Eamonn's Home

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-10T18:12:00.000Z

Overwork? Lack of sleep?

2006-11-01T08:08:00.000Z

It's probably a symptom of something that I got up this morning, in the dark, showered, dressed and was half way to work before Theresa called to tell me that I was wearing my son's shoes. His are at least two or three sizes smaller than mine. I thought my feet felt a little funny...

Baroque Cycle and Change

2006-10-29T18:17:00.000Z

Since I've already marked myself out as a hopeless nerd (see Free Software), I may as well also admit that I love science fiction. I've just finished Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle trilogy. It's not for the faint of heart. Each volume -- Quicksilver, The Confusion and The System of the World -- is about 900 pages and has a cast of characters and scope that make War and Peace look like a one-act play. But it is also a good illustration of what I find so fascinating about Sci-Fi, stripped of the irrelevant and distracting bits. The genre isn't primarily about the future. It's about change.

Unlike most of Stephenson's earlier works, the Cycle is set in the past, during the 17th and early 18th century, when the world was moving from one dominated by religion and aristocracy to one driven by science and economics. The characters include most of the prominent members of the Royal Society (Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke, etc.), Louis XIV of France, William I of Orange and James II of England. The fictional ones include vagabond Jack "Half-Cocked" Shaftoe, Eliza, a former harem slave turned duchess, and a smart but underachieving member of the Royal Society named Daniel Waterhouse. The action moves through India, North and South America, Europe and North Africa. A reviewer for the Telegraph put it best: you don't just read the Baroque Cycle, you move in and raise a family.

Like all good science fiction, the tension in Stephenson's stories comes not from prediction, but from responding to dramatic or catastrophic shifts in perception. That's why Jules Verne or H.G. Wells novels remain good reads, even if little of what they say have or will occur. It's about contemporary humans confronting a new world, one where the old rules no longer apply, and they must adapt.

The Cycle is about a time when almost all modern concepts in science, such as physics, computing and cryptography, first crop up, even if the inventors didn't yet have the resources (i.e., engines) to put all of them into practical use. At the same time, politics was being transformed by the rising power of the "Mobb," the common man, and nations were beginning to grasp the power of currencies and international trade. Battles were still fought with guns and swords, and obviously will continue to be, but economic warfare was already becoming crucial. A smart investor with some cash could bring down a government, then as now. Those several decades were the historical equivalent of a perfect storm.

Half the fun of reading such a novel is to put myself in some of the characters' places and imagine how I would respond, whether I would recognize the changes in time, or know how to take advantage of them. With Stephenson's story, we know what happens next. It took another 200 years before economists understood fully that money is a confidence trick. It isn't based on gold, but on the belief that a nation can generate the wealth to back it up. And we're still grappling with the implications of our understanding of the universe, and our relatively minor role in it.

We're also living in interesting times now: We have all of the world's knowledge at our fingertips. Anyone can write, film or record something and have it instantly read or viewed by a billion people. And, on the negative side, any tin-pot nut case can acquire the know-how to kill thousands. I wonder how long it will take us to fully grasp today's changes?

rly fun

2006-10-23T09:47:00.000+01:00

I sometimes worry that the decision to move to the U.K. was a mistake. I took the kids away from easy access to their grandparents and extended family. But, once in a while, the children have an experience that would be hard to duplicate elsewhere. Right now, my eldest son is on a student exchange in France, living with a family in the south of the country for a week. We worried how he would handle days alone with a strange family, speaking a language he barely understands. Yesterday, I got a text message:

"I went huntin. It was rly fun."

"What were you hunting?" I replied. "And did you kill one?"

"4 pheasants and partridges. I didn't kil. any but they (chris+his dad) got 3 pheasants + 1 partridge."

I'm sure trooping around the French countryside killing birds is improving his French...

Free software

2006-10-22T20:58:00.000+01:00

As I'm considering what I'm going to do with the second half of my life (see previous post), I thought it might be useful to review what I'm interested it. My fascination with free software such as Linux probably marks me most as a nerd. But what I find most fascinating about it isn't the obvious. I'm drawn to the ideas, such as that sharing makes something worth more or that real economic value doesn't have to be derived from scarcity.

Free software is a bit like science. Scientists publish. The data is then ripped apart by other scientists. What holds up to scrutiny becomes the foundation for the next discovery. That process is the way, as Isaac Newton put it, that scientists "stand on the shoulders of giants." Few would argue that science lacks value, or that it would be worth more if kept secret.

Software used to work more like science, back when the commercial value was thought to lay purely with the hardware. Software (in source code form, so that you could see how it worked) was freely distributed and shared. It was when the tide was turning toward closed, commercial software that Richard Stallman, a programmer at MIT, formed the Free Software Foundation. His aim was to create everything you need to use computers -- the operating system, the applications, etc. -- in a free and open way. His genius was to use copyright law to ensure that the software stays free. The FSF's General Public License gives you the right to use the software (for any purpose), share it without anyone, view the source code and modify it. The catch is that you can't remove any of those rights. If you modify the software and distribute it, you have to pass on the same rights. That restriction is enforced by copyright law, which gives the creator of the software the ability to dictate the terms of use. In this case, the terms are the opposite of the usual restrictions ("all rights reserved"), hence the GPL's nickname: copyleft. There are several other free software licenses, but the basic concept is usually the same.

One point of confusion comes from the limitations of the English language. One of the rights isn't that the software should be free, as in no cost. Free software means freedom. You're perfectly entitled to sell your modifications, and people do, but the Internet and its easy copying has led nowadays to most free software developers making their money by selling their skills (e.g., getting a job with a company that uses free software) or by offering technical support (such as Red Hat Inc. or Canonical Ltd.). What's interesting about free software is that the economic incentives, plus "copyleft," ensure that the general level of quality rises. If you're looking to sell your skills, you're going to want to make your work (free for anyone to see) as high quality as possible. If you are selling technical support, you better make your software as trouble-free as possible, to lower your costs. And, in both cases, you're obligated to share your work with everyone else. But what I found most interesting is that much of the work, maybe the majority, is done by people who get no economic benefit whatsoever. They do it because they find the work engaging and they believe in freedom.

Whatever the motivation, the system works, and has generated billions of dollars in market value. Every time you use Google or Amazon, you're using free software. The majority of the Internet is built with it. As thousands of developer tweak, twiddle and fix, that work goes back to the community. Everyone benefits.

As an end user, however, benefiting used to be hard. I remember starting with GNU/Linux, a combination of the Free Software Foundation's applications and a free operating system, back in 1993. Hardware support was limited and it was a real effort to learn. Nowadays, it is so easy it's almost boring. I currently use Ubuntu, one of many "distributions" of GNU/Linux, which handle the work of combining the applications and the operating system into a usable package. A new version is due out this week (Oct. 26). You can try it before installing it by running the software from a CD. Wireless networking can still a be bit tricky, but almost anything else I throw at it (digital cameras, iPods, etc.) is handled with aplomb. Today, you don't even need to use a free operating system to try free software: just try Firefox.

I'm not against commercial software. I use Windows for 10 hours a day. It's fine. But I do believe free software will win out in the end, just as open science won out over alchemy, which was also based on secrecy. What holds back most people from using free software is the subject of another post, but basically it's responsibility. People don't want to take it. Using free software when no one else you know is means taking responsibility for your own computer. People would much rather just let Microsoft (or whoever) handle it. It gives them someone to blame. It's why my children's schools all sign expensive contracts with Microsoft Solution Providers. They don't want the responsibility. I can understand that and feel no compunction to "evangelize."

But personally, 25 years of using computers is enough to demonstrate that commercial companies don't give a fig about me. I'm only valuable to them if I keep on buying. Putting important information in their hands -- such as your photos, important documents and music -- is nuts. I've pumped out a lot of information into proprietary applications that is no longer accessible. I've paid a lot of money just to keep what I have. I'm motivated to take responsibility, and to help our where I can. I report bugs, test new software and helping others when asked. It's the least I can do, and in the meantime I get to watch a revolution unfold.

Goals

2006-10-21T17:26:00.000+01:00

I was reading a blog post the other day by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic. He advocates using what pop-psychologists and self-help gurus call affirmations. He writes down his goals 15 times a day and says it has an almost a magical effect.

I don't believe "affirmations" are anything new. They were probably invented around the same time as stone tools. People used to call it prayer. Repeating something often enough, in a positive way, obviously has an affect. It keeps the goals in the forefront of our mind and alert to opportunities. Adams certainly has a long track record of achieving his.

But Adams's post brought up a troubling thought: I don't have any idea what I would write down as goals. I have wishes -- I want every member of the family to be happy, for example -- but those are mostly out of my hands, more the domain of prayer than affirmations.

So what would I write down, assuming (and this is a big if) I'd have the patience and the self discipline to do it several times a day? On this side of 40, the question has become more difficult. I wanted to be a journalist and I succeeded. I could always be better, of course, but I've definitely achieved that one. Marriage, family, buy a home? Check. Travel and live abroad? Doing that. Most people at this stage just carry on as before. I'd rather have a more definite destination in mind for the second half of my life. It shouldn't just be a 40-year winding down.

Financially, I don't necessarily want to be rich, but I do want the flexibility to trade money for time. I want to be able to work less and spend more of my time with the family, to pursue my interests, to get involved in causes I'm passionate about. At the moment, I spend the great majority of my waking hours on making money, all of which goes right out the door again to house, feed, clothe and entertain a family of seven in one of the most expensive cities in the world. The rest of the time is spent taking care of -- fixing, filling, emptying, watching, listening to or cleaning -- all of that accumulated "stuff" that seems to gather around us like dust bunnies. Life is upside down. The important is crowded out by the mundane.

Of course, it's not really a finance issue. If I were richer, the ratio of my time spent on "taking care of stuff" and on food and shelter would just shift a bit. It's really about priorities -- setting them and sticking to them -- and then I'm back to the problem of goals.

I started out writing this thinking I'll just list some, but I'm realizing now that it isn't that easy. I'm already making choices -- every time I buy more stuff or stay late at the office -- but with no definite plan. I'm just going with the flow, unsure of where it's taking me.

Answering that question is tougher than I thought -- a worthy goal.

Child Prodigies

2006-10-13T20:09:00.000+01:00

I worry too much about my kids. I forget what I was like as a child -- hopeless at school and socially awkward. Yet today, although I'm no Nobel Prize winner, I get by. Ironically, I'm making my living doing precisely what I most struggled with as a student. I learned to write years later than my peers, but ended up employed for the past 20 years doing just that.

One of my favorite writers, Malcolm Gladwell , gave a speech, summarized here, that's really worth reading on the "myth of prodigy." It's a good reminder that I need to worry less if not all my children are at the top of the class. A snippet:

Gladwell cited a mid-1980s study (Genius Revisited) of adults who had attended New York City’s prestigious Hunter College Elementary School, which only admits children with an IQ of 155 or above. Hunter College was founded in the 1920s to be a training ground for the country’s future intellectual elite. Yet the fate of its child-geniuses was, well, “simply okay.” Thirty years down the road, the Hunter alums in the study were all doing pretty well, were reasonably well adjusted and happy, and most had good jobs and many had graduate degrees. But Gladwell was struck by what he called the “disappointed tone of the book”: None of the Hunter alums were superstars or Nobel- or Pulitzer-prize winners; there were no people who were nationally known in their fields. “These were genius kids but they were not genius adults.”

Now look at it the other way:

The other way to look at precocity is of course to work backward — to look at adult geniuses and see what they were like as kids. A number of studies have taken this approach, Gladwell said, and they find a similar pattern. A study of 200 highly accomplished adults found that just 34 percent had been considered in any way precocious as children. He also read a long list of historical geniuses who had been notably undistinguished as children — a list including Copernicus, Rembrandt, Bach, Newton, Beethoven, Kant, and Leonardo Da Vinci (“that famous code-maker”). “None of [them] would have made it into Hunter College,” Gladwell observed.

In fact, being considered a child prodigy can be a handicap, Gladwell says. The one "poster child" for precociousness, Mozart, in fact, isn't. What he did, perhaps via a pushy father, was work his tail off.

Here in the U.K., even more so than in the U.S., the focus is on spotting talent early, and giving up on the rest quickly. You're pegged as university-bound at 11 and football-player material at 7 or 8. Students here have to make drastic choices on their future at 13 or 14, deciding whether to stick with maths and science, or give up on foreign languages. At that age, I'd be pegged as a non-achiever and relegated to stopping after high school (if I even made it that far).

My advice to my kids is to keep your options open, with basic and broad subjects, and don't get pegged. It's hard work, like swimming upstream. The schools want you to decide, or they'll decide for you. I need to send a few of those teachers a copy of Gladwell's speech.

In the meantime, though, all of my kids are more socially adjusted and doing better at school than I ever did. Their struggles are minor, not major. They'll be OK.

Cures for the Common Cold

2006-10-13T14:16:00.000+01:00

I've been bedridden and out of work for a couple of days now with a cold I dragged back from the U.S. I must not be used to the germs there, because this one has floored me more than usual. I think I caught it from my father, who was over it in 12 hours.

With little else to do, I've been thinking about all of the proposed cures. My mother's latest preventative, if not cure, is to take a protein drink a day. Yes, the same stuff bodybuilders drink to "bulk up." My very thin mother needs to bulk up, I don't. My wife Theresa swears by Echinacea, an herbal remedy. I believed it worked if I started taking it just at the beginning of a cold, but it hasn't touched this one as far as I can tell. Vitamin C is one of those cures that only seems to work if you believe it does, same with Zinc. The Wikipedia article on the Cold lists a few more, albeit similarly iffy, cures.

For now, the only cure I've found is to sleep through it.

Family at a Distance

2006-10-12T18:34:00.000+01:00

I was home over the weekend for my sister Dara's birthday and, finally, got a few of the family members on Skype. We haven't tried to use it yet, but I'm hopeful it'll let me hear their voices now and again. At the moment, we see each other only every couple of years, at most. I met my youngest nephew for the first time and reacquainted myself with the older ones, so that I'd at least recognize them if I met them on the street. I also got a quick top-up on Americana -- watching a school football game, in person, and a baseball game or two on my father's giant-screen TV.

But the most important thing I've learned in the last two trips to the U.S. (the prior one being for my mother-in-law's funeral) is that I need to do more on my end to keep in touch. Letting this blog languish isn't helping, nor am I going out of my way to email. So, for the time being, I'm back to posting and will try to keep it up, even if I don't have anything brilliant to say.

A life well lived

2006-08-31T20:35:00.000+01:00

Life comes in waves of weddings, baptisms and, finally, funerals. They're our periodic reminders of what life is about.

The impact of Elaine, my mother-in-law, was evident at her funeral last week. Nine daughters, 38 grandchildren and 20 great grandchildren, who all owe their very existence to her, are just the beginning. A lifetime of involvement in the community made a deep impression on the world. Her departure leaves a void, especially for her husband, with whom she shared more than 64 years.

But what was evident in the family gatherings after the funeral is that Elaine's love, her compassion, her commitment to the family and community and her humor live on in her daughters, grandchildren, great-grandchildren and even her friends. That's the legacy of a life well lived.

Second Life

2006-06-27T15:10:00.000+01:00

It's the name of Second Life that put me off. I don't have time for my first life, let alone another one. But if something doesn't grab me initially, it's usually because I don't know enough about it. And there's no doubt that this is the future, or something very like it. I need to learn more.

Second Life is more of a place than a game. It's created by the people who use it. Participants make and animate a graphical representation of themselves, called avatars, and walk, fly, drive around a large continent and surrounding islands, chatting with others, building or buying things, and almost anything else you can imagine.

Although this metaphor will probably offend anyone remotely connected to Second Life, the most accurate way of describing the whole experience is that it's like playing with dolls. Mind you, these are very cool dolls. They can do and say anything at all. You build your own accessories, such as a house and furniture, clothes, car. You can also buy any of the above, at miles of shops in the world itself.

The imagination of some of the residents is impressive. One avatar I met over the weekend was a cartoon rabbit. He was wearing a t-shirt that changed its slogan every minute or so ("There's no place like 127.0.0.1" "Touch my carrot"). I've also met a dinosaur, a sphinx and a Luke Skywalker look-alike, complete with storm trooper outfit, light saber and R2D2.

My avatar is vaguely a copy of me, albeit thinner and with better hair -- no imagination! I haven't progressed far with making accessories, either. The best I've been able to create was the beginnings of a snowman. While I was struggling to do that, someone next to me was practicing with a motorcycle. She drove away before I got my snowman's head on straight. With built-in 3D designing software and scripting language, or using an external free application such as Blender, there doesn't seem to be too much you can't do.

Although there are no clear goals in Second Life, participants seem to treat it like a game of Life. They aim to sustain and grow their character over a long period, master the environment, create an interesting alter-ego and get "rich." Getting rich is at least possible. Second Life may be virtual, but the economy is real. The currency, called Linden dollars, has a floating exchange rate against the U.S. variety. The rate is currently about 250 to 1, so you'd have to be the Second Life equivalent of Bill Gates to be rich in reality.

You get 250 Linden dollars when you join. You own, and can sell, anything you make. Don't have much money? Get a job. The most skilled can work as a builder, the lucky as a fashion model for one of the many clothes designers. Residents who sign up for a monthly plan (instead of the free membership) get a plot of land to start off with, giving them a leg up onto Second Life's property ladder. Monthly subscribers also get a L$500 weekly stipend.

I find the culture a bit baffling, even after a few days. It seems to be bad manners to ask about, or even reveal, much about your "first life." To view someone's profile, you right-click on their avatar. Although there's a section for describing who you are outside of Second Life, I'm the only one who seems to have anything in there. That brings up an interesting question. What do you talk about? I like meeting people, not avatars. I don't need a name, age, address and social security number -- I just want to know where they are from (generally), what attracted them to Second Life, what work they do. I also want to know how old they are. How rare are 43-year-old residents? The main topic of conversation seems to be Second Life, or what accessories you have, or what you're building. As a newbie, I don't have much to contribute to the discussion.

