Thursday, June 30, 2005
Voices Silenced
Paul Winchell and John Fiedler died last weekend. Winchell was the voice of Tigger, Fiedler was the voice of Piglet in the Winnie The Pooh films — my younger son's current favorite series.
Winchell actually stopped doing voice work for Tigger in 1999 when Jim Cummings, the current voice of Pooh, took on Tigger's part as well. Sterling Holloway, the original voice of Winnie The Pooh, died in 1992.
Winchell, Fiedler and Holloway all had very distinctive voices. Winchell was originally a ventriloquist (remember Jerry Mahoney?). Fiedler and Holloway had both been popular character actors.
It's interesting to note that despite the deaths of these voice actors, their voices live on through others. Cummings has been doing an impression of Sterling Holloway's near-falsetto voice as Pooh for 13 years after Holloway's death. If more films are made, it's likely that someone will reproduce Fiedler's high-pitch Piglet voice as well.
Winchell actually stopped doing voice work for Tigger in 1999 when Jim Cummings, the current voice of Pooh, took on Tigger's part as well. Sterling Holloway, the original voice of Winnie The Pooh, died in 1992.
Winchell, Fiedler and Holloway all had very distinctive voices. Winchell was originally a ventriloquist (remember Jerry Mahoney?). Fiedler and Holloway had both been popular character actors.
It's interesting to note that despite the deaths of these voice actors, their voices live on through others. Cummings has been doing an impression of Sterling Holloway's near-falsetto voice as Pooh for 13 years after Holloway's death. If more films are made, it's likely that someone will reproduce Fiedler's high-pitch Piglet voice as well.
Monday, June 27, 2005
Darth Cruise
Tom Cruise has joined the dark side? Yup. Just watch the video. Evil or not, I still plan to see War of the Worlds. (Via Waxy.org)
Our Founder
Posters with images of famous people in computing recently appeared on the walls in my office building (Grace Hopper, Jef Raskin, John Mauchly, An Wang, etc). The posters advertise an innovators program for "early tenure" employees.The other day as I leaving work I noticed one of these posters on the door leading outside. This particular poster caught my eye because I didn't immediately recognize the photo. It was Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM.
Watson died nearly 50 years ago. The company he founded produces nearly $100 billion in annual revenue and employs over 320,000 people — including me.
Most of us know the names and faces of founders of more recent technology companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Dell, Google, Yahoo, etc. If these firms have the longevity of IBM will, for example, some Apple employee fifty years from now wonder who this guy was?
Lucas vs. Spielberg
Interesting article on the long-term complex friendship of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
Sunday, June 26, 2005
Yahoo email settings
Here's another tip if your company blocks outbound traffic on port 25 (SMTP). If you use a POP client such as Thunderbird or Outlook Express and have a Yahoo account, you can use port 587 rather than port 25 for your outgoing (SMTP) mail.
Learning to wait in line
My younger son was with me when I stopped to buy an iced coffee on Saturday — I needed a caffeine fix and drinking hot coffee when it's 97° F outside just didn't seem like a good idea. The line was especially long and my son got pretty restless. It's hard to wait in line. It's something that you learn to do. To queue up. To wait your turn. To avoid physical contact with those in front or behind you. To move the line along. I kept telling my son that he was "doing a good job being patient". Given their penchant for queues, the experience felt more English than American.
This Man Wants To Eat Your Lunch
Years ago when Lotus, Microsoft and Borland were battling for supremacy for Office suites, posters appeared in the Lotus cafeteria with pictures of Bill Gates and Philippe Kahn. Below each image was the tag line:
This Man Wants To Eat Your Lunch
I guess we were supposed to be motivated to work harder — to avoid letting Microsoft Office or Borland Office eclipse Lotus SmartSuite. But the posters were pretty silly especially since, at that point, the food in the Lotus cafeteria was mediocre. Many of us thought that if Bill or Philippe really wanted our lunch, he could have it.
Saturday, June 25, 2005
Batman Begins
I saw Batman Begins the other night. Definitely recommended. Excellent cast; Christian Bale is terrific as Batman. A really good telling of the Batman "back story". It's directed by Christopher Nolan who also wrote and directed one of my favorite films of the last five years, Memento.
Friday, June 24, 2005
Most liberal places in America
This list of the Most Liberal Places in America is based on votes, political contributions and demographics. According to the list the most liberal cities, large medium and small are in Massachusetts.
My town, Arlington, MA, is listed as the third most liberal medium-sized city in the US. This high rank is probably not much of a surprise to my friend, and fellow Arlingtonian, Andrew.
My town, Arlington, MA, is listed as the third most liberal medium-sized city in the US. This high rank is probably not much of a surprise to my friend, and fellow Arlingtonian, Andrew.
