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Justin du Coeur
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| Because if you do, Sotheby's has the auction for you. It's a huge collection of ancient manuscripts, and it's quite neat: 53 lots, most of them period or pre-period, including things like a charter from King John, a fragment from an unknown Greek play, and ancient manuscript copy of Herodotus, and so on. And it's cheap! Some of the items are estimated at only three to five thousand pounds! (Some are rather more expensive.) Well worth going and ogling the items on the website, at least... | ||||||
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| Today's entry in Catching the Wave talks about the distinction between Google Wave -- the very early release of the client from Google -- and the larger open protocol they're trying to encourage. Check it out... | ||||||
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| For the past couple of weeks, I've had a major back-burner project simmering. Since Google Wave is the nearest I've seen so far to a realization of the ideas underlying CommYou, I and a bunch of friends have been working up an extensive examination and critique of Wave: both the theory of where it's going and the practice of Google's initial version. As of today, I'm starting to post it in my professional blog, The Art of Conversation. I'll be posting the series in little bite-sized chunks, theoretically one every weekday for the next few weeks. (I don't know exactly how long it'll be, but there's over a week written so far, and we're still warming up.) Frankly, this is a topic that I'm deeply passionate about, so I'm going to be encouraging folks to check it out. So I'll be posting pointers from here to there as I post the series. I'd love to have more people getting involved in the discussion, so come join in over there and spread the word. So to begin with: Catching the Wave: Prologue. | ||||||
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| Woke up with a classic sinus headache this morning: sort of fuzzy around the edges, and stuffy without being precisely stuffed-up. Started to get more worried when I got to lunch and found that I had no appetite for it at all. (When I just nibble at caesar salad and macaroni and cheese, you *know* something is wrong.) Felt gradually more unsteady and queasy, so I went home at 2pm and took a 12-hour Sudafed. I've never had projectile vomiting before. Not an experience I care to repeat. (Fortunately, I got to the bathroom in time.) If I had a fever, I'd be worrying about flu, but my temp's been running normal-low the whole time -- best guess is that it's just a mild cold causing a truly horrific sinus flareup. I'm doing rather better now: taking some more Sudafed on an *empty* stomach partly cleared my head (although I'm still groggy), fixed the post-nasal drip and eased the queasiness. But it's still a slow-and-careful evening of chicken soup and toast for me, and a strong hope that this clears up tomorrow... | ||||||
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| Signal-boosting for the most interesting video I've seen lately: Pranav Mistry exploring the potential of the SixthSense system. TED is an increasingly-influential series of conferences about the cutting edge -- of tech and other things -- and often has cool ideas, but this one's exceptional, less for the technology actually shown and more for the ideas in it. The high concept is that there has been a lot of work done for bringing real-world objects into the digital realm, but not enough for going the other way. He shows some demos -- I suspect semi-rigged, but still provocative as all get out -- for how to build a cheap system that makes the digital and real worlds really interactive. The key idea is that, by combining a portable camera and projector, you can really start blurring the lines. The tech itself is homebrew and a little hokey, but those with a sense of technology history will remember that most technological revolutions start that way. I think he's on to something here, and it'll be interesting to see where it evolves... | ||||||
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| Hi, my name is Justin, and I'm a Jewellust addict. ("Hi, Justin") Warning to anyone on the Android platform with any susceptibility to casual games, *especially* to anyone who has a fondness for Bejeweled: Jewellust is a really horrible addiction. It's basically Bejeweled on steroids, adding a more complex tactical element and *just* the right amount of difficulty that I can keep progressing if I stay riveted to the game. First game in a while to give me Tetris dreams. I probably should go cold turkey in the interest of sleep, but I know it's going to take a while before I can do so... | ||||||
