propositional content

vertical labels in XUL (using XBL and SVG)

2010-02-04T12:23:00.003-06:00

I haven't posted in a while. Sorry about that. Eventually I'll post a description of what's gone down in the meantime, what with finishing the degree in Dublin and moving back to the U.S. of A., but for right now, I'd like to post about something else: about putting vertical labels into XULRunner applications.

I searched for a while trying to find an easy way to do this, and the closest I came was a very general-purpose SVG shape solution, which I thought was far to unwieldy for my usage (you can check that out here). My solution is much simpler, using just a single binding with an svg:text attribute in it and not much else.

The source files are as follows:

vlabel.xml: The XBL binding for the vertical labels

vlabel.xul: A simple XUL file which shows the usage of the vertical labels (if you're in Firefox 3.5 or better, you should be able to view it just by clicking on this link) EDIT: Apparently, this might not work if you're running Linux? I don't know why, sorry.

vlabel.css: The CSS file which attaches the binding to the XUL element

And that's all! I hope it is useful to some other XUL developer out there.

spring awakening

2009-04-28T18:45:00.004-05:00

I've been rather negligent about this blog lately. A lot of things have happened since Halloween.

Such as being a zombie.

The main consumer of my time since I last posted has, fairly obviously, been school; that is the reason for my presence here, in any case. So, in no particular order, here are some of the things I have accomplished during my studies here in Dublin:

I wrote a distributed application in Java for booking train journeys across Ireland.

I learned about various forms of cryptography, network authentication, and key exchange (like Kerberos and Diffie-Hellman)

I studied, memorized, and used concurrent programming techniques such as two-phase locking and two-phase commit.

I listened to lots of lectures about the data link, transport, and network layers of the OSI stack.

I wrote part of a Facebook application for rating events.

I won a bottle of cheap champagne for suggesting that Intel improve the profiles in their wireless card management software.

I gave a business plan presentation about putting advertisements on cheap umbrellas.

I led a team of eleven to complete a framework for administration of a managed motorway system.

I drank a lot of Guinness (this one is very important to the learning).

I wrote distributed applications using the Sieve of Eratosthenes and Conway's Game of Life.

I helped modify a discrete event-based network simulator to allow for mobile network nodes, and may even get a publication out of the resulting paper.

I discussed all the current forms of intellectual property protection.

I watched presentations on network file systems, and on the difference between thread-based and event-based concurrent programming.

I learned how to use thread pools and event channels.

I heard talks about reindeer herders in Lapland and about transmitting data to Mars orbiters.

I worked with all sorts of XML-based technologies, like XSLT and DTD and RDF and OWL.

I started using virtual machines.

I wrote a little bit of Perl.

I had to know and describe the difference between .Net Remoting and Java RMI in terms of their use of proxy objects.

I studied and wrote part of a paper on new network management technologies such as WS-Management, which uses composable web services to manage network elements.

I learned a language for use in proving the validity of concurrent algorithms.

I read papers about third-generation peer-to-peer technologies.

I gave a part of a presentation about service-oriented architecture.

I did, well...a bunch of other stuff that one might do during a one-year masters' course in computer science.

Of course, I had some fun during my time here as well, especially since it's so close to Europe. For instance, I went to Italy and ate an entire octopus...

The tentacles were tricky.

...and played on the beach.

No cliffs in Italy!

I also read two books, and I went to Cork in the south...

They have cliffs there, though.

...and Connemara out in the west...

Like cliffs but landlocked.

...and even to Belgium.

Ah, Belgium; where 13 years makes a beer more tasty.

So I've been out and about at least a little bit. I did some work, too; our Italian clients have been (mostly) successfully updated to a new version.

Now it's summer for me (exams finished up a few weeks ago), and it's time to start working seriously on my thesis. I picked a topic on something called knowledge-based networking, which involves using some of the semantic technologies we learned before to allow for more expressive subscriptions in the middleware we're using for content-based networking and message delivery. I'm adding support for temporal and causal reasoning, which also involves adding a database to each message broker. That's probably gibberish to most people, but the full description is far more esoteric, so I'll leave it at that.

Hopefully my next post won't be so many months in the making...

distributing posts

2008-10-29T12:32:00.004-05:00

I've been very bad about keeping people informed on what I'm up to, so here's a brief update for you all before I dive back into the mountain of work I need to do for school.

Let's start with some general information about Dublin.

Also, here's a picture of the Liffey.
I'm still enjoying my place, and my real flatmate came back (so far so good on that score, too). Once you get going, it's really not that much different than my life was in the USA, just a bit more local since I don't have a car or anything. The trash goes out on Tuesdays, I applied for the Tesco Clubcard the other day, stamps cost 82c to send things to the USA, Guinness costs EU 3.90/pint at Dec Gallagher's (just down the street) but can be as much as EU 5 around Temple Bar, I still have no idea where to pick up a pencil sharpener...these are the concerns I'm dealing with here. It's a bit odd sometimes to realize that I'm many thousands of miles away from where I was living just a few months ago.

As far as school goes, it's definitely picking up in terms of coursework. Starting from this coming Friday and running through November 14, we have the following things due, in order of impending deadlines: a group research proposal for data communications (my group is going to do something with a sensor network simulator), a general security-related suggestion for Intel (to be fleshed out later), a review of a research paper, an initial stab at a Facebook application (we're doing a way to rate events), a confirmed topic and supervisor for our thesis project (I'm meeting about mine on Friday), and a prototype of a socket-based system that allows booking and cancellation of train tickets across multiple stops and multiple companies (which has to scale up to millions of users and dozens of companies). Anyway, there's a lot to be done.

Luckily, the others in the course are generally reliable, intelligent, and easy to get along with. We've already started a sort of course tradition of hitting the Pav (the Pavilion Bar, the student bar on campus) immediately after class on Thursdays (no class on Friday) to complain about our course load, discuss thesis and project topics, and throw back a collectively vast quantity of cheap, generally horrible beer. That usually turns into a more serious night out and a hangover on Friday, but that's why we wait until Thursday to do it.

The classes themselves aren't too bad, either. In software engineering, we've been talking lately about some of the problems with designing concurrent systems, specifically those that arise from attempting to access shared data and how to avoid things like deadlocks and inconsistency within the system. Network security has been focused on cryptography the last few days, with lectures about encryption algorithms and authentication schemes. Network applications has been focused on the implications of using social networks as a development platform (ala Facebook), and network management has been about various management protocols such as SNMP. Even our formal methods course is interesting (at least to me, with my logic background). I'm sure I'll be posting more about that later, especially once I get into my actual thesis project (which will probably be about inserting causal and temporal reasoning into a knowledge-based event broker network).

In other recent news, I had a very lovely visit from a very lovely visitor a couple weeks ago and went out to Galway for a few days, even down the Cliffs of Moher (which are pretty impressive, as evinced below).

See, I'm so impressed I can't even take my eyes off them!
If you, dear reader, ever do get a chance to go to Galway, I have some things to recommend:

First off, we stayed at the Adare Guesthouse (sorry, no website, so no link), which was conveniently close to the city center, clean and comfortable, had a good breakfast (especially the salmon stuff), but was maybe a bit pricey. Still, a fine place to stay, especially on the short notice we gave them.

There are a number of really cool pubs in the center of Galway city, including the likes of Taaffes Pub (which is great for traditional music), Coel Tigh Neachtain (with a rather segmented, intimate interior), and Roisin Dubh (which I'd say was the college bar).

Go to McDonough's and get the fish and chips. Specifically the smoked fish. That's less of a suggestion and more of a demand.

Ok, so that's all I've got time for right now. Time for some food, and some furious programming on a train ticket booking system.

coursing along

2008-10-07T15:57:00.002-05:00

Well, I managed to survive the first two days of class, and I think I'll be able to manage for a few weeks at least.

The schedule this term (that means until December) is a pretty solid 10-5 with a one-hour lunch break from Monday to Thursday (we have Friday off completely). Of course, add onto that the group projects and research papers and course work and exam study time (well, exams aren't actually until March, so I've got some time for that) and it turns into a much more demanding task.

Right now, things aren't too bad. So far, it's been pretty introductory; we've had a quick review of basic concurrency concepts (e.g., processes, threads, context switching) and a brief overview of the impetus for computer security along with a discussion about why middleware exists. Also, we've received our first individual project assignment (due in 6 weeks) and were told to start picking groups for a data communications research project, which is made more interesting in that very few of us know anything at all about the topics we'll be covering in class.

Still, it seems like it'll be a rewarding course, even if it is somewhat difficult. My course-mates seem engaged (not too hard on the second day) and competent and generally come across as being almost exactly as intimidated as I feel, which is good. If they were more intimidated I'd feel as though I were missing something, and if they were less I'd feel like an idiot.

I spent some time looking through past projects and dissertations, and many of them seem to involve ad hoc wireless networks, with the more recent ones have to do with mobility (basically, trying to connect a device to an access point while one or both are moving through the coverage). That doesn't mean that's going to be something we have to do, but it seems as though that's where the faculty are steering us (not too surprising, really, given the sorts of projects the Distributed Systems Group at TCD works on)

In any case, I suppose my task now is to figure out exactly what it is I want to get out of this course and start working toward it. I already have some ideas of what I would like to know more about, but these are sort of a mess of potentially unrelated general concepts, like small-world and scale-free networks, models that utilize Bayesian inference such as the Hierarchical Temporal Memory model, self-organizing systems, and even emergence in general.

I think what I'm ultimately after (although I'm not sure how fervently I'll pursue it just yet) is some sort of answer as to what mechanism(s) give rise to complex systems from simple components. That's a pretty tough question, though, so I think I might be satisfied by figuring out some abstract patterns that apply to such systems. I do think that learning more about the structure and properties of communication networks will be very useful in that, and that learning how to produce a distributed application will give me insight into how simple nodes are treated when purposefully constructing a complex system on top of them (although that approach might be a bit to teleological to help in understanding self-organization...)

Anyway, now I'm just sort of blathering so I think this post is over. The main point is that courses have gone well so far, seem likely to go well in the future, and I'm already starting to shift toward academic mode again.

getting classy

2008-10-04T16:01:00.002-05:00

After all this time, my extended vacation is finally coming to a close. Classes start on Monday, so I might actually have to do stuff most of the day again. That's fine, though, given that that was pretty much the entire point of my trip over here.

We had an orientation thing for the computer science postgrads yesterday, so I got to meet everyone and hear a bit about the course itself. It sounds like it'll be pretty intense; teaching runs from 10ish to 6ish every Monday through Thursday, but we have Friday off entirely. That will be the case from now until March, and in March we have exams to qualify us to actually do the dissertation to get the degree. Apparently, students over here usually get a couple of chances to pass their qualifying exams, but in our case we have to pass them the first time or we can't get the degree. It makes sense to me that I'd have to pass all my tests, but to the Europeans in the group (which basically includes everyone else, since I'm the only American in the course this year) that came as a bit of a surprise.

