I'm at Selena's with a crew of five other conference organizers (Audrey is co-chair, also Jason, Ed, Brian), wading through all these talks. We've already voted on relevance and interest, so now have an initial ranking.
I'd missed seeing mine included, think I forgot to vote on it (not out of false modesty -- I probably thought it was maybe one of the magical first cut but no, I may not make the finals, let's see what happens).
Ditto with Saturday Academy this spring, students aren't biting across the board (hey, it's spring!) and I have only the one offering. I had a good talk with an SA: staffer though, shared some follow-up with the Wanderers list.
We could branch more into teacher training, was the gist of it.
PHP has a lot more frameworks than I realized.
Co-working and hacker spaces are needed on the biz track. Doesn't have to mean hardware...
Some discussion of Scala versus Ruby, in terms of speed. This is apparently big news in the blogosphere because of that Twitter engineer, or so they tell me.
Selena is tracking everything in PostgreSQL. "I need to do an inner join", "I haven't quite memorized the schema yet".
We need my talk for long format under Culture, bridges higher and elementary ed (my focus is high school). Keith, looks like we've got yours too. Score two for ISEPP then, or at least Pauling House Wanderers.
This is good soup, thank you Selena.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Thursday, April 09, 2009
What Shall I Do?
This is in the Wanderers tradition of rounding up colleagues for a soul searching, otherwise known as a clearness committee (Quaker namespace). Art did it expertly, laid out his credentials, his options, ended up making wise choices I thought (such as not to move to Washington, DC, already crowded). Then Jeffry gave it a spin, ended up branching off in a new direction. Helen added a framework, called Appreciative Inquiry, so now even more of us are doing it, as we see the potential benefits.
In my case, it's about insinuating into that gap between public and private sectors, by which I don't mean tax-funded school vouchers (I'm against those, if used to bolster competing systems, many with no use for Uncle Sam). As someone who cut a lot of teeth in the private sector, I feel uniquely qualified to come forward as a trainer of public school teachers, hoping to add to their arsenal of relevant skills and tools, perhaps in exchange for more merit pay and bragging rights as to their "pilot project" exclusiveness, if selected for the program. I'm half teacher, half recruiter, half location scout (math joke about 3/2).
So how do I retain PPS as a client. "Go for the ESDs, Luke" said one advisor, "and use da force" (Pinoy accent). "Yes Yoda" I said, "but many of them hate me, because I support LEP High, charter schools as public schools, merit pay, all that Obama stuff the Democrats want to bury. Means I'm persona non grata in some circles". "Present to NCTM" was my other advice, but now I'm thinking "ATM" would be nicer (more congenial), given the Caleb Gattegno connection and a stronger constructivism. Lots of this Lower 48 stuff is merely marketed as constructivism, but then they hold back the real toyz (no computer programming for you young lady, that's just for the Phillips Exeter kids (lucky devils, learning Python at a tender age...)).
I'm not wanting to let go of hospital work either, which is why I keep thinking "clients" (in the plural). I've always had multiple clients and find that keeps me more open minded. Besides, I'd lose my private sector street cred if I became a full time classroom teacher. The whole point of "mining the gap" is to keep a foot in both worlds -- if that makes any sense. Out here in the Silicon Forest, we use Python as an industrial standard, to test Intel chips, to write eCommerce sites. In there, in the math classroom, you could be getting more of our Supermarket Math then, not because you'll all become green grocers (though some of you will, and that's a high tech area what with RFID (maybe just let 'em push the cart through that door, no checkout lanes, sucks the Visa without anyone even opening a wallet (try in a PX first, for cigs and beer only?))).
I mentioned to Tara about Project Earthala again (we already have our first Queen), a little microvillage in the boonies, lots of Quaker aesthetics, but accessible to television, better than phony HBO stuff (love HBO, Extras especially, though that's BBC through HBO in some ways). Dot these around, among other religious, get the eCommerce going (Catholic brandy, Jewish vodka...), and voila, a market for tiny commuter jets, from the same people that make your dwelling machines (economies of scale there). I could do some teaching, even hospital work, from these high bandwidth XRL sites, doubling as computer camps when the schools aren't in session (or even when they are, in parallel). The drawings are here in the blogs, just waiting for Lockheed-Martin to get back to me (defense puts me on hold a lot, thinks I'm too tiny a customer).
I'm also a movie and TV critic, blogger extraordinaire.
So let's see what happens next. The big question, on everybody's mind, is whether we'll be seeing more Mites, Sytes and Kites on public television. I'll have to say something to OPB next time I get a chance ("Hey OPB, come visit our Coffee Shops Network sometime, get some free samples"). I also need to get to work on the Synergetics article for Wikipedia. I'll switch to doing that now, need to add some pointers.
In my case, it's about insinuating into that gap between public and private sectors, by which I don't mean tax-funded school vouchers (I'm against those, if used to bolster competing systems, many with no use for Uncle Sam). As someone who cut a lot of teeth in the private sector, I feel uniquely qualified to come forward as a trainer of public school teachers, hoping to add to their arsenal of relevant skills and tools, perhaps in exchange for more merit pay and bragging rights as to their "pilot project" exclusiveness, if selected for the program. I'm half teacher, half recruiter, half location scout (math joke about 3/2).
So how do I retain PPS as a client. "Go for the ESDs, Luke" said one advisor, "and use da force" (Pinoy accent). "Yes Yoda" I said, "but many of them hate me, because I support LEP High, charter schools as public schools, merit pay, all that Obama stuff the Democrats want to bury. Means I'm persona non grata in some circles". "Present to NCTM" was my other advice, but now I'm thinking "ATM" would be nicer (more congenial), given the Caleb Gattegno connection and a stronger constructivism. Lots of this Lower 48 stuff is merely marketed as constructivism, but then they hold back the real toyz (no computer programming for you young lady, that's just for the Phillips Exeter kids (lucky devils, learning Python at a tender age...)).
I'm not wanting to let go of hospital work either, which is why I keep thinking "clients" (in the plural). I've always had multiple clients and find that keeps me more open minded. Besides, I'd lose my private sector street cred if I became a full time classroom teacher. The whole point of "mining the gap" is to keep a foot in both worlds -- if that makes any sense. Out here in the Silicon Forest, we use Python as an industrial standard, to test Intel chips, to write eCommerce sites. In there, in the math classroom, you could be getting more of our Supermarket Math then, not because you'll all become green grocers (though some of you will, and that's a high tech area what with RFID (maybe just let 'em push the cart through that door, no checkout lanes, sucks the Visa without anyone even opening a wallet (try in a PX first, for cigs and beer only?))).
I mentioned to Tara about Project Earthala again (we already have our first Queen), a little microvillage in the boonies, lots of Quaker aesthetics, but accessible to television, better than phony HBO stuff (love HBO, Extras especially, though that's BBC through HBO in some ways). Dot these around, among other religious, get the eCommerce going (Catholic brandy, Jewish vodka...), and voila, a market for tiny commuter jets, from the same people that make your dwelling machines (economies of scale there). I could do some teaching, even hospital work, from these high bandwidth XRL sites, doubling as computer camps when the schools aren't in session (or even when they are, in parallel). The drawings are here in the blogs, just waiting for Lockheed-Martin to get back to me (defense puts me on hold a lot, thinks I'm too tiny a customer).
I'm also a movie and TV critic, blogger extraordinaire.
So let's see what happens next. The big question, on everybody's mind, is whether we'll be seeing more Mites, Sytes and Kites on public television. I'll have to say something to OPB next time I get a chance ("Hey OPB, come visit our Coffee Shops Network sometime, get some free samples"). I also need to get to work on the Synergetics article for Wikipedia. I'll switch to doing that now, need to add some pointers.
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Grip Slip
I messed up doing my job as volunteer escort today, forgetting a regular gig. So sorry.
I've been leaving a somewhat tortuous trail of signature lesson plans at the Math Forum that at least Anna is looking at.
In terms of breaking through to a wider public, that's proving difficult in this economy. My services are admittedly esoteric.
I need to try a new approach maybe, find some new breakfast of champions, other than Fruit Loops. See footnote [3].
Congratulations to Senator Ted Stevens, on his exoneration and vindication.
I've been leaving a somewhat tortuous trail of signature lesson plans at the Math Forum that at least Anna is looking at.
In terms of breaking through to a wider public, that's proving difficult in this economy. My services are admittedly esoteric.
I need to try a new approach maybe, find some new breakfast of champions, other than Fruit Loops. See footnote [3].
Congratulations to Senator Ted Stevens, on his exoneration and vindication.
Saturday, April 04, 2009
Math 2.0
Here's an excellent slide show from Maria's blog, and not just because she links to 4D Studios.
If you think math is boring, maybe you're not being "social" enough. Think of math as a contact sport -- doesn't have to mean rough, although when life gets that way, math can help sometimes (or call it computing).
And remember to help your partner, don't be selfish. Teaching your peers is the name of the game (plus let them teach you as well -- they'll learn more by doing it).
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him. -- Walt Whitman
Sunday, March 29, 2009
Closing Time (Pycon 2009)
Last night's dinner was a high point of the conference for me. I got to sit across from Scott Gray of the O'Reilly School of Technology, over excellent food, cabernet from his county, talking constructivism versus objectivism. He expressed sincere admiration for Andre's Crunchy project and talk. As the six of us conversed, the hotel dimmed its lights to mark Earth Hour, a global event. Scott is in the Jerry Uhl lineage (Urbana-Champaign) and following a productive trajectory.
My thanks to Steve, PSF chair, for making this introduction. I also finally got to meet the elusive (to me) Julie Steele of O'Reilly. We compared notes on Newark, NJ briefly (she likes it there).
To my right was Ben Bangert inventor of hellanzb, a principal Pylons developer etc. His take on the afternoon's ORM panel discussion was helpful to me. I enjoy clear expressions of bias (e.g. from Leonard also).
Later, I was enabled to crash a party at a nearby hotel. The PSF legal counsel and I eyed the xBox guitars but I didn't play until later (easy level, higher than beginner) opposite a real pro, and thanks to some Black Label.
We had lots of connections to Iceland in that room. Insofar as I was able to decipher the chatter, we were multi-user game programmers with rather vast followings. CCP is one of the major league players.
As CSN CMO, I was pleased to learn more about Mochi as well.
Ian Benson, Steve Holden and I are planning to brave the light snow and visit Starting with the Universe. I've got my bag parked at the hotel so I might hop off the El (train) and onto the O'Hare shuttle, looking forward returning to PDX.
Friday, March 27, 2009
About Python Namespaces
Jeff Rush is up front in ballroom E (our plenary room with the dividers installed). We're waiting for the signal from A/V (a Quakerly silience..., keys tapping). Jeff is our Dallas chief.
Namespaces are mappings, the foundation of Python: globals, locals, (builtins). Lexical context, dynamic context (Python uses lexical context for closeures).
Name binding occurs during assignment, defs, imports, arg declaration, for statements, except clauses, as a result of closures. Code objects + namespaces = coll stuff. Steve makes this same distinction ("object spaces").
