The Underground Man

Letter from America

Godspeed, Alistair Cooke.

Alistair passed away yesterday in New York at the age of 95. I won't repeat what all the obituaries will say.

As one who came from England to America as a boy, I found that Alistair's commentaries perfectly embodied my love of this country. I loved hearing his take on life here in America and the always sympathetic voice reminded me of everything that is good here.

Yes, I tear my hair out sometimes over the politics and the myopia (I often think Teddy Roosevelt was correct in saying that America's national animal should be the grizzly bear not the bald eagle) but the fact remains that I've lived my entire adult life here and made a good living.

It is sometimes easy to lose sight of America's virtues amidst the bluster and foreign policy blunders. But Americans are, at their best, a tremendously generous and open people and Alistair's letters reminded us of that weekly.

I think he will be sorely missed.

(For those of you who have never had the opportunity to hear him, his last letter is here (BBC UK RealAudio). A transcript is here.)

I like Austin

Well, I missed SXSW but since I've never attended I'm not too disturbed.

Austin seems like a very pleasant city (but then, I like Texas anyway). Ideal weather (mid-80s) and the freeways don't seem too crowded. Even the price of gas is pretty good (compared to the West Coast).

Well, off to breakfast and then interviews...

Chess by oneself

I think I first came to really appreciate chess reading the novels of Raymond Chandler. I went on a Chandler kick sophomore year in college and read everything I could get my hands on.

Philip Marlowe (I think it was in The Big Sleep) comes home one evening to play chess against a famous opponent. But the opponent was drawn from a recorded game in a book.

At that moment I realized that I could play and practice by myself. It was quite a revelation. I simply had to get some books and a chess board.

For years, I had avoided playing chess. I had been traumatized at a young age (like 6 or 7) playing with my cousins. They taught me the rudiments and then proceeded to thrash me unmercifully whenever they needed an ego boost. Almost ruined me forever (chess-wise). I stayed very far away from the game until I reached university. Instead, I pre-occupied myself with war games (board-level simulations of historical battles).

I went out that weekend and made the first acquisitions in what is now a fairly sizeable chess book collection. Some of the best acquistions were Eugene Znosko-Borovsky's series, How to Play the Chess Openings, The Middle Game in Chess, and How to Play Chess Endings. I include in this group Dr. Lasker's Common Sense in Chess, and Capablanca's Last Lectures (a very rare book). These are all considered classical texts for the beginning to intermediate player and introduce concepts that even as an expert you will use frequently.

Jose Raul Capablanca was a Cuban grandmaster in the early part of the last century and quite probably the best chess player in the modern era of chess. (Amongst chess aficianados that statment is "flame bait".) But there aren't too many who would argue that he is one of the top three of the modern era (defined as chess after about 1850). I love reading about his games--they were revolutionary and still take your breath way with their audacity.

But you don't have to play with just yourself and a book. Nowadays, chess programs have gotten very, very good indeed. The one that comes with Mac OS X is quite decent though on first examination it doesn't appear possible to either examine its opening book (the lines that it will play in response to certain openings) or to set up a position and have it follow a particular line (a script of a game) or even to have it set up a position and play from a set point. I'm looking for a good Mac chess game that will do this.

I found Chessmaster Turbo 4000 on the PC years ago and it's really more than strong enough to beat me. I think we're up to 9000 now (Lord knows what the number means, it seems to be just the edition). You can pick lesser editions up from remaindered software houses for a song.

For the Mac (OS X) the best product I've seen so far is Sigma Chess (which has a free version). This particular program will allow you to set up chess problems and help evaluate the strength of your game.

If you want to play against human opponents, check out the Internet Chess Club. They have a ton of clients for PCs and several for the Mac. When I was first a member in the mid-90s one only had a terminal interface. Now one can put a graphical front end on the games and its much nicer. One super-cool feature is the ability to observe other games - including master and grandmaster play (when I checked a moment ago there were 14 grandmasters and 37 international masters online). A six-month subscription is something like $4.75/month (this allows you to have a permanent rating rather than playing as a guest all the time).

For me, the old-fashioned board with double-weighted Staunton pieces is more than good enough to pass quite a few hours of time. Given enough time over a board, one can almost sense the "gestalt" of the game and more abstract concepts like lines of attack and balance in the game become a reality.

I'm not advocated that you spend hundreds of hours over a chess board but familiarizing yourself with a couple of the openings (and indeed, really learning one) can allow you to give even a decent player quite a run for his money.

Chess is, as with most things in life, a negotiation. Players will tacitly agree on an opening during the beginning moves (this in itself is a fascinating negotiation) and if you want to play in only a semi-competitive fashion one can play speed chess (the whole game in less than 10 minutes, timed by a chess clock) and explore dozens of openings in an afternoon. I would frequently get together and play just one or two lines with friends for a whole afternoon.

By the way, my favorite opening (for Black) is the Nimzo-Indian (1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4).

Noam Chomsky has a blog!

Finally. This promises to be a very interesting forum.

Here's a lovely quote from one of his first posts:

People in the more civilized sectors of the world (what we call "the third world," or the "developing countries") often burst out laughing when they witness an election in which the choices are two men from very wealthy families with plenty of clout in the very narrow political system, who went to the same elite university and even joined the same secret society to be socialized into the manners and attitudes of the rulers, and who are able to participate in the election because they have massive funding from highly concentrated sectors of unaccountable power that cast over society the shadow called "politics," as John Dewey put it.