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| Today's project is localizing the check fraud UI that I'm working on -- that is, making it work in various languages. For testing purposes, this really needs to be "programmer art". This is a valuable concept I learned at Looking Glass: when a programmer is doing any sort of design, it is vitally important that it be as ugly and useless as possible, to head off the chance of someone saying, "good enough -- ship it" before the real designer gets to make it right. Similarly, I don't want to come up with a quick-and-dirty French translation that someone might be tempted to show to a customer: everyone needs to be clear that the localizations must come from a real translator. So obviously, the correct localization for me to use in testing is Klingon. Unfortunately, having done about 20 minutes of research into Klingon, it's quickly apparent that doing anything more accurate than stringing together a lot of random plosives and glottal stops (or simply grabbing random words from the mailing list archives of the Klingon Language Institute) is going to be *way* too much effort, and the geek in me kind of wants to do a real (if pointless) translation. So I might just go for Esperanto instead, on the theory that I can probably fake it semi-accurately without as much effort... ETA: Although I notice, to my amusement, that the number-one Klingon speaker in the world is apparently Rich Yampell, who I know slightly from many years back. It's halfway tempting to write to him about it... | ||||||
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| [Finishing the catch-up diary entries.] Of course, the next question that I just couldn't avoid was: what were we going to do to help with the reign? This became an immediate distraction during the tourney itself as somebody (might have been ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} msmemory, but I honestly don't remember for sure) pointed out that I was the logical person to wind up as Pocket Herald if Edward won. It honestly came as a bit of a shock to me: I've spent so many years insisting "I am not a herald" that I'd never stepped back and looked at it. Sure, I'd run a lot of Baronial courts and a few Royal ones, but always as a fill-in or the only candidate available: I'd always thought of myself as the emergency backup. But now I had to think about it seriously.Pondering it for a day, I had to admit to myself that it was intriguing. I wanted to do something real to help out: I'm a little burned-out on the things I've been doing, and could use a new focus for while, so helping and working with friends on something this big was really appealing. This was something I *can* do, and fits rather well with my usual fondness for going off and getting good at something new every once in a while. (Both in doing the job, and getting to know and working with lots of other heralds.) So I offered myself into the mix, if TRH wanted to tap me for it. At this point, I was reminded of one of my personal flaws, that I need to work on. As far as I can tell, I'm a little unusual in being comfortable with almost any level of responsibility in a project. I'm willing to be the autocrat, or just the guy doing the dishes. What makes me utterly crazy, though, is not *knowing*: I like to have a direction to run in, whether it's as a leader or a follower. So the next few days were pointlessly agonizing for me -- having made the offer, I was altogether too desperate for an answer nownownow. I can't in the slightest fault TRH for needing a few days to figure it out -- it was absolutely clear that they had a lot of decisions that were *much* higher on the critical path, and I think they dealt with them in exactly the right order. And they actually got things ironed out astonishingly fast, given the colossal buttload of work they were suddenly handed. But even knowing all that, and intellectually telling myself that I was being asinine, I got remarkably neurotic for a few days anyway. It's an interesting lesson for myself: I've got to learn to deal with the fact that these things do take time. In the end, they came to a decision that I think was quite insightful: they offered the job to me *and* msmemory, jointly. It hadn't occurred to me, since it's never been split before, but it makes oodles of sense: we often share a brain anyway, would mostly be traveling together anyway, work well together and have different talents and levels of experience in different parts of the job. We're likely to be better at it together than either of us would be individually, and less likely to get excessively stressed-out. And it'll give us lots to talk about over dinner on Date Night.So that brings us up to the present day. We're starting to think about plans for the next year, and it promises to be exciting: I've been saying for a while that I wanted to start traveling more, and we're looking at a year of a *lot* of out-and-about as we follow TRH on their travels. It'll be a lot of work, but also a lot of fun, and I look forward to seeing folks in person who I've mostly been talking to online... | ||||||
