yacitus

Barry Lyndon: yet another Kubrick masterpiece

2009-12-04T08:06:00.001-08:00

After several recent mentions of Barry Lyndon on Daring Fireball, I thought I should re-watch this Kubrick film I recall the least. It's available for "Watch Instantly" on Netflix, so I put it at the top of my queue, and watched it over the last couple nights.

The cinematography in Barry Lyndon is beautifully painterly. Several scenes reminded me of the Rembrandt and other paintings I've seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Of course I cried during the one emotional scene. It's much more effective for some reason because you know it's coming. (And much more effective on me now that I have children.)

Are there any other filmmakers who have made so many masterpieces as Stanley Kubrick?

A little bit of trivia that stood out on Kubrick's excellent Wikipedia page: "…the only Academy Award Kubrick ever received was for supervising the special effects of 2001: A Space Odyssey."

A couple months ago, a Daring Fireball post led me to Jeremy Bernstein's 1966 interview with Kubrick. The video has been removed from blip.tv, but I don't recall it being difficult to find. I believe I downloaded a ZIP of MP3s, which I listened to instead of podcasts for a couple days. It truly is "75 minutes of audio gold".

Update: A friend on Facebook (thanks Aaron) pointed out that Barry Lyndon (as Wikipedia puts it) 'saw a considerable number of sequences shot "without recourse to electric light."' That make this masterpiece an even more impressive achievement.

Today

2009-09-11T08:19:00.001-07:00

(I posted this on Facebook, but all the line-endings were removed. So I thought I'd copy it here where I have a little more control over the formatting.)

Some things I'm going to try not to think about today:

I'm now closer to 50 than 40
When my father was my age, I was 21
When my grandmother was my age, I was born
When Henry (our youngest) is a senior in high school, I'll be 59

Instead, I'm going to concentrate on the feeling that my best is still ahead of me.

Two pitchers won this week without throwing a pitch

2009-07-10T23:52:00.001-07:00

Two MLB pitchers won games this week without throwing a single pitch.

Alan Embree won Wednesday for the Rockies when he came into the game in the top of the eighth inning with two out and a man on base. He picked off the runner for the third out, without throwing a pitch. The Rockies scored a single run in the bottom of the eighth (giving Embree the win) and Huston Street came in for the Rockies in the ninth and got a save.

Pirates right-hander Joel Hanrahan won without even being at the game. In fact, he won without even playing for the winning team. He was the pitcher of record on May 5 when the game between the Nationals (who Hanrahan played for back then) and Astros at Nationals Park was halted because of rain in the bottom of the 11th inning. Hanrahan was traded to the Pirates on June 30th. The game finally resumed Thursday with Washington winning, 11-10, in 11 innings.

I love this kind of baseball trivia. (Though that's not why I love baseball.)

(Note the Hanrahan article doesn't say if a pitcher has ever won a resumed game without being there before. But the Embree article says the last time a pitcher earned a win was surprisingly as recent as 2003. But that's the only other time this feat has been recorded.)

Children of the Mind

2009-07-03T22:25:00.000-07:00

The feature in iPhone 3.0 that resulted in the biggest change in my life is the little "1X" button when playing podcasts (and audiobooks) that switches to "2X" when pressed, enabling the audio to play back at "double speed". (The pitch is adjusted so there is no "Alvin and the Chipmunks" effect.)

I've found I enjoy listening to most of the long list of podcasts I download in iTunes just as much at 2X. (I've heard Leo Laporte say that some study has shown that retention is higher when listening to audiobooks in this fast mode. Perhaps he was referring to this.) That has resulted in quite a bit more time to listen to audiobooks. So the conclusion of this long-winded introduction is that after only getting through about a quarter of Children of the Mind in five weeks, I got through the rest of it in less than a single week.

I blogged about finishing Xenocide and starting Children of the Mind in "Xenocide". I wrote then that my expectations for Children of the Mind were raised after enjoying Xenocide more than I expected. Unfortunately Children of the Mind continued the streak of Orson Scott Card novels "proving" my thesis in "The tyranny of high expectations".

Unlike Xenocide, there wasn't much interesting science in Children of the Mind (and that's probably what I look for the most in an SF novel). Again, there wasn't much action. [SPOILER WARNING] I was more interested than I might have predicted in the fate of Peter and Wang-Mu (and Jane and Ender), but I found the characters agonizing over each other's fate tiring. And the mystery of the nature of the creators of the Descolada virus is never revealed.

In an afterward to the audiobook written and narrated by Orson Scott Card himself—I believe each of the audiobooks in the Ender's Game series have such an afterward—states that he intends to someday write one more book in this series. Children of the Mind was not so disappointing that I won't want to read that when it comes out. But if the future me reads this blog post first, I advise me not to re-read Children of the Mind before that.