Finding people and things to do and see is harder than I thought. Although there are a quarter of a million residents and several thousand online at any given time, the place is huge. There are several ways to get around. You can just walk or, with a keystroke, fly, just like in dreams. You can also teleport from one place to the next by clicking on a spot on the map or choosing a location from a list.

When I just wandered or flew around, I ended up finding mostly dull shops and casinos. My initial impression was that Second Life is a giant shopping mall with almost no one in it. I also ran into a lot of "mature" areas. I had no idea that anyone older than 12 got their kicks out of posing their "Ken" and "Barbie" into erotic poses. I don't feel enriched by this discovery. But once I figured out how to find "events" and centers catering to newbies, the experience has picked up a bit. I found a couple of wonderful parks, art galleries and "sandboxes," where you can try building things.

I'm also starting to understand the advantage of Second Life over more traditional text- or even audio-based communication on the Internet. You can use four of your five senses, making communication a lot richer and easier to assimilate. I can spot groups of people talking from a distance, for example, and swoop in to join the conversation. There are cinemas (videos), concerts and dance clubs. People have organized presentations in Second Life and play their own selection of music at their "house" or shop.

You also get a richer idea of a person by the avatar they choose. It doesn't tell anything about the more superficial aspects -- what they do or where they are from -- but you definitely get a quick impression of their personality and (possibly) world view.

I still don't have much time for a "second life," but as I get the hang of it, it's seems worthwhile dropping in when I can. I'm "Eamonn Supplee" (you have a limited number of surnames to choose from). Stop by and say hello!

Dorodango

2006-05-15T12:20:00.000+01:00

This is my first, very poor attempt at making a dorodango. It's not supposed to look this rough (I used soil that was too gritty), but I was still very impressed that it worked at all. You can't tell from the photo, but the ball is rock-hard and heavy. It looks exactly as if I found a nearly perfectly round rock and gave it several coats of enamel. I only dimly remembered reading about the Japanese art of making these things (I read the linked Web page a year ago), but while watching my son play baseball it occurred to me that the soil at baseball fields, with its mixture of sand and clay, would probably be perfect for making one. I just threw some water on the soil, formed a ball, and started polishing using dry soil. This is the result after a hour and a half or so. It would have come out smooth if I had sifted out the pebbles, which I may try next time.

Another year

2006-05-12T07:01:00.000+01:00

DSCF0002.JPG
Originally uploaded by ailishsul.

The beer, the TV remote control and lots of candles on the cake... The parallels with Homer Simpson are becoming scary.

Roman Holiday

2006-05-10T16:34:00.000+01:00

Theresa looking out over the forum
Originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

Theresa and I are back from a short trip to Rome, our first. The city wasn't high on my list of places to see. Iceland was considerably higher, to give you an idea. But I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As usual, I set out to learn the language before we went and didn't get far. My excuse this time was that my iPod died -- complete hard drive failure. That happened about three days into my attempt to get through an Italian audio course and it meant I had to listen to it in the car (30 minutes a month, approximately) instead of the tube (2.5 hours a day). I ended up barely knowing how to say non parlo italiano by the time we arrived.

We saw the usual sights -- Vatican, Coloseum, the Roman Forum (that's the Arch of Septimius Severus behind Theresa). We walked about 10 miles on the first day, so had to take a break on the second and hang around a huge public park near the hotel, filled with local families and some sort of African festival. We ended the day at a wonderful little trattoria (family restaurant) in an alley in the Trastevere neighborhood.

On the third (and final) day, we spent most of it in at the Vatican museum and St. Peter's. The museum was fabulous, but the crowd going to see the Sistine Chapel wasn't so fab. We felt like cows being herded. We quickly broke off and made our way to the quieter exhibits. For lunch, we ate at a pizzeria recommended by a colleague at work. We ended the evening at a more upscale restaurant near our hotel for a complete, six-course meal. It was wonderful, but I feel like I brought some of Rome home with me, around my middle...

The complete set of photos from the trip is here.

Quiet

2006-04-18T11:55:00.000+01:00

I read an essay a few months ago in which the writer advocated spending a day alone, once a year, with no distractions but your own thoughts. It sounds attractive, especially after the past few, non-stop months, but for me it would be like forcing a couch potato run the marathon. I'd be in no better shape afterward, assuming I survived.

A more fruitful approach is to integrate quiet time into daily life, like regular exercise. My first encounter with that idea was the Rule of St. Benedict, a guide for monastic life written in the sixth century. I became familiar with it while attending Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire, which is run by Benedictine monks.

You don't have to be religious to appreciate the central theme of the Rule: balance. The monks' days are divide into manual labor, quiet contemplation, socializing and service to others. The balance still fits well, even after 800 years. Labor was set at about six hours a day, which is bang on for productive work, in my experience. Sufficient food and sleep was considered important and the rule has little of the gratuitous austerities then fashionable. It was written for real human beings, exhorts them to be human, and it's still going strong.

Alas, modern life often isn't very amenable to balance. I may only be truly productive for six or seven hours a day, but my bosses don't want to hear that. So I'm in the office, typically 11 or 12 hours a day, eating both breakfast and lunch at my desk. Couple that with about 2 1/2 hours commuting, seven hours or so of sleeping, and that leaves about two hours a day to accomplish everything else.

That doesn't mean I can't integrate quiet time in my life, of course, but it does mean I have to make trade-offs that are difficult. I already spend too little time with my family and don't exercise enough, for example. I'm also an insatiable student. I've spent many hours of that free time this year learning Common Lisp, just for the heck of it. So, what goes? And when? It's an ongoing struggle.

Another approach is to make whatever I'm doing a quiet meditation. This idea is a heck of a lot older than the Rule of St. Benedict, stretching back at least to Buddhism. Basically, it's the belief that life is what is happening right now and that most of us wander through existence in a dream-like state, worrying about the future, dwelling on the past or feeling deprived of some imagined need, such as money or time. Those who reach enlightenment, Buddhists say, are fully present, fully aware of life, and at peace.

That idea is behind the "mindfulness" approach that has taken off lately. See here, for just a very recent example. And it's no wonder. "Continuous partial attention" is the norm today. We're always doing several things at once, while planning our next steps and worrying about the previous one.

Escaping from this is so hard that people try to find easy short cuts. One is extreme sports, which force you to be fully here, fully focused on the present moment, more alive. But thrill-seeking is a cheap, shallow copy of what an enlightened, mindful Zen Master can accomplish while washing the dishes, sweeping the floor or simply sitting under a tree. What the parachutist accomplishes is more basic -- a survival mode, an adrenalin-fueled rush. What the mindful can accomplish, even while skydiving, is to be fully human.

Learning to quiet that constant, inane chatter in our heads takes practice, however. And fighting it doesn't work. Try telling yourself to think of nothing... The way Zen Masters do it is to develop a level of detachment, so they can observe themselves wandering and gently bring their minds back.

Although gaining that skill takes a lifetime -- or several, according to Buddhists -- even the first faltering steps are worthwhile. Just yesterday, I was dwelling on all of the things that are hanging over my head, such as the big news events coming up at work that I must prepare for, the seemingly endless list of repairs needed on the house and the worries about my wife and children. And then I looked up and paid attention to what was happening around me. I was walking the dog, with my beautiful wife, on a gorgeous, sunny day. The birds were singing, the blossoms blooming and the only thing that needed doing, right now, was to be here and enjoy the walk.

Even in my busiest, most hectic moments, the contrast between my harried mind and the what is actually happening is stark. I may be jamming under a very tight deadline, with multiple people demanding my attention at once, but the present moment consists of making the sentence under my cursor read well, with no errors or awkward phrases. The present moment is always quiet, always peaceful.

I'd like to try a day of silence sometime, maybe 24 hours on a shoreline with a pup tent and a sleeping bag. But I suspect it wouldn't improve my life as much as the essay writer thinks. A better approach would be to just pay attention to the quiet around me. Right now.

Tags: Life

Time to come out of hibernation yet?

2006-04-08T16:13:00.000+01:00

Blossoms
Originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

Maybe.

A Man for All Seasons

2006-01-29T13:36:00.000Z

We went to see A Man for All Seasons with Martin Shaw last night with my parents, who are visiting from the U.S. It was excellent. I only dimly remember the film and never saw it on stage before, but my father watched the play in the early 1960s, with Paul Scofield, and he enjoyed this production as well. If you get a chance, catch it before it closes on April 1st.

My favorite part of the play is when More defends the law against the ultimate in "the end justifies the means" arguments. The character Roper and More's daughter Alice beseech More to have his eventual betrayer arrested before he leaves the house, even if he has to make up some pretext. More argues that doing that would be a very bad idea:

Alice: While you talk, he's gone!
More: And go he should, if he was the Devil himself, until he broke the law!
Roper: So now you'd give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I'd cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast - man's laws, not God's - and if you cut them down - and you're just the man to do it - d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake.

Roper's sentiment is as strong as ever. Terrorism, or whatever the evil du jour, may seem to justify sweeping away inconvenient laws, as long as it makes us safer. But it has the opposite effect in the long run.

Tags: Theater, Legal

Programming and Writing

2006-01-22T16:09:00.000Z

I was speaking to a fellow editor recently and confessed my secret: I program computers for fun.

"Are you sure you're in the right job," she asks.

Yes, I reply, because programming and writing, especially non-fiction writing, are essentially identical skills. I believe that's why there are many good programmers who are also good writers -- Paul Graham, just to take one example. That we don't see too many examples of the reverse is because few writers understand the symmetry.

Both aim to convey information -- ideas, images, numbers and text -- in the most concise and efficient way possible. And both achieve beauty when they succeed. I wouldn't compare programming to Shakespeare, but there's not much separating a good software application from a well-written news story or essay. Software conveys information to a computer initially, while the written word is read directly by a human reader. But even that difference is just a distraction. The ultimate target of both is a person.

I've written for a living and programmed for fun for at least 20 years now and find that practice in one improves the other. Neither can be done well unless I'm thinking very clearly about the problem I'm trying to solve or the ideas I want to convey. Building logically from one point to another, in the simplest, clearest way possible makes good source code and good writing.

And just as learning different human languages can make you a better writer, learning other computer languages makes you a better programmer. I'm absolutely hopeless at learning human languages, and struggle enough with English to keep me well occupied. I studied French for years and still can't ask for directions or understand the answer. I don't remember much about the Latin I studied in High School, nor the Russian I spent two years wrestling with at university, but I do believe I've received benefits from them. I may not remember many specifics, but I do remember the ideas, recognize a Latin root or two and have observed the pluses and minuses of their different approaches. A phonetic alphabet (Russian) is a good thing, for example, as is precision in the choice of words.

I can't claim to be any better at computer languages, but at least I pick them up faster. I've programmed in Basic, Pascal, Fortran, C, C++, Java, Perl, Visual Basic and lots of different application-specific macro languages. My current favorite is Python, and I've written fairly complex graphical programs in it. As with the human languages, I've absorbed them to varying degrees. I can still pick up a Basic program, even though I haven't programmed in the language in any serious way since the Apple IIe, while I would have to learn C++ and Java again from scratch. And, again, I've benefitted from each, because each has a unique way of approaching and solving problems.

Since the beginning of the year I've also been putting in some serious effort into learning Common Lisp, so I'll use that to illustrate some of the benefits.

Lisp has been compared to Latin. In computer terms, it's certainly as old as Latin, dating back to the mid 1950s. But I think it's closer to a language with a completely different alphabet or wholly unfamiliar grammar, like Greek, Japanese or Hebrew. Unlike most modern languages, which are based on a predecessor known as Algol, Lisp isn't written in a way that would look familiar to most people.

The Pythagorean Theorem --

c = √(a²+b²)

-- might be written in a Algol-derived language such as Python, like this:



c = sqrt(a**2 + b**2)

Most people would find that at least familiar, once told that sqrt means square root and ** means exponent, anyway.

In Lisp, however, one way to write the same thing might be:

(setf c (sqrt (+ (* a a) (* b b))))

The inside-out style is definitely unfamiliar, but it doesn't take too many bouts with really hairy algebra or tricky text manipulation to understand that it is more efficient for some problems. There are many tasks that would take several steps in an Algol language, but can be solved with a tight one-liner in Lisp that, once you get used to it, is still readable. Learning a new language, in other words, is forcing me to think differently, out of the box.

Another benefit of putting effort into both disciplines is that it puts you in charge of two essentials of the modern world: communications and computers. The latter is getting as ubiquitous and as necessary as the former. Just as illiteracy can turn a free human being into a slave, computer ignorance will make you steadily less and less in control of your life in the next decades. Kids today are being taught nothing about computers in school except how to run Word and Excel. Who's the master in that relationship? It isn't the student. Programming has made me as confident in wielding a computer as the written word. (Read: not very, but I'm learning.)

The original question -- about whether I'm sure I'm in the right job -- assumes a divide between the sciences and the liberal arts, math and art, computers and words. I don't think it exists. I'm proud to be interested in both.

And, anyway, it's a lot more interesting than doing a crossword puzzle.

Tags: Programming, Writing

Last three books I've read

2005-12-29T16:00:00.000Z

While I'm catching up, here are the last three books I've read and enjoyed.

Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity Is Near took me weeks to read, and not just because it is over 600 pages (including notes). What made it hard was its extraordinary ideas. Every page had an insight -- the nature of consciousness, blurring of human-computer boundaries, the nature of a "self" and the impact of computing power limited only by physics. My mind kept wandering over the implications -- I'd read a paragraph and then find myself dreaming up a Philip K. Dick novel.

Kurzweil starts with a simple premise: the rate of progress is accelerating exponentially, which he backs up with some convincing evidence that extends back at least as far as the discovery of fire and invention of stone tools. He then carries on logically and methodically to show why, if that's true, we're much closer than we realize to some extraordinary advances, when progress will essentially proceed at an infinite pace (the "Singularity"). I think he underestimates the complexity of many of these problems, but that would only delay some of dilemmas that we'll face. Just to take one example: Kurzweil compares individuals to the shape of a river, with the water representing the atoms that make up our physical bodies. Because every molecule in our bodies changes about once a month, Kurzweil argues, what we are is a pattern of information, like the shape of the river. Every neuron, and every other part of us, can theoretically be modeled in a computer. What happens when computers get powerful enough to host all of that information? Is it a person? Why not? If Kurzweil is right, we'll be confronting questions like that faster than we realize.

Alastair Reynolds's Pushing Ice was a bit of a mental break compared with Kurzweil's book, but it still had plenty of insights. This is the first book I've read by Reynolds, who has a Ph.D in astronomy and works for the European Space Agency. The story starts in the second half of this century and evolves around a comet-mining ship that is diverted to chase what appears to be an alien vessel racing away from the solar system. Like the last Ken MacLeod book I read, Reynolds takes minimal liberties with the laws of physics. That leads to a problem: Going anywhere interesting takes months or years in space, which leaves conflicts aboard ship to provide much of the action. There's plenty of that before anyone ever encounters an alien, assuming they'd recognize it as such. As time drags on and the chase turns involuntarily into a long-term, interstellar mission, the crew has to struggle to survive.

As always, the science in this fiction isn't strictly necessary. The same story could be told about a ship rounding the horn of Africa in the 16th century. But Reynolds obvious grasp of the science adds to the gripping read. Unlike Kurzweil's book, I devoured this in a couple of sittings.

I'm only about half-way through David Pogue's Mac OS X: The Missing Manual, but it's a skimmer anyway. I'll be popping in and out of this book for quite a while since, as I've mentioned in a previous post, we got an iMac for Christmas. Although I've used Macs once in a while while working for PC Week, I haven't used one in earnest since college, when Apple's computers ran a totally different operating system. I've been pleasantly surprised on how similar OS X is to Linux (since it has a free BSD operating system underneath) and Pogue's book does a good job of filling in some of the blanks. The author's focus, however, is aimed squarely at the non-nerd, home computer user. I'm still struggling to get my head around the way OS X manages daemons and schedules tasks, which isn't something that will keep the average home user awake at night. It's something I worry about, though. It took me a week to get a daily backup working, which I finally managed by just piggy-backing on tasks that the computer already does on a daily basis. Perhaps I should try some of the other O'Reilly books on the Mac, such as the ones geared toward people who area already familiar with Unix.

Tags: Books

Splogspot?

2005-12-29T13:45:00.000Z

I've apparently offended someone enough to be listed, next to dodgy drug sellers and loan sharks, in Splogspot' s list of spam blogs. I've not heard of this site before, and my initial impression isn't good. I used its method of appeal (a little link next to each entry that says 'not spam?'), pointing out that I would think a spam blog would have to be trying to sell something, or at least carry ads. I've heard nothing back in a few days and there isn't any other contact information on the site.

I understand that spam blogs (or splogs for short) are a big problem, but a heavy-handed black list, with little or no accountability, is a poor answer.

Tags: Spam, Splogs

Christmas presents

2005-12-26T20:19:00.000Z

It must be a sign, but I'm not sure of what. Theresa and I ended up with the coolest gifts this year.

Theresa's main present was a fireplace -- our first in at about 16 years (Ailish was a baby the last time we had one). It puts out a lot of heat, easily heating most of the downstairs. And if I get carried away and stuff too much into it, we have to move upstairs or out in the sunroom for a while. (I'll eventually get my pyromania under control.)

What I especially like about it is that we don't watch the TV as much. It's more pleasant to just sit around the fire, listening to music or reading a book.

My main gift is a new 20-inch iMac. It's mostly for the kids, since I have a PC running Linux upstairs. But I get to play with it a lot, especially when I'm off a few days. (I'm writing this now on the iMac.)

I've wanted a Macintosh since college, and a few days with the real thing has convinced me that Apple has the most advanced PC on the planet, by far. Windows can't touch this. (Nor can Linux, for that matter, but what do you expect for free?) Apple's decision to switch from the PowerPC processor to Intel has more recently given me pause. What tipped me over this time is that the kids' Windows PC is beginning to fall over and the thought of starting all over again with the battle to keep it upright against a determined kid attack was just too much. The Mac, like Linux, is far better equipped for life on the Internet, even (and especially) in the hands of children. Plus, the kids are now getting familiar with Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. They're able to sit down on any of them and be productive. That's got to be worth something. The Intel migration, I decided, wasn't much of a worry. A family PC has a 2-3 year life and, by then, Apple will have made the transition and it'll be time to start thinking of a new main computer.