Wikiquote
Wikiquote is a collection of quotations in every language, including sources, translations of non-English quotes, and links to Wikipedia for further information. It's not a huge collection yet but growing fast. I haven't looked around too much so far but there are pretty good lists of film and television show quotes.
Happy Birthday
Today is my wife's birthday. She doesn't read my blog — she hears enough about geeky stuff from me anyway.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
Cool Dog, Crazy Dog
Most dogs are trusting, friendly and pretty darn flexible. Watch the dog in this video. He just accepts that gravity has disappeared and he's on the ceiling. His facial expression isn't "what the heck?". It's more like "okay, this is happening". He adjusts. Put a cat in zero gravity and the result is a bit different. Eventually the cat may adjust but not as quickly as a dog. Replace the dog with a cat in the first video and the pilot would have a furry Alien-like face hugger and scratches all over.
And then there's Happy, a dog who appeared on Bravo's reality show Showdog Moms & Dads. Happy has some serious issues as shown in this video. The root cause is probably Happy's owner. I wonder if the dog could be retrained or is a loss cause?
And then there's Happy, a dog who appeared on Bravo's reality show Showdog Moms & Dads. Happy has some serious issues as shown in this video. The root cause is probably Happy's owner. I wonder if the dog could be retrained or is a loss cause?
List of people widely considered eccentric
Wikipedia weighs in on eccentricity with the list of people widely considered eccentric. Their definition of eccentric is pretty broad. Is a category that can encompass Albert Einstein, Michael Jackson, Salvador Dali and Dennis Rodman as well as Idi Amin and Adolf Hitler really that meaningful? Eccentric is such a quaint word. It doesn't really capture the essence of someone like GG Allin who, like some people on this list, was probably insane or at least very disturbed. How about a "list of people widely considered insane"?
Wednesday, June 22, 2005
Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out
Neal Stephenson has written an interesting Op-Ed piece for the New York Times: Turn On, Tune In, Veg Out. He notes major differences between the original Star Wars film and Episode III. The original film was a freestanding narrative. Except for the opening crawl, you didn't need to know anything. Episode III relies not only on the earlier films but also on "Clone Wars," the animated TV series that bridges the story arc between II and III. Many viewers, including me, never watched that series so we aren't familar with some of the characters and back story in Episode III. We're left to let all of the cool on-screen action wash over us without fully understanding what's going on. (And, I'll add, not caring all that much about the characters on screen but that's another matter).
Stephenson's "veg out" vs. "geek out" comparisons are interesting but his contention that Americans spend too much time "vegging out" and as a result the United States will go "the way of the old Republic" is a bit much. Nevertheless, I think he's right that far too many films are mostly eye candy. A lot of filmmakers don't bother to create an immersive, engaging experience.
Stephenson's "veg out" vs. "geek out" comparisons are interesting but his contention that Americans spend too much time "vegging out" and as a result the United States will go "the way of the old Republic" is a bit much. Nevertheless, I think he's right that far too many films are mostly eye candy. A lot of filmmakers don't bother to create an immersive, engaging experience.
Managers Good and Bad
I've worked for lots of managers — mostly good, a couple of bad ones. Scott Berkun has written an excellent essay on how to survive a bad manager.
Many years ago I had my first, and only, experience managing a software development team. It's a difficult job and the transition from developer to manager is hard — I went from spending 90% of my time on purely technical issues to spending 90% of my time on people issues. And the team had a lot of people problems. I had been a member of the team for a short time beforehand which makes the transition harder. My relationship with team members changed — I had become "one of them". My tenure lasted about a year. I moved back to a technical lead role on another team afterwards. I can't say for certain whether my team thought that I was a good manager or not. I think I did pretty well under very difficult circumstances — the overall organization was dysfunctional and I didn't have much influence on working conditions. I tried to shield the team from the worst of it. And that's something to keep in mind before blaming your manager for doing a bad job. As Scott says: "If you were so fed up with your manager that you wanted his job, paying some attention to his management landscape is well worth the time. It's possible your bad manager is actually protecting you from an even worse manager above him."
Note: Scott has a lot of other interesting essays on his web site. He's also written a book, The Art of Project Management, which, based on his essays and the book excerpts, sounds like worthwhile reading. (Via Dave)
Many years ago I had my first, and only, experience managing a software development team. It's a difficult job and the transition from developer to manager is hard — I went from spending 90% of my time on purely technical issues to spending 90% of my time on people issues. And the team had a lot of people problems. I had been a member of the team for a short time beforehand which makes the transition harder. My relationship with team members changed — I had become "one of them". My tenure lasted about a year. I moved back to a technical lead role on another team afterwards. I can't say for certain whether my team thought that I was a good manager or not. I think I did pretty well under very difficult circumstances — the overall organization was dysfunctional and I didn't have much influence on working conditions. I tried to shield the team from the worst of it. And that's something to keep in mind before blaming your manager for doing a bad job. As Scott says: "If you were so fed up with your manager that you wanted his job, paying some attention to his management landscape is well worth the time. It's possible your bad manager is actually protecting you from an even worse manager above him."