Geeky things to do on a first-time visit to the Bay Area

2009-05-29T09:36:00.001-07:00

A friend of mine is making plans to visit the Bay Area for the first time, and asked me to recommend some things to do here. I explained that now that I have (young) kids, all I could recommend are toddler-friendly places not too far from home in Scotts Valley. (My memory of life pre-kids in San Francisco and San Jose is pretty cloudy.) But I had what turned out to be the good idea to ask for suggestions on the "fun-list" mailing list at work.

I don't think my friend would mind if I described him as a geek. (I'm one too, and I believe we both wear the label with honor.) And he doesn't have a driver's license. Not having a car limits one's choices in the Bay Area. But my co-workers (many of them also geeks, and not into cars) responded with many good ideas:

First a list of places to go or things to see...

In San Francisco:

California Academy of Sciences ("Night Life" at the Steinhart Aquarium on Thursdays from 18:00-22:00)
Exploratorium
SFMOMA
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
The Cartoon Art Museum
Alcatraz
Pier 39
Musée Mécanique
USS Pampanito Submarine Tour
Fisherman's Wharf
Ghirardelli Square
Chinatown
Union Square
The Castro
AsiaSF
Point Break Live!
Spamalot
Golden Gate Park
Get a bike from Blazing Saddles and ride over the Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito and come back by ferry
Or get a "proper bike" at Pacific Bicycle and try one of these tours (if he's really in good shape he might try riding up the road to the top of the Marin Headlands for an amazing view)

Recommended San Francisco walks:

Hippie Hill (or DeYoung Museum) <-> Haight/Ashbury

hippies! druggies!
Giant Robot
Kid Robot
Amoeba Records
Thrift stores
If he wants a *long* walk, go all the way to Lower Haight for the urban / hip hop scene and Indian Oven

Castro <-> Dolores Park

gays! lesbians!
upper class shopping
The Castro Theater, as seen in Milk
dogs & sunshine in the park

Valencia St

hipsters! indie kids! moustaches!
The Pirate Supply Store (826 Valencia) (this is a must)
Four Barrel Coffee
Ritual Roasters
Spork, Dosa, Herbivore are good dinner places
Burrito joints

Napa Valley:

On the Peninsula:

In San Jose:

Tech Museum of Innovation

Web sites with ideas:

511.org
California Do-It-Yourself Tours (see San Francisco and Berkeley)
Weird Treasures of the Bay Area
Free Walking Tours of San Francisco
Dr. Weirde's Guide to Mysterious San Francisco
Caltrain Pub Crawl

Some recommended books:

Stairway Walks in San Francisco
A Guide to Mysterious San Francisco: Dr. Weirde's Weirde Tours (I have this one.)

Did I leave anything out?

Update: added The Cartoon Art Museum

Update #2: added Segway Napa

Xenocide

2009-05-24T08:03:00.001-07:00

Last week I finished listening to Xenocide, over 6 weeks after I started. I blogged about "reading" (listening to) Ender's Game and Ender in Exile in "Pleasures of a poor memory" and about reading Speaker for the Dead in "The tyranny of high expectations". To continue the expectations theme, I'll remind you that I went into this with low expectations. And again, the book exceeded them.

I found this book had the most interesting science of any of the series (so far). And while there wasn't a lot of action, I found certain sections moving, especially [SPOILER WARNING] the description of the riot that burns down the Pequeninos' forest. I found the "creation" and reintroduction of a new Valentine and Peter Wiggin contrived, but towards the end Peter at least began to get interesting.

Now I'm on to the last (audio)book in the series, Children of the Mind. (But a fairly large list of podcasts continue to take priority.) I guess my expectations are higher now. We'll see if they're exceeded.

The tyranny of high expectations

2009-04-03T08:03:00.000-07:00

Have you ever suspected that expectations can shape your opinion?

I think I remember first running across this idea while reading a book on skiing about 20 years ago. (I thought it was something like “The Chi of Skiing”—I remember noting that it did not use the more common eastern religion words like “Tao” or “Zen”. But I can’t find it online. Maybe it’s long out of print.) The book talked about avoiding expectations, and instead trying to anticipate. I’ve learned in the 20 years since first encountering that idea that like so many prescriptions for living, this is much easier said than done.

It’s impossible to definitively test the influence of expectations on experience, of course, since we can’t rewind time and re-experience something with different expectations. But it could be statistically measured. It would be interesting to expose one group of people to negative reviews of a movie, for example, and another to positive reviews (and have a control group that knows nothing about the movie) and then analyze their ratings afterward. I suspect that (if most people are like me), negative expectations can often lead to my enjoying something more. (Provided it’s not completely horrid or absolutely great. I think this effect is strongest on shaping one’s opinion of a mediocre experience.)

