Places that sell themed and/or local touristy postcards, such as the San Francisco Exploratorium, should also sell thematically appropriate stamps of the correct denomination, and have an outbound mailbox.
Sometimes, people just gotta be told what to do.
Posted on 2009.11.01 at 22:00Current Location: AS 354, starting decent to OAK
Once again, there has been an upset little kid on the flight. This time, far in the back behind me. Not sure what she is upset over, but she's pretty clearly saying
I am committing presenteeism in the first degree, by being on this flight and by going to ApacheCon. I caught a flu last Friday while in Atlanta. By Saturday morning I had chills, hot flashes, stuffed sinuses, raw sore throat, and the real capstone was that all my joints ached. And I couldn't just sit in bed or in the bathtub, some of the furniture in the house has been swapped around, and it lead to me needing to move a bunch of my own stuff, and help one of my housemates make a run to the dump. So while everyone else was carving pumpkins, I was withdrawn, grumpy, and curt.
Speaking of curt, I had an odd experience at the end of my flight back from Atlanta. The flight had left late, and there were a handful of passengers on board who needed to catch a connecting flight to Anchorage. The crew announced as we were taxi'ing in that that other flight was holding and delaying at the next gate for us, and could everyone stay seated so the Anchorage bound people could get off fast. So, we pull up to the gate, and the there is the bing sound and the crosscheck alert. And, of course, EVERYONE stands up, gets in the aisle, and starts opening the overheads.
I am annoyed. So I say, "HEY! ARE YOU GOING TO ANCHORAGE?!" My voice rung out, filling the cabin, louder and harsher than I've heard it in my own ears in a long time. And there was silence for a moment, and then everyone sat back down, and a handful of people rushed down the aisle and caught their flight.
Sometimes, people just gotta be told what to do.
F*** You!.
I am committing presenteeism in the first degree, by being on this flight and by going to ApacheCon. I caught a flu last Friday while in Atlanta. By Saturday morning I had chills, hot flashes, stuffed sinuses, raw sore throat, and the real capstone was that all my joints ached. And I couldn't just sit in bed or in the bathtub, some of the furniture in the house has been swapped around, and it lead to me needing to move a bunch of my own stuff, and help one of my housemates make a run to the dump. So while everyone else was carving pumpkins, I was withdrawn, grumpy, and curt.
Speaking of curt, I had an odd experience at the end of my flight back from Atlanta. The flight had left late, and there were a handful of passengers on board who needed to catch a connecting flight to Anchorage. The crew announced as we were taxi'ing in that that other flight was holding and delaying at the next gate for us, and could everyone stay seated so the Anchorage bound people could get off fast. So, we pull up to the gate, and the there is the bing sound and the crosscheck alert. And, of course, EVERYONE stands up, gets in the aisle, and starts opening the overheads.
I am annoyed. So I say, "HEY! ARE YOU GOING TO ANCHORAGE?!" My voice rung out, filling the cabin, louder and harsher than I've heard it in my own ears in a long time. And there was silence for a moment, and then everyone sat back down, and a handful of people rushed down the aisle and caught their flight.
Sometimes, people just gotta be told what to do.
(written yesterday, Oct 29, while in the air)
On my way to Atlanta for No:SQL(East). We really need a better name than "NoSQL" for the emerging implementations of scalable key/value stores and caches, but nobody yet has come up with one that has stuck. Which is maybe a good thing, since a "good" name constrains wide thinking (which is both a good thing and a trap), and right now this space of development is still exploring what "works" for APIs, usability, implementation, performance, and scalability. We dont want it nailed down yet.
There are, of course, a whole array of existing and soon-to-exist vendors who are commercialize some approach (fair disclaimer: I work for one of them), and then start pouring marketing muscle into nailing down people's thought patterns towards thinking of Product X or Approach Y as "THE solution to your problem". That will come, soon, for good and ill. I don't think anyone has jumped the gun just yet.
