Don't send a Samurai to do a Ninja's job

My eyebrows were raised a bit by the rumor-news that the Kin, Microsoft's mobile phone based on Windows 7 was being yanked from the market. At first, I thought that I had just missed Kin's release b/c targeted at a much younger demographic. But it turns out that it's been a mere six weeks since launch.

In the trade press, the usual suspects have been blamed: Low on features, high on monthly plan, disjointed marketing, etc. But to be contrary, I'm going to declare myself a temporary marketing expert (on the strength of having once been a tween-then-teen-then-twenty-something) and let you in on the secret behind the failure.

Simply put, the target demographic was too darned obvious. More importantly, Angst doesn't take well to obvious pandering. If you want Angst to buy something, you do one of two things:

A.) Tell Angst to grow up and leave that sort of thing in the toybox with its old Barbies & GI Joes. (See also, Hello, Kitty)
B.) Tell Angst that it can have it when it grows up. (See also, everything else.)

Personally, I thought that the round version of the Kin was kind of cute, suggestive of a hyper-evolved Tamagotchi. (Which sentiment, by the bye, should pretty much be the Kiss of Death for its prospects with Angst.) So I hope that Microsoft & Verizon's lost millions will at least benefit the B-school textbooks of the next decade. Namely as an example of the difference--purely in marketing terms, of course--between Ninjutsu and Bushido.

A truism in another form

You know people who try to be everything to everyone? It doesn't matter whether their intent is selfish or selfless. The effect is largely the same: They're too scattered to rely on for the long haul. It's also true of software, it seems.

In tonight's case, I'm talking about a "framework" for which the user supplies specifications and a data source, then punches the magic button that builds web pages. The problem is that the under-the-hood workings make it a three-aspirin headache to modify the code once it's been generated--often, the only option is to start from scratch. And if that framework ever needs to be upgraded? There's absolutely no guarantee that the modifications will survive that. (And, frankly, the upgrade will completely blow them away only if you're lucky. In the worst case scenario, the mix of new code and old mangled customizations could bring the entire thing crashing down.)

This is mainly whining on my part, although I can honestly say that I could--and should--have rewritten the functionality for these very simple forms from scratch and saved oodles of time. But the take-away is that it's better to have a tool that's written for something close to your purpose and is built with the assumption that it will need to change. Just like your needs.

Good question

The normal hubbub of a rock station, clanking weights and smack-talking among The Buffed Ones at the gym was interrupted by a car alarm--loud enough that I could hear it through noise-cancelling headphones and a Wine Library TV podcast. One of the guys strolled outside to check out the source, and turned back with an incredulous grin: "Who puts an alarm on a Harley?" he asked all in general and no one in particular.

Good question.

Yes, I realize that edginess--provided not a fad, anyway--invariably creeps to the muddling center. The problem is that buying a motorcycle so pricey that its owner needs the "grown up" insurance policy of an alarm runs 180 degrees counter to the leathers and doo-rag cachet that rides the fumes and road-dust behind these symbols of freedom. Bourgeois meets badass. Not unlike the most die-hard-core fanboys/fangirls camping out--in costume and full regalia--in front of the most banal surburban mall cineplex imaginable.

Marketers and brand-builders know quite well that what they're selling and what you're buying can be two different things. And as much as I champion the notion of the informed consumer, "informed" probably can't reach its full potential without some self-awareness. Where do rent/mortgage payments blur into "club dues" for the neighborhood? Where does the grocery list blur into weight control or keeping one's diet "pure" (of additives, GMOs, high-carbon footprints, factory farming, deforestation, etc.)? Where do the widgets on a new gadget take a back seat to its cool factor?

In one sense, it's cheering to think that we can imagine many purchases as a two-for-one deal. Perhaps sometimes even do better than a mere two-fer. (E.g.: You're buying a bag of coffee beans aaaaand they're organic, shade-grown and traded fairly--so you're also buying a better world, and maybe even sticking it to The Man besides. A 24-cube of Coke can't do those tricks. Just sayin'.)

That's where the afore-mentioned self-awareness comes in, meaning the forethought to ask oneself: "What am I really buying here?" Coolness? Comfort? Change?

Good question.

Haven't we been here before?

In recent months, I think that I've caught one or two references to using the iPhone to deliver mobile ads. Whatever--didn't plan on drinking the Apple-flavored Kool-Aid in the first place. But I should have known to look for the "me-too" from other folks. And here it is from Microsoft.

If the advertisers subsidized part of your phone bill or chipped in to discount the original cost to the device--and you had a choice about it--I wouldn't be so disgusted. But I very much doubt that happening. At least in the scenario described, the customer has to take the step of installing an application from the advertiser. If the relationship is abused thereafter, s/he presumably has the choice of severing the connection by uninstalling the app. Fair enough.

What bugs me, though, is how the lessons of the internet age were clearly not absorbed. Because you can already see the marketing wagons fitted out to march to the next boom-bust cycle. It's in the use of phrases like "advertising platform"--as if spammers, scammers and B-school boorishness have an actual right to bogart bandwidth for which you, the consumer, are footing the entire bill. You know, the reason that spam filters and image-blocking have to be baked into email software, and popup blockers are in their own arms race against JavaScript-gone-bad. The reason why people have to make an all-or-nothing decision about whether or not to block Flash on web pages.

In other words, welcome back to the 1990s, just on a smaller screen, at tastier download speeds, and higher costs to the "customer."

My ally, the gremlin

For me, the good news was that this past Wed. was mostly heads-down, and I managed to clear the pressing stuff out of my path. The bad news for me was that this left all the niggling stuff. The stuff I wasn't looking forward to sending back to QA b/c I'd had to do such ugly Rube Goldberg tricks to make it work, and they'd find all the spots where I forgot to hot-glue the Tinker-toys to the Legos originally duct-taped to the Lincoln Logs. And then I'd realize that glue just isn't cutting it, and I need to refactor everything with baling-wire. Gack.

But, because it could no longer be avoided, I started unit-testing. The longer this went on without incident, the more annoyed/bored I became: What wasn't I thinking of...and how much more of this tedium do I have to inflict upon myself before I think of it? Then, at last, an error-message! Yippee! Like the hounds baying after their quarry, I was now on the hunt, attitude completely revamped.

In an odd sense, the gremlin was ally in the battle against boredom and the inertia that too many possibilities can spawn. But then I squished it. And then one of its relatives. And possibly another after that--I was kind of losing track by then, because I had my mojo back.

Moral of the story: The enemy of my enemy is my friend...until we run out of mutual enemies. Then all bets are off.