But enough philosophizing. The reason I bring this up is that I’ve noticed this expectation effect twice lately. Last Thursday, while I was in Chicago for PyCon, I took the afternoon off and walked around the city. As it got late (and as I tired from all the walking) I decided I was in the mood for a movie. (I hadn’t seen one in a couple months.) I chose Watchmen. I enjoyed the graphic novel, which I read last year after I read a glowing recommendation of a friend. (He wrote something like “best graphic novel ever”, or maybe even “best novel ever”.) My expectations were high, especially after I saw that it is the only graphic novel to appear on Time’s “All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels” list. I enjoyed it, but I didn’t love it. (I suspect I would have enjoyed it more without such high expectations.) But I went into the movie with low expectations. I had seen some middling reviews, and heard some of a very negative review on the Slate Culture Gabfest (no. 29) before I skipped it to avoid spoilers. I enjoyed the movie immensely. It wasn’t great. But I had a very good time, and didn’t notice that it was long. I suspect I may not have enjoyed it as much if I had high expectations.

Yesterday I finished listening to Speaker for the Dead. I wrote about listening to the audiobooks Ender’s Game and Ender in Exile a little over a month ago in my Pleasures of a poor memory post. I had completely forgotten it. It was like reading (or hearing) it for the first time. But I had high expectations. I remember noting it as perhaps my favorite SF novel. Sadly, I wouldn’t rank it so highly anymore. Perhaps Orson Scott Card’s observations of human nature aren’t as impressive to me after I’ve acquired 25 more years of experience (and perhaps a tiny bit of wisdom). But I suspect the damping effect of my high expectations had a lot to do with it.

I guess my lesson is that to maximize my enjoyment, I should always expect the worst.

Speaker for the Dead did finish well though. Well enough that I just downloaded Xenocide (the next in the Ender series). I’m going to try not to expect much. (My expectations are lower actually, since I recall the series goes downhill after Speaker for the Dead.)

A tr.im TextExpander snippet that works for me

2009-03-06T09:28:00.000-08:00

At the end of A TextExpander snippet to paste quoted text I gave myself a to-do to create (or find) a TextExpander snippet to create a tr.im shortened URL. tr.im is currently my favorite URL shortening service. Not only is the domain short and easy to remember, but (if you sign up for an account) they provide stats for each “tr.immed” URL.

A Google search found this post on the SmileOnMyMac Blog (from the makers of TextExpander), where you can download a snippet that works. But it’s unnecessarily complicated. After reading the tr.im API documentation I simplified it to this shell script:

#! /bin/bash
curl -u yacitus:xxxxx  http://api.tr.im/api/trim_simple?url=`pbpaste`

Note that Blogger refuses to make this column any wider or use a scrollbar to show all of this code. But the text is there; just copy it and paste into your favorite text editor. (You'll need to use the same trick to see all of the code for the other bash one-liner and the Python code below.)

(You’ll of course want to replace “yacitus” with your tr.im username and replace “xxxxx” with your password.)

The problem with this is that it doesn’t work for me at work, where I use the Authoxy proxy server. I can make it work with:

#! /bin/bash
curl -u yacitus:xxxxx -x localhost:8080 http://api.tr.im/api/trim_simple?url=`pbpaste`

…but then it doesn’t work when I’m at home (and not using Authoxy). curl, unfortunately, doesn’t auto-detect proxy settings.

Once again, Python comes to the rescue. I read in “Fuzzyman’s” urllib2 - The Missing Manual that the Python urllib2 module will auto-detect proxy settings, so I wrote this script:

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""
This script writes to stdout a tr.im version of the indicated URL.

"""

import urllib2
import sys


TRIM_API_URL = 'http://api.tr.im/api'
USERNAME = 'yacitus'
PASSWORD = 'xxxxx'


def main():
"""The entry function."""
url_to_trim = sys.argv[1]
if not url_to_trim:
   print "ERROR: one (and only one) argument accepted--the URL to GET"
   return -1

response = urllib2.urlopen('%s/trim_simple?url=%s&username=%s&password=%s'
                          % (TRIM_API_URL,
                             url_to_trim,
                             USERNAME,
                             PASSWORD))
print response.read().strip()

print response.code

return 0



if __name__ == '__main__':
sys.exit(main())

Like in A TextExpander snippet to paste quoted text, I put this in a file called trim_url, did a chmod +x on it, created a symbolic link to it in /usr/local/bin/, and created my TextExpander snippet:

I could have saved myself a lot of time if I had stopped there. But I read on http://tr.im/api that basic HTTP authentication is preferred over the query string parameters I used above. So I figured it would be a learning opportunity to implement basic HTTP authentication in Python. The problem is, I’m not done learning yet! I have yet to get it to work. I posted my question on the BayPIGgies mailing list where I got some good advice on how to debug it (but no one saw the problem), and I also posted a question on stackoverflow.com where I got one answer that may be an improvement on the query string parameters, but again no one saw the problem. I guess I’ll have to take jj’s suggestion and look at what is being sent over the wire. When I figure it out I’ll post the answer on my PyPap blog (and of course on the BayPIGgies mailing list and stackoverflow.com).