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| [Continuing those neglected diary entries:] So a week ago Saturday was Crown Tourney. Most of you have heard the results, but let me say: that was a bloody exciting day. It was the deepest Crown list I have ever seen, with a bunch of heavyweight contenders trying quite seriously to win. It's a credit to everyone that they kept it clean despite the intense competition. We started off the day by herding cats, as usual -- since Brigantia couldn't be there due to illness, msmemory got to actually herald the procession for once. Things started with exceptional efficiency, largely because of His Majesty, who had some pretty sensible ideas about the order of events, and who didn't dawdle in giving us the green light. Things still started a *little* late -- but given that I'd looked at the schedule that morning and decided it wasn't plausible, it was impressively close.Like I said, the tourney was deep, with a remarkable array of royal peers and chivalry. Not everyone seemed to be serious about trying to take it (I was quietly amused at Brian fighting various esoteric weapons forms and *still* tending to win: he's scary-good), but it was clear that a bunch of the entrants were focused and determined. I honestly thought it was a preposterously uphill fight, but as the day went on, I started to realize that Edward was making his way up the tree quite steadily and confidently. I got to herald Edward and Marguerite into the finals, and it was probably the scariest thing I've ever done in the SCA. I mean, I've heralded Royal Courts before, but there was something just plain higher-stakes about this: a sense that I mustn't screw up, lest I jinx the way Edward was shaping reality around him. (Worse, I was facing D. Sebastian, a far more flamboyant performer than I, who was heralding for Duke Lucan.) But I didn't trip over my feet, nor screw up *too* badly on the lines I'd quickly composed in my head, and I clearly didn't jinx things. The rest of the day was a bit of a blur (moreso as it began to sink in that our plans for the next year had suddenly altered a *lot*), but there were a number of other notable points, especially the food. The dayboard, organized by lady_cassia and elmer42, was one of the best I've seen, and certainly the best at a Crown Tourney -- hot, period, flavorful and (not least) right there at the field where the people were. Dinner, run by tpau and ladysprite, was just plain great -- I liked all of the dishes and loved a bunch of them. (I still need to get recipes for several dishes, especially the chickpea stuff: there aren't enough vegetarian dishes that I like *that* much.) And ladysprite's subtlety -- an oak tree full of edible acorns (Her Majesty's badge) of many different sorts -- completely stole the show: it was pretty, extremely appropriate to the day, utterly tasty and wonderfully period. (The quail's-egg acorns were quite the scientific adventure, and I think her period predecessors would have greatly approved.)So overall, it was a fine day. The weather wasn't quite ideal, but for a fall Crown it was really pretty good (a bit drizzly, but unusually warm). It was a day of seeing my friends do great things, and there's surely little better than that... | ||||||
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| baagvai mentioned Pandora as a killer app in the previous thread; I haven't been motivated by that yet, but I've observed two that are making a big difference for me: -- GMail. I'd been starting to move more of my correspondence towards my gmail account anyway, but the DROID provides a lot more impetus. Getting that little "ring" every time something hits my Inbox means that I notice and respond to email faster than I *ever* have before. I'm suddenly starting to think of the Android OS as Google's sneaky way of getting people much more hooked on its tools. Speaking of which, the real surprise was: -- Google Listen. This is their podcast client, which I'd been "enh" about initially. I've never really done podcasts seriously: I don't sync my iPod very often, so I never had enough loaded for it to be useful. But doing it directly through the phone makes a huge difference -- it means that I can dive into whatever I want, as I get into the car. (In practice, this most often means that I can listen to Marketplace when I'm driving, regardless of whether or not that happens to be the 6:30 - 7 timeslot.) So now, I'm actually starting to think about what other podcasts I might find interesting and useful, because they're literally to hand. And the sound quality and responsiveness have been astonishingly good so far: Marketplace sounds as good as on the FM, with just a few seconds of buffering to start. | ||||||
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| Okay, there -- having been requested, I've just gone and made a better page for myself on the East Kingdom Wiki. It's rather a fun exercise in self-expression: while there are some guidelines for content, there isn't anything particularly constraining what you say, so it's an opportunity to make a concise statement about who you are. Now I just need a decent SCA picture of myself for the page. I'm sure they exist, but I've never really made much of a priority to keep track of them, especially since I always use my arms as my userpic. Anybody got a good photo of me? | ||||||