Frivolous Friday, 06.25.2010: Movie mashup

Tuesday's 10am meeting with the Alpha Geek was theoretically open to all developers, so I shamelessly availed myself of the opportunity to peek at what-all's coming down for the main branch of our flagship product--of which "mine" is an elaborate code-fork. Maybe a code-spork, actually. Maybe--come to think of it--even a whole code Swiss Army knive unto itself.

But I digress.

I strolled in to a meeting already in progress, and was greeted with a collective bemusement that seemed to range from "What do you want?" to "What did you break this time." To clarify my intent, I settled into a chair and explained, "I'm crashing your meeting see what mischief you little scamps are making," with a sarcastic tone entirely cancelled out by an insouciant wink. And basically shut up for the rest of the meeting. Because learning was the point.

The phrase "crashing your meeting" stuck with me through the remainder of the day, however. So much so that it developed into the idea of taking the premise of the movie The Wedding Crashers applying it to big corporate meetings. Which--alas and alack--recalled the thoroughly forgettable 1987 Michael J. Fox vehicle, The Secret of my Success. (In case you're wondering, my then-boyfriend had a man-crush on Fox--or, more aptly, Alex Keaton.)

The plot outline:

1. Two peeps--male and/or female--work among the great unwashed masses of a soulless giga-corporation.
2. Our protagonists are smart enough to have figured out how to automate their jobs, leaving them ample free time to perfect the fine art of "Meeting Crashing," which involves a number of requirements for a successful "crash," handed down by a soon-to-be-outsourced mentor.
   
3. One litmus-test of a successfully-crashed meeting is an invitation to transfer to a cushy job in an attending big-wig's department.
   
4. Protagonists are eventually invited to an appropriately lavish "executive retreat," where they will eventually have to decide whether or not this continues to be a game--and also whether they actually have the chops to play with the big kids week-in and week out.
5. Protagonists end up taking over the company...and eventually continuing the "meeting crashing" tradition on the Boards of Directors of other companies.
   

Personally, I'm less of a comedy fan than most folks. But, if done well, I could totally justify iPod space for this flavor of schtick. Pity that--even in the wake of obvious rip-offs like Last Man Standing--no one will likely have the comic ambition to go toe-to-toe with the legal depts. of Universal Pictures and New Line Cinemas. Because Office Space sooooooo needs company in the pantheon of subversive classics.

"The Great Big Book of Everything"

I've managed to clear enough off my plate this week to have time to initiate our shiny-new QA peep in the mysteries of "my" product. My work of nearly five years. My adopted child. In the crush of a deadline, when I might not even respond to my own name, my ears perk up at the mention of the client name: "Who's talking smack about my baby?" For context: Take how Scotty felt about his ship and add it to how Kirk felt about his crew (minus that one lip-lock with then-Lieutenant Uhura) and you might have some inkling of my attitude.

Poor QA peep.

When instructing, you're not supposed to bludgeon people with information. But in this case, I thought it wisest to let him know what he's in for tomorrow after lunch. So I sent him the list of things I was planning to cover as part of the "You drive; I'll ride shotgun" hands-on tutorial. It's a list of thick blocks of bullet that would choke even the most meeting-hardened PowerPoint veteran. On his way out for the day, he stopped by my desk to warn me that he "hadn't had a chance to finish your Great Big Book of Everything." "Too bad," I retorted with an evil grin. "There'll be a quiz at the end."

Jesting aside--there's no point in letting someone sprint because they aren't aware that they're actually running a marathon. Well, there might be one point in it. But that's another story for another post on another day.

My newest role model

I wouldn't exactly term chez fivechimera a "spider sanctuary" per se, because (in non-winter) I do evict the ones who cross my path. But in first grade, our class' student teacher--whom I adored--read Charlotte's Web to us, and it changed my life with respect to arachnids.

Thus, when I saw the ambitiously-sized web spanning mirror and door on the passenger's side of my car, the very last thing I would have thought to do was break it. As it happened, I did break a major strand by dint of cracking open the window on a warm day. The web--by now sporting several mummified insects and assorted blown debris--was pretty well shredded by a weekend trip to Monticello shortly thereafter.

The following Monday morning, however, saw a new (and equally impressive) web which, upon inspection, proved to have its anchor on the seal of the window, rather than the glass itself. During the week, this filled up with more silk-shrouded spider-suppers and was looking pretty dilapidated come the weekend. Then, sometime between last night's storm and my first foray into today's rain-washed morning, a new--albeit more modest--web had materialized.

Yes, I'm aware that this could easily be the work of three different spiders. And yes, I'm equally aware that I'm egregiously anthropomorphizing here. But I'm choosing to believe that I have an eight-legged cross between Fillipo Brunelleschi (for the handiwork) and Winston Churchill (for the dogged stubborness) gracing my car. Why? Because you can never look up to too many people. That, and nobody ever said that role-models had to be bipedal.

Why small business and diverse economies *matter*

I was planning to write another post entirely, except that I bopped out to Wikipedia to double-check the accuracy of one historical assumption I was making. I found it, but with it the realization that the notion of bootstrapping entire economies is far more important than individuals.

The point of fact I was checking had to do with the explosion of slavery in the south after the popularization of the cotton gin. Normally, the mechanization of a trade means that fewer workers are needed. But in the economy of the pre-Civil War South, it instead triggered a near-monoculture (cotton production) and corresponding need for slave labor--and, of course, ever-expanding frontiers.

Here in the North, seven-score years after Fort Sumter, the Civil War is--thanks to Harriet Beecher Stowe and Julia Ward Howe--entirely a moral enterprise. To me, it largely serves as an example--albeit extreme--of why single industries cannot be allowed to dominate government. Not only because it stinks of corruption. But also because sooner or later, the cash-cow runs dry, and it takes generations to rebound (e.g. Detroit). Had the Civil War not occurred, eventually there would have been no more land suitable for planting cotton anyway, which would have brought the whole thing crashing down. (The South, in fact, had at one point proposed annexing Cuba for that purpose.) Sustainability FAIL.

But the corresponding problem is that governments, at their worst, are reactive. Which means that they tend to measure the forest by its tallest trees (no matter how rotten they might be at their core). And, lest we consider Yankees innocent of greenback imperialism, let's recall that less than a decade before the Merricmack-Monitor slug-fest, the U.S. Navy was used to open Japan's markets to U.S. goods at cannon-point.

Fast-forward to 2010, and the lessons of history are clearly squandered on the powerful and peon alike. Goldman-Sachs and their ilk can thumb their collective nose at meaningful oversight (while 401K deductions are still dutifully flow from hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of paychecks to their coffers). Meanwhile, Governors Jindal and Barbour, Rep. Tom Barton and Judge Feldman ignore the devastation to other industries while coddling Big Oil. The distinction between Don Blankenship and the 19th Century coal barons handing 10 year-olds the death sentence of black lung blurs with every safety violation--and fatal "accident." Likewise the arrogant egregiousness of mountaintop removal.