Sacrificing the hunt for Bin Laden for the invasion of Iraq

According to the Guardian the Bush administration pulled the 5th Special Forces Group (and other assets) off the hunt for Bin Laden in March of 2002 in order to re-deploy them for the Iraq war.

This is simply incredible to me. I cannot believe that the 5th SFG would be necessary for the invasion. They had already spent five months in Afghanistan tracking down Bin Laden and trying to establish relationships with the locals.

Why is this story coming out in the British press and not the American?

On a side note, I got up a 6am this morning to watch Meet the Press and I was fairly displeased with Tim Russert. I think he sacrificed an opportunity to really delve into Richard Clarke's claims that the Iraq war came at the cost of the hunt for Bin Laden (he got 5 minutes near the end of the hour to expound on this) in an attempt to be "hard hitting". In reality, Russert made himself look a tool of the current administration. He spent much of the hour questioning Clarke on the accuracy of claims made by the Bush administration that Clarke had perjured himself or lied in his book. Doing exactly what the Bush administration wanted rather than focusing on the substantive issue that I think we can all agree is more important--Iraq for Bin Laden. Clarke pointed out numerous times that this shouldn't be about him.

I had thought better of Russert before this (though I have become unhappy with him of late because of the virtual pass he gave Condi Rice a couple of weeks ago).

Ambient Executive Dashboard

A very nifty product I found through an old post on Burke & Wells site on alternative interfaces.

To quote their Web site:

Ambient’s vision is to embed information representation in everyday objects, making the physical environment a seamless interface to digital information.

This particular product allows you to create an analog display (indicator dials) representing a whole variety of information such as stock market indices, whether you have email (and how much), etc. This device sits on your desk like a clock and connects wirelessly to a data service (subscription free apparently). It's due to launch soon (June 2004 I believe) and it could prove very interesting providing they manage to find enough unique and interesting data sources.

It's getting to be golf season

When I lived in the SF Bay area full-time, I had the pleasure of being able to play golf full-time. I'll never forget going out to play golf on NY's day and it being 65F and sunny. I used to laugh at those commentators on the Golf Channel who went on and on about getting ready for the coming of "golf season".

I don't laugh any longer. While I'm getting somewhat acclimated to the rain and cold here in the Pacific Northwest, I'm really missing my golf. I can still putt during the winter but I just don't find golf enjoyable when I'm both cold and wet (more the cold than the wet 'cause wet in Hawaii is better than dry most anywhere else).

With the coming of big tournaments on TV (Players Championship this weekend, the Masters in a couple of weeks) I'm getting golf fever again. My first tournament is due April 12th and I'm woefully out of practice.

I tell my friends who are beginning to play to watch the women play. As damaging as it may be to the ego, most of us normal males have absolutely no chance to play as well as the guys on the PGA (or even Hooters) Tour. Not a hope in hell. But, if you watch the women you will see that most men can hit the ball as far with the same selection of clubs. I drive it as far as the best of them and my irons are just a little longer.

So if you want to learn how to play a really good course, watch the LPGA events. You'll learn something about course management and wise choices.

I should love this time of year

I love spring. (Part of that is that I hate the endless rain of the Pacific Northwest.)

But the flip side of this coin is that lately I've been suffering from the worst allergy attacks. Apparently we are going through a 10-yr high of pollen right now and I'm feeling the effects. Two Allegra per day (can you believe $40/bottle?), plus some Loratidine and some cough suppressant and I barely feel human.

Makes me wonder how human beings develop allergies (I didn't use to have any). I'm not sure allergists even understand this. I've asked a couple and apparently it is still a mystery as to how we develop an allergy. They understand how allergies cause the body to react but not what we do to develop the allergy (or what is done to us, perhaps).

Never thought I would pray for rain. That is some kind of ironic given how much of a sun-lover I am.

Telling it like it is

Oliver Willis tells it like it is regarding the Bush administration's handling of affairs surrounding 9/11 and its handling of dissenters.

I was struck by how transparent some of the partisan tactics were in yesterday's 9/11 commission hearings. George Tenet (Director of the CIA) in the morning and Sandy Berger (Clinton's national security advisor) and Richard Clarke (Director of the Counter-terrorism Security Group under Bush I, II, Reagan, and Clinton) testified in the afternoon.

One could see that Tenet wanted to shift the focus to his agency's priorities: better funding for human intelligence (humint) and better coordination between agencies. He urged a fixing of systemic issues still plaguing the intelligence community. He really seemed to dance a bit about the administration's lack of response to his warnings about terrorism in the summer of 2001. I can only presume that is because he wants to keep his current job.

What I found interesting about Clarke's testimony was that he didn't do this for partisan reasons. He is a registered Republican who has served Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and now Bush II. His chief reason for leaving doesn't appear to be the lack of attention the Bush administration placed on terrorism before 9/11 but rather that they persisted in prosecuting the war on Iraq at the cost of fighting terrorism. I've felt since before the war that conquering Iraq was a huge sideshow and I feel like events have proven that to be the case. We can only conjecture as to whether this has had any negative effect on Al Qaeda but it certainly hasn't appeared to help America.

What I don't understand is why the public hearings only lasted TWO days. Surely we could have learned more. Personally, I think there were many more questions to be asked and I'm really aggravated that Condoleeza Rice hasn't testified in public and under oath.

