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Posted today on my facebook page: What if computer programming was treated like competitive sports?Commentator speaking in a hushed voice as the camera pans from a wideshot of Garnet's desk to a closeup of his screen: OK, Garnet Chaney's setup the method with a proper set of error checks, he has made sure that all the inputs are legal, and now he's getting into the meat of the method. Is he going to use a FOR loop or a WHILE loop with a local variable? His concentration is intense, he appears like he's hesitating at the keyboard.... Oh look at that, he went for a FOR EACH loop! (Crowd cheering!) Jack, that's looking just like the method subroutine he wrote 28 minutes ago where he used an iterator on a hash object... Oh look at that, (the crowd roars!) he's going for the refactor to combine the two routines, and he's going to use the mediator pattern with a static method... Wow, what a masterful set of keystrokes.... And now a word from our sponsor, "Accucream Typing Balm". After the break we'll visit Nik Page as he tries to reproduce a crash bug in Garnet's code, and watch as Ivaylo Lenkov's team discovers whether or not they can extend Garnet's code or if it is more fun to just rewrite it, and then we'll hear from Garnet's boss as he lectures Garnet on how they company could be worth a BILLION dollars if only Garnet would work harder, and does he understand how much his ten percent ownership share of a BILLION dollar company would be worth.... Stay tuned to the Wide World of Programming..... (cut to upbeat network program music....) Garnet sees the on air light turn off, quickly checks Facebook.... OK, be honest... Have you ever scavenged through your Facebook friend's profiles looking for new Facebook friends for yourself? I'm guilty. Consider David Interimone, (who hasn't yet responded to my friend request of an hour ago). I last saw him somewhere between 2 and 5 years ago at a random gas station in San Francisco near Geary and 19th where he actually recognized me from 15 or more years earlier. No wonder that on Facebook he has gathered 1289 friends. Yet his friends listing wasn't any help for me to find anyone to add to my profile...... I went through everyone else I could find and went through their all their friends too, trying to jog my memory. I am facing the possibility that I've run out of people to friend. An existential limit to my friending.... It has been days since I had a direct search for anyone that turned up someone I was confident I knew among all the homonymous people sharing their name. And I realize my mind is not that great at remembering names.... Charles Baxter, the author of The Business of Memory summed up my concern:
I feel like Hal as his memory chips as Dave is pulling his memory chips....
Who is pulling my memory chips? A mental block maybe? Forgetting names, Schacter (2001), chairman of the department of psychology at Harvard, labels it blocking, failure to retrieve names, rather than failure to store them.
afriendsia? Kind of like aphasia, but specifically targetted at inability to remember names of friends you are sure you know?
Oh great, the information mini-highway in my brain is developing potholes.
So perhaps the whole Facebook exercise is a modern fertility rite. And I think from looking at the friends of so many others, I am starting to have phantom "I know that person" when I don't.... It is bad enough when in real life I see someone who looks familiar, and I have to stop and figure out which continent do I think I know them from... Do I really know all the people I friended, or am I really just a fan of them? For example, Jeff Duntemann the author I just friend requested. Probably I've spent more time reading his books than directly talking with him. But I'm pretty sure he was a TASM beta tester and I talked with him then when he was authoring one of his early books. Didn't I? (I originally wrote Duncan, eventhough I just friended Jeff 5 minutes ago after finding him on someone else's profile. I am anxiously waiting on his response. See what I mean?) Does my sending friend requests to people that I don't know endanger the entity known as Facebook? Will it someday decide to defend itself? Perhaps it already is. It keeps refusing my request to friend Phillipe Kahn, a public personality and the founder of Borland with probably hundreds or thousands of friends. Eventhough I have 5 mutual friends with him. And I spent 5 years of my life working for him. I tried searching for him three times, didn't find him. It was much easier to scavenge his link from one of my 5 friends. But Facebook also decided to reject my attempt to friend John Miller from church. He is someone I regularly visit, I went to his most recent birthday party, and sometimes I drop by his house and we chat for hours. But Facebook wont allow the connection. Has it decided he is not important enough to have a 64th friend? Or is Facebook trying to tug on my memory chips. Existentialism, "a sense of disorientation and confusion in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world"... Or at least a meaningless internet website. Maybe I should retreat to the safety of my wikis with their legions of anonymous visitors, and occasional anonymous comments. Where I'm not tempted to try to find a lot of meanings