This is not the most comfortable flight I've been on. I'm in the back, I can smell the lav, the seat is hard, and in the row in front of me there is a wiggly little boy and also in infant who expresses the slightlest bit of frustration, bordom, tiredness, or being poked at by said wiggly little boy by howling. (She just feel asleep, thank prime. Hopefully for the rest of the flight.) This happens sometimes when travelling, and has to be lived with, sort of like the occational dead run though ORD. Crap, she just woke back up, mainly because her brother got bored and poked at her to see what would happen.
I am still undecided about my growing hair. It's been a year now since the last major cut. Fortunately, I dont seem to be suseptible to the "frizzy fringe of split ends" that many longer haired male geeks are. The length is now to where it touches my below my neck, a sensation I'm not yet used to. I can tie it back, barely, but I don't yet have the habit of stocking hair ties. I had a couple of them knocking around my room that had accumulated over the years, but I've since now lost them all. I finally figured out where they get stocked in the local supermarkets, but I went to each of them, and they were all sold out. What, was there some kind of recent super demand for hair ties?
SteamCon I, this past weekend, was fun. I really enjoyed looking at all the clothes and costumes. People should dress up more, with more colors, patterns, and things that swirl. We have the social and technological infrastructure to make attractive and comfortable clothes for relatively cheap, and yet most people dress so poorly.
Of course, I am one to talk, often being head to toe in black. My original and continuing reasons for doing so are complex and sometimes hard to articulate. There are elements of wanting to stand out, wanting to disappear, not wanting to have to worry about matching colors, having components that are easily replaced as they wear out, and having less stuff.
I did get a new vest and shirt and hat for the con, and picked up some jewelry while I was there, and they will get worn again.
I have taken to working from Metrix Create Space on Broadway when I am working, instead of a local cafe. They have tables I can spread a workspace out on, they have power outlets, they have ripping fast and dependable internet, interesting people come in to hack on interesting things and having interesting conversations
And something that is really nice is that they keep the background music low, and play classical chamber music and/or jazz. I know that some people claim they can work only when the music is cranked. I'm not one of them. And I really don't like the inclination that many places have, as described in the They Might Be Giants song "Man, It's Loud In Here!", to turn every place of social commerce (cafe, restaurant, bar, gym, clothing store, etc) into a place of loud music. Earbuds were invented for a reason.
I noticed today someone had muted all the TVs at SeaTac, at least in the terminal I was in this morning. They were instead running the closed captioning. I strongly Approve, and hope this is a trend that is spreading.
I tweaked my right arm at Burning Man, probably while tying down a piece of webbing while a windstorm was trying to tear off the back of the shade structure. It has been healing, slowly. But I've discovered the hard way to avoid both climbing and doing pushups, both of those retweak it. I had![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
sierrafaye dig into it during my appointment with her yesterday, and that was a high intensity sensation that helped a great deal. I kick myself a little that I didn't think to have her dig into it earlier.
On my way to Atlanta for No:SQL(East). We really need a better name than "NoSQL" for the emerging implementations of scalable key/value stores and caches, but nobody yet has come up with one that has stuck. Which is maybe a good thing, since a "good" name constrains wide thinking (which is both a good thing and a trap), and right now this space of development is still exploring what "works" for APIs, usability, implementation, performance, and scalability. We dont want it nailed down yet.
There are, of course, a whole array of existing and soon-to-exist vendors who are commercialize some approach (fair disclaimer: I work for one of them), and then start pouring marketing muscle into nailing down people's thought patterns towards thinking of Product X or Approach Y as "THE solution to your problem". That will come, soon, for good and ill. I don't think anyone has jumped the gun just yet.
This is not the most comfortable flight I've been on. I'm in the back, I can smell the lav, the seat is hard, and in the row in front of me there is a wiggly little boy and also in infant who expresses the slightlest bit of frustration, bordom, tiredness, or being poked at by said wiggly little boy by howling. (She just feel asleep, thank prime. Hopefully for the rest of the flight.) This happens sometimes when travelling, and has to be lived with, sort of like the occational dead run though ORD. Crap, she just woke back up, mainly because her brother got bored and poked at her to see what would happen.