I'm in the process of trying to get my head around Apple's version of Unix, which isn't very different from Linux. Still, it's the differences that are tripping me up. I've created a script to back up everyone's documents folder to Linux using rsync. This is native-speaking for Mac OS X, happily, except for telling it when to run (cron seems to be ignored). I've figured out that I need to use Apple's next-generation services interface via a program called launchd. It's still early days for that, however, and creating and managing services is a bit rough. You have to create an XML file and put it into a central place. I guess I thought "crontab -e" was difficult, when I first encountered it, so this will be no different. I found a good program called Lingon that made it easier to set up and schedule the tasks. I'll find out tomorrow morning if it works.

Another gift that will mostly be used by the whole family is a GPS (global positioning system) receiver. I wrote a post recently about our weekly outings to local parks and Dean Shareski added a comment suggesting we try geocaching. We're taking him up on it. The kids have already found a couple of caches nearby. The idea is that you use GPS to find containers (usually tupperware) hidden around the world. The boxes have little tidbits in them -- little momentos. You take one and add one. Sounds fun and it'll make walking Dude a little more interesting.

The kids? Well, they got the usual assortment: Nintendo DS, some Playstation 2 games (and the network adapter), and various loud toys. But I've barely noticed. I'm too busy playing.

Tags: Family, Christmas, Mac

This Year's Christmas Tree

2005-12-04T16:51:00.000Z

We put up our Christmas tree a little early this year, since Theresa and I will be working most weekends this month. As usual, it's virtually impossible to take a good photo of a Christmas tree. You either see the tree or the lights (and the latter fuzzily). Ailish, our family photographer, gets the right idea, as usual, snapping a photo of just one ornament:

Now, why didn't I think of that?

Tags: Christmas, Family

Thanksgiving in London

2005-11-27T20:30:00.000Z

We're living our eighth year in London, overstaying our "two-year adventure" by quite a bit. But even though most of the kids speak with English accents and we've all grown comfortable with the British variant of the language, we still celebrate Thanksgiving every year. It is, by far, the best holiday -- a mostly non-commercial anomaly in a marketing-driven world. No gifts, no cards, just food and getting together.

This year, unusually, we celebrated on the day itself. I took Thursday and Friday off, just for the heck of it, and our guests were also available. We have to make a few adjustments -- the local "stuffing" is a lot denser, for example -- but turkeys are abundant now as we get closer to Christmas. Kathy picked us up some canned pumpkin for making into pies at a store in Hampstead that specializes in "American" food, and we can even find cranberry sauce in the shops now. Either Theresa is getting better at finding the fixings, or the English are picking up on our tastes.

Tags: Family, London, Thanksgiving

How to Wake Me Up

2005-11-18T15:28:00.000Z

I worked one of my rare overnight shifts, from around 5pm Thursday evening until 2:30am on Friday. One advantage of doing just one, instead of a whole week's worth, is that you end up only working four days that week. I had the day with Theresa on Thursday, with plenty of time for a long walk with the dog and then lunch at a local Indian restaurant before I had to head into work. Today, Theresa is working, which theoretically should have given me a quiet house to sleep in.

The dog had other ideas. About five hours after I went to bed, he tried to drag me out. When that didn't work, he bounced on me a while, then barked his head off for about 15 minutes. I pulled the covers over my head and tried to catch another few minutes of sleep. Dude went downstairs, broke through a puny toddler fence we foolishly believe will keep a 70-pound boxer out of the kitchen and proceeded to sift through the bin for snacks -- old, rotten snacks, like egg shells and last night's pasta. Apparently, it took some effort to find just the right thing because the garbage was spread all over the kitchen in an even layer of stinking slime. The evidence suggests that he rolled in it.

That got me up. Sleep and I have a strained relationship anyway, so five hours is about par.

Dude and I had an exchange of words -- I yelled my head off and he stood there, wagging his stubby tail. "He must be saying 'it's time for your walk' in a very loud voice," thinks he.

No, he's not very bright.

Early Morning Walk

2005-11-14T06:26:00.000Z

It's going to be a week for doing unusual things. This morning, since Theresa is working and so is our normal alternate dog walker, I got up at 5am to take Dude for a stroll. It's was a freezing morning, with a hard frost, no clouds, and no moon. The skies are as dark as it ever gets in the city -- dark enough for me to see my first shooting star in months and to make out six of the Seven Sisters without trying (seven, if I look out the corner of my eye).

I had a ball, but there was no point in throwing it. It would just get thrown once, and neither one of us would see where it went. But there was plenty to keep the dog running. It's the time of the morning when the foxes, Dude's arch-enemy, have the run of the neighborhood. Once he caught the scent, he was off and running. Fortunately, he's a mediocre hunting dog, at best, and has no hope of catching anything. But it keeps him entertained.

By the time we headed it home, it was just before 6am and the sky to the east was glowing very slightly. It's going to be a long, dark winter.

Tags: Pets, Walking

Sunday Afternoon

2005-11-13T20:38:00.000Z

Sunday Afternoon

We had an unexpected gap of free time this afternoon. Theresa was scheduled to work Saturday afternoon and evening, arriving home around 10pm, and then the early shift on Sunday, which would have had her home around 4pm. Not much time left, after dog walking, church, meals, etc. It was going to be a very quiet (read: boring) weekend. Instead, she ended doing the two shifts back-to-back, working continuously from 1pm Saturday afternoon until around 8am on Sunday. That meant she'd sleep through part of the day on Sunday, but we'd have a couple of extra hours. We spent it doing something we haven't done in months -- dinner out with the whole family.

We walked about 15 minutes, in cold but clear weather, to a small Italian restaurant in Eastcote that offers the best mix of choices for even the pickiest eaters among us. Most of the kids had pizza. I went for linguine Frutti di Mare, a mix of pasta, mussels, squid and prawns. Theresa splurged on a monk fish dish.

It was just what I needed. I woke up crabby and anxious already about the week ahead, which will include my own overnight shift on Thursday. The dinner took my mind off that and made me feel more like I've had a weekend. It also reminded me that we're heading into a nice stage with the kids. All of them are old enough now to have real conversations at the dinner table. We're not battling to keep them quiet out of fear of disturbing the peace. We still played 21 questions, as normal (answer: ice cube), and a staring contest (I remain world champion), but the atmosphere at a family dinner is getting more and more "adult" every year. I'll miss the youngster stage, of course, but not that much.

Tags: Family

Learning GNU Emacs

2005-11-12T16:17:00.000Z

I've been reacquainting myself lately with Emacs, which I've used off and on for nearly 15 years. The off part is because I occasionally think that it's ridiculous for a liberal arts-educated news editor to be using Emacs, possibly the most complex text editor ever devised and usually thought of as a tool for programmers. This monster of a program is dedicated purely to moving characters around, inserting them and deleting them. That's it. Nothing else. Yet it includes way more features than Word or even most professional publishing programs. It even includes its own psychoanalyst.

So once in a while I decide it's time to grow up and start using WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) programs such as Microsoft's Word, which I have to use it at work anyway, or OpenOffice on Linux. But that's equally silly. I can count the formatting attributes I care about on less than one hand -- italics, bold, centred and, um, that's about it. I rarely print, and in 20 years of reporting and editing, I've never cared what the output looks like, ever. Just give me a word count and off I go.

And nothing, with the possible exception of another editor called Vi, is more powerful at flinging words around than Emacs. It isn't very easy to learn, but once you do, it's easier and less distracting to use. I like how I can keep my hands on the keyboard at all times and jump anywhere in even the longest documents with a keystroke..

What got me back to Emacs this time was Tim Bray's ode to Emacs on the Mac, which I read after a long time exploring "Web 2.0" editors such as Writely. This time, I also picked up a copy of the latest version of O'Reilly's Learning GNU Emacs because I need a refresher and there's always something new to learn about Emacs. What I especially liked about this book is that it focuses on the aspects of the editor that are useful for any writer, not just for the programmer. The first two-thirds of Learning GNU Emacs is about writing features, such as the built-in outliner, searching, moving text around, and creating macros.

One side of Emacs that I haven't explored too deeply before is customising it. The book goes into the programming language that Emacs uses for customization, a variant of Lisp called elisp. Lisp isn't for the faint of heart. As the book points out, it's one of the oldest high-level languages and was designed when it was more important to be easy on the computer than on the programmer. The authors (there are several -- Debra Cameron, James Elliott, Marc Loy, Eric Raymond and Bill Rosenblatt) do an excellent job of walking through the basics of adding small features, customising the many "modes" that Emacs has and even developing your own mode from scratch.

I think I'll stay in Emacs for a while. For what I do, it still hasn't been beat.

Tags: Books, Emacs, Review

Insomnia

2005-11-08T03:47:00.000Z

It's 3:30 am and I'm still awake. Insomnia is a drag, and as I leave 40 in the distant past, the problem is getting worse. Now, even when I do sleep, it's fitful, never deep. I'm getting a tired of being tired.

I recently read probably the most unhelpful advice I've ever received for fighting insomnia: Don't. Just go to sleep when you're tired and wake up when you, um, wake up. Sounds heavenly. The idea is to reset your body's natural clock, to become in tune again with its circadian rhythms.

Unfortunately, it take weeks. I'm not independently wealthy, nor do I make a living at a job that could tolerate such flexibility. An author, in the middle of writing a long book, could maybe do that. Or a programmer working on a long-term project that doesn't need human contact for a while. But not me.

So instead I'm trying and failing to make myself tired by writing this. And in a couple of hours, I'll be sitting at a desk, pumping caffeine as quickly as I can into my system in an attempt to stay sharp, setting myself up for another fitful-at-best night's sleep. There's a circadian rhythm for you.

Guy Fawkes Day

2005-11-06T20:35:00.000Z

Bonfire night, held every year on Guy Fawkes day in the U.K., is difficult to describe to our U.S. relatives. It's vaguely like Independence Day, commemorating when the English foiled a plot by Catholic conspirators to blow up Parliament. Had they succeeded -- and they very nearly did -- it would have been easily as devastating as 9/11. The plan was to blow up the building during the opening of that year's session, killing the king and every top noble in the country. The English celebrate the capture and burning of the conspirators every year on Nov. 5, or the nearest Saturday night.

Fortunately, the anti-Catholic aspect of the celebration has waned a bit. They hardly ever burn Catholics on those bonfires now. What they do instead is shoot off enormous quantities of fireworks, which are legal and cheap here. You can buy anything, up to and including the biggest chest-thumping rockets, at the local corner shop.

The noise begins a week or so before because the Hindu celebration of Diwali, which is also celebrated with copious amounts of explosives, falls at the end of October. The Asians are concentrated mostly a couple of miles away, closer to Heathrow, but the low rumble of thousand and thousands of fireworks in the distance adds to the illusion that we're near the front lines. In a week, the battle will roll through our neighborhood in its full fury.

For an American, where fireworks have been made illegal in most states, and expensive where they remain, the barrage is hard to imagine. Try to think what it would be like if every third or fourth house could put on a show equal to any managed by a small town on July 4th. On calm nights, the smoke hangs in the air like fog and you can hardly hear each other talk.

This year, like others, we trudged out in the drizzle and mud to try to watch some of the show. I took the kids and the dog to the middle of a large field, which gave us a view of several simultaneous displays. I had hoped we would be close enough to watch one of the biggest shows around -- a paid event in a park nearby -- but by 9:45pm or so, they hadn't started yet and the kids were getting cold and tired. We did manage to watch some kids diligently trying to blow each other up. At first, they were shooting their rockets up, like they're supposed to. When that wasn't entertaining enough, they started shooting them at each other. We moved before we became the next target.

We also had fun for a while making letters out of a flashlight for the camera. I put together Sullivan, above, but we made enough letters to make everyone's name, as well.

Tags: Family, Bonfire Night

Why Share?

2005-10-30T19:54:00.000Z

There are several online conversations going on about the business of sharing. One dispute is over whether users should be compensated for the value they bring to sites such as Flickr and del.icio.us. See Anil Dash, Catrina Fake and Ted Leung, for example. Another that's been going around is whether you should be giving these corporates your data in the first place . Keep it to yourself, some say. In other words, why share?

I think there are good economic, social and societal reasons behind sharing on the Internet.

First, I use Flickr (paid account) and del.icio.us because I get economic benefits from it. They provide storage and bandwidth. Instead of sending a multi-megabyte photograph on email, I just upload it once and then can use it in multiple ways with short bits of HTML. On del.icio.us, my Web bookmarks are stored centrally and accessible anywhere, and I can also repurpose them in multiple ways, such as on my blog. But we can, and should, join these services with open eyes -- they're making money off our content. Flickr, at least, gets some economic benefit from my photographs. When I send photos to friends and relatives who aren't Flickr members, they see advertisements. I'm not sure what del.icio.us's business model is, but I suspect its purpose is to be bought, which is a business model too. Either way, the benefits are worth it. That doesn't mean really good photographers shouldn't share in the revenue (see my post below about revver.com), but Flickr's business isn't necessarily wrong. If the trade off isn't worth it, don't use it.

The second benefit is social. What keeps me on del.icio.us even in the face of increasing competition from similar services, or on Flickr despite rivals with a simpler user interface or more features, is that I benefit from the work of other users. Thousands of people daily submit links to del.icio.us, making its popular links page one of the best places on the Internet to find really interesting stuff. And Flickr brings me photos, ideas, people and places every day that I wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. They're valuable because they're popular.

Finally, sharing makes the Internet a better place. The Web is like a public park or town commons. The fewer people who use it, the worse it gets. That's counterintuitive, but you see the phenomena all the time in a big city such as London. If a park isn't used, it quickly degenerates into a hang-out spot for vandals, bored teenagers or worse.

The photo above is of a fence around our local scout hut, which was burned down twice. And when they rebuilt it, it was quickly covered in graffiti. They've resorted to surrounding it with evil-looking spikes and a tall fence. Right next to it is a playground that used to be constantly covered in broken glass and the remains of equipment that the local yobs had been diligently trying to smash into smithereens for years. Frequent visits from the police did nothing. The solution was to put in new equipment. People started to bring their kids again, and the vandalism declined dramatically.

The same effect can be seen on the Internet, where the equivalent of the vandals are the spammers, script kiddies and phishers who have turned some previously valuable corners of the Web into neighborhoods you'd hesitate to walk through at night. But spammers are a minority, by a long shot. Most people are good. The more of the latter who use the Internet -- really use it, by contributing to it, not just consuming what the big media companies give you -- the more hospitable, interesting, pleasant and valuable place it becomes.

Tags: Web 2.0, Business, Sharing

Encouraging File Sharing for Cash

2005-10-30T09:26:00.000Z

Revver is one of the most interesting attempts to make a business out of file sharing. Video creators upload their files, the company adds an advertisement, and then splits the resulting ad revenue with the creator. The files can be distributed everywhere, using whatever software, because the ads are embedded in the file itself. I spotted one today that was wonderful -- a video of a guy getting some amazing sounds out of a ukulele. Unfortunately, it's gone now.

A couple of problems: First, if the ads just measure views and not clicks, it could be considered spyware. There should be an option to just purchase the video, sans ads. The second problem is that I don't know how the ads work. I'm using Linux, and the only viewer I have for quicktime videos doesn't show me the advertisements. So, on Linux at least, I can't show my appreciation by at least clicking on something. Perhaps Revver should offer filmmakers the option to convert their videos into some more standard formats, or even flash, like YouTube does?

(Updated: The video I was pointing to has disappeared. Bummer.)

Tags: Video, Filesharing, Business

Halloween

2005-10-29T21:10:00.000+01:00

Theresa's favorite holiday is Halloween. Christmas is an expensive pain and she works like a slave on Thanksgiving. But All Hallow's Eve? That's for having fun. She even held a murder mystery party for the kids and their friends this year.

I've never carved a pumpkin in my life and didn't even like candy that much as kid. Halloween always meant avoiding bullies, dodging flying eggs and acting nice to cranky neighbours -- all to collect a grocery bag full of stuff I mostly didn't like.

Thank God for Theresa. The kids are making much better memories.

Rethinking Thin Clients

2005-10-25T00:06:00.000+01:00

I've been tinkering with the Linux Terminal Server Project (LTSP) over the last week or two and it's been changing my mind about thin clients, the low-powered computers that act as a terminal for a central, powerful computer.

The Linux distribution I use, Ubuntu, comes with the software built in. Getting LTSP set up took about an afternoon, and two messages to the support email list. The process is described here on Ubuntu's Wiki (which I've contributed to a little). But once done, my own moderately equipped Ubuntu PC (2.8GHz Celeron, 1GB RAM) could be used by three people simultaneously with good performance. I used an IBM Thinkpad and an HP Vectra as temporary clients.

The original idea of thin client computing, and the one most supporters still push, is that it's good for very large companies who want greater control over their users: Why give the cubicle dwellers real PCs that they'd only mess up anyway? But all that does is shift the cost. The companies have to manage several big servers with enough horsepower to run everyone's software and the clients aren't that much less expensive than full PCs. The two most expensive parts in your computer are the processor and the display, both of which are still needed by a thin client. So now you have two problems -- the cost of a big server room, and only slightly less pricey PCs. No thanks.

I think a better use is for home users. The most common computers you can buy cheaply now have more than enough umph to run handle several users simultaneously. Why not make use of all of those wasted cycles and let your kids surf the web or work on their homework at the same time you're checking your stock prices and reading email? Adding thin clients is easier for home users than just adding PCs to a home network -- there's only one hard drive to back up, for example, and one PC that needs protecting from viruses. You can even use your old clunker PCs as the clients.

Another good use for them would be in schools. Microsoft and its partners are ripping off many schools, preying on the ignorance of its administrators. Any of the computers at most schools (one per classroom, if they're lucky) can run at least two or three other thin clients. With a powerful PC, you could get something that looks like this, running Edubuntu, the version of Ubuntu aimed at students.

One big hurdle is that Windows is a lousy server for thin clients, compared with Unix-like systems such as Linux. But Linux takes too long to learn, especially for the busy school administrator or home user. It's going to be need to be much simpler.