A TextExpander snippet to paste quoted text

2009-03-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

I prefer the inline replying posting style. So a frequent workflow for me is copying text, pasting it into BBEdit, applying "Increase Quote Level", "Rewrap quoted text...", "Select All", "Copy" and then pasting the text into (typically) Mailplane, where I finish composing my email. (Or if I'm running Outlook in Fusion, I may compose the email entirely in BBEdit and paste it as a whole back into Outlook.) Each time I do this, I get that "there's got to be a better way" itch. (But then I get back to what I'm working on and forget about it until next time.)

Yesterday I was reading Dan Frakes' "Plain Clip revisited" MacGem post, which explains how to use the free (donations excepted) Plain Clip utility with TextExpander to automatically paste whatever is in the clipboard with any formatting information removed when you type "ptp" (which is the abbreviation he chose to assign to this "snippet" in TextExpander). I need to do that occasionally (and again, I've been doing it by pasting into BBEdit and then copying back to the clipboard), so I downloaded Plain Clip and a free trial of TextExpander and began setting it up. Dan Frakes uses an AppleScript to run Plain Clip through the command-line. But I noticed I can define a shell script in TextExpander so I don't need to bother with an AppleScript "do shell script" wrapper. But I couldn't get it to work. I quickly found a link in the comments to Gordon Meyer's "A tip for using Plain Clip with TextExpander" blog post, which solved the problem for me.

And that's when a light bulb finally went off in (over?) my head. If I created a simple command-line utility to do word wrapping, I could create a TextExpander snippet to paste quoted text. And about 30 minutes later that's just what I had.

When I need to create a command-line utility, I almost always turn to Python. And as is so often the case with Python's "batteries included" nature, I found a textwrap module that provided almost everything I needed.

#!/usr/bin/env python
"""
This script wraps the textwrap module with a command-line interface.

"""

import optparse
import sys
from textwrap import TextWrapper


DEFAULT_WIDTH = 70
DEFAULT_QUOTE_STRING = '> '


def main():
"""The entry function."""
parser = optparse.OptionParser(description='Text wrapper', prog='wwrap')
parser.add_option('-w', '--width',
               action='store',
               metavar='NUM',
               default='%d' % DEFAULT_WIDTH,
               help='maximum length of wrapped lines; defaults to 70')
parser.add_option('-q', '--quote',
               action='store_true',
               default=False,
               help="add '%s' to start of each wrapped line"
                    % DEFAULT_QUOTE_STRING)
parser.add_option('-r', '--remove',
               action='store',
               metavar='TXT',
               help='remove TXT from start of each line prior to'
                    ' wrapping')
parser.add_option('--removequotes',
               action='store_true',
               default=False,
               help="remove '%s' from the start of each line prior"
                    " to wrapping" % DEFAULT_QUOTE_STRING)

options, arguments = parser.parse_args()

if not options.width:
 print "I don't know how the width wasn't specified, since it's"
 print "supposed to default to %d.  Aborting." % DEFAULT_WIDTH
 return -1

try:
 width = int(options.width)
except ValueError:
 print "ERROR: the width specified ('%s') is not a number" % (
             options.width)
 return -1

if options.remove and options.removequotes:
 print "ERROR: cannot use both --remove and --removequotes options"
 return -1

if options.removequotes:
 options.remove = DEFAULT_QUOTE_STRING

wrapper = TextWrapper()
if options.quote:
 wrapper.initial_indent = DEFAULT_QUOTE_STRING
 wrapper.subsequent_indent = DEFAULT_QUOTE_STRING
wrapper.width = width

lines = sys.stdin.read().split('\n')
if options.remove:
 for i, line in enumerate(lines):
     if line.startswith(options.remove):
         lines[i] = line[len(options.remove):]

print wrapper.fill('\n'.join(lines))

return 0




if __name__ == '__main__':
sys.exit(main())

Note that even though you can't see the code at the end of long lines, it's there. Just copy it all and paste it into your favorite text editor to read it all.

This code should be quite self-explanatory. As is (also) so often the case with Python, the "meat" of these 81 lines are the 7 lines starting with line 67 where I read in the text to be wrapped from stdin. All the preceeding lines are for handling the command-line options.

I put this in a file called "wwrap" and did a `chmod +x` on it. I then created a symbolic link to it in /usr/local/bin/, and I was ready to create my TextExpander snippet.

Now I can just type 'qtp' and the quoted, wrapped form of whatever text is in the clipboard is pasted in.

I'm inspired to look for more workflows I can simplify with TextExpander and possibly Python. (I'm going to start by trying to figure out how to re-create the "Create tr.im shortened URL" in Dan Frakes' TextExpander screenshot.)

Pleasures of a poor memory

2009-02-25T07:06:00.001-08:00

One of the benefits of having a good memory is getting to enjoy good novels all over again, years (sometimes not so many) after reading them.

