There are 10 kinds of people in the world...

Money, Mints and budgets

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 02:28:36 GMT

Hoefler & Frere-Jones' Typography.com compares and contrasts the new line of UK coinage with the new U.S. five dollar bill. The implication that for $525 million and 2,500 people, the U.S. is getting a worse deal than British public are ignores the fact that the the Royal Mint got the benefit of approximately 500 entrants (per the Royal Mint's Competition site) and only has to pay a very small fraction of them (presuming they're paying the winner and a subset of the invited artists).

The striking new designs, selected from an open competition that attracted four thousand entries, are the work of a 26-year old graphic designer named Matthew Dent. They are Mr. Dent's first foray into currency design.

That sounds a lot like spec work.

Moreover, Hoefler & Frere-Jones is only giving one side of the numbers. For starters, all 2,500 employees they say the U.S Mint has aren't all working over engraving stations (and apparently sucking). Just as the 915 employees of the Royal Mint didn't judge the coin competition.

Looking at budget figures from each mint's respective 2006 report, the Royal Mint [pdf] had sales of $228 million with an operating loss of about $4 million. The U.S. Mint [pdf] had $1 billion in sales with $85 million of profit.

Sure, the UK coins are handsome, but budget and employment figures aren't the cause or fault for pretty or ugly money. The agencies themselves aren't far apart when each country's population (60 million vs. 301 million) is taken into account. Wait, actually the U.S. has one mint employee per 120,400 residents, the UK one for every 65,000 or so.

H&FJ's take seems like a one-sided anti-bureaucratic cheap shot that misses another way to frame it: The Royal Mint didn't have one employee out of 915 they wanted to design their money.

Interesting reads from the week of Feb. 24, 2008

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:24:44 GMT

A few days later than I wanted to put this together, but so it goes.

Finding WWII aircraft crash sites in the Himalayas, with recovery to follow. [1]
What makes a perfect president: Media and politics in creating the presidency as an American myth [1]
The suit from the 1989 Exxon Valdez spill Case may get closure before the Supreme Court
South Korea is sending their first astronaut into space in April. So, that means the national dish, kimchi, goes to space, too.
New Yorker talks about six words

Disclosure

Recapping the NC Science Blogging convention

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 05:24:10 GMT

Corrupt Tree/RTP f/8 @ 1/160 sec

f_4_t and I hit the second NC Science Blogging conference at Sigma Xi in RTP on Jan. 19. Divided into three breakout sessions, ample social/networking time and then two whole conference sessions.

I've posted a photoset from the day and an earlier lab tour at the EPA.

Sessions

Science and Ethics Blogging
Blogging the Social Sciences/Humanities
Public Science Data
Changing Minds through Science Communication

Overarching subtext: In which the long knives are brought out for The MSM [1]

There was a lot of teeth gnashing and rending of garments over the Media's [2] role in covering science poorly. Being misquoted, having quotes taken out of context, the fall of the population believing in evolution, etc. was largely laid at the feet of mass media in general and corporate media specifically. I wasn't expecting this, but perhaps should have been.

And if the mass media took hits for general vapidness, science journals also took a hit for keeping research results from the public due to exorbitantly priced subscriptions, paywalls and closed research data. Also troubling is when science bloggers are quoted for publication but cannot see the quotes because they are behind these paywalls.

It seems a common element of passionate online communities that they don't feel they are being represented as well as they feel they should, particularly if they're not doing the representing. I suspect there will be a perpetual dissatisfaction from members of a niche with the depth to which a mass medium covers said niche if there's an expectation that the mass medium demonstrates the same interest toward a community of interest as the community focuses on itself.

Ethics of science blogging

Janet D. Stemwedel, philosophy professor at San Jose State University and blogger led a session, centered around the questions of "What are my responsibilities as a blogger?" and "To whom am I responsible?"

The themes and questions weren't specific to science blogging.

One of the first questions, from Wired's Aaron Rowe was if stories should be vetted with sources. I disagree(d). I'm not a currently practicing journalist [3] but the criteria I learned earning my journalism degree and agree with is being willing to verify quotes, positions and paraphrasing. There's a large swath of territory between ensuring that sources verify they are being quoted and represented accurately and quote another to allow them to see a piece. I do not want to allow a source to see a piece prior to publication since it gives the source reason to believe you are seeking approval or feedback on the tone of a piece. That's not the role of a source, it's the role of an editor.

It is misleading to the source and it also creates problems for the audience. Is damaging material being massaged for PR purposes? Really, the audience can't tell, but if they think it might be going on, that's problematic too.

Journalists and politicians sometimes run into similar difficulty. It's not the actuality of an ethical breach/crime/prior restraint in fact, it's the appearance that also has to be defended against.

Other interesting discussion came out about blogging or commenting under a pseudonym. I was predisposed to be against pseudonyms, but as Abel Farmboy demonstrates, there might not be another way to blogging when working for an employer that disagree the principle of blogging.

Is there a need for blog certification? There is a medical/health blogging certification. That blossomed into a discussion about critical thinking. Essentially, does a badge or membership in a blog roll become a substitute for critical thinking about what you're reading?

Blogging the Social Sciences/Humanities

The bulk of Martin Rundkvist's presentation started with listings the social sciences and humanities from Wikipedia and asking the audience for examples of each.