Still, my classmates seem like they'll be good people to be working with, and they're generally a lot of fun. There was a little reception after the orientation sessions today, and after that a bunch of us went to the "Pav" (the Pavilion Bar, which is on Trinity's campus) and had a few beers before taking off for a pub called the Globe on Dame Street. It was pretty packed, given that it was a Friday night and Trinity was just starting classes back up. I guess my actual student experience is starting back up again.

Some other notes from Ireland:

It's getting cold here. Yesterday, the high was around 9º C (48º F), and today it's raining (again).

After we were done at the pub, we went to Dublin's answer to Lazzari's in Lincoln, a little pizza joint that serves up fresh-cooked slices late into the night. I don't remember the name, but it's just off the Temple Bar area and I imagine I could find it again if I looked.

So, anyway, that's all I've got for now. More updates later!

a l'Italia

2008-09-23T07:27:00.010-05:00

I just got back from my first trip across the continent, this time to Cesena, Italy to do some training with a partner we have there for work. The flight was cheap and easy, since Ryanair (for now, at least) flies a direct flight from Dublin to the airport in Forli, which is about a 20 minute drive. Anyway, the work went very well, but that's beside the point.

The point is that I got to go to Italy for four days, and I got to see a bunch of really awesome things. First off, I stayed at a little hotel right in the center of Cesena, the Hotel Cappello.

Hotel Cappello.

Cesena is a very pretty little Italian city (around 100,000 people, according to my work host) about 25 minutes from the Adriatic coast in the Emilia-Romagna region. The sun was shining pretty much the whole trip--a welcome change after the standard Dublin weather--and the food was great, of course. We ate a fair bit of local seafood, and also they have a local dish from Romagna called "piadina", which is a type of bread somewhere between a tortilla and a pita. From what I could gather, the main attractions include a fairly imposing pentagonal fortress on the top of a big hill right in the center of town, and the Biblioteca Malatestiana, the first ever public library in Italy (opened somewhere around 1450).

The Rocca Malatestiana, Cesena's castle

The highlight of this round in Italy came on Saturday of the trip, though, when we caught the train from Cesena down to Florence, via Bologna. The train ride was fun and rather relaxing, and only took about two hours of travel through the beautiful Italian countryside.

The country surrounding Cesena, from the hill in the center of the city

Florence was packed with tourists, and for good reason. Being the seat of the Renaissance, the architecture and the art are amazing, especially the main sights such as the cathedral and the campanile...

The Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore (Il Duomo) in Florence, with the Campanile di Giotto

...and the Piazza della Signoria, which houses (copies of) a bunch of the famous statues by the Ninja Turtles and their contemporaries, like Michelangelo's David, Donatello's Judith and Holofernes, and Ammanati's Fountain of Neptune.

The copy of David and Bandinelli's Hercules and Cacus.

We also wandered past the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence's most famous art museum, but the line was absurd and our time limited, so we didn't go in.

All in all, I'd say the trip was a resounding success. Good food, good wine, good company (I even met the mayor of Cesena, for some reason), and a great location make for a good weekend. I also got to improve my Italian, which was immediately noticeable when I came home to Dublin and my Italian roommate had his parents visiting.

So, until the next trip, enjoy the pictures!

if you blow chunks and she comes back

2008-09-14T16:24:00.003-05:00

This weekend was a big weekend for me.

I had my first guests (Brian and Erica), so I had an excuse to go do some of the touristy things I hadn't hit since getting here. Some of the highlights:

We went down to the Temple Bar region and wandered around for a while (i.e., got a bit lost) looking for Irish music and food (we weren't entirely successful).

Saturday started with a tour of the Guinness Storehouse, which is fun if somewhat expensive. It's a self-guided, wandering-around-the-old-brewery sort of thing, where they tell you the basics of beer brewing and talk about the history of Guinness. The marketing floor is the coolest part of the actual tour, but the best thing is the Gravity Bar on the top, which has a killer view of the surrounding city (also that's where you get your free Guinness).

Dublin Castle isn't much of a castle. If castles are your thing, go to Blarney.

We ate lunch at a little Indian restaurant a bit off Grafton Street; I don't remember the name (Meloti, or something) but it was tasty. It wasn't the best value Indian restaurant on the street, but it was the only one open for lunch on a Saturday.

As far as guided tours go, the Old Jameson Distillery one is pretty good. They tell you about whiskey making, and how Irish whiskey differs from scotch and bourbon, then there's a taste comparison for a few lucky volunteers and a free Jameson for everybody.

The food at the Brazen Head is pretty good, and for being as big a tourist destination as it is, it is still has a pretty traditional feel.

At the end of the night Saturday, we finished at The Cobblestone, a real traditional Northside pub that has live music most nights. When we got there, there were three people with instruments playing away in the corner, and a host of locals crowding the bar, but still enough seating that we got a table in the back. It was great, and I'll be going back.

One of my Kiwi friends got the use of the corporate box at Croke Park today, so she offered us some of her free tickets for the hurling and camogie (women's hurling) finals that were going on. It's an interesting game; sort of a cross between field hockey and rugby. Anyway, I might actually try to take in a bit more of the hurling next season.

So, that's the update. I have a lot of pictures, and I'll probably post some of them later. For now, though, I'm tired and I think I'm going to sleep.

taking it to the house

2008-09-04T18:21:00.002-05:00

So, to advance my policy of keeping everyone up-to-date on the benefits and pitfalls of living in Ireland, I think tonight is a good night to give you an update on what I have been doing for the last few days. Let's start with Tuesday.

On Tuesday, I took a psuedo-business trip (there's a woman I've met here who runs a startup tech company who is in sore need of an IT manager) out to Athlone, in the center of Ireland (along the Shannon River, in fact). I met some of the folks at the Athlone Institute of Technology (and for you JDEers/Raikes Scholars reading this, let me assure you--that bullshit we went through for Design Studio is primo experience in Ireland) and after the business was dealt with, I got a free trip out to the ancient monastery at Clonmacnoise. That's one of the best things about Ireland, at least in comparison to the United States; about every 20 miles or so, there's some ancient monastery or circle tomb or something that has been raided by the Celts in 300 AD, and/or the Vikings in 800 AD, and/or the Normans in 1100 AD, and/or the English in 1300 AD, etc. The history here is (dare I say) palpable.

Anyway, that was Tuesday--during the day, anyway. When I got back that night, I was invited out by my Italian roommate to go to the Temple Bar area, and in fact we went to the Temple Bar itself, which was quite nice. Very touristy, a bit pricey in comparison to the pubs outside the Temple Bar area, but it was fun. They had live Irish music, in any case, which is always a plus.

Yesterday was a bit worthless (I admit, I was a bit hung-over), so I hit Dublin hard again today. I took off around lunch time to go find a good place to eat, and I'd previously found a street (I don't remember which, but if you visit I can show you precisely the one) which had a number of interesting restaurants--Italian, French, Lebanese, Indian, etc. Today, I picked one of the Indian places (Jewel in the Crown) and had their very tasty rendition of lamb madras with some naan bread. With the price at €7.50, that puts it about the same as The Oven (in downtown Lincoln), and I would say that the dish here was better. More complex flavors, in any case.

The real adventure tonight, however, was the place I headed to for my evening pint (or two...or three...or four)--The Porterhouse. This place is Dublin's answer to the microbreweries we have back home, and the beer was quite excellent. According to the website, they have live music every Thurs-Sat, but tonight at the Temple Bar location I did not hear any. Still, I'm not going to give up on them. I had a few really great beers, and had a great chat about American politics with an Irish fellow named Pat (so far, everyone I talk to here would count as a Democrat). Anyway, I promised a review of the beers I tried, so here you go:

Hop Head: Even though they don't know it, this was the Porterhouse's answer to Hopluia. It did provide some of the floral, hoppy aroma that we are blessed with back in the States, but I've had far better hopped ales back home. Maybe we should teach these people about dry-hopping...

Wrassler's XXXX Stout: This one was a very good stout. If this were exported to Nebraska, I would recommend that you buy as much as possible. When you people come visit, I'm taking you to the Porterhouse, and I'm buying this one.

Porterhouse Red: This was a pretty generic (although very smooth) red ale. Not much to say about it really; if anyone remembers the red that Empyrean made back in the spring and the way it tasted on the cask...that's about what this one was like.

An Brain Blasta: Ok, so this one is a bit of a challenge for me. In theory, this beer is copper ale, sort of like Singletrack Ale from Boulder. However, it had far more of a hopped flavor than any Singletrack I've ever had. Plus, the alcohol content was the highest of any currently on tap at the Porterhouse (7%, if I remember right). So, it was a strange combination of hoppy and malty, almost as though it were a dry-hopped Belgian-style beer. It's worth a try anyway; when you come visit, and I take you to the Porterhouse to get my Wrassler's XXXX Stout, I will get you a Brain Blasta first.

So, that's the story about Dublin over the last week. Otherwise, St. Stephen's Green is nice, Temple Bar is a great place for tourists, and letters back to the states cost €0.82.

When I have something more to report, I'll let you all know.

there is no place like Dublin

2008-08-30T17:27:00.002-05:00

So, while I'm sitting here tonight listening to the first Husker game of the season (that's a big sad-face right there), I figure I could at least delineate some of the things I have learned about Dublin in the last week.

According to the Irish, this is one of the coldest, wettest, and generally worst summers on record. Other than it being overcast all the time, it's been fine with me; when I tell them that it is generally over 30° C (86° F) in Nebraska in the summer, they usually respond with something like "Oh, Jay-sus!".

The Irish are pretty keen on their bureaucracy, especially when it comes to banking. In an effort to prevent money laundering, I had to provide proof-of-residence to get a bank account. For me, since I'm a student at Trinity College, the easiest accepted proof would be a letter from Trinity stating that I'm a student and listing both my address back home and my address here in Dublin. However, since I'm not registered yet (and can't register until late September), Trinity College policy wouldn't allow them to provide such a letter. So, what it came down to was that I couldn't get an account until I registered, couldn't register until I paid my fees, and couldn't pay my fees until I had a bank account. It sounds bad, I know, but the key to any bureaucracy is to find the person who's far enough from the center that they don't really care about policy yet still is close enough to have appropriate authority. It only took me a couple of days to track that down, so huzzah for a new, Irish bank account!

In St. Stephen's Green park, just south of Trinity's campus, they have a little photo exhibit thing titled "Wild Poland" showing pictures of Polish wildlife and natural parks. Apparently, there's a pretty sizable Polish presence in Dublin, which is fun.

There's a place on Grafton Street (which is a pedestrian-only shopping area/tourist trap) called "Capt. America's". Despite their claims to have brought over Ireland's first American-style burger, the burgers aren't very good. It's not that the beef here is bad, per se, but the hamburger is just off somehow. Also, I was told that they don't really pluck their chickens all that well, so the chicken wings you buy at the grocery stores sometimes still have bits of feather. I'll have to check the butcher down the street to see if it's the same there.

Living with an Italian (my Dutch roommate is in San Francisco right now, and is subletting his room) leads to good dinners. Apparently, Irish food is not up to the standards of southern Europe, which is fine with me--I like pasta!

When it comes to Gaelic football (which I have yet to experience), the Cork vs. Kerry match is about as heated as it gets. The whole city center was covered with fans last weekend. Not quite like downtown Lincoln on a game day, but still...

