. In Coda, after I've edited the file, I see the following:

If I hover over that little M, Coda tells me that I can commit the change:

Once clicked, Coda pops open a dialog box where I can enter a commit message, and it takes care of the subversion commands. If I want to instead do something like revert to a previous version, then I can use the context menu and go about things that way:

This was all I needed; I plunked down the money for Coda on Saturday. $99 was more than I would have liked to spend, but it's well worth it in the end. I don't even mind the Sites visual metaphor any more, especially since it goes and takes an automatic screenshot whenever there's a change.

I find I'm much more productive in Coda than I am in PSPad, and the ability to log in and modify remote files, whether it's through SFTP, FTP, or WebDAV, is a much-appreciated feature. I like too that the preview is contextual, and knows whether you're previewing a local file (in which case it goes to the local webserver) or the remote file.

My only remaining complaint is fairly small - I wish that Coda would maintain the highlight on closing and opening brackets. As far as I can tell, Coda will only highlight opening/closing brackets when they are both on the same screen. Unfortunately, I sometimes have fairly long conditionals, functions, or case statements, and I'd like to be able to see where those end when I scroll down. It might be something that I can fix through the Preferences, but I haven't found it yet.

Extensibility vs. focus

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 02:58:56 +0000

I've been discussing the finer points of how to provide software to faculty, staff, and students at work lately. There's two schools of thought to software provision: one is to find an application that is extensible and can be modified to support a user's request for a type of functionality; the other is to provide focused software installations that meet the user's functional needs. It's hardly a new argument, as can be seen through the seemingly generations-long debate between vi and emacs, among other things.

The side that I've come down on is that it is a more effective strategy to provide users with a focused solution when they come a-knockin', and base that solution on a good sit-down with the users to see what their real requirements are. My colleagues have the opinion that repurposing an already-supported tool is a better solution, because it a) makes use of technologies we already support, and b) is a good promotional tool to get them to use the technologies we have in place for other purposes.

I have a bit of a problem with this last argument. Tim Bray recently posted a bit about screwdrivers; Bray talks about the benefit of having several different types of screwdrivers, each with a specific use, rather than a multi-bit screwdriver when working around the house. On the surface, a multi-bit screwdriver is a great idea; it takes up less space, can conceivably do the same things a range of screwdrivers can, and conveniently carries everything it needs with it. Of course, it doesn't always work well; sometimes the bits fall out, sometimes they're too short to fit in the area you're trying to drive the screw in, etc.

I think the same thing is true in software choice; the example that I brought up in the discussion was blogging software. When you present a piece of software to a user to solve a given problem, such as blogging, you inherit a set of user behaviours and expectations around that software. For example, if you provide someone with a piece of blogging software -- regardless of what it is -- the user expects that there will be comments, trackbacks, categories, the ability to save drafts, and chronological posts. The user also expects a certain kind of workflow, and if the software you present them with doesn't match their expected functionality, or works against the type of workflow they are expecting, they won't accept the software.

Another issue is primary and secondary focus, and the affordances each provides. Most software is written around a primary focus; Movable Type's primary focus is blogging; Word's primary focus is word processing, etc. Sometimes these packages have add-ins that add secondary functionality. Movable Type can be used to publish a journal or magazine, for example. The problem with this secondary functionality is that it is invariably guided by the primary functionality. To bring forward an example, we could look at Moodle and its blogging add-in. Moodle, for those who are not aware with the software, is a learning management system. This is akin to a content management system, but geared towards classes and educational use. One of Moodle's central pieces of functionality is its forums; it was, in fact, some of the very first functionality of the software. And this is clear in the approach Martin Dougiamas, its chief architect, takes towards blogs. Blogs in Moodle do not - and if Martin has his way will never - have comments. Martin suggests that if people want to comment on a particular blog entry, that they should create a forum post to discuss it.

The important thing to make note of, and address, is context. The way I argue it is thus: if a person is already using a product and wants to add a piece of functionality to it, then choosing an add-in is the way to go; if someone is looking for a specific piece of functionality, then focused software is a better solution. A couple examples of this have come up recently: one faculty member wanted a blog, and another wanted a wiki; both wanted each outside of the context out of the classroom. As an institution, we are currently very invested in Moodle, and some of our CS staff immediately suggested that we install it for both cases. I had a problem with this, because Moodle's primary focus is learning management (for those of you not in the know, learning management systems are similar to content management systems).

I understand that there are very real issues with regards to systems maintenance. It's untenable to install and maintain a new system for every single user, and there are occasions where it does make sense to extend an existing piece of software. That being said, installed software that doesn't match the user's expectations and behaviour is software that is set up for failure. And what's worse - maintaining several active systems, or maintaining a bunch of orphaned systems?

I think that the way to get people to use the software you install is to install software that people will use. It serves an IT department's purpose to repurpose existing software and try to shoehorn it into the user's requirements; but it doesn't serve the user's needs.

What do you think is the better strategy?

Blog responses: Comments vs. Forums

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 22:24:05 +0000

A discussion at work today had me thinking about the differences between blog comments and forum posts. It originated out of this assertion by Martin Dougiamas, the lead developer at Moodle, saying that he wouldn't give the blog module comments because there is no difference between a blog comment and a forum posting.

Unfortunately, Martin is wrong. His assertion that forums replace commenting in blogs is fundamentally flawed, and in my opinion betrays a lack of understanding of how blogs function. One of the key affordances that blog commenting offers is a discussion in context of the original material. Removing the comments to a separate area breaks that contextual link.

At a very broad level, yes, forums offer a similar set of functionality; but if that's really the case, then why have blogs at all - why not just post to the forum? The reason is that the blog offers a different kind of interaction than the forum, and has a different set of behaviours for authors and contributors (the blogger vs. the original poster) in the initial act of authoring. Jeremy Finke gives a good summary: "Blogging is a one to many communication. Forums are a many to many communication." Another way of putting it is that blogs offer the creation of a specialized community, whereas forums offer the creation of a generalized community.

My contention with Martin's assertion, however, is in the removal of context. Comments on blogs work well because there's a very tight correlation with the original material and the comments that follow, and all of the activity is contained within a single location. Using Forums for blog comments, as I mentioned, breaks that contextual link, and creates a separation between the original content and the discussion it inspires. Forum posters have to go outside of the discussion to read the original material (if there's even a link back to it, which in the Moodle Blog module there is not) in order to make a meaningful contribution (remember, if you're posting the original material to the forum, there's no actual need for the blog in the first place), and the potential for derailing the discussion is much higher.

As well, in Martin's/Moodle's model, the blogger and his/her readers now have to go searching through the Forums to see if the original blog entry has inspired discussion; in the blog comment module, it is immediately apparent whether or not a discussion has emerged from the post just by reading it.

Another key function that blog comments offer is for the blogger to moderate the discussion, and give them ownership over it. As soon as you remove the comments to a forum, the blogger loses any control over the ensuing discussion.

So what do you think - can a forum serve as an effective communication tool for blogging?