Note: Scott has a lot of other interesting essays on his web site. He's also written a book, The Art of Project Management, which, based on his essays and the book excerpts, sounds like worthwhile reading. (Via Dave)
java.awt.Robot
The java.awt.Robot class has been around since JDK 1.3 but I never noticed it before. Robot is used to generate native system input events for test automation, self-running demos, and other applications where control of the mouse and keyboard is needed. In addition to controlling mouse clicks and keyboard presses, Robot can be used to do screen captures. I found a sample application called JVNC that shows off the capabilities of java.awt.Robot. It's a simplified clone of VNC.
The '70s House
First there was the 1900 House then The Frontier House and The Colonial House. Trying to live the lifestyle of an earlier era can provide some interesting insights in what it might have been like. Leave it to MTV to treat a more recent era as ancient history with The '70s House. A dozen young people will swap their iPods for 8-track players and their PSPs for Pong for a "far-out journey back in time." Groovy.
Polaroid-o-nizer
Use Polaroid-o-nizer to turn an image into a Polaroid snapshot. Here is my contribution. It looks like Polaroid-o-nizer was written as PHP script. The web page is in Dutch. Babelfish does a fairly coherent translation.
Monday, June 20, 2005
20Q
I've been meaning to blog about the handheld version of 20Q for a while. Someone mentioned it at lunch today which reminded me of this review on Cool Tools. The handheld version of 20Q is an impressive gadget and relatively inexpensive. It's suprisingly good at even obscure objects and great fun to try to stump. An excellent gift.
Friday, June 17, 2005
You've got to find what you love
Steve Jobs gave the commencement address at Stanford University the other day. He told three stories about his life beginning with his decision to drop out of Reed College after six months and ending with a story about his close encounter with death — not the usual subject matter for a commencement speech. Maybe I'm just a sucker for stuff like this but it's a good speech. The text can be found here, the audio here.
The Starbucks Mermaid
Interesting post about how the mermaid in the Starbucks logo has become more sanitized over time.
NeXT and IBM
Robert Scoble quotes an unnamed former NeXT employee who said that IBM did the work to get NeXTStep to work on Intel. Ironic because Apple recently decided to switch from using PowerPC chips to Intel.
It's an interesting story but sounds apocryphal to me. I didn't work at NeXT or IBM at the time but my team at Lotus worked pretty closely with NeXT including porting of Lotus Improv to NeXTstep Intel which was shown during Jobs' keynote that year.
IBM licensed NeXTstep in 1988. By the time IBM completed an initial port of NeXTstep 1.0 to RS/6000, NeXT released NeXTstep 2.0. There was a contract dispute and IBM apparently abandoned the project. (Here's some background on NeXTstep for RS/6000). It's bit ironic in some ways because it was the first time that much of the code that would eventually become Macintosh OS X was running on the PowerPC architecture. Also, a short time after this Apple and IBM began collaborating through Taligent to build a next-generation operating system to run on PowerPC.
Given this history, it's not clear to me why IBM would have done the work to port NeXTstep to Intel. There is a rumor that NeXTstep 1.0 had also been ported to the PS/2, an Intel box, so maybe some of that work was reused for NeXTstep Intel?
The whole thing seems unlikely to me. At the very least it sounds like an oversimplified version of the real story.
It's an interesting story but sounds apocryphal to me. I didn't work at NeXT or IBM at the time but my team at Lotus worked pretty closely with NeXT including porting of Lotus Improv to NeXTstep Intel which was shown during Jobs' keynote that year.
IBM licensed NeXTstep in 1988. By the time IBM completed an initial port of NeXTstep 1.0 to RS/6000, NeXT released NeXTstep 2.0. There was a contract dispute and IBM apparently abandoned the project. (Here's some background on NeXTstep for RS/6000). It's bit ironic in some ways because it was the first time that much of the code that would eventually become Macintosh OS X was running on the PowerPC architecture. Also, a short time after this Apple and IBM began collaborating through Taligent to build a next-generation operating system to run on PowerPC.
Given this history, it's not clear to me why IBM would have done the work to port NeXTstep to Intel. There is a rumor that NeXTstep 1.0 had also been ported to the PS/2, an Intel box, so maybe some of that work was reused for NeXTstep Intel?
The whole thing seems unlikely to me. At the very least it sounds like an oversimplified version of the real story.
