Behind The Laughter

Last class weekend of the semester? Check.

Paper and homeworks finished? Check.

Not paying attention in class? Check.

Thrilled that I’m sitting in class on my birthday? Check.

Yep, turned 29 today. One year until the big 3-0.

Usually, when my birthday hits I take a few minutes to consider my mortality. I mean, this is one more year I’ve been lucky enough to avoid…

• getting struck by lightning
• getting hit by a falling anvil
• drowning in the bath tub
• floating into space by virtue of holding too many helium balloons and thereby suffocating due to a lack of oxygen

Well, no more. No more worrying about death; no more being concerned with departing the land of the living. Time to take a stand.

I have decided to embrace, not fight, the advance of technology in the modern world, and begin the process of personal cyborgization. Yeah dude, its a word, Wikipedia says so (citation needed).

This is by no means an inexpensive venture; in fact, this would put us in significant debt. So how do I reach immortality without entering bankruptcy? One word: ads.

By partnering with the largest ad network on the planet, Google AdSense (copyright 2008, Google, Inc.) I will be able to subsidize the cost of my cybernetic enhancements and, using the parlance of our times, actualize a paradigm shift in the business of immortality.

This process has not yet begun, but rest assured I shall see it through to completion. You’ll know that it worked when I outlive everyone else on this god-forsaken planet.

The following is an artist’s rendition of my projected cyborgified appearance*:

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* - note, I did this myself, therefore it is more of an amateur’s rendition.

I can’t believe I missed 37 signals’ response to Jason Calcanis’ original article.

To say they are both interesting reads wouldn’t be doing them justice. Read Calcanis’ article, then read the linked response from Techcrunch and from 37 signals.

This quote sums up how I feel (emphasis mine):

If your start-up can only succeed by being a sweatshop, your idea is simply not good enough. Go back to the drawing board and come up with something better that can be implemented by whole people, not cogs.

One of the industry’s great luminaries, Bill “My Glasses Aren’t All That Impressive But They Cost More Than Your Life” Gates spoke at the University of Texas this week. The talk was open only to undergraduate/graduate students in the Computer Science or Computer Engineering departments of which I am a member, what with my status within the Executive Software Engineering program. Well folks, no mas; I was not allowed to attend. Which brings us to…

A big Fuck You to the University of Texas Electrical and Computer Engineering department. Listen clowns, I’m paying UT through the nose for this Master’s degree.

The least you can do is treat me like the ECE graduate student that I am and allow me to see the world’s richest man on stage. I mean, how am I supposed to grovel at his feet for the spare $100 bills in his pockets if I can’t into the talk?

Apparently, students within the Option III program are not considered full time graduate students.

Last time I checked we

• take the same courses
• with the same professors
• get the same brutal homeworks and lengthy paper assigments
• and get the same degree

Needless to say I’m frustrated beyond belief. I mean, its not the end of the world or anything. It’s really the principle of the matter that angers me most.

This is the first - in what I hope will be a long and continuing practice - of self-styled “I Hate Everything” posts.

• I hate coffee shops that have live musical acts on nights that I want to get homework done. I mean, c’mon man! I came to do work, not enrich my life with further exposure to the arts. If I want culture, I’ll go pick it up from the grocery store.
• I hate undergraduates clogging up my coffee shops. Multiple times in the last two weeks, I’ve had to embark on Coffee Shop Tour 2008 (Epoch, Flightpath, Clementines and Flipnotics) and Coffee Shop Tour 2008: The Wrath of Idiots in order to find a place to work. You know what I find? The places are all teeming with undergrad bozos; their like rats or something. Go back to the dorms and have your little “meetings” or “study groups” there. Make way for me and my graduate student ilk.
• Finally, a big Fuck You to Microsoft. Why is it so hard for you to make a working product on Mac OS X? I mean, it only took you exactly 18 months to produce a Universal Binary of Office. What you produced, Office 2008, is by no means 18 months worth of improvements. Shit, even if it took you 12 months to make your code Universal, that’s still 6 months to make some useful improvements. Instead, what did I get? Stupid crap enhancements like Word Art, Smart Graphics and Quick Tables. Did I get apps that crashed less often? Nope. How about actual Exchange support within Entourage? Nope. Click on the two images below to get a sense for how ridiculous Office 2008 is with it’s windowing. Note, that I had activated “Expose: All Windows” and my mouse is over the Word 2008 window. Where is the window highlight, you must be asking yourself? Not over the fucking window that’s for sure.