I believe I first read Ender's Game soon after it was first published in paperback, sometime in 1985 or `86. (Almost 25 years ago!) I remember enjoying it, enough to then seek out other books by Orson Scott Card. (I enjoy "binging" on a writer after I discover a good novel. Maybe someday I'll re-enjoy many of my favorite Kurt Vonnegut novels.) I don't remember much of Speaker for the Dead, but I do remember telling my sister that it was great, perhaps my "favorite", and that Card's understanding of human nature and psychology rivals the great Russian novelists. (Not that I had read any of them. And I still haven't.)

Now that I have a longer commute to work (40 minutes going in early, often over an hour coming home), I have time to enjoy my favorite podcasts and listen to audiobooks. I started getting audiobooks from the library, including Ender's Game. Which I enjoyed again. I look forward to when my kids are old enough to enjoy it--it's a "juvenile" novel after all--but I think they should be at least 12 or so.

I wanted to move on to Speaker for the Dead, but I did a little research on the Ender series [spoiler warning] first, and decided this time to "read" Ender in Exile first. I was published only late last year, but takes place chronologically between Ender's Game and Speaker for the Dead. But the library didn't have it.

So I signed up for an Audible.com membership--I chose the "twit749" deal I'd been hearing about on TWiT and MacBreak Weekly--and downloaded it. I just finished it. I'm not going to turn this into a review. But I recommend it. (One line was worth quoting: "Pacifism only works with an enemy that can't bear to do murder against the innocent. How many times are you lucky enough to get an enemy like that?")

I just downloaded Speaker for the Dead. I'm looking forward to it. (Though I'll listen to my favorite podcasts first.)

Too many long, rambling podcasts

2009-01-23T07:24:00.000-08:00

I started listening to the This Week in Photography (TWiP) podcast (episode 65) on my way in to work this morning. Over seven minutes into a one hour and 20 minute episode, and they hadn't really started talking about photography. So I skipped ahead to the next podcast in my playlist.

I much prefer the Tack Sharp podcast. The average length of the episodes is about 20 minutes, and each episode focuses on one subject only. I've learned something from every one of the six episodes so far.

Alex Lindsay and Scott Bourne, the founders and two of the regulars on TWiP are also regulars on MacBreak Weekly (MBW). So it's understandable that the style and format of their podcast is very similar. (They even have "picks of the week".) But what makes MBW (and TWiT) worth listening to (even when they rat-hole or ramble--although I'm often tempted to skip them when they're particularly long--the last MBW was just sort of two hours) is that I feel like I've gotten to know the personalities so each week feels like listening to old friends. (And Leo Laporte does a great job of keeping both podcasts interesting.) Perhaps if I kept listening to TWiP I'd get that same comfortable familiarity with it, but I only have so much time.

The TWIPPHOTO.COM blog has excellent show notes for the episodes, and there's plenty of other material there worth reading. So I'll probably favor their blog over their podcast. (But I find it harder to make time for blog reading than podcasts.)

I use two iPhone Twitter apps

2009-01-18T07:30:00.000-08:00

Twitter has plenty of meta-discussion. (TODO: It would be interesting to approximate the percentage of tweets that are about Twitter.) Very frequently (at least among the people I follow) the discussion is about iPhone apps for Twitter. More often than any other, I see people recommend Tweetie. Though Twitterrific is mentioned frequently, and I see TwitterFon come up increasingly often.

I use Tweetie and Twitterrific Premium. The contrast between the two is interesting. They're both excellent, well-polished apps that illustrate two different approaches to designing a quality iPhone application.

I use Tweetie often enough that it gets a spot on my main launcher screen (reserved for the apps I use more frequently). It's full-featured. In fact, it seems like I can do just about anything in Tweetie that I can do from twitter.com.

But I use Twitterrific more often than any other iPhone app, so it gets the privileged spot on the bottom left (on the strip on the bottom that appears on all launcher screens). Twitterrfic is a good example of the "do one thing only and do it well" school. Twitterrific's one thing is reading tweets. It does that so well that I prefer it to twitter.com on my MacBook Pro (though I haven't tried any desktop Twitter apps).

Twitterrific Premium's killer feature (which I haven't seen or heard of in any other iPhone Twitter app) is how it "maintain[s] a reading position between launches of the application". (I think this feature is not in the free version of Twitterrific.) This is why Twitterrific is my most used iPhone app. I can very quickly launch is and scan through all the new tweets since the last time I checked.

As I'm reading in Twitterrific, if I see a tweet with a URL that looks interesting that I want to take the time to look at later (especially if I don't want to take the time to wait on EDGE), I'll mark it as a favorite.

Then later (when I'm on WiFi on my iPhone or my MBP), I'll use Tweetie (or twitter.com) to scan through my favorites and un-mark them after I read them.

I also use Tweetie occasionally to check for replies.

And Tweetie is better for writing tweets, especially if I want to include someone's name or a URL. And the new version 1.2 has an optional landscape keyboard.