But she has the time to run around and do every talk show under the sun.

gutted.. absolutely gutted

Liverpool lose 2-1 (3-2 on aggregate) to Olympique Marseille at the Stade Velodrome, Marseille.

Quite a good match, marred by a bad penalty call by the Spanish referee giving OM the first goal from a penalty kick. Yes, Igor Biscan probably deserved a red card but certainly the penalty shouldn't have been given (and the Spanish commentators agreed with partisan me).

Frustrating. One wonders with all the talent on the Liverpool side whether it might be time for Gerard Houllier to leave. I have been one of his staunchest supporters but they have rarely performed to expectations since that great 2001 season.

Now I only have a 4th place finish in the Premier League for which to hope.

A Klog Apart

Just found another interesting blog. It's called "A Klog Apart" and the author has a significant focus on project management. A new direction for me is considering how knowledge managment practices intersect (on a best principles basis) with project managment. My gut level feeling is that the intersection is quite large.

The particular post that got me thinking in this direction suggested that one might use blogging technology (collaborative communications technology?) as one vehicle to enhance communications in projects.

I think this could be of actual benefit with (1) distributed teams, (2) teams with different foci. It might really help document a lot of evolutionary thought that otherwise gets lost during the pell-mell rush to keep on schedule. Especially during the design/concept phase when different ideas are being considered and are discarded.

Maybe I'll get a chance to introduce it on a project (doubtful) ...

Austin, Tx on my horizon

Well, I learned today that my phone interviews went well and I now get to visit Austin, the capital of Texas. I'm down there next week on Wednesday 31st.

I rather like Texas from what I've seen of it already (sister in Dallas, cousins in Austin and Houston). I've never been to Austin but it's been called the nicest city in Texas so that bodes well. Heck, maybe I'll get to see Lance Armstrong riding about town. He's the closest thing to a real American hero I know. (I'll be riveted to the TV at dawn again this summer watching him in the Tour de France.)

With any luck I'll get a chance to see something of the city.

Liverpool v. Marseille, this Thursday

I'm on pins and needles here. Liverpool has to visit Marseille on Thursday and win by at least two goals if they want to advance to the next round of the UEFA Cup (and nothing less than the Final would save Houllier's job at this point).

Some good news is on the horizon as Djibril Cisse should be joining the club this coming summer and one of the club's major investors is considering contributing another 50 million pounds to buy a seat on the board. That would go directly to paying for the new stadium and player acquisitions.

I cannot help but think that we're one or two players away from matching Arsenal, Man Utd, or Chelsea. Not in depth, but in the first eleven or twelve at least.

the latest fashion accessory for my cat

Sometimes I think we really live in a Monty Python universe. Thanks to a pointer from LXV23, I found this site.

They sell little "caps" for your kitty's claws. They last for about four to six weeks and come in blue, red, pink, and purple.

Personally, I'm holding out for a neon color for my kitty. Maybe a yellow .. Just what I need to turn my little predator into a defenseless house ornament. But its better than that mutilation that is called "de-clawing".

Obsolescent hardware

I suppose it's inevitable that I would run into the obsolescent hardware issue. I've had an old 3/4" mag tape lying about since my college days. I'm unable to get at the contents 'cause I just don't have a PDP 11/70 hanging about with attendant tape drives.

My current issue is, having discovered the original source to my thesis on Apple floppy disks, being unable to retrieve the contents. My Power Computing clone wants to format the disks (I suspect they are 400k floppies) and my laptop doesn't even have a floppy drive.

So now I have to find someone with a Mac SE or something that can read it and then hope that their machine is Internet-enabled or networked so I can get the content off the disks.

Either that or give up hope that I'll ever see my thesis in electronic form again.

Occasionally, I have a really good idea - they call it TypeKey

I note with some pride that SixApart have taken to heart my recommendation that they implement a trusted, cross-site identification system as part of MovableType. They are calling it TypeKey and while they haven't posted details it sounds as if they took my suggestion of using public-key encryption and have built a validation system for MovableType.

I wrote to them about the idea on the date of my post and added the suggestion on a couple of well-known MT-based sites. I wrote it in the very early days of the MT-Flood problem and it seemed that SixApart was still just trying to deal with the problem symptomatically (by blocking either the source IP of the flood comments or limiting the time between comments). I didn't see this as a solution and suggested a cross-site authentication system so that we could screen out spammers.

So I think I may have been the first one to think of this (at least in this context). Until further evidence surfaces, I will assume I was. :>

So there.

Is Cheny a liability?

Halliburton (or rather their subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root) is on what is called a "cost + percentage of costs" contract in Iraq. Now, this sort of contract is illegal when one is doing business with the American government (normally). Lord knows how they got away with it.

What this means is that for every dollar they spend, they get the dollar back plus an additional percentage of that dollar (their guaranteed profit). So they have an incentive to spend as much of "our" money as possible in their efforts to reconstruct Iraq. This contract skipped the regular procurement process and was simply awarded (the also rare "no-bid" contract). There is no cap on the amount of money they can make on this contract.

That just makes me ill. I'm just happy Halliburton have been busted for abusing this gold-plated cheque. The question is, will this rebound on Cheney and Co. (since he used to be the CEO of Halliburton and still collects deferred salary from them)?

