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.

Personal philosophy…

I sometimes hear or experience something that cements my way of thinking. Sort of a "eureka!" moment, I suppose, but on a personal "philosophical" level. I had one of those moments earlier this week.

Someone made a comment, a standard cliche heard in corporate circles all the time: If we aren't growing, we are dying. Naturally, I've heard this comment before. And I've had a fundamental disagreement with it, but this time a bunch of thoughts came together at once for me.

I am a consumer. Not quite a BMW driving, Latte sipping, Armani wearing Yuppie, but sort of the techy equivalent. I don't feel a need to apologize for my life. But in recent years, I've made some decisions regarding the balance between "more!" and "happy!". I've jumped off the career fastpath, taken an effective pay cut, and started doing work I enjoy more. I haven't gone to live in a sod hut, or stopped buying computer upgrades: but I've made some changes. So maybe that's made me more sensitive to the extreme side of the capitalist/consumerist ethic.

So what bothered me about the "we gotta be growing or we're dying" statement? Basically, its at the root of the dotcom bubble, and its part of the "evil" of the stock market.

Ten years ago I disagreed with this statement, when my employer at the time started laying people off because we "only" grew our profit by 10% that year. Years ago, you didn't lay people off unless you were losing money. In the 90's, it became normal to dump people just because you weren't growing fast enough. But I didn't really meld this into a personal philosophy.

I think a better personal statement for me would be "if you aren't improving, you are dying". I don't think growth or expansion equals improvement. If it did, cancer would be the most successful form of life: it grows really well. An individual or a company that is becoming more efficient, that is learning and correcting its "bad habits", that produces a better product, that delivers faster and provides a more satisfactory solution to its client, that is "happier"...that company is better than a company that simply gets bigger.

I'd like to think that what I'm saying here is just common sense. But it doesn't seem to be that way. I still hear that cliche statement, and it continues to bother me...

Getting better, not necessarily richer...

Continue ReadingPersonal philosophy…

Irritating people

Earlier today I was deep in thought trying to get a computer system to cooperate here at the home of the Fur Olympics. The doorbell rang, which always irritates me when I have a computer in pieces and its not behaving properly.

In that frame of mind, I opened the door. A white haired gentleman was there, and he immediately began to berate me. Apparently, he and his wife had been walking by our house, and the lawn clippings on our sidewalk offended his sensibilities. He also informed me that he "knew the man who owned this house before...", as if this would somehow cause me to quiver in my boots.

I assured the fellow that I had just finished mowing the lawn an hour or so earlier, and planned on sweeping up. He then told me that no one else on my block had such rude grasskeeping habits as I, and that he had seen my despicable behaviour before. He again reminded me that he knew the man who owned my house before.

Well, I swept the sidewalk. But let me tell you, I really wanted to find that old guy again and belt him one. So I had some grass clippings on my sidewalk. Unlike my neighbors, I mulch, which saves nature etcetera. It also saves me from having to bag lawn clippings, but apparently it offends this old fellow.

But what really bugged me about what he said was his "I knew the man who lived here before you..." line. Exactly why should I care? I own the house now, I pay the mortgage, the taxes, and the other sundry bills. If he finds my sidewalk keeping habits unsatisfactory, well whoopdee fricking doo. I'm happy to hear a polite opinion, but this wasn't an opinion, it wasn't even remotely polite. I've never complained about our neighbor's howling dog, or the 2:30 AM backyard beer fests their teenagers have. I don't get go across the street and tell Mr. "I've got a leaf blower and I'm going to find something to blow around every blasted weekend" to shut his noisy contraption off. And now he has a gas powered pressure washer...

But right about now, I really figure I should start complaining. Apparently, once you reach a certain age, that becomes your right. Just walk right up, and piss some one off with your useless, self-absorbed, myopic, and basically irritating opinion. And frankly, I've about had it up to here (points somewhere above the top of his head) with retired wastes of good oxygen telling me how offensive my grass clippings are.