Several years ago, companies like Oracle and Sun Microsystems were pushing thin clients as a Microsoft killer. They failed, utterly, of course. But I think that's because they were pitching it at the wrong crowd.

Tags: Thin Client, LTSP, Ubuntu

Dude Dancing

2005-10-23T14:13:00.000+01:00

I finally managed to get a video of the dance Dude, our boxer, does when we have guests over and have to open the sleeper sofa. Dude considers it his, although it apparently needs lots of softening up before he'll use it.

For those reading this via a blog reader, the embedded video probably won't work. See the Dude Dancing video by clicking here.

Tags: Video, Pets

Lifehacker Considers Dangers of Web apps

2005-10-20T14:35:00.000+01:00

Ask Lifehacker Readers: Web apps hosting your info: "Call me paranoid, but what if Gmail goes down, or Google decides to stop being "not evil"? What if angry project management trolls hack 37 Signals and record my every to-do, building a too-personal-for-comfort profile of my every day activities? What if del.icio.us disappears? What if Flickr, who has photos of my baby nephews and the inside of my house, is really in the surveillance business?"

It definitely has occurred to me that we're taking a risk by moving to Web-hosted applications. And I do have a domain name (eamonnsullivan.co.uk) that I'm not using, which could be the home of a Web app of my own, combining the features of Gmail, Flickr, del.icio.us and Writely, assuming one existed or I spawn a new self to create one from scratch. But then you also lose the benefits of scale with those social applications. Other Flickr members help me identify my best photos and categorize them. Gmail's millions of users refine its spam filters. Del.icio.us subscribers recommend sites I never would have known existed.

Perhaps the best solution is to keep a personal copy of all of that data, so that you can go elsewhere quickly.

Tags: Social Software, Web Development

WSJ's Walt Mossberg Gets on the Bandwagon

2005-10-20T07:49:00.000+01:00

WSJ.com - Personal Technology: "Companies have a right to protect their property, and DRM is one means to do so. But treating all consumers as potential criminals by using DRM to overly limit their activities is just plain wrong."

The pain of Digital Rights Management has hit the mainstream, with even the Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg chiming in. There are many possible solutions that don't involve treating all of your customers as criminals. Why not -- just for an example -- brand (watermark) digital media with the name and address of the purchaser at the point of sale, along with an agreement that says you're responsible if stuff with your name on it shows up on a mass distribution site? I don't think that will happen, however, unless lawmakers step in. And we all know what side they're on.

Tags: DRM, Copyright

John Battelle's The Search

2005-10-18T22:53:00.000+01:00

Internet search has made my job a lot quieter. When I first started out as a reporter, newsrooms were loud. If you wanted to know even the most trivial data -- the spelling of an executive's name, who came second in last year's election for the school board or the number of students at the local university -- you had to pick up the phone and call a human being. Nowadays, the phone gets used mostly just to break news that isn't already listed on a Web page somewhere, and newsrooms are almost as tranquil as libraries. Most of that run-of-the-mill information can be found with typing and clicking.

The effect of easy Web searching has been just as dramatic on my kids' homework. Almost every research project begins at Google's Web page and ends at a Wikipedia article or museum Web site. Remember when we had to buy expensive encyclopedias or go to the library?

It is hard to imagine that it has only been seven years since Google started. There were many search engines before it -- I was an enthusiastic user of Archie, Veronica, WAIS and Alta Vista -- but nothing has approached the impact of Google. We've become accustomed to being able to find out almost anything with a mouse click or two.

John Battelle's The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture doesn't focus just on Google, but the company dominates the book as thoroughly as it does the industry. Its origins in a Stanford University dorm room (the same school that spawned Yahoo!), its initial stumbles in the quest for a sustainable business model, its competition with other search companies, and the debt it owes its predecessors, are all well described.

Battelle, however, focuses on the most interesting side effect of searching: it's a gold mine of consumer intentions. By searching for "digital camera" on Google, Yahoo or MSN, we're screaming to the Internet, "I want to buy a camera!" Each search company has used that information in different ways, reflecting their varied origins. Yahoo, unlike Google, was ready and willing earlier to exploit that stream of information for commerce. Google took a more cautious approach, resisting banner ads and paid search placement, for example. But its laser focus on usefulness and staying out of the user's way have paid off.

The book also explores the not-insignificant privacy implications of Google's enormous database of our intentions. Its slogan may be "Don't Be Evil," but that means nothing in the face of the Patriot Act in the U.S., even more draconian laws in China and elsewhere or the mindless, remorseless march of commerce.

One potential failing of the book is that it's in danger of overstating its case. As impressive as search is, I'm not sure it has had the same impact on people outside of journalism, research or the technology industry. Even a tech geek like me found the latest Google Desktop software less than essential. I uninstalled it a few weeks after trying it out because I found I never used it. And there are limits to the usefulness of search, such as when you're not sure what you're looking for. For that, recommendation engines, blogs, tagging systems like Flickr and Del.icio.us and even product suggestions on Amazon are more useful at ferreting out interesting information that I didn't even know I wanted, based on the collective judgment of people with similar tastes.

All of these challenges to Google's dominance are covered, but there isn't much discussion about how the company has been clumsy in its attempts to expand out of search. Blogger has changed hardly at all since Google purchased it, for example. Google Talk and the company's new blog reader are rudimentary at best.

The book is so current (just a few months out of date) that it's like a long and good article in Wired. You better read it fast. It may be as obsolete as last month's issue if the industry keeps changing at this pace.

Tags: Google, Books, Review

Internet Stamps as Solution to Spam

2005-10-17T19:57:00.000+01:00

ongoing � Internet Stamps: "When you allow people to add content to the Net for free, the economic incentives to fill all the available space with spam are irresistible, and fighting back is difficult, maybe impossible. This works because, while the payoff per unit of spam is low, the cost is zero. Well, we can solve all these problems at once. It wouldn't be free, but it would be cheap and it wouldn't be that hard. It's called 'Internet Stamps'."

This is a very old concept, and I remember it first as an urban myth. Then, if I recall correctly, the U.S. Post Office proposed something similar, maybe in the mid 1990s? It's an excellent idea that years ago faced almost universal opposition. But now even my parents and kids are so familiar with the concept of spam that it just might work.

I'd be willing to pay a small sum to post online. A penny is all that's needed. It would be just enough to take the economic incentive out of spamming and would be a relatively small hassle for individuals. It would be a larger hassle for Internet providers, however, which is probably why we'll never see this.

Tags: Spam, Internet Stamps, Tim Bray

The Blogspot Problem

2005-10-17T12:44:00.000+01:00

Splogspot in the Splogosphere: "I love Google. I love Blogger. What I don't love is how Google hasn't done anything about the Blogspot problem."

I'm obviously a Blogspot user, but I'm feeling more and more embarrassed to be one. Spam blogs, or splogs as some call it, are poisoning the web. I gave up on trackbacks in the last few months because I couldn't keep up with the bogus links to gambling, pharma and sex sites. Now it's even affecting comments in this dusty, dark corner of the blogosphere. My wife and kids are seeing it on their sites as well, and they have even fewer regular readers.

The only thing that has ever stopped spammers is having to spend money. Perhaps Google should bring back Blogger Pro, give it a new domain and leave the free blogspot.com domain as a sandbox -- something to play with while you get the hang of blogging.

Tags: Google, Blogging, Spam, Blogger

Administrivia

2005-10-16T12:41:00.000+01:00

I had just managed to get my blog site to look slightly less than ugly when I realized I had broken the comment system entirely. If you had tried to comment in the last few weeks (all three of my loyal readers), I apologize. I've had to move back to one of Blogger's ugly templates. Mind your eyes, and perhaps you'd rather just read the feed in a blog reader. Believe me, it's better.

Kids and the Internet (or Thoughts on Yahoo)

2005-10-15T16:42:00.000+01:00

Earlier this week, Yahoo buckled under pressure from everyone's favorite attorney general and banned anyone under 18 from their chat rooms, probably wiping away 90 percent of their users. My initial thought is that it was a gross overreaction. What's next, banning anyone under 18 in the school cafeteria or playground? There's a lot of talk about sex there, too, and the participants are mostly underage. I still feel that way, but when I try to think it through, the reasons are complicated.

I have five children, ranging in age from eight to 16. I can't say that I'm the most attentive parent, or even just a present one a lot of the time, but I do have a few guidelines that may work out in the end (we'll see when they all turn 30). First, I can't protect my children from the world. The world is made up of all sorts of people, from saints to sinners, with a few psychos thrown in. Second, I want my children to be able to function independently in the real world -- the way it is, not the way I wish it was. Finally, I subscribe to the nine-tenths rule, with variations: Nine out of 10 people in the world are wonderful, not just harmless (that's 99 out of 100), but truly wonderful. One of the most useful skills you can develop is openness to the nine and the ability to recognize and steer clear of the 10th.

Those guidelines have led me to raise my children in one of the largest cities in the world, albeit in the outskirts (I can't afford to house seven people in central London). I want them to experience the most diverse environment possible, and interact daily with people of all kinds. It also leads to me to encourage my children to participate in the even larger city of the Internet, for the same reason. My two older kids already have blogs (here and here ) and they all are fairly savvy users of the Web, multi-user online games and instant messaging (i.e., chat). As far as I know, they don't use Yahoo's chat rooms, though.

But I understand that the Internet has its unique dangers. Anonymity seems to bring out any asocial tendencies in a larger percentage of the population. Some people turn into blithering idiots when they hide behind a nickname in a chat room and are talking with people they know they are unlikely to ever meet in person. But you'll meet some of those same sorts of sub-folks at a car boot sale (U.S. translation: a mass, organized yard sale) or city park. Learning how to handle even these sorts of people (mostly by ignoring them or banning them, depending on the software) is a useful skill, and it'll only get more useful as they go through life, and as the real and online worlds blur.

Kids aren't automatically equipped to handle life, let alone the Internet. They need help, but not necessarily sheltering. Talking to your children -- I don't do this enough -- solves 90 percent of that problem. The rest of it Theresa and I handle the following way:

We tell our children not to give out any personal information on the Internet except to people they know very well. That means no addresses, telephone numbers, email address, skype names, etc.
We tell them that if anyone ever makes them feel uncomfortable or says something to them that they don't understand, tell us, immediately.
We keep the family computer in the living room, in plain sight. The second computer is in our bedroom. We ask them what they're up to occasionally or ask them to show us the games their playing and explain them to us. (A side thought: I'm not a believer in the theory that violent games make for violent people. Theresa may differ on this. As long as it's not gory or extreme, it's probably harmless.)
Suggest interesting sites, software or technology that may interest them, steering them toward safe, fun and interesting things to do on the Internet. This isn't easy, since "interesting" to me is often about as exciting as math homework ("Hey, kids, want to do some programming in Linux?"). But there are some very cool hacking (in the good sense of that term) sites on the Internet that do seem to attract them. I especially like the ones that prompt the kids to walk away from the computer and into the tool shed or outside.

Anyone else have tips? I'd love to hear them. Anyone disagree?

Tags: Family, Parenthood, Yahoo, Internet

My daughter, the Artist

2005-10-10T10:30:00.000+01:00

silhouette
Originally uploaded by ailishsul.

Ailish's photographs continue to amaze me. she really has an excellent eye. Check them out here.

Serenity

2005-10-09T00:05:00.000+01:00

Theresa and I just came back from watching Serenity, the film spawned from the failed-TV-series-turned-cult-hit Firefly. Yes, as some critics have said, it's a two-hour TV episode on the big screen, but it was a heck of an episode. Although you could watch it without having seen the series, I'm glad we were familiar with the characters and background. Much that was left hanging when the series came to an abrupt end was wrapped up. Unfortunately, I don't hold out much hope for more. It's opening weekend in the U.K. and a 9pm showing on a Saturday was only a quarter full. That doesn't bode well for a new series or film.

Tags: Film, Scifi, Serenity

New Family Tradition

2005-10-08T23:54:00.000+01:00

In the last few weeks, we've decided we're going to try out a new park every Saturday, weather permitting. This week the weather just permitted. It started pouring as we neared the car park on our way back from a visit to the Aqua Drome in Rickmansworth. It had two large ponds, full of swans and ducks, with a sailboat race going on and people fishing. It's one of the best things about the London area -- they don't skimp on the parks. There are wide-open, green areas every few miles. It'll take us a while to work our way through them.

For more photos of today, see here.

Tags: Family, Parks

Dave Winer Hates It

2005-10-08T18:10:00.000+01:00

Dave Winer, the alpha blogger, isn't impressed with Google's new blog reader:

This is the second blog-related product they've come out with recently that appears not to have been touched by human beings before it was introduced to the world (the other was the ridiculous blog search). I think they need to start using their own stuff before releasing it.

I haven't used the reader enough to say, but it's not very fast. Before I make any final conclusions, though, I want to know what Google means when it sorts my incoming posts by "relevance." Is it trying to guess what I'd find interesting? If so, it might be more useful than it appears.

Tags: Google, Software, Aggregator

Everyday Sites (and some unsolved problems)

2005-10-08T13:05:00.000+01:00

Robert Scoble, Microsoft's corporate blogger, earlier this week wrote a post saying that he likes Web applications if he uses them less than 10 minutes a day and prefers Windows software if he uses them more often. I used to be like that (well, substitute "local" for Windows -- my operating system preferences are elsewhere), but my circumstances have changed so much in the last few years, and the Web has improved so much, that I'm finding myself spending most of my time on the Web. This is significant because, unlike several years ago, I'm a regular user now. My job isn't in technology. This should worry Microsoft.

First, the circumstances, some of which are unique to me:

I'm never more than a few steps from a broadband or wirelessly connected PC or device.
I work on several different computers. The one at work isn't mine and my employer barely lets me save anything on its hard disk. At home, we have a wireless network and I'm either using one of two desktop computers or a laptop. When traveling, I'm using Internet-cafe style computers or whatever happens to be on the desk at the local bureau. The implications of that is that a local application just complicates my life. A local blog reader, for example, couldn't easily keep track of what I've read and what's new. My email would be in pieces all over the place. The documents I'm working on would have to be kept in sync, laboriously.
A vanishingly small part of my output needs to be kept local. I'm a news wire editor -- the only thing that matters in my work is what gets sent to newspapers. And nothing spends long on my screen. I recently picked up a USB flash disk pen and I'm having trouble thinking of stuff I need to keep on it. I used to have a Palm Pilot, but gave it to my daughter because it was yet another thing to carry and was redundant. Since I stopped being a reporter, I'm rarely out of the office. When I travel, it's to another desk.

The result is that the Web is a more natural place for me to keep my data than a local disk. Within minutes of sitting at a new desk, everything I write, bookmark or photograph is available to me, without me having to do anything more complicated than open a browser and type in an address.

That's been true for a while, but the early Web applications were painful and awkward to use. That's changing. Whether you call it "Web 2.0" -- the current meaningless hype word -- there's no denying that the applications are becoming less of a joke. In the past, for example, I used Hotmail only in a dire emergency. Today, Gmail is my main email client and I like it. With a reasonably fast Internet connection, today's Web apps are responsive and feature rich enough. The key word is enough. I've been using computers for so long now that I'm jaded. I don't care if you have 80 features, compared with 74 at your rival. I just want to get my work done. The simpler, the better.

Here's the current list of sites that I find I use everyday. Crucially, every one of these works on every computer I use, Windows or Linux:

Del.icio.us: I've written many times about this before, so I won't spend too much on it. This is where I start, because it keeps track of all of my Web bookmarks. Mine are added here. In Firefox, I can even "subscribe" to different tags and they appear identical to regular bookmarks. So, for example, if I add a new news Web site at work, it shows up automatically under "news" on the bookmarks menu at home.
Gmail: Again, mentioned many times previously. In my opinion, it's the best Web client around right now, even compared with the admirable efforts at Hotmail and Yahoo to match it. It does force you to rethink how you use email a bit -- no folders, for example -- but once you get use to its methods, I think it's superior. It has an excellent spam filter, basically because you have millions of users refining its filters. You still need to be invited to get an account, as far as I know. If you want to try it, email me.
Backpack: I'm a notoriously disorganized person, which is one of the reasons I work in daily (or minute-ly) journalism. I have a difficult time managing long-term projects and am a terrible procrastinator. To-do lists help. Even though I know what I have to do next, checking it off a list keeps me moving. Backpack provides up to five free pages, which can contain just about anything -- notes, photos, etc. I just use three pages for to-do lists -- personal, work, and daily (stuff I have to do every day).
Writely: This is one of the most useful sites I've found in a long time. It's a word processor and document manager for the Web. You create documents in a simple, but very Word-like editor. You can also share them with anyone with an email address. One feature that I'm using a lot is its ability to post to a blog. I find Writely a superior editor for Blogger. You can write your post using the full screen, for example, rather than Blogger's puny little form. I wrote this page in Writely.
Flickr: Again, I've written about this loads of times, but Flickr is the best application right now for managing your photos. And the fact that it's on the Web is irrelevant.

Here's a few others that I use everyday, but are just candidates or in a bit of a flux.

SearchFox: This is an interesting new blog reader that I'm trying. I subscribe to around 80 blog feeds, which can be a bit hard to handle, especially if I'm busy and miss a few days. SearchFox watches what you read, what you mark as favorites, what titles catch your eye, etc., and orders the blog posts to show you first what it thinks you'll find most interesting. It's still a work in progress and invite only. (If you want an account, message support@searchfox.com with your preferred username and use my reference code xb17.) It still has a few drawbacks -- it doesn't automatically find feeds given a regular Web address like Bloglines does, for example, and it takes a while to learn your preferences well enough to become really useful. I have a high volume of blogs and it took it a few weeks to start picking out the real gems.
Yahoo Calendar: I use Yahoo for my calendar, but I'm not thrilled with it. There are lot of garish advertisements and it's slower and more complicated than I would like. It does have all of the features you'd want -- recurring appointments, alarms, ability to sync data with personal devices, etc. But it just doesn't thrill me. I'm still looking.