Thursday, June 16, 2005
Java character sets and encodings
I recently fixed a couple of bugs caused by incorrect assumptions about how character sets and encodings are handled in Java. There are classes and methods in Java that use the platform character encoding by default. This can cause problems when, for example, dealing with XML content encoded in UTF-8.
Here are a few traps to watch out for:
Here are a few traps to watch out for:
- Calling String.getBytes() will return the text encoded in the platform character encoding. Often this is incorrect and you should use getBytes(String charsetName) instead.
- Likewise, using the String(byte[] bytes) constructor interprets the byte array using the platform's default character encoding.
- FileReader and FileWriter classes can only handle the platform character encoding. If you need to read or write files with different character encodings, you should use InputStreamReader and OutputStreamWriter with an explicit charset argument instead.
Wednesday, June 15, 2005
Trigraphs and other escape sequences
I was fixing a bug the other day in code that generates Java source code. I had to make a small change to code that generated Unicode escape sequences. This got me thinking about the ways in which programming languages support encoding of non-ASCII characters in source code.
Java compilers must support source programs written using the full Unicode character set. But since most text editors don't handle all of Unicode, Java supports Unicode escape sequences using the \uXXXX syntax, where XXXX is a 16-bit hexadecimal value. When the source is compiled, the substitution happens before any lexical analysis is done. So a Java source file could be entirely composed from Unicode escape sequences. (How's that for Obfuscated code?).
The C Programming Language predates Unicode. It even predates the consistent usage of ASCII. C uses a number of characters that were not available on some European terminals (which only offered the seven-bit ISO 646 character set and use these positions for accented characters). In order to allow such systems to support C, trigraphs were added to the language. Trigraphs are sequences of three characters (introduced by two consecutive question marks) that the compiler replaces with their corresponding punctuation characters. Here's the set of trigraphs that were defined:
??= #
??( [
??/ \
??) ]
?? ^
??< {
??! |
??> }
??- ~
Pretty ugly. Imagine having to type ??< ... ??> around every block of code. Since full ASCII support is no longer an issue, trigraphs are now just an obscure language feature. But they live on. C++ compilers usually support C as well so trigraphs are supported by most C/C++ compilers.
C# doesn't support trigraphs but it does support Unicode escape sequences although not in quite the same way as Java. According to the C# Language Specification, Unicode escape sequences are processed in identifiers, regular string literals, and character literals. A Unicode character escape is not processed in any other location (for example, to form an operator, punctuator, or keyword). So in C#, the processing of these escapes must happen later, during lexical analysis. I don't think it really matter in practice. The most common usage of Unicode escape sequences would be in string and character literals. Using them elsewhere, especially in identifier names would be pretty weird.
Java compilers must support source programs written using the full Unicode character set. But since most text editors don't handle all of Unicode, Java supports Unicode escape sequences using the \uXXXX syntax, where XXXX is a 16-bit hexadecimal value. When the source is compiled, the substitution happens before any lexical analysis is done. So a Java source file could be entirely composed from Unicode escape sequences. (How's that for Obfuscated code?).
The C Programming Language predates Unicode. It even predates the consistent usage of ASCII. C uses a number of characters that were not available on some European terminals (which only offered the seven-bit ISO 646 character set and use these positions for accented characters). In order to allow such systems to support C, trigraphs were added to the language. Trigraphs are sequences of three characters (introduced by two consecutive question marks) that the compiler replaces with their corresponding punctuation characters. Here's the set of trigraphs that were defined:
??= #
??( [
??/ \
??) ]
?? ^
??< {
??! |
??> }
??- ~
Pretty ugly. Imagine having to type ??< ... ??> around every block of code. Since full ASCII support is no longer an issue, trigraphs are now just an obscure language feature. But they live on. C++ compilers usually support C as well so trigraphs are supported by most C/C++ compilers.
C# doesn't support trigraphs but it does support Unicode escape sequences although not in quite the same way as Java. According to the C# Language Specification, Unicode escape sequences are processed in identifiers, regular string literals, and character literals. A Unicode character escape is not processed in any other location (for example, to form an operator, punctuator, or keyword). So in C#, the processing of these escapes must happen later, during lexical analysis. I don't think it really matter in practice. The most common usage of Unicode escape sequences would be in string and character literals. Using them elsewhere, especially in identifier names would be pretty weird.
Tuesday, June 14, 2005
Mike Kudla
Flying or Falling with Style?
A contestant on a Japanese gameshow gets shot over a lake with pressurized water bottles strapped to his back. Watch the video. The flight itself is not exactly controlled but there's an amazing amount of propulsive force in those water bottles. The guy looks stunned as he tries to get out of the water afterwards. (Via MilkAndCookies.com)
130-year-old Chinese fire put out
According to this BBC report, a fire that broke out 130 years ago at a Chinese coalfield was finally extinguished last November. Ulysses S. Grant was President of the United States when the fire started in 1874. It took four years to put out the flames. I wonder what made them finally decide to put it out?