Language and linguistics brought up a couple of examples:

Law:

Geography: Rundkvist opened the topic by noting the European assumption that American high school students don't know geography. The response, shouted from the audience, "The world is flat!"

Confluence: Crowd sourcing reports of intersections of lat and long. take a photo, write a report. Noted was local people aren't always the reporters. There's also the benefit of multiple people coming into the same place and presenting their own experiences.

I brought up a concept of a highway history, say Route 66 or old U.S. 99 that could be a mix of cultural anthropology and geography. Turns out, someone else in the audience had an example, covering Highway 11 in Canada. Seeing that I love the Great Lakes, Highway 11 looks like a future road trip.

Geocaching sites and Google Earth layers were also brought up, but I didn't catch specific links.

Political science was skipped over on the pretext that polisci sciences are really just about politics.

Psychology

The discussion led off with an introduction to a blog carnival. I was unfamiliar with the concept. Four Stone Hearth was mentioned as an example carnival.

All in all, a lot of interesting resources mentioned that I hope to get to, at some point.

Lunch

Shared floorspace with f_4_t, badger, a researcher from Charlotte and Tom Linden, medical journalism professor at UNC.

Public Scientific Data

Co-presented by Xan Gregg and Jean-Claude Bradley had a great two part presentation. The presentation is available as a podcast. There are also the links from Gregg's portion of the session. The session wiki page also fills in the general structure and examples.

The basic premise is that making raw scientific data public is A Good Thing. Key reasons mentioned were knowledge sharing (obvious), reproducibility of the analysis and the experiment and archiving. With archiving, it's one thing to have a researcher hold the data. it's quite another to have that data "in the cloud," as the termite eaten data of Ram B. Singh demonstrates.

It sounded as if data sharing is a popular concept, but in practice, hardly anyone does. The American Economic Review is a notable exception, requiring data be made available prior to publication.

But taking it another step, is the transparency and collaborative nature of having data publicly available. Using Flickr to share lab or experiment photos in open notebooks. I was interested in hearing about some of the cultural shifts going on. The thought people are bumping up against about giving away the research online and not being able to be the first to publish. Or, more negatively, let the other guy run into the same problem to slow down their research.

But, and this audience knew this, there is value in sharing information about what failed and why. There's an incredible amount to learn from what doesn't work and why it doesn't. Why not share that information for wider understanding?

Still, there's a sea change that has to happen in what was termed "funding culture." The Internet seems to have this effect in every industry it touches. Keep the old, restrictive status quo or, take a risk and open into a more collaborative ecosystem?

I suspect openness will win in the end.

Changing Minds through Science Communication

Jennifer Jacquet, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Chris Mooney presented, in two parts, a presentation alternately knocking the Media for a decline in the amount, quality and placement of science reporting and talking about leveraging Science Debate 2008 into changing the approach for science discussion in public [4].

In my notes, I initially wrote that down as "discussing science with the public," but thinking about it later, that phrasing reinforces a tone I picked up throughout the presentation and ensuing discussion, that being Scientists have to swoop to the rescue of the Public from the Media. Corporate Media.

There are valid concerns. There's no way the percentage of Americans who believe in evolution should have dropped. There is clearly some misunderstanding of the meaning of the word theory.

Mooney talked about Science Debate 2008 and the general state of media coverage. On one hand, he said it was a good thing that the blogging community had gotten the issue taken serious, a grassroots movement built around it and the mainstream media picked it up. That sounds like a success. But then, Mooney indicated disappointment, that the community shouldn't have had to and it was nearly dumb luck and circumstances with the WGA strike that the issue had any attention at all, because the Media wasn't going to do it for them.

I'm confused on this point. On one hand, there's a community of enthusiasts who are trying to drive change and are getting some attention for that drive. But there's a converse lambasting of the Media for not leading the charge or, at least, being late to the party.

That really seems like trying to having one's cake and eat it to. Wanting to improve the level of science coverage in general and in politics specifically, then complaining when met with success at having to do the work at all. Isn't this exactly why people want participatory media and are building out communities of interest, to raise their own voices and find common cause, articulate some vision and get the word out? People get upset when the Media presumes what their interests are, but I get the sense they're sometimes unhappy about the effort that goes into being articulate and speaking themselves. In my mind, it weakens the argument when, after taking ownership of something, you bitch about the having to take ownership. If it was that important to you, stop bitching about it being less important to someone else and just get on with it.

Putting it another way, why is it considered a failing if the media picks up a story after it gains some traction in the blogosphere? Is it because there's a fear the media outlet won't acknowledge where the material is coming from? It's possible, yes, but it would be carelessness and I don't believe a good reporter would fall into that trap. Is it a concern over the Media not being the pioneer?

I am unclear on exactly who I'm supposed to be upset at, as a subset of the Media, since the Media is not a cabal. What works for television is not what works for newspapers or websites. National and local TV stations approach their news differently, on air and online. Newspapers vary their coverage based on their perceived audience. National, regional and strictly local sites all handle things very differently. Newspaper vs. television sites while dealing with the same material, approach websites differently. So, it really paints with very broad strokes to put us all in the same camp. It's as if one started referring to canine and feline families as The Carnivores and suggested they were acting in concert.