  

  

I heart the new NetNewsWire possibly more than I heart that cat that lives with us.

I want all of my information in the “cloud”. Specifically, my contacts, calendar and tasks. In general, my personal data isn’t double-super-secret or anything like that; I would simply call my data “private”.

What’s the overall goal of having my bits out there? To avoid the ridiculous notion of physically linking my mobile device with my computer to transfer the aforementioned information.

Back in the 90’s Palm introduced this notion of syncing data to a PDA. The consultants rejoiced and the user experience folks cried, of which I am firmly planted in the latter camp. Fast forward a decade and this dated practice is still commonplace among the multitude of mobile devices. Consider the numerous devices that have PAN (Personal Area Networking, e.g. Bluetooth) functionality built-in (I’m looking squarely at you, Blackberry and iPhone) and yet, users are still forced to whip-out a USB cable to move data from one place to another.

Personally, I hate syncing my data (though, if you hadn’t caught this by now, you’re not paying attention). To think that I have to plug a cable from my phone into to my computer just to pickup a change to someone’s phone number is absolutely absurd. Or perhaps I have to change a calendar entry or add an appointment? Aaargh!

What’s the solution?

Unfortunately, it is a three part problem, ranked in order of increasing difficulty.

1. Someone needs to build a business around storing your data in a manner that is secure. (Easy)
2. The manufacturers have to commit to either an open standard for data formats (contacts, calendar, etc.) or build in API support for developers to read/write those data stores. (Medium)
3. The carriers have to lighten the financial impact of having a data plan and commit to supporting the an open data exchange between consumers and third parties that support this functionality. (Hard)

In an ideal world, I would have three interfaces to my data: my computer (via built-in tools like Address Book and iCal), the web and on my device. If I make a change in one place, it should cascade throughout the system.

If there was an open market/standard for this type of data management, third party companies could create their own portal-esque solutions that meet the niche needs of each consumer.

As of now, there is one solution out there that makes this all possible, even though it operates using closed formats and proprietary tools: Microsoft Exchange.

Back during my Blackberry days, I had the exact setup that I desired above. I could CRUD (create, update, delete) from any of the three interfaces (Blackberry, Outlook Web Access and Outlook) and the changes would be available throughout, with near immediacy. Unfortunately, such a solution requires too many back-end proprietary solutions to make it work in the open market for Joe Consumer.

This is a significant problem and one which is endemic to all smart-phones that are not supported by an Exchange infrastructure. In my “expert” opinion, this will cause the burgeoning consumer smart-phone market to plateau even before it hits any sort of critical mass.

As you know, I’m currently in the University of Texas Software Engineering Executive Masters program. One of the components of the program is the summer “conference” course requirement, wherein each student selects a summer topic to work on with a small group and professor. Typically, this involves students reading assigned papers and either discussing them or providing written summaries to the prof.

That’s all fine and dandy, unless you are me. I didn’t want to do “busy work” for the summer; I wanted to do some actual research. I contacted my Data Mining professor and he allowed me to work with one of his graduate students on a research topic. My job was to prepare a paper covering the application of a hierarchical clustering algorithm to social network analysis*.

(* sounds smart, but really, I’m no smarter for having done it)

Without going into the gory details, let me just say that the research proved to be useful and we were able to find organizationally significant clusters within the social network (in this case, Enron).

Well, I wrote the paper and handed it in to my prof. I subsequently proceeded to drink myself silly for the next few days.