If you buy into the idea that that the "moral superiority" of capitalism lies in its raising of the standard of living through efficiency, even that falls short in a world economy dominated by mega-corporations. The widening gulf between rich and poor, between manager and managed, would be closing otherwise.

Because--sooner rather than later--the soi-dissant "investment houses" need to produce something of tangible value. (For historical interest, see also: South See Bubble and the Tulip Craze.) And, similarly, substituting "oil" for "cotton" should starkly highlight the patterns of history and foreshadow their similar ends. The fact is that the United States reached peak oil in the 1970s. (Like him or hate him, Carter nailed "energy independence.") By all rights, the political clout of the petroleum industries should have been slowly dwindling since at least the first Reagan Administration. But it hasn't. And that's a problem. Along with a myriad of closely-related problems sired by the "too big to fail" codswallop.

Efficiencies in production and distribution systems have their merits, but they can also lead to economic monocultures. As a nation, we're still feeling the effects of that, both in The Great Recession and in the mess in the Gulf.

All of which is why I believe that we need small business more than any time in our history, with the possible exception of the so-called Gilded Age (meaning the heyday of the Morgans, Carnagies, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts...and also of Tammany Hall politics). But in the wake of Citizens United, I'm certainly open to rethinking that ranking.

I don't think that OSHA can help with this one

Not that I'm complaining, but the occupational hazards of programming computers for a living include things like:

• Extended (and stressful) hours racing against deadlines
• Folks assuming that just because you can write code, you can fix their printer
• An ever-widening Universe of things you don't know (but which can hurt you...or at least make you look like a complete dolt)
  

To me, it's all worth it, for any number of reasons--the shallowest of them all being that, when someone asks me what I do for a living, my trade at least retains it aura of above-average intelligence. (Even--surprisingly--in the wake of the dot-com bust.)

But today Dennis & I were chatting with one of the guys @ Wisconsin Building Supply, he gave us the URL for a window company's website, assuring us that the info. would be there. Dennis quipped something like, "Oh, yes--you can find everything on the internet." Our host didn't seem too thrilled with that notion: Ohhhh noooo, not at allllll... Mercifully, he wasn't interested in chatting about jobs, so there was no need to, ahem, "burden" him with the knowledge of how we both make our living.

Now, much of my work life revolves around making organizations--one in particular--somewhat more transparent to those inside them. In doing so, I reduce a lot of the friction caused by the normal churn of people. Churn itself is expensive, and friction much more so. But it wasn't until then that I realized that Spokeo, Google Street View, ZabaSearch, TweetStalk, and the like may be getting Big Brother cooties on me in a way that spam, viruses and black-hat hacking hasn't.

Buying buzz: Another look

In the last week or two, I've noticed the "Sponsored" icon next to a certain Trending Topic, which I thought was an interesting development in crowd-sourcing. Kudos to Twitter for being transparent about it. Make that kudos with a side of booyah, and do pardon me for a second while I glare in the direction of InfoSeek's grave (now known as Go.com).

As when Google introduced paid listings, I wouldn't have dreamed of squawking. Why? Because it was all on the up-and-up: Paid results here; "organic" listings below--no ambiguity. (Although, truth be told, I did pay attention to relevance until the trust level bounced back up. Which didn't take too long: The joy of having esoteric hobbies is that "relevance" is--typically--far less subjective than with mainstream ones.)

But comparing Twitter to Google is not quite apples-to-apples. Invoking the wisdom of The Omniscient Google (and their mind-dizzying algorithms) is different from simply putting finger to pulse-point, which is the (ostensible) point of Twitter's Trending Topics. Purchased popularity is a bit different from sponsored links (themselves generated by a somewhat impersonal algorithm). You know: Lucius Malfoy buying Draco a spot on the Slytherin Qidddich team--that sort of thing.

Maybe it's just me being contrarian--fancy that!--again, but my gut feeling is that that buying buzz is the surest way to kill it.

A possibly heretical view of ePublishing

A friend was recently cut from the job she's held for many years. She's quite personable, insanely well-read, and is fully part of the community which she served as librarian. She's also approaching retirement age--which, together with the foregoing--makes me suspect that actual job performance wasn't the issue. But that's mere speculation on my part.

But it's doubly sad, because it's my against-the-grain belief that libraries will survive chain bookstores. (Used bookstores are another story b/c the novelty dynamic doesn't apply--most I've visited have had more of a "library" ethos.) Assuming that the purveyors of byte-books cooperate (by which I mean allowing a library to lend out digitial copies just like Joe Blow can), the concept of the overdue book vanishes. That frees up librarians to focus on what they're really paid to do, which is to know what's where in the library, and whether it's any good for the purpose at hand. And, of course, to make sure no one's using the library's computers for illicit purposes.

As they currently exist, chain bookstores exist to push pulp. There's no vetting except with an eye to what will sell right this very nanosecond vs. what is useful and thought-out, much less what will stand up to time or further scholarship. Because--with all due reverence for the written word, and I have great gobs of that--more books are fit to be borrowed than owned. I expect the ratio to grow ever steeper, at least in the shorter term, as publishers adjust to new realities with the typical response of doing even more of "more of the same." (In other words, brace yourselves for more erotic vampire fiction, (political) anathema-hurling that would make the medieval (anti-)Popes blush, and "History" sections nearly monopolized by WWII and the Templars.

That's where the libraries step in, namely rescuing you from the 95% or more of everything that's dreck. In the end, perhaps the libraries will go straight to the publishers for digital books, further pushing Amazon into a virtual department store, or Barnes & Noble out of the mall's anchor spots. Hopefully, indie. bookstores that offer a value-add similar to libraries, picking the books you'd want to keep, rather than just read. Because the point is not to offer a book (and its review in Publishers Weekly) and wait for the crowdsourced reviews to pile up.

The point is to know the author by reputation and/or to--gasp!--actually read the book first. That's something that chain stores aren't willing to pay their employees to do. Therein lies the difference...and the opportunity. Nor only to make a decent living for librarians and indie. booksellers, but to bring back some of the respectability that publishing has (justifiably) lost.