Why You Shouldn't Work On A Glass Desk
Tempered glass is strong; nearly four times stronger than normal annealed glass. When tempered glass breaks, the glass fractures into small, relatively harmless fragments which reduces the likelihood of injury as there are no jagged edges or sharp shards. Of course this property of "dicing" into small pieces can be pretty messy. Look at what happened to this glass desktop. Notice all the small bits of glass scattered among the items that used to be on top of the desk? In the comments the guy who owns the desk says that he just came home and the desk had shattered. What a mess.
Newcastle Brown Ice Cream
Doddington Dairies has launched a hand-made ice cream whose ingredients include double cream, sugar, egg yolks and a syrup made with Newcastle Brown Ale. Sounds weird but Newcastle Brown's flavor might taste good as ice cream.I've tried Guinness Stout Ice Cream at Toscanini's in Cambridge. It'll never surpass more normal ice cream flavors but it's better than it sounds.
Monday, June 13, 2005
Ducklings
An Illinois woman who stopped to escort a mother duck and her ducklings across a busy highway ended up in the hospital after she was hit by a car and thrown 60 feet. Fortunately she escaped with only a leg injury. Noone wants to run over ducklings but this was an incredibly risky thing to do. And in the end, at least four of the ducklings were killed. I guess in the "real world" version of the children's book Make Way for Ducklings Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack, and Quack don't all make it across the street safely. (Via ObscureStore)
Sunday, June 12, 2005
Layer Cake
I saw Layer Cake the other night. It's directed by Matthew Vaughn who produced Guy Ritchie's two gangster films: Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. While Guy Ritchie's gangster films were comedy based, Layer Cake is more serious. The film's unnamed main character (referred to as XXXX in the credits) is a successful cocaine dealer who plans to retire after amassing a million pounds offshore. His plans are delayed when his boss hands him two tough assignments: to find the missing daughter of an associate and to help move one million Grade A Ecstasy pills. As you'd expect, things don't go as planned. The plot is complex and the dialog is sometimes a little difficult to follow through some of the accents.
Overall it's a very good film. The cast is uniformly good. The main character is played by Daniel Craig, who is supposed to replace Pierce Brosnan as the new James Bond. Based on his work on this film, he should do a terrific job.
I've always enjoyed English gangster films. I think my favorite is still The Long Good Friday. Oddly enough I found a connection between Layer Cake and The Long Good Friday. One of the secondary characters in Layer Cake looked familiar. It's Dexter Fletcher who I remembered from The Rachel Papers. According to IMDB, he also had a small role in The Long Good Friday (as did Pierce Brosnan in one of his first roles).
Overall it's a very good film. The cast is uniformly good. The main character is played by Daniel Craig, who is supposed to replace Pierce Brosnan as the new James Bond. Based on his work on this film, he should do a terrific job.
I've always enjoyed English gangster films. I think my favorite is still The Long Good Friday. Oddly enough I found a connection between Layer Cake and The Long Good Friday. One of the secondary characters in Layer Cake looked familiar. It's Dexter Fletcher who I remembered from The Rachel Papers. According to IMDB, he also had a small role in The Long Good Friday (as did Pierce Brosnan in one of his first roles).
Bzzpeek
How do you say "meow" in other languages? Bzzpeek has the answer. Bzzpeek contains a collection of onomatopoeia from around the world using sound recordings from native speakers imitating the sounds of animals, vehicles, etc. Fun.
Photo Fun
In the game of Truck vs. Overpass, if your rental truck is higher than the overpass, the overpass always wins. It doesn't matter how fast you drive under it or if you just ignore that horrible scraping noise that you hear. It's amazing how neatly the roof just peeled right off.
We occasionally have piles of obsolete monitors at work collected for recycling. Noone ever thought to arrange them like this. Then again, when you almost get this one right, the sound of imploding picture tubes as your creation topples over probably would draw a crowd.
When Pigeons Attack the results aren't pretty. This poor kid looks terrified. But maybe they're just making fun of her outfit.
We occasionally have piles of obsolete monitors at work collected for recycling. Noone ever thought to arrange them like this. Then again, when you almost get this one right, the sound of imploding picture tubes as your creation topples over probably would draw a crowd.
When Pigeons Attack the results aren't pretty. This poor kid looks terrified. But maybe they're just making fun of her outfit.
Block Party
We had a block party on our street on Saturday. Despite the sweltering heat, the party was well attended and a lot of fun. There were activities for kids, lots of food, music, etc. It was a good opportunity to meet all of our neighbors and feel part of a community. Hopefully this will be the start of an annual event.