They're not namespaces, run inside namespaces, are not function obejcts. import, compile() exec, execfile etc., are code object creators (compilers we could say). The "assembly language" of Python. He's showing compiling on his slide. from dis import dis. co = compile(blah blah). ns = {}, exec co in global_ns, local_ns.
He's showing us where the code objects are. Just fragments, not everything defines a code object. You get these trees of code objects, with the module the outer code object. Good use of pointers for assignment.
When you instantiate a module, you get this "knitting" among code objects, assembled into a constellation of objects (not all of which are code objects).
The object tree is what's in the .pyc file. The namespace assembles the code object starting with the root node, throws that away, gives us the new namespace in sys.modules. You don't get your function objects until post-execution. The body of a class is actually a function. The post-execution view is closer to what my level understands, so its good to see pre-execution diagrams.
Generators keep the local namespace around, but functions and methods throw it away. A closure is a nested scope. My way of returning a derivative function (from a function) is a good example of closure.
He's giving some really excellent code examples, going by lickity-split. These slides better be on the web someplace. I need to come back to this stuff, think about it some more. globals() is locals() -- when is this true?
Namespaces are mappings, the foundation of Python: globals, locals, (builtins). Lexical context, dynamic context (Python uses lexical context for closeures).
Name binding occurs during assignment, defs, imports, arg declaration, for statements, except clauses, as a result of closures. Code objects + namespaces = coll stuff. Steve makes this same distinction ("object spaces").
They're not namespaces, run inside namespaces, are not function obejcts. import, compile() exec, execfile etc., are code object creators (compilers we could say). The "assembly language" of Python. He's showing compiling on his slide. from dis import dis. co = compile(blah blah). ns = {}, exec co in global_ns, local_ns.
He's showing us where the code objects are. Just fragments, not everything defines a code object. You get these trees of code objects, with the module the outer code object. Good use of pointers for assignment.
When you instantiate a module, you get this "knitting" among code objects, assembled into a constellation of objects (not all of which are code objects).
The object tree is what's in the .pyc file. The namespace assembles the code object starting with the root node, throws that away, gives us the new namespace in sys.modules. You don't get your function objects until post-execution. The body of a class is actually a function. The post-execution view is closer to what my level understands, so its good to see pre-execution diagrams.
Generators keep the local namespace around, but functions and methods throw it away. A closure is a nested scope. My way of returning a derivative function (from a function) is a good example of closure.
He's giving some really excellent code examples, going by lickity-split. These slides better be on the web someplace. I need to come back to this stuff, think about it some more. globals() is locals() -- when is this true?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Google App Engine
I'm learning more about cloud computing this morning. Hey, YouTube is coded in Python, didn't know that.
J.C. Gregorio is taking us through the app.yaml file (don't use /_ah/ or /form). You fall through the rule set. List the top level handlers, what to skip, caching rules. Not everything in your tree has to be mentioned though. Specify whether a login is required and, if so, must it be admin.
Django 0.96 is the current default templating language, but you're not forced to use it. Use os.path.dirname(__file__) to build an absolute path to our template file. We're getting questions about using Mako instead of Django. I found some stuff in the blogs about that. What about Jinja2?
Lars is here from the Mozilla development team. He's been working on a crash detector that phones home (sends httpRequest) with a binary payload, with Python doing the analysis on the server. Mozilla is able to monitor, in quasi-real time, where their browser is breaking.
Read PEP 333 to get a better handle on WSGI, which supersedes CGI. The SDK includes a lightweight version. We're moving quickly here, as the datastore is what's most important.
The datastore is an "entity store". It's not an RDBMS. You can't do joins. GQL is the new language, based on SQL but different. Subclass db.Model and create your properties, setting defaults (e.g. auto_now_add=True for db.DateTimeProperty). The writes probably take longer than you're used to, given the redundant write stipulations (like the Hadoop, you'll have x3 replication). Update the same entity about 5 times a second, but as many entities as you like in parallel. Reads are very fast.
I got stuck trying to store and read the above GIF in a model blob property, couldn't get it to work. The famous Wesley Chun in the row in front came back and showed me his solution (he liked the challenge, which I'd asked about publicly). He knew some tricks it'd've taken me a long time to come up with (set mime-type, use read method). Thx! I hope he sends me the source code (note later: he did).
J.C. Gregorio is taking us through the app.yaml file (don't use /_ah/ or /form). You fall through the rule set. List the top level handlers, what to skip, caching rules. Not everything in your tree has to be mentioned though. Specify whether a login is required and, if so, must it be admin.
Django 0.96 is the current default templating language, but you're not forced to use it. Use os.path.dirname(__file__) to build an absolute path to our template file. We're getting questions about using Mako instead of Django. I found some stuff in the blogs about that. What about Jinja2?
Lars is here from the Mozilla development team. He's been working on a crash detector that phones home (sends httpRequest) with a binary payload, with Python doing the analysis on the server. Mozilla is able to monitor, in quasi-real time, where their browser is breaking.
Read PEP 333 to get a better handle on WSGI, which supersedes CGI. The SDK includes a lightweight version. We're moving quickly here, as the datastore is what's most important.
The datastore is an "entity store". It's not an RDBMS. You can't do joins. GQL is the new language, based on SQL but different. Subclass db.Model and create your properties, setting defaults (e.g. auto_now_add=True for db.DateTimeProperty). The writes probably take longer than you're used to, given the redundant write stipulations (like the Hadoop, you'll have x3 replication). Update the same entity about 5 times a second, but as many entities as you like in parallel. Reads are very fast.
I got stuck trying to store and read the above GIF in a model blob property, couldn't get it to work. The famous Wesley Chun in the row in front came back and showed me his solution (he liked the challenge, which I'd asked about publicly). He knew some tricks it'd've taken me a long time to come up with (set mime-type, use read method). Thx! I hope he sends me the source code (note later: he did).
Cowboy Programmer
(K.L.L., Mozilla Corporation)
(K.L.L., Mozilla Corporation)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
More on Race
There's a tendency to distill humans into subspecies, at least for storytelling purposes. We have the more dog like, the dwarf like, the geek like... the elvyn like. Every Middle Earth has its lore and its peoples, its nations, its guilds & ethnicities.
Astrological birth signs brought some order to the scene. Personality types -- people are big into measuring those.
Not everyone wants to be a goth (and you don't have to be one to love one).
In terms of our shared genome providing needed plasticity, adaptability, I'd say the record proves we're well endowed. That doesn't make us masochistic however. Let's not invite stupid outcomes. Let us not "just see what it's like" to survive another nuclear holocaust how about it?
Keith talked about a new Van Allen Belt thanks to nuclear testing. In sweeping the web, I see lots of caveats and denials. It's gone now they say. Some people got angry about those tests and I can see why: those testers don't own the world, merely act like they do (= bad acting). That level of hubris is ugly to behold.
I can see some of those races people believe in. They're less transient than cloud formations certainly. Others I don't see or am less likely to want to believe in. I'll suspend my disbelief, but only by so much. Call me a skeptic.
Yes, I believe the lunar landings (Apollo) really happened.
Once we start arguing who is racially "pure" (archetypal) versus who is "mixed" (mongrel) I tend to walk away, unless we're talking about breeds of horse or dog maybe (seems harmless enough).
I don't trust the judging or judges where humans are concerned. They start making it matter, make it more than a show. Yet there's no "racial essence" in the DNA anywhere. Pigeon holing, or coming up with percents ("the mix"), is a nightmare, a quagmire, and an exercise in futility sometimes. Pseudo-science takes over, pandering to some "master race" mythology.
There is such a thing as taking racial categories too seriously, kind of how I felt about the WTO. I liked it when Yes Men poked holes. Not every story has the same half life, just like not every open source project achieves critical mass or long term momentum.
Astrological birth signs brought some order to the scene. Personality types -- people are big into measuring those.
Not everyone wants to be a goth (and you don't have to be one to love one).
In terms of our shared genome providing needed plasticity, adaptability, I'd say the record proves we're well endowed. That doesn't make us masochistic however. Let's not invite stupid outcomes. Let us not "just see what it's like" to survive another nuclear holocaust how about it?
Keith talked about a new Van Allen Belt thanks to nuclear testing. In sweeping the web, I see lots of caveats and denials. It's gone now they say. Some people got angry about those tests and I can see why: those testers don't own the world, merely act like they do (= bad acting). That level of hubris is ugly to behold.
I can see some of those races people believe in. They're less transient than cloud formations certainly. Others I don't see or am less likely to want to believe in. I'll suspend my disbelief, but only by so much. Call me a skeptic.
Yes, I believe the lunar landings (Apollo) really happened.
Once we start arguing who is racially "pure" (archetypal) versus who is "mixed" (mongrel) I tend to walk away, unless we're talking about breeds of horse or dog maybe (seems harmless enough).
I don't trust the judging or judges where humans are concerned. They start making it matter, make it more than a show. Yet there's no "racial essence" in the DNA anywhere. Pigeon holing, or coming up with percents ("the mix"), is a nightmare, a quagmire, and an exercise in futility sometimes. Pseudo-science takes over, pandering to some "master race" mythology.
There is such a thing as taking racial categories too seriously, kind of how I felt about the WTO. I liked it when Yes Men poked holes. Not every story has the same half life, just like not every open source project achieves critical mass or long term momentum.
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Noodling and Doodling
I'm sitting at the big table at Pauling House, yakking with Drs. Feinstein and Taylor, regarding the future of computer programming.
I expressed my frustration with this "la dee da" attitude that any given computer language is a passing phase (a "flavor of the month"), whereas we're swiftly heading into a push button walk-away civilization, computers humming beneath the surface, a few Morlocks in the tunnels, tending the pipes. So why bother learning what's slated to fade away?
On the contrary, I contend, we've made approximately zero progress towards removing human intelligence from the picture, nor are the smarter shops, like Pixar, even trying to make all cartooning an AI project. What would be the fun of making movies, if you didn't get to actually make them? Human intelligence is here to stay, serves a critical function.
In terms of curriculum, there's this idea of "hard fun" (not an oxymoron). The psychologists among us, looking for brain cycles in the fantasy lives, the daydreams, of their intended customers, ala Smallville, Grey's Anatomy etc. (i.e. in TV melodramas, soap operas), may encourage vicarious living versus fantasizing realistically about one's own future. Either way, you get audience engagement, provided the surrounding society nurtures escapism, other forms of anti-realism (important genres, I agree, right up there with sports).
Is it possible to doodle in computer language, just for the fun of it? Storyboarding for television is a kind of programming.
Yes, and it's a sign you're getting an education, when you want to play the "language games of science" (Bill Nye voice) just for the fun of it. Chess is entertainment, not a chore (for some people), though in professional life, one sometimes has to "slog through" a "book of changes".
Allen is off to Oregon City to lead a meeting of the L5 Society. Shomar is here in the house with us, an honorary Wanderer. We're looking forward to Patrick (a psychometrician) joining us later. Buzz just walked in. Retreat in progress...
