Geek Miscellany

Black holes, LHC, Star Wars, quantum uncertainty… if it is of general geek interest, but doesn’t fit into one of the other categories, it lands here.

New planets discovered…

I was reading a news blurb in Astronomy magazine the other day about some new planets discovered around distant stars. Some of these planets are pretty weird.   An important couple of points need to be made first before I talk about the planets. I've got to mention that IANAAOAA (I am not an astrophysicist or an astronomer), so everything here is just a lay-persons perspective. From what I understand, scientists are not discovering these weird planets because they are the only type of planets around distant stars. They are finding them because the techniques they currently have will *only* find weird planets. Basically, the only methods they have at the moment to detect the existence of a planet boil down to detecting variations ("wobbles") in the rotation of the star they are looking at. To make a star wobble enough to detect currently requires an extremely large planet (Jupiter sized or bigger) or a largish planet that is very close to the star. Future detection methods will hopefully allow detection of more typical planets   That said, some of the weird planets they are finding are really weird...   The latest batch are very close their stars...like about 0.028 astronomical units...or about 2.5 million miles. And they are quite large- something like 15 times the size of earth. And they complete a "year" (a full orbit around their sun) in a matter of hours: two to three days. For comparison, Mercury (the closest planet to our Sun) orbits at a distance of 0.38 AU (53 million miles), is a third the size of Earth, and completes one orbit in something like 90 days.   So, here we have a planet 15 times the size of earth that is orbiting its star ten times closer than Mercury does to our Sun. Its travelling around its orbital path at something in the neighborhood of 250,000 miles per hour. If you were on an "earth" in this distant solar system, you'd be seeing the equivalent to the transit of Venus across the sun every few months (I'm guessing on this- the math is a bit beyond me). Except this "venus" in this case would be huge...I can't quite imagine what it would look like seeing a planet that large that close to its sun as it passes between you and that sun, but I imagine it would be spectactular. This planet is a freak...   But here's the really weird part. So far, scientists have found three planets pretty much just like this. What this says to me is that there is a huge range of weird and wonderful planetary systems out there, and we have a ton more to learn.

Continue ReadingNew planets discovered…

Catwoman…or why are people such sheep?