Anyway, that's pretty much all I can tell you so far. I'll learn more as I go, I expect, and hopefully I'll be able to head out to the rest of the island soon. I think tomorrow I might brave the bus system to get to a BBQ/college football watch party with some other American ex-patriots. Wish me luck...

Seo teach dom

2008-08-23T07:32:00.006-05:00

I managed to take some pictures yesterday of the new place, so here you all go:

Here's the door into the place.

This is the view down the street.

From just inside the front door.

Here's a shot of the living room, toward the street.

It's me, in the kitchen area!

The hallway toward the bedrooms. Mine is just to the left.

The "garden". They aren't big on grass in Dublin.

This is where I sleep.

This is my bathroom (I know, I know...the picture you'd all been waiting for...).

Anyway, that's where I am. More pictures of the city to follow, I'm sure.

regularity

2008-08-21T17:10:00.002-05:00

Mountjoy Street is a great place to live.

I spent most of the day (well, the afternoon; I slept in to finish off the jet-lag) roaming around the area around the room I rented. It was quite informative. Here are the things I have learned:

Just a couple blocks south of here is Parnell Street, which is one of the major streets for shopping in the area. Just off Parnell and further down Jervis Street are where the main malls and department stores are located. Also, Moore Street is a pretty major fresh produce market, and there's a Tesco, a Lidl, and an Aldi all within a block or so.

In the other direction, you get into the heart of Phibsborough, the part of Dublin I'm in. Phibsborogh is famous as the home of the Bohemian F.C., a pretty successful Irish League football club. They play at Dalymount Park, which is about an 8-10 minute walk.

The McDonald's off O'Connall Street (which is about 8-10 minutes away as well) serves spring rolls.

The pub on the corner--Dec Gallagher's--is a pretty classic little local pub. I was the only stranger in it, and by the time I left tonight, the barman knew my name anyway.

So, that's what I've picked up on my third day in Dublin. No fun Irish story tonight, so you'll have to just tide yourselves over with the Dublin facts above.

home, home off the range

2008-08-20T17:59:00.003-05:00

I am now an official resident of Dublin. I have found myself a place.

So, I suppose now that I'm official, I should tell the story, and tell about all my happenings. First off, let me just say that all the flights went really well. Took off on time (or even early, as was the case in Lincoln) and got to their destinations without trouble. The airport in Philadelphia was nice--didn't even have to go through security again for the international leg! Also, my baggage arrived at the same time I did, so things were great!

While in Philadelphia, I met these two Irish ladies, one of whom had just dropped her daughter off at Cornell for college. They were very friendly, and gave me some good, motherly advice about where to live, where to avoid, and how to watch myself while in Dublin. They even gave me their contact info, so I could tell them if I found the hostel all right.

Since arrival, things have been a bit of a blur. I wandered around campus for a while, tried to find some advice about accommodation (as they call it here), but Trinity College wasn't expecting any post-grads to show up until September, so they were rather useless. Did get an O2 sim card out of it for the phone, though, so I wrangled an Irish phone number.

The next step was to sit in the hostel (with the free wifi) and email people about rooms they'd posted on the little website dedicated for such things, daft.ie. It was very useful; I had three tours booked less than 12 hours after I'd arrived!

In any case, I went to check them out. Met some nice people, mostly couples with extra rooms (one from New Zealand, one from France) and finally decided to room with a guy named from Holland who is in Dublin for work. It's a nice place--roomy, kind of quaint. It's on a little street about a block away from a mid-level thoroughfare, so pretty quiet but still lots of conveniences around. Also, the pair of girls living upstairs seem cool and the landlady is really nice and laid-back as well. I'm already moved in, and I think I'll get on well here.

Really, though, that's all I have to report. It's been mostly business so far, but now that I'm settled, the fun begins!

As a sign off, though, have a random story about Ireland:

So, last night (my first in Dublin) I went down the street from the hostel (Jacob's Inn) to a pub called Molloy's. It was a pretty traditional looking place, green walls and woodwork sort of thing. At the bar, there was a group of people--an older couple (maybe mid-60s) and two of their slightly younger friends (35-40, I'd guess). They were talking and carrying on, so I sat down next to them for my Guinness. After a few songs and some banter back and forth amongst them, one of them caught my eye as I observed and invited me over.

They seemed pretty taken aback that my name was "Clay"--apparently not to common over there. But still, they were quite friendly; they asked about Nebraska, sang me some old Irish tunes, and even had me sing a couple "Nebraska" songs ("There is No Place Like Nebraska" was a big hit, and they all sang along for "King of the Road").

In any case, they heard that I was coming to Trinity and was looking for accommodation, so the older gent, Jack, offered me a room in his own house, supposedly a 15 minute walk from Trinity! He even gave me his number so I could call and go see it (he suggested Friday; I probably will call him, just for the novelty and because I told him I would).

So there you go--that's a story about Ireland for you. Guinness and singing in a pub, and extending your hospitality to complete strangers.

a dubliner

2008-08-19T18:17:00.003-05:00

So, I arrived in Dublin today (at 9:00 am for me, which was what...3? 4? at home?). Anyway, things have gone swimmingly so far. Already wandered around campus, got an Irish phone set up, toured three places to live (two of which are locked in, should I want them) and have one tour tomorrow and possibly a fifth tour on Friday.

In any case, I'm tired now, and need to sleep so I can visit Sinead up on Killarny Street in the morning. A full report to follow later, and possibly a place to live as well!

eMigration

2008-08-01T13:44:00.002-05:00

So, for those of you who don't know, I'm moving to Dublin on August 18th. In fewer than eighteen days, I will become an expatriate (well, for a year or so).

The circumstances are that I got accepted into a Master's degree program at Trinity College Dublin, so I'm packing up, getting on an airplane, and flying away, to be back sometime after next September. It'll be the first time I've been out of Nebraska for longer than a month contiguously.

Needless to say, it's quite exciting as well as more than a little frightening. I'm giving up my apartment, my job (sort of), my culture (a lot of it anyway), my currency, my absurd network of local friends (they'll just be non-local), etc. It's going to be quite the change.

Anyway, since this is my last day at the office--and the start of my last month in America for a while--I though I should put in a note, just to chronicle it. Besides, I figure everyone is going to have to start reading this to see what I'm up to over there anyway, so you probably deserve an update every now and then.

my net works

2008-04-21T23:26:00.003-05:00

I finished up a couple of books in the last few days (it's as though this blog is turning into Clay's personal reading recommendations...), Critical Mass by Phillip Ball, and On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. I also went to a play tonight, one Preludes and Fugues by someone named John Glore, and prior to that, I'd spent some time reading up on a current "documentary" called Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (propaganda does not deserve a link).

Now, whether these things in particular (well, the first two mainly) have evoked some sort of connections in my mind or whether my current overall state had already been leading to it, I don't know. Regardless, a few things have managed to click lately, which for some reason I feel I need to divulge to the Web.

First, Critical Mass is generally about networks, and how certain general statistical properties reliably emerge from large numbers of agents, whether those agents be atoms in a magnetic material, people walking down a hallway, or stock brokers on the buying room floor. Nothing that arises is individually predictive, mind you, but certain things can be said about certain types of networks as a system. The part that interested me the most about this book was the section on small-world and scale-free networks (small-world networks being the topic of another book I like, Six Degrees by Duncan Watts). Small-world networks are those wherein the average path length connecting any two nodes is small and the "clustering coefficient" ("the average over all vertices, of the number of edges connecting a vertex v divided by the total number of possible edges in the neighborhood of v", Ball 367). It turns out that in certain circumstances, a "scale-free" network can be arranged such that its topography fits the small-world requirements as well, such as in the way networks of interconnect websites seem to have developed (seriously, if you are getting any of this--or want to--just read Critical Mass). In any case, that intrigues me--especially considering that I'm intending to get an advanced degree in networks and distributed systems. The thought that these scale-free, small-world networks can arise from an undirected addition of nodes based on some sort of criterion for survivability is definitely something I would like to pursue, which brings me directly to my next point, about Expelled.

Apparently (I haven't seen it, so I don't know) Expelled is a very thinly veiled attack by intelligent design proponents against the supposed tyranny of the ruling intellectual elite in the biological sciences--namely, the proponents of modern evolutionary theory (the Darwinists, according to the film). I'm not going to say one way or the other; I haven't seen it, so I don't know. If the reviews are correct, then it sounds like a horrible blight on the face of modern cinema and will actually harm the advancement of knowledge in this world. If not, more power to them. The reason I bring this up is because it got me thinking about evolution, about selection and mutation and about complexity can arise from simple entities. Self-organizing systems are a staple of modern evolutionary thought (check out The Origins of Order by Stuart Kauffman), and combining that with the idea of a scale-free network, with its characteristic robustness and redundancy could have some pretty interesting implications, some of which came up in the next book I read.

On Intelligence had been in the works for a while, since I got it in the same trip as some books on information theory. Still, in two sittings I managed to power through it, and given what I remember from my cognitive science days, Hawkins might be on to something about how the neocortex works. I haven't done any further research yet (although I intend to) but the "memory-prediction framework" (Hawkins 104) he espouses sounds like he's on to something. He gives some pretty detailed conceptual models of how the various layers of a column in the visual cortex might work, and ties it into the functioning of the whole visual processing chain, right up to the hippocampus at the "top" of the pyramid. In doing so, he talks fairly glibly about "connections" and "links", about axons and dendrites connecting from many nearby networks, as well as some elongated ones (specifically in layer 1) that come from the far reaches of the brain. I don't know; sounds like a small-world network to me (high clustering, potentially low path length). Also, given that he posits a hierarchical organization to the whole thing and points out that the plasticity of the brain shows that different parts are functionally identical at the biological level, it seems to me that with a bit more modeling (which may have already been done; I never said I was up to date) it may be shown that the organization of the cortex has some aspects similar to that of a scale-free network. On an interesting note, it seems that Hawkins defines creativity as a novel generation of links between similar parts of the network (he was more about applying partial pattern matches to similar situations, but maybe you can give me a little creative license).

I used to think that creativity was all about generating new content. I even coined a little phrase about it, in the hopes of explaining why I don't paint or write songs or something similar--"I can't create, I can only interpret and facsimilate." (wow, turns out that's not actually a word). The thing I've come to realize is that that interpretation and recombination that I had so often discounted in my own endeavors is creativity. Every painting, every screenplay, every song is composed of parts of the universe as experienced by its creator. The raw materials come from the same mundane sources that I have access to, yet are joined by a network of similarities and linkages that I do not have, because my experiences have provided me with a different set. In any case, I was wrong. Every day I create, by weaving a unique tapestry of familiar entities that itself can be fed back in as a raw material, whether it be something I code, write, say, or just think.

Which brings me to the last bit of raw material I had at the beginning of this post, Preludes and Fugues. I went to see the production primarily because two of the four people in the cast are pretty close friends who have already had a significant impact on my life recently (and one of the remaining two is also a less-connected part of my network) so I felt I should support them. As a brief review, I felt that the actors did a fair job of dealing with what I consider to be a poor script; I'd describe the writing to be the opposite of "subtle", whatever that may be ("blunt" doesn't really work in this case, nor does "trite").