- - - - -

Apologies for the belated post: We had company yesterday...a much overdue dinner and movie. (Alan Rickman could read the phone book and I'd still listen raptly. [happy sigh])

Frivolous Friday, 06.18.2010: More Murphy

More sub-clauses of Murphy's Law, written specifically for programmers:

1. Management’s sense of urgency is both cyclical and non-discriminatory. Therefore, infrastructure upgrades will always coincide with development crunches.
2. The nastiest, most deal-breaking bugs will always be found during the status meeting.
3. If you're a hardware maven, folks will ask you to create websites; if you're a software maven, they will ask you to troubleshoot their internet connection.
4. The process of reverting code that breaks stuff is invariably more manual, error-prone and time-consuming than the process of promoting it.
5. Griping about a mess that required much tedious, manual clean-up is the surest way of learning about a tool that could have saved you 3/4s of your time.
6. Conversely, installing the shiny new automation tool that “everyone” raves about is the surest way to create a mess that requires tedious, manual clean-up.
7. You’re only as good as your last release.
8. It's always darkest before the dawn...particularly when you're pulling an all-nighter and the power went out right before you were about to save your work.
9. The company that values communication and collaboration enough to jet its management all over the world for face time with each other (and cube-farm everyone else) will be the same one that can't afford enough hard drive space to archive more than two months' worth of email.
10. The instinct for simplicity of design is a deeply appreciated skill in programmers. But only when project budgets and deadlines are being set.
11. The line between “development methodology” and “cult” is finer than you think.
12. Expensive HTML authoring tools that Graphics can't live without were invented for the express purpose of honing the HTML table layout and CSS skills of the programmers who "only need to plug in the back-end code."
13. The trade press will never coo over a software company started by anyone over the age of 40. Ever.
14. Viruses, malware and spam are the sincerest form of flattery.
15. Working late to get into The Zone guarantees distraction from the “Out of Office” auto-replies clobbering your inbox and users desperate for after-hours tech. support dialing your extension at random.
16. The more indispensable the gadget, the more likely its accessories will (collectively) weigh more than it does.
17. The shortest distance between two points was drawn as a bitmap, rather than vector graphic. (Guess what you need to scale?)
18. The probability of being pulled in last-minute to help "save" a project is inversely proportional to your knowledge of it or the personalities involved.
19. If you studied for--and passed--the certification test on your own time, the company will have no use for the technology. Or (more likely) will recognize its mission-critical importance by tapping someone (who didn't) to keep them busy.
20. If you want to make the Coding Gods laugh, show them the specs. and the deadlines.

(Thanks go out to Dennis for contributing a couple items!)

Building a bigger fence does not equal greater security

It's as true with computers as it is in the real world.

Case in point from the last day or so of work: I was enhancing/fixing code that used Secure Sockets Layer ("SSL" for short--it's what should be going on under your browser's hood when you're providing sensitive information such as credit card numbers.) I promoted it up to the integration server, spot-checked things, then pushed it up to the Quality Assurance server, and spot-checked a few things more.

Because an inordinate number of clients still access the application with Internet Explorer 6, I've taken upon myself the nuisance of working with that outdated--and, consequently, less "secure"--browser. Unfortunately, all Hades broke loose for those using Internet Explorer in versions 7 and above. The result was a scramble to reverse my work, which is a right pain.

The heart of the issue was something known as cross-site scripting. Normally, if the JavaScript code on a web page delivered by one server attempts to access code on a web page from another server, browsers block it as potentially hazardous. However, in this case, the pages were being delivered from the same server--with the difference that one page was being encrypted by SSL and the other wasn't. Same server, same domain; only the ports were different.

To me, such browser paranoia is the equivalent of making toddlers take off their shoes at the airport. Frankly, I expect anyone--or anything--charged with "protecting" me to have as much brain as brawn. In the context of software, that ratio had better be even higher. Because the upshot of such over-reacting is that anyone in a similar situation will have to find a workaround. (Which, by the bye, is a polite term for "hack.") The lessons of Hadrian's Wall, the Berlin Wall, the Great Wall of China and the Maginot Line should be pretty self-evident, yes?

More self-congratulatory navel-gazing

About seven or eight years back, my right wrist started showing the signs of carpel tunnel syndrome. I'm not overly gifted with motor skills--as any number of arcade games could attest--but it took only about a week for mousing with my left hand to feel unforced. Today, it's as natural as breathing for me.

My right hand retains its monopoly on handwriting duties, though. Having mostly grown up in a paper-and-pencil world, it's also as natural as breathing. Especially when there's creative thinking to be done. Thoughts seem to flow from brain down neck, over to the point of the shoulder, down the arm, concentrated by wrist and fingers through the ball-point. The cursive must be somewhere between legible and calligraphic. The delay gives thoughts time to congeal in a way that letters rushing toward a typed margin--all but falling over one another in the process--never could.

Meanwhile, the left hand is free to tap the universe through the filter of a web browser, providing new ingredients for what will flow onto the page, perhaps rearranging perceived reality or unlocking the odd "Ah-ha!" here and there. Never let it be said that I don't appreciate technology--old and new. Almost as much as having the opposable thumbs to take full advantage of it.

Pretty-please let this just be bad reporting (a rant)

Today's La Crosse Tribune cherry picked a semi-local (if depressing) item off the Associated Press wire: Delta mechanic killed at Minneapolis airport. Admittedly, my motives for clicking were not lily-white: Dennis and I will be travelling later this year, and I thought I remembered Delta being one of the airlines involved. Thus, there was more than a passing interest in safety involved.

Yet that consideration was quickly overridden by disgust at the presumption of what was considered most important to the audience. Specifically phrases such as "...no impact on overall operations..." and "...a substitute plane that left on time from another gate."

Not even the pretense of regret at the fact that somebody's melon was squashed in a bloody great big gear door on a bloody great big airplane. Yes, it's important that airlines pretend to hew to their published schedules. But it's rather more critical that safety is not merely a pretense and that somebody somewhere cares more about flesh and blood than metal and fuel. That's what I want to hear addressed. Not that the two-legged cargo was efficiently herded away before its delicate sensibilities were ruffled by the sight of someone's brain being hosed off the tarmack.

Yeeeeesh.

Like I said, I hope that this is merely an example of clumsy quoting and/or yellow journalism at its most sensationalist. Either way, somebody's got some 's'plainin' to do... Whoever you are: Back to Human School with you!

The climb is part of the crest

A sharper realization of an oft-made point more or less whacked me upside the head earlier this evening. I stayed up later than I should have last night, and was at work about two hours later than normal tonight. Two different projects were in flight, but they shared a goal: Smashing through the "Now what the heck was I doing here, again???" barrier.