Thursday, June 09, 2005
Extraordinary Machine
Fiona Apple completed her latest album Extraordinary Machine in May 2003 but it was never released. Opinions vary as to why Sony Music/Epic Records decided not the release the album: lack of commercial appeal or that it's not finished? A website has (freefiona.com) been set up to campaign Sony/Epic to release the album.Based on copies floating around on BitTorrent, it's clearly a finished work. And, while some of the tracks are quirky, it's pretty appealing too.
Boiled Egg-ploded
I was reminded of Ned's story of the exploding frozen soda when I saw Michael Krakovskiy's image of an exploded boiled egg. That's evil looking. And he ate it. <shudder/>. Okay I'm exaggerating a bit but broken boiled eggs can take on some pretty odd shapes. Toss a bunch of these into a jar like picked eggs and you can make you own own Thing In A Jar.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
Snap Judgments
According to this article some photofinishing labs have started to refuse to print professional-looking photographs taken by amateurs. The reason? Federal copyright laws disallow copying images without the permission of the copyright owners. Photofinishers don't want to be held liable for copyright infringement. But when images are reduced to bits &mdash as opposed to film or negatives — copyright ownership becomes harder to verify. And digital technology makes it easier for amateurs to produce professional-looking results. So whether a particular image is owned by someone making prints becomes a judgment call on the part of the processor. I guess the thing to do is to include some out-of-focus and badly-framed images in your print order to "prove" that you're an amateur.
60 second story
60 second story is a literary contest that asks writers to compose a short story, then record themselves reading it (in roughly 60 seconds) with a digital camera. The results are posted online. Most of them are pretty strange such as the Tuna Oracle and Charles. The contest ends today. Winners will be announced tomorrow.
Pump 'em up
I posted a few months ago that we've been "pumping up" our cats with subcutaneous fluids to help flush waste products through their kidneys. The fluid is injected just below the skin and is slowly absorbed into the body. After the injection they both have temporary Arnold Schwarzenegger physiques. Apparently a similar approach with saline soluton is being used as a temporary breast enhancer. The effect will last 24 hours &mdash maybe even 48 hours. After that, the saline solution just flushes through the body. (I was trying to think of something funny to say at this point and I'm at a lost for words. You can make up your own joke ). (Via A Welsh View)
). (Via A Welsh View)
Monday, June 06, 2005
The Monster Engine
The Monster Engine is a book by artist Dave Devries. The premise for the book is based on the question: What would a child's drawing look like if it were painted realistically? Note: I wouldn't use the word realistically for these works. Maybe a better way to state the question is What would a child's drawing look like reimagined by a professional artist?
It's amazing how childhood imagination can produce some amazing and disturbing images when combined with the Dave's talent.
According to the web site, this is just the beginning. A sequel is planned as are other titles: The Hero Engine, The Circus Engine, The Dinosaur Engine, The Undersea Engine, etc.
Why Crunch Mode Doesn't Work
Interesting essay by Evan Robinson on Why Crunch Mode Doesn't WorkThe sad thing is that on some projects this isn't even referred to as "Crunch Mode". It's just "the way development is done". Early in my career at a startup the development team started to crack under the stress and lack of sleep. We had been doing 60-80 hour weeks for over a year and were burned out. There was serious peer pressure to be in the office. It had become an unhealthy work environment. We needed to take time off or, at the very least, cut back on work hours. Our CEO, who often left the office mid-day and was never seen in the office in evenings and weekends, responded by telling us that "this will never be a 9 to 5 job". For many of us, that was the beginning of the end.
Any way you look at it, Crunch Mode used as a long-term strategy is economically indefensible. Longer hours do not increase output except in the short term. Crunch does not make the product ship sooner — it makes the product ready later. Crunch does not make the product better — it makes the product worse . Crunch raises the odds of a significant error, like shipping software that erases customer's hard drives, or deleting the source tree, or spilling Coke into a server that hasn't been backed up recently, or setting the building on fire. (Yes, I've seen the first three of these actually happen in the last, bleary days of Crunch Mode. The fourth one is probably only a matter of time.)
Smart Stick Adventures
Help the little stickman through a set of puzzles. Not as slick as Hapland. Crude but fun.There are three Smart Stick Adventures 1, 2, and 2 1/2. You can also find all three here
Hopefully you'll have more luck than we did. We maimed an awful lot of stickmen before completing these.
Laptops Outsell Desktops for First Time
According to this article, notebooks have for the first time outsold desktops in the US market &mdash accounting for 53% of the market last month vs. 46% during the same period last year.