In my own particular nerdy fashion, I started thinking about the play as a system (it didn't really work for me to think of it as a piece of music, as the author obviously intended; like I said, not subtle). The seemingly random story lines and intended (yet poorly executed) continuities of name, location, place, and actor became threads in the tapestry, links in the network (fine...melodies in the symphony). What I found was that the similarities he invoked (or tried to) did not support the piece as a whole; he spread the audience too thin, with too few of the nodes connected to the surrounding ones, yet tried to connect every node in the network to each other node. In a way, the script popped out at me as being a sort of densely-connected network, with too many redundancies and too little clustering to be believable. The overt attempts to tie everything back together became formulaic and boring, while the injection of forced absurdity and convention-breaking comedy simply seemed out of place and disconnected. The network of the script connected only a few nodes, yet there was such strong noise that the intended message got corrupted anyway.

It makes me wonder about what network science could say about such things as scripts; maybe, when modeled a certain way, there is an ideal topology for a narrative, just as there's an ideal topology for the brain, for a traffic system, for a power grid, for the Internet, etc.

In any case, it feels good to think about this. Maybe I can actually salvage something out of this random walk that I call a life; maybe it wasn't so random after all.

overdog

2008-04-05T03:04:00.002-05:00

Well, I did it.

On March 28, 2008, at somewhere between 9:00 and 11:00 AM CDT, I managed to drop an application for Trinity College into the FedEx box (with hopefully all the right stuff filled out).

So, there's that. Now I'm just waiting...

...which sucks.

It's something that I've known about myself for a while; anything under my control is something I'll succeed at. Anything I don't control--that's up in the air. That I might fail, even if it isn't my "fault".

It's strange (to me, anyway); I'm used to a world that falls into place, not a world that just falls. I'm used to being able to pick one of the (usually equally good) choices, never to just wait until one of them chooses me. But that's increasingly how I see life becoming--relationships, business interests, scholarship applications, whatever. It's nothing I do; what I say or don't, what I do or don't, whatever happens that I control does not matter. Sure, it may lead to a point here, a different point there. But whenever I reach that point, the outcome is equally (or to a greater extent) decided by someone else, someone independent.

I know, that may just sound like common sense to you. Well, it's not to me. It's hard, for me. It's something I was maybe too socially stunted to realize back in high school, or whenever everyone intuitively understands his or her place in the Grand Scheme (note the capitals). Maybe it's just maturity; maybe it's shedding the naivety and innocence of youth.

Still, at the same time, it's horrible. From where I stand, there's a certain level of hope entwined with my active hand in the Universe. There is always a point at which one can say, "Well, I don't know what they've tried so far, but I can try this...Maybe I can succeed where everyone else--everyone who had more a shot at it than I do--has failed." We love an underdog. And we want to be one. But that's not something we can determine.

I'm no exception; I try to spin my life as though I've fought against something, or risen up above some tribulation. That's what society wants, that's what draws the support, the admiration, the love. It's flaws and imperfections; it's the broken implicit promises, the forgotten incidentals. It's the faults that we love; the strenghts we're only drawn to.

But even so, I can't help but blame myself whenever something doesn't go as I'd like it to do. When the 't's don't get crossed, and the 'i's don't get dotted, I consider it my fault, because I should have known, I should have been observant enough to see. And that's ridiculous; a person that can "see" what another person will do should be doing tarot somewhere. I'm not psychic, I'm not special in any way); I'm just human.

I guess that'll have to be good enough.

coming soon to a Cartesian theater near you

2008-03-26T16:28:00.003-05:00

Immediately prior to waking up this morning, I had a dream. This dream was actually just a movie trailer for a new, independent comedy that was supposedly coming out soon. The actors in the trailer were unrecognizable, and the writers weren't of note (although, it did mention something about "the people who brought you Zoolander"), but the thing I do remember about the movie was its title: Carlos Let the Loose Fish Out.

I think the movie was somehow about some touching-yet-comedic personal journey undergone by Carlos, and that it was either instigated or completed when there were some "loose fish" which Carlos "let out". I do not know if that was to be interpreted metaphorically or literally, or even how many "loose fish" there were. In any case, I kind of felt the movie to be akin to maybe Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with less "crazy", or maybe a more positive Ghost World.

In any case, it looked like a movie I would go see.

And the title is awesome.

marching on

2008-03-12T15:17:00.003-05:00

Given that it's March, and my last post was in December, I think it's a good time to catch up.

First of all, at the end of January, Executive Function, or a Story About a Dog Named Rudolph went up at the Haymarket Theatre. It was an amazing experience--the show was great, the cast was great, the audiences were great (usually). I think it's a good show to go out on; I'm closing the book on theater in Lincoln for the time being.

Of course, that hinges upon actually leaving for Ireland this time (in case you were paying attention in the past, I have had some trouble doing that). I think I'll make it; I have everything but the passport photo for the application and the application fee already lined up and filled out. Plus, I've decided I'm going even if I don't get in the program, so I should be Ireland-bound as of June or July.

In other news:

Irish-themed bands (such as The Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly) are awesome. Any bands who have albums with titles like "Drunken Lullabies" and songs like "Kiss me, I'm shitfaced" are just fine in my book.

I've decided that complexity theory (especially the study of emergent behavior) is still on the top of my future-academic-pursuits list. Thanks, Philip Ball!

...and that's it.

around, on, or insanity

2007-12-25T21:58:00.000-06:00

Every so often, I am struck again by the notion of how intricate and how fragile the human mind truly is. It's as though I somehow forget; as though I slips out my brain again that when it comes right down to it, the little world that everyone builds for him- or herself hinges upon this fey little organ that we carry about in our skulls.

Anyway, despite all that, I'm not going to subject you, gallant reader, to some sort of intellectual masturbation about the brain, where I propound some sort of grand insight at which I feel I have arrived. No, I just wanted to point it out that so much could go wrong; God knows the threat I pose to my own brain, after all.

What really got me started was that I finally got around to reading The Collector by John Fowles. For those not interested in following the link, it's the story of Frederick, a mild, obsequious clerk who collects butterflies, and Miranda, a beautiful art student who he watches from his window...until he wins the football pool, comes into a large sum of money, and decides to make her his "guest" with some chloroform and a newly-acquired house far from civilization. I like Fowles; I'd read Magus a few years back (wow, it still strikes me as odd to say that about college) and I highly recommend it. He did a great job again in Collector (actually, he wrote that one first), very vividly bringing to light the psychological states of his characters--both captive and captor--with a stream-of-consciousness sort of narrative. It got me wondering about what it is like to be a person with such psychological problems, "from the inside." What is it like to be that obsessed with a person? The character of Frederick tells it all in a very procedural sort of way; it isn't about what he's doing, so much as it is about how. Is that really what it seems like? Does a crazy person know that he's crazy? Can he?

Whatever it is like, I suppose (and hope!) that I'll never really know. It's as though every time I start to wonder if I'm insane, there's a reminder showing me what real insane is about. Not that my mind doesn't have it's own little quirks; a good portion of my mental life is spent in what Josh and I call "the Meta." For me, it's a sort of mental retreat; a part of my mind watches the rest of itself work, analyzing trains of thought, emotions, reactions, etc. Usually, there's a normative aspect as well--I tend to judge myself against some ideal that is unattainable by definition (what would be the point of a reachable ideal?). Anyway, I'm going to derail this before I start analyzing it too much (already too late).

Still, I guess all of this is hopefully useful, as I have been fortunate enough to land a role in another Rough Magic show, Executive Function: or a story about a dog named Rudolph which will be opening January 31, 2008.

So, with that, here's wishing you all a merry Christmas (why is the "merry" usually capitalized, anyway?), a happy Hanukkah, a great winter festival, a nice Tuesday...whatever you want, it's all the same to me, since all I actually care about is beaming out some peace and love.

book-stravaganza

2007-10-08T00:11:00.000-05:00

Oops...skipped September. Oh well.

Lately, I've been reading a fair bit--compared to the last few months, at least. This is probably directly due to not being in any plays since Gilgamesh got done back in mid-August. Here is a list of the books, in the order I finished them (all links go to Barnes & Noble, not Amazon--spread the love, people):

Trinity, by Leon Uris. It's historical fiction, and tells some of the history of Ireland, from the mid-19th century up through just before the Easter Rising in 1916. The main effect it had on me (other than sheer knowledge increase) was that it let me draw some interesting parallels between the portrayals of England's horribly corrupt, profit-seeking government and many of the media portrayals of our current political system.

Programming the Universe, by Seth Lloyd. Lloyd is a pioneer in quantum computing, and the book basically offers up the idea that the universe is just a big quantum computer. It's not great literature; it's an "educated populace" book written by a scientific expert. The parts where I felt his writing was the clearest and most expressive were the slightly deeper explanations of some of the techniques and phenomena; the general audience sections were a little weak, but overall it at least got me intrigued by the concept of the "universe as information processor" idea, but more on that later...

The Emperor's Handbook, a translation of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations by C. Scot Hicks and David V. Hicks. This was awesome. It had very accessible, updated language for what I imagine could easily be a rather uninspiring slog through a bunch of maxims and proverbs. As it was, Aurelius' philosophy is pretty sweet, focusing on personal responsibility and a need to realize that the opinions and positions of the people around you don't have any credence as to your own life unless you allow them to do so. So, develop and trust your own intuitions and judgments and let those be your guides, filtering out any of the emotional, irrational bullshit that comes your way--be it external or internal. I think most people should probably read this, and hopefully internalize it a bit.

Decoding the Universe, by Charles Seife. Again, this one is about information science, in that the underlying workings of the universe are based on information--all of them. Seife gives a quick (and from what I can tell, pretty thorough) run-through of the various theories about relativity, quantum mechanics, and information which was actually really easy for me to follow and helped to clarify some of the things I hadn't previously understood intuitively(-ish...this is quantum physics, after all). Anyway, he's a journalist by trade, so he wrote good little non-fiction narrative tying everything together, going pretty smoothly from the history of thermodynamics to the pioneering theories out on the edge of science that are trying to explain the "how"s and "why"s of things like entanglement (such as the "many worlds interpretation" of quantum decoherence). It really got me thinking about these things, and sort of makes me want to go back to school for math and high-energy physics.

Anyway, that's it for book review time. Enjoy!

pandora's box

2007-08-15T15:19:00.000-05:00

So, I haven't posted in a month. Here's what's happening:

I'm in yet another play--"The Epic of Gilgamesh, as Told by Mr. George Smith, Associate Curator of the British Museum (Deceased)". It's at The Loft at The Mill, and is being put on by Rough Magic.

I've been doing C++ at work lately, working with MSCOM and XPCOM (Mozilla's variety) in an attempt to get better Internet Explorer functionality into SEMCAT. It's kinda fun, but kinda the most horrible thing I've ever had to do (more on this later, probably).

I have fearsome whiskers (as a result of the first item).

I have consumed a great deal of alcohol lately, which means the number of stupid things I've done or said socially has increased. I apologize if that's affected you personally.