Quakers (Friends) have a track record of improving conditions for mental patients, so the fact this was Asylum Avenue, because of Dr. Hawthorne's mental hospital, even before it gave birth to the Silicon Forest (Doug Strain & Co.), gives us lots to think about, in terms having a good neighborhood (97214).
I expressed my frustration with this "la dee da" attitude that any given computer language is a passing phase (a "flavor of the month"), whereas we're swiftly heading into a push button walk-away civilization, computers humming beneath the surface, a few Morlocks in the tunnels, tending the pipes. So why bother learning what's slated to fade away?
On the contrary, I contend, we've made approximately zero progress towards removing human intelligence from the picture, nor are the smarter shops, like Pixar, even trying to make all cartooning an AI project. What would be the fun of making movies, if you didn't get to actually make them? Human intelligence is here to stay, serves a critical function.
In terms of curriculum, there's this idea of "hard fun" (not an oxymoron). The psychologists among us, looking for brain cycles in the fantasy lives, the daydreams, of their intended customers, ala Smallville, Grey's Anatomy etc. (i.e. in TV melodramas, soap operas), may encourage vicarious living versus fantasizing realistically about one's own future. Either way, you get audience engagement, provided the surrounding society nurtures escapism, other forms of anti-realism (important genres, I agree, right up there with sports).
Is it possible to doodle in computer language, just for the fun of it? Storyboarding for television is a kind of programming.
Yes, and it's a sign you're getting an education, when you want to play the "language games of science" (Bill Nye voice) just for the fun of it. Chess is entertainment, not a chore (for some people), though in professional life, one sometimes has to "slog through" a "book of changes".
Allen is off to Oregon City to lead a meeting of the L5 Society. Shomar is here in the house with us, an honorary Wanderer. We're looking forward to Patrick (a psychometrician) joining us later. Buzz just walked in. Retreat in progress...
Quakers (Friends) have a track record of improving conditions for mental patients, so the fact this was Asylum Avenue, because of Dr. Hawthorne's mental hospital, even before it gave birth to the Silicon Forest (Doug Strain & Co.), gives us lots to think about, in terms having a good neighborhood (97214).
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Uncovered... (movie review)
CIA brass, other experts, come out of the closet to denounce the USA's being "neoconned" into nutty actions in the Persian Gulf region.Moral: There's a reason you don't want to pester those Langley people, make 'em rethink their positions. Ask 'em questions sure, but don't tell them how to do their jobs. That's their business, not yours (this was Robert Baer on "data mining" -- similar to "stovepiping" in trying to force intelligence to fit the politics).
I checked this out from Multnomah Friends where it's been kicking around for while (it's from 2003). This isn't news in zip code area 97214 I don't think.
I liked Peter Zimmerman (chief science guy, Senate Foreign Relations) talking about "cartoons". Aluminum tubes... 16 words. Good seeing Bearden again.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Pi On Demand
I need to counter the stereotype, nay ethnic smear, which says buckaneers tape over the 'pi' key on their calculators because they don't believe in it. "I don't believe Nature is using pi" Bucky kept saying, even though he'd publish the opening digits, like in Grunch of Giants (subversive!).
Whereas it's true that we're skeptical of calculators, prefer actual laptops, there's nothing verboten about using 3.14 to get the circumference, in meters, of this building in Wichita, Kansas, home of the Wichita House and/or Dymaxion Deployment Unit (DDU).
In honor of said operational process (using the pi feature), and leaving aside the deep philosophical questions about nature's discreteness, I provide the above Youtube by Wesley Fryer and company. Linking geometry with geography is what we're all about n'est pas? I appreciate his take.
Greetings to Nirel, on the beach in Malibu, had beers with your dad just now. We're hoping Kiah is enjoying her XO, even if the screen isn't touch sensitive.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Chauffeur Duty
I'm escorting an MVP again today, Razz at the ready, although sometimes I do Max from the airport, show my guest how to get around town without me. I don't like to hover.
I'm reminded of tour guides I've enjoyed in exotic destinations like Shanghai and Guangzhou (training from Hong Kong, ate snake soup that one time), Tashkent... they met our plane or whatever conveyance, made sure we weren't looking the "wrong way" when crossing the street, then set us free, remaining on standby to ask questions, lead a foray if called upon.
As aliens, we weren't allowed just anywhere, unless we had a proper escort. In Bhutan, that meant special papers. Bhutanese are a generous people, yet understandably leery about wannabe landlords trying to muscle into the place.
Another role model: James Lambert, high level escort for the State Department. He was major league, would go all over the country with visiting dignitaries, like that newspaper editor from Zimbabwe, the neice of the DL. Finding people to talk to is a challenge sometimes.
Not everyone is as gregarious as Borat at the end of the day.
Like I recall that Thanksgiving, our Tibetan guest here in town, a lot of the guys just wanting to huddle around the TV and watch NFL or whatever, whereas I know plenty of women who'd've given their eye teeth to be in that room talking with such a deeply spiritual person.
James was quiet to the point of invisible, and debonair, as you'd expect. Maureen's family made the connection, likewise to the late Admiral Crowe's family (another hat guy).
I'm reminded of tour guides I've enjoyed in exotic destinations like Shanghai and Guangzhou (training from Hong Kong, ate snake soup that one time), Tashkent... they met our plane or whatever conveyance, made sure we weren't looking the "wrong way" when crossing the street, then set us free, remaining on standby to ask questions, lead a foray if called upon.
As aliens, we weren't allowed just anywhere, unless we had a proper escort. In Bhutan, that meant special papers. Bhutanese are a generous people, yet understandably leery about wannabe landlords trying to muscle into the place.
Another role model: James Lambert, high level escort for the State Department. He was major league, would go all over the country with visiting dignitaries, like that newspaper editor from Zimbabwe, the neice of the DL. Finding people to talk to is a challenge sometimes.
Not everyone is as gregarious as Borat at the end of the day.
Like I recall that Thanksgiving, our Tibetan guest here in town, a lot of the guys just wanting to huddle around the TV and watch NFL or whatever, whereas I know plenty of women who'd've given their eye teeth to be in that room talking with such a deeply spiritual person.
James was quiet to the point of invisible, and debonair, as you'd expect. Maureen's family made the connection, likewise to the late Admiral Crowe's family (another hat guy).
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Nine Lives (movie review)
Here is one of those gems where it pays to watch the Special Features and listen to the writer-director Rodrigo Garcia, producer, actors.
The Nine Lives themselves focus on nine women, their names starting each featurette as the curtain rises. I'm a Sissy Spacek fan, so was led in to this rotating sequence of exhibits by her name on the marquee, to discover many marvels, in terms of capable, strong, intelligent performances. I liked seeing the sheriff from Invasion again, now deaf, yet still attracted to this squid of a woman (gorgeous and well played by actress Amy Brenneman with just the right distance).
The girl Samantha trapped between two parents who always say the same things was especially claustrophobic. As a casual drop-in, one has the luxury of knowing it'll be over soon, not so for the imprisoned. Nonhumans didn't have much of a role in any of these scenes, in itself a source of claustrophobia for me. Like where are the horses, the snakes?
So yeah, the writer is skilled at coming up with these puzzles (seemingly insoluble). The mom behind bars, wanting to talk with her daughter (but the phone was broken) was especially poignant as well. The woman about to have surgery, lashing out at the guy... Sissy got to be in two of the sketches. The meeting in the supermarket (two people pushing carts) took me back to a scene in George Tenet's stormy book, although neither character was pregnant in his version (a similar "pattern language" though).
As I remarked during the viewing (not too loudly I hope), this was all very theatrical in flavor, didn't feel like "a normal movie" and the reason is obvious: each vignette, though rehearsed, is shot as a mini-play, a sustained 14 -17 minute take (mas o meno). You can be 10 minutes into a perfect performance and flub somehow, have to start again.
Standard procedure is to edit together all the best bits, but in theater one doesn't have that luxury, and as the producer reminds us, this very low budget effort had only nine shooting days to get it right, 17 total, basically two days per ordeal. I say "ordeal" because it's really challenging to dive in to a script like this, with steadicams dancing around, but on the other hand it's the kind of work thespians really enjoy, as you get to live the character and scene, aren't tasked with the exhausting chore of "chopping it up" into 5-30 second takes so much.
Thanks for putting on great skits and inviting us back stage after the performance. You're wonderfully skilled people. Thanks for adding this to the stacks.
The Nine Lives themselves focus on nine women, their names starting each featurette as the curtain rises. I'm a Sissy Spacek fan, so was led in to this rotating sequence of exhibits by her name on the marquee, to discover many marvels, in terms of capable, strong, intelligent performances. I liked seeing the sheriff from Invasion again, now deaf, yet still attracted to this squid of a woman (gorgeous and well played by actress Amy Brenneman with just the right distance).
The girl Samantha trapped between two parents who always say the same things was especially claustrophobic. As a casual drop-in, one has the luxury of knowing it'll be over soon, not so for the imprisoned. Nonhumans didn't have much of a role in any of these scenes, in itself a source of claustrophobia for me. Like where are the horses, the snakes?
So yeah, the writer is skilled at coming up with these puzzles (seemingly insoluble). The mom behind bars, wanting to talk with her daughter (but the phone was broken) was especially poignant as well. The woman about to have surgery, lashing out at the guy... Sissy got to be in two of the sketches. The meeting in the supermarket (two people pushing carts) took me back to a scene in George Tenet's stormy book, although neither character was pregnant in his version (a similar "pattern language" though).
As I remarked during the viewing (not too loudly I hope), this was all very theatrical in flavor, didn't feel like "a normal movie" and the reason is obvious: each vignette, though rehearsed, is shot as a mini-play, a sustained 14 -17 minute take (mas o meno). You can be 10 minutes into a perfect performance and flub somehow, have to start again.
Standard procedure is to edit together all the best bits, but in theater one doesn't have that luxury, and as the producer reminds us, this very low budget effort had only nine shooting days to get it right, 17 total, basically two days per ordeal. I say "ordeal" because it's really challenging to dive in to a script like this, with steadicams dancing around, but on the other hand it's the kind of work thespians really enjoy, as you get to live the character and scene, aren't tasked with the exhausting chore of "chopping it up" into 5-30 second takes so much.
Thanks for putting on great skits and inviting us back stage after the performance. You're wonderfully skilled people. Thanks for adding this to the stacks.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Busy Busy
I just got off the phone with someone at Yale (she called me), having placed my OS Bridge proposal in the hopper. We're looking to attract an out of town audience.
Dr. Nick scoured Powell's Books on Hawthorne last night and came up with Walking With Nobby as an ultra-cool find (I promptly bought it, so he could peruse as my guest, leave it for me). Nobby is the late Norman O. Brown, author of a kind of aphoristic glue language important in my formative years, helped tilt me towards Princeton philosophy, Dr. Kaufmann etc. Later, E.J. Applewhite showed me where he'd added Love's Body to his Georgetown apartment collection. NOB has links to Wittgenstein too.
Razz, my "welcome wagon" (for chauffering guests around Portland), is overdue for some maintenance. I'll take her out to Dick Hannah if my earmarks get through. You'd think we'd be further along by now, but big wheels turn slowly.