about anything other than how well do the intelligences known as search engines like my writing. I wonder what percentage of the friend requests I sent out that actually looked at my request and didn't think i was cool enough to add to their profiles.... And why would people from high school a billion years ago, who I haven't spoken with since then, be so willing to add me to their profiles..... Or people adding each other from the past without any kind of "Hey, how are you, whats been happening for you?" comment back and forth.... Vanity... All is vanity.... Will I be able to break 100 friends by year end..... Maybe I should go to china town in KL and get a Facebook specific card printed and then spend a few days in KL striking up conversations with strangers to create instant intimacy just to see if they will friend me. Should I do that exercise on an entirely new Facebook account, so that I can track the results of it? Do I want to pollute my real account of people I barely knew decades ago with recent friends I even more barely know from last week? Existentialbook.com ? "One who experiences existential angst comes face to face with the existential limits of their existence. For example, through the experience of eg. uncertainty, meaninglessness or endings or death, the resultant anxiety reflects their aloneness in making sense of their existence. As each of us proceed through our lives, we are bombarded with challenges to the fixed ways in which we define ourselves and our worlds. The unpredictable nature of others’ behaviour or our own challenges us to embrace the co-constructed nature of our phenomenal selves." I need to find some university that will give me a PhD for writing a dissertation about this once I figure out something vaguely revelatory to say about this experience.... In case you think you know me, my facebook profile is at http://www.facebook.com/garnetchaney Go ahead and friend me. Just don't be offended if I scavenge through your friends looking for someone I really know. Links:
Today (November 7th) is the 144th birthday of Madame Marie Curie. Examining her papers will expose you to radiation:
The half life of her and her husband Pierre's favorite radioactive element, radium-226, is 1600 years. "In 1903, Pierre Curie, after observing burns on his arm left by the chunk of radium that he tied to it for 10 hours, concluded that he had discovered a cure for cancer." BTW, Ellen G. White, the author of the book "The Desire Of Ages", warned against these new fangled "medicines". She started writing in the late 1800's up until the early 1900's. She advised that the only true cures to health are when we work with nature in a gentle way and use God's eight principles of health:
You can easily remember these with the word "NEWSTART". In other news, we wonder.... Does it do a body good? How about some radioactive milk that the state of California and FDA & EPA say "Trust us, the milk is ok...." http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2011/0401/Radioactive-milk-harmless-but-will-consumers-buy-it For a discenting opinion about milk, radioactive or not, see Dr. Walter Veith's talk "Udderly Amazing" - http://www.beyondpatmos.org/watchvideo.aspx?videoid=249 I read Gary Chapman's book a long time ago and it made a lot of sense to me: http://www.5lovelanguages.com/learn-the-languages/the-five-love-languages/ Different people feel loved in different ways. Some people feel really loved if you give them a gift, other people that doesn't do much for them. Other people prefer to be physically touched, others prefer a handshake instead of a hug. Ever have a friend who "fishes" for compliments? Some people want you to tell them they did a great job on something, this is what gives them a good feeling. Chapman's research is described in this way:
Chapman also uses the metaphor of a love tank, or a leaky cup. When people's love tank is full from expressions of love, they are happier, and more relaxed. But over time, the love leaks away, and they need their tank refilled with more things that they interpret as love. If their love cup remains on empty too long, they cant feel the love, and eventually may start to "misbehave". The computer game "Creatures" involved raising and training some artificial life forms, and observing them as they explored their computer world. They had needs for food, attention, etc. that were expressed as fuel gauges. Once the creature was full of attention, (they would periodically seek out the player for interaction), it would then wander off and do other things. If you kept the creatures satisfied on all accounts, they would breed and you could get new varieties of creatures to train and raise. I think that an important way to teach children about many important lessons in life is to have a pet, and give them a chance to take care of it. I have always used this illustration of love with my kids: "If I have a pet, and I say over and over, 'I just love my Flabowill, Flabowill is the best pet ever, I love him so much', but I let him go without fresh water, or I forget to feed him, or dont pay attention to him when he needs attention, or neglect him in other significant ways, does my love mean anything to the pet?" Its important for children to learn that love should show itself in our actions, and not be just words we say.