I started using Pandora, which is actually really sweet. So far, their little music genome thing has determined I like music with folk roots, subtle use of vocal harmony, acoustic sonority, prominent percussion, acoustic rhythm guitars, and solo strings (among other things). That's probably because I started with Gaelic Storm.

Last night, I learned how to do some rudimentary origami using dollar bills and quarters, which I intend to use to flirt with girls in bars.

Anyway, I'm done posting now.

no such thing

2007-07-15T22:13:00.000-05:00

So, for a long time, one of my deepest metaphysical assumptions was basically the idea that there are individual things (particulars) that have certain characteristics and aspects (properties) attached to them. Add on to that that I'm a materialist, in that I think there's really only one kind of stuff (physical, as opposed to mental or spiritual).

Basically, what it boils down to is that I held that the standard model of physics has it right; there are certain root particles that have mass and volume and those particles make up the universe.

It also plays into my religious beliefs. Generally, I hold that there has only ever been and will only ever be one "miracle" (miraculous happenings being those produced by a supernatural entity in defiance of physical laws) and that "miracle" is the fact that there is a universe at all. There's stuff--it's a miracle!

But I was recently describing a book I'm reading to a friend (it's kind of about quantum computing and information theory) and I made the comment that, in one way of thinking, there is no such thing as stuff. And it made sense. And it shifted my world-view in a relatively big way.

It's no big surprise, I'm sure, especially to those who actually know what quantum physics is really about. The line between matter and energy, between force and object, has always been a tenuous one. It's just easy to think of and describe certain actions as the result of objects sometimes, but in reality the "mass" is only a measurement of the effect of one force on another, and the same could be said about volume. For a portion of space to be "taken up" is simply for some irresistible force to prevent any other force from acting upon the space cordoned off by it. I mean, seriously...an electron is not like a baseball. If you cut it "in half", there's not some kind of stuff inside, is there? Can we really maintain that kind of outlook all the way down into the infinitesimal depths of physics?

And if what we think of as objects are really just complex interactions of energy according to the rules that govern physical forces, then where are the particulars? Where is the substratum that binds the properties to it, when all that exist are the rules and equations? There can be no strata; there can be no bare particulars.

So, now, I guess, I no longer buy into that school of substance theory, and by rejecting it I in essence reject my materialism as well. There are only the rules and the forces they govern. It doesn't matter what kind of stuff there is; there is no such thing as stuff!

I don't mind the following consequence, but this has now left me without an "-ism" in this regard. I'm no longer what I would call a materialist, but I'm not so sure I qualify as an idealist either (one who holds that only mental/spiritual things exist). It's as though I'm rejecting the concept of material things and holding on the the idea of material interactions.

I'll have to do more research, I guess; there has to be some substance theorists out there who hold forth that all that can truly be said to exist is causal interaction, right?

Also, there two additional things, now that the philosophy is over:

It's stormy right now, and watching the lightning from a 10th story window with an unobstructed view to the west is cool.

"He could sell Rogaine (R) to a Wookie"

setting (up) the stage

2007-06-20T01:33:00.000-05:00

So, lately, I've been drinking the metaphorical Kool-Aid when it comes to Lincoln theater (in fact, I've already signed up for my next play, which will be in August). But it's gotten worse. I've been talking to some of the various artistic directors and actors in town, and the collective feels that Lincoln needs a better theater aggregator, or at the very least, a convenient, easy-to-use-and-remember calendar. Maybe a website or something ('cause the Internets are neat).

Of course, being the zealous little arts supporter that I am, I volunteered, in a sense. So, now there's Lincoln Live Performances.

It's just a stub right now; I'm developing it in Ruby on Rails on my machine at home (conveniently source controlled by the SVN server behind my television). Hopefully I'll have something up soon and I can talk some theaters into posting events (turns out I'm pretty well connected in that regard all of a sudden). Then you all, the general Lincoln public, can view them.

And maybe (that's a big maybe) it'll even look nice...

the high life

2007-05-28T12:16:00.000-05:00

So, I've been horrible about blogging lately, so here's one for you all to catch up with, in a handy bulleted list.

I have a new apartment! It's #1003 in CenterStone at 12th and O St. (pictures to follow)
I'm in a play! It's a much less naked play than the last one, since we're doing Love's Labours Lost by ol' William Shakespeare out at the Swan Theatre in Wyuka Cemetary. We open June 7th.
I got a new couch! (Not really ground-shaking news, I know, but I'm excited. Pictures to follow.)

Ok, that's all you get. Now, time for some pictures.

That is my building, from next to the diamond store by the movie theater.

That is my door plate (it's a-door-able! HA!).

My kitchen is better than your mom.

This is the room for living, with Flower Friend enjoying the new couch.

There are lights under the stairs that go from the kitchen up to the living room.

That's the roof terrace. The housewarming party was here.

There are gargoyles...

...and a tree!

And, finally, this one is for Henry. 'Cause he told me to.

Enjoy the bandwidth usage! Bye!

of literal importance

2007-04-06T13:46:00.000-05:00

Something has been bothering me lately, but for whatever reason I couldn't place it until last night.

Let's start with some back-story. Over the last few months--for whatever reason--I've been seeing a lot more articles and things online about the debate between "creationism" and "evolution" (I use the quotes because those terms can be rather vague, and I want to assure you all that I mean them in the vaguest possible sense). You know--the whole "OMG CopurnicuSTUPID and DERPwin were n00bz, God 4EVR"-vs.-"Science FTW, biotches" kinda thing. That debate doesn't bother me; I enjoy participating in it on occasion, even.

The thing that bothers me is that I don't completely understand why it is such a Big Deal.

It's something I've never really understood about the fundamentalist "Bible-as-literal-truth" sort of position; what difference does it make? Does it really have to be six-literal-day creation? Really? Does God's existence or validity require a geocentric cosmology? Is there no possible way for mankind's salvation to be just as necessary and important in a world where human life developed over millenia?

I've never had the importance of this debate fully explained to me. It's not like, say, abortion where the presumed ensoulment of the embryo is what makes it an issue for the religious pro-life types. That I understand; that's the sort of thing I can handle as a basis for a position. But what's the basis for the vehement attack on the whole "modern" cosmology? What moral turpitude is the scientific community committing there?

I have a few speculative notions on what the actual issue is, but they're just that: speculative.

"No supernatural causes means no God": This one I hear a lot, but I don't see how it follows. I think the basic argument is that science seeks naturalistic explanations for everything, but God is a supernatural agent. So, if science succeeds, you just apply Occam's Razor and excise God from the universe. That won't work, though; Occam's Razor only applies to such explanatory principles when they are sufficient for the explanandum, which I doubt will ever be possible, given the ex nihilo and conservation constraints which exist in most dominant scientific theories. So, if you take the approach of "I have a reason to believe in God" and "If creation wasn't a miracle, there's no reason to believe in God" leading to "Creation was a miracle", then I have a perfectly valid scientific argument for you, based on what I consider to be pretty sound empirical evidence: "There's stuff! Holy shit, it's a miracle!"

"No 'Adam and Eve' means no fall, which means no sin": I can almost get behind this one as a theological position. If the point of Christianity, say, is that Christ sacrificed himself to redeem humanity from the sin that was introduced to the universe by the two unique progenitors of the species, then yes--I can see how threatening the "two-unique-progenitor" idea is a problem (why you need sin at all is a different theological question all together). I suppose that attacking the basis for sin would overturn the entire basis for the religion, but I somehow don't think that this is the main crux of the cosmological debate. I think if pressed, most evolutionists would be perfectly willing to let the theists pick two early homo sapiens sapiens or two of whatever proto-humans and say "These two; God put the souls in here". Selective ensoulment doesn't have a whole lot to do with evolution, in my understanding.

"Evolution means that God's original creation wasn't perfect": I'm just throwing this one out there for kicks, because personally I think this is utterly idiotic. I'm a software architect; I design systems. To me, a well-designed system is always better than a kludge-filled hack. Things like fault-tolerance and autonomy are the hallmarks of a well-designed system; the more the programmer has to mess with it during operation, the worse it is. So, if God made the entire universe as a system that works on its own with a minimum of interference, God is awesome. Designing a perfectly-functioning static system--while admirable--isn't particularly impressive. Designing something as complex and dynamic as the universe required by science and having that work perfectly--that's the kind of perfection I want my God to embody.

"Science robs life of its significance.": Again, I think this is rubbish. The significance I find in my life is not tied to being chosen or created by God; it's not the actions and experiences of another being that make my life worthwhile, nor is it my importance relative to the events in the universe. I don't have to live at the center of the universe, and I don't have to have been specifically detailed by some creator. I exist, whether as an ensouled being or as a haphazard collection of elements bound together by chance. I don't see why being designed by God makes me any more or less worthwhile than being the product of evolution.

Anyway, that's just a few ideas I had or arguments I'd read--nothing too comprehensive. I just don't get it; the argument is obviously not about theology, nor is it about empirical science.

What principle says we can't accept both?

party crashing

2007-03-12T15:43:00.000-05:00

Despite my proclivity to occasionally discuss the topic, I really dislike politics.

Or, more specifically, I dislike political parties.

Don't get me wrong; I think the little two-party system we have going on in this country works fine for the most part, especially when the White House and Congress are divided (and thus very little actually gets done). I'm really not a political science type of person, so I don't actually have too much to say about the inner workings of our system. All I really know about is voting, because that's all I really get to do.

When it comes down to voting, I feel like the American public gets a raw deal--not because of the electoral system (I really have no strong feelings there)--but because we don't have enough viable options when it comes to electing a president. There are two main options--the Republican and the Democrat--and a smattering of third-party candidates who would need some sort of direct divine mandate to even be in the consideration. I think that that pretty much sucks; it comes down to two candidates who try as hard as possible to run solely on being the antithesis of each other. Each candidate's position on each of the issues is simply the negation of the other candidate's. So, we're stuck with a "for-or-against" mentality which I feel is incredibly damaging to our leaders' ability to actually lead the country in a meaningful fashion.

In any case, I'm not just going to bitch; I have an idea. It's a pretty simple one, and I haven't really built up a bullet-proof case for it, but here it is: in an election (especially for president), the incumbent (if there is one) should not be allowed to gain his or her party's nomination. The incumbent should run as the incumbent, not as the Democratic or Republican candidate (of course, they can retain their party affiliation; that would be silly to revoke that).

My goal with this is that the party in question would then nominate another candidate for the office as a challenger, bringing the number of viable options up to three (presumably). For instance, let's say that the Democrats decide that Barack Obama is the best candidate for president in 2008, but he doesn't have the necessary experience to win the general election in the current climate and a failed bid would ruin his chances for the future--say, 2012. If they nominate another candidate and that candidate wins, Obama won't even have the chance to run in 2012 because the Democratic support would go to the incumbent (unless he or she does something really, really, really stupid). If the incumbent were off the table, the Dems could nominate him again when he's ready and we'd have three possible candidates.

Anyway, that scenario aside, there's a bunch of positive things I see coming out of this:

More voter options - the people get to select the status quo, the opposite philosophy, or the updated version of the philosophy in power.