Loren Brichter updates Tweetie much more frequently than Craig Hockenberry updates Twitterrific. But that is expected when you think about it, since there is always plenty of opportunities for new features and improvements to a full-featured app like Tweetie, whereas Twitterrific is so specialized and so polished that @chockenberry should be very careful not to fix something that isn't broken. But if @atebits adds a "maintain reading position" feature to Tweetie that works reasonable well, I may give up using Twitterrific and give Tweetie the place of honor on my iPhone.

But when/if that happens, I won't regret the $10 I spent on Twitterrific Premium. I use both often enough and both are so pleasant to use that the $10 and the $3 for Tweetie was money well spent. I recommend both.

Update: I remembered one more situation where Tweetie comes in handy. Twitterrific has a limit on the number of tweets it will hold, so if I can't make time to check it for a while, or if the number of tweets is much greater than usual for some reason (such as the inauguration), then when I come back to Twitterrific I'll notice that the "last read" tweet is at the bottom of the list and I won't remember reading it. In Tweetie's advanced settings I've changed the "Initial Load" to 100 (from the default of 20), so I can catch up on missed tweets often by just opening Tweetie and scrolling down (or maybe touching "Load more..." a single time). Yes, I know that Twitter isn't email, and I don't feel the need to read every single tweet that goes by, but if I've just missed an hour or two's worth, Tweetie makes it easy to read them.

Can I wait to upgrade iLife & iWork?

2009-01-07T20:28:00.000-08:00

I'm quite eager to try the new iLife '09, especially the Faces feature of iPhoto. I think I'll also enjoy using the Places feature, and the Facebook & Flickr integration. If I ever get time to use it, iMovie '09 also sounds like a big improvement. And I'd like to play with the "learn to play piano" feature of GarageBand. I don't use iWork often, but I've paid for the previous version and I expect it's worth upgrading.

But ironically the "Mac Box Set" may keep me from upgrading. Or I suppose more accurately, the lack of an iLife/iWork bundle may keep me from upgrading. iLife '09 costs $79, as does iWork '09. (There's no discount for people who have previously purchased iLife '08 or iWork '08.) The "Mac Box Set" is a bundle of iLife '09, iWork '09, and Mac OS X 10.5.6 Leopard, for $169. But the new MacBook Pro I got in August came with Leopard, and I've already bought Leopard for my old PowerBook G4. So that bundle doesn't save me any money. But knowing the bundle exists makes me think I should wait for when Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) is released (probably this summer) and buy the inevitable update of the "Mac Box Set" then.

At least I'm not bored

2008-12-04T20:32:00.000-08:00

I just read 10 Essential Steps to Take BEFORE You’re Laid Off after seeing the link in Cosmin Stejerean's tweet. (He also links to three more in Hacker News--I also very much disagree with #13; some very interesting comments follow that articulate my distaste better than I could.)

I practiced a lot of these while I was at Altera. (I instinctively knew they made me more marketable professionally.) I'm quite sure that many of these made it much easier to get interviews and find my new job when I decided it was time to move on. I spent quite a bit of time updating my skills: before I joined Altera (in Sept. 2002) I had never used Python, Ruby, or CSS. I had limited experience with Java. I studied many other technologies, practices and tools over those six years (such as Test-Driven Development, Scrum, Django, Javascript, AJAX, etc.). I started this blog, and PyPap. I created and updated my LinkedIn profile. I started using Twitter and Facebook. I continued running regularly, and kept myself in good shape. And almost all this was on my own time, since I was careful to "Avoid being laid off in the first place". I put in at least a full eight hours of work (often more like nine or ten) every weekday, and was careful to avoid getting accustomed to doing personal tasks while at work. I constantly juggled my very limited available time, since my wife gave birth to our three kids over those six years.

The juggling has become even more difficult now that I have so much to learn at VMware. I need to make sure I focus on "Avoid being laid off in the first place", but I don't want to drop everything else. I want to find time for "Do extracurricular work that showcases your abilities". (I have no shortage of ideas for that work.) And the ideas for things to blog about (both here and on PyPap) are piling up. I just don't know where to find the time. I already get up between 5:30 and 6:00 so I can work on personal projects when I'm at my best in the morning. But there's so much to learn at work that most mornings I just end up starting work early. I'm usually too exhausted after the kids are asleep to do anything that takes any real mental energy. (And I need to go to bed early so I can get up early.) The kids get priority on weekends since they get so little of my time during the week. (And that's the only time I have for chores.)

At least I'm not bored.

The Road

2008-09-05T08:20:00.001-07:00

This morning on the way to work I finished "reading" The Road by Cormac McCarthy. (If you haven't read it yourself, don't read the plot summary on the Wikipedia page.) I listened to it as an audio recording: 6 hours 40 minutes unabridged. I agree with Leo Laporte--listening to an audiobook feels like reading.