I am still undecided about my growing hair. It's been a year now since the last major cut. Fortunately, I dont seem to be suseptible to the "frizzy fringe of split ends" that many longer haired male geeks are. The length is now to where it touches my below my neck, a sensation I'm not yet used to. I can tie it back, barely, but I don't yet have the habit of stocking hair ties. I had a couple of them knocking around my room that had accumulated over the years, but I've since now lost them all. I finally figured out where they get stocked in the local supermarkets, but I went to each of them, and they were all sold out. What, was there some kind of recent super demand for hair ties?
SteamCon I, this past weekend, was fun. I really enjoyed looking at all the clothes and costumes. People should dress up more, with more colors, patterns, and things that swirl. We have the social and technological infrastructure to make attractive and comfortable clothes for relatively cheap, and yet most people dress so poorly.
Of course, I am one to talk, often being head to toe in black. My original and continuing reasons for doing so are complex and sometimes hard to articulate. There are elements of wanting to stand out, wanting to disappear, not wanting to have to worry about matching colors, having components that are easily replaced as they wear out, and having less stuff.
I did get a new vest and shirt and hat for the con, and picked up some jewelry while I was there, and they will get worn again.
I have taken to working from Metrix Create Space on Broadway when I am working, instead of a local cafe. They have tables I can spread a workspace out on, they have power outlets, they have ripping fast and dependable internet, interesting people come in to hack on interesting things and having interesting conversations
And something that is really nice is that they keep the background music low, and play classical chamber music and/or jazz. I know that some people claim they can work only when the music is cranked. I'm not one of them. And I really don't like the inclination that many places have, as described in the They Might Be Giants song "Man, It's Loud In Here!", to turn every place of social commerce (cafe, restaurant, bar, gym, clothing store, etc) into a place of loud music. Earbuds were invented for a reason.
I noticed today someone had muted all the TVs at SeaTac, at least in the terminal I was in this morning. They were instead running the closed captioning. I strongly Approve, and hope this is a trend that is spreading.
I tweaked my right arm at Burning Man, probably while tying down a piece of webbing while a windstorm was trying to tear off the back of the shade structure. It has been healing, slowly. But I've discovered the hard way to avoid both climbing and doing pushups, both of those retweak it. I had
sierrafaye dig into it during my appointment with her yesterday, and that was a high intensity sensation that helped a great deal. I kick myself a little that I didn't think to have her dig into it earlier.
Steam-Con has been fun, even just purely from an eye-candy point of view. More and more, I become a fan of dressing up, and of the people around me dressing up. Everyone looks good in good fun clothes.
The People in Photos feature that Flickr just rolled out has been much fun to play with. I've spent some time adding this new metadata to mine and many other photos. Some people have marked their photostream to not allow it, and some people have asked to not be identified. That request gets honored, but it's pretty much pointless. It won't be too many more years before automatic recognizers just get run over all photo and video sources, both live and historical. You will be tagged and identified, the only question is do you want access to your metadata as well. It will exist anyway. (But it's not terribly useful to point that out to people who think that by asking, it won't happen...)
I had an odd exchange a few days ago with a friend of a friend, which I am still musing over. It ended with me saying "it sounds to me like you maintain your relationship with a GROUP of people, instead of a set of individual relationships with individual people." (The middle part of the discussion was about my serious discomfort with observing that something looked like a self-selecting closed set "are you cool enough to be one of us" "cool kids" clique.) Anyway, her response was "that's the only way I can maintain a relationship with as many people at once as I want to have".
I can't tell if this is just a world-view difference between us, or a failure of communication and understanding, or something I've been "doing wrong" all these years. Maybe it's just that I don't much care for the "cool kids clique" attitude. But then, every handful of years, I get to learn the hard and painful way, that trust isn't transitive, that friendship isn't transitive, and that even fellowship isn't transitive.