I was late to Oversight tonight, glad Maye thought to call me. I'm somewhat distracted. Dr. Nick is on his way, drove him to Union Station this afternoon. I'll start reading that book now.
Dr. Nick scoured Powell's Books on Hawthorne last night and came up with Walking With Nobby as an ultra-cool find (I promptly bought it, so he could peruse as my guest, leave it for me). Nobby is the late Norman O. Brown, author of a kind of aphoristic glue language important in my formative years, helped tilt me towards Princeton philosophy, Dr. Kaufmann etc. Later, E.J. Applewhite showed me where he'd added Love's Body to his Georgetown apartment collection. NOB has links to Wittgenstein too.
Razz, my "welcome wagon" (for chauffering guests around Portland), is overdue for some maintenance. I'll take her out to Dick Hannah if my earmarks get through. You'd think we'd be further along by now, but big wheels turn slowly.
I was late to Oversight tonight, glad Maye thought to call me. I'm somewhat distracted. Dr. Nick is on his way, drove him to Union Station this afternoon. I'll start reading that book now.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
PPUG 2009.3.10
PyParsing (Brett Carter):
Brett Carter is talking about PyParsing ("the best thing ever", heh). It's a Python library that easily lets you create BNF style grammars. It's geeky, very CS (shades of bison).
Backus-Naur Form (BNF) is a formal notation for languages. Is this linguistics, "are we not men?" (citing Devo)? Yes, all 35 - 40 of us are XYs (not always the case, as I've met many an XX "FOSS boss").
There's a full grammar specification for Python 2.6 on the screen (yow -- or maybe not that bad?). "Regular expressions on steroids" might be a way to describe this language game. How simple an application might still be interesting?
Now we're eyeballing a parser for SQL statements, now for Icon (another language). Why Brett, why? Trying to convert a CVS repository to Mercurial...
Machine Learning (John Melesky):
I lost power in the middle of blogging about Machine Learning, unfortunate but I think there's a video recording happening somewhere...
The presentation was all about geometric approaches to analyzing documents (hyper-dimensional -- lots of geographic metaphors) versus the more statistical, as in Bayesian approaches (naive and not). Detecting spam is a common example for the latter technique.
Targeting advertising to specific contexts is a typical application for machine learning, automatic tagging. Getting a handle on large stashes of documents, like blog posts, is the name of the game.
Divmod's Reverend (Bayes was a reverend) is way better than Ruby's Bishop, the port, in terms of speed and accuracy (plus Bayes wasn't a Bishop).
Support Vector Machines: PyML... Orange (academic i.e. semi-broken, still usable). Technique: munge with math to make the non-linear linear, then employ linear separation.
Sorry I'm skipping the light bulb jokes (despite their mnemonic value). John also said: "I have no Python code, I am a horrible, horrible man, but I do have an excuse, we found rats in our kitchen this morning". This guy cracks me up.
PyTyrant etc. (Michael Schurter):
Tokyo Cabinet, a data store (like for key:value pairs, B+ tree, other formats) is wrapped by Tokyo Tyrant, with PyTyrant the Python remote client. The Tokyo Tyrant daemon is the database server and offers a lot. It has replication, Lua extensions, hot backup, http option, is high concurrency, multi-threaded. PyTyrant is lagging, probably because Tokyo Tyrant is evolving so quickly. Other languages are ahead at the moment.
Followup: this post to the PPUG list; link to Michael's slides.
Monday, March 09, 2009
Patching a Hole
Glenn Stockton likes to auto-generate new geometry using stone age tools, found objects, and recently showed up with some pentacaps, folded from tetrahelixes passed through by Nat Bobbitt at our meeting of the minds in Eugene that time (Dr. Nick also present, plus expected later today).
The pentacaps (Johnson Solid J13 in particular) got him musing about the role of regular tetrahedra in the world of five-fold symmetry, i.e. an "eternal war of incommensurability" as we think about it in Synergetics. I submitted a request for good data on Synergeo and Adrian Rossiter came back with some answers, as did Dave Koski in top form. In the process of checking, we discovered Wikipedia is sporting a wrong formula, not even linear, relating edges (a) to height (H). Here's the mistake:
I didn't immediately apply a fix, not having the fancy math notation LaTeX or whatever, although I did figure the right answer. Instead, I posted something to the Pre-College Geometry list, suggesting some younger serious-minded person put themselves to the task, earn some street cred.
Wikipedia invites public spirited individuals to correct mistakes, one of the hallmarks of an open source literature base.
My thanks to Glenn, Nat, other cast, for getting us another step along the journey. Fighting misinformation is a full time job.
Followup: Wikipedia was fixed within a few hours of our drawing attention to this problem. Here is the corrected formula:
:: icosacap analysis
by D. Koski w/ vZome ::
by D. Koski w/ vZome ::
The pentacaps (Johnson Solid J13 in particular) got him musing about the role of regular tetrahedra in the world of five-fold symmetry, i.e. an "eternal war of incommensurability" as we think about it in Synergetics. I submitted a request for good data on Synergeo and Adrian Rossiter came back with some answers, as did Dave Koski in top form. In the process of checking, we discovered Wikipedia is sporting a wrong formula, not even linear, relating edges (a) to height (H). Here's the mistake:
:: oops ::
I didn't immediately apply a fix, not having the fancy math notation LaTeX or whatever, although I did figure the right answer. Instead, I posted something to the Pre-College Geometry list, suggesting some younger serious-minded person put themselves to the task, earn some street cred.
Wikipedia invites public spirited individuals to correct mistakes, one of the hallmarks of an open source literature base.
My thanks to Glenn, Nat, other cast, for getting us another step along the journey. Fighting misinformation is a full time job.
Followup: Wikipedia was fixed within a few hours of our drawing attention to this problem. Here is the corrected formula:
:: all better now ::
Sunday, March 08, 2009
Quaker MVP
Friends,
Nancy Irving, General Secretary of FWCC, former attender of BCFM and current resident of London, England, will join BCFM on March 8, 2009 for Worship. At rise of Meeting we can gather over our coffee cups to hear her speak to us about FWCC's activities and her extensive travels with the organization. In her position Nancy interacts with Quakers of all stripes in all areas of the world.
If you have ever wondered what it means to be a Quaker, come hear Nancy describe the Friends she knows in every corner of the world.
Pat Shields
:: photo by Peter Schütte ::
Friday, March 06, 2009
A High School Melodrama
Having high schoolers stage Romeo & Juliet is completely age appropriate, as this was the age group these romantics represented.
The story is as accessible as it is absorbing to teens, unlike polyhedra maybe, however colorful ("I'll bet none of these kids knows what a MITE is" I found myself thinking, given my teacherly obsessions).
This play took me back.
We all learn in English class how the actors were all male in Shakespeare's day, even when cast in female roles. How refreshing then, to have Tybalt be this fearsome "mean girl" (a real one) complete with leather skirt, fishnets and boots.
I'd forgotten how hormonal our Romeo was already being for Rosalyn (always off camera) when suddenly Juliet gains his attention. He's mocked for this from all angles but is too self-absorbed to really see their point.
I was pleased to encounter the play's co-director Johnny Stallings (& angel) at this venue, so appropriate given his stellar status in Shakespearean circles, not to mention his street cred as a transcendentalist. We compared notes on Dr. Nick, expected in town this coming week.
My thanks to Tara for dragging me out to this enjoyable production (even after the drive home from Seattle) which she needed to take in as an honors assignment for Cleveland High.
She's read and seen the play a few times already, had no trouble following, nor did the rest of the Catlin Gabel audience, which caught most of the jokes it seemed.
The set was starkly polyhedral, minimal, skeletal, like a jungle gym (monkey bars). Every "scene change" was a mere rotation of the scaffolding by silhouetted stage hands with head sets.
The story is as accessible as it is absorbing to teens, unlike polyhedra maybe, however colorful ("I'll bet none of these kids knows what a MITE is" I found myself thinking, given my teacherly obsessions).
This play took me back.
We all learn in English class how the actors were all male in Shakespeare's day, even when cast in female roles. How refreshing then, to have Tybalt be this fearsome "mean girl" (a real one) complete with leather skirt, fishnets and boots.
I'd forgotten how hormonal our Romeo was already being for Rosalyn (always off camera) when suddenly Juliet gains his attention. He's mocked for this from all angles but is too self-absorbed to really see their point.
I was pleased to encounter the play's co-director Johnny Stallings (& angel) at this venue, so appropriate given his stellar status in Shakespearean circles, not to mention his street cred as a transcendentalist. We compared notes on Dr. Nick, expected in town this coming week.
My thanks to Tara for dragging me out to this enjoyable production (even after the drive home from Seattle) which she needed to take in as an honors assignment for Cleveland High.
She's read and seen the play a few times already, had no trouble following, nor did the rest of the Catlin Gabel audience, which caught most of the jokes it seemed.
The set was starkly polyhedral, minimal, skeletal, like a jungle gym (monkey bars). Every "scene change" was a mere rotation of the scaffolding by silhouetted stage hands with head sets.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Field Trip to Seattle
Britain accepted the occupation at first, welcomed Italy to the colonial club, reversed itself later. The Soviet Union never did accept the occupation and one of the audio tracks mentions the Russian airplane used to transport an important stolen relic back to its native context.
The history is much longer and more twisted than a small exhibit might fit, but at least it hits some of the high points: Queen of Sheba, descendants of King Solomon, Arc of the Covenant... Stuff homo sapiens were into, long after Lucy's species had ended its tenure.
Lake Tana looks interesting: lots of islands with sacred sites. Dawn would have liked going there maybe, given her esoteric interests.
Haile Selassie's message, that racism must end if Africa is to ever have peace, gets some good press. He didn't consider himself a god though.
Hominids (bipedalists) leave a complicated puzzle going back some six million years, with many makes and models in the fossil record. Paleontologists have their various pet theories of how to fit the puzzle pieces together.
The Lucy fossil, some 3.18 million years old, was on display in the last room, the climax of the exhibit. She doesn't get out much, part of the motivation to catch this exhibit before it closes.
Tara and I stayed in a hotel near Seattle Center, joining our hosts for Japanese food in addition to some chess playing and dancing at Center House.
Yes, Lucy is named for that Beatles song.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Explaining Esoterica
from the Wanderers archive (posting by me):
<anthropology>
Might help if you had some background about how some celebs and supermodels get snarfed up into esoterica, along with the Queen of England, UFOs, Da Vinci codes, other crazy-making stuff. Think of underground comix. I heard Britney's name a few times at Esozone (Glenn, Don also there, with some folks from Terwilliger Plaza) i.e. it's not just me designing this namespace, although I might be the only Quaker engineer on the project, not sure. Esozone pix: [redacted]
Heidi Klum is another source of fascination among some Robert Anton Wilson fans (not a literature I've kept up on -- only so many newsgroups one can track).http://www.facade.com/
http://www.masonicinfo.com/kansan1225.htm
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/11/
Just think of the X-Files, its popularity among geeks.