The reward was the end of the slog, by which I mean (mentally) duct-taping together all the pieces of someone else's work, to do what needed doing. Now it's all downhill--in the good sense of the term. On the drive home, I jokingly thought, "I could get addicted to that feeling." But the truth is that the cresting of both hills would never have happened without the work that went before (plus several short washes down the waterspout and itsy-bitsy climbs back up). Or, in terms less musical and mime-prone, the not-so-very-addictive part.

Pity, that. It wouldn't be the noisiest monkey I could have on my back...

Didn't see this conundrum coming

I managed to talk myself out of a Blackberry, but with Notion Ink's Adam delayed until August (if we're lucky), the siren song of a dedicated eReader has become louder. In my case, the scenic route around instant gratification is banging around the internet for product reviews.

Which is when it occurred to me to wonder how students will cite research (meaning publisher, edition, and most specifically page number) if digital books become the norm rather than the exception. As one video review for the Nook (or was it the Kindle?) eReader, noted, page number is irrelevant when the user controls font sizes. In that case, perhaps a simple chapter/paragraph or chapter/sentence citation will now have to do. Technology is grand and all, but I still wouldn't want to be the first student to submit that sort of citation.

It's the creators, stupid.

If you're in the mood for (mostly) content-free hyperbole today, look no further than The Atlantic's Closing the Digital Frontier. If you're not, allow me to summarize:

1. Traditional media/entertainment (nearly) brought about its own demise by buying into the early hype about information "freedom."
2. The web browser is dead.
3. "Curated" internet access--i.e. controlled by Apple, Netflix, Big Media, etc. is the future.
4. The near-monoculture in the U.S. of wireless carriers, smartphone OSes, will leave consumers with no choice but to shut up and pay up for the "best" stuff.
   
5. Curated apps and paid media will kill Google and search/aggregation in general.
   

Rebutting point by point:

1.) I call "Historical revisionism." The RIAA and MPAA hardly bought into the "information is free" mantra. Moreover, I recall paywalls throughout my experience with the web. I remember a fully "curated" World Wide Web. (It was called AOL.) I remember Disney buying InfoSeek and basing search results' "relevance" on who was willing to pay. That and the "portalization" of search was--IMLTHO--what drove us into the clean interface and impartial rankings of Google. And so I would even make the case that what is still killing big media and big entertainment is not pirated content, but rather the reduced barrier to entry for so-called "amateurs" who are equally or more talented than the "professionals." Thus, the demise is much more a matter of competition. That and the consumer figuring out how much they'd been fleeced for mediocrity--if not outright suckage.

2.) The browser is the fastest, easiest and most generic way to get information online, period. And that even with the royal pain that is cross-browser support. Also, smartphone disk space is limited, and expecting someone to give up drive space for a single-function app is pretty darned arrogant unless it's impossible to deliver the same functionality in a web browser. Is there any way Twitter can improve your experience with accelerometer (meaning Wii-like controls)? Don't think so. Ditto for Facebook, looking up phone numbers, finding a restaurant, GPS, etc. A bootstrapped software company is not about to invest months of coding in Objective-C and praying for Apple's laying-on-of-hands to replicate the same functionality that web forms could provide in two days with Dreamweaver and an upload to GoDaddy. If MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. had gone the "application" route, we never would have heard of them, much less their mobile versions.

3.) Curated, paywall access works for content that's expensive to produce. For everything else, there's YouTube and long tail marketing. Getting the consumer to pay for streamed content is hobbled by data capping and attempts to control what's routed through The Tubes. In essence, Apple's set itself up in the business equivalent of a love triangle. On one hand, it's in bed with AT&T until 2012. On the other, it's wooing the content providers (Netflix as well as more traditional publishers and media). The interests of Apple's two paramours are diametrically opposed: One makes money pushing as much data to the consumer as possible, the other by limiting it. The consumer pays three times--for data, delivery and device. Which I personally don't have a problem with, but when each member of this love triangle is pushing what the market will bear, independently of the others...that's an oligopoly ripe for disruption. Particularly when, with three hands held out for each byte streamed to every device, the consumer is still expected to put up with advertising for the privilege.

4.) (And speaking of disruption...) Why Michael Hirschorn assumes that the boundaries of the various markets stop at the US border I can't fathom. I'm not knocking good ol' Yankee ingenuity--not in the least. But devices that sip battery life, add bulletproofing for spotty connections, are solar-chargeable, use freerer platforms (e.g. Android, Linux) and otherwise make virtues of scarcity are more likely to come from overseas. You know all those people who are manufacturing our gadgets or writing the code for them? After all these years, a few of them just might...just maybe...have figured out how to create stuff without Western input. If we're lucky, the usurious attitude of the Western titans even provided a little extra incentive to stick it to The Man. (Then we can sit back and enjoy the spectacle of watching Bollywood try to figure out what Hollywood hasn't. I'll pop the popcorn.)

5.) The amount of information stored on servers is not static, much less decreasing. Someone has to make it findable; someone needs to tie it together in relevant ways--with "relevant" being a highly subjective term. Individual applications are, by nature, too partisan, too one-size-fits-all. Certainly there will be niches focused and valuable enough to justify installing a new app. on a mobile device. But a niche isn't valuable until you are already aware of it...and know enough to assess the value of the information. And where would you find that online? Oh yeah...that would be through search and Wikipedia and blogs and maybe Stack Overflow-type sites. You know, all that stuff whose wake is being planned.

But I guess what chaps my hide--even more Hirschorn's smug assumption of the native superiority of brand-name content and distribution systems--is the collective view of the world as passive consumers dropping quarters into an internet that resembles nothing so much as a vending machine or pinball game.

Bottom line: The proverbial "killer app" is rarely created in a management retreat; still less often is it created when Joe Consumer somehow connects to Jane CEO and says, "Make me x." No, a "killer app" happens when its creator thinks of a unique way to solve a problem--even if the "problem" is mere boredom--and gets off her/his (figurative) backside long enough to solve it. Preferably in the most convenient, efficient, and perhaps even creatively satisfying manner possible. Any pipe-dreams on the part of the Big Boys of setting up more toll booths on the internet are not integral to the design. Unless the telco, entertainment, and hardware giants collude (and, less likely, cooperate) to create the One Web To Rule Them All, creators will win.

Frivolous Friday, 06.11.2010: The bees-eye view

I imagine that the ghost of Bob LaFollette would be pleased to know that Wisconsin lives up to its Progressive heritage by being on the leading edge of a food purity issue, namely honey. According to an AP article in Wednesday's La Crosse Tribune, honey standards are now being considered at the national level. See "Shumer: Import rule needed to limit honey "fraud" for the deets.

As with the Wisconsin standard, it's a no-brainer that if bees didn't make it, it shouldn't be labeled as honey. And if it's poisoned with medications, pesticides or what-not, it has no place on store shelves. Taken together, the premise should be a win-win for both consumer and honey producer.