So, when Jacquet said Britney Spears losing custody of her kids pushed the Arctic ice survey showing a faster and broader than expected summer melt, "off the front page," suggesting no one covered the story and I can, in the session, find a New York Times story from the day after via Google, the actual nuanced facts are being glossed over. Out of emotion? Ignorance? The facts getting in the way of the truth? I don't know.

There's a fear that Mike Huckabee is going to be the nominee for the Republican party and, as Mooney put, a debate with Huckabee may not be so much about scientific topics, but science vs. anti-science. But Huckabee's base are a group the science blogging community needs to find a better way of explaining science to and engaging. Instead, I again get the general sense that potential Huckabee voters are seen as the great unwashed. What's unfortunate about that is the attitude carries and clouds any hope of understanding, particularly when one of the questions I wrote down from the session (Unsure if it was spoken or not) is, "What is your recommendation for addressing an arrogance, even among ourselves?" and the statement, "[Science is] divorced from society as a whole."

People get defensive if they feel they are being looked down upon. In the complaining I heard about what's wrong with what's going on with other people, there was a definite defiant and righteous tone I found a bit off-putting. I won't deny there's a great argument to be made that science isn't getting its due. But the point needs basis in fact, not appeals to emotion or cherry picking.

The biggest thing I can suggest is to stop thinking of ourselves with a victim mentality. Stop blaming Creationists and pundits and corporate boardrooms for where science coverage or discussion is at. Instead, let's have a realistic examination and consideration for why Science is where it finds itself, particularly when the subtext is how to create better understanding of science in the public mind. Build a community of science bloggers but understand that the community needs outreach to establish ties with other communities. Cooperate and collaborate with media outlets. Invite them to participate in the community. It's a tedious process to change the communication style, but slowly, as the market changes, so does journalism. That does not have to be the negative that it could be seen as, with the focus on lambasting corporate media.

Be passionate. Be interesting. Be honest. State your case articulately. Share and listen. As Ghandi put it, "You must be the change you want to see in the world."

Since a lot of my analysis and opinion covers media matters, please see my disclosure notice.
I use the term "the Media" to illustrate what came across, to me, as the presumed monolithic nature of various outlets like newspapers (national or local), newspaper-owned websites, television news and magazines. AKA MSM. When I hear someone talking about "the Media," I generally perceive their description as overly broad and generally negative.
Setting aside, for the moment, if writing about a blogging conference is journalism. Also setting aside that my degree is in journalism.
My notes from the afternoon didn't have quite this what I'll term harshness in my impression of what the talk was about. Instead, thinking about it over the course of a week shaped my impression of the session's material.

Interesting reads: Jan. 27, 2008

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 02:37:39 GMT

The fourth Krispy Kreme Challenge, NC State's growing tradition, was yesterday. Bell Tower to Krispy Kreme, eat a dozen donuts, then run back (four miles) in an hour. The prize? A green t-shirt and money raised for the NC Children's Hospital.

I grew up in Sacramento, Calif. back in the 1980s, left in 1986 then moved back to town in 1996 for college. One of the region's big concerns is mass-transit, something that after explosive growth from Bay Area-evacuees, the area is still trying to get right. Raleigh seemed in a similar position back in 2002 when I moved here. So, it's with interest that I watch Raleigh and the Triangle struggle with some of the same questions of mass transit. Today's Q section in the N&O [1] asks, "Where should the Triangle put it's transit dollars?"

It's a question to answer sooner rather than later since it's harder to rework an area to fit mass transit after the building that would justify said mass transit takes place. Also: early mass transit planning shifts how and where development takes place vs. being a bolt-on after the fact.

$128 buys you a clear plastic ID card from Clear to zip you through the TSA line. Setting aside token possession isn't security, the article is more about the people who might fork over the $128:

Clears are the simple and speedy people, who tend to know the price of things before they get to the register and always have the cash or debit card ready, and step out of the way immediately to a place where they can put away their change and receipt and reassemble themselves without obstructing the flow.

...

Corporate America invented self-checkout lines for Clears, which worked well for about five minutes, until someone who wasn't a Clear caused yet another human paper jam.

I'm one of those people and I hate stores that have the inefficient people (customers) check themselves out. Or worse, tune the self-scanners differently than their clerk-manned stations. If you want me to check it out myself, let me do it as fast as you allow your employees to. Still, I don't see myself ponying up $128 for the privilege.

Just like cutting back on gas, looking for more fuel efficient trips, Mark Bittman suggests rethinking meat consumption, too in the New York Times:

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.

...

Because the stomachs of cattle are meant to digest grass, not grain, cattle raised industrially thrive only in the sense that they gain weight quickly. This diet made it possible to remove cattle from their natural environment and encourage the efficiency of mass confinement and slaughter. But it causes enough health problems that administration of antibiotics is routine, so much so that it can result in antibiotic-resistant bacteria that threaten the usefulness of medicines that treat people.

Disclosure

Interesting reads Jan. 20, 2008

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:20:12 GMT

My Sunday reading habit is to work through the N&O in print and Washington Post and New York Times. Between Twitter, email newsletters and RSS feeds from the later two publications, I'll easily open about 20 browser tabs.

It struck me this morning that I was going to have a lot of material and material to write up from yesterday's NC Science Blogging conference, far more than I simply wanted to leave to Twitter.