The People in Photos feature that Flickr just rolled out has been much fun to play with. I've spent some time adding this new metadata to mine and many other photos. Some people have marked their photostream to not allow it, and some people have asked to not be identified. That request gets honored, but it's pretty much pointless. It won't be too many more years before automatic recognizers just get run over all photo and video sources, both live and historical. You will be tagged and identified, the only question is do you want access to your metadata as well. It will exist anyway. (But it's not terribly useful to point that out to people who think that by asking, it won't happen...)
I had an odd exchange a few days ago with a friend of a friend, which I am still musing over. It ended with me saying "it sounds to me like you maintain your relationship with a GROUP of people, instead of a set of individual relationships with individual people." (The middle part of the discussion was about my serious discomfort with observing that something looked like a self-selecting closed set "are you cool enough to be one of us" "cool kids" clique.) Anyway, her response was "that's the only way I can maintain a relationship with as many people at once as I want to have".
I can't tell if this is just a world-view difference between us, or a failure of communication and understanding, or something I've been "doing wrong" all these years. Maybe it's just that I don't much care for the "cool kids clique" attitude. But then, every handful of years, I get to learn the hard and painful way, that trust isn't transitive, that friendship isn't transitive, and that even fellowship isn't transitive.
In Trond Norbye's blog entry Testing libmemcached on EC2, he refers to "Someone pinged me yesterday about a problem he was seeing when he tried to run the test suite on Jaunty Ubuntu.".
I am that "someone".
I ended up filing two bugs on launchpad against libmemcached 456080 and 456084, and just submitted a branch that fixes the second one.
I am that "someone".
I ended up filing two bugs on launchpad against libmemcached 456080 and 456084, and just submitted a branch that fixes the second one.
I think that T-Mobile has screwed up my telephone number port.
I can call people, and the CID is the correct number, but when they call me, they get a "number not in service" error.
I will be on the line with them tomorrow to get it fixed.
I called a couple of people last night, really hoping for a call back, and got nothing. This may be way...
I can call people, and the CID is the correct number, but when they call me, they get a "number not in service" error.
I will be on the line with them tomorrow to get it fixed.
I called a couple of people last night, really hoping for a call back, and got nothing. This may be way...
In this post, my friend elfs comments about Karl Lagerfeld's reaction against the blowback against anorexic runway models.
I responded in agreement, with this comment:
elfs comments about Karl Lagerfeld's reaction against the blowback against anorexic runway models.I responded in agreement, with this comment:
I think I've told you my prediction that reasonably soon, the fashion design industry will eliminate the human models entirely, and instead have robotic coathangers with legs walking the runway. At which point it the last vestige of it being about wearing clothes will be severed, and it will quickly evolve into a variety of kinetic sculpture with textiles.
Then the rest of the world can completely ignore, instead of mostly ignore, the "high fashion" "designers", and can instead just wear fun clothes that we like wearing.
It's been a month since I've been back from Burning Man. There is a lot I got there, and a lot I've taken away, mostly on the social processing front. A problem is, instead of getting a whole "something", I think instead I just got part of it. Which is maybe what is supposed to happen. Instead of being given a whole thing outright, I have some new or different threads to chew on.
The new job has been rewarding, it magnifies some of my favorite strengths, but also magnfies some of my least favorite weaknesses.
I've not been posting much. And I don't want to be one of those people who most of my posts have been that I've not been posting much.
I have been travelling more, and having some good experiences while travelling. Right now I'm in Hawaii. Not for any reason other than a friend asked me to accompany her to Hawaii for a week.
I'm using my wireless EDGE modem, until this data plan runs out on the 18th. AT&T has significantly improved their network in Honolulu from from when I was here last..
I'm not being so impressed with T-Mobile. I can't get wireless data inside the SeaTac airport. Fail.
I'm about to go out walking to see my friends at the Kapahulu SBC.
More later.
The new job has been rewarding, it magnifies some of my favorite strengths, but also magnfies some of my least favorite weaknesses.
I've not been posting much. And I don't want to be one of those people who most of my posts have been that I've not been posting much.
I have been travelling more, and having some good experiences while travelling. Right now I'm in Hawaii. Not for any reason other than a friend asked me to accompany her to Hawaii for a week.