Granted, the "no-brainer" aspect has probably limited the breadth and depth of debate. But even so, not all voices have been heard--in fact, billions have had no say whatsoever in any policy-making. I'm of course referring to the bees themselves. So to rectify the situation--and add a six-legged perspective to the debate--let's turn to our Senior Apian Correspondent, Beatrice.

fivechimera: Thanks for joining us, Beatrice.

Beatrice: Thanks so much for having me. Oh, and do call me "Bea."

fivechimera: Okay. So, Bea, as I understand it, sometimes your humans will feed you sugar water or corn syrup and even soy-based pollen to tide you through the cold spells. Frankly, is the species even affected enough to have a position on a regulatory definition of honey?

Beatrice: Oh, definitely. Obviously, some of the taint in adulterated honey comes from over-medication. That's something we'd like to see eliminated entirely. But at the end of the season, it really boils down to craftsmanship and letting nature shine through.

fivechimera: Craftsmanship? Meaning like a winemaker respecting the terroir and vintage?

Beatrice: Exactly. What two-leggers don't seem to understand is that, other than seeing the hive survive another year, the quality of the product is really the only other reward.

fivechimera: I guess I've never heard it put in quite such stark terms before. Would you care to let readers know a little more about that?

Beatrice: Well, I don't mean to complain. But maybe I should translate things into human terms context. Imagine that, right after you're born, the first thing you have to do is clean your room. Which you share with upwards to 60,000 of your sisters, half-sisters and half-brothers. You graduate from being a housekeeper to raising the next generation of brood to come along. Later, you might end up putting your life on the line guarding your home. Finally, you graduate to grocery runner until you wear out and/or something eats you. All of which will likely happen in about six weeks. And the sum total of your life's work will average out to one-twelfth of a teaspoon.

fivechimera: And having some idiot human completely ruin your handiwork with chemicals or impersonate it with corn syrup--after all that--I can see how that would be absolutely infuriating.

Beatrice: The human concern about parasites and diseases is completely understandable--trust me, we're even more concerned. The life I just described--that only happens if we're one of the lucky ones. If a parasitic varroa mite crawls into our cell when we're still a pupa, we might be born without wings at all. That's scary enough, even without CCD. Even so, there's a limit to how much good chemicals and sugar water can do for us. They're no subsititute for good practice and having decent working conditions in the first place.

fivechimera: I think that sentiment's something even we bi-peds can get behind, Beatrice. Is there anything else you'd like us to know?

Beatrice: I think the perception is that if it's a flower, it's all good for us. But the reality is, when we have the choice, we're actually quite deliberate about what we bring back for food. That's something we'd recommend to any species.

fivechimera: Absolutely. Well, I believe that we're just about out of time here, but, Bea, thank you again for sharing your unique perspective on our human doings.

Beatrice: It's been my pleasure.

Why bother to lead?

So I'm strolling back through the office this morning after scoring the day's first hit of coffee, when I notice two co-workers clustered around a third at his cubicle and overhear one ask in a semi-puzzled tone, "I don't think I'm the Captain?"

Context: For our work contracts, we generally have a position known as a "Job Captain," which is a side effect of being part of an architectural firm. So I didn't think much of it until the cubicle-resident--one of the more cynical folks in the office--say, "You are now." Which is when I realized that they were team-mates for the office scavenger hunt. In that light, I completely sympathize with "You are now," simply because there's no billing code for time spent on mandatory "fun."

That being said, it led to some reflection on the reflexive deflection of leadership. I've seen it at so many contexts. And I'd be a liar if I denied honing my abilities to dodge the time-wasting forms it takes. Because there are very obvious reasons for avoiding leadership:

• Avoiding wearing the bulls-eye when things don't go as planned. Or do go as planned, only with unforeseen side effects
• Avoiding the extra overhead and/or busywork that too often comes with the territory (e.g. the all-responsibility-with-no-authority fiction known as the "team lead")
  

In a sense, one of the few fringe benefits of "working for The Man" is a freedom from the responsibility--albeit not the consequences--of making poor decisions.

Yet, IMLTHO, we're still struggling through a recession of leadership--i.e. the balance is still too tilted toward punishing ideas vs. even giving them a fair debate (to say nothing of implenting them). Understand, though, that I'm not--in the main--knocking those who are making decisions right now. I'm talking about those who are content to sit on the sidelines and snipe. In which company I include myself, btw. Leadership isn't so much about telling folks what to do as knowing what needs to be done. I'm far, far too myopic that way--I know that. There's a long and uphill road ahead in that direction. But at least the first stretch is shallow: After all, learning how to lead oneself is relatively risk-free. And after that, at least you have a better sense of how it's supposed to be done. Even when you decide not to do it yourself.

Shout-out to Steve's posse

I just wanted to let folks know about a surprising customer service experience from this morning. When the guyzos at Steve Low's Midwest Toyota cleaned up the rear brakes on my car Monday, they discovered that a bearing cover had gone AWOL. The $4 part wasn't in stock, but they put it on order, and phoned me yesterday to let me know that I could swing by at my convenience to have them snap it in.

So I swung by at about nine this morning. I literally hadn't finished my coffee in the waiting room--my first cup of the day, y'understand--when A. popped his head through the glass door to tell me that that my four-wheeled baby was parked around the corner with the key in the ignition. "Wow! You guys are goooood!" I laughed. I stepped up to the cashier counter, wallet at the ready, but was waved on. "Oh, did you already put that on Monday's tab?" I asked. "Nah--we got'cha taken care of," quoth A.

In the end, it's not saving the cost of a $4 part and a few minutes of labor that means anything. At least not to me. It's the "We got'cha taken care of." See, the business isn't a matter of buying car parts and swapping them in for the bits that have gone kablooey. These folks seem to understand that they're really in the "making that worrisome noise go away" business. Or, more generally, the "peace of mind" business. And I thought that more than deserved the recognition. Because I personally believe that it's virtually impossible for the "peace of mind" market to become crowded. And even if it did, I think it'd be a much better world for that.

The hidden price of style

I'm starting to dread Steve Jobs' keynote speeches, because they more or less guarantee a new iProduct. To which I'm mostly indifferent, except that this inevitably (and immediately) precipitates another food-fight between the platform/language fanboys & fangirls. Case in point: Should my gentle reader feel that her/his opinion of the human race is running too high of late, Tim O'Reilly (@timoreilly) helpfully supplies the following two links. (Hint: Read comments for full effect.)