The moral: if you come to my door, with some complaint about something as earth-shatteringly critical as my lawn keeping habits, then I strongly advise that you approach it with some degree of subtlety, wit, and friendliness. Otherwise, keep your trap shut and find something useful to do with your life.

Continue ReadingIrritating people

Klingon speakers required…

Apparently, a government office in Oregon is seeking fluent speakers of Klingon in order to serve some of their clients.   I've admitted elsewhere to being a geek, but even I have to draw the line somewhere.   It seems to me that Klingonese is worthy of some academic interest, in that its one of the most completely formed fictional languages developed. But why does a public agency need staff that can speak the language? That seems pretty silly...   Well, ready the article closely, and it will begin to make sense. The agency treats mental health patients. And, apparently, some of their "clients" (read: crazy people) speak nothing but Klingon.   On the plus side, now there is gainful employment available for all those uber-geeks that learned Klingonese...

Continue ReadingKlingon speakers required…

Hackers are like painters…

I'm a hacker...not a security hacker, not a script kiddy, but an old school, widget-writing code developer. I write code, I don't theorize about it.

But I've always felt guilty. My brief stint in University (I dropped out of Honours Comp. Sci after about six months) made me feel like real computing science was all about mathematics and set theory. Then I found this article by Paul Graham, which really hit a chord with me.

Basically, Paul's suggestion is that Computing Science is, for many people, not a science. Instead, it is more akin to an art form. Coders like myself don't write out some mathematical theory for a program, then transcribe it. Instead, we work with materials and theories to create. Some of what we do is sketching, some of it transcends mere sketching and becomes "beautiful". But it is a far cry from a formal science for many (most?) programmers.

Just like a good artist or architect, good hackers don't program randomly: we start with a theme or a context (the requirements for an application, a problem that needs to be solved), and create something "organically" that fulfills or perhaps transcends our original intent.

I've spent a good chunk of my life feeling guilty, or sometimes angry, regarding the way I code versus the way I had been taught I was *supposed* to code. Paul's article helped me see this in a different light. In fact, its encouraged me to dig a bit more into theory: not because I feel I have to, but because it might help me be a better coder.

Continue ReadingHackers are like painters…

HTML rendering crashes Internet Explorer…

Everyone knows that Microsoft products are the subject of a great deal of hacker attention. Sure, Microsoft hasn’t in the past been very good about securing their products, but with all the script kiddies and coders making them their #1 target, it isn’t too surprising that problems keep cropping up. (more…)

Continue ReadingHTML rendering crashes Internet Explorer…

Hindsight: Views on the Iraq War

Warning: the following is my current opinion. As my sagely nephew often says, Opinions are like a$$holes...

George W. Bush ("Dubblya" to his friends) said that the American people had to strike against the "axis of evil". Thousands went to war, and I think the battle went as cleanly and quickly as any of us could have hoped. But what was it about? And what happens now?

Continued on the next page

Continue ReadingHindsight: Views on the Iraq War

This guy is nuts…but what if…?

There is a guy currently in jail in New York for the crime of making too much money too quickly on the stock market. He started with $800 and, in two weeks, had a stock portfolio worth over $350 million. He did this on in a mere 126 trades, every single one of them successful.

But that isn't the interesting part. The interesting part is that he says he's from the future...

Andrew Carlssin says that he's from the year 2256, and that he travelled back in time with the knowledge that our time period was one of the low points in the stock market's history. He also had a list of the key stocks and dates to buy. All he wants to do is go back to his time machine and travel back to his own time: if he's set free, he'll reveal the location of Osama Bin Laden, and will provide a cure for AIDS.

Okay, the guy is nutty as a fruitcake. But the claim that he is benefitting from insider trading seems pretty darned far-fetched as well. 126 perfect trades? 126 different stocks? This guy must have a freaking huge list of "insiders", all of whom know exactly how some announcement or another is going to drive their stock. Doesn't this seem just the teensiest bit unlikely?

So, how did he make 126 perfect and ultra-highrisk trades in a row? Furthermore, there is no record of this guy existing prior to December, 2002. Maybe he is from the future...

Continue ReadingThis guy is nuts…but what if…?

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