Portland's techo-occulture is quite geekified in some ways, is also cosmopolitan e.g. includes some Asian XX-engineer types, also XYs, takes all kinds (Back Space is a hangout http://www.backspace.bz/index.
</anthropology>
<anthropology>
Might help if you had some background about how some celebs and supermodels get snarfed up into esoterica, along with the Queen of England, UFOs, Da Vinci codes, other crazy-making stuff. Think of underground comix. I heard Britney's name a few times at Esozone (Glenn, Don also there, with some folks from Terwilliger Plaza) i.e. it's not just me designing this namespace, although I might be the only Quaker engineer on the project, not sure. Esozone pix: [redacted]
Heidi Klum is another source of fascination among some Robert Anton Wilson fans (not a literature I've kept up on -- only so many newsgroups one can track).http://www.facade.com/
http://www.masonicinfo.com/kansan1225.htm
http://uk.gizmodo.com/2008/11/
Just think of the X-Files, its popularity among geeks.
Portland's techo-occulture is quite geekified in some ways, is also cosmopolitan e.g. includes some Asian XX-engineer types, also XYs, takes all kinds (Back Space is a hangout http://www.backspace.bz/index.
</anthropology>
Monday, March 02, 2009
Sunday, March 01, 2009
Marley & Me (movie review)
I went to this movie a skeptic, secretly wanting to study this Aniston character some more. I tend to avoid sitcoms (and tabloids), have not observed much of her work to date. Her appearance on the CBS Morning Show with Harry Smith perked some interest.
Flashing back on Little Buddha with Keanu & Co., I was thinking their whole slice of life in this movie is within that part of the Buddha's career when he's still living the dream inside the palace walls.
It's a saga, but framed in those middle years of good health and young children, sustained by a more than adequate middle income. These adults are lucky dogs, not so shivering and alone as dear Wendy in North Portland, also a dog aficionado.
I recall Pamela J. Power's remark that it's OK for us to become more attached to our pets as we grow older, as they become the talismans for our inner journey. This film pays homage to that concept.
It's a film about choices within a very nuclear family, devoid even of grandparents: when to have a first baby, which adult gets the career, and how does that career nurture the careerist?
Pamela's remarks about violence also pertain, or let's just call it shocks to the system. Staying home with the kids is stressful, even minus some "official diagnosis" and Jennifer is good at portraying that. But these are also the basis of future memories, highly treasured in retrospect. Woof.
In what time period was this set I wonder? Political events don't obtrude much, even though these are both "reporters" we're told. There's something nasty unfolding in South America but that's not enough to go on. The newspaper computers look really ancient.
The film itself is a bit of a Wurlitzer, by which I mean it somewhat transparently fills the sponge and squeezes, getting emotion on cue, as one's made for TV life flashes by in a time of letting go. I'm not the crufty cynic here though (because I'm an Alan Arkin fan?), noting that people go to the movies for a reason. For some reason I'm reminded of Groundhog Day and Broken Flowers, both a little crazier than this one.
As for the male journalist character, the reporter-columnist, I'm thinking my own writing is far better, and so when do I get the big bucks? How does one "boost circulation" in the blogosphere anyway? I'm more into boosting coffee and donuts mixed with LCD content, than wood pulp. Which reminds me, here's a link to something I ran by the Portland Tribune, at the request of the education desk.
Happy birthday Alexia!
Flashing back on Little Buddha with Keanu & Co., I was thinking their whole slice of life in this movie is within that part of the Buddha's career when he's still living the dream inside the palace walls.
It's a saga, but framed in those middle years of good health and young children, sustained by a more than adequate middle income. These adults are lucky dogs, not so shivering and alone as dear Wendy in North Portland, also a dog aficionado.
I recall Pamela J. Power's remark that it's OK for us to become more attached to our pets as we grow older, as they become the talismans for our inner journey. This film pays homage to that concept.
It's a film about choices within a very nuclear family, devoid even of grandparents: when to have a first baby, which adult gets the career, and how does that career nurture the careerist?
Pamela's remarks about violence also pertain, or let's just call it shocks to the system. Staying home with the kids is stressful, even minus some "official diagnosis" and Jennifer is good at portraying that. But these are also the basis of future memories, highly treasured in retrospect. Woof.
In what time period was this set I wonder? Political events don't obtrude much, even though these are both "reporters" we're told. There's something nasty unfolding in South America but that's not enough to go on. The newspaper computers look really ancient.
The film itself is a bit of a Wurlitzer, by which I mean it somewhat transparently fills the sponge and squeezes, getting emotion on cue, as one's made for TV life flashes by in a time of letting go. I'm not the crufty cynic here though (because I'm an Alan Arkin fan?), noting that people go to the movies for a reason. For some reason I'm reminded of Groundhog Day and Broken Flowers, both a little crazier than this one.
As for the male journalist character, the reporter-columnist, I'm thinking my own writing is far better, and so when do I get the big bucks? How does one "boost circulation" in the blogosphere anyway? I'm more into boosting coffee and donuts mixed with LCD content, than wood pulp. Which reminds me, here's a link to something I ran by the Portland Tribune, at the request of the education desk.
Happy birthday Alexia!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Enhancing Education
Wanderers Barbara, Keith, Allen and I are having a useful discussion about SQL, what is it and why should I care? I also throw RSA into the mix. Here's from our dialog...
Hi Barbara --
SQL has a lot of problems, isn't theoretically pure, and so the "math mafia" (stealing from Haim on math-teach) will typically object that it's "too messy" to mess with in K-12, even with all those hours spent noodling with polynomials or whatever they do in the "dust ages" (allusion to chalk dust).
However, there's the "how things work" spin, and the whole library of stories around keeping track, keeping tabs, around how our own personal records are stored and retrieved.
We're talking about identity management here, a part of "home economics" one might say ("micro-economics"?), something that should be a focus for young teens, involved as they are in creating cyber-personae, not to mention "real ones" as well.
As soon as you talk about "keeping tabs" and "identity", you're immediately into high paranoia areas of life, the idea of people having data about you, maybe violating your privacy in various ways, your habits under scrutiny, that sense of being watched.
This isn't all unjustified wheel spinning, as history reveals:
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/
I don't think we're able to have an intelligent civilization that makes use of power tools like SQL, without directly addressing privacy concerns, records management issues.
Put another way, records management, in the sense of preservation (maintaining accuracy) but also controlling access, is a core function of civilization, and is these days done with computers -- the only way to keep up with the huge volume of transactions we've come to engage in.
So when I advocate SQL as a topic, I'm not just taking a "heads down" hunched-over-the-math-book kind of view. I'm taking a zoomed back "sweep of history" view and asking teachers to spark imaginations, open mental doors and windows, by telling more of the history, of information management basically, but not as something dry.
Assign Cryptonomicon for example, because when it comes to controlling access, cryptography is part of it.
And that leads me to my other recent buzz word "RSA". I'm saying we need to focus on RSA in IB, not just SQL. Have students get how it works. I've got a rather quirky video on the topic, proves "Kirby is out there" but then it's not entirely incoherent:
http://www.4dsolutions.net/ocn/rsa.html
Every time your browser goes to an https: web site, you get this added security layer that encrypts the communications, coming and going, presumably blocking out any snooper with a packet sniffer, sitting a few tables away.
I think young teens through adults, working to understand about identity, would be well served by schooling which takes our infrastructure seriously, bothers to spell it out, make things clear.
This isn't just about recruiting to the ranks of engineers. It's about creating an informed citizenry that isn't easy prey to scare tactics, i.e. if there are transgressions and abuses in the records keeping (e.g. vote tallying), we should be able to identify these rationally, in a timely fashion, and apply fixes (patches).
People wigging out because they're "being spied on" need stronger concepts, better mental pictures (I'm not saying "they're wrong" I'm saying if it's true, then "fighting back" requires "knowing the score").
As a software engineer, I get frustrated with public policy discussions because they're simply too underinformed.
People live in the past (pre computer).
Future shock isn't about experiencing the future necessarily, it's about catching up to what's so, already the case.
This is not a new line for me. I was preaching the need for database savvy back in like 1985 or thereabouts, getting a foot in the door with various think tanks.
And it's not like I'm expecting overnight change.
What I do expect is a younger generation grappling with these concepts and issues with or without assistance from an older generation (e.g. mine).
Better they should have some support and guidance. We would all benefit.
Kirby
Hi Barbara --
SQL has a lot of problems, isn't theoretically pure, and so the "math mafia" (stealing from Haim on math-teach) will typically object that it's "too messy" to mess with in K-12, even with all those hours spent noodling with polynomials or whatever they do in the "dust ages" (allusion to chalk dust).
However, there's the "how things work" spin, and the whole library of stories around keeping track, keeping tabs, around how our own personal records are stored and retrieved.
We're talking about identity management here, a part of "home economics" one might say ("micro-economics"?), something that should be a focus for young teens, involved as they are in creating cyber-personae, not to mention "real ones" as well.
As soon as you talk about "keeping tabs" and "identity", you're immediately into high paranoia areas of life, the idea of people having data about you, maybe violating your privacy in various ways, your habits under scrutiny, that sense of being watched.
This isn't all unjustified wheel spinning, as history reveals:
http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.
I don't think we're able to have an intelligent civilization that makes use of power tools like SQL, without directly addressing privacy concerns, records management issues.
Put another way, records management, in the sense of preservation (maintaining accuracy) but also controlling access, is a core function of civilization, and is these days done with computers -- the only way to keep up with the huge volume of transactions we've come to engage in.
So when I advocate SQL as a topic, I'm not just taking a "heads down" hunched-over-the-math-book kind of view. I'm taking a zoomed back "sweep of history" view and asking teachers to spark imaginations, open mental doors and windows, by telling more of the history, of information management basically, but not as something dry.
Assign Cryptonomicon for example, because when it comes to controlling access, cryptography is part of it.
And that leads me to my other recent buzz word "RSA". I'm saying we need to focus on RSA in IB, not just SQL. Have students get how it works. I've got a rather quirky video on the topic, proves "Kirby is out there" but then it's not entirely incoherent:
http://www.4dsolutions.net/
Every time your browser goes to an https: web site, you get this added security layer that encrypts the communications, coming and going, presumably blocking out any snooper with a packet sniffer, sitting a few tables away.
I think young teens through adults, working to understand about identity, would be well served by schooling which takes our infrastructure seriously, bothers to spell it out, make things clear.
This isn't just about recruiting to the ranks of engineers. It's about creating an informed citizenry that isn't easy prey to scare tactics, i.e. if there are transgressions and abuses in the records keeping (e.g. vote tallying), we should be able to identify these rationally, in a timely fashion, and apply fixes (patches).
People wigging out because they're "being spied on" need stronger concepts, better mental pictures (I'm not saying "they're wrong" I'm saying if it's true, then "fighting back" requires "knowing the score").
As a software engineer, I get frustrated with public policy discussions because they're simply too underinformed.
People live in the past (pre computer).
Future shock isn't about experiencing the future necessarily, it's about catching up to what's so, already the case.