There are several drawbacks to using Web applications. Here are few:

Keeping track of all of those accounts. No one has come up with a good solution for this that works across platforms. I need it to work on both Windows and Linux, and the Mac would be a nice plus (because I plan on getting one of those soon). At the moment, I keep an encrypted file with all of my usernames and passwords and keep it in Gmail. It's an awkward system. The alternatives are less than secure -- using the same password for everything, or using only passwords that are very easy to remember.
They have your data. My data isn't earth-shaking important, but it's still not good to leave it exclusively in the hands of companies such as Google. My approach is to spread my data among several companies, try to keep the same piece of information in more than one place and only use services that provide a way to easily export it, so that I can take my stuff elsewhere if need be. Part of that is keeping my stuff in portable formats -- text, HTML, JPEG, XML. I avoid any kind of "digital rights management" or proprietary formats.
No one has come up with a good Web app for my most abundant data: music. I have 25 gigabytes of the stuff (all legal). At the moment, I keep it in portable MP3 format (I would have used a loss-less file format if I were forward-thinking enough, but I'm not), mirror the collection between two computers at home and keep another copy on my iPod. We need a Flickr for music, assuming someone has the guts to locate it on a deserted island and stand up to the record companies.
Finally, and this isn't exactly a drawback, but there are still applications that I prefer to use locally -- Skype, Firefox, Emacs.

Even with those drawbacks, my attention (a scarce resource) is being spent more and more on line. I read with interest everything Microsoft's Scoble wrote about the latest professional developers conference, where his company trotted out all the stuff it's planning on shipping in the next year (or three). But I wasn't excited about it; there's was no feeling of anticipation. I've had it with pretty animations, sculpted interfaces and pretty buttons. I just want to write things for the Web, share my photos, communicate and keep track of information. And these days, I can do that anywhere.

Tags: Web, Microsoft, Software, Web 2.0

Andrew Smith's Moondust: In search of the Men Who Fell to Earth

2005-10-08T09:25:00.000+01:00

I was six years old when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. I must be one of the few people my age or older who doesn't remember it. I suspect my parents didn't let me stay up, or if they did, I didn't understand what was going on and it went over my head. I do, however, remember later landings. The nuns at my school brought in a TV and we got a break from schoolwork to watch some astronaut -- I forget who -- sing "Walking on the Moon One Day," while skipping along in low gravity. It seems like a dream, barely believable.

That dream-like quality of a unique period in history is the focus on Andrew Davis's Moondust -- a book-length essay about his effort to track down the remaining nine people on the planet who have viewed earth from deep space. Most, it turns out, were profoundly changed by the experience, which is unsurprising. What do you do after you've been to the moon? Neil Armstong became essentially a recluse. Alan Bean is spending the rest of his life trying to recapture the scenes on the moon with oil paints. Edgar Mitchell is pushing an almost New Age view of the universe. Buzz Aldrin is advocating a return to deep space. But that's just scratching the surface. Davis goes deeper and tries to understand what the race to the moon really meant, not just to the astronauts, but the rest of us as well.

A couple things struck me the most in the book: First, it's amazing just how seat-of-the-pants the moon trips were. The whole enterprise was incredibly dangerous. Armstrong was, NASA calculated, two-fifth of a second away from death during a test of the lander, for example, and barely wrestled control of a tumbling spacecraft in the Gemini program. Most of the landings would have ended in disaster if it wasn't for quick work by the experienced test pilots, facing situations they weren't trained for and that the engineers hadn't anticipated. Second, the whole program seems to have been designed as temporary from the start. At each stage, engineers abandoned more enduring technology -- even cheaper ones -- for expediency. "Spam in a can," is what the astronauts called the method NASA chose to blast humans into space on towers of explosives. They abandoned the promising X-plane program and used a lunar-orbit process (instead of an earth-orbiting launcher), for example. And all but one of the astronauts were non-scientists, so relatively little science was accomplished, nor intended. They say we no longer have the guts for a deep space program, but we didn't really have the guts then either. It was political, and once the politics went away, the moon program did too. What's left is a bureaucracy sustaining itself with projects of little purpose. We're doing good science these days, but with robots, not people.

At the same time I was reading the book, the BBC was running a series called the Space Race, which focused on the political battle between the U.S. and Russia. It reinforced the impression of danger, describing some truly horrific accidents in the Russian program that wasn't made public for decades. The U.S. has been relatively lucky. And it is luck -- the manned flights were done as soon as nerves of steel could stand, with barely tested parts wielded by incredibly brave people. But the TV series ended as sadly. The participants expected it to go on -- to Mars, colonies on the moon. Instead, we looked, and then ran home.

Cost is one, but not the only, problem. The nine years of the Apollo program cost less than one year of the Vietnam war at its height. The other problem is a lack of a goal. Why send people to such a hostile place? Davis, in Moondust, is a skeptic, but by the end he's won over in an unexpected way. (I'll leave you to discover that yourself.)

Tags: Books, Review, Space, Television

On my way home.

2005-10-04T18:52:00.000+01:00

On my way home.
Originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

On my way to Paris, then Brussels

2005-10-03T06:11:00.000+01:00

It's ungodly early Monday morning and I'm at the Eurostar station at
Waterloo. I'll be traveling to Paris this morning, then switch to a
Brussels hotel tonight and spend the day in the office there tomorrow.

Theresa and I are in our periodic busy periods. She worked until late
last night and then will work two overnights when I get back, so we'll
barely see each other this week. We're still waiting to win the
lottery.

17 Years

2005-10-01T09:53:00.000+01:00

Today is our 17th wedding anniversary. That feels both long and short. It seems like I've known Theresa forever. She's as naturally a part of me as my left arm, and her absence would feel as unnatural. But at the same time, it doesn't feel like 17 years, or the nearly 20 that I've known her.

Seventeen years ago today I was a cub reporter in New Hampshire, covering planning commissions, school boards and selectmen meetings in little towns along the I-91 corridor. Dead and dying villages, most of them, with enormous, empty, factory floors -- leftovers from a machine-tool industry that had moved to Asia. Theresa worked in one of the largest teaching hospitals in New England. By the time our first child was born, we had skipped over the Connecticut River and worked and lived in Vermont. For our second, third, fourth and fifth child, we were further down the Interstate, in Massachusetts -- me writing about computer trivia, while Theresa worked in Hospice and cared for families as they said goodbye to their dying husbands, wives, fathers and daughters. Today we're in another country entirely. Theresa's still caring for cancer patients, and I'm still moving words about, albeit of a slightly less trivial sort.

Laid out like that, it sounds like a lot. It isn't. It went by like a flash. I haven't spent enough time with Theresa, not by a long shot. She still surprises me almost every day. I'm looking forward to another 17 years of discovery.

Tags: Family, Marriage

Half-finished

2005-09-29T21:01:00.000+01:00

The half-started and half-finished draft blog posts -- there's a difference, though subtle -- are beginning to pile up and looks like I'm not going to get another post on here unless I force myself. So here goes. This what I could write, on my Blackberry, with my two thumbs, in the time the time it takes me to get home. Pardon the typos.

Work is heating up, as it always does this time of year. I run a team of journalists covering courts in Europe and, with the exception of criminal courts, the news flow drops dramatically in the summer. It even stays quiet through most of September as lawyers reacquaint themselves with the half-finished (and half-started) cases -- "What's our defense, again? Oh, right, he didn't do it." -- and judges take practice swings with their swords of justice -- "Off with his head! Nah, just joking with ya." And both re-powder their wigs, at least in the U.K.

But suddenly, near the end of September, the mad dash starts and will continue to Christmas. I barely have time to go to the bathroom for the 14 hours a day I spent either in the office or traveling to or from. It doesn't leave much room for thinking, or spotting interesting articles, or talking with the family.

On top of that, I'm doing my (now traditional) twice-a-year dive into the Linux community. My flavor of Linux is Ubuntu (pronounced oo-boon-too), which gets upgraded, come hell or high water, once every six months. I find six months perfect for me. After that long, I start itching for a change in my computing environment -- new versions of software to explore, for example.

I get so much out of Ubuntu, though, that I feel a bit guilty. Free software such as this depends on volunteers -- not exclusively, since the core developers are paid, but it wouldn't be possible to put out a free operating system as powerful as Windows or Mac OS X without tender loving care from several hundred or thousands of others. And the truth is I give back very little. I just don't have time.

So the computer sits in a corner, dutifully running for months at a time, handling homework assignments for five children, backing up every file in the house each night, retrieving and distributing email for everyone, acting as our second TV for playing DVDs, playing our music and Internet-based radio stations and finally, and most taxing, acting as my personal play box for new software (also created by mostly volunteers) and programming languages (my version of
crossword puzzles).

(Later, I'm home now, and to wrap this up quickly...) So, to give at least a little back, about a month before the developers of Ubuntu put out a new version, I download and install the half-finished (not half-started) version and bang away at it, trying to find bugs and filing reports. I've even submitted one "patch" (a file that shows changes needed in source code that may solve a problem), although I submitted it in the wrong format and it was only for the most minor of cosmetic bugs. I also subscribe to the the user support mailing list and weigh in as much as I can to help new users solve at least the simplest problems. It may not be much, but it's something.

Anyway, 14-hour work days, tinkering with the computer and answering tech-support questions is filling up my time, just about all of it. Typing my thoughts into a Blackberry on the way home, however, might be a way to squeeze out just a little bit more.

Tags: Linux, Ubuntu

Autumn weekend

2005-09-25T17:53:00.000+01:00

Autumn berries
Originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

It was a beautiful weekend, uncharacteristically sunny, with just a bit of rain over Saturday night. And for the first time in what feels like weeks, Theresa wasn't working.

Here's a photo taken during our walk with Dude yesterday. The autumn berries are out on the trees, the sky is blue. What else could we want?

A Tree in the Forest

2005-09-24T17:31:00.000+01:00

My wife Theresa has started blogging again, after a pause. She's, as usual, outdoing me by a wide margin, even writing some excellent children's fiction. Read her, encourage her, and suggest she get an agent, so that I can retire on her earnings.

Tags: Family, Blogging

The Christian Paradox (Harpers.org)

2005-09-24T09:43:00.000+01:00

Someone in the newsroom passed me an excellent essay in Harper's, The Christian Paradox. It sums up better than I ever could the central paradox of religious conservatives everywhere, not just Christian ones.

The closer religion and politics get, the worse both become. As the two near, the hard bits of any religion start dropping away. Tolerance and prohibition against killing civilians in Islam, for example. In Christianity, "minor" details such as the Sermon on the Mount, "love your neighbor as yourself" and "Sell all you have and come follow me" fall by the wayside as the focus shifts to eliminating taxes on our inheritance and killing as many terrorists as we can. Even the traditionally social-justice-focused Catholics, of which I'm a poor example, have become more and more obsessed with one, and only one, issue. And it isn't social justice.

Bill McKibben, in the Harper's essay, argues that the precepts of the current religious conservatism movement in the U.S. and Christianity are at odds, and for good reason. The religion, at its core, isn't conservative. It couldn't be more radical:

Love your neighbor as yourself: although its rhetorical power has been dimmed by repetition, that is a radical notion, perhaps the most radical notion possible. Especially since Jesus, in all his teachings, made it very clear who the neighbor you were supposed to love was: the poor person, the sick person, the naked person, the hungry person. The last shall be made first; turn the other cheek; a rich person aiming for heaven is like a camel trying to walk through the eye of a needle. On and on and on—a call for nothing less than a radical, voluntary, and effective reordering of power relationships, based on the principle of love.

And this is true of other religions, as well. The major religions agree on an awful lot, much more than admitted. Much of what people hate religion for are politically expedient add-ons -- the subjugation of women, for example, or the battle against science -- all of which can be backed up if need be in the Torah, Bible, Koran... You can justify anything you want. You don't have to give up any of your prejudices, make any hard choices or give up any comforts, if you don't want to. But is that religion?

Tags: Religion, Politics

Ken MacLeod's Learning the World

2005-09-17T12:32:00.000+01:00

One aspect of science fiction that puts me off occasionally is that you have to suspend too much science. Much of the fiction depends on developments that are, at best, unlikely.

The most common one of those, of course, is faster than light travel. The speed of light, to the best of our current knowledge, is an absolute. Nothing can, and ever will, go faster. That means travel to all but the closest stars will take at least decades and probably centuries, even to the people doing the traveling, let alone the ones left behind. That barrier also makes alien encounters statistically unlikely and probably cumbersome if they do occur. What's the fun of talking to an alien when it takes a couple of centuries to get a reply to a message?

Ken MacLeod's latest, Learning the World, shows it's possible to adhere to the laws of physics and still produce a gripping SciFi novel. In MacLeod's world, humanity has been expanding slowly, at sub-light speed, for 14,000 years. They move from system to system in enormous ships that spin to provide an artificial gravity for the passengers living on the sides and manned by a micro-gravity adapted crew in the center. Journeys take centuries, and are multi-generational. Humans have overcome current age limits and the "founders" of the ship will still be around when it arrives, along with their children, grand children, etc., all educated in the skills they'll need to transform the new system into home. After settling in, a new ship is constructed, a new founder group forms and the process starts over again. In all that time, humans have never encountered any extraterrestrial life more complicate than pond scum.

As the ship at the center of Learning the World approaches a new system, they start picking up radio signals from one of the planets and discover they've got a serious ethical dilemma. The encounter is told from several points of view, including that of a teenaged blogger and an alien astronomer who first spots what he initially believes is a new comet. Both sides are changed in unexpected ways.

I haven't read any of MacLeod's books before, so I'll have to add yet more to my seemingly infinite reading list. What impressed me the most about his writing, aside from getting around the light-speed problem, is that he's made a gripping novel out of relatively little action. Much of the book is politics, which in lesser hands would make for an effective sleeping aid. Instead I was so engrossed that I was frequently in danger of missing my stop on the Tube. I can't ask for much more.

The book is newer than the ones I'm usually picking up, and is available right now only in hardcover, but Amazon has it at a reasonable price. You can buy it here or by clicking on the book cover above.

Tags: Review, SciFi, Books

English Education

2005-09-14T06:50:00.000+01:00

One aspect of living overseas is that we're constantly having to negotiate unfamiliar ground, literally and figuratively.

Our children's education is the figurative sort, especially for our eldest. Theresa and I didn't go through the English school system, so each year is a whole new vista. Our 16-year-old has started at sixth form college, which is roughly equivalent (in years) to the second half of high school in the U.S. and (academically) to junior college. At the end of it, the students take their A-Level exams. If they do well, they then go on to university, but usually only for three years.

The school is all of 3.3 miles from our home (according to Google Maps), but it's also on new ground for me (of the literal sort). The bus we took drove through Harrow School, through the kind of neighborhood where the homes have names ("Hedge House") rather than mere numbers, the Royal Mail boxes haven't changed since the 19th century and the local shops sell convertible Jaguars. Hugh Grant wouldn't look out of place walking down these streets. I've lived here for more than seven years, but have never wandered through this particular corner of outer London.

My daughter doesn't go to Harrow, of course. The bus kept going and dropped us off on the other side of the tracks, figuratively, but not more than a couple of hundred yards. Her college, St. Dominic's, is a bit smaller than her secondary school, with about 800 students. I can't say we got a good look, but I got a warm feeling about the place in our brief visit last night. The new headmaster looked competent, and obviously won't put up with much from any troublemakers.

I've been anxious about my kids' education. Most well-off people here send their children to private schools (which are, oddly, called "public" schools). The newspapers are constantly filled with articles about the inadequacies of the education system, but I think that's true anywhere.

What really worries me is that the English seem to be in a hurry. At 16, my daughter has to make major decisions about what courses to take and what to drop. In the U.S., Theresa and I took almost exactly the same subjects until the third year of university, even as she became a nurse and I became a professional drain on society.

We advised flexibility, suggesting to our daughter that she take as wide a range of courses as possible. She's taking both physics and philosophy, for example. I know a few relatives will bristle at this, but I do believe Liberal Arts have value. The world is changing so fast that the only real function of the education system is to teach you how to learn. And it isn't just science and maths, it's making ethical decisions, discriminating between truth and cattle manure and communicating effectively. I had no idea what I wanted to do at 16 (or 26), but a combination of a liberal arts education and a strong interest in anything technical has served me well enough. I can only hope it works even better for my children.

Tags: Education, Family

The View From My Bedroom this Morning

2005-09-13T13:55:00.000+01:00

Autumn is here and it's starting to get darker when I get up. This is what it looked like around 6:15-6:20 this morning. Compared with family and friends back in the Boston area, ours days eventually end up shorter by about an hour on each end (two hours in total). We have an additional two hours of sunlight in the summer, but that seems a long way away.

Tags: Sunrise, Photos

Charles Stross's "The Family Trade" and "The Hidden Family"

2005-09-11T12:20:00.000+01:00

The part of Windsor Castle that made the biggest impression on me when I toured it a few years ago was the weapons room. It was filled from floor to ceiling with weapons for hand-to-hand combat -- every imaginable type of blade, hammer, mace and ax. It reminded me that the aristocracy got there because their ancestors were basically warlords, some of them equal in viciousness to any you'd find today in Somalia or northern Afghanistan. They were trained from an early age to kill, and the deadliest threat often came from within their own family. Fairy tales featuring princesses and Prince Charmings rarely mention the murderous in-laws in the happily-ever-after.

Charles Stross doesn't gloss over this aspect in his Merchant Princes books, The Family Trade and The Hidden Family. The main character, Miriam Bechstein, a high-tech journalist in the Boston area who was adopted as a baby , discovers that her birth family lives in an alternate universe, a more primitive version of our own, where kings still rule and her relatives are merchants who have recently joined the aristocracy. The Machiavelli-like mercantilists have a unique ability to walk between our world and theirs. They've grown rich by trading between universes and are muscling in on the traditional nobility.

Miriam is a believable character. Instead of being awed by her family, she quickly susses that they are a dangerous lot. Extracting herself and going back to her old life is impossible. Her only choice then is to remake the other world into something she can live with. The challenge is to drag her family into the modern world while dodging several factions who would rather kill her than change.

Stross doesn't play the usual comedy/tragedy-of-errors game. Miriam doesn't act like an idiot or miss (most) obvious clues. The dilemmas are convincing, her responses intelligent and the results convincing. Stross also has the journalist type down. As a former high-tech journalist from the Boston area, I recognized the type. There were very few false notes.