• iPhone 4 Is Nice, But It's Not Enough to Slow Android
• Words Apple Won't Hear (Right Now) - Code for Android First

Perhaps it's just that I don't have enough fortitude to follow such...ahem...dialectics...in their entirety, but I have yet to see one factor addressed. That factor is style, by which I mean the ethos of the programmer and/or code-shop itself.

A bit of background for my readers working outside the software trade: The two styles I'm talking about are loosely defined as "waterfall method" and "agile." Using broad-brush sketches, "waterfall" attempts an assembly-line process of design, build, test, and release. Agile, by contrast, iterates through these steps multiple times--as quickly as possible--until customers are satisfied with the final version. There's merits to both methologies, of course. Using the agile mind-set for the software that runs nuclear power plants is a Very Bad Idea for obvious reasons. Similarly, insisting on waterfall methods in a bleeding-edge web start-up is the short road to insolvency.

In the context of smartphone applications, I think that the difference is fairly obvious. Apple prides itself on--and enforces--polish and fit; Android's application market has gained a reputation--unfairly or not--of trading finesse for freedom. In other words, releasing a minimum viable iProduct will likely defeat the purpose; over-thinking an Android application will seriously--perhaps fatally--impact its time-to-market.

That's not to say that an iPhone/iPad software shack can't run on agile principles, nor even that Android applications can't be born of the waterfall school of development. But, overall, my best guess is that the platform will to some extent work with or against the process. That's not a consideration to be taken lightly. Changing the modus operendi for a one-person code-shop is a big deal. (In a nutshell, you're turning vices into virtues and vice-versa.) When additional people are involved, my gut-level math is that you don't multiply the difficulty by the number of people; you take the difficulty to the power of the number of people involved.

So, as tempting as the jump into a new market seems, the ultimate "price" isn't necessarily a matter of training, new development environments, and some language manuals. You just might have to decide whether the changes wreaked upon style are also worth the benefits.

Band-aid on a broken knee?

Dennis scooped a CNN article on a Roman gladiator cemetery found in the unlikely place of York, England. (Not, in fact, as unlikely as it initally seems, but that's another story...) So I followed the link on the Facebook recommendation, read the article, then jumped back a bit at the "Dennis ----- recommends this" note at the bottom. I was still logged into Facebook at the time, so the two websites were clearly sharing a cookie (or three) with the earnestness of kindergarten BFFs at milk-break.

Such borrowing of credibility struck me as truly pointless, for a few different reasons:

• It only works when the reader is also logged into Facebook (and perhaps other Web 2.0 hangouts besides). Maybe some folks never log out, but to me that's tantamount to spending all day by the office coffee maker, waiting for your peers to stroll by and validate whatever newspaper/magazine article you're reading.
• Making the media more "social" doesn't address what I consider the fundamental problem with mainstream "news" reporting, namely the too-cozy relationship between reporters--their upper echelons, at any rate--and the reported-upon. Politics is no place for paparazzi, whether you're barbequeing with the Bidens or trading on your Watergate laurels to legitimize Vietnam 2.0 and 2.1.
• The prurient appeal of a Arianna Huffington vs. Ann Coulter locker-room cat-fight notwithstanding, we--speaking broadly, of course--tend to pay most attention to the "reporters" we agree with. Finding our friends in the crowd may provide additional validation of our world-views, but validation is an after-the-fact side-effect. It does nothing to bring in (desperately needed) new readers.

And, most importantly, news is not a popularity contest. Mixing the dynamics of new and old media is a B-movie species mis-matchup that just might be more ridiculous than "Bambi vs. Godzilla." Except not nearly as funny. Not even close.

Another new "race" in technology

Another riff brought to you by last night's trip into Barnes & Noble. Not so much about books, though, because--for once--the in-your-face front display did not contain books. No, the pride of place normally given to J.K. Rowling and Stephanie Meyer was instead devoted to the Nook eReader. No great shocker there, just elementary retailing in action. In fact, I think it was just last week I'd read that both Amazon and B&N are more aggressively marketing their gadgets.

But the poster-blurb about wi-fi & 3G did catch my attention, along with some mention--I thought--about web browsing. It turns out that the web browsing thing wasn't just the mudslide pie sugar-rush talking after all. Amazon's next-gen Kindle will (allegedly) also have built-in wi-fi--presumably in conjunction with, or in place of WhisperNet.

Together, they only make me (again) wonder how long it will be before accessing an unfettered internet will be a "given" in the same sense as electricity and hot & cold running water. Which is interesting timing, considering how AT&T and Verizon and Comcast and a number of their ilk are dusting off the notion of data-capping and/or actively fighting net neutrality.

In a sense, it's a race to see whether always-on and unmetered access will become either a quasi-right or a privilege in the American mindset. Granted, utilities are typically metered, but phone/data companies try to have it both ways by combining use-it-or-lose-it with overage charges. I mean, seriously, who talks exactly 500/1000/whatever minutes a month? Yeah, didn't think so--which makes it a lose-lose proposition all the way.

Personally, I'm betting on quasi-right. And the driving reason is the explosion in the number of gadgets that come with web browser as a standard feature. Gadgets that are live in a handful of seconds, rather than the time it takes a PC or laptop to go through the operating system equivalent of waking, showering, brushing teeth and reading the paper over coffee. In a phrase, instant gratification. Standing between the American consumer and instant gratification generally isn't smart business. And, having recently rolled my eyes half-dizzy shopping the talk/text/data Happy Meals the brand-name mobile giants offer, I can't say as I'll feel sorry for them when they lose the race.

The price of instruction, or "Is our professionals learning?"

In my considerably less-than-humble opinion on the matter, instructional books--digital vs. dead-tree doesn't matter here--should come in one of two prices:

A.) Free (and by "free" I mean "Free as in Richard Stallman buying the beer")
B.) Something between $20 and $25 (2010) US dollars per printed pound.

In my case, I mean computer programming books, (What else would you expect here?) But in all cases, the value-add of instructional books is multi-level. At the base, someone had to master the subject well enough to explain it to someone else. Built over that, that same someone had to have the additional (and much rarer) talent to break the subject down into chewable, digestible bites for folks starting from zero. (And, of course, that someone had to scrape together the wherewithal to write and publish the material.)

But back to the price-points.

"Free," whether we like it or not, comes with a "pay it forward" kind of obligation--at least after we've invested enough of our disposable time and attention-span to extract significant value from "free." At a minimum, we can recommend the material to others seeking the same skills, and thus give the author the recognition that s/he was presumably seeking by giving away her/his work.