I'm using my wireless EDGE modem, until this data plan runs out on the 18th. AT&T has significantly improved their network in Honolulu from from when I was here last..
I'm not being so impressed with T-Mobile. I can't get wireless data inside the SeaTac airport. Fail.
I'm about to go out walking to see my friends at the Kapahulu SBC.
More later.
Don't worry about "Who am I?" and instead consider "What should I do?".
Posted on 2009.10.05 at 15:19
There’s plenty I don’t understand about myself, but nothing nags. Paradoxically, the deeper I got into neuropsychology the less interested I became in the details of my own inner workings. I’m not sure why. It certainly is not because I arrived at any great insight or understanding. I still experience the almost visceral sense of puzzlement over matters of brain, mind and selfhood that first drew me to the field. What happened, I think, was a shift – let’s imagine a neural switch somewhere in the frontolimbic circuitry - from one preoccupying question, What am I? to another, What should I do? It left me less inclined to bother about self-understanding than to consider the value of things, moral and aesthetic. How best to live? But here’s a nagging thought: might those two preoccupying questions turn out to be one and the same, like the evening star and the morning star? -- Paul Broks
link
... to get one's contact list from Google.
!!!
Bad, Twitter, bad!
You know better.
!!!
Bad, Twitter, bad!
You know better.
http://www.creditbloggers.com/2009/09/u
As soon as fMRIs are super cheap, here is one way they can change things:
As soon as fMRIs are super cheap, here is one way they can change things:
A research team at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) recently conducted anexperiment in which a group of volunteers were offered an abstract public good. The price for the public good was fixed, but each group member would benefit differently from it. So how do you determine how much each person should pay? In this experiment, the researchers scanned the volunteers' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging as the volunteers stated how much they were willing to pay. The researchers analyzed the fMRI images to obtain information about how much the person really valued having the public good, and then compared it with how much they were willing to pay for it.
The kicker was that volunteers whose measured value closely matched the amount they were willing to pay were charged less than people whose fMRI value was higher than the amount they were willing to pay. In other words, the folks who lied about how much the public good was worth to them were penalized by having to pay more than the people who told the truth about how much they valued the public good. As Caltech graduate student Ian Krajbich, who co-wrote the paper about the experiment for the online edition of the journalScience, put it, "The rules of the experiment are such that if you tell the truth your expected tax will never exceed your benefit from the good."
It didn't take many iterations for the volunteers to learn that honesty was the best policy, at least in this laboratory. The researchers said that once volunteers understood the penalty for lying, they told the truth 98 percent of the time.
As far as I'm concerned, the age-old free rider problem has been solved. Now all I need to do is drag my free riding neighbors into the nearest brain scanning center and make them pay up.
Many people noticed my tweet just over a week ago that I tendered my resignation at Sun Microsystems. Many people asked me "what next?". Here is my What Next:
Today is the first day of my new job at Gear6, as the Director of Community Development.
In part, this means that I will be doing for Gear6 what Jay and then Dups used to do for MySQL.
I'm the face of my company into the Memcached / Gearman / Drizzle / etc communities, and just as importantly, I'm the face of those open source communities into my company.
I was very positively impressed with the people at Gear6 when we were interviewing each other. I truly believe that they want to do The Right Thing, both from an open source community member perspective, and from the perspective of the technology, their customers, and their investors.
Very soon, I'm going to be splitting my "blog existance" into several blogs for different aspects. My current existing LJ will remain for my personal stuff. There will be another one for professional / technical musing, and I will also create and manage one or more blogs just for Gear6's open source and technology topics.
Today is the first day of my new job at Gear6, as the Director of Community Development.
In part, this means that I will be doing for Gear6 what Jay and then Dups used to do for MySQL.
I'm the face of my company into the Memcached / Gearman / Drizzle / etc communities, and just as importantly, I'm the face of those open source communities into my company.
I was very positively impressed with the people at Gear6 when we were interviewing each other. I truly believe that they want to do The Right Thing, both from an open source community member perspective, and from the perspective of the technology, their customers, and their investors.