This is not a new line for me. I was preaching the need for database savvy back in like 1985 or thereabouts, getting a foot in the door with various think tanks.
And it's not like I'm expecting overnight change.
What I do expect is a younger generation grappling with these concepts and issues with or without assistance from an older generation (e.g. mine).
Better they should have some support and guidance. We would all benefit.
Kirby
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Wanderers 2009.2.25
Micheal Sunanda is a guest this morning, though not our presenter. He's a character, has lots of stories. He slumdogs in a "one frequency dome" near Eugene, parked with a comfortably well off family who tolerates a "weirdo in the back" (they brought the dome in on the a flatbed, lifted it off with a fork lift -- typical family toyz).
Micheal has a telephone and flatscreen computer in this 8 foot "tent". He likes to steer discussions, including by boosting the discomfort level (he talks about smells a lot) -- OK in small doses. As his chauffeur, I'm suggesting he supplement his print media activities with a blog, plan to show him the ropes. Likewise, Jeff is suggesting Kym start a blog.
Micheal and I have done Internet radio together.
Glenn is introducing himself as someone who has lived "off the grid" sometimes, including for a ten year period. Like me, he's interested in "systems theory" (GST). Glenn has a background in cryptography.
Our presenter today is actually Kym Croft Miller, passionate about her writing, a kind and personable woman, someone who knows Buzz, and has been getting more media exposure recently, including on TV.
Her topic is Just Enough, part of the sustainability movement (more below).
She wants our introductions to include a moment or episode when we've been happy e.g. Jeff is happy about the some successful fund raising he's been doing for a friend whose infant needs a heart transplant.
My recent moment of happiness was having mom discharged from the hospital. Kym shared a German nurse's observation that USA hospitals make no sense, as good nutrition and sleep are essential to healing, yet in the Lower 48 it's all about bad food and waking people up every hour.
I'm hoping the new Foodhub service (Ecotrust) will begin to address the nutrition piece at least, by providing more organic bulk produce to large institutional buyers.
Kym described being at an elite private school auction where some teddy bear had just sold for $2.5K -- admittedly for a good cause. She got a strong hit of that "enough is never enough" aesthetic, a focus of Over the Hedge (a cartoon), an experience which sparked (catalyzed) her journey of self discovery.
Does wealth (in the sense of "money") "make you happy"? The faux lip service answer is "no" but the behavior says otherwise. "Affluenza" is the name of the disorder she's addressing (like an eating disorder).
Kym and her lucky guy husband tried a four day experiment in Hawaii, living luxuriously, to discover if it led to real happiness. The first day was the best, then it was down hill from there, back to ambient levels.
The next experiment was to stop buying most stuff for an entire year (Februrary 2003 - 2004). You had to be able to eat it or use it up completely, with the exception of batteries and light bulbs, in order to justify buying it.
In this scenario, the quality of life actually improved. The initial experience of a burden being lifted was quite powerful, buoying. Even the kids bought into it eventually, became more self-reliant around clothes-making and so on.
Servicing old stuff was OK -- accepting stuff from others was also OK (a kind of recycling). Getting stuff repaired is getting to be a lost art (her broken VCR story).
Kym recommends The Story of Stuff as a worthwhile web site.
What's somewhat different about Kym's message is her focus on happiness as a goal, not stultifying self-righteousness. What we've been talked into (living beyond our means, buying for the sake of buying) is not really a source of happiness. So how is motivational psychology so powerful that it gets people to sabotage their own pursuit of happiness in this way?
Wanderers generally agreed that brainwashing through television is what programs people to join the vast zombie army that tramples people to death at a Wal*Mart or whatever. A herd animal mindset takes over, uniform thinking, while the collective IQ takes a dive.
Whatever the causes, this is not a "way of life" worth defending. No one admires CEOs who flaunt "net worth" as a way of advertising their power and influence. That's in poor taste and ugly, gauche, plus we know they're not really creating life support in many cases i.e. there's no real power there, just Vaudevillian showmanship (Enron anyone?).
Here in the Silicon Forest, we're more egalitarian, less into flaunting. Sure I'm a high powered executive (one of many), a mover and a shaker (or Quaker), but it's institutional wealth I care about, not personal wealth so much. Like the Pauling House here (ISEPP's), or Multnomah Meeting. My bizmo fleets won't be my personal property either -- what a hassle that would be, like owning aircraft carriers (blech).
We're actually TV programmers and motivational psychologists around this table, so it's not like we're simply "at the effect" of all this brainwashing. Consider us masters of the communications arts, consummate media campaigners. So how shall we better use our skills? Kym is challenging us to think about that question.
Television has a brighter future I'm thinking, thanks to the Internet. We're becoming less dependent on "stuff pushing" (including drug pushing -- what USA TV is a lot about these days, including psychotropics, antidepressants etc. (ask your doctor)). "Educational TV" will be less of a joke maybe? Headline: ToonTown to teach FOSS (on an LCD near you -- might be a coffee shop?).
Of course I'm hoping a thinking atmosphere in coffee shops, purchasing geared in with charitable giving, will lead to a more participatory lifestyle aimed at creating life support, a different meaning for wealth than "money" which includes happiness as a side benefit. Fuller: work precessionally, as nature does. You'll start by giving profit maybe, but eventually you might donate your real time and energy, skills (once you have some).
Jim Buxton just walked in, another mountain man.
Obviously it comes down to role models. Where are the people who create life support without squandering? An effective recruiter is someone who walks the talk.
I mostly look outside the Lower 48 these days (Kym is from Alaska), given the intense resistance to intelligent programming -- although in Portland I'm finding some high caliber folks. Like CubeSpace is a great place to work (PKL rents space there -- that's Portland Knowledge Lab, formerly @ ActivSpace).
Micheal has a telephone and flatscreen computer in this 8 foot "tent". He likes to steer discussions, including by boosting the discomfort level (he talks about smells a lot) -- OK in small doses. As his chauffeur, I'm suggesting he supplement his print media activities with a blog, plan to show him the ropes. Likewise, Jeff is suggesting Kym start a blog.
Micheal and I have done Internet radio together.
Glenn is introducing himself as someone who has lived "off the grid" sometimes, including for a ten year period. Like me, he's interested in "systems theory" (GST). Glenn has a background in cryptography.
Our presenter today is actually Kym Croft Miller, passionate about her writing, a kind and personable woman, someone who knows Buzz, and has been getting more media exposure recently, including on TV.
Her topic is Just Enough, part of the sustainability movement (more below).She wants our introductions to include a moment or episode when we've been happy e.g. Jeff is happy about the some successful fund raising he's been doing for a friend whose infant needs a heart transplant.
My recent moment of happiness was having mom discharged from the hospital. Kym shared a German nurse's observation that USA hospitals make no sense, as good nutrition and sleep are essential to healing, yet in the Lower 48 it's all about bad food and waking people up every hour.
I'm hoping the new Foodhub service (Ecotrust) will begin to address the nutrition piece at least, by providing more organic bulk produce to large institutional buyers.
Kym described being at an elite private school auction where some teddy bear had just sold for $2.5K -- admittedly for a good cause. She got a strong hit of that "enough is never enough" aesthetic, a focus of Over the Hedge (a cartoon), an experience which sparked (catalyzed) her journey of self discovery.
Does wealth (in the sense of "money") "make you happy"? The faux lip service answer is "no" but the behavior says otherwise. "Affluenza" is the name of the disorder she's addressing (like an eating disorder).
Kym and her lucky guy husband tried a four day experiment in Hawaii, living luxuriously, to discover if it led to real happiness. The first day was the best, then it was down hill from there, back to ambient levels.
The next experiment was to stop buying most stuff for an entire year (Februrary 2003 - 2004). You had to be able to eat it or use it up completely, with the exception of batteries and light bulbs, in order to justify buying it.
In this scenario, the quality of life actually improved. The initial experience of a burden being lifted was quite powerful, buoying. Even the kids bought into it eventually, became more self-reliant around clothes-making and so on.
Servicing old stuff was OK -- accepting stuff from others was also OK (a kind of recycling). Getting stuff repaired is getting to be a lost art (her broken VCR story).
Kym recommends The Story of Stuff as a worthwhile web site.
What's somewhat different about Kym's message is her focus on happiness as a goal, not stultifying self-righteousness. What we've been talked into (living beyond our means, buying for the sake of buying) is not really a source of happiness. So how is motivational psychology so powerful that it gets people to sabotage their own pursuit of happiness in this way?
Wanderers generally agreed that brainwashing through television is what programs people to join the vast zombie army that tramples people to death at a Wal*Mart or whatever. A herd animal mindset takes over, uniform thinking, while the collective IQ takes a dive.
Whatever the causes, this is not a "way of life" worth defending. No one admires CEOs who flaunt "net worth" as a way of advertising their power and influence. That's in poor taste and ugly, gauche, plus we know they're not really creating life support in many cases i.e. there's no real power there, just Vaudevillian showmanship (Enron anyone?).
Here in the Silicon Forest, we're more egalitarian, less into flaunting. Sure I'm a high powered executive (one of many), a mover and a shaker (or Quaker), but it's institutional wealth I care about, not personal wealth so much. Like the Pauling House here (ISEPP's), or Multnomah Meeting. My bizmo fleets won't be my personal property either -- what a hassle that would be, like owning aircraft carriers (blech).
We're actually TV programmers and motivational psychologists around this table, so it's not like we're simply "at the effect" of all this brainwashing. Consider us masters of the communications arts, consummate media campaigners. So how shall we better use our skills? Kym is challenging us to think about that question.
Television has a brighter future I'm thinking, thanks to the Internet. We're becoming less dependent on "stuff pushing" (including drug pushing -- what USA TV is a lot about these days, including psychotropics, antidepressants etc. (ask your doctor)). "Educational TV" will be less of a joke maybe? Headline: ToonTown to teach FOSS (on an LCD near you -- might be a coffee shop?).
Of course I'm hoping a thinking atmosphere in coffee shops, purchasing geared in with charitable giving, will lead to a more participatory lifestyle aimed at creating life support, a different meaning for wealth than "money" which includes happiness as a side benefit. Fuller: work precessionally, as nature does. You'll start by giving profit maybe, but eventually you might donate your real time and energy, skills (once you have some).
Jim Buxton just walked in, another mountain man.
Obviously it comes down to role models. Where are the people who create life support without squandering? An effective recruiter is someone who walks the talk.
I mostly look outside the Lower 48 these days (Kym is from Alaska), given the intense resistance to intelligent programming -- although in Portland I'm finding some high caliber folks. Like CubeSpace is a great place to work (PKL rents space there -- that's Portland Knowledge Lab, formerly @ ActivSpace).
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Waking the Poet
The title alludes to Gene Fowler's work, another armed robber who found Bucky from prison, kind of romantic, good if reading is allowed, I'd say laptops should be, could be intranet only, then air gap, not saying its my business.
I was telling this store clerk reading the dictionary today that the imprisoned Malcolm X found that therapeutic as well. Many of us do, like I don't blame David F. for subscribing to the OED, not one bit.