I immediately received feedback and it wasn’t great. The short list of issues were centered around the need for a less overarching conclusion and additional experimentation. No major concerns with that; I felt that was fair and useful criticism. Really thought, I was happy to be done and start the fall semester of my coursework.

Fast forward to October 10th, 2007.

I checked my grade for the above summer project and nothing had been entered. Concerned, I emailed my prof inquiring as to the status of my grade.

Well bucko, **bombshell** he was still waiting for my final version! At that point I more or less lost my lunch.

Which brings us to today. The situation, as it turns out, is not too bad. I owe my prof a final version addressing the issues noted above. Unfortunately, I owe this final version to him before the end of this semester. Gah!

For the remainder of the semester, I will likely not be seen by anyone other than my wife. Underground. Incognito. Invisible. Unseen.

The project was a fair amount of work. To put myself back in that mindset, finish the open items and manage through my current coursework should break my spirit quite handily. Not that I’m concerned or anything…

The transformation is now complete. Here’s a rundown of the changes:
- new theme: Cutline
- new and integrated photo gallery: Plogger
- updated blogroll
- all of my social party bits are on display

I guess that’s really it. Integrating Plogger into Wordpress took the most time, though it wasn’t mind numbing. I’ll post those steps separately…

Well, only Chris really asked for the follow-up; the rest of you will have to suffer through it.

So it’s been over three weeks since the iPhone has graced me with its presence. Verdict? Good. Pretty damn good. Not great and not perfect.

I could go into an extensive review and comparison of features, usability, blah blah blah. But I won’t. Instead, if that’s your fancy start here.

No, instead, I will bore you with a short compilation of the things I like/love/hate about the iPhone. I can’t tell you its going to make your life better, you’ll have to find that out on your own. Also, just in case you were told otherwise, the iPhone does not make toast. Not at all. Bummer.

Like:
- User interface smoothness. Go check this thing out an Apple store, I just can’t do it justice.
- The clock. Sounds dumb, but it’s actually useful
- Safari. Great to have a real browser on a mobile device, though its still Safari which means it crashes periodically.

Love:
- If you’re listening to music and you get a call, the music fades out and the call comes in. After the call is over, the music fades back in. Sweet.
- Calendar’s list view. No explanation needed.
- Integration between all apps, SMS, Google Maps, Phone, Photos, etc.
- Google Maps is very well done and terribly useful.
- Best iPod ever.

Hate:
- Calendar. No “To Do’s” or “Day View”. Weak.
- Safari. No Flash and that crashing thing.
- It hasn’t made me any cooler than before (gah!)

(On the plus side, the first two “Hate” items can be addressed in a software update which I’m sure will happen soon.)

I’m definitely digging it (surprise!).

Please forgive me darling. I’ll do anything you ask of me. Take me back. Please.

Gayatri? No not you devil woman!

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Using your expert powers of deduction, you should by now have realized that I’m talking about the iPhone. If you think loving some “gadget” is preposterous, you must not know me. Or you must think I’m crazy.

I’ve been caught up in the hype machine. The corporate hype machine, to which I clearly pledge my ever-loving allegiance. (What changed? Umm, it must be my inability to ignore the voices in my head. Or perhaps it is advertising? Yep, really good advertising.)

Forget all of the complaining I did before, I desire to have an iPhone of my own. To have and to hold, until death (or iPhone rev. 2) do us part. Alas, my unconditional love is not enough for us to be together.

You expect me to pay for you!?!?

What are you, some cheap (misnomer alert!) hussy?

No, I don’t roll that way; I don’t pay for love.

This is worse than unrequited love. This is lack-of-funds-broke-ass love.

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Summer research is going very, very slowly. I think I’ve spent more time waiting for my sparse matrices to be built than I have spent actually analyzing the data. In fact, as I write this latest entry from my non-sensical brain to my non-sensical blog, I’m patiently waiting for my python script to finish.

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I like dashes. Especially three of them in a row.

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That is all.