Increased perception of accountability - if the people currently in power know that their own party will be putting up an opposing candidate, they might tend to police themselves a bit more and not be quite so cavalier about making decisions.

Increased freedom for dissent - if each party knows that there will be another candidate against the current administration, they may not be quite so scared of going against the policies of those in power

More debate on the issues - if each party is forced to go through the primary process at each election, the issues of the day will debated between the parties as well as with the current administration (no more of the current "I just have to out-run you" kind of thing; we would actually get to debate nuances).

..and there's probably more I could come up with if asked, but for now I'm tired of typing out the list. I would say that it will decrease the advantage the incumbent naturally has, but I'm not sure if it would; sometimes it might split the incumbent's votes, but other times it might split the challenger's votes. I don't know.

In any case, I don't think I've ever heard anyone propose this before, so I figured I should get it time-stamped and out on the Internet, just in case. I'd like to explore it a bit more, too, and so other people need to read it so we can discuss.

Although, discussions are better when they involve beer rather than keyboards...

pleased to nietzsche

2007-02-11T14:25:00.000-06:00

(WARNING: This post is generally philosophical in nature. It promises to be long, rambling, and of questionable interest to anyone)

I just started reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche today. It's the first of his work that I've ever read, and now that I've started to enlighten my perspective a bit, I feel like Nietzsche gets a bad rep--his work is not at all what popular culture has made me expect.

To start with, Nietzsche is associated with nihilism, but nihilism itself is poorly portrayed and misunderstood. It's like in The Big Lebowski--"We are nihilists, Lebowski. We believe in nothing." That's not it; that's totally not the way I think the position should be interpreted. Rather, nihilism is a sort of specific anti-realism; it's a position that there is no objective meaning or great truth to life. That's really all I'm going to say about nihilism for now, since I feel like people have turned it into a rhetorical weapon. It's like something you use to disembowel an opposing view, where you say something like "That view is nihilist. If you accept it, you are rejecting everything, so it must be empty and worthless." I hate that kind of argument, like the Heap Argument or the Slippery Slope. Sure, sometimes it's true, but most of the time it's just a way to discredit an opposing position you can't take on directly.

So, back to Zarathustra. I haven't gotten very far into it, but so far I'm very impressed. I don't really know what the institution calls Nietzsche's philosophy or what kind of "-ist" he is (I don't really care, either; that's why I didn't more actively pursue that Ph.D. in philosophy), but I find his writing strangely compelling. What the title character proclaims appears to be a very direct rejection of the implicit dualism present in most of Western thought--that there is some great, important, ontological chasm between the spirit and the body. The body dies, the spirit lives on; the flesh should be rejected, the soul uplifted. At least early in the book, Nietzsche seems to be ardently arguing that that view is wrong. The soul and the body are not separate, and all that matters is the unified self (Nietzsche 30). (Yes, that's right. I cite my sources in my own blog.)

He also attacks the idea of an afterlife, which is closely related. Worrying about one's position in the hereafter is pointless and ultimately harmful; it's the coward's way out, because it provides a chance for one-shot access to justice, a way "to get to the ultimate with one leap" (Nietzsche 29).

In a way, it echoes a concept we talked about in my Judeo-Christian literature class a couple years ago: the idea of a "doctrine of retribution". The world can be rather unfair a lot of the time, but one of the dominant themes in the Abrahamic religions (specifically Christianity) is that God will make sure it works out in the end; everyone will get what they deserve, in terms of rewards for the virtuous and punishment for the wicked, like so:

[God] will render to every man according to his deeds: To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality--eternal life: but unto them that are contentious, and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness--indignation and wrath. (Romans 2:6-8 KJV)

It's a tough concept to shake; justice is a big deal to the human psyche (that's another entire post in itself). But, at the very least, Nietzsche seems to reject the idea that there are objective, divinely-crafted laws that we need follow--"Behold the believers of all faiths! Whom do they hate most? The man who breaks their tablets of values, the breaker, the lawbreaker--he, however, is the creator." (Nietzsche 18) At this point, I'm actually not sure if that's a direct rejection of the divine or if it's just a rejection of the proscriptions imposed by organized religion, but that'll probably clear itself up as I read further.

Instead, (and I know, I'm kind of going backwards here) Nietzsche seems to hold up those who are passionate about life, whether the good or the bad: "I love him whose soul is deep, even in being wounded, and who may perish through a minor matter [...] I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgets himself, and all things are in him" (Nietzsche 12). That, to me, was the most surprising revelation of all of this; in my previous unenlightened state, I did not expect to find such a rousing endorsement of life in Nietzsche's work--it seems that society thinks of it as a rejection of life, when really he's rejecting the Stoicism that sometimes seems to drive our society.

Anyway, I may just come to find that the book carries on to destroy that very position. Either way, I'm very glad I picked this up; it's nice to get back into something deeper than JavaScript occasionally.

Nietzsche, F. (2005) Thus Spoke Zarathustra. C. Martin, trans. Barnes and Noble Classics: NY

full dis-clothes-ure

2007-01-22T12:45:00.000-06:00

Well, I managed to get myself into that play I auditioned for last week. So, when March exposes it's lovely, birthday-laden self on the calendar, I'll be performing in The Full Monty at the Lincoln Community Playhouse.

It might be a little nuts of me; the show will be quite a bit different from what I've done in the past. Somehow, my high school one-acts and the few musicals I've been in since haven't exactly required the balls that one might need for this show. Regardless, I'm looking forward to it. It'll give me something somewhat productive to do in the evenings (even if that is just making an ass of myself), and will hopefully provide me some new blood for my social circle.

In any case, I encourage people to come see it, if only to get some butts in the seats, but I will warn you in case you didn't know--I'm gonna be naked. So add that into your considerations.

documen-tedious

2007-01-16T15:08:00.000-06:00

We use a wiki for our project management and documentation at work; it fills the role fairly well, and is in principle pretty agile and can be easily changed. In principle.

In practice, editing the wiki is perhaps the most tedious documentation work I've ever done. It isn't the sort of download-and-fill-out-the-template documentation that was so prevalent back in the JDE days--no, this is a continuous, constantly impending job of having to go through the free-form wiki, wrangle it into some sort of organized form, and update the appropriate pages, which may or may not still be linked in the right way. The wiki we're using (Trac) doesn't allow for spaces in the names, so page names aren't exactly English, which makes it harder to link the pages together in the ways I would like; it interrupts my flow to have to redirect and name the links with the built-in wiki formatting rules.

All in all, I'm not too pleased with it. As important as I think documentation is, it should be like an extension of the project, not an entirely new project all its own. Developers are already basically trained to always put in detailed log messages in their commits (at least, we are around here), so why can't the documentation be like that? Granted, we've already got some sort of bastardized Javadoc going on (which doesn't work well; our JavaScript is formatted differently than the generator expects) but that doesn't (and as far as I'm concerned shouldn't) explain the logic, the business rules, the connections to other components, etc. The Javadoc is for the API--what goes in, what comes out, which functions the object has--but not the purpose in the greater project. That's the sort of thing that should be first determined in the design, documented as such, and then updated with implementation-specific comments that change as the implementing class changes.

So, here's my idea for a solution:

The documentation should stored in a wiki, which should be filled out with the initial design descriptions.
The pages of the design wiki (through macros or something) could be linked to files/classes in the repository which represent the implementation of that design element, which will have their API reference generated directly from comments in the code (Javadoc, or something)
The wiki could then be updated by a script/macro that reads markup entered by the developers as part of their commit logs any time a change is made that effects part of the documentation.

It's that last point that I think is lacking in the tech world right now; I think that could be a great open-source project, as well. It should be fairly straight forward, depending on what interfaces exist with the wiki software, and some extension of XML could be defined as the markup for the logs. The programmer could either enter the markup manually, or it should be fairly simple to write a little GUI that would generate it for him or her. Conceivably, it could even download the appropriate wiki page, render it, and allow for editing right in the commit window.

In any case, I wish I had something like that; it would improve our documentation and (as far as I can guess) would not slow us down much in development. Plus, with its similarity to the commit logs, it would be easy to accomplish the required social engineering to get everyone to actually document their changes. I don't really have the time to develop it right now, but maybe someday...

irregular expressions

2007-01-15T10:36:00.000-06:00

Sometimes I'm jealous of people who engage in the more "standard" arts as hobbies or professions--things like painting, photography, woodworking, writing, etc. Or, at least, "jealous" is the best way I can describe it; really, it's more a feeling of sadness directed at an unfortunate state of the world rather than at any person or field.

I'll try to explain; it's not that I feel that they possess some sort of faculty that I lack, or that they somehow gain an enjoyment of life that I am unable to attain. Art, in all forms, is a wonderful thing--not just for the observers (for whom it is sometimes not so wonderful; seen Ultraviolet lately?), but for the artist.

For me, art is primarily about creation. The artist takes some sort of raw material from the world--be it paint and canvas, steel and brick, or even just a subtle trick of light on a city street--mixes it with a portion of him- or herself, and delivers the finished product in all it's novel glory to the world (or anyway, that's how I think of it when I see something that stirs me).

Yet, this sort of creation is not limited to the "Arts". Sometimes, I feel the same feeling looking at an intricately, complicatedly tangled system of on-ramps and freeway exits as I do when I hear the Rohan theme in The Two Towers. Some civil engineer (or some few) designed that, built it, took the concrete and steel and added a dash of human will to produce something entirely new in the universe. It's the same with my source code, or an elegant math proof, or a novel argument for some philosophical concept.

Therein lies my jealousy, if that's what you can call it; what is it about the world (or just our society, or whatever) that robs practical things of their aesthetic value? Why is it so admirable to be able to design a living room, but not a word processor? Why are there television shows dedicated to competitions in fashion design, but not in architecture? Why America's Next Top Model, but no America's Next Top Modeler?

Anyway, that's my rant for the day. Too much Fountainhead, I guess.

it beats a dead horse...

2007-01-12T16:17:00.000-06:00

Despite my previous enthusiasm, it turns out I will not be going to Ireland this year.

Instead, Allied Strategy (my current employer, for those few of you don't know) made me an offer that I was unable to turn down. So I guess I'm going to be staying in Lincoln for a while (at least another year) and doing everything in my power to help the company make lots and lots of money.

Anyway, that's a happy development. I can just put off my international travel plans by one year, so no big deal.

And I'm auditioning for a play. Just thought you should know.

ingenui-tea

2006-12-25T23:21:00.000-06:00

So, going home for Christmas netted (among other things) a "new" coffee mug so that I no longer have to get the silly little to-go cups at the Mill every morning. Of course, the translation of "new" in the previous sentence means I stole an electric company mug from my parents' cupboard. It was everything I could have hoped for...except that the little slider on the top was too loose and it would fall to close the hole every time the user attempts to drink.

This, however is a small obstacle. It is easily solved with glue, or maybe some other adhesive.

Like nails.

(from the top of the lid)

(from the bottom)

I do realize it's just a coffee mug. I can get another one (probably even steal a different one from home), but this one happened to meet all of my criteria, with the exception of the lid not working. But now the lid works, so now it's perfect.