"We're servants of our overload [1]" N&O ideas columnist J. Pedar Zane writes about the decline of capital 'R' Reading:

Start with books. Recent surveys show that fewer than half of all Americans read at least one work of fiction for pleasure each year. The decline is especially pronounced among teenagers. Many factors have contributed to the trend, but the rise of the Internet is clearly a chief culprit.

...

My guess is that the average American reads more words in a week than our ancestors read in a month. It's just that we're not reading books.

Steve Jobs says the number is around 40 percent. But where is that figure coming from?
Half of Japan's top ten bestsellers started off as cellphone novels.
The New York Times on the NFL's "air it out" 2007 season:

This was the year of the pass, when 3 yards and a cloud of dust gave way to the three-step drop. In one game of their undefeated season, the Patriots, who until this season featured a balanced offense, ran only twice in the first half. Seven quarterbacks threw for more than 4,000 yards this season, more than ever before, and two of them — New England's Tom Brady and Green Bay's Brett Favre — take their teams into Sunday’s conference championship games as favorites.

Bill Walsh's legacy, perhaps? Remember when the 49ers lined up with Joe Montana [2] under center and had Jerry Rice, John Taylor, Roger Craig, Tom Rathman and Brent Jones and they could all catch passes?
The Senate is considering legislation that would force the FDA to require special labeling for cloned food. Short of that, consumer groups want allowance for labeling food as "clone-free." Interestingly, the Washington Post article says the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture has to help get cloned food to market.

Disclosure
Though Joe Cool is dear to the hearts of every 49ers fan, I liked Steve Young better, possibly because I remember more of watching Young play than Montana.

Truth

Sun, 07 Oct 2007 17:53:33 GMT

Khoi Vinh on trying to hold onto (or worse, recapture) "the cool:"

Any time a media outlet publicly declares its intention to reach a younger demographic, chances are good that the results will make me cringe.

He's talking about NPR's Bryant Park Project, and how surprising it is that it doesn't include "jargon, zany sound effects or comedic narrative." He could be talking about newspapers, television or movies. I've read or seen too many horrible examples of 40-something suburban writing about 20-something urban trends.

Mostly, what (most) everyone comes up with is dumbing things down for a "younger" audience, adding a laugh track and calling it done. How insulting.

Whitaker Park

Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:24:01 GMT

Stripped/Raleigh f/8 @ 1/160 sec

Posted 10 more images in the Whitaker Park set.

Redevelopment

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 03:58:48 GMT

609 Wayne Drive/Raleigh f/8 @ 1/100 sec

The apartments I spent my first four-ish years in Raleigh at, Whitaker Park are halfway demolished as new $700,000 homes go up. Up and down Anderson Drive, on the other side of Fallon Park, several teardowns. Now, Pine Drive and Oxford look like they're next.

This week, The N&O's Q section ^[1] asks, "How big is too big?"

From the article:

Most supporters of teardowns cite increasing property values as a positive outcome. But experts say the impact on values of existing homes is not clear.

A study at the University of Illinois at Chicago found values of existing properties near a teardown dropped by as much as 24 percent following construction of a large new house in a village near Chicago.

Building more valuable homes does boost the property tax base and can also benefit other property values by making a location more desirable, said James W. Hughes, dean of the school of planning and public policy at Rutgers University.

But a teardown also could hurt the value of the house next door, he added. As buyers eye properties only for the land, the houses themselves become a nuisance that has to be torn down. On Raleigh's Overbrook Drive, a half-acre lot is on the market for $499,000 -- $40,000 more than it sold for in June with a house on it.

The Triangle has a lot of growth issues to address. Infrastructure upgrades, water, mass-transit, schools. Add housing to the list. I'm fairly biased in what I would like to see, houses that fit the character of their neighborhoods rather than seeing castle after castle go up. Ugly castles, at that.

Booking bands

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 01:28:17 GMT

Take a book name, combine with band name. Here's what I came up with in a few minutes:

Snow Patrol Crash
The Hunt for Simply Red October
Barry White Oleander
About a Badly Drawn Boy
Cat on a Hot Hot Heat Roof
I'm OK, You're OK, Go (edit: someone already had this one)

From the 103rd Floor, Sears Tower

Fri, 07 Sep 2007 04:26:03 GMT

Observation/Chicago f/9 @ 1/60 sec

Chicago

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 05:17:28 GMT

Core/Chicago f/9 @ 1/125 sec

f_4_t and I were in Chicago over the weekend for my cousin Jackie's wedding. As per custom, I've started a city photo set on Flickr. Right now, it's all Sears Tower-related, but I'll have more from around downtown, the Art Institute and Millennium Park in the coming days.

Better news

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 01:34:27 GMT

My phone died (well, rather, failed to have infinite battery life) Monday night and therefore, missed three phone calls from the Raleigh Police Department. They were able to go out Monday night, pay a call upon the hopefully bruised-shinned fellow and put him in custody.

So, Tuesday afternoon when I realized I had a number of messages waiting, I called back and headed downtown with f_4_t to pick up the bike. It was still in good condition. Oddly, I don't think the guy ever bothered to hook the front brake back up. I'd disconnected it last Sunday after our last ride to get it onto the roof rack. The seat quick release is a bit out of whack, but that was actually something I was going to ask REI about when I took it in for a tune-up. Other than that, it's fine. Picking it up involved other people arrange for paperwork to be done or look things up.

