Monday, January 29, 2007
Surfries
Remember Sniglets? — a word that should be in the dictionary, but isn't. Sniglets came to mind the other day when I ordered a kid's meal for my son at a drive-thru. A kid's meal usually includes an order of fries. Hey what's fast food without fries? After the fries in the little sleeve are eaten you dig around a bit and see if any have escaped to the bottom of the bag. This happens often enough that I think they intentionally spill a few into the bag. As a sniglet: Surprise + Fries == Surfries?
The Contractor's Note
It seems like most full-time developers have at least one story to tell about an incompetent software contractor — including the friend who sent me a link to The Daily WTF's article The Contractor's Note. At least this contractor admitted, after the fact, that he couldn't do the job.
I can think of two similar contractor stories. They both took place a long time ago and were at startups. The first was the guy with stellar recommendations who contracted to write a shared memory manager. As in the Daily WTF article, it was a well-defined task but no one was monitoring his work. None of us saw his code until after the contract had been paid and he was long gone. The code was worthless. It was clear that he didn't understand how shared memory worked.
The second case was more egregious. The contractor was hired to help the team building our UI system. He had excellent references and an impressive resumé. Fortunately he didn't work in isolation. After a couple of days interacting with the UI team it became clear that he had seriously inflated the accomplishments on his resumé. And his references turned out to be more personal than professional. So his contract was terminated. As a final insult he printed out most of our functional and design specs. He piled them into a box and tried walk out of the building with them. Geez.
I can think of two similar contractor stories. They both took place a long time ago and were at startups. The first was the guy with stellar recommendations who contracted to write a shared memory manager. As in the Daily WTF article, it was a well-defined task but no one was monitoring his work. None of us saw his code until after the contract had been paid and he was long gone. The code was worthless. It was clear that he didn't understand how shared memory worked.
The second case was more egregious. The contractor was hired to help the team building our UI system. He had excellent references and an impressive resumé. Fortunately he didn't work in isolation. After a couple of days interacting with the UI team it became clear that he had seriously inflated the accomplishments on his resumé. And his references turned out to be more personal than professional. So his contract was terminated. As a final insult he printed out most of our functional and design specs. He piled them into a box and tried walk out of the building with them. Geez.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
The other iPhone lawsuit
The shape of the smartphone and mobile data markets
Michael Mace worked in product planning and marketing at PalmSource and Apple. He's got some interesting analysis on his blog of the smartphone and mobile data markets. I like this diagram:
Friday, January 26, 2007
Pictaps
Pictaps is a Flash app that let's you design a character and then watch him/her dance — along with an enthusiastic crowd of dozens of clones.
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
FlexiSheet
FlexiSheet describes itself as "The Next Generation Spreadsheet". It's a multi-dimensional spreadsheet that lets you define multiple categories, rearrange your data, etc. Sound familiar? To me it sounds exactly like Lotus Improv.
Lotus Improv is a dead product but it's very widely known. At the very least, the folks behind FlexiSheet ought to acknowledge prior art especially since Improv billed itself as "The Next Generation Spreadsheet" seventeen years ago!
Note: there's another commercial product called Quantrix that's based on the same concepts as Lotus Improv.
Lotus Improv is a dead product but it's very widely known. At the very least, the folks behind FlexiSheet ought to acknowledge prior art especially since Improv billed itself as "The Next Generation Spreadsheet" seventeen years ago!
Note: there's another commercial product called Quantrix that's based on the same concepts as Lotus Improv.
Road to Dystopia
To honor Children of Men, the online edition of Entertainment Weekly lists their twenty "favorite" dystopian films:
Wikipedia also has a list of dystopian films that includes more good choices: RoboCop, V for Vendetta, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly.
Two other films in this genre that aren't as well known are The Time of the Wolf and La Jetée. This latter film was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys.
- A Clockwork Orange
- 12 Monkeys
- Brazil
- Metropolis
- The Road Warrior
- The Matrix
- Escape From New York
- Blade Runner
- Logan's Run
- Akira
- THX-1138
- Dark City
- Alphaville
- Fahrenheit 451
- The Omega Man
- Soylent Green
- Beneath the Planet of the Apes
- Death Race 2000
- Back to the Future II
- Gattaca
Wikipedia also has a list of dystopian films that includes more good choices: RoboCop, V for Vendetta, Minority Report, A Scanner Darkly.
Two other films in this genre that aren't as well known are The Time of the Wolf and La Jetée. This latter film was the inspiration for Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys.