I led Adult First Day today, as a committee of one, focusing on a two part query: (1) how am I nurtured by criss-crossing the Q | ~Q boundary? and (2) what equals from outside Q-dom might I bring to nurture our group? That's cryptic I realize, using Q to mean Quaker, ~ to mean not. Philosophy trained, geek, other failings.
I hadn't planned to speak beyond the intro, but wound up bringing up Glenn Baker taking retired brass on tours of Cuba, as in "let's meet the enemy, now that we're emeritus". They had some fun parties, with Castro included.
Glenn and Applewhite met a few times; Ed kept mentioning he liked the embracing genericness of the name CDI for some reason. "So maybe I could bring someone high ranking from DoD to our meeting" I mused (paraphrase)? Like I'm thinking of Nozizwe that time, and our meeting with the DL in Cape Town.
Dr. Kasman worked in medical ethics in DC, which might explain the drift of my communications (i.e. people we both know). Her Hani was a hit with the kids. Alexia and Tara made it to Ikea today.
I was telling this store clerk reading the dictionary today that the imprisoned Malcolm X found that therapeutic as well. Many of us do, like I don't blame David F. for subscribing to the OED, not one bit.
I led Adult First Day today, as a committee of one, focusing on a two part query: (1) how am I nurtured by criss-crossing the Q | ~Q boundary? and (2) what equals from outside Q-dom might I bring to nurture our group? That's cryptic I realize, using Q to mean Quaker, ~ to mean not. Philosophy trained, geek, other failings.
I hadn't planned to speak beyond the intro, but wound up bringing up Glenn Baker taking retired brass on tours of Cuba, as in "let's meet the enemy, now that we're emeritus". They had some fun parties, with Castro included.
Glenn and Applewhite met a few times; Ed kept mentioning he liked the embracing genericness of the name CDI for some reason. "So maybe I could bring someone high ranking from DoD to our meeting" I mused (paraphrase)? Like I'm thinking of Nozizwe that time, and our meeting with the DL in Cape Town.
Dr. Kasman worked in medical ethics in DC, which might explain the drift of my communications (i.e. people we both know). Her Hani was a hit with the kids. Alexia and Tara made it to Ikea today.
Friday, February 20, 2009
Technical Difficulties
It's easy to see how the economy is falling apart.
When Chuck put in a claim to Allstate for storm damage, allowing for the deductible, they go "sure sir, but the only reason your premiums are this low is you've never put in a claim."
That's the standard protection racket: we'll take your money as long as nothing happens to you where we have to protect you for real, and if something actually happens, then we'll want more money still (all that other stuff was just for "peace of mind" in case you ever do need to file -- we hope not though).
When I search on "Gibson" in this blog, using the search slot at the upper left, I don't get back any blog post but this one, and yet using the outside Google search engine, I get another one right away. That means the internal blog searcher is weak and anemic, gives up too easily. Or if that's not what it means, then you tell me? I'll keep running those tests, posting my results. Oh wait, I just tried it again and it worked great this time. Let's see if that lasts. Could be a traffic thing.
Oh yeah, the iTunes podcaster is way behind with the CBS News, ending around February 6 even when I hit refresh. Is it Apple I should blame? The voice and picture aren't synced for Doll House, Tara blames "the dish" (DirectTV).
I have a longer list, but I'm more into "beefs" than "concerns" i.e. I should stick to reporting bugs I might be able to help fix. When you file a beef, there's this implied "and I'm on it", which is what we in the Open Source world like to keep hearing.
Don't just be a whiny end user, be a part of the solution.
Of course reporting bugs (concerns) is a public service sometimes, even if you have no clue how to address them. But if your entire demographic is end users, no coders, then consider this a sinking ship. For every bug you report, make it your practice to fix two? Stay in shape, pull your weight.
Like so what if kernel code is world readable if you can't code in C? And so what if medical supplies are available, if you don't know anything about medicine. And so what if the airplane is yours, yet all you know how to do is crash it? Get lessons, practice, don't expect cheap short cuts will work.
There's maybe this belief that if I pay enough money, then I won't need to study. That's just "stairway to heaven" talk and as any investment banker well knows, there's really no alternative to doing your own homework. Like no one will do it for you, at the end of the day. Kafka wrote as much.
When Chuck put in a claim to Allstate for storm damage, allowing for the deductible, they go "sure sir, but the only reason your premiums are this low is you've never put in a claim."
That's the standard protection racket: we'll take your money as long as nothing happens to you where we have to protect you for real, and if something actually happens, then we'll want more money still (all that other stuff was just for "peace of mind" in case you ever do need to file -- we hope not though).
When I search on "Gibson" in this blog, using the search slot at the upper left, I don't get back any blog post but this one, and yet using the outside Google search engine, I get another one right away. That means the internal blog searcher is weak and anemic, gives up too easily. Or if that's not what it means, then you tell me? I'll keep running those tests, posting my results. Oh wait, I just tried it again and it worked great this time. Let's see if that lasts. Could be a traffic thing.
Oh yeah, the iTunes podcaster is way behind with the CBS News, ending around February 6 even when I hit refresh. Is it Apple I should blame? The voice and picture aren't synced for Doll House, Tara blames "the dish" (DirectTV).
I have a longer list, but I'm more into "beefs" than "concerns" i.e. I should stick to reporting bugs I might be able to help fix. When you file a beef, there's this implied "and I'm on it", which is what we in the Open Source world like to keep hearing.
Don't just be a whiny end user, be a part of the solution.
Of course reporting bugs (concerns) is a public service sometimes, even if you have no clue how to address them. But if your entire demographic is end users, no coders, then consider this a sinking ship. For every bug you report, make it your practice to fix two? Stay in shape, pull your weight.
Like so what if kernel code is world readable if you can't code in C? And so what if medical supplies are available, if you don't know anything about medicine. And so what if the airplane is yours, yet all you know how to do is crash it? Get lessons, practice, don't expect cheap short cuts will work.
There's maybe this belief that if I pay enough money, then I won't need to study. That's just "stairway to heaven" talk and as any investment banker well knows, there's really no alternative to doing your own homework. Like no one will do it for you, at the end of the day. Kafka wrote as much.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Democracy Engine
DemocracyLab is harnessing some state of the art cloud computing, a Google app engine, to focus initial user groups. I've been lurking behind the scenes, marveling at some of the code (it's an open source project).
The most current edition is for use with Oregon 150’s Project 2059, designed to enable high school students to create a collaborative vision for Oregon’s future.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Monday, February 16, 2009
Presidents Day
Tara returned from her ski trip today, a Quaker event. Now we're watching Simpsons, Alexia visiting, a day off for her too. Julie is keeping me up to date about mom.
I've been networking with "the professoriate" today, got a wry one from Dr. Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University, about the quirky Math Forum archive, appreciating my pithy synopsis of the constructivist meme (an abbreviated account to be sure).
What really surprised me (pleasantly) was this esoteric Java site, brought to my attention by one of the authors. That's very close to the stuff I serve, albeit in Python and at a lower grade level, along with my Vegetable Group Soup in Flash. Both Cryptonomicon by Stephenson and In Code by Flannery fit into our syllabus around here.
I wrote a long autobiographical piece, taking up bandwidth on math-thinking-l, focusing on my New Mexico connections. That got IEEE guy bandit yakking about his friend Glen the Aikido guy in Santa Cruz, reminding of me of Ron Marson's TOPS.
There's a need for "flight plans" in this airspace, or we'll just waste energy dodging each other. Why not fly in formation? What a concept!
My thanks also to John P. Dougherty, Computer Science, Haverford College, for the kind note. "And we also enjoy using Python in our CS1/CS2 sequence, so far so good".
Dr. Chuck, good at branding, sent me the latest draft of his O'Reilly book on the Google Appengine. I've learned a lot from studying it, wrote a little demo of this nifty new service called OS Garden. This work goes back to my internationalization work, which I've been pitching to clients as a "next big thing" in some sectors, old hat in others I realize.
I've been networking with "the professoriate" today, got a wry one from Dr. Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University, about the quirky Math Forum archive, appreciating my pithy synopsis of the constructivist meme (an abbreviated account to be sure).
What really surprised me (pleasantly) was this esoteric Java site, brought to my attention by one of the authors. That's very close to the stuff I serve, albeit in Python and at a lower grade level, along with my Vegetable Group Soup in Flash. Both Cryptonomicon by Stephenson and In Code by Flannery fit into our syllabus around here.
I wrote a long autobiographical piece, taking up bandwidth on math-thinking-l, focusing on my New Mexico connections. That got IEEE guy bandit yakking about his friend Glen the Aikido guy in Santa Cruz, reminding of me of Ron Marson's TOPS.
There's a need for "flight plans" in this airspace, or we'll just waste energy dodging each other. Why not fly in formation? What a concept!
My thanks also to John P. Dougherty, Computer Science, Haverford College, for the kind note. "And we also enjoy using Python in our CS1/CS2 sequence, so far so good".
Dr. Chuck, good at branding, sent me the latest draft of his O'Reilly book on the Google Appengine. I've learned a lot from studying it, wrote a little demo of this nifty new service called OS Garden. This work goes back to my internationalization work, which I've been pitching to clients as a "next big thing" in some sectors, old hat in others I realize.
Saturday, February 14, 2009
TECC Talk
Anna Roys was our Wanderers MVP, between Dr. Livio and Dr. Haack. She even summoned the courage to venture onto Don's boat, a symbol of having achieved inner circle hood vis-a-vis Wanderers in some way. She came straight from PDX to our Appreciative Inquiry workshop with Helen Spector.
Her staying at the Kennedy School (McMenamins) was likewise apropos, given the purpose of her visit: to visit her grandson Sammy, and to carry on with charter school work in Matsu District, where she has already successfully started Twindly Bridge, now in its fourth year of operation.
Planning meetings for TECC tend to happen in Palmer, at the Vagabond Blues, whereas more Twindly plots were hatched at the Digital Cup in Wasilla. There's an Office of Innovation in the US Department of Education that's focused on facilities grants, but the Alaska legislature has yet to write the codes for tapping in to those funds, which would cover about 90% of new campus costs.
We drew a lot of diagrams for one another, mapping out various players and their interconnections. I also got into my sphere packing spiel, tying the 1, 12, 42, 92 of the cuboctahedral sequence, to the 1, 3, 4, 6 of my IQ Test, which ties to NCLB the way I look at it. We had our laptops going, so it was easy to tap in to the On-line Dictionary of Integer Sequences and show the virus links (getting the connection between cuboctahedral and icosahedral numbers is more easily explained with the Jitterbug Transformation, but I didn't take the time to go into that piece of it). The charters have websites filling in with more details.
MIT OpenCourseware was also mentioned, plus I had my XO handy, yakked about OLPC. Ms. Roys showed me the Elluminate platform (Java based), which she uses to participate in distance learning classes, in both learning and teaching capacities. That seems like a capable system, and am glad to know about it. Our curriculum won't have to go begging for sponsors for too much longer maybe. Alaska has lots of key players.