I'd recommend buying both books at once. They were originally written as one, and it shows. The ending of the first isn't very satisfying. You'll want to jump straight away into the second. (As usual, you can click on the book covers above to jump right to the Amazon page.)

What I find most enjoyable about Stross is that he's always different. The Merchant series couldn't be more different than Accelerando, and couldn't be more different again from Iron Sunrise or Singularity Sky. The only thing in common among these books is excellent writing.

Tags: Books, SciFi, Review,Charles Stross

Three out of Four

2005-09-10T11:12:00.000+01:00

I have four blogs, and managing them all gets a bit difficult. The first is this one, where I let family and friends know what's going on, what I'm interested in and what I'm reading and watching. The second is my del.icio.us account. That's where I put all Web pages that catch my eye, categorized with tags and usually a sentence or two of description. The third is my Flickr account, where I post all my photos, again with tags and usually a description. Finally, the stream of news stories I edit and send to the newspaper wires can be considered a blog, albeit not one I own. My company pays me a salary for all rights to my judgment and meager skills, so it gets to decide who can subscribe to it and where the information is distributed.

To make it easier for my legion of fans (if you define "legion" as "four"), I've combined the first three blogs into one feed using Feedburner. If you're interested in seeing a daily summary of my links from del.icio.us and any photos I upload (not just the ones I blog about), make sure you're subscribed to this feed. You can also find it by clicking on the orange "XML" icon at the very bottom of this page. If you just want what I post here, which is a more edited summary, then subscribe to the Atom feed that Blogger provides automatically.

Tags: Blogging, RSS, Feedburner

Firefly

2005-09-08T19:48:00.000+01:00

My wife and I will have been married 17 years next month, for which I credit one thing above all else: a similar taste in television shows. Who else but my soulmate would sit through years of Stargate and Deep Space 9?

I had heard great things for a couple of years about Firefly, a science fiction drama written by Joss Whedon. But it wasn't until I read rave reviews at the Londonist and Plasticbag.org of a new film of the show that I plunked down the money and bought the whole season on DVD. We went through the 14 episodes in a couple of weeks and loved every minute of it.

Whedon is the guy behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which Theresa and I were drawn into relunctantly, and then enthusiastically. A teenager who kills bloodsuckers at night? Uh, right. But it was an excellent show, with some of the sharpest writing I've ever seen on television. Firefly's premise is only slightly less silly-sounding: 500 years in the future, two veterans of the losing side of a war and a small crew of hangers-on do odd and sometimes illegal jobs in a small ("Firefly-class") transport ship called Serenity.

The show is a weird mashup of science fiction and Westerns. Horses and shoot outs with revolvers feature heavily, but also run-ins with a dictatorial government's secret police and giant spaceships. The show seems to appeal to more than sci-fi fans. My daughter Ailish groaned every time we tried to watch a Stargate episode, but she willingly watched and enjoyed every episode of Firefly. I'd recommend caution for younger kids, though. Some of the episodes were violent, although all of the swearing was in Chinese. (Yes, Chinese. Don't ask me why.)

What's interesting about Firefly is that it was a total flop on TV. Only four episodes were actually broadcast, and in the wrong order. But the DVD unexpectedly sold like hotcakes, propelled by word of mouth. Those millions of sales have led to a film, due to come out on Sept. 30 (coincidentally the day before our wedding anniversary).

It's also the first time we've bought a TV series on DVD, and we liked it. We could watch when we want and as much as we wanted. I think we're going to start buying a few more, especially of series that we liked, but caught half way through, like Dead Like Me. With DVDs and Internet-delivered shows over Bittorrent bringing us the best TV shows lately, Theresa asked why we bother subscribing to Sky. Good question.

[Updated Sept. 11. Typo fix.]

Tags: Television, DVD, SciFi, Firefly, Review

NerdTV

2005-09-07T20:25:00.000+01:00

I watched the first-ever episode of NerdTV today. The show, which describes itself as the "Charlie Rose for geeks" and is hosted by columnist Robert X. Cringely, aims to be an intelligent technology program, something you don't find much on regular TV.

The first guest was Andy Hertzfeld, the original Macintosh systems programmer. Two things jumped out at me from the interview: Asked if money was enough, Hertzfeld said if money is your only motivation, then you're working at odds with your customer. But if you work to achieve something truely good -- something that could change the world -- you and the customer win. You can both become rich.

Secondly, Hertzfeld, who is now a believer in free, open-source software, said systems such as Linux are actually more valuable than closed systems such as Windows or Office, because you can more readily build on it. It's a foundation instead of just an end in of itself. And he didn't have any trouble coming up with business plans -- from hardware (IBM) to information (O'Reilly). People can make money with free stuff.

One aspect of the show itself that struck me is that it was easy to download and watch -- it was over an hour long, but took just a few minutes to download. And it looked good. That seems basic, but neither has been true of past attempts at bringing "television to the Internet." This might actually work this time. I hope it does. I want more of it.

Tags: NerdTV, Television, Technology

On Tribes and Honor

2005-09-06T22:27:00.000+01:00

Two blog posts about New Orleans caught my eye today. I printed them off and read them on the way home on the Tube. One is about Tribes, the other about Honor. Both are typical for the genre - heartfelt, if a bit rambling. But they couldn't be more different.

Read them both, because I'm about to, in my own heartfelt, rambling way, summarize them with all sorts of bias. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Bill Whittle's Tribes essay starts out about how the increasing divisiveness of the U.S. "breaks my heart. It just breaks my heart into little pieces." Then he goes on to demonstrate how much he loves it. Leave aside for the moment some of the most obviously dubious arguments -- the some-of-my-best-friends-are-black/gay/Democrats gymnastics and his attempt to conflate opposition to the administration's handling of the disaster to being soft on terrorism. That rhetoric is, sadly, so commonplace as to be expected. What I didn't expect was his conclusions, that the problem with New Orleans and the shelter at the Superdome is that it wasn't populated by more people like Bill Whittle. Who knew?

That’s because the people I associate with – my Tribe – consists not of blacks and whites and gays and Hispanics and Asians, but of individuals who do not rape, murder, or steal. My Tribe consists of people who know that sometimes bad things happen, and that these are an opportunity to show ourselves what we are made of. My people go into burning buildings. My Tribe consists of organizers and self-starters, proud and self-reliant people who do not need to be told what to do in a crisis. My Tribe is not fearless; they are something better. They are courageous. My Tribe is honorable, and decent, and kind, and inventive. My Tribe knows how to give orders, and how to follow them. My Tribe knows enough about how the world works to figure out ways to boil water, ration food, repair structures, build and maintain makeshift latrines, and care for the wounded and the dead with respect and compassion.

When I first read that, I admit that I found myself nodding in agreement. Of course, the people preying on the survivors are scum. My family and friends probably wouldn't be mugging and raping people, either. And, God, why didn't anyone think of organizing a latrine or something similar at the Superdome? He carries on, though, taking on tribe after tribe -- Michael Moore fans, Hollywood celebrities. He divides the world into the Pink and Grey tribes. The Pinks' moto is "EVERYBODY IS SPECIAL," while Greys are "tough, hard-nosed, capable, competent." Bill Clinton and Ted Kennedy are, of course, Pink, while George W. Bush, Condoleeza Rice are Grey. And so are John F. Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln. Who's side are you on? (Er, I'm against Abe Lincoln, an obviously facist!) Later, he divides the world into further tribes -- sheep, sheepdogs and wolves. He's a sheepdog.

So it's a war. Don't let any news of screw ups distract you. Real Greys -- real sheepdogs -- don't look to the federal government to save them. New Orleans went badly, he says, because of a lack of leadership, at the local level, a "battle between the capable and the culpable."

Same holds for Governor Blanco. She’s not weak because she’s a woman, or because she’s a Democrat. Truman was a democrat. The Buck stopped there. She’s weak and indecisive because that is the individual she is. I wish history could work with variables: I’d love to see what Margaret Thatcher would have done in such a case. It would not only have been better, it would have been good. That woman was tough. She could be Grey as granite. And, for this, the Pink Tribe despises her.

Take a look at the comments below Whittle's essay. If there are any catcalls in there, they're drowned out by the virtual whistles, cheers and standing ovation. I think it's because his message is comforting. The world is perilous because there aren't enough of us good guys. And we're not responsible.

Now consider Dave Rogers's thoughts on "change." Rogers, a former U.S. Navy officer, takes a very un-former U.S. Navy officer approach: He turns inward.

For a while, after 9/11, some pundits opined that the event would mark some watershed in American history, that it was the end of the Age of Irony. They were wrong. We do have a problem in this country, but it's not going to be solved by a particular economic "sector." There's no faith-based program to address this particular need. There's no catchy slogan, no social software solution, no pill, no gene therapy, no stem cell, no Supreme Court decision that's going to fix what's wrong with this country. But then, there doesn't need to be, because what's wrong can be fixed by you and I. Indeed, it will only be fixed, if you and I fix it.

I'm not an ideologue. I don't have any particular view of the world that I want to promote, other than maybe two ideas: First, know thyself. And second, you must become the change you wish to see in the world.

He writes about what he learned conducting more than 30 burials at sea, about honor, about giving respect to someone you don't know, to someone who is passed caring, and who may never have cared. He writes about the lost respect for public service. Ironically, Whittle and Rogers agree that New Orleans was a failure of leadership.

What happened in the failures of government in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was not something intrinsic to the nature of bureaucracies or the public sector. What happened was a failure of leadership, a failure to renew and strengthen the shared faith that makes each of us a part of something larger, and hopefully, better than we are as individuals. What happened was a failure of leadership to keep faith with us.

That failure in leadership was not an accident. It was the result of too many years of too much neglect of the value of public service. For too many years, for too many people, public service has become just a means of advancing oneself in the private sector. People with something to gain, people with a profit motive, selfish, cynical people, have blurred the ideas of authority, responsibility, and accountability. All toward the end of abusing their authority to promote themselves while neglecting or ignoring their responsibilities, oblivious to the shared faith that has become the tattered and fraying social fabric that binds us together.

I look at these two blog posts and despair. One writer has five times the number of subscribers in Bloglines than the other. Guess which?

Technorati Tags : Katrina, Politics, Society

New Orleans from a distance

2005-09-05T12:39:00.000+01:00

I've been out of the U.S. long enough to take what I read about it with a grain or two of salt. Complicated situations can appear deceptively simple from a distance. But the reaction to the New Orleans disaster has been remarkably consistent. People are angry, and it sure looks like it's justified.

Andrew Sullivan, writing in the Sunday Times, dismisses some of what I've been reading -- that the government couldn't respond with enough troops because they're all in Iraq. But without that excuse, what's left?

In fact, there are plenty of troops and National Guardsmen who could have responded adequately. Iraq holds only 10.2% of army forces. There are 750,000 active or part-time soldiers and guardsmen in the US today. The question then becomes: where were they? The Sun Herald in Biloxi, Mississippi, said last week: “On Wednesday, reporters listening to horrific stories of death and survival at the Biloxi Junior High school shelter looked north across Irish Hill Road and saw air force personnel playing basketball and performing calisthenics.”

Where was the urgency to get these soldiers to rescue the poor and drowning in nearby New Orleans, or the dying and dead in devastated Mississippi? The vice-president was nowhere to be seen. The secretary of state was observed shopping for shoes in New York City. The president had barely returned to Washington; and had already opined that nobody had foreseen the breaching of New Orleans’ levees.

Earth to Bush: the breaching of the levees had been foreseen for decades. If anyone wanted evidence that this president was completely divorced from reality, that statement was Exhibit A. It didn’t help coming after a five-week vacation, when most Americans are lucky to get two.

A Florida resident, who is well aware of the dangers of hurricanes, wrote in his blog that the danger was obvious. Before the disaster, his wife worried about the people who wouldn't be able to get out:

I told her that: The US Army, Navy, Coast Guard, and Marines in the region were already staging for deployment, and that before she even hit, they would be rolling towards the area.
That the Army would be dispatching troops, supplies, and medical assistance, including MASH units, and Tent Cities, from at least several bases outside the “Target” area, and that they would be on site when the winds died down just enough to move in.
That the United States Navy had capabilities that few Americans were aware of: Fully loaded supply ships with just about every commodity you can think of, including clothing. Assault Landing Craft, capable of landing Thousands of Troops, ( even Tanks), and Heavy equipment on ANY kind of land. That they had the ability to land and resupply entire Divisions of troops. That the Marines had Helicopter Carriers, the Navy had not only Rescue, and SAR (search and rescue Helos), but that Pennsecola probably had a bunch of them used for training. That Helicopters, troops and even C-130’s could be flown in from as far away as Ft. Campbell Ky., iand be “Operational”, On Site, in less than 24hrs, with literally thousands of trucks/semis/amphibious troop carriers, loaded with supplies and Medical teams, “On Site”, in LESS than 48 hrs. That the Coast Guard, and National Guardsmen would be on scene within HOURS, from ALL of the surrounding areas (States).

In other words…….While we can’t prevent Mother Nature from ravishing the area, we CAN help the survivors within Hours!!!!!!!!!

Boy was I Full of Shit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

In the meantime, administration officials are insisting that no one could have foreseen this. As an easy Google search will show, the possibility of a major hurricane hit on New Orleans was considered one of the top three threats facing the U.S., that the Army Corp. of Engineers has been warning that the levees were inadequate, that the government recently slashed the budget for repairs and put the money toward projects such as a bridge from one Alaska town (pop. 8,000) to a nearby island (pop. 50).

Someone's got some explaining to do.

Tags: New Orleans, Politics, Katrina

Being Poor

2005-09-04T22:24:00.000+01:00

Whatever: Being Poor: An excellent, poetic and sobering look at what it's like to be poor (via Clive Thompson). Here's a sample, but please read the whole thing:

Being poor is people angry at you just for walking around in the mall.

Being poor is not taking the job because you can't find someone you trust to watch your kids.

Being poor is the police busting into the apartment right next to yours.

Being poor is not talking to that girl because she'll probably just laugh at your clothes.

Being poor is hoping you'll be invited for dinner.

Being poor is a sidewalk with lots of brown glass on it.

Being poor is people thinking they know something about you by the way you talk.

Being poor is needing that 35-cent raise.

Tags: Blog, Poverty

More odds and ends

2005-09-04T21:36:00.000+01:00

3hive - sharing the sharing: Interesting blog about free music files on the Internet (mostly via band or record company sites). I especially like that you can play the blog like a radio station.
Tags: MP3, Blog, Music, Review

rebecca blood :: bloggers on blogging :: heather armstrong (dooce), august 2005: Interview with the woman behind one of the most popular blog's, dooce.
Tags: Blogging, Interview, Writing

Reader²: A site for tagging, reviewing and recommending books. Seemed still lightly populated when I checked a few days ago.
Tags: Books, Review, Tags, Social

EFF: The Customer Is Always Wrong: A User's Guide to DRM in Online Music: Excellent introduction to the issue of digital rights management, for people who aren't necessarily geeks.
Tags: DRM, Copyright, Rights

Making the second post easier

2005-09-03T19:45:00.000+01:00

I've been moderately successful at getting some of my extended family to create blogs, but I have had less success in getting them to post anything. Most of the new family blogs have one entry -- their first.

If the obstacle is that the technology is intimidating, there are a couple of programs that make posting to your blog as easy as writing a letter and printing it. The first is an add-on to Microsoft Word, made by Google for its Blogger service, which can be found here. Another is a separate editor called Qumana LE, which you can download from here. Both are free.

Blogger's Word add-on has the advantage of familiarity. Once installed, it adds four new buttons in the toolbar: Blogger Settings, Open Post, Save as Draft and Publish. I gave it my Blogger username and password and that's all the set up it needed. I could use any of Microsoft Word's features, such as Autocorrect and grammar checking, and posting was as easy as clicking on one button.

Qumana worked similarly, but had a few more advanced features, such automatically inserting Technorati tags and support for almost any blogging system (such as Typepad and Blogware). One neat feature is something called the DropPad. It's a floating icon that let me gather Web sites or snippets of text by dragging from my browser and dropping it on to the icon. The collected items are put into a document for later editing and posting. Qumana lacks the ability to save your post as a draft, something I do frequently. You can, however, save it on your hard drive (in Rich Text Format) until you're ready to put it on your blog.

Both are for Windows only at the moment, which means I won't be using them much, and anyone comfortable with HTML will find them limiting. But for the average user -- and that's most of my family -- either makes posting a snap.

Technorati Tags : Family, Blogging, Wysiwyg, Editors, Blogger, Qumana, Review

Comments

2005-09-03T11:11:00.000+01:00

Just a quick administrative note: I went back to Blogger's normal comment system, after trying a third-party service called Haloscan for months. I tried it because I like the idea of "trackbacks," which allow you to explicitly attach your blog entry to another's, as a response or a continuation of the conversation. Unfortunately, spammers are ruining the system. Most trackbacks I got were to gambling or dubious pharmaceutical sites. It wasn't worth the effort to find and delete those, especially since I get very few legitimate trackbacks anyway. One side effect is that if you've commented on a post, the comments are gone. Sorry about that.

Tags: Blogging, Trackback, Haloscan

Slow motion

2005-09-03T10:25:00.000+01:00

I was working when the 9/11 attack in New York and Washington happened. The newsroom is surrounded by giant TV screens, so the scenes played over and over, all over the room, as we watched in silence. I remember the stages we went through: Disbelief, shock, anger and then grief.

Over the hurricane in New Orleans, I've been going through the same stages, watching the same giant TV screens. The scenes play over and over, all day long, for days on end. How can this happen in the world's richest country? This time, however, the disbelief, shock and anger are unfolding over several days, when we're a bit more capable of absorbing it. That's the danger. I woke up this morning to see headlines turning hopeful for the first time. How many will breathe a sigh of relief and put off making that donation?

New Orleans isn't going to drain. It has to be pumped out. The lower Mississippi area is the world's fifth-biggest port and accounts for a tenth of the country's oil and gas production. Recovering from this is a long term project and will be going on long after most of us have moved on.