The suspect is in jail on charges of breaking & entering and possession of stolen goods. I have no idea how it'll turn out. However, the officer I spoke with asked me where the bike was purchased and about how much it was worth.

I answered, and he replied that I'd confirmed a suspicion of his. Apparently the suspect told him the bike was purchased at Wal-Mart. The officer said he rides and was pretty sure that wasn't a match.

There were three surprises for us. First, that the bike was ever spotted by the police at all. Second that it was recovered. Finally, that after he was stopped by police, and they ran the bike, he didn't ditch it in a field. But these are pleasant surprises. We're both rather thrilled.

Theft sucks

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 03:54:26 GMT

Back in March, I had a great opportunity to buy a mountain bike at REI. f_4_t's preferred mode of cycling is that involving lots of whoopdy-dos and dirt. And since for the first few months of our relationship, she'd been a sport and kept up with me on her mountain bike while we were on the Greenway or road-riding, I figured I'd give true off-road riding a shot.

It came that my REI dividend, the member discount and a great price combined to get me a K2 for cheap. We hadn't taken the bikes out a lot, but some and I was really liking mtn. biking, looking forward to getting down to Harris Lake for rides. A friend was telling us about a great trail up near Roxboro that sounded nice.

Unfortunately, I currently can't pursue those rides since we noticed last Thursday that we'd had a break-in either the previous night or early in the morning. Seems someone saw fit to break into the storage shed attached to the house and purloin my bike.

We called the police and they were there in minutes, walking through our less than spotless living room, asking who the animal lover is.

"Uh, we both are," I reply.

The two officers, one uniformed, another in a polo shirt and jeans with badge on lanyard, interviewed me on the back deck.

Yes, I'd touched the door knob.

No, I really can't say for sure when the bike was stolen.

Yes, it could have been anytime after Sunday, when we last went for a ride.

These details and more went into a notebook. The officers said they'd keep an eye out. I described some odd activity and call me if they turned up anything about the bike. I don't know if they were just trying to make me feel better, but I said something along the lines of, "I'm not seriously expecting to see the bike again."

I suppose my thinking is reminded by The Big Lebowski and no, I shouldn't expect the police to work in shifts.

But then, Saturday, something unexpected happened.

A Raleigh sergeant detective called and asked for more description of the bike. Turns out, they think they saw a guy riding the bike over on Atlantic Ave, a big block west of our place, looking into cars Wednesday evening.

"I tried looking under K2, Zed...," he told me, explaining that they'd tried to find some record of this bike being stolen when they stopped the guy.

"I think I can get your bike back," he said, explaining they had a description, a name and an address.

Nothing came of it over the weekend, but I was told it might be a few days. Still, I'm not feeling like it's a complete last cause. I'm not expecting it back, but I'm gratified that there seems to be some effort to catch a petty crook.

The hardest part is keeping an eye on things around the house, paying attention to how the dog is barking. We're checking more on what happens outside, wondering if someone else wandering through is going to get a bright idea. Several of our neighbors have been in contact with the cops, too, recently and they're certainly aware of the neighborhood. I'll feel a little better, though, if there's an arrest.

We should drop flyers off at the pawn shops. We dropped in on a second-hand store and described the bike. We could probably spend more time going around and checking those, or time checking Dumpters in the immediate area. It partly feels worth it, partly not. I keep hoping the SPD pedals on the bike come up and whack the shins of the guy who stole the bike. That makes me feel a bit better.

BarCampRDU 2007 session notes

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:04:43 GMT

As previously noted, I spent a few hours Saturday at BarCampRDU. I hit six sessions and feel all were in some way valuable.

Write-ups of each based on my notes are below the cut. (NB: I'll try and fix the internal links for LJ)

Camping in 10 slides

We've only just started working on Ruby on Rails at work, and there was enough Ruby session ideas to send me in five or six different directions. Still I think I heard Camping mentioned as a micro-framework and my ears perked.

Camping is Why the Lucky Stiff's [1] four kilobyte anti Rails web framework. Model, view and controller are all in one file and that's a feature. The 50-minute session was basically mad typing while slides were changed and obscure syntax errors [2]. Add to the stress that the projector was on the fritz.

Found some additional info about Camping. I may take another look at it when I'm further along with Ruby to step further from the guided walkways of the books I'm working through.

Still, Why seems like quite the interesting writer, so I'll probably spend some time poking through what he's got.

Slides from the rapid-fire presentation are available [pdf].

GTD

Getting Things Done is David Allen's geek-friendly productivity methodology. I first became aware of GTD via the Mac community, seeing links to Kinkless GTD, built upon my second favorite Mac app [4], OmniOutliner Pro. kGTD and OO begat OmniFocus, which I've been alpha testing.

While there's been a burst of both web and desktop applications that aim to implement GTD, the session didn't focus on the software, but more the methodology.

I haven't become a student of GTD just yet, but I seem to be moving in that direction. The key boils down to writing down all of the "TODO" items in your head as concrete, actionable items. A "project" is a series of related and possibly dependent tasks.