I just finished watching Catwoman on DVD. This is the movie that Halle Berry starred in last year, and which received pretty much universally terrible reviews.   And you know what? I liked it. I liked it quite a lot, actually. And now I'm a bit angry...   I originally wanted to watch the movie when it came out in the theatre. But it received such bad reviews that I couldn't convince anyone to go with me, and I started to doubt that it would be fun anyway. I mean, it was rated by viewers as a 2 or something on the Internet Movie Database. How could so many ordinary viewers be wrong?   As I say, I saw the movie last night, and again today. It was fun: an interpretation of the Catwoman myth brought to life with a very sexy star (Halle Berry) who really seemed to "click" with the right cattitude. The main love interest felt real- the duality of the fragile Patience Phillips/dominant Catwoman character realistically attracted the male lead. The "evil" in the movie wasn't ridiculously over the top like the Joker in the original Batman- it was an almost believeable kind of corporate evil, played out well by Sharon Stone and Lambert Wilson.   I can see where comic book purists would dislike the movie: it lept off into a different story line entirely from the comic books. Mind you, the comic book Catwoman has had a ton of different "lives" over the years...as has the Dark Knight himself. But I've talked enough to comic book "people" to realize that they develop their own mythology about their favorite characters, and violating "canon" is the ultimate sin.   But rating this movie as a 3 out of 10? Rating it lower than the Hulk? Good freaking God, no! I watched the Hulk, and charitably it is at best nearly as good as Catwoman.... And Matrix: Revolutions rated higher than the Hulk! The Hulk at least didn't take itself seriously...there were people who wrote PhD thesis on the Matrix! Yet Catwoman rates barely half the score. Why?   Frankly, I believe its a culture of "cool". Its cool to rip into something, and its a lot easier to be over the top when you don't like something. And its really cool to sit around and bash a movie with your Latte sipping, iPod listening wannabe "friends" than it is to form your own opinion.   Interesting fact: of the 6000 or so people who rated Catwoman on IMDB over 2500 rated it as a 1 out of 10. Rumour has it that many of those "1" votes came in before the movie was released. This review by "Unemployed Critic" (thank god he's unemployed) came in a full *week* before the movie even released. What the heck is up with that? I guess even unemployed assholes can get into advance screenings...   How would I rate Catwoman? That's somewhat meaningless without some context...so let me give you some context by looking at my rough personal ratings for similar "fantasy" type movies. I'd rate the first Matrix as an 8 out of 10. The third Matrix as 5 out of 10. Spiderman as an 8 out of 10. Spiderman 2 as an 8 out of 10. X-Men as an 8 out of 10. X2 as 6 out of 10. Batman (the first movie) as 8 out of 10. Batman Returns as 7 out of 10. Batman Forever as 6 out of 10. Batman and Robin as 5 out of 10. The Hulk as 5 out of 10. Princess Bride as 7 out of 10.   I'm admittedly not a harsh reviewer. And I place particular importance upon the use of that word: review. Notice I don't say "critic". I don't go to movies to "Critique" them: I go to enjoy them. Critics, as a breed, are pathetic and worse than useless for the purpose of helping me form an opinion. Their role in life is to sound smarter than they really are, smarter than the movie producers, the actors, and all of the viewing audience. The reality is that they are, generally, useless wastes of oxygen: they weren't good enough to direct, produce, act or write. No one even thought they were good enough to edit. So they criticize. If I were dictator, I'd line up the lawyers first in front of my firing squads, then the movie critics.   A movie that I give a score of 5 to is one I could have seen or not seen and not felt one way or another about- it didn't make me retch, but I wouldn't strongly recommend it to a friend. 8 out of 10 is a movie I'd recommend even to someone who doesn't like the particular genre. Very few movies I've ever watched rate higher than 8. A fair number list lower than 5: movies like Krull, or Dungeons and Dragons fall into that category, movies that I'd actually tell people *not* to see.   Catwoman...I'd rate as 7.5 out of 10, although I should make that 10 out of 10 because of the sheep effect. I'd recommend it to people who were turned off by the negative press but who generally like movies based on cartoon mythology.   I'm angry because the negative press generated before the movie even released made enjoying it in a theatre with a friend difficult. I'm also angry because I imagine Halle Berry will be resistant to future roles playing a comic book character, which would be sad: she's good. And I'm disappointed because, frankly, I'd like a Catwoman 2.   All you folks who honestly disliked the movie...you are entitled to your opinions. The rest of you who formed your opinions based on the "buzz" and then parroted those opinions as if they were your own...I'm sure there is a special place in hell for people like you.

Continue ReadingCatwoman…or why are people such sheep?

Tsunami…

I recall reading years ago about the potential destructiveness of a tsunami. Naturally, the speculative scenarios were somewhat sensationalized: 1,000 foot waves washing over the east coast of the good old USA...that sort of thing.   Now we have the reality. A 30 foot wave washes over Sri Lanka, India, and other "3rd world" nations. 2,000 estimated dead...5,000...20,000...60,000...120,000. And thousands more no doubt yet to be found. Big sigh of relief: only a handful of North Americans dead! Thank the Lord! Better send some charity over there...how about $30 million?   I look at this series of events and questions arise in my mind.  