Her staying at the Kennedy School (McMenamins) was likewise apropos, given the purpose of her visit: to visit her grandson Sammy, and to carry on with charter school work in Matsu District, where she has already successfully started Twindly Bridge, now in its fourth year of operation.
Planning meetings for TECC tend to happen in Palmer, at the Vagabond Blues, whereas more Twindly plots were hatched at the Digital Cup in Wasilla. There's an Office of Innovation in the US Department of Education that's focused on facilities grants, but the Alaska legislature has yet to write the codes for tapping in to those funds, which would cover about 90% of new campus costs.
We drew a lot of diagrams for one another, mapping out various players and their interconnections. I also got into my sphere packing spiel, tying the 1, 12, 42, 92 of the cuboctahedral sequence, to the 1, 3, 4, 6 of my IQ Test, which ties to NCLB the way I look at it. We had our laptops going, so it was easy to tap in to the On-line Dictionary of Integer Sequences and show the virus links (getting the connection between cuboctahedral and icosahedral numbers is more easily explained with the Jitterbug Transformation, but I didn't take the time to go into that piece of it). The charters have websites filling in with more details.
MIT OpenCourseware was also mentioned, plus I had my XO handy, yakked about OLPC. Ms. Roys showed me the Elluminate platform (Java based), which she uses to participate in distance learning classes, in both learning and teaching capacities. That seems like a capable system, and am glad to know about it. Our curriculum won't have to go begging for sponsors for too much longer maybe. Alaska has lots of key players.
Friday, February 13, 2009
OS Bridge Planning
I showed up late to this meeting, as I'm pushing hard on a writing project having to do with the CRRs versus LMRs, clinical research records versus legal medical records. I've been in this business for fifteen years or so, have a lot of information to distill.
What neither Jason nor I realized, was the leadership for this conference is looking at filling a hotel with out-of-towners as a consequence of booking the Oregon Convention Center, on the model of OSCON.
That's a challenging prospect in today's economy as businesses are cutting back on employee enrichment (Bruce was very clear about this), even where this may be a perverse response given networking is often the lifeblood of an industry, conferencing a chief way of keeping shows on the road. Fear is unproductive.
No one needs a lecture from me on an obvious, in-our-face problem. My plan is to continue supporting OS Bridge, would hope that the City gets more involved, as we're actually talking about the economic future of our town.
At some level, "open source" is an engineering response to the challenges facing the scientific community, as it seeks to gain traction in the face of pressures to hunker down and stop sharing.
We're talking about passing on a very high civilization, not an easy job but on the other hand what else is there to do? This is the work, whether compensated or not. Passivity is not an option, especially if you're an engineer.
What neither Jason nor I realized, was the leadership for this conference is looking at filling a hotel with out-of-towners as a consequence of booking the Oregon Convention Center, on the model of OSCON.
That's a challenging prospect in today's economy as businesses are cutting back on employee enrichment (Bruce was very clear about this), even where this may be a perverse response given networking is often the lifeblood of an industry, conferencing a chief way of keeping shows on the road. Fear is unproductive.
No one needs a lecture from me on an obvious, in-our-face problem. My plan is to continue supporting OS Bridge, would hope that the City gets more involved, as we're actually talking about the economic future of our town.
At some level, "open source" is an engineering response to the challenges facing the scientific community, as it seeks to gain traction in the face of pressures to hunker down and stop sharing.
We're talking about passing on a very high civilization, not an easy job but on the other hand what else is there to do? This is the work, whether compensated or not. Passivity is not an option, especially if you're an engineer.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Wanderers 2009.2.11
This morning's presentation by Helen Spector is on Appreciative Inquiry.First we learned about a PBS TV show (available through Netflix) on The Hobart Shakespeareans: 5th graders, many with English as a 2nd language, work with Mark Twain, math concepts, a variety of other content, to produce a Shakespearian play as a project.
The fundamental premise of appreciative inquiry is we get answers to our questions, and we have the choice to focus on what's working.
We did an exercise in appreciative listening with a partner, a guided interview, preferably with someone we didn't already know. Then we introduced our partner focusing on something that surprised and delighted us about that person.
Our energy as a group was raised by this process. Buzz, with history as a radio broadcaster, liked the combination of "relevant reverence" with high bandwidth, "an ideal combination for radio listeners wanting to expand their thinking".
"Appreciative" means "growing in value over time" not "mindless happy talk". Questions focus attention. Energy follows attention. We get more of that to which we give our attention. Ergo, the first question is fateful. Focusing on "what's broken" may not be as productive as focusing on "what's working". Stories matter, contextualize the technical information (one of my themes as well).
We heard a story about Avon, how these techniques helped turn the company culture around, by focusing the group on what generative and respectful relations between men and women would be like, drawing on real experiences that workers could draw upon.
The cycle of Appreciative Inquiry Helen drew on the white board was one of Develop, Discover, Dream, Design, Deliver, and back to Develop. There's a methodology and a stance, the latter having to do with the questions, getting in touch with what works. The literature, a lot of it from Case Western Reserve, refers to this as a 4D or 5D cycle (depending on whether Develop is included).
Develop: the question (e.g. what's working? -- a surprising question will redirect from a dead end). Discover: info about what works. Dream: vision for the future. Design: the social infrastructure to support the dream. Delivery: implementation. Then what do we want to inquire into next? Back to Develop.
Interviewing is a core methodology in this management framework (there's a discovery interview protocol), more important than surveys or polling. "When do I get to say what's not working?" sometimes comes up in this process. Helen: in the wishes.
Anna Roys is with us, having arrived from Alaska (via Seattle) at 6:45 AM. Anna is talking about the wildlife she gets to observe in her neighborhood, a live action version of Animal Planet. Some of these tools might be useful in her work around TECC. I'm seeing applications in my own career as well.
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
ScratchPad
I've configured a Virtual Host, 4d.kirby as follows:
My thanks to Aimee and her personal journal, A little place of calm for some advice.
I've waded in up to my neck with Apache many times, but there's always "beginner mind" to come home to, along with humility and finding new teachers, including much younger ones. The Internet lets me scour the hinterlands in search of kind souls. And then of course there's O'Reilly's Safari.
Note to self: PHP's copy-on-write is not the same as Python's memory management scheme, as assigning a second name to the same list (array) only delays copying. The moment you update a PHP list through the added name (i.e. variable), a new copy of that array gets created in memory, whereas in Python both names keep pointing to that same list object (everything is an object in Python).
<virtualhost>
ServerName 4d.kirby
DocumentRoot /home/kirby/php_study
AddType application/x-httpd-php .php .html
</virtualhost>
My thanks to Aimee and her personal journal, A little place of calm for some advice.
I've waded in up to my neck with Apache many times, but there's always "beginner mind" to come home to, along with humility and finding new teachers, including much younger ones. The Internet lets me scour the hinterlands in search of kind souls. And then of course there's O'Reilly's Safari.
Note to self: PHP's copy-on-write is not the same as Python's memory management scheme, as assigning a second name to the same list (array) only delays copying. The moment you update a PHP list through the added name (i.e. variable), a new copy of that array gets created in memory, whereas in Python both names keep pointing to that same list object (everything is an object in Python).
Sunday, February 08, 2009
Slumdog Millionaire (movie review)
Portlanders lined up at Cinemagic and filled every seat in the house for this one.
There's what feels like superhuman stress and duress in this story, given the bleakness and impossible odds. The use of flashbacks is effective.
This film teaches compassion, and like a Charles Dickens novel also shows how suffering will twist a human character into something diabolical.
I came away admiring humans more than not, but hating their circumstances. That would seem a productive head space, not too misanthropic.
My morning was productive, in terms of advancing my "4D meme" -- admittedly esoteric. I'd like my brand of positive futurism to catch on more and that requires connecting the dots.
There's what feels like superhuman stress and duress in this story, given the bleakness and impossible odds. The use of flashbacks is effective.
This film teaches compassion, and like a Charles Dickens novel also shows how suffering will twist a human character into something diabolical.
I came away admiring humans more than not, but hating their circumstances. That would seem a productive head space, not too misanthropic.
My morning was productive, in terms of advancing my "4D meme" -- admittedly esoteric. I'd like my brand of positive futurism to catch on more and that requires connecting the dots.
Monday, February 02, 2009
Celebrating Soho
I was pleased to get this invitation yesterday, was thinking about it just now when buying a cup of Soho blend, mixed with Midtown, at Noah's Bagels this morning, en route to Cleveland High with Tara.
Soho (a neighborhood in lower Manhattan) is where Kenneth keeps a truly amazing studio, packed with memories of past glories, shades of adventures to come.
The last time Tara and I got to visit, he was preparing for a show at Versailles in Paris, showed us a scale version of his Supine Dragon. His Forest Devil is in our Portland Art Museum, plus I snapped this photo of his V-X-II in Chattanooga that time, am the proud owner of his Barrel Tower.
As Kenneth's first web wrangler back in the day, I studied his relationship with Bucky and his Portrait of an Atom, in addition to his tensegrity sculptures.
Thanks to my familiarity with this internationally recognized artist and his work, other noteworthy characters would contact me, including Julian Voss-Andreae (a Wanderer), who was later able to meet with Kenneth, as did Flextegrity's Sam Lanahan, first introduced to me by Fuller scholar par excellence Trevor Blake, thanks to the Tetrascroll connection (LaJean just sent me notice of their new shipping address).
Kenneth and E.J. Applewhite also had a good meetup, I think in part because they both considered me a loyal friend, thereby maybe helping to heal famous the Fuller-Snelson rift we've all read about (Ed was loyal to Bucky, through lots of storms and stresses).
In affording me this opportunity to collaborate on a web site, and in so many other ways, Kenneth has added value and richness to my life. I am forever grateful. The guy is as charming as his wife is adorable.
On a couple occasions, after staying with Kenneth, I would train up the Hudson to the Rhinecliff station to stay with Stuart Quimby and Cary Kittner, the dymanic duo behind the now defunct Design Science Toys, creators of Tensegritoy based on Snelson's work. Cary, a certified genius, was another early innovator in this emerging field, as was Sam.
Stuart, Cary and I worked as a team on StrangeAttractors, which I still sometimes use when showcasing my art to prospective new patrons (I did the ray tracings on the box and for the instruction booklet -- I also wrote the informative booklet that comes with the glow-in-the-dark Space Ball from DaMert, originally developed by Roger Gilbertson, whose "muscle wires" idea is likewise part of the elastic geometry mix).
Gerald de Jong's "elastic interval geometry" (EIG), pioneered with assistance from Karl Erickson, Russell Chu, other first power users of Gerald's Struck (a Java EIG application), was likewise inspired by the tensegrity concept, and helped spawn a whole subculture of new software development attractive to artists and designers.
I just got a note from Gerald yesterday in fact, pointing me to this open source Python project called Nodebox | Evolution, reminiscent of his Darwin @ Home in some ways (maybe check the embedded video at my studio's MySpace page).
I hope I get to New York on business one day soon, where there's lots going on in open source and design science.
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