According to a reference from Common Dreams:

The Cheney-Halliburton story is the classic military-industrial revolving door tale. As Secretary of Defense under Bush I, Cheney paid Brown and Root services (now Kellogg Brown and Root) $3.9 million to report on how private companies could help the U.S. Army as Cheney cut hundreds of thousands of Army jobs. Then Brown and Root won a five-year contract to provide logistics for the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers all over the globe. In 1995, Cheney became CEO and Halliburton jumped from 73rd to 18th on the Pentagon's list of top contractors, benefiting from at least $3.8 billion in federal contracts and taxpayer-insured loans, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

It just looks bad for the VP's former company to be given a contract that would make a bank robber blush and then have them brought up on charges for ripping off the Department of Defense.

So I ask the question again - is Cheney a liability? Will Bush II dump him before the next election using the pretext of a bad ticker and pick a new running mate without quite so much "baggage"?

Benefit/Cost ratio in project management

I am studying project selection metrics today. It struck me that during project selection that one should be calculating the benefit/cost ratio for all your projects. Yet, in the startups that I've worked for (as opposed to the one I owned) no one but me ever considered BCR. Perhaps because there was a concern for obtaining market share and anything, however ephemeral, that contributed to that almost-mythical market share could be justified.

So with an infusion of cash (say something like $17million during the period I was at Asimba) there was no real analysis of the cost/benefit of the projects that we did on the Website (the primary hypothetical revenue generation mechanism of the firm). No one had a clue, or even seemed to care that 1) project cost wasn't tracked, and 2) benefit from project execution wasn't quantified in any way. Not even a suggestion that the project completion would contribute directly to the bottom line.

I think this was probably symptomatic of the dotcom firms during the boom years. I suppose that my firm (Art & Science W³ Development) was somewhat of an exception in that we were the agency that built the Web sites for these firms. Our revenue stream didn't depend on the validity of the client firm's business model (good thing, that).

We were the miner's supply store, not the miner.

Why I love the Guardian..

I miss the quality of writing I find in the Guardian. There are a few American newspapers that may equal it. The Washington Post, the Christian Science Monitor, the NY Times. But with the exception of the Monitor I don't find these other papers as consistent as the Guardian.

I stumbled across this article about the severely flawed SA80 (the British army's main battle rifle). It's a pretty thorough history--really an expose--of a subject that has become a scandal. (It reminds me of the Pentagon Papers although the scale of the incompetence in the UK doesn't match that of the Bradley debacle.)

The rifle has been some twenty years in development and it's still a poor design. So poor that mention of its flaws recently made it into the brilliant show MI-5 (you can't fire it left-handed).

Finding that lost golf ball

I'm very skeptical of gadgets for golf. Does any sport have more (cf. Tin Cup) gadgets for the desperate duffer? I confess to having bought a few--mostly ones related to improving my putting.

I was watching the golf channel this morning (I'm an addict, as anyone who knows me will testify) and saw an ad for a new product. They are glasses that filter out the green spectrum (grass) in order to make your ball stand out in the rough.

Unfortunately, they don't appear to work too well but I had my hopes.

Actually, as my handicap has dropped I've actually completed rounds with the same ball that I started it with (which any golfer will tell you is an accomplishment for a high-handicap hacker).

Average temperatures around here are creeping up into the high 50s in the daytime. Time to think about practicing. My first tournament is April 12th and I'm woefully out of practice.

Bluetooth headphones for the Mac

Why is it that no one has made Bluetooth headphones available for Macs yet? One can buy Bluetooth headsets to use with cellphones but what I really want is to be able to walk about and listen to my iTunes on a wireless headset. I was reminded of this the other day when at Starbucks I tried to stand up while wearing my headphones--bad idea.

It would seem a natural idea and the technology to do this already exists. One could even merge it with the cellphone headset technology so that the music would cut out when you got a call. Indeed, quite a few new cell phones come with memory cards that allow them to work as MP3 players.

I would think about adding the memory card to the actual headphones so that you could download 30-60 minutes of music to the headphones from your laptop and go walkabout if desired. Because of the low speed of Bluetooth, you would just dock the chip into your laptop to transfer new music.

That would be worth $100 to me, maybe $150 if the design was truly excellent. (Doesn't that seem obvious--that good design should enhance value?)

Negotiation

I was thinking about negotiation and negotiation strategies this morning in the shower (what is it about showers that lead me to do some of my most original thinking?).

A couple of things gave rise to this train of thought. First and foremost, I was showering when the temperature of the water changed. As frequently happens in our household two of us were showering in different parts of the house at the same time. What happened next has happened to all of us at some time.

You fiddle with the temperature control to get it back into a satisfactory range, aware that the other person's water will cool correspondingly. Too large a jump and they will be penalized--most likely your next temperature change will be severe as well. So you negotiate. A little tweak so that you get a little warmer but they don't get too cold. The process goes back and forth until the system reaches a balance point where you are both relatively happy.

What does this tell us about negotiation? I think that smaller adjustments are more desirable than the larger ones. Large differences in position (temperature) can result in ill feelings (retaliation).

Design and ROI

I was reading an interesting article on one of my favorite Web sites of the moment, Airbag.

The question was posed by Greg Storey, the creative mind behind Airbag. He questions the utility of design without purpose:

"You can style a site six ways to Sunday but unless it does something to improve the metrics for which the design has been made, well it won't amount to a pile of nested tables."

I find the responses almost more interesting that the original question. I've always been a firm believer in form following function (at least 98% of the time).