This is the darkest novel I can remember reading. I was wondering as I approached the end if McCarthy would be able to give it a positive ending. I want to avoid any spoilers, but I will say I found the ending satisfying, and I could imagine much darker conclusions to the story.

I found the novel especially moving because I am a father, and I can identify with the theme of trying to guide your children towards becoming a self-respecting, respectable adults, while keeping them safe and trying to gain every advantage possible for them, within sometimes fuzzy moral limits. I'm glad I'm not raising my kids in a world as dark as that in the novel. But I admired "the man's" very human heroism--his struggles to keep his son safe but also continue to "carry the fire" of "the good guys".

Another theme that resonated for me is how to live life after confronting the existential crisis. How do you live your life in a world with no ultimate purpose or external meaning? I spend quite a bit of time thinking about this. I keep coming back to the answer that one must find one's own meaning for life. Mine is rather selfish. I want to make the most of the great luck I've had in this particular combination of genes being born at all. "Making the most" is a constant struggle and balancing act between doing what provides me satisfaction over the short term and what will provide me satisfaction over the long term. That sounds selfish, but many of the things that provide me both short-term and long-term satisfaction are related to sharing with and caring for my family (as well as myself). I guess this should be the subject of a longer essay, that may take me a lifetime to write.

I may come back to this novel occasionally, for it has given me a renewed appreciation for nature and our environment. McCarthy paints the picture of a world with absolutely no life at all so vividly that like being separated from a loved one for too long, I want to give it a big hug now that we're back together. (Others have had the same reaction: see the last paragraph under "Awards and nominations" on the Wikipedia page. Again, skip the plot summary.)

I see that a film adaptation will be released soon. It may be a good movie, and I'll certainly seek it out. But I recommend you read (or listen to) the novel first. If you see the movie first you may forever lose the opportunity to experience this story in all its power.

Instant relief from back troubles, again

2008-08-20T19:00:00.000-07:00

A little more than six years ago (I remember Claire was pregnant with Elleda, who just turned 6) I woke up one morning, stretched, and *click*—something happened to my upper back and I was in extreme pain. But the urge to urinate was even stronger than the pain of getting up, so I forced myself to my feet and staggered towards the bathroom. I remember one shoulder being much higher than the other—my back felt all twisted up. Somehow I made it to the bathroom and relieved myself, and then I think I mumbled something to Claire and lost consciousness.

Claire had never seen anyone faint before, and called 911. I think the paramedics were there almost immediately after I regained consciousness—or at least that's how I remember it. They found me upstairs in the bedroom lying flat on my back. They (of course) took this seriously and took my vitals, gave me an IV (if I recall correctly) and carefully strapped me onto a backboard and carried me downstairs and to the nearest hospital in an ambulance.

At the hospital they hooked me up to various monitors and asked me questions. Once they were satisfied that it was "only" back pain (and that my loss of consciousness was a "vasovagal syncope") they had me stay for a couple hours to make sure. (I happened to be in very good shape at the time—I had been running assiduously in preparation for my pending fatherhood—so I was proud that I kept setting off an alarm when my pulse dropped below 40.) But in the end there was nothing they could do—back pain is the sort of trauma they're not trained to deal with—and they sent me home (with a prescription for some kind of painkillers).

The pain wasn't nearly as severe (especially with the Vicodin or whatever they gave me), but after a couple days something still felt wrong in my upper back. I went to see my primary care physician (PCP) who (lucky for me) wasn't available and so I saw someone else. This doctor asked me a few questions and then examined my back. (This was the first time anyone had done that.) He found a vertebrae had slipped out of place, and asked if I had ever seen a chiropractor. I explained I'm a skeptic and that I've read about many that have made quite outrageous claims, and I don't know how to find a "good one". He then had me lie down on a massage table, asked me to take a deep breath and pushed on my spine and I felt instant relief. He had popped the vertebrae back into place. He explained that the muscle pain was spasms as they tried (vainly) to pull the the vertebrae back into place. I asked him if there was anything I could do to keep this from happened again, and he said he didn't think so.

I still felt a little soreness, but that subsided after a couple days.

Let's skip ahead all the way to last weekend. I had noticed my back was a little sore at work last Thursday and Friday, but I thought it was probably due to the new chair and desk at my new job, or the workouts from the fitness "boot camp" I had signed up for there. On the weekend I noticed my back was quite sore especially when I leaned over or lay on my side to play with the kids. Claire noticed that my shoulders were far from level. But it wasn't until Monday that I made the connection. The discomfort became pain, especially after the stress of the drive home.