A heftier price-tag, on the other hand is a healthy thing for the would-be purchaser (assuming that the work doesn't suck of course). With the odometer of software versions flipping so quickly, with new languages/infrastructures continually sprouting (and, sometimes, dying off just as quickly), the book purchase is almost a commitment. (Tightwad that I am, I think I may well have proposed to Android at Barnes & Noble tonight. Gack.)

But, as much reverence as I have for the printed word, there shouldn't be a middle ground between the two price-points. Discounting is a by-product of the industrial mentality--the extraction and manufacture of X is commoditized by mechanization and economies of scale (plus, not infrequently, cut-throat tactics and ruthless, brutal exploitation). Absolutely none of that applies to mastery of a topic or skill at helping others master it.

Oddly enough, I'm optimistic that the "ninety-five percent of everything is crap" principle will actually benefit the quality of instructional knowledge as a whole--particularly in my field. The creators of the bottom ninety-five percent--with no offense intended to their efforts or know-how--will not optimize to deliver value for the longer-term. The remaining five percent will. (As an example, consider what Jancis Robinson does for the constantly shifting geography of the wine world with what's basically a freemium business model.) In that scenario, the middle-grounders are caught between an overgrown jungle of free information and the carefully cultivated walled gardens of the brand-name authors on the topic.

Yes, it's a species of snobbery I'm guilty of here. But if it stops--or at least slows--the waste of trees and/or bandwidth on cut-rate mediocrity, that's the kind of snobbery I can live with.

Frivolous Friday, 06.04.2010: Schadenfriday limericks, Part II

Honestly, I don't think you can stay in I/T without at least a few strands of optimism in your neural wiring. (Although--oddly enough--a healthy streak of paranoia is never a bad trait for anyone who has to keep systems up & running & un-hacked.) That being said, the dewy-eyed-gee-whiz-ain't-technology-grand attitude that the magazine & gadget blog industry trades on can become a little insufferable at times. Luckily (for anyone else who feels this way), the antidote comes your way in five-line doses, starting...now.

Your smartphone looks new and so sleek
Palm-cradled or upside your cheek.
Yet buyers' remorse
Will come in due course:
A cooler one launches next week.

Computers forever surprise
Inverting chips' power to size:
Crunching data to store--
With less being Moore.
(If only our brains worked likewise.)

Instructions you'd joyfully pen
To head off computer mayhem.
Then 't'would be All Good,
If peeps only could
Stop freaking and RTFM.

On keyboard you've labored all day;
Your masterpiece goes to QA.
Yet, though unit-tests
Gave hopes for the best,
Bug tickets are headed your way.

Our tech. will be thrilled to discuss
The error that's caused so much fuss.
Please continue to hold
Until you grow old:
Your call is important to us.

Ditching the digital diary

A co-worker's question today nudged me just a bit out of the paper-bound universe by asking about my experience with blogging software. Turns out that it wasn't the plug-ins he was interested in so much as a way to organize the content around what something was about, rather than it was published.

Such talk should be double-heresy to this erstwhile History-English major, the kind that should have me looking over my shoulder for the periwigged ghost of Sam Pepys. Yet, when I think about how I look for and absorb blogs, date has very little to do with...well..much of anything. Oh, it's useful for context, and definitely as a cue that the material I'm reading is new (if only to me). But that's it, really.

In the end, I mentioned Blogger's tagging feature to the aspiring blogger. Tumblr may have it too; I've just been too lazy to look for it...not to mention open the door to having to tag 400+ posts on two copies of the same content. It's a door that will have to be opened, though, and soon. If only because date-driven blogging sends the signal--however subtle--that the blog is more "about me" than it is for the perusal of my readers. That's an attitude I'd prefer to avoid projecting, much less have reflected back into my own mindset by the medium itself.

Rudder > Motor

Slightly heretical thought for a self-conscious world: Assuming that irreparable damage isn't done, of course, what you break doesn't matter even half so much as how effectively you can fix it.

Speaking purely for myself, it's easy for we programmer types to believe that we live in a separate universe--yea and verily even "hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar underneath Funk & Wagnall's porch since noon" for my pre-GenY compatriots--from that of investment (cough!) "bankers," sticky accelerators and the species of idiot that drills a hole a mile-plus undersea w/o much thought as to how to put the cork back into the bottle.

Nevertheless, it's true. For instance, I managed to thoroughly crash a database server--mercifully over the three-day weekend--with a query that slowly ate CPU cycles until the only way to kill it was to change my network password, thus severing my workstation's connection from the server...along with everything else. By the same token, when I tried to run the traditional Monday report (on Tuesday, after reclaiming my login), I discovered that an upgrade on the very same server had broken it.

In both cases, we dealt with things pretty phlegmatically. Understand that by "we," I ninety-plus-percent mean our preternaturally awesome--and unflappable--SysAdmin. The same person who, knowing that I'd been cut off from the corporate email system, tracked me down on Facebook to let me know what was up. Who also happens to sit kitty-corner from me in the pod. The other ten percent came from the former SysAdmin, since promoted to minor-Deityness of reporting. Who is a cubicle wall plus two cubicles away. Which is pretty much the point. Not that I mean to detract one whit from such legendary awesomeness, mind you. Nuh-uh. It's just that the closer (physically and hierarchically) you keep the folks who fry the bacon to the folks who can pull it from the fire when things go awry in the frying-pan, the better off you are as an organization.

And I'm probably being far too Utopian here, but maybe--only just maybe--such working cheek-by-jowl would lead to a world where you'd see less of taking billions of bailout dollars with one hand and million-dollar bonuses with the other. Less whining about getting one's figurative life back after nearly a dozen (human) lives have been quite literally lost. Less denialism when irrefutable data to the contrary sits twenty feet away from one's desk.

Yep, definitely Utopian. Unless we--with dollars and votes and career-choices--insist that private and public organizations optimize for rudder, rather than motor (and--to extend metaphor--even more than the cargo-capacity of the boat itself).

A twist on chickens and eggs

I still don't have that whole intrinsic motivation thing down pat. But when I've been able to afford it, I've made the purchase of a new toy the reward for longer-term achievements such as a semester 4.0 average, the force-march through a multi-month project, and so forth. So it seemed fit enough that my reward for slogging through enough SQLite & Android to write a non-trivial application should be an actual Android device to run it on.

Now, it's no secret that writing software user interfaces--i.e. the screens, buttons, forms, etc.--is most certainly not my strong point as a programmer. So I decided to take a page from Kathy Sierra's book and work everything forward from the "How will this make the user rock?" First stop: Mind-mapping. Tools of choice: 11 x 17 paper and a refillable pencil dating from college.

Which is when I thought, "Wouldn't this be a great application for a tablet PC?" Sigh. Chickens and eggs, 2010.