"Change the oil" could be refined to:

Buy oil and oil filter at parts store
Drain oil from the car into oil pan
Change oil filter
Replace oil plug
Recycle old oil

Then, these tasks have "contexts" of where the task will be accomplished. @home, @work, @errands for instance.

Most importantly, GTD's methodology encourages filtration or outright dumping of vague tasks and focusing on what you can complete. Tasks you can't should go elsewhere.

Some key discussion points that I liked from the session:

If something only takes two minutes to do, take the two minutes to do it rather than scheduling it somewhere. However, don't fill your day with two-minute tasks either.
Have a 30,000 foot view of where your goals are.
Goals and projects need prioritization.
Ask (reiterate and refactoring) if your projects are leading to your goals or toward an determinable outcome. If not, get out of the projects you're in and find new ones that do lead to your goals (renegotiate).
Remove or filter things you can't do or won't do.
Spend your life on "Urgent and Important" not "Urgent and Unimportant" or "Not urgent and unimportant"

Most importantly, the methodology is what you choose to make it. You organize the projects and determine the contexts. Some folks don't find using contexts helpful, so they drop that aspect of the method.

There was a sign-up for a GTD contact group, but thus far, I've not heard anything.

Test Driven Development

A few weeks back, we started looking at Ruby on Rails to develop future applications. Thus far, our experimentation has proved promising. I spent our Wednesday coding party working on learning what Rails offers in terms of baked-in unit testing. Pleasantly, it's quite a bit.

Unfortunately, I missed the first 15 minutes of this presentation when the 1:30 p.m. sessions were moved to noon when lunch delivery ran late.

Still, good discussion about what people were finding useful in Test Driven Development and mention of a few tools that I'd not come across in my deadline-driven explorations last week.

Selenium got prominent mention as a way to do GUI testing. Watir for Ruby also mentioned, with the caveat that it is currently only for IE. However, there is a SafariWatir and FirefoxWatir and, apparently soon, a unified release.

Eclipse and Java were covered, particularly with writing the test and having Eclipse build the actual code that gets the tests to pass. For instance, calling a method in a test that doesn't exist will cause Eclipse to prompt, "foo doesn't exist, would you like to create foo?"

Other things to check out: RSpec, Windmill.

Limits of Technology

Stephen Sellars brought several quotes from Kirpatrick Sale's, Rebels Against the Future, with the point that Luddites weren't fearful so much of technology itself as much as it's effects. The knitting frame served as a disruptive technology in 1812, as did Gutenberg's press in 1450 and as do any variety of changes now.

The discussion started though is whether technology augments or limits society. In short, my answer would be both, or as I said in the session, "the hammer has no intent."

But what's interesting to me here is the compression. So much new happens, technologically speaking, it's impossible to stay on top of it and discussions taking place about the technology seem to border on obsolete. That's when the conversation takes place at all.

Sometimes it's technology strictly for the sake of technology. Complexity grows and becomes a feedback loop.

As one attendee said, "Technology is an accelerator and there's very little discussion about the direction." But again, technology is simply a catalyst. Whether it's good or bad is entirely up to the user. BitTorrent is one example. Ultrasound equipment is another, as was mentioned by a teacher participating in the discussion. Fantastic for parents in the western world to get early word on the health of their child. Not as good in China where in utero sex determinism and a one child policy make being a female fetus dangerous.

Other touchpoints...

The U.S. economy doesn't factor in externalities, such as pollution in China.
There is a consolidation of diversity in computing.
There is a consolidation of diversity in crop science. Monsato's Terminator seeds got a mention.

Finally, the software developer's paradox from Grady Booch [5]

Not everything we want to build can be
Not everything we want to build should be
Building quality software that matters is fundamentally hard work
Software-intensive systems can amplify human intelligence, but they
can't replace human judgment
Software-intensive systems can fuse, coordinate, classify and analyze
info, but can't create knowledge

The session covered a quite bit of territory and certainly made for interesting discussion and was slightly disjointed as somewhat academic party discussions are. At least they are in my head.

Open services

Luis Villa brought up open services, a question of getting out what you put into services like Flickr, Facebook, insert Web 2.0 service here. But it's more that simply getting your data out. There's a real question if the data you have on a Web service is of value outside of that service.

Dare Obasanjo puts it bluntly, "'Web 2.0' is the New Vendor Lock-in."

Basically, if you can't switch to something else, you're stuck with a service that may become evil. Or, you're willing to sacrifice your data. I'm guessing that most people will rationalize staying and not losing their data.

Villa takes this lock-in and brought up several questions / observations:

How do get freedoms in web service?
You don't have the hardware
You don't necessarily have the data
You probably don't have the source.

The discussion took off from there. The key that we talked about, and touched in in Obasanjo's post (found after BarCamp), is that individual data in a social network does not have the same value as the collective data set. Two interesting questions arise, both centered around ownership.

What rights do you have to export all data associated with yours (for instance comments and notes on your Flickr photos)?
Should you be able to remove yourself completely from a Web 2.0 if you decide to take your data and go home?