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Pollings came out today, and inspire a new guideline worth keeping in mind when you write an award recommendation to the Crown, especially for a polling Order:"Don't be defensive. Your recommendation will, in all likelihood, be sent unedited to all the members of the Order. You may happen to know some history with the candidate or the Order, but they probably don't. So you only hurt the person you're recommending if you spend time being defensive about them -- it mostly acts as a big warning sign that Some People Think There's Something Wrong Here. Instead, focus on the positive: why you think this person deserves to be there. Worrying about the negative just draws attention to it, usually for the worse." | ||||||
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| Back to one of the languages that can't quite count as "new" any more -- I've been intrigued by it for years now -- but which is ever-so-slowly continuing to gain momentum. Over on LtU, Guy Steele has announced that there is now a Fortress blog. Fortress, for those who weren't around the last time I talked it up (a couple of years ago) is a project over at Sun Labs to build a truly modern language -- frankly, I half-suspect that part of why Java still sucks so badly is that all the high-wattage language thought at Sun is working on Fortress. Fortress is basically trying to fill the same evolutionary niche that Fortran once did, so it is tuned for scientific and mathematical use. It is deeply parallel -- indeed, many things that would normally be loops default to parallel unless you say otherwise -- and is designed to let you program more or less in conventional scientific notation. While you can write in standard ASCII, there is a direct translation from that ASCII into a format that looks more like something out of a math textbook. (Indeed, printouts clearly matter a lot -- they're spending a remarkable amount of effort on producing a comment syntax that is preposterously powerful, to let you arbitrarily describe what's going on.) I gather that there are a moderate number of people working on it, but the two most notable for my purposes are Guy Steele (famous for his work on Common Lisp and Java) and Jan-Willem Maessen (aka John de Caversham in Carolingia). Both have entries in the new blog. Jan's talks about how to implement a fast parallel treap in it, and is pretty neat: it finally makes clear to me why treaps *matter*, which I hadn't seen explained clearly before. Language geeks may want to keep an eye on this blog -- while Fortress hasn't caught fire yet, it's still a contender to become a significant next-generation language... | ||||||
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| I gather that I am just one of many who went out and bought a DROID in the first few days it was available. It was kind of an impulse buy, but I had basically spent all of last week talking myself into it, and didn't see much point in waiting. It's kind of amusing. A week or two ago, Ars Technica had a little blurb on the DROID's ad campaign, that boiled down to, "Yeah, yeah -- it's got a multiprocessing and open development and all that. But who cares about that?" The answer, it seems, is us. I'm not sure whether Verizon deliberately targeted the geeks with this phone, but they seem to have done a good job with it if so. Anyway, so far I'm reasonably pleased with it. It's responsive, powerful and rather fun to use. The main downside is that it gives you enough rope to hang yourself: it *does* do multiprocessing and it *does* have lots of apps, so it is *very* easy to kill your battery. The most important advice I've gotten so far was from Denise, who told me that I needed to get TasKiller as the very first app I bought. This seems to be true: you've got to do active process management on your own if you want decent battery life. Even with that, the battery is only so-so: I can pretty well drain it in 3-4 hours of serious online work. (OTOH, it appears easy to swap batteries, so if it ever becomes a real problem, I can get myself a spare.) That's really my only complaint, though: in general, I'm enjoying the heck out of it. So far, I've picked up the following apps:
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| So there I was at Game Night, about two weeks ago, shooting the breeze with mindways and keshwyn. All intent of leaving at midnight was shot: we pulled up a cup of tea and spent a couple of hours chatting about this and that, when she happens to ask whether I'm interested in some GM'ing. Strange Boston is one of the campaign LARPs currently running; a bunch of my friends are in it. As it happens, she's one of the GMs, and they've been a little short-handed. The next run is early December; would I like to come in as an AGM? The timing was really quite good. I haven't GM'ed anything in too long, and there's a certain appeal in *not* being the lead GM for a change -- I found that helping out had a lot of appeal. So I accepted. Last Thursday was my crash-course introduction to the game, and this looks like it's going to be a lot of fun. The scenario is flexible and cool; the details are just plain delicious; and I already know half the people in the game. We talked a bit about what might happen in the next run, and the ideas have started to percolate. There's a lot for me to read into, but the writing duties are decently light. And after all, I have lots of boring free time, right? Then came Saturday... | ||||||