Penn Jillette names daughter Moxie CrimeFighter
Frank Zappa gave his children unusual names like Moon Unit and Dweezil — Frank insisted his kids would always have more trouble because of their last name. Penn Jillette has named his daughter Moxie CrimeFighter Jillette — including the CamelCase spelling of CrimerFighter. According to Penn:I wonder if Moxie is going to see the humor in this choice?
"We chose her middle name because when she's pulled over for speeding she can say, 'But officer, we're on the same side,'" Jillette explained. "'My middle name is CrimeFighter.'"
It's True
Apple is going to move from PowerPC to Intel chips. Steve Jobs just announced the details at the Apple WWDC in San Francisco. Jobs claimed that the main motivation to this change was that Intel offers increased performance and reduced power consumption. The transition will be complete by WWDC 2007. Apple has been secretly compiling OS X for Intel for the last five years "just in case". They'll include dynamic binary translation technology called "Rosetta" to allow Intel boxes to run existing PowerPC applications. OS X will support "universal binaries" to support both PowerPC and Intel.
This is a huge and risky change. It doesn't sound like Apple/Intel boxes will appear until next year. In the meantime, will customers continue to buy PowerPC-based Macs?
I'm having a strong sense of deja-vu with this announcement. Back in January 1992 Steve Jobs announced NeXTStep 3.0 for Intel. The Improv team did a quick port of Improv to NeXTstep Intel which Jobs showed at the announcement. The difference is that at that time Intel meant running on PC hardware. As far as I can tell from these annoucements, Apple is only switching processors. NeXT was supporting Intel as a way to ease out of the hardware business. Apple still makes a lot of money selling hardware. The next year is likely going to a bumpy ride for Macs.
Here is Apple's press release on the announcement.
This is a huge and risky change. It doesn't sound like Apple/Intel boxes will appear until next year. In the meantime, will customers continue to buy PowerPC-based Macs?
I'm having a strong sense of deja-vu with this announcement. Back in January 1992 Steve Jobs announced NeXTStep 3.0 for Intel. The Improv team did a quick port of Improv to NeXTstep Intel which Jobs showed at the announcement. The difference is that at that time Intel meant running on PC hardware. As far as I can tell from these annoucements, Apple is only switching processors. NeXT was supporting Intel as a way to ease out of the hardware business. Apple still makes a lot of money selling hardware. The next year is likely going to a bumpy ride for Macs.
Here is Apple's press release on the announcement.
Sunday, June 05, 2005
I'll See You Intel
John Gruber has written an interesting analysis of the Apple / Intel story. Both CNet and the Wall Street Journal are now reporting this as a fait accompli. As John points out:We'll know the full story on Monday. No matter how this plays out, Apple certainly keeps things interesting.
What this means is that something extraordinary must occur: either Apple is going to announce the biggest hardware transition in company history (and, arguably, industry history), or, two well-respected news organizations [CNet and WSJ] have committed enormous blunders.
Friday, June 03, 2005
Things I Learned While Watching Revenge of the Sith
Revenge of the Sith is chock full of head scratchers and plot holes. Charles Miller and Adam Fields have turned these into humorous lists of "Things I Learned Watching Revenge of the Sith" (Charles' list, Adam's list).
Note: lots of spoilers, you may not want to read these if you haven't seen the film yet.
Note: lots of spoilers, you may not want to read these if you haven't seen the film yet.
Apple to switch to Intel chips?
According to C|Net, Apple Computer plans to announce next Monday that it's switching its computers from PowerPC to Intel x86 chips. I'm skeptical but anything's possible.
This isn't a technical challenge for Apple; I'm sure that OS X already runs on x86 chips in Apple labs. The real issue is software. Unlike the switch from 68k to the much faster PowerPC, Apple is unlikely to be able to rely on a PowerPC emulator for the x86 to allow customers to run older applications on new hardware. So every third-party application will need to be recompiled and rebuilt. And then there's hardware. Will Apple allow hardware clones?
Either C|Net has a huge scoop here or they'll have egg on their face on Monday. This should be interesting.
This isn't a technical challenge for Apple; I'm sure that OS X already runs on x86 chips in Apple labs. The real issue is software. Unlike the switch from 68k to the much faster PowerPC, Apple is unlikely to be able to rely on a PowerPC emulator for the x86 to allow customers to run older applications on new hardware. So every third-party application will need to be recompiled and rebuilt. And then there's hardware. Will Apple allow hardware clones?
Either C|Net has a huge scoop here or they'll have egg on their face on Monday. This should be interesting.
Working for the Weekend
I'm not sure why Shawn Barrett's home-made music video made me laugh so much. Probably because early-80s music like Loverboy's Working for the Weekend is so darn earnest and cheesy.
Who Are You?