But even better to demonstrate the lessons of love is to have a pet that can express its own preferences. This lets the child more clearly see responses to showing the right kinds of attention to the animal. So animals like lizards, or fish, or mice, while they make great pets and I've had all of them, and they can help a child learn responsibility, still may not be the best. I think dogs or cats are a must have for parents of young children. However dogs that just love everyone, while a great choice, are probably not even the best, since some dogs will continue to love people and crave attention even from those who aren't taking good care of them. Henry Wheeler Shaw's saying, "In the whole history of the world there is but one thing that money can not buy... to wit the wag of a dog's tail" appears at the beginning of the Disney film Lady and the Tramp.[14] Josh Billings was the pen name of 19th century American humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw (21 April 1818 – 14 October 1885). He is also quoted as "Money will buy a pretty good dog, but it won't buy the wag of his tail."
In my experience, I think cats are the best pet for teaching children about love and lessons of life. This is because they are much clearer in their take it or leave it attitudes. They are much more likely to run away from those who dont speak their love language. If you can have more than one cat, it is likely they each will have somewhat different preferences, so that these preferences are even better for teaching the lessons of love.
Cats tend not to like the random actions of very young children. While a collie dog wont mind a toddler whacking their hand on them they same way they whack their toy piano, a cat is going to very quickly say enough of this and run away. The child may, unfortunately for the cat, find that making the cat run away is great fun. As the child gets old enough to understand language, and the cat is comfortable with you and happy to sit with you for love and attention, but gives a wary eye when the child approaches, you can tell the child, "See how I am giving the kitty gentle rubbing? Kitty dont like to be whacked, she is not like Fido dog. Hear the sound Kitty is making? That is called purring, and she will make this sound if she likes what you are doing. If you do the things that Kitty likes, Kitty will come to you for more attention. But if you think it is funny to scare Kitty, she wont like that, and she wont come around her. You'll never get to hear her purr, or see her enjoying coming to relax with you." As the child gets older, they can help with the things needed to take care of the cat. If you have more than one cat, you'll be able to show the child how one cat likes one kind of rubbing, but another likes a different style. One cat likes one kind of cat treat, another likes a different kind of food, one likes to be at your side, another likes to be held but another doesn't. They learn that not at all cats like the same thing, and if they want the kittys to feel loved and respond to that love, you need to learn what each kitty likes and give them what they like. And the different cats will respond to you in different ways, but it will be very clear when they love what you are doing and when they dont. Cats learn quickly, and they will avoid things they dont like, but they will live for the things that they enjoy. Unlike the typical stereotype most people have of the aloof cat that does care about people, every cat I have ever had will follow me around the house and choose to spend time with me. They will develop very warm and affectionate bonds with those who treat them right. As a result, my 11 year old son has a very good relationship with all the cats in our house. When his friends come over, and are over affectionate with the cats, he defends the cats and tries to teach his friend to do the things the cat likes. I have always been fascinated by animals of all kinds. In aquariums, I am fascinated by shrimp. I like looking through the ghost shrimp, and they remind me of robots as they walk around with their hands probing things. I have also had water crabs in my aquariums, they are fun to watch. Recently I have started raising shrimp, I now have three different kinds of shrimp, one of each in a different aquarium. The algae shrimp is doing well, he recently molted, which is good evidence that his environment is good and he is thriving. I have discovered that he reacts very quickly to the presence of a beta fish food pellet dropped into the water, often within 5-10 seconds he gets very active looking for it. He will find it and carry it around.... A ghost shrimp I have died, possibly because of water quality problems because of it being a new aquarium and a filtration pump got plugged while I was away. Aquariums often thrive from benign neglect, and the water quality can be ruined by overfeeding. So to this aquarium problem, I also feed very lightly, especially since the only animal in the whole aquarium was a single shrimp. But with the ghost shrimp I thought it could eat from the plants and marimbo java moss ball I put in the