Consider giving something now, and again weeks from now, when it's needed most, and few are giving it much thought.

[Update Sept. 6: Corrects the region's portion of oil and gas production.]

Tags: New Orleans, Katrina, Charity

Blog Day 2005

2005-08-31T21:34:00.000+01:00

Today is Blog Day, apparently. I'm not sure what it is, but I'm supposed to mention five blogs that you might not have heard of. So here goes:

Jon's Thoughts on Everything: I can't find Jon Maddox's profile, so I don't know much about him, but he's alerted me to some cool tech stuff.

Eamonn Fitzgerald's Rainy Day: Anyone with a name like that has to be cool. Plus, he's a hell of a writer.

Education Technology - Tim Lauer: The principal at Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. I bet he would have made my education a lot more fun.

vanillasky: A woman in Manchester (England) who has changed my view of the city.

Charlie's Diary: Charles Stross's blog is as entertaining as his books.

Tags: Blogging, BlogDay2005

Odds and ends

2005-08-30T21:30:00.000+01:00

ongoing � Mac Mini for Mom: Tim Bray converts his mother from Windows 98 to a Mac Mini and discovers what works and what doesn't for a Macintosh novice. I'm also thinking of getting off the Windows treadmill. Keeping antivirus software and spyware eradicators up to date and making sure I'm patched regularly is getting to be a drag. I personally prefer Linux, and the kids don't seem to have any problems using it for homework and their Web-based games, but I'm hoping the Mac's more polished interface and, crucially, the availability of Microsoft Office will make the transition easier for my wife (who I've never seen voluntarily use Linux). What's keeping me from making the jump sooner is that I don't want to add a fourth computer in the house. The Mac will replace Windows -- it certainly won't replace Linux -- and that's a big jump.

But Is There Intelligent Spaghetti Out There?: The New York Times notices the newest religion on the block -- Pastafarianism. This a brilliant way to combat efforts to mandate the teaching of "alternate" theories of creation in science classes. I don't have a problem with teaching kids Intelligent Design or even straight Creationism, just don't do it in science class. It isn't science.

Hollywood, Microsoft align on new Windows: CNET's News.com writes about how Microsoft is adding new digital rights management in the next version of Windows, locking down literally everything to please the film studios and record companies. History seems to be repeating itself in the computer industry. I remember when word processors, spreadsheets and games came with "copy protection." Some companies went as far as requiring users to install a dongle on the back of their computers before their applications would run. Users ran away, in droves, and turned to software that wasn't such a pain in the ass to use -- shareware and, ironically, Microsoft's products, such as Word. Cory Doctorow gives Microsoft a tongue-lashing over the plans.

And, while I'm on the subject, here's another good essay on why digital rights management is an unworkable idea (via Tim Bray's site again).

Inequality and Risk: Paul Graham takes apart the apparently laudable goal of reducing economic inequality. What happens if you try to narrow the differences between rich and poor? He argues that we're aiming at the wrong problem.

Leonardo da Vinci: Qualities of a Genius and How to Think Productively: "These strategies are common to the thinking styles of creative geniuses in science, art, and industry throughout history."

A War to Be Proud Of: Christopher Hitchens finds the Iraq war to be a glass half-full, rather than half empty.

On the same subject, Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. argues in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. has to adopt a better counterinsurgency strategy. His approach, borrowed from the British in Malaysia, sounds like it could work -- in 10 years, with two or three times the current troop level.

Neat software:
- Partition Logic: a free equivalent of Partition Magic and Norton Ghost. It still seems pretty limited, however.
- Stellarium Astronomy Software: Easy to use software for finding stars and planets.
- Real-time HTML Editor: Play around with HTML on the top of the screen and see how it looks, immediately, in the bottom.

Home base

2005-08-29T12:57:00.000+01:00

I made a rash promise a few posts ago to write down how I use computers today, both to laugh at it in 10 years and just in case there's anything I'm doing that may be useful for others in the family. But I can't go too far without mentioning Linux, thereby outing myself as a hard-core geek. Bear with me through this one, please. I'll get back to some stuff that my family will actually use in subsequent posts.

First, some basics: Linux itself is just the kernel -- the lowest level of the operating system, the part that runs the hardware, loads the drivers for peripherals such as printers, keyboard and mouse, and manages how applications share the processor, disk and memory. It was originally written by a Finnish student named Linus Torvalds, who is still the main guy in charge of its development, although there are now many programmers working on it.

On top of that are basic Unix-like utilities, primarily written by an organization dedicated to free software called the GNU Project (it's a recursive acronym, meaning GNU's Not Unix). Richard Stallman, who founded GNU, prefers to call the whole system "GNU/Linux," since Linux by itself would be useless. He's right, of course, but most people still just call it Linux.

On top of the kernel and basic utilities, there's the X Window System, a basic graphical environment originally invented at MIT in 1984. Above that is a desktop environment (the menus, file manager, etc.), the two most popular of which are Gnome and KDE.

Since there are so many, independently developed parts to Linux, most people use it by installing a "distribution," which packages everything together for easy installation. I first played around with Linux using a distribution put out by Texas A&M University (TAMU) in 1992, but the first easy one I used was Slackware. If I remember correctly, I had to download 30 or 40 disk images for 3 1/2 inch floppies. I couldn't get the darn thing to boot from the hard disk -- I had to boot from a floppy and everything else ran from the hard drive. But it ran, and ran and ran. It was the most stable thing available for a PC, bar none, and I was hooked. I've run Web sites on it since late 1993 and it's always what I come back to it for my own, personal work. I may spend most of my time on Windows, since I've always been required to run it at work, and I like Mac OS X, but Linux is my preferred home base.

I've tried many distributions since Slackware, including Red Hat, and now use a Debian-offshoot called Ubuntu. Each has been progressively easier to use and more sophisticated. Ubuntu, in particular, is close to the point where a normal (i.e., non-geek) could use it for everyday work. Installing it is the toughest part, but have you ever tried to install Windows on a bare hard drive on a new PC? Ubuntu is actually much easier than that. It usually just works. It's when it doesn't that you'll need a little help. There's also a "live" CD that you can boot and run the distribution from, which is useful for checking if the installation will work for your hardware. (My Ubuntu PC is what's in the screenshot above.)

One of the aspects of GNU/Linux that I find most fascinating is that it works despite turning traditional economics on its head. The software is copyrighted, just like Windows or Office, but it is shared with a license (primarily the GNU General Public License) that requires the distributor to let users have the source code, the underlying instructions that companies such as Microsoft keep secret and guard like the crown jewels. Any modifications to that source code must be distributed with the same license, i.e. made available to everyone.

The result is that GNU/Linux operates like an open consortium. Most of it is now worked on by paid developers at corporations that benefit from it. If you use Google or Amazon or have a Tivo, you use GNU/Linux. There are several Linux-powered mobile phones now. Nokia, for example, is releasing a wireless Web device this year, running Linux. The license is the key. If Google makes an improvement to the operating system, it benefits, but so does Amazon, IBM and Novell. But Google is glad to do this, because it gets any improvements made by Amazon or IBM. Sharing benefits everyone. (And, by the way, there's nothing in the license that prevents people from selling Linux, and they do. Most people aren't programmers, so the source code is useless to them, and they're paying for the convenience and support.)

Linux lets me be as geeky as I want. If I'm curious about how the operating system works, I can find out, as far as my curiosity leads me, right down to the most basic level. And since thousands of people and several dozen (at least) companies depend for their survival on Linux, I can opt out of the so-called operating system wars. I don't care if Windows takes over the world and everyone has to follow its twists and turns just so they can keep accessing their own data. Linux isn't in that rat race and is the safest place to keep my stuff. Even if it never breaks out of its 2 percent or so market share of desktops, people such as researchers, students, programmers and startups will run it, and improve it. The economic benefits are too great, and the license ensures that I benefit from their improvements.

The big change in the past 10 years is that the disadvantages of Linux have slowly been going away. In the past, what you gave up in using Linux was access to the latest in cool software. Today, the world is coming to us. The Internet and standards-based systems means there are relatively few things developed on Windows and the Macintosh that I can't make use of or find an easy alternative. And much of the best software is written for the Internet directly. The best email program right now is probably GMail, for example, which runs on a Web site. I was able to use Google Talk right away from Linux because it uses a standard instant-messaging system called Jabber. I can open and write Word documents, edit photographs and videos, watch DVDs and write Web pages. Even some of the hottest software, such as Skype, are often available on Linux because it is where the so-called early adopters are. They're the people that will try new stuff first and tell their friends about it (like me).

I'll probably never be able to recommend Linux for everyone in my family, but it's an integral part of my own use of technology, allowing free exploration. And that's good enough for me.

Tags: Technology, Computers, Linux, Ubuntu

Relaxation

2005-08-29T12:52:00.000+01:00

Relaxation
Originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

One of Ailish's shots of Dude sleeping on the couch. (Yes, he has us well trained.) The dude knows how to take it easy.

Tags: Pets, Dogs, Photos

Kenwood House concert

2005-08-29T10:55:00.000+01:00

Kenwood House concertOriginally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

It's Bank Holiday weekend in England, the traditional end of summer. Last night we went to Hampstead Heath for the proms, a classical music concert/flag waving/fireworks event. It was a clear, mild evening -- light jacket weather. My sister Kathy (far left in the photo) and Theresa put together a picnic of fruit, shrimp, olives and wine. The kids played a portable version of Trivial Pursuit and cards. Even the dog was content. (One couple came up to us after the fireworks to comment on how amazed they were that Dude didn't flip out.) It doesn't get much better than this.

The concert in the park is held every year but we've only been once before. There's a main area, where you can sit if you've bought tickets (in the £20 to £25 range, I think), but we plant ourselves on a hill near the concert. We can't see the performers, but we can hear the music very well, and we're surrounded by similar groups of picnicking families. At the end of the evening, we have to walk about a mile through the middle of the park in total darkness. We gave the kids candles in lamps, which gave us just enough light to avoid running into a tree or falling off the path. Just.

Ailish got a few shots of the fireworks, which you can find here. Here's one that came out particularly well:

Tags: Family, Hampstead Heath, Concerts, Fireworks

iPods

2005-08-28T12:13:00.000+01:00

Every once in a while I get asked for advice when one of my family purchases an iPod. Rather than put it in email yet again, I thought I'd post what I've been telling people lately.

First, get a cover for your iPod. While the body of the devices are pretty rugged, especially the iPod mini, the screen scratches easily. Mine is difficult to read right now and it's because I put the iPod in the same pocket as my keys, just once. That's all it took to get thoroughly scratched up. It doesn't matter what you get, as long as you can access the controls (get the right cover for your model of iPod).

Second, set up iTunes to record in MP3 format, not Apple's AAC. While Apple's format is better in lots of ways, MP3 files can be played on almost anything and you won't notice the difference in sound quality. iPods happen to be the best music player right now, but that may not be true in five or 10 years. Don't get tied to Apple.

Third, avoid collecting lots of music that has been "protected" with digital rights management. People have been so brainwashed by a constant barrage of propaganda about piracy that it isn't worth getting into an argument about it. Just trust me on this one, or read many people who argue this better. DRM isn't good for you, nor is it good for the record companies. The latter just don't realize it yet. That means, for the moment, buying most of your music in CD format and recording it yourself (check first that it isn't a "protected" CD) or spending your money on sites that give you more freedom. Magnatune and MP3tunes.com are good ones.

Fourth, if you have lots of kids and don't commute to work on trains, you won't get much chance to listen to it. The easiest way I've found to listen to the iPod in the car is with one of those cassette adapters. The difference between the £10 (or $10) ones and the £20 ones is noticeable. Spend a little extra.

Tags : apple, ipod, tips, drm, music

Pages that caught my eye today

2005-08-27T20:44:00.000+01:00

Harvard Gazette: What makes a city thrive?: Does the difference between Paris and Boston come down to density?

SoYouWanna.com home: The ultimate how-to site. How to do almost anything.

Business 2.0 - Magazine Article - Printable Version - The $50 Million Giveaway: Do you have a killer business plan for any of these ideas? Someone's waiting to give you money for them.

Why Atheism?: A well thought out discussion of the intellectual case for atheism. I've been linking to a lot of sites about religion, so here's something for the other side.

VanderWorld: Smart Women Don't Get Laid: A smart woman response to a study that says men are smarter than women. I must be well below average because most women I know are smarter than me.

Code Craft - Freedom languages: Good description of the difference between "freedom languages" (i.e. perl, python) and "safe languages" (C++, Java). I'm inclined toward the freedom side for various reasons (see next entry).

Why Good Programmers Are Lazy and Dumb: Interesting article about working efficiently and creatively. Applies to more than just programmers.

The Law West of Ealing Broadway

2005-08-27T10:21:00.000+01:00

The Law West of Ealing Broadway is one of the most interesting blogs I've come across in a while. It's by an anonymous magistrate, somewhere near London (and from the title, probably nearby). Magistrates in England and Wales are the lowest level of the judicial system. They're proper judges, but are just normal people, doing it for civic duty or fun. They are almost never lawyers. They handle cases such as drunks, fist fights, vandalism and domestic assault -- the depressing background noise of low-level crime in any community. The blog, written by someone who calls him (or her)self ByStander, is a facinating peek at this world:

The prosecutor stood up apologetically and told us that she could not find the case papers, and that the policeman who had come to give evidence did not have any papers either. She asked for an adjournment and I gave her a sceptical glance and asked for comments from the defence. This seemed to take the solicitor by surprise and he mumbled and faffed about the distance that his client had travelled. 'Are you opposing the application to adjourn?' I asked him. The penny dropped and he said that he was. My colleagues' agreement took a few seconds to check, and we said that we refused to adjourn and that the Crown must proceed. At that point she bowed to the inevitable and offered no evidence, whereupon we dismissed the case.

We looked at the defence brief expecting an application for costs, but it took a pointed question from the clerk to jolt him into it. We made an order that his client's costs be reimbursed out of central funds.

We wasted an hour or so of court time, plus the defendant's costs. A police officer wasted most of a morning. A man who might have been guilty was acquitted because of a prosecution foul-up that a ten year-old should have been able to prevent - how hard is it to keep hold of an A4 folder?

Tags: Law, Blogging, London

Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe

2005-08-26T18:50:00.000+01:00

Cory Doctorow's Eastern Standard Tribe is a look at what life would be like with all barriers removed by instant communications -- except for the need to sleep.

The action happens in two familiar places for me, London and the Route 128 area around Boston. The main character, Art, leads a double life: He's a "user experience" designer and a spy for the Eastern Standard Tribe, those who choose to live on New York and Boston time, no matter where they actually reside. Art has been sent to sabotage the rival Greenwich Mean Tribe by designing systems for the megacorporation Virgin/Deutsche Telekom that appeal to the executives and bean counters, but are almost entirely unusable. His aim is to gum up the already inefficient Europe, widening the economic gap between GMT and EST. This is a bit too plausable for comfort, especially for someone who rides the Tube every day. I can think of many other products, laws and procedures that are apparently designed by sadists.

The story opens, however, when Art's life has already gone off the rails. He's on the roof of an insane asylum outside Boston, trying to decide whether to give himself a lobotomy by sticking a pencil up his nose. How he got there is told in flashbacks, involving corporate intrigue and backstabbing over a proposed music-swapping service designed to boost road toll revenue for his real employer, MassPike.

The writing is excellent, extremely funny and done with a lighter touch than in his latest, Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town. I only wish the book was longer. At only 221 pages -- in very big type -- I finished it in just a few daily commutes.

Definitely recommended for my friends in family in both time zones.

Tags: Book Review, SciFi, Cory Doctorow

Google Talk pluses, and a lot of minuses

2005-08-24T20:18:00.000+01:00

Google gets so much publicity whenever it does anything at all that I feel like a cog in its marketing machine just writing about it. But since I started last night, I better finish with some initial observations on Google Talk.

First, the pluses: It's dead simple to setup and use. A friend called me tonight on Skype and the quality wasn't great -- my friend kept breaking up, although he heard me fine. We switched to Google Talk and he sounded much clearer, no break up at all. You can't draw conclusions from one call, and Skype usually sounds much better, but my initial impression was good. I also haven't made any special changes on my wireless router for Google Talk, which I've done for Skype. Adding contacts was simple too, as long as they have a gmail account. Finally, I was able to connect to Google's service from Gaim on Linux, so put a checkmark next to the standards compliance.

Now for the negatives. Skype needn't worry right away. There's no way to make or receive calls from regular phones (equivalents of SkypeOut and SkypeIn, respectively) and no voicemail. Calls and chats aren't encrypted, the voice calls work on Windows only and I didn't see any way to have group chats (I might have just missed this feature). The standards compliance has some limits, too. There's no way yet to initiate a call to someone who isn't on the service (such as a member of another Jabber server). Many of these limitations are mentioned already in the documentation on Google's site, so there are probably plans to address them.

A couple of similarities: The voice calls are peer-to-peer, like Skype's, and the basic user interface is remarkably similar.

Conclusion: In a few iterations, once Google follows through on some of its promises, Google Talk could be a winner. In the meantime, at best it's something that I'm going to run once in a while, alongside Skype and Gaim.

[Update: SkypJournal does a better point-for-point comparison.]

Tags: Google, Google Talk, Skype

Google Talk?

2005-08-23T22:14:00.000+01:00

According to the L.A. Times, Google is planning to announce an instant messaging/voice over IP application as early as tomorrow:

According to a person who has seen the service, Google plans to let users chat using more than just their keyboards. Like similar programs from competitors, Google Talk also will let computer users with a headset have voice conversations with other computer users with headsets, this person said.

As I've said previously, Skype will have a hard time competing if the big boys get into Internet telephones, and it sounds like one of the biggest boys around is moving in. But I wouldn't start planning Skype's funeral right away. Google has a mixed record when it comes to catching up. Its Hello photo-sharing service, for example, is nothing to write home about, and its customized home page is rudimentary. I'll also be disappointed if Google Talk just supports Windows, and not the Mac and Linux.

The best scenario would be if Google bases its product on open source, like Jabber (which I've heard suggested) or maybe by adopting something like Gizmo. The company has done it before, when it used the open-source VLC media player for its video service.