  • Why is it when North Americans die, the estimate of death is usually higher than reality? When the trade centers fell, 10,000 people were estimated to be killed...the reality was less than 3,000. Yet third world nations seem to always report numbers woefully below the reality
  • How can we feel good about the fact that we are sending a few tens of millions over to the "poor" people in India and Sri Lanka? 120,000 foreigners die, we toss over $50 million or so. When 3,000 Americans died, the U.S. spent $100 *billion* on getting some kind of revenge...not against the people who committed the crime, but against a leader who maybe helped the people who committed the crime. To put that in perspective: per person, the implication here is that an Indian flood victim is worth about $400, whereas an American victim of terrorism is worth $33,000,000. Seems a bit out of whack to me.
  • The awesome destructive force of nature puts our pathetic squabbles to shame. I believe that the 8.9 richter scale earthquake that started the tsunami expended energy equivalent to well over 60,000 one megaton hydrogen bombs...probably closer to 100,000. That's an energy release equivalent 100,000,000,000 tons of TNT
  • Just before Christmas, a near earth orbit object was identified as meriting "significant attention" (4 on the Torino scale...about a 2% chance of hitting based on data available at the time)...MN4 is 300 metres in diameter: if it hit it would release energy equivalent to about an 8.6 on the Richter scale. 23 years away from potential impact, that sort of thing is a threat we might actually be able to do something about...if we could quit fighting amongst ourselves. And I don't mean "all become good Americans"... The threat of the object (MN4) hitting has been reduced to "normal" or 1, by the way- observations provided better data to reduce the threat
What's my point? I'm not saying I have one...not every discussion needs to have a point. I'm more interested in thinking and using logic then in standing on a soapbox and shouting. I think if I have a point its this: we are quick to spend time and money to get revenge or cause more death, but far less prone to just help each other out. This makes me think we have some room for improving our society.

Continue ReadingTsunami…

Code Folding…

I am a programmer. I wouldn't consider myself to be a "master" programmer, but I think I write pretty decent stuff when I get going. I also occasionally cut corners and write quick and dirty "hacks" to solve a particular problem or to test something out. I sometimes feel guilty about this, but then I read findings from interviews with master programmers, and I discover that they often write ugly but useful hacks as well...

I used to be a procedural programmer, with languages like C and Pascal. Now I'm migrating to object oriented languages. And I stumbled across a little article about the the bad side of code folding.

Code folding is a really simple concept with a mysterious sounding name. Basically, it allows you to group a section of code together in an editor and "collapse" it, hiding all the nasty bits. I discovered code folding in the Visual Studio .Net integrated development environment...

...where it is used without user intervention every time you write an application with a user interface. Microsoft automatically uses code folding to hide a bunch of control objects so they don't clutter things up.

If you read that article in the link above, you would have heard the opinion of Matt Stephens, a fellow about which I know pretty much nothing. But his article is well thought out, and made me stop and think about what I use code folding for.

The answer is I use it almost not at all. But I do find it very handy when I do use it. Not because I write huge, "one method to rule them all" code segments. Personally I kind of like a method to never be much longer than one screen full...and no, I don't have a 72" portrait monitor with 1024x48000 resolution.

Instead, I use code folding or "collapsing" as a way to focus my attention. I might have 10 methods in an object. Nine of them are debugged and working happily, and the tenth is causing me some grief. I create a code section to conceal the "functioning" code and hide it so that I don't get distracted by the other bits.

Does this make me a bad programmer? I don't think so. I know I'm still pretty early in the migration from procedural thinking to object oriented thinking: I still struggle at times to break old habits, and I need some peer code reviews to continue my improvement. But I don't see code folding as a sin. Like a lot of things, including object oriented development itself, it has its good and bad points.

In fact, one could argue that code folding is a true and proper outgrowth of object oriented programming. One of the key values to OO, or so I've always thought, is the promotion of idea of objects being "black boxes". That is, I really shouldn't be spending my effort as a programmer figuring out how an existing object works: I should know what properties it has, and what methods I can invoke or inherit and what they do, and that it works. Beyond that, I should just use the dang thing.

Extending this to its logical extreme, within my own objects I shouldn't be continuously re-figuring out methods that I've already written. If they work, and I know what purpose they have and what properties or parameters they manipulate/use, then I shouldn't be messing with them. I should be working on one code element at a time, refining each in term in isolation from the next. Code folding can, used properly, encourage that kind of thinking.

I suppose I could be missing something here in my thinking. And I'm open to contradictory opinion. But I'll continue to use code folding from time to time, and I don't plan on feeling guilty about it.

Continue ReadingCode Folding…

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