The first question really depends on how the service is established. My guess is, in order to leave the service with not only your data [6] but other data augmenting your contributions (comments) the not yours data would need to be under a Creative Commons license. The second question I answer with "no." In the same way as not being able to unattend a party after the fact, you shouldn't be able to pretend you didn't participate in an online conversation. Contributions to a discussion should be permanent. You can, however, decide to not go to any future parties. There's tension between the individual ownership at stake and the fact that the data also belongs to the community. Such is the value of social networking. So, having the freedom to leave is different than having the freedom to delete. There's also something to be said that if you leave, having the right of return. I believe in cooling off periods. Some service will become widely perceived as "evil" or "sell-outs" and it'll be interesting if users who leave can recreate community outside of the service. Further, do the fragments of their data add up to a whole on their own.

Network-centric Advocacy

Presented by Ruby Sinreich of OrangePolitics.org, the talk was based on an earlier presentation at Yearly Kos. Basically working with communities of interest for action. It might be partisan (most of the examples were Democratic, with the exception of conservative response to the CBS News / Bush Air National Guard memo debacle) but it doesn't have to be. The main thrust of her presentation were the five aspects of effective networks.

The network has social ties, built on personal relationships, trust and an awareness of who else is in the network.
The network is built around a common story: shared values
There's a dense communications grid, both online and off for the network
There's resource sharing, both of data/information and skills/expertise
There is a clarity of purpose: You feel like a member and you know what you're all there fore.

Also important: the network has to be real, not astro-turfed. It also has to be compelling and enjoyable [7]

Interesting to note, as Sinreich did, that these network strategies are borrowed from network-centric warfare... Slides showed a number of different network structures and the advantages and disadvantages of each. Hierarchical, mesh, star/hub, ring, tree...

Finally, these networks are open. You have the ability to come in and leave when you want [8].

I attended not out of any political leaning, more to see the "activism" piece of social networking. Flickr's a great community for photographers, or rather, a collection of neighborhoods. But I like that it's very feasible to create new communities of interest for action. And while everyone's trying to figure out "hyper-local content," or more precisely, how to build a business around the term, it really doesn't take anyone else's definition, permission or offering to start or join one of these communities. They really can be defined by their constituents, organically. That's exciting.

The end(ing)

It was a very intense eight hours and I'm definitely happy I went. I'll go again in 2008. I like the format and I liked the breadth and depth of the session ideas. I was easily interested in another four or five sessions, so I certainly didn't feel like I'd be wasting time if I wasn't able to squeeze into my desired sessions. I may try to present next year.

I'm also looking forward to SparkCon 2007.

Right up there with Ingy döt Net for oddest scripting language developer name.
Not helped since my reading of Ruby is now about two weeks old. Easier than learning your first language, I think Ruby is my fourth [3], but I wouldn't claim fluency.
Perl, JavaScript (more than once), PHP (more than once), Ruby.
BBEdit still wins
Booch, an IBM fellow talking on, "The Promise, the Limits, the Beauty of Software" Flash Video.
Which, really, should there be any doubt about exporting your own data?
I believe Ruby said "fun," but I'd want to dial that back a bit. Basically, you find some positive value.
Or, as I do, "take a vacation."

Step one through three on the road to Keynesian economics: Episode 37

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 03:13:59 GMT

Reading about Science Foo Camp on Daring Fireball led me to the link about Foo Camp. Seeing as I was at BarCampRDU earlier today and not fully aware of the origin of the term, I clicked more.

I'll work at webifying my outline from the session tomorrow.

BarCampRDU 2007

Sat, 04 Aug 2007 13:29:56 GMT

Mark Andrews/BarCampRDU f/4 @ 1/160 sec

Sessions going on now. Wiki. On twitter.

Sessions pitches

Expertise: how to find it
Magnetic poetry kit: formula to tip your ideas
Web 2.0 citizen marketer vs. cult of the amateur
Learn to Juggle
How to build online communities
Project management, Six Sigma
Excel pivot tables, DB access
Distributed version control systems
Why the lucky stiff / camping in 10: Learn Rails/camping (*)
How to deploy Zen in your datacenter / Linux virtualization
From hacker to CTO
Future of LUGs
Playing bughouse
Taproot Radio / podcasting / roundtable
How to automate home via Ruby / Simple circuit for home power metering
Test driven development: how to do it better
Extending sketchup w/ Ruby
Open source development tools
Limits of technology or can we take lessons from the luddites
iphonedevcamp rdu
Getting Things Done (*)
Open Moko
Beyond version control (git)
Traffic spikes and web hosting for small business
What's new with EJB 1.1
"I'm Ruby and I'm not on Rails"
Network-centric advocacy
Geeks for Good
Why IE sucks and how you can cope
What's stopping you from starting up
Marketing and sales is mostly bullshit
Open (web) services, creating ecosystems
Making people and processes congruent
OLPC
Improtect vulnerability scanner
Digital ID management
How to use Trac, Trac for multiple projects
Social media measurement
Game jams/game development
Mac Productivity Blowout
Developing with the Facebook platform

* sessions attended

Music on Podcasts

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 20:46:46 GMT

I don't really keep-up with podcasts, or lately, my RSS feeds and friends list, but when I have taken the time to catch up on a couple of podcasts, I find two music-related podcasts compelling tonics to the general pap of modern music:

NPR's All Songs Considered.

Bob Boilen directs All Things Considered. As part of the show, he's responsible for the bumps between stories NPR calls "Musical Interludes." He's also the host of the podcast/streaming only NPR show, All Songs Considered. The show has two sides. First, a generally weekly podcast that Boilen curates more than anything. In roughly half-an-hour, he'll run through six or seven songs, talk about what an artist is doing and why he's putting it in the show.