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| I haven't posted many diary entries lately -- that's mostly because I've been pretty cranky, and I never like posting in such a mood. That said, November was an illustration of a principle I've often found: that the universe tends to keep my life interesting, so long as I pay attention to the opportunities it gives me. So the next few entries will be catching up on what's been going on, as life not only became a bit of a roller-coaster, but one gaining speed pretty rapidly. Part one is about work and stuff. When last we left our hero, he was trying to emulate a good British stiff upper lip, and halfway managing it, but let's get real: losing the CommYou project hurt like hell. While I'm really excited to see all of these ideas I've been talking about for years being put into practice, I had kind of been hoping to be the one to make the splash there. It's a blow to the ego to realize that, while I am very good at startups, I'm not very good at the entrepreneur-CEO role. The adjustment took about three weeks, from the point at which I realized that Google Wave had washed CommYou out to sea (yes, yes -- get used to the bad metaphors), before really coming to terms with it. There have been two main things that have eased the transition:
There *was* a sense of being adrift, and not knowing what to do next, which isn't a sensation I enjoy: that was the source of much of the crankiness. But remember what I said above, about the universe keeping things lively? Well, we'll talk about that in the next couple of entries... | ||||||
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| Here's a good little article in Ars Technica, taking a look at the increasingly-common rumors that have been spreading about "global cooling" -- basically, the way that a lot of people with a vested interest in fighting the idea of global warming have seized on short-term statistics and ignored the long-term ones. Apparently the AP did a simple little experiment of sending the data, context-free, to some statisticians and asking what trends were seen in the numbers: the result (which won't surprise most people here) is that the pattern of warming is quite clear, and the "cooling" is nothing more than statistical blips and preconceptions... | ||||||
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| I just came across Tim Bray's blog, ongoing -- a neat technical blog from one of the more significant thinkers in the field. I'm adding it to my daily feed: the signal/noise ratio looks good enough to be worth it. Most interesting right now is his concur.next project: basically a personal exploration of the major options currently around for real-world concurrency, and specifically a look at the main contenders that he calls the HECS languages (Haskell, Erlang, Clojure, Scala). It's an interesting, pragmatic, freewheeling discussion, trying to figure out which of these is likeliest to become "the next Java". He's admittedly biased towards Erlang (much as I am towards Scala), but I think he's doing a good job of exploring the issues that will matter going forward... | ||||||
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| The latest programming language to come to my attention is rather neat: in the pi language, the entire focus is on declaring patterns -- EBNF-style declarations of syntax, and their associated meanings. See the linked page for a little more info and some cool (if simple) examples of how easy it is to define new syntax in this language. My initial reaction is that it's a bit scary, and almost certainly *much* too easy to completely hang yourself (I'd love to see what you could do with an obfuscated-code contest in this language), but also quite powerful for certain sorts of problems. Probably extremely well-suited to defining DSLs and the like, once it gets more mature... | ||||||
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| Signs that you work at a geeky company: for today's Halloween party, the Development group came as (essentially) the UI that I built when I started here. It's collusive-networking detection software, displaying graphs of potentially related suspects, so each member of the group grabbed a character from our icon set and some string, and tied ourselves together to make the graph... | ||||||
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Justin du Coeur
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