Monday, January 22, 2007
Soylent Green
The other night I mentioned that I'd seen Children of Men and we starting discussing dystopic films. Soylent Green came up. One of our friends recently got the film on DVD as a joke gift for her birthday. Soylent Green was the first film that she'd seen in a movie theater when she was young and it terrified her. I haven't seen it in quite a while but I certainly recall the classic reveal at the end. (If you haven't seen the film and don't know the plot twist, you may not want to click on the link).
And then there's Homer Simpson's take on the same subject.
And then there's Homer Simpson's take on the same subject.
Sunday, January 21, 2007
My hovercraft is full of eels
My hovercraft is full of eels is a line from an old Monty Python sketch about an English-Hungarian phrase book gone wrong.
Among a collection of useful phrases in many different languages, Omniglot includes the line translated into sixty different languages. It's no fun if you have to ask why.
Among a collection of useful phrases in many different languages, Omniglot includes the line translated into sixty different languages. It's no fun if you have to ask why.
Saturday, January 20, 2007
Star Wars: Clone Wars
Star Wars: Clone Wars is a series of animated shorts that orignally aired on Cartoon Network in 2003-2005. The story takes place just after the end of the Star Wars: Attack of the Clones film and just before Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. The collection of shorts have been assembled into two DVDs which can be watched together as a feature length animated film.
The series was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and has a similar look to his other Cartoon Network series. It's a bit strange initially but grows on you. The voices are all different from the films except for Anthony Daniels doing C-3PO. My son and I watched Star Wars Episodes 1-3 over the holidays and decided to get this series on Netflix to fill in the gaps. Overall we enjoyed them.
The series was directed by Genndy Tartakovsky and has a similar look to his other Cartoon Network series. It's a bit strange initially but grows on you. The voices are all different from the films except for Anthony Daniels doing C-3PO. My son and I watched Star Wars Episodes 1-3 over the holidays and decided to get this series on Netflix to fill in the gaps. Overall we enjoyed them.
Children of Men
I watched Children of Men on Thursday evening. Wow. It's still with me. It's such a terrific film with almost no buzz. Great script, great cast, fantastic cinematography. It presents a dystopic future where the human race has become infertile. No child has been born for 18 years. But this isn't a dark slow-moving sci-fi piece like say, Nineteen Eighty-Four. It's a gripping drama with some terrific action sequences equal to the best war films. I won't say much more except: Go see it.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
January Ice Even Less Nice
Another ice storm last night. Last November an ice storm caused a really nasty commute. Last night was worse. Over four hours stuck in traffic — and I left work early to avoid it. The steep hill close to our house was littered with cars. It was an icy mess. This has been quite a winter.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Sixty things about David Bowie
In keeping with the "List of N things" theme, here are Sixty things about David Bowie.
Five Things You Didn't Know About Me
Tagged by Pete.
- My birthday is coming up this weekend. Gifts, birthday cards, MacBooks, etc. are welcome.
- I grew up outside of Albany, New York, the second of four children. We were part of a large extended Irish-German family. As a child I wasn't always thrilled about the chaos and noise. Now that we all live far apart, I miss that.
- I'm left-handed. It's not a big deal now but it was an issue when I was a kid. It made learning to write more difficult. Likewise when learning to play baseball, hockey, bowling, etc. It's hard to teach a left-hander when you're right-handed. I'm discovering the same issue in reverse with my two right-handed sons.
- For several summers in high school and college I worked at a meat packing plant. Hog trucks arrived at one end of the plant, various meat and meat byproducts were shipped out from the other end. You probably don't want to know too much about what went on inside. It was dirty and smelly work. But it paid union-level wages. And there's something satisfying about physical labor. I also had a side job during the summers working for a company that printed and distributed marketing flyers. We assembled flyers in a dingy warehouse and then dropped them off to carriers who would put them on doorsteps and in mailboxes. The job paid slightly more than minimum wage. For many people working there, this wasn't a summer job, it was their only job. Working there and at the meat packing plant meant meeting some really interesting characters. And I don't mean that in a pejorative way. When you just stick to people in your own world, you miss out.
- In my professional life, I've always been a software developer. This wasn't my original career goal, it just worked out that way. I was interested in gadgets as a child. I liked to take things apart and see how they worked. I followed this interest in college; receiving Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Mechanical Engineering. But ever since high school, I was also interested in programming. In fact, my Master's Thesis was primarily the design and implementation of Mechanical CAD software. When I began interviewing, I found that many of the jobs in Mechanical Engineering didn't hold my interest. So I interviewed at a couple of software companies. I accepted a job at Applicon, building CAD software. I think I made the right career choice and I don't regret my educational choices. Software is still an evolving field. I've found that having an engineering background has been very helpful. Just don't ask me to work with Navier-Stokes equations, I've forgotten most of what I learned about fluid dynamics. Fortunately, they haven't come up recently.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
Apple Macworld Announcements
Steve Jobs announced two new products during the Macworld Keynote today: Apple TV and the long-rumored Apple iPhone. (APple also introduced a new 802.11n Airport Extreme but I don't think it was discussed during the keynote).