Boilen is a gentle guide, sometimes critical, sometimes challenging, but overall retaining and conveying a sense of wonder about music. I won't buy everything in a given show, but it's a very rare show that I've ever thought there wasn't something I'd be interested in listening to again. Most valuably, it's never been a waste of my time.

The other half of the show are a number of shows from Washington DC's 9:30 club and other venues. Currently, Nigerian singer Femi Kuti is on. Not anything I'd pick out at Schoolkids or were I still in Sacramento, The Beat, but damn, it's a good listen. Other recent highlights: Sleeter-Kinney, Ben Gibbard, the Arcade Fire, Ted Leo + Pharmacists and Explosions in the Sky. All complete and downloadable or podcast. Other concerts are streaming only (Modest Mouse, Gogol Bordello), which is a disappointment, but I love, love, love that Boilen and NPR have the relationship with the 9:30 Club and artists to get any of these shows online at all.

The musical love is evident in both halves of ASC and it's the kind of thing that I miss from radio.

Podington Bear

Posting a new song every Monday, Wednesday and Friday in 2007, Podington has a set of CDs on offer. Electronic and interesting for exploring within the general keyboards of keyboard sequencing and having to have something unique to post every other weekday. Having taken a stab at my own 365-day self portrait project, I can say it's difficult to explore something in an disciplined manner on a regular basis with creativity. So, even if every song isn't tops, I'll say I like the ritual behind it.

BarCampRDU

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:29:34 GMT

f_4_t and I are signed up for BarCampRDU.

Film: Ratatouille

Sat, 07 Jul 2007 04:10:42 GMT

f_4_t is still on pager duty and normally, that means avoiding things like movies. Well, that went out the window tonight, with Ratatouille.

I knew in the first few minutes from the smile that affixed itself that this would be a film I gushed about. Great story, great plot and not one thing about the film felt out of place or forced. It never felt slow. Most importantly, it was fun.

Some small things I liked:

Brief reference to Good Fellas
When Colette is illuminated in sunlight, her white chef's jacket has the highlights blown out.
The spacing in the cobbles along the Seine. As I saw it, I imagined that, yes, Pixar went to Paris and looked at cobblestones, among other things.
Anton Ego's typewriter

Definitely one I'd like to see again. A definite purchase when the DVD comes out.

Trailers:

Daddy Day Camp: Looks like crap
Underdog: Looks less like crap
Wall-E: The 30-second teaser trailer was enough to have me hooked for next summer.

Pager inventions

Thu, 05 Jul 2007 02:27:08 GMT

f_4_t and I have back-to-back pager weeks, which means two weeks of trying to not get cabin fever but also not making firm plans, seeing movies in the theaters or dining at fancy restaurants. She's taken to calling it something along the lines of "Life on the 10-minute leash." Staying close to wi-fi is high value.

Aside from carrying a low level of stress at perhaps being awoken at 3 a.m. by a customer who's forgotten their FTP password, the pager itself gets spam. Far more spam than actual pages. Everything from classic OEM software (Corel seems popular) to libido enhancers to some 419 spam.

So, while we were sitting at last night's Raleigh Flickr meet, a spam page came in. Software. In the reading I created Photoshop Cialis. Tagline: "When your photos come in a little limp."

Dinner

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:06:05 GMT

Quick dinner this evening.

Bratwursts cooked in a skillet
Sauteed onions
Stone ground mustard
pickle relish
Terrapin Rye Squared Imperial Pale Ale

All tasty. Not a bad meal to watch For A Few Dollars More with.

The beer is very fully flavored, but not overpowering. The brats did better with onion, mustard and relish than with Amy's Chili, though the chili wasn't a bad option.

Photo links

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 20:39:49 GMT

The New York Times reports on New York City's Mayor's Office of Film, Theater and Broadcasting is proposing new rules governing photography that would, "require any group of two or more people who want to use a camera in a single public location for more than a half hour to get a city permit and insurance."

The permits are free and the stated intent is aimed more at professionals and intended to ensure they have insurance. However, it isn't hard to see a group of Flickr photographers crossing the "professional" threshold and getting stopped and cited because they lack a permit. Thankfully, I didn't notice anything about "enhancing security in a post 9/11 world."

Closer in, and more pleasantly, N&O photographer Takaaki Iwabu has a gallery, Drive-by America, photographs taken while driving.

Desktops for yr iPhone

Sat, 30 Jun 2007 01:31:17 GMT

Try out Gir, from IconFactory.

Robin just brought up that I might want to recrop some of my photos for use on iPhones... Tempting. Someone could also do some LOLCats, say.

Devil's haircut

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 22:54:45 GMT

I went in for a haircut [1] and overhead one stylist talking to her client about that stereotypical salon discussion topic: the iPhone.

Unfortunately, due to a scheduling mishap, my stylist had the haircut down for another time. Blegh.

Angler

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 05:04:06 GMT

The Washington Post has a very worthwhile series on Dick Cheney and his effect on the Bush Administration. From Chapter Four: Leaving No Tracks:

Because of Cheney's intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.

It is fascinating reading.