I went to see a doctor Tuesday morning. I described my symptoms and told her my story of how I was sure this was the same problem as before. She told me (even after I explained how the other doctor had previously "fixed" me) that all she could do was prescribe muscle relaxants and ibuprofen, and give me some back strengthening and stretching exercises. Most of the time, she explained, back pain subsides after days or a couple weeks. If it was still a problem after 30 days then I could return for "imaging". I protested saying that I was sure it was the same vertebrae problem, and she did a quick exam and I was able to clearly identify where the problem was, but she said there was nothing she could do. I asked her if she could refer me to another doctor who could, and she explained she is an MD and the doctor I had seen way back was possibly an osteopathic physician (DO). Kaiser (my HMO) employs DOs as well as MDs as PCPs, but she couldn't refer me to another PCP. I asked if there were any DOs at that Kaiser facility (in Mountain View) and she looked it up and kindly gave me a list of the DOs at nearby facilities (none in Mountain View). I recognized the one name in Campbell—I was pretty sure it was the same doctor I had seen over 6 years ago.

I called to make an appointment (and ended up having to make him my PCP in order to do so); the next available appointment was the next afternoon (today), so I suffered through another drive home and painful night. The muscle relaxant (cyclobenzaprine) helped a little, but also dulled my senses in an unpleasant way.

This afternoon I saw that doctor and was pleased that he was the same one. This time it took him three tries to get the vertebrae (T4) back into place. I didn't feel the same immediate relief I remember from last time, but my back has been feeling progressively better every hour. I asked him if I should try the strengthening exercises and he replied "Can't hurt." I asked if there's anything I can do to prevent this from happening again, and he said hopefully there's no need to worry about that since it last happened over 6 years ago.

I'm going to avoid drawing any sweeping conclusions from this experience, but in this case an osteopathic physician was better equipped to help me than a "plain old" MD. I don't think this is an argument for "alternative medicine" (which I remain skeptical about), but it does appear there are some legitimate alternatives to standard medical practice.

A couple Henry anecdotes

2008-08-17T22:55:00.000-07:00

Claire took Elleda to a sleep-over birthday party yesterday, so it was just the boys yesterday and this morning. Today I was telling Claire about Henry's accident yesterday where he said "I have to go potty" and then couldn't hold it and made a puddle on the carpet. Henry was in the other room, but was eavesdropping. He looked at me and said "You said 'Ugh.'". That cracked us both up. I wish we had it on video.

Henry and I have found a rather elaborate bedtime ritual. After reading him some stories (usually Claire reads to Elleda and Gabe separately), he says "I want to sleep in my Thomas bed" (meaning his Thomas the Tank Engine toddler bed). I tuck him in, and warn him that if he gets out of bed (he always does), I'll put him in his crib. (Which we're glad we've kept in his room. He either hasn't figured out how to climb out of it--or the thought just hasn't occurred to him.) I then sit down and wait outside his room for a couple minutes until he opens the door. Then I tell him he needs to go in his crib, and (usually) smell something and ask him if he has a "poopy". If he does (and he often does), I change his diaper and give him another chance in his toddler bed. Then I wait outside his room again until he opens the doors and I put him in his crib. Tonight though, he had another poopy diaper, and he got one more chance. (This wasn't the first time that's happened.) But even though I told reminded him (again) that he'll go in his crib if he gets up, he couldn't resist. He asked me "Where's Mommy?" and when I replied "She's downstairs." He said "You go downstairs with her!" He didn't want me waiting outside his door.

No poopy diaper the third time though. And after about 45 minutes I could finally go downstairs.

What's the word for...?

2008-08-01T20:02:00.000-07:00

Is there a word for being compelled to do something that would sound ridiculous to someone else? That’s what I’m feeling.

It's Friday night, and I'm working late, on my last day of work!

I'm working to document the web site that I've been working on for the last few months, that I only just deployed yesterday. And now the server that runs that site is down for maintenance. So I'll have to use my local install of my site on my laptop to help me write. (Before I delete all the code that belongs to my former employer from my machine.)

And the wiki server on which I would post my documentation is also down for maintenance. So I'll have to email it to a co-worker--technically now a former co-worker.

And my card-key stopped working. So I packed up my stuff and left before there was no one around to let me back in.

So I'm now at a coffee shop writing away, for my now former employer, on a Friday night.

Sounds ridiculous, eh? But I'm compelled to do it. I just can't bear the thought of people using my site and being confused or (worse) deciding it's of no use to them.

So I'll get back to work.

Legoland Photos

2008-07-18T22:52:00.000-07:00

I uploaded 57 photos taken (over three days) at Legoland to Flickr. As usual, for my comments see www.spitzer.us first.

June Photos

2008-07-08T08:25:00.000-07:00

I uploaded 40 photos from June to Flickr. See www.spitzer.us.

May Photos

2008-06-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

Just three photos from May were worth uploading to Flickr. See www.spitzer.us.

Update: I found another 19 photos from May on Claire's computer that were worth uploading to Flickr.

Competitive Drive

2008-06-23T12:09:00.000-07:00

A friend (of mine) asked Gabe why he likes sports so much. Gabe responded (with the complete honesty of a four-year-old): "Because I like to win."