Apple TV. When this was previewed as iTV back in September it sounded interesting. Now I'm not so sure. First there's the name. It's not a TV. It's not a TV network. It doesn't even have a TV tuner. And what do you get for $299? The ability to stream video and photos to HDTV and music to your entertainment center. It can't play DVDs, high-def or not. It's a gutted Mac mini that runs FrontRow. For only slightly more money you could buy an XBox 360 that does high-def and can stream video, music and photos from Media Center, play DVDs (and optionally HD-DVDs) and, oh yeah, play games in high-def too Buying a Mac mini to use FrontRow also seems like a better deal than Apple TV. More than likely there'll be more to Apple TV in the future than just this device.
The Apple iPhone demos were dazzling. There's an amazing amount of technology in this device. After watching the demo, I wanted one. But thinking past the demo, questions came to mind:
Update: According to Gizmodo, Apple VPs have confirmed that the iPhone "won't be an open system that people can develop for". In other words, no third-party apps for the iPhone, just like the iPod.
Apple TV. When this was previewed as iTV back in September it sounded interesting. Now I'm not so sure. First there's the name. It's not a TV. It's not a TV network. It doesn't even have a TV tuner. And what do you get for $299? The ability to stream video and photos to HDTV and music to your entertainment center. It can't play DVDs, high-def or not. It's a gutted Mac mini that runs FrontRow. For only slightly more money you could buy an XBox 360 that does high-def and can stream video, music and photos from Media Center, play DVDs (and optionally HD-DVDs) and, oh yeah, play games in high-def too
Buying a Mac mini to use FrontRow also seems like a better deal than Apple TV. More than likely there'll be more to Apple TV in the future than just this device.The Apple iPhone demos were dazzling. There's an amazing amount of technology in this device. After watching the demo, I wanted one. But thinking past the demo, questions came to mind:
- Although the device runs some form of OS X, as far as I've read thus far, it's a closed box. Apple-only software just like the iPod. Maybe this is only for the short-term but, if true, it would be a major issue. One of the major assets of Palm OS and Windows Mobile is the large amount of third-party applications. On my Treo I use PocketQuicken to sync with Quicken, SplashID to manage accounts and passwords, SnapperMail and a whole bunch of other third-party apps and games.
- Typing looks difficult. I've used onscreen keyboards before and haven't been too happy. No tactile feedback. I can go pretty fast with a thumb-board on my Treo, same with Blackberries. It'll be interesting to try this out.
- I could be wrong but it doesn't look like the iPhone has a memory card slot. One of the apps on use on my Treo is BackupMan which is scheduled to do nightly backups. It's saved me a few times.
- What does this device do to the iPod line? The iPhone UI makes the existing iPods look like MacOS circa 1984. Does the iPod follow suit and get an OS X-based UI? Will there be a video iPod without the cellphone and Internet services? But what about form factor and capacity? The iPhone is limited to 4/8GB just like a nano but not nearly as small.
Update: According to Gizmodo, Apple VPs have confirmed that the iPhone "won't be an open system that people can develop for". In other words, no third-party apps for the iPhone, just like the iPod.
Laptop Woes
My Toshiba Tecra M4 died the other day. It would power up but nothing would appear on the screen and there was no Toshiba boot screen. It turned out to be a system board failure. The tech said that Toshiba has had problems with video chips on these systems overheating and dying. Ugh. He swapped out the board and I have my laptop again. It felt weird being without one for a few days.
Wednesday, January 03, 2007
Snow Globes Considered Harmful
More security theater from TSA. They're confiscating Snow Globes. Another interesting factoid in this article is that monkeys are allowed as service animals on flights. That is, unless they're holding a snow globe.
Tuesday, January 02, 2007
Groovy 1.0
Groovy 1.0 was released today. It's a dynamic programming language for the JVM that includes features found in Python, Ruby, and Smalltalk, but uses syntax derived from from Java.There was a lot of buzz around Groovy a couple years ago. More recently the focus has been on incorporating dynamic language features in Java and supporting scripting languages like Groovy, JRuby and JavaScript in the runtime.
I haven't looked at Groovy in a while. Adding it (and Grails) to my growing list of cool stuff to look at some day...
Monday, January 01, 2007
The Apple Product Cycle
Dan Smith's essay on The Apple Product Cycle is pretty funny. It captures the rumor to reality cycle of many of Apple's products (such as the current speculation about an Apple Phone).
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