aquarium (another shrimp has lived for months from that food source while living in a very 1 pint container.) So maybe I was too neglectful in my benign neglect. So I fixed those problems, and got another ghost shrimp, and a single tiny baby guppy. I tried dropping in a couple of beta food pellets, and there was no reaction. The fish picked at the pellet a little, but the shrimp didn't. So then I dropped a couple flakes of flake food. One of the flakes was driven on the current from the filter to come to the shrimp and it grabbed it, held on to it, and ate it. It was interesting to watch the internal workings of the gut as the shrimp ate the flake of food. So I have discovered that the language of love I need to show to each of these shrimp is different. It dont matter how much I love my shrimp, or want to see them do things that I can say "The shrimp is happy", if I dont consider the specific needs of each kind of shrimp and translate my love into giving the shrimp what it needs to live and be happy, my love for the shrimp dont matter. Zoo keepers long ago discovered that captive Koala Bears will die if not given a specific kind of eucalyptus to eat. Koala bears from different parts of Australia have become adapted to eating different species of eucalyptus. No matter how much the zookeeper loves the koala, if the zookeeper gives the koala the wrong kind of food, the koala will not recognize it as food. No matter how much we might say, "Stupid Koala, its still eucalyptus, nutritionally its indistinguishable from the other kind," it doesnt matter. If the Koala is not given what it recognizes as food, the Koala will starve and die. Here are some more funny dog quotes: |
http://www.bobsgear.com/dashboard.action?maxRecentlyUpdatedPageCount=40
. Finally found the memory leak problem with my wikipedia parsing. It was a quirk of the LINQ database stuff keeping things in memory. The program is now happily processing 100 articles every 0.4 seconds, which is amazingly better than the 10 seconds it was taking to process 100 articles yesterday morning. Occassionally it speeds up and processes 100 articles in only 0.1 seconds.... And not having all the extra memory sitting around being held means the program is not gradually slowing down either. How I structured the program:
The XML parsing thread occassionally sleeps because it is much faster than the database threads, I dont want more than about 2500 articles sitting in memory waiting to be dumped into the database.... With the program current speed, it might take maybe 400 minutes to process entire wikipedia dump, down from maybe 6 days for the version of the program yesterday morning. Some lessons learned:
A couple of useful articles:
This concerns revision 484 of [wminfra:WikipediaToConfluence] project. Note: A PC can still become quite unusable over time if a program is running and doing a lot of updates to a database on the same machine. This can resemble a memory leak, but it doesnt show up in task manager. The machine may be almost unusable, unable to popup menus, programs may have strange errors, etc. Stopping and starting, restarting, the SQL Server service will restore the machine to proper operation. If SQL Server is not limited in the amount of memory it can use, it will try to use all the memory in the machine, but it uses it in a way that doesn't show up in task manager. The other day I was tracking my diet for a couple of days, and discovered some big deficits of certain vitamins. A friend of mine is a wellness doctor. I asked him for his opinion on vitamin supplements. Does he think vitamin supplements are useful, or are they a bunch of hype? He said he feels they are very useful. The vitamins we have the most problem not getting enough of are:
I asked him what he thinks about the U.S. RDA numbers for vitamins. I've heard that they are set just above the minimum to keep you from getting diseases like scurvy, but not high enough to give real health. He agreed. What about vitamin B-12? My doctor friend said that is very important for vegetarians and vegans to supplement. I told him I had some trouble finding a vitamin supplement without extra iron. He asked if I cook with an iron skillet. Cooking with an iron skillet is a great way to end up with extra iron in the diet! He takes 1000 mg. a day of Vitamin C, 1000 mg. of vitamin D. He said we have a problem with having enough vitamin D because we don't get enough sunlight. My doctor friend said he had learned about the importance of vitamin supplements from watching a friend of ours, Dr. Merton Shelton who lived into his 90's and was a big believer in taking vitamin supplements. Related pages:
Labels: iron, a, us-rda, d, wellness, vitamin, vitamin-c, supplements, iron-skillet, vitamin-d, c, vitamin-supplements, vitamin-a, vitamins, cooking
Hmmm... Almost a year since my last blog posting in this space. That's the problem with having too many places to post things at..... What have I been doing in the last year?
Think I've finished some others recently too, have to come back here and update the list. |
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