Very soon, I'm going to be splitting my "blog existance" into several blogs for different aspects. My current existing LJ will remain for my personal stuff. There will be another one for professional / technical musing, and I will also create and manage one or more blogs just for Gear6's open source and technology topics.
My friend Gabriel came up with a working "progress bar" for ALTER TABLE. Until MySQL / Drizzle can do this "natively", this is a pretty neat trick:
http://gabrielcain.com/blog/2009/08/0
http://gabrielcain.com/blog/2009/08/0
I actaully saw this!
I was surprised and a bit taken aback to see it, something that looked like a senior citizen's tourist shuttle driving around. It was something utterly alien and unexpected to see there.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c
I actually figured it was some kind of art. But now I know it was something even stranger: it really was a senior citizen's tourist shuttle driving around.
I was surprised and a bit taken aback to see it, something that looked like a senior citizen's tourist shuttle driving around. It was something utterly alien and unexpected to see there.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.c
I actually figured it was some kind of art. But now I know it was something even stranger: it really was a senior citizen's tourist shuttle driving around.
The record labels do not just "not get the internet". They do not understand their own business: ma
Posted on 2009.09.17 at 10:24
Yesterday, while walking from the Online Cafe (where I can print and fax), to Kinkos (where i can fedex), I walked past the Everyday Music on Broadway.
I walked in for a moment, walked up and down the aisles, looked at the layout, at the staff. It was all very interesting, and the staff seemed very engaged. But I didn't buy anything. Because looking at CD cover art tells me nothing about whether I would like the music inside or not. And using iTunes or Amazon MP3 tells me in a moment with a 30 second clip what something sounds like, and a click later I own the piece, and am enjoying the full thing.
According to Gizmodo, the big music labels are now demanding that they get paid for the performance of promo clips.
!!!
This is sort of like having to pay a ticket to get to look at movie preview.
This is not the record labels "not getting the internet". This is the record labels not actually understanding their own business, of marketing, advertising, and branding!
I walked in for a moment, walked up and down the aisles, looked at the layout, at the staff. It was all very interesting, and the staff seemed very engaged. But I didn't buy anything. Because looking at CD cover art tells me nothing about whether I would like the music inside or not. And using iTunes or Amazon MP3 tells me in a moment with a 30 second clip what something sounds like, and a click later I own the piece, and am enjoying the full thing.
According to Gizmodo, the big music labels are now demanding that they get paid for the performance of promo clips.
!!!
This is sort of like having to pay a ticket to get to look at movie preview.
This is not the record labels "not getting the internet". This is the record labels not actually understanding their own business, of marketing, advertising, and branding!
I've not been a huge fan of China Mieville , either as a person or as an author. But for free, I will give a book of his a try.
The Kindle edition of Perdido Street Station is currently a free giveaway.
The Kindle edition of Perdido Street Station is currently a free giveaway.
I just quit my job at Sun Microsystems
I spent almost an hour trying to get printing and faxing working at Kinkos, with lack of success. Walking over to the Online Cafe, I got printing and faxing that Just Worked, for cheaper. Plus I was able to enjoy a tasty drink while I worked. And the computer time and wifi time were free.
Burning Man was again amazing and transformative. The camp worked decently well, and we're already talking about what to do next year.
One day I walked out to the Man, then the Temple, and then the Meditatory. Barefoot. In a duststorm. I wrote a fair amount on the Temple. I burned my feet. It was worth every step.
I spent almost an hour trying to get printing and faxing working at Kinkos, with lack of success. Walking over to the Online Cafe, I got printing and faxing that Just Worked, for cheaper. Plus I was able to enjoy a tasty drink while I worked. And the computer time and wifi time were free.
Burning Man was again amazing and transformative. The camp worked decently well, and we're already talking about what to do next year.
One day I walked out to the Man, then the Temple, and then the Meditatory. Barefoot. In a duststorm. I wrote a fair amount on the Temple. I burned my feet. It was worth every step.