Mostly, though, I'm bored and haven't posted in a while, so I thought I should reward you all with pictures. Text can be fairly monotonous.

it's the little things

2006-12-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

Just now, I discovered the remains of a Vincenzo's pizza I had left in the fridge at work on Friday.

It immediately made my life immeasurably better.

picture perplexing

2006-11-27T21:39:00.000-06:00

An odd thing happened to me on the way home from work.

I was walking along on 8th St. at around 6:00 pm (so it was getting dark), and had just walked under the O St. overpass (as I do every day on the way home from work). It had been cold in the morning, so I was wearing my nice, full-length wool topcoat and my God scarf (that's another story), but at the time it wasn't all that chilly so I had the coat unbuttoned and the scarf loosely draped across my neck. The coat was held together a bit by the strap of my messenger bag, slung from my right shoulder diagonally across my body. So far, all this is rather mundane, but you can judge the relevance as you read on.

As I was walking down the sidewalk past Jack's Bar and Grill, I noticed a girl (late teens to mid-20s, it appeared) walking down the same sidewalk in the opposite direction, about half a block ahead of me. The girl reached into her purse, pulled out a digital camera, flipped it open, pointed it directly at me, and snapped a flash photo. She then calmly closed the camera, put it back in her purse, and continued on. I made eye contact as we passed on the sidewalk, but only got the sort of polite, terse little smile that people give to random people they make eye contact with on the sidewalk.

Now, I have no idea what this girl was doing. The only thing I can think is that there was either something going on directly behind me of which I was unaware, or that the situation, framed by overpass, perhaps some smoking exhaust, etc. was just a sort of generically photogenic scene. I don't know.

But it was a little surreal.

on honor

2006-11-25T01:24:00.000-06:00

For those of you who don't know, I went ahead and got the tattoo described in the earlier post. It's now permanently inscribed on my right forearm, from near the elbow to about halfway up the wrist. So that happened.

Subsequently, I've had a few people ask me why "honor" is so important, why that was worth getting a tattoo about. Well, that's a tough question. About the best I can say is that being an honorable man is the ideal that I strive more than any other. I'm not too concerned about wealth or knowledge or righteousness or even truth. For me, the main ideal is honor.

Culturally, that word is a little loose, so here's the best description I could come up with; for a man to act with honor is for him to do all of the things he is responsible for and only the things he has a right to do. Not is right to do, mind you, but things he has a right to do. Some things that happen are not right--they are not just or moral or good--but they are things that a man may not have the right to prevent. It's a rough concept, and not one for which I have explicit rules. But that's the ideal for which I strive. I can't say I fulfill it always; I do fail, just like everyone else.

But that's what's tattooed on my arm. Honor. Right where I can see it, right where I can read it. For the rest of my life.

I hope that's enough explanation to suit you all.

branding

2006-11-10T23:56:00.000-06:00

So, I'm a crazy person. Right, now on to business.

For some reason, I was struck tonight with an intense, irrational desire to get drunk and get a tattoo. I don't know why. Regardless, whenever the idea of a tattoo comes up, I generally lean toward getting something done in Ogham, which is an ancient Celtic script usually found carved onto standing monoliths and things. It's pretty simple stuff; lines of various lengths carved either orthogonal or oblique to some center stroke. In any case, I think it usually looks neat.

So, with that settled, I had to decide on a word. I picked the Irish word for "honor"/"respect" (onóir, pretty much pronounced the same), just because I felt like it. So, I looked that up in Ogham and drew up what it would look like (that's the picture posted below, read from bottom-to-top).

On basically a whim, I thought that would be nice on the inside of my right forearm (with the bottom near my elbow, up to the wrist), so I drew it on with magic marker to test it out for a bit. I could get used to it, especially if it was done by someone with any talent (i.e., not drawn by me with my left hand on my right arm).

Of course, I couldn't just leave it at that, so I did more research. Apparently, each letter in the Ogham alphabet was associated with a tree sacred to the druids (so sayeth the Internet) and each tree was associated with some sort of mystical/divinatory properties. So, here's a brief description.

gorse/furze (o) - A yellow, flowering shrub. Signifies finding that which is sought, abundant knowledge and blessings, and invokes a reminder to share of this bounty.
ash (n) - The tree, obviously. Associated with interconnectedness and a recognition that one's problems and questions are not his alone. Urges one to recognize the effects of his actions and to balance himself with the world.
gorse/furze (ó) - I just want to spell out the whole word.
yew (i) - An evergreen tree with poisonous berries, used to make bows and things. Heralds a coming change, or perhaps the recognition that nothing lasts forever and one should let go of the past.
elder (r) - A hearty, fast-growing shrub. Represents renewal and the cyclical nature of life, with change bringing newfound creativity.

Anyway, that's been my night.

aer lingus, erlang-us

2006-10-30T21:57:00.000-06:00

First off, an update on the Ireland thing; I sent off an email to the course director at Trinity. Still no response, but hey...it's only been a couple of days (and despite the title of the post, it'll be a while before I'm buying plane tickets; it's only there for cleverness).

Secondly, in preparation for potentially becoming a distributed computed grad student, I've been learning Erlang. For those of you who don't care about clicking the link, Erlang is a language for distributed systems that has primitive support for concurrency and error recovery while still maintaining the benefits of a high-level, functional language. So far, I like it. It's been fun to learn a new syntax and I like the thought of something distributed (I mean, seriously; think about all the unused cycles in my apartment!). I'm planning on eventually writing some sort of digital ant farm; for now, I'm working on a simple hill-climber that will grow into a swarm algorithm of some sort.

Also, I've been on a wine kick lately; I might be posting about that from time to time in the near future.

the pipes, the pipes are calling

2006-10-11T10:56:00.000-05:00

For those of you who may not already know, I have a plan. I tell the Internet my plan for two reasons: (1) I'm rather excited about the plan, and (2) if more people know about it, there's more pressure for me to follow through.

So, anyway, here's the plan: I'm going to apply for a master's degree in computer science at Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland, if that wasn't immediately obvious).

For those of you who know me only marginally or through certain circles, that may be a bit of a surprise; a foreign M. Sc. in networks and distributed systems is a far cry from a domestic Ph. D. in philosophy. When it comes right down to it, though, computer science is what I do. And if I can do it in Ireland, I am in like Friends was in the mid-to-late 90s.

Although I haven't worked out all the details, here's what I know about the plan so far:

My background in JDE seems to match well with the program (or should I say, programme), so I think my application would be well received,
Provided I get in, the course would last me from October 2007-September 2008 (or 2008/2009, pending discussions on fellowships),
I would end up with a M. Sc. in computer science from Trinity, and
It's in Ireland.

Overall, I see no real problems with this plan, so I'm going to do it. I'll give more details as I get them.

potent potables

2006-10-05T15:00:00.000-05:00

Apparently, one shouldn't leave containers of perishable liquid sitting around for multiple months without at least checking on them once in a while. I have two testimonials.

One: A jug of milk was left half-full in the office fridge for approximately 3 months. The milk had been slightly sour when purchased (thanks, SunMart!) and, of course, got progressively worse. However, no one was ever planning on drinking it, and no one really used the fridge for much, so it wasn't an issue...

...until the pressure building inside caused the bottom of the jug to rupture and leak mostly-curdled milk all over the inside of the fridge and onto the floor outside it (the office smelled like puke last Friday).

Two: My roommate purchased a bottle of mead from James Arthur Vineyards about six months ago (you'll have to correct me if that's wrong, Jesse) and placed in the wine rack, where it sat quite contentedly...

...until Tuesday, when some combination of a bad cork, oxygen in the bottle, and overactive yeast managed to spontaneously fire the cork across the living room. The bottle happily gurgled half of its contents onto the futon before we recovered enough from the shock to tip it upright (the futon mat still somewhat smells like vinegar).

here there be dragons

2006-09-14T11:06:00.000-05:00

Sometimes, I am far dorkier than I would usually care to admit (in this instance, "sometimes" actually means every hour of the day).

As an example, consider one of the (admittedly many) allegorical devices I use every day at work: dragons. I grew up with a rather fantasy-based imagination--King Arthur, Tolkien, plastic swords, Dragon Warrior on the NES, the Dragonlance series, etc.--so I suppose it's really no wonder that I've drawn that cognitive set with me to the present day, but the thing that gets me about it is that I've made it work so well (at least, as far as I'm concerned).

So, here's how the dragons work for me now. In the current setting, "dragons" refer to considerations or parts of the software that we have acknowledged but not yet dealt with. It can apply to both business risks (say, the terms of an NDA we haven't written yet) or parts of the design that have yet to be implemented (such as a stub function within a larger sequence). I even made a definition in my little task-list plugin in my IDE for "//HTBD" so I can denote places in the code that I have to come back to and finish.

In general, the reference comes from the practice of ancient cartographers drawing serpents or other mythological creatures at the edges of the known world (the title phrase of this post loosely comes from the Lenox Globe, ca. 1503). Those parts of the system that have yet to be defined are hence "off the edge of the map" and are thus "dragons".

In any case, it keeps me entertained at work. I always used to daydream about slaying dragons, and now I get to.

killing me sweetly

2006-09-13T11:37:00.000-05:00

I think my job is going to kill me.

Not because of the stress, not because of the potentially long hours, but because of the adult-onset diabetes.

Granted, programming isn't the healthiest job in the world anyway; I stare at a computer monitor all day (eyes), type into a keyboard for hours (wrists), and sit at a desk doing very little in the way of exercise (heart). But what takes the cake in this case (ha!) is the sugar.

The office fridge is stocked with Pepsi, cream soda, etc. We've even made a little pop-can tetrahedron, which is currently starting into its eighth triangular layer; right now it's at 86 cans. Figuring most of those are Pepsi and only a couple are diet, I'd say we can look at an average of around 140 calories and about 38 grams of sugar. All told, that brings us close to 12,000 calories in the stack and about 3,200 grams of sugar consumed. Granted, it's not all me and it's taken us a few months, but still...that's a lot of high fructose corn syrup.

Maybe we should switch to diet.

fiddle me this

2006-09-05T11:58:00.000-05:00

For future reference, all else being equal, girls who play the violin are far more attractive that those who do not.

Especially if they're Irish.

backtalk

2006-09-01T14:00:00.000-05:00

Something has really been annoying me lately, and even though no one seems to want to provide me with any feedback on this blog of mine, I figure I'll open it up to the community for further discussion.

First, here's an example situation: last night about seven o'clock, I was sitting around watching football and trying to figure out what to do with my night. In the process of doing this, I talked
back and forth with two friends about the prospect of going downtown. The first exchange ended around 7:30, and I was told "I'll call you when I'm ready". The second exchange ended around 8:30 with "I'll give you a call back when we leave here, which should be in just a little bit". Having supposedly settled that I was going to be going downtown in a while, I threw on a belt, shaved, etc. and finished up watching the college football, expecting to get a couple of phone calls when the time came. Around 10:00, all the games on TV were over, so I wandered over to the computer to check the postgame reports on the other ones, still patiently waiting for the phone to ring. About 11:00, I started getting a little impatient and decided to call my people to see what was up. No answer. No return phone call. No contact of any sort. I heard through the grapevine that both actually did end up downtown, and supposedly had a great time.