Having been in the business of building Web sites and Web applications for a living I've always found return on investment (ROI) to be the one baseline metric that should never be ignored. At least in a commercial site.

One worthy recently commented in response to Greg's question:

I also agree that ROI is very important consideration when building any site. However, awards aren't there to congratulate the designer on how much money they have made for their clients. They are there to congratulate them on how well the site has been designed. Good design doesn't always mean high ROI and a high ROI doesn't always mean a good design!

In one sentence he says ROI is a very important consideration and then the next paragraph pretty much dismisses the initial statement. I find it almost impossible to dismiss ROI.

Unfortunately, good design doesn't always yield a good ROI--but it is much likelier to do so than poor design (all other things being equal). And yes, sites can succeed in spite of poor design.

But the original point still pertains--if you don't have some metric for success, and the design you provide doesn't make some progress toward those metrics, it wasn't a good (adequate) design. I don't think you can separate ROI from design if you are designing for a client rather than for yourself.

Maybe this is the difference between art school students and commercial artists? I found that I often had to explain to artists who worked for me that 90-95% of the ideal was good enough--we simply didn't have the time/money to continually reinvent graphical approaches on a fixed budget.

Those who "got it" frequently made good commercial artists. It's a tough job bringing discipline to a creative field.

Kerry/McCain?

I think that if the Kerry campaign could convince John McCain to be his running mate the ticket would be a slam dunk. I don't know if McCain would have to change parties. Certainly, I don't believe there are any rules about who has to be part of which ticket.

Most Americans seem to be pretty ignorant of their own political history. As little as a hundred and fifty years ago there were multiple successful political parties--this wasn't just a two-party system as it is now. The Republican party didn't really exist until about 1853-1854.

Teddy Roosevelt was a member of the "Bull Moose" party (a progressive splinter chapter of the Republican party) and originally brought in as a vice presidential candidate (he made it into office through the assassination of William McKinley.

I would absolutely love a combined ticket of Kerry and McCain. I've liked McCain's policies for a while and a number of my Republican friends have even told me that that would be a ticket for which they could vote. Think about it - these huge deficits didn't work under the Reaganites, why would they work now?

frogdesign

Wow.. I have an phone interview with frogdesign on Thursday. They may well be the premier industrial design firm in the world, certainly one of the top five.

I'm sort of a frustrated industrial designer. Perhaps I chose the wrong career path many years ago (such is the wisdom of age) but maybe I'll get a chance to make that mid-course correction. I've tried to get a job with them for the last ten years or so (ever since I became aware of their work on the Yamaha FZ750).

I was racing several Yamahas at the time (early 1990s) and was very interested in any new bike-related technology. I even went by their offices hoping to see the prototype in the lobby (no joy).

At last a recruiter from their offices called me back today. Definitely a dream job working there.

The precursor to the Web

I was searching for references to "hyperinformation" and found this fascinating article.

It definitely presages the development of the World Wide Web.

Pretty cool.

Pixar moves to G5s and Mac OS X

So Pixar has moved to using Mac OS X-equipped G5s as its production machines.

I predicted this some weeks ago.

Broken down in BC

I did not have a good last couple of days. I drove up to Vancouver, BC (lovely city by the way) to visit my first cousin who was in town for a conference. We got our wires crossed and didn't end up meeting but as I was driving home my car lost the power steering belt.

Fortunately, I pulled over and I seem to have avoided any damage to the motor. But in spite of the CAA (Canada's AAA) responding very competently and quickly I didn't get my car to the dealership in time to get them to fix it.

So I got a loaner car and stayed the night in a hotel. Bad breakfast (not at the hotel) followed by the news that an idler pulley had "frozen" on the motor and needed to be replaced--presumably the proximate cause of the belt failure.

Note that my local dealership had set the belts should be replaced at my last service and I had three new ones sitting at home in the garage waiting to be put on this weekend.

Well, the pulley may or may not be in tomorrow. But I had to return the loaner car (a lovely G35) this morning and rent another car to drive the 100 miles home south across the border.

I drive up tomorrow in the hope that they have received said pulley (shipped from Toronto overnight) and that I can actually drive my car home tomorrow. I took the opportunity to ask them to change the transmission fluid (I use Mobil 1 ATF) only to find it is just about unavailable in Western Washington for some unknown-to-mortal-man reason.

So I have to run about in Vancouver tomorrow am early and try and secure 14litres of unobtanium (otherwise known as Mobil 1 ATF).

I just don't need this stress.

James Burke, Michael Loceff, Joel Surnow, Luc Besson, La Femme Nikita, and "24"

That's an odd juxtaposition of names and titles. I must explain. I'm a big fan of James Burke, creator of the Connections series of TV shows that were aired on the Learning Channel and on PBS (here in the 'States). Wonderful stuff with references like Burke leading us down a garden path to eventually describe how Napoleon was important to the development of the modern computer.

Unfortunately, I can offer no such profundities. However, I do love film and I noticed a few small connections of my own between Luc Besson, probably my favorite director, and the television show of the moment, "24".

"24" is now in its third season and the first two weren't bad for pulp fiction (the subject of another essay on another day). The third season seems to be lagging a bit but that is neither here nor there.

Let's go back to the beginning. French film director Luc Besson grew up travelling the world and scuba-diving. Inspired by the experience, he wrote the first drafts of a couple of films which would later bring him great acclaim: Le Grand Bleu (1988) and Le cinquième élément (1997). The Big Blue was a critical success and led to the necessary funding and support to do La Femme Nikita (1990).