When I post a link to a blog entry I try to use the author's name or some other identity. If it's an anonymous or multi-author blog I might just use the blog's name, otherwise I try to find a name. It's amazing how difficult this can be. Sometimes there a photo of the author in the corner of the page but no indication of who they are. If you blog (and you want people to know who you are) please provide a name or "About Me" link (here's mine).
How to Lose Friends and Alienate People With Email
Email can be a source of aggravation especially for recipients of emails that follow Bert Webb's email rules (in two parts), Funny and useful too.
Here are a few that I think Bert missed related to email threads:
Here are a few that I think Bert missed related to email threads:
- Don't remove attachments from a long-running email thread: — Multiple copies of 10 MBs of attachments will always liven up a good meandering email thread.
- Reply-to-All when you receive a Blind-Copy — Friends and co-workers love to discover that someone else is getting Bcc'ed copies of their "private" email discussions.
- Don't use the Spell Checker — Spelling is optional. Recipients will get the gist of what you're trying to say. And if not, it'll be entertaining for them to guess what you meant.
- Always uses Reply-To-All — This is especially useful when you receive an email in error. Let the world know about it. If others do likewise, Reply-To-All works well to respond to them as well.
- Add recipients to the CC list who've been disparaged earlier in the thread — People love surprises, especially when they find out what others really think about them in an email message.
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Failing the Turing Test
The term Turing Test is usually taken to indicate a test in which a human judge converses with a human and a computer without knowing which is which. Since less of our time is now spent face-to-face, we all unwittingly run our own daily Turing Tests via email and IM. Sure, we know that there's a person out there but when we've never actually met the person it can get a little weird. Did you ever have the experience in an email or IM exchange where you slowly become convinced that the "person" on the other end of the conversation is not human?
Lifecycle of Bloggers
I've been maintaining my blog for nearly two years but I think I'm barely at step 3 on Min Jung Kim's Lifecycle of Bloggers.
Kung-Fu Hustle
I saw Kung-Fu Hustle last night. What a hoot! It's a crazy mixture of Hong Kong Martial Arts, Warner Brothers Looney Tunes, American 1940s Noir Gangster films and other oddball genres that director and star Stephen Chow decided to throw into this visual blender. Like Quentin Tarantino, Chow includes movie references galore. I saw references to The Matrix, The Shining, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Gangs of New York and The Untouchables. I'm sure that there are lots of others that I missed.The film uses a lot of digital effects but also includes impressive action scenes choreographed by Woo-ping Yuen who did all of the "action choreography" for The Matrix series and Kill Bill.
Kung-Fu Hustle contains a fair amount of graphic violence but has more in common with musical comedy than the typical Hollywood gore fest. I saw it at the Kendall Square Cinema in Cambridge — an "art house" theater. It's too bad that the film didn't get wider distribution in the US.
I've heard that Chow's previous film Shaolin Soccer is also pretty amazing. I'm going to find a copy.
I saw trailers for a couple of new films that I hadn't heard of before. I believe that both films are due to be released in the US this summer:
Night Watch is a Russian film that looks pretty amazing. It's the first part of a trilogy. The dark visual style is reminiscent of The Matrix and some of Jean-Pierre Jeunet's films (e.g. City of Lost Children). I don't recall ever hearing about or seeing a big budget Russian film before so if Night Watch is as good as the trailer this may be a cinematic milestone. You can see the trailer here.
Howl's Moving Castle is a new animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, director of the amazing Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke.
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Acquired Situational Narcissism
I heard a story on NPR the other day about Acquired Situational Narcissism (ASN). According to Robert B. Millman, professor of psychiatry at New York Hospital - Cornell Medical School, pathological narcissism can be induced in adulthood by celebrity, wealth, and fame. The sufferers of ASN — billionaires, movie stars, professional athletes, politicians, business executives — will develop grandiose fantasies, lose their ability to empathize, react with rage to slights, both real and imagined and, in general, act like textbook narcissists.Now aren't you glad you're not famous?
Johnny One-Note
An email thread today reminded me of the song Johnny One-Note. It's from the Rogers and Hart musical Babes In Arms. Here's a sample of the lyrics:Johnny One-Note is useful shorthand to refer to someone who keeps coming back to the same topic over and over. Not necessarily a full-blown narcissist, but no matter what is being discussed, they always try to veer discussion back to the same topic.
* The lyric sheet spelled the world "bleu" rather than "blue".
Johnny could only sing one note
And the note he sings was this
Ah!
Poor Johnny one-note
sang out with "gusto"
And just overlorded the place
Poor Johnny one-note
yelled willy nilly
Until he was bleu* in the face
For holding one note was his ace
Couldn't hear the brass
Couldn't hear the drum
He was in a class
By himself, by gum!
* The lyric sheet spelled the world "bleu" rather than "blue".
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