Now, I don't know what the rest of the world thinks about this, but that pisses me off. And I feel like I'm completely justified.

If I'm not justified in that sort of situation, then where's the disconnect? Did I miss the lesson on interpersonal interaction that gives the rules on when you call someone back and when you don't? Is there some unwritten law that forbids giving someone a call if you decide to cancel pending plans? Have the common-courtesy police decided that there's no need to apologize for basically ditching someone?

I can understand if some plans just sort of fall through. If the situation is like "Hey, I'm going downtown too--maybe I'll call you when we get down there", then I don't really expect a call. When the voice mail says "Hey, just thought I'd see what you're up to--give me a call", there's no real responsibility to return that. I can understand if something comes up and you just can't answer the phone, or if you're too busy at the moment to respond immediately. There are valid reasons out there to miss a call or be late on returning one. But if the plan is specifically to go out with someone and it's down to the "call me to tell me where we're meeting" phase, that's a call you need to make. When it's "Hey, I need to buy tickets tomorrow. Call me back and tell me whether you're coming or not", that's a call you need to make.

I'm not saying that people should always follow through with social plans and should never cancel. That's fine. But is a phone call to the cancelee to tell them you're calling it off too much to ask?

anthro-promiscuous

2006-08-30T23:00:00.000-05:00

Here's one of the things that I consider among my top idiosyncracies: I tend to personify inanimate objects a lot.

It's usually pretty innocuous, and I doubt most people realize how much I do it, but it happens with everything. If I need some unnamed object near another person, I usually ask for it by saying, "Hey, hand me that guy" or "Pass me one of the little blue dudes". It's not a guy; they're not dudes. They're lumps of lifeless material.

It happens even more frequently when I'm working; I've developed this intensely anthropomorphic ontology for my system, complete with a God-like registry object, "angels" and "devils" controlling the various models objects, etc. It's built right in; the objects don't call other functions, they "ask" for the standard controller and "tell" each other about the various events that happen in regards to the user. But there's really no asking or telling, there's only functional execution. The intelligence inherent in the system is mine, not that of the "agents" I have constructed. They only exist for metaphorical purposes.

And yet, as odd as that sometimes seems to me, it appears to be commonplace throughout human thought. Personification of nature or emotion happens frequently in literature or poetry, pagan or tribal religions use the anger or sadness of the spirits inhabiting all things as a rhetorical tool all the time. In philosophy, Aristotle's physics focused on the tendencies of each kind of element to "seek" its sphere (fire goes up, earth down, etc.). Even in more modern, "scientific" disciplines like software, we still put that to use all the time; functions are easily understood as being the actions that the objects undertake upon each other. It simplifies the description because we can understand it; people know what it's like to be people, so if non-human concepts can be described by personification, so much the better.

I guess it's not so strange that I apply my understanding of humanity to these sorts of things. It just strikes me as odd that people tend to glaze over such an incongrous heuristic.

earbads

2006-08-29T10:14:00.000-05:00

I've never really been much of one to listen to music constantly, but recently I bought an MP3 player and I've learned something.

The little earbuds that come free with audio equipment are pretty uncomfortable.

Anyway, just an observation.

you can't go home

2006-08-28T22:13:00.000-05:00

I went back to my hometown this weekend for their centennial celebration. Yes, that's right--Polk, NE turns 100 this year.

For those of you who are from small towns (especially if they happen to be in the general vicinity of central Nebraska) might have an idea of how the event went down. First, there was a tiny little parade down Main Street (all two blocks of it), then beans and ice cream in the park (at the end of Main Street) and a vintage car show at the elementary school (on the other side of the park). In the evening, the part of Main Street outside the town bar was closed off and there was a beer garden and street dance with some little cover band out of Grand Island (I don't remember the name). I went for the early afternoon and wandered around with my family, then hit the beer garden and hoped for some people I knew.

Luckily enough (I guess), there was a pretty good showing of the younger crowd; only a couple from my class directly, but a few from the classes around me. Now, in high school, I never really liked the people in the classes around me. Sadly--but not too surprisingly--few of them seemed to have changed much.

I can't really believe that, though; I feel like I've changed a great deal in the last five years, and any of the classmates I kept in touch with have as well. I think what happens in those cases is that going back to Polk also means going back to who you were then. People fell back into their old roles, cracked the same sorts of jokes with their old buddies; if we hadn't done that, it would have been awkward. None of us really knew each other any more, we only knew the old versions and tried our best to apply them to these otherwise new people (hell, almost none of my high school buddies had ever seen me drink before). It was kind of depressing; here we all are, back from five years of adult life, and we were trying to bring back something that most of us had easily given up on graduation day.

Still, it wasn't all depressing. After the beer garden closed, we took off for the pasture surrounding a buddy's pond with some Busch Light for a good old-fashioned bonfire. I spent most of the night avoiding the other guests and staring at the sky (Lincoln's got nothing for stars, let me assure you) but after the bulk of the party left, it was down to myself and two of the guys with whom I graduated. We stood around talking about life and watching the bonfire go out until the sun came up and we figured it was probably time to go home.

I always felt constrained in Polk; for that matter, I feel a bit constrained in Lincoln. I think it's very unlikely that I'll even go back for my 10-year reunion. So, I think Saturday night might be my last pasture party, my last Busch Light bonfire; I never really enjoyed them anyway.

But I can't help but be a little sad.

making pretty pictures

2006-08-22T10:44:00.000-05:00

I love Inkscape. If I could get a job doing nothing but making diagrams in Inkscape, I'd probably take it. Here's an exported PNG to give you an (inadequate) example (text blurred to protect the innocent):

Trust me, it looks much better in its full, scalable vector glory.

applied metaphysics

2006-08-21T22:23:00.000-05:00

There's something I want to set the record straight on. I met a fair number of people this weekend, and in most cases meeting new folks follows a conversation pattern something like this:

Person: "So, do you go to school?"
Me: "I graduated in May."
Person: "Oh, really? What'd you study?"
Me: "I got my B.A. in philosophy."
Person: "Oooo...so what are doing with that now?"
Me: "Actually, I'm a software architect. I wrote tools for insurance agents."
Person: "Wow! Talk about diverse interests..."

Now, I still do not quite understand why our society is so enamored with (a) the idea that everyone should immediately get a job in exactly the major they got in college and (b) the thought that any degree in the humanities is like professional suicide, but those are not the points I want to clear up here. The point I want to clear up is that philosophy and computer science are not so dissimilar after all. Some of you may already have heard this from me before, but here it is for the world to read so I can stop having to tell it to everyone (or at least, all 2-3 people who read my blog).

Everyone who knows anything about computer science understands that it is fundamentally based on the basic rules of bivalent logic: true and false, 1 and 0, on and off, "and" and "or", if-then. Logic is based in philosophy; it's still one of the focus disciplines within the greater subject. In that regard, computer science and philosophy are linked, but, again, that's not the connection I am after right now.

What I focus on is a different kind of connection that exists between software engineering on one hand and metaphysics on the other. Since I assume most of my readership comes from the software side of this, we'll start with metaphysics--metaphysics is, briefly, the study of things in general. Questions about what sorts of things exist (i.e., physical things or mental things, collections of general properties or individual particular objects) and how they can relate to each other (e.g., causal relationships) are questions that fall under the purview of metaphysics. In essence, it is the most abstract of all branches of philosophy, because a metaphysical truth must hold for everything--tables, chairs, the number '2', cats, dogs, trees, all points exactly 4 light years from Venus, beer, people, last Wednesday, next October, even God himself (depending on who you side with). That's metaphysics.

Now, then--software engineering. The subject of this one is more intuitively clear; a software engineer is responsible for the design of whatever system he or she is working on, from determining the class structure, process flow, and component interaction (whatever is necessary) to choosing an implementation. It's a broad subject, too, but for now let's just focus on the part that I enjoy the most, which is the design work.

So, we have two subjects--metaphysics, which focuses on the sorts of things and the kinds or interactions which do/can exist in our universe; and software engineering, which focuses on developing the design for the components and activity of some program or another. Hopefully by now you can see the connection I'm trying to evoke; metaphysics is philosophy's way of reverse engineering the design of the actual universe, whereas software engineering is the computer scientist's way of constructing his own little microcosm.

I've heard it said that technology is applied science; in much the same way, I see software engineering as applied metaphysics.

I had a friend berate me once for choosing philosophy as a major; she accused me of wanting to "be God". Well, I'll admit--there is some merit to her accusation. But I have no desire to actually design the universe; I want to understand it, yes, but I most certainly do not want to be in charge. After all, I'm a software architect. I get to play God every day, to sit at the helm of my own little personal universe and direct its ontology. I get to determine which concepts are acceptable and which are not, which causal relationships to allow and which to forbid. I determine the laws of nature and I determine the essential properties of the objects within my personal metaphysical sandbox, and it's hard sometimes. It's hard to design a system even as small as the one I work on, so I can't even imagine trying to wrap my brain around something so complex, so stable, and so vastly intricate as the universe.

So, I'll just stick to my software. I'm not quite qualified for Infinity.

code aesthetics

2006-08-18T17:27:00.000-05:00

Today at work I was sitting in front of JEdit (the IDE of choice for the current project) and for some reason I found it very hard to actually code the design I had been working on. Not because it was hard, not because I was unmotivated to work, but because I was overcome with a powerful feeling that the code would be ugly. It simply repulsed me. I did not want to write it.

I don't really know what set me off; usually I find my code to be quite beautiful. I generally carefully set up my development environment to gain the maximum distinction between categorically similar portions of the code (such as the standard text, the comments, and the string literals, the digits and the operators, etc.) while still maintaining a comfortable level of contrast between the text and the background color (pure white on pure black hurts). This practice has generally led me to what I consider to be a very beautiful display when combined with my general style practices, to which I adhere quite religiously (specifically, K&R style for the braces with 4-space tabs and a fair bit of commenting).

Today, though, I was sickened. I don't know why.

In any case, I did have a lot of code to write so I had to move on. I decided that the best way to move forward was to switch my color scheme in an attempt to dissuade my disillusionment. It seems to have worked fairly well.

in the beginning

2006-08-16T14:09:00.000-05:00

There sometimes comes a day when boredom and peer pressure together contrive to overwhelm a man's misgivings and force him to do something he would not have otherwise done. Thus, I have decided to start blogging again, mostly so I have something that seems at least creative (if not productive) to do in the evenings. I warn you now, however--it will most likely be boring and infrequently updated. That being said, read on, should you so desire.

This entry is mostly introductory, so I suppose I'll cover what I plan to put up here. In general, my life is rather boring, so I don't imagine the Internet needs any descriptions of that (plus, I'm rather uncertain I can come up with anything worth posting when considering my day-to-day activities). As such, I'm planning on posting more of the things I observe in the world and what I think about those things (after all, this blog is for you more than for me; I already know what I think about). So, anyway, if that sounds intriguing, check back later. I'll probably have some real content up eventually.