This did pretty well over here in the States—it didn't hurt that Anne Parillaud had that elfin sort of appeal. Besson would go on to write and direct both Léon (released as The Professional here in the 'States) and The Fifth Element. While writing and directing the Fifth Element, he wrote a TV adaptation (actually just the Nikita character) of his 1990 movie. This became the great TV series, La Femme Nikita, which ran for four years on USA.

Michael Loceff and Joel Surnow who had been script writers on Nikita then became script writers for "24".

To which I attribute a lot of the good quality of the first couple of seasons of "24". La Femme Nikita (the TV series) was a real departure for television with (for an action drama) a real depth of character and dramatic tension that is the hallmark of the best of the shows of the TV genre. The fact that the cast stayed remarkably stable and also utilized largely unknown actors seemed to allow them a freedom to evolve the show and still remain true to original concept.

What I want to know is how did Michael Loceff go from being an obscure college professor to a Hollywood screenwriter of such obvious talent?

Bush flip-flops

Ok, a political post. It's been a while. I'm doing my best not to turn this weblog into a political diatribe.

I found a reference to this on Like Kryptonite to Stupid, one of my favorite political commentary Web sites.

It's a response to the Bush campaigns attack on John Kerry--the one claiming that he flip-flops his positions.

Someone on the Daily KOS posted a list of notable Bush flip-flops (far more egregious in my opinion).

Check it out.

Colin McRae Rally 3

I'm really getting into this XBox driving game, Colin McRae Rally 3. Colin McRae is a four-time Rally World Champion (and the current titleholder I believe) and has switched to driving a souped-up Ford Focus RS200 in recent years (something like 300bhp).

Anyway, the game differs from most driving games in that the car will accrue damage during the course of the race that affects its performance. The game is designed to mirror rally dynamics so one frequently has to race at least three or four stages before the car can be repaired to optimal (in the event of really severe damage like a rollover it frequently cannot be repaired completely during a day).

This leads to a change in the playing dynamics--no more "balls to the wall" driving because a mistake might mean a DNF and really serious damage to the car.

I underestimated how this might affect game play until I tried it. I have become that much more cautious and 2nd and 3rd place results are now treated with joy rather than the previous frustration. Only a near perfect drive will give you a 1st place on a stage (I've never achieved it, only got really close).

If you've got an XBox and like driving games, buy this game!

Finally, full text RSS 2.0 with pics

Thanks to Brad Choate and Paul Beard I've got my RSS 2.0 feed yielding full-text plus pictures.

Really quite annoying how long this took. I had the code correct (that was quite easy) but there was something else about my template that wasn't. I'm going to debug it over the next couple of days so it doesn't bite me again when I'm unaware.

XML seems very simple but I'm not sure the dev tools for it are up to it yet. Seems to be a lot of validators just hacked together by people in the know and no development environments. I'll post further if I actually find a good one on OS X, Linux or Windows.

Doing my best to increase the noise level

I have altered my RSS 2.0 feed to be both full text and to include images. Thanks to Paul Beard for his code help.

Unfortunately, it doesn't pick up the entire text if I use the "read more" feature of Movable Type but since I rarely do that, it's pretty close to the full feed.

The World Rally Championship

My interest in the World Rally Championship has been piqued of late by a couple of XBox games, Rallysport Challenge and Colin McRae Rally 3. Rally racing is a bonafide success in Europe and watched by millions on TV. Cars are modified from a street version (which can take weeks of dedicated work) and re-engineered to compete across a variety of road surfaces (from gravel to mud, snow, ice, and tarmac). From the WRC site:

Each rally must allow three days for the reconnaissance (or recce), one day for technical checks (or scrutineering) and three days for competition. The rally is divided into three legs, and typically has between 15 and 25 Special Stages.

Every year events take place all over the world (it seems seldom in North America). This year events are held in places such as: Mexico, Argentina, Sweden, Monte Carlo, Sardinia, France and Australia. About one a month. I imagine this gives teams the time to travel and rebuild/refit their cars.

For the rest of the world, the race-inspired design and engineering of cars like the Mitsubishi Evolution and Subaru WRX help sales and marketing. Here in the 'States, where we grow our cars big this is much less the case.

My only wish is that I had the proper controller for these driving games. I've also been playing Project Gotham Racing (I'm going through a driving game kick) and the XBox controller is a little twitchy for this sort of thing. Of the XBox games I've tried Colin McRae Rally 3 is definitely more "realistic" but the Rally Championship game is more fun (a little easier). I'm really looking forward to Rally Championship 2 (out soon).

It almost makes me wonder what it would be like to drive one of these little monsters (especially the Evolution). I've got to think that 271 hp in such a little package would be a kick!

I have found the Speed Channel has some coverage. Meagre though it may be it is better than no coverage at all.

Administrative Professionals Week

Sometimes I'm just amazed at the political correctness that surrounds us.

Apparently, Secretaries Day has been renamed "Administrative Professionals Week" by the entity formerly known as the National Secretaries Association (now known as the International Association of Administrative Professionals).

I'm struck by the differences I observe (between France and America) in the respect (or lack thereof) accorded to people in blue-collar jobs here in America. Maybe the Rights of Man are just more immediate to the French, maybe their society has a much larger blue-collar class, but one feels that the average bus driver, train station ticket taker, or bakery worker has a lot more respect from his fellow citizens in France.