The second-best scenario is that Google adheres so well to existing standards, such as SIP, that the company won't have to create a different client for every operating system, you'll just be able to use existing ones.

[Update: It's out already. Download squad has a review. It's based on Jabber, so that means it may be best scenario #1. I'm using it now with Gaim on Linux. The voice calls, of course, don't work with anything but Google's own client, just on Windows, but the company says it's aiming for interoperability with other voice clients. Colour me initially impressed.]

[Update2: You can get it here. Instructions for setting up Gaim and other clients here.]

Tags: Google, VoIP, Technology, Instant Messaging

August garden tour

2005-08-23T17:45:00.000+01:00

I was working from home today and I thought I'd grab a few last shots of the garden in summer. Autumn in the U.K. isn't like in Boston, where the weather tends to stay try enough to enjoy the colour of the leaves. Here, it tends to rain even more often than normal, knocking the leaves off as soon as they change.

On the plus side, it'll stay mild well through October, so I can't complain. OK, yes I can.

The grapevine produced its first crop, after a couple of years of just taking up space.

We finally got the knack of growing tomatoes. We grew this year's batch in a container outside our kitchen window, well out of the reach of our dog and slugs.

I still can't identify a single one of the flowers. This is, um, a blue one. With a bee.

Tags: Gardens, London

Klingon Fairy Tales

2005-08-23T11:58:00.000+01:00

McSweeney's Internet Tendency: Klingon Fairy Tales is a list of familiar titles with a Klingon twist. A sample:

"Goldilocks Dies With Honor at the Hands of the Three Bears"

"Snow White and the Six Dwarves She Killed With Her Bare Hands and the Seventh Dwarf She Let Get Away as a Warning to Others"

(Via BoingBoing)

Painless backup (without boring myself to death)

2005-08-22T23:05:00.000+01:00

I've been typing on computers, more or less continuously, for more than 25 years. I started on the DisplayWriter, IBM's semi-successful answer to Wang's word processor, which we had in the house for a while (my father worked for IBM). Then, through school and various newspaper jobs, there was a Kaypro with CP/M and WordStar, a Radioshack TRS100, an Apple IIe, an IBM PC, a PS/2 and a long string of generic 386s and 486s.

Every word I typed into those machines, except for a fraction on yellowing paper, is gone forever. This isn't a great loss, admittedly. My reports on the ping-pong tournament at MIT and the planning commission in Springfield, Vermont, didn't advance human knowledge much. And if I threw an insightful question at Jack Kemp, Michael Dukakis or Jesse Jackson during the 1988 presidential primary in New Hampshire, it was accidental and promptly edited out.

But there are things I want to keep: my music, photos and some personal writing (the forum for which has varied over the years). Retaining data, through rapid technology changes, companies that come and go, and changing technology fads (5 1/4 floppy disks, anyone?), isn't rocket science: Decide what's important, maintain at least two copies (preferably far apart) and keep the bits in a format that isn't going to be forgotten down the road. Unfortunately, I'm not a rocket scientist and have lost countless files that I cared about. I spent years writing a weekly column in the 1990s, for example. A Google search turns up five hits, only three of which are actual columns. And they're not even very good ones.

One of the reasons I've lost so much is that I hate backing up my data. It is so incredibly boring that I've spent about two days writing that last sentence. I just can't bear it. The only way I've found to keep my stuff from disappearing at the next move, natural disaster or mouse-click-too-many is to make backing up a side effect of something else I want to do.

For example, my photos are on my hard disk and on Flickr. I just want to share my photos with my family, friends and the occasional complete stranger. The side effect is that my photos are in two different places, separated by about 6,000 miles (London and someplace in California). Similarly, my music is on my hard disk and the MP3 player du jour (currently an iPod). I just want to listen to my music on the Tube. Keeping my Led Zeppelin collection safe from hard disk crashes and house fires is just a nice extra.

Keeping documents is a little harder. Fortunately, in a fit of total madness one week a few years ago, I learned rsync. It took me days of hairpulling. But by the end of it, I learned to set up an automated process that keeps the downstairs computer in sync with the upstairs one. [Update: here's a good recent explanation of the process. That's basically what I do.]

And anything really important, I email it to myself on gmail, in searchable text. Et voila! My stuff is in two places -- on my hard disk (at least once) and in Google's server farm, someplace on an earthquake fault line. I feel safer already.

Tags: Backup, Technology, Computers

Computer Independence

2005-08-20T15:54:00.000+01:00

I was thinking over the last week about what has changed in my use of computers over the past 10 years. Although technology has moved on considerably, the differences are less obvious than I would have thought.

In 1995, I was forced to run Windows at work, used Linux at home and wanted a Macintosh to play with. Back then, I wrote reviews for PC Week (now eWeek) and thus had a whole lab full of cutting-edge hardware, free software and a fast permanent connection to the Internet. I was already a neck-deep in the Web, running PC Week Labs' site (one of the few print publication sites to start in 1994, complete with discussion forums written in Perl).

Today, I'm still running Windows at work, use Linux at home, and can't afford a Mac. The difference is that it doesn't matter nearly as much. My "lab" is my living room, but the software that counts is free, the hardware that I can build myself for a day's pay outstrips PC Week's fastest workstations by several orders of magnitude and my home connection to the Internet is speedier than the one at work. And what clinches it is that I can start this sentence at work (Memo to boss: No, I'm not), write the middle of it on an Internet PC in the Eurostar business lounge at Waterloo station in London, type a bit more of it on my Blackberry, and finish it on my Linux PC at home.

In short, what computer I'm using is less and less important. The applications I like -- Firefox and Skype, for example -- are available on all three operating systems. The data that matters to me -- my email, Web bookmarks, photos, the blogs I follow, documents and contacts (the latter primarily kept in GMail) -- are accessible from just about any make or model.

For most of my friends and family, however, this may seem irrelevant. They're still running one computer, or at most two (home and work). Why is computer independence a good thing? One word: Freedom. I really don't care what Microsoft does, or who wins the operating systems war. I'm not drooling over the next promised upgrade of Word. And if I manage my data carefully, I don't care who gets reaped in the next Dot-Bust. I still want a Mac, of course, but when I get it, migration will be a breeze.

Over the next couple of posts, I'll take a look at my current strategies for keeping independent.

Tags: Software, Internet, Technology

Flickr Toys

2005-08-20T11:31:00.000+01:00

This magazine cover maker (which I used to make this image out of one of my photos from High Wycombe) is one of a collection of Flickr Toys. There are many others listed on the Great Flickr Tools Collection. Remember when, way back in the last decade of the 20th century, when columnists and other opinion shapers were talking about how the Web was going to kill Microsoft? The idea was that new applications would be built on the Internet, making the operating system (and programs like Word, Excel and Outlook) irrelevant. Sites like Flickr, Amazon, eBay and Google (with its Maps stuff) are making it happen, finally.

I bet few were thinking of these kinds of applications back then. But from such small things...

Tags: Flickr, Photography, Development, Web

ReligionFacts.com - Just the facts on world religions.

2005-08-19T13:47:00.000+01:00

ReligionFacts.com - Just the facts on world religions.

Looks like an excellent site. If you were ever confused about Tibetan and Zen buddhism or how a Sunni Muslim is different from a Shi'a, this is the place.

Cringely on "patent reform"

2005-08-19T06:13:00.000+01:00

PBS | I, Cringely . August 18, 2005 - Patently Absurd: "If patent reform will hurt most of the people who receive patents, why are we doing it? Good question."

Good column this week, focusing on following the money in patent legislation. The patent system, almost everywhere in the world, is in a bit of a mess. You wouldn't think it matters to you and me, but it's the same system that encourages companies to make new things like medicine. It's also one of the hardest things to tinker with. One change can have numerous unitended (or intended, but non-obvious) side effects. Want to scrap software patents? Good, I agree with you, but how do you define software? Where do you draw the line on inventions such as antilock brakes on cars, which run on software? Patent reform will be tricky, and anyone who tells you it isn't, doesn't fully understand the situtation.

Tags: Patents, Intellectual Property

Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

2005-08-16T20:05:00.000+01:00

Cory Doctorow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town is a pleasant surprise. I thought I was buying a science fiction book (having read nothing about it beforehand), got something closer to a Stephen King novel, and enjoyed it.

The main character, Alan (or Andrew, or Aaron, Arnos... Only about half the cast have fixed given names) is the son of a mountain and a washing machine. And I don't mean a big guy and an overworked housewife. He's the offspring of a geographical formation and a household appliance with a fertile spin cycle. But, other than a missing belly button, he apparently looks normal enough to blend into a Toronto neighbourhood. The same can't be said of his brothers, three of whom are like a Russian doll, one inside the other. The smallest of this trio goes missing, a victim of possible foul play by an evil sibling, and the race is on to find and stop the villain.

Doctorow wields the ridiculous premise as well as Stephen King, like playing a game of chicken with the reader: How far can I go before you stop reading and swerve away? Doctorow has King's knack of keeping you reading with a quick-moving plot. I didn't find myself having to slog through any part of the book.

He's not quite as good at painting the characters. Preposterous stories need big ones. King fashions his with a sledge hammer and neon graffiti. Doctorow is a little too subtle. Three quarters of the way into the book, for example, a neighbour tells Alan/Adam/Andy that he's the weirdest person she's ever met. But the mountain/washing machine background is a secret she doesn't know. Why does she find him weird? His actions so far struck me as only mildly eccentric. Does he snort when he laughs? Keep his top button fastened in summer? Cut his hair with the help of a cereal bowl? Without a bit more colour, that line has to be taken on faith. That's a minor quibble, however. Other characters in the book -- the love interest with bat wings growing out of her back, the cyberpunk trying to turn Toronto into a wireless Internet Mecca and the evil mountain spawn -- are drawn more boldly.

It's the first book I've read by Doctorow, who I've encountered previously only through his blog posts championing fair use and opposing copy protection (digital rights management) . I agree strongly with his talk, and Doctorow walks the walk. The entire text of Someone Comes to Town can be read online, if you want. I suspect that helps sales of his books, not hurts as we've been brainwashed into believing.

I bought my copy, taking advantage of the author's offer to sign every book sold online through a local bookstore, and I'm looking forward to exploring his other books.

Tags: Book Review, Fantasy, Fiction

YouTube

2005-08-14T20:49:00.000+01:00

YouTube, a new Web site under development, looks like it's shaping up to be the best way to share those little, 2-minute videos from your digital camera (or the 15-second ones from your phone). It's early days, but worth checking out. (Spotted via Slashdot.)

Tags: SocialSoftware, Video, Filesharing

Back home

2005-08-14T14:19:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow it's back to work, but I've finished uploading the rest of the photos from our holiday and I can't help giving it a quick last glance.

Every year is different. When we first started going to Tramore from London, seven years ago, we were still pushing strollers. This year, every child swam well enough to use the Guillamene and place bets at the Tramore Races, while the dog took much more time than a toddler.

The Guillamene (pictured) wouldn't be allowed anywhere but Ireland, and I suspect the lawyers will catch up some day. It's made up of cement platforms built into the cliffs, with sheer drops into water 40-feet deep. It's where my mother learned to swim and some of the crazier locals use year-round. The scenery is beatiful, but the water is frigid. My dive watch measured the water temperature at around 16C, though it's not accurate unless worn outside a wet suit. I'd say it was closer to 12C or so.

Some of the older children went last year, and Aidan learned to love jumping off one of the steeper sides. Our youngest took some coaxing, but she can swim well enough now to tread water and swim around, as long as I'm nearby. Theresa even went in once. Just once. And briefly.

Another favorite each year is the Tramore Races, a more than 200-year-old traditional fleecing of the local population. I've been going off-and-on since I was in low single-digits and I don't think I've ever come away with any money. Fortunately, my wife and kids are better gamblers than I am. Cara won 28 euros on a 2 euro bet, while Theresa walked away with something similar. My horses, as usual, came in dead last each time I bet on them. Maybe I should start betting on the horse I think will lose?

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

Sunset on Tramore

2005-08-11T11:52:00.000+01:00

sunset, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

Our holiday seemed particularly fast this year. We return home the day after tomorrow and we haven't accomplished half the things we normally do.

An important to-do items that I have accomplished is to think of goals for the next year. I'm keeping my aim simple -- to enjoy everyday life more. I've finally figured out (after 42 years) that work and everyday tasks shouldn't be something you suffer through until you get the occasional holiday. I'm not going to wait until I win the lottery or retire to start living. It starts now.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

Ailish's photos from the U.S.

2005-08-09T14:54:00.000+01:00

DSCN1067, originally uploaded by ailishsul.

I uploaded some of Ailish's photos from the states (and here in Tramore) from her digital camera, before they get lost. She's been away from a broadband connection for several weeks, traveling among the relatives. More of her photos can be found here.

Tramore dunes

2005-08-09T14:12:00.000+01:00

Tramore dunes, ecology tour, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

I've been going to Tramore, Ireland, most years since I was about 2 years old. And I've probably walked around the Tramore Dunes several times, every year. But I realise I know little about them, so this year we signed up for a tour of the area with a recent ecology graduate. We probably knew more about the area than the tour guide (we were her first ever public tour), but we did learn several new things. For one, the terrain is extremely rare in Europe. There are almost no wetlands like it anywhere in Europe. Some of the last of it has been filled in and used for golf courses in Portugal.

More photos of our tour can be found here.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland, Ecology

Another beach day

2005-08-08T12:51:00.000+01:00

Another beach day, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

It's usually around this point of our annual vacation to Ireland, after the first week and just as Theresa gets up the nerve to get into the water, that I begin to seriously consider whether I should simplify my life. Why do I work 14 hours a day? Theresa can work anywhere as a nurse. I could start freelancing again. I keep telling myself that we're seeing Tramore as it is in the summer. In the winter, it's probably pretty dire. And I somehow doubt that its schools are on the top of the league tables. Some day, though, I'm not going to come back.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

Accelerando

2005-08-08T11:23:00.000+01:00

Charles Stross's Accelerando reminded me of the TV shows Dallas or Dynasty. Set in an earlier epoch than his first two books, it follows a complex, future-shocked and dysfunctional family -- and one wise-cracking artificial cat -- as humanity goes through rapid change through the 21st century.

The central character is a idealistic cyberpunk named Manfred Macx who prides himself on being well ahead of the curve. He has several ideas before breakfast each day, files patents on them and then donates the patents to the "Free Infrastructure Foundation," an obvious direct decendant of the Free Software Foundation. The aim is to spread the wealth, make as many people rich as possible to help them over the economic upheaval Macx believes is just around the corner. The urgency increases when Macx gets an unusual request for asylum -- a group of lobsters uploaded to a computer, neuron by neuron, has achieved sentience and wants protection.

That leap in development, in which computers can host minds, begins a race against time as humanity makes more progress in 5 decades than it does in the previous 50,000 years. The resulting blurring of many lines, such as between our brains and computers, sentient and insentient beings and even time and place, brings up a stark choice: Do you cross the line and become more computer than human, or do you stay behind and retain your humanity, a Neaderthal in a modern world?

I found the book harder to grasp than Stross's first two. It was difficult to keep track of the forked copies of the main characters, and who was mother, father, grandfather or son in a universe where characters can grow old, die and then come back as youngsters. The family tree resembles brambles. This book is also built around a completely different universe than Stross's earlier work, with no shared history that I could see, but I'm looking forward to see if he continues on this track or extends the universe built in Singularity or Iron Sunrise. Accelerando seems to offer more possibilities.

[Updated to expand it a bit. I'm having trouble writing these in drips and drabs in internet cafes. I initially left out several things I wanted to say.]

Tags: Book Reviews, SciFi

Beautiful morning

2005-08-05T09:17:00.000+01:00

Beautiful morning, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

It pelted rain all day yesterday, which is when we consider maybe not coming to Tramore next year. Then it clears, the sun comes out, the waves pick up and we forget that idea. Until it rains again.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

View from Below

2005-08-04T14:58:00.000+01:00

view from below, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

I finally found an internet cafe in Waterford that will allow me to connect my own laptop. My aim was to upload the photos we have taken already. Unfortunately, I left the smartcard with most of our pics back at the house in Tramore, miles away. (Notice a trend here? My IQ drops at least 50 points while on vacation.) Anyway, I've managed to get a few up there and I'll try to upload some more next week. This photo is of Aidan flying his kite during a very typical Irish beach days -- cold, grey and windy. We've had some good days so far as well, so I can't complain.

Today it's pelting rain and we used the opportunity to take a trip into town. The rest of the family are at the cinema, watching Fantastic Four or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (they split up after failing to agree).

More photos can be found here.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

Waiting for the tide

2005-08-03T15:50:00.000+01:00

Waiting for the tide, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

I'm still limited to posting these crummy camera phone pictures of our holiday. The family at home will probably have to wait until we get back to see some of the shots. One thing I've learned is I need to prepare better. I went to try and put some of the good photos on my laptop and realized I didn't load the camera's software on it before I left. I'll have to wait until later in the week when I can get to a fast connection in Waterford to see if I can find the software on the Web.

Anyway, here's another low-res and dark shot. It's of the kids. You'll have to take my word for it.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

Morning walk

2005-08-03T09:05:00.000+01:00

Morning walk, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

The weather in New England has nothing on Tramore -- blue skies, sun, and then in the course of 15 minutes, rain. Theresa and I have stumbled on a good routine. We get up early and walk the dog, when the weather seems more predictably good.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

Elephants

2005-08-02T11:20:00.000+01:00

Elephants, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

The first day on the beach: I get out of the car, glance at the sea, and freeze. My brain can't quite grasp what I'm seeing. The circus is in town, so the trainer brought these two down to the strand. They weren't tethered in any way. The elephants went way out -- up to their necks -- and splashed around for a while. When they were finished, they just calmly walked in, looked around for the trainer and followed him back. I got some good shots on the real camera, but until I find a way to upload them, you'll have to make do with these crummy camera phone pics.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland

Land!

2005-07-31T17:13:00.000+01:00

Land!, originally uploaded by Eamonn_Sullivan.

You can just see Ireland off in the distance. Yes, the weather is a bit gray.

Tags: Family, Vacation, Ireland