Here, perhaps because of the pursuit of the almighty dollar (and I'm as guilty of this as most), those who make more are considered "more valuable" members of society--more worthy of respect. As if they exist on a higher stratum simply because they are worth more.

I wonder if this is perhaps behind the need to redefine titles in blue-collar (sanitary engineer) and lower white-collar realms (administrative professional).

Whatever the reason, I just find myself sick of it.

The Rights of Man

Found this at The Avalon Project. It is a transcription of the French declaration of the Rights of Man.

The representatives of the French people, organized as a National Assembly, believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the Social body, shall remind them continually of their rights and duties; in order that the acts of the legislative power, as well as those of the executive power, may be compared at any moment with the objects and purposes of all political institutions and may thus be more respected, and, lastly, in order that the grievances of the citizens, based hereafter upon simple and incontestable principles, shall tend to the maintenance of the constitution and redound to the happiness of all. Therefore the National Assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence and under the auspices of the Supreme Being, the following rights of man and of the citizen:

Articles:

1. Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be founded only upon the general good.

2. The aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression.

3. The principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body nor individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

4. Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights. These limits can only be determined by law.

5. Law can only prohibit such actions as are hurtful to society. Nothing may be prevented which is not forbidden by law, and no one may be forced to do anything not provided for by law.

6. Law is the expression of the general will. Every citizen has a right to participate personally, or through his representative, in its foundation. It must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in the eyes of the law, are equally eligible to all dignities and to all public positions and occupations, according to their abilities, and without distinction except that of their virtues and talents.

7. No person shall be accused, arrested, or imprisoned except in the cases and according to the forms prescribed by law. Any one soliciting, transmitting, executing, or causing to be executed, any arbitrary order, shall be punished. But any citizen summoned or arrested in virtue of the law shall submit without delay, as resistance constitutes an offense.

8. The law shall provide for such punishments only as are strictly and obviously necessary, and no one shall suffer punishment except it be legally inflicted in virtue of a law passed and promulgated before the commission of the offense.

9. As all persons are held innocent until they shall have been declared guilty, if arrest shall be deemed indispensable, all harshness not essential to the securing of the prisoner's person shall be severely repressed by law.

10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.

11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.

12. The security of the rights of man and of the citizen requires public military forces. These forces are, therefore, established for the good of all and not for the personal advantage of those to whom they shall be intrusted.

13. A common contribution is essential for the maintenance of the public forces and for the cost of administration. This should be equitably distributed among all the citizens in proportion to their means.

14. All the citizens have a right to decide, either personally or by their representatives, as to the necessity of the public contribution; to grant this freely; to know to what uses it is put; and to fix the proportion, the mode of assessment and of collection and the duration of the taxes.

15. Society has the right to require of every public agent an account of his administration.

16. A society in which the observance of the law is not assured, nor the separation of powers defined, has no constitution at all.

17. Since property is an inviolable and sacred right, no one shall be deprived thereof except where public necessity, legally determined, shall clearly demand it, and then only on condition that the owner shall have been previously and equitably indemnified.

I hate resume sites

I hate having to submit my resume online. Here I've spent all this time carefully formatting it, and of late, adding hyperlinks and then I go to a corporate site to apply for a position and I'm forced to cut-and-paste the copy.

I lose all the value-added context that I've just spent hours adding. I'm not even convinced a human sees the resume. I think it's just that damn Resumix program (spawn of the devil).

Excess energies

Fortune cookie received last night:

Try to channel excess energies into rejuvenation.

Pindelski.org

I have a deep and abiding love for photography engendered in part by the work of my uncle, Thomas Pindelski. It was he who suggested that I work in black and white when starting out and I think that made all the difference to my composition skills. He has the "eye" that we all wish we had and has had the persistence to continue to work with his cameras whatever his circumstances (who would expect a financial whiz to be so good at photography?).

His web site has developed to the point that its a pretty good representation of his body of work.

Check it out. I think you'll be impressed.

Owens traded to Baltimore

I was shocked to see that Terrell Owens (star receiver of my beloved San Francisco 49ers) was traded to the Baltimore Ravens for a lousy 2nd-round (51st overall) draft pick. This for one of the top five receivers in the league.

Simply stunning, the ineptitude of the current management. I thought Steve Mariucci (the former coach) had serious problems but York (the new owner) and Erickson (the new coach) seem seriously incompetent.

I don't quite know how this can be justified. This guy was a franchise player--he would be for most teams in the league, is in the prime of his career, and is a wideout that most teams would give at least a 1st-round pick for, if not a high first-round pick.

I'm still a season ticket holder but I'm feeling a little ill.

Wild Turkey

This is not, as one might imagine looking at the title, about Wild Turkey liquor.

Rather, I photographed these wild turkeys near our farm yesterday. We have quite a flock (??) these days. One of our neighbors let lose some domestic turkeys she had been raising (presumably as a food source as I cannot see them as being very entertaining) about two years ago.

To the surprise of everyone hunters didn't kill them and they have thrived on the wooded farmland around here. I counted thirty-seven the other day in the current flock with three of them being toms.

Those are the three you see in the photo, along with one female who appears to be stalking them. She has a badly injured foot and I wonder whether this makes her less desirable in genetic/turkey terms so perhaps she has to work harder to get a mate. The three toms probably didn't notice as they were busy flaring their tail feathers trying to impress her.

There was only one tom last year and he was the biggest turkey I've ever seen. I was driving to the farm and he and his harem blocked the road. Never a patient person, my mother got out of the passenger seat, grabbed a sun shade and shooed him from the road. This after headlights and car horn failed to intimidate him.

Let me tell you that was one brave tom. He even charged my car--not intimidated at all.

He seems to have passed away but his sons are growing pretty large. The flock has trebled in size in the last year.

The things that occupy the country mind.

Political Compass of Primary Candidates

I found that the folks at Political Compass have calculated the indices of the candidates running in the primaries.

Interestingly, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton are closest to my indices. Since I don't see either as a viable candidate, the next closest candidate would be John Kerry.

Fortunate for me.

I wonder where Bush I and Bill Clinton would have showed up on this chart?

The Ten Major Causes of Project Failure

(From 5-Phase Project Management by Joseph W. Weiss and Robert Wysocki)

1. The project is a solution in search of a problem.

2. Only the project team is interested in the end result.
3. No one is in charge.
4. The project plan lacks structure.
5. The project plan lacks detail.
6. The project is under-budgeted.
7. Insufficient resources are allocated.
8. The project is not tracked against its plan.
9. The project team is not communicating.
10. The project strays from its original goals.

This book (5-Phase PM) is just a great beginner book. I gave it to all my beginning project managers and had them follow it religiously in project setup. It really helps develop the proper mindset without overwhelming with technical detail.

Accenture World Match play controversy

I am somewhat bemused by the response to Davis Love III's interaction with a "fan" at Sunday's final round of the Accenture World Match Play tournament. For those of you not into golf, Accenture puts up several million dollars to get the top 64 players in the world to play each other in single-elimination matches.

Everyone is seeded and this year two #1 seeds (Tiger Woods and Davis Love III) made the final. The final is two eighteen-hole rounds, played over the same course morning and afternoon.

In the afternoon round, a fan heckled Davis Love III, yelling "No Love" as he stepped up to the tee (while he was leading the match). Davis walked over the gallery, found the fan in question, and asked an official to eject him. Now Davis didn't play well from this point onward, losing his advantage over Tiger and eventually losing the match (and about $500,000).

This has caused a furor of response on the sports talk radio shows (and in the sporting press). Apparently people are split 50-50 about whether this sort of heckling should be allowed.

I've got to ask "why?"

I love golf. I love the civility of it. I've even come to respect the rules that require us to call a penalty on ourselves--even if noone is around to see it. It harkens back to an age when manners were king and I don't find that a bad thing.

I think it is terrible that the American version of the game is becoming like a football or basketball game. Heckling is not cool, should never be permitted and doesn't have a place in the game. Golf is tough enough without having some idiot shouting during your backswing. It's not kosher to do it in your Sunday foursome so why should it be ok, or "cool" to do it to a superstar like Davis.

I think Davis was perfectly within his rights to have the fan ejected.

I think he should have had the jerk tarred and feathered.

Thinking about design

I was thinking about design, in all its facets, while driving home this evening. My car is a pretty sophisticated piece of Japanese engineering. It is quiet, powerful, comfortable and the ergonomic design verges on outstanding (a few minor quibbles). This train of thought was launched when I adjusted the temperature (set to 73F to warm my feet) downward to 67F to keep me awake and saw that the flow control was automatically changed from my feet to my head. Vice versa when I upped the temperature.

Somebody had to be aware of how people use the system and program in that feature.

Why can't software be that good?

<caution: screed follows>
I was installing another satellite modem for a client and hooking up their printer directly (a Canon) which had previously been run off a local network server I had set up for them.

Not only did Windows XP Pro not recognize that I had a full install of Canon drivers on the local machine (a laptop) but it failed to do the install when pointed at the driver files. Then I decided to simply de-install and re-install the drivers (a frequent tactic when dealing with Windows).

Big mistake.

Then ensued a good hour of wasted time until I realized that the de-install had only partially worked and that the re-install was failing because of this. I had to use the system restore feature of Win XP Pro (which thankfully worked smoothly) to back up a day and then do another de-install and re-install. This worked and after three some hours total I had their configuration working.

This left me fuming. Why the h*ll don't applications (and Windows) register their components so that the de-installs work properly. If necessary, bring the system down to DOS during the install process rather than telling me that "Some software could not be uninstalled". That's crap. More than that, why can't a system recognize that the drivers do exist, are valid, and can be used without requiring a complete overhaul of the system.

Why is it, too, that Windows application installers even give you the opportunity to remove essential OS files during an application un-install? This just shouldn't be possible. But you can totally hose yourself if you click "Yes" or "Yes to All" when asked if an application dll should be uninstalled.

Absolutely, frigging ridiculous.
<end screed>

I am a frustrated industrial designer and user interface geek. I read about this stuff all the time and run across poor design all the time. I kind of wish I cared less.

I would live longer.

Wikipedia

I have re-discovered Wikipedia. It's a very cool idea--a public, free encyclopedia that is edited and maintained by its own contributors. In fact, in a bow to being self-referential, here is the Wikipeda page on Wikipedia.

Actually, VoodooPad, of which I have written several times before, is a desktop implementation of this concept in miniature.

Of course, it has its issues. The possibility of poor articles (of which I have yet to find any), vandalism, and lack of completeness are the obvious ones that come to mind. So far, it has proved to be a great resource.