alek blogs

Warm, Cold, And Warm Again in Arizona ...

I took some pictures of the trip to Northern Arizona.

Here is how warm was and where did we go:

Hot Beginning of Week: Hanging Around in Phoenix and attending SC 2003

Warm Friday on way to Flagstaff stopping in Montezuma Castle, Wupatki National Monument

Very Cold Saturday With Even Coder Wind in Grand Canyon

Warm Sunday on way back seeing Sedona Oak Creek Canyon

But all in all there is way too much to see in Arizona and I will need to visit it again ...

created Mon November 24, 2003 23:10 MST [2003/11/24 23:10 MST] permalink

Unusually Warm November ...

More pictures.

No comments ...

created Sun November 2, 2003 17:10 CST [2003/11/2 17:10 CST] permalink

Mad Milton Goes Out...

This entry is written by Milton who took a (temporarily) possession of Alek for one Saturday night on evil mission to win costume contest ("almost" success!):

and more pictures ...

created Sun October 26, 2003 16:15 CST [2003/10/26 16:15 CST] permalink

Gold Red Brown Green And Beautiful Autumn ...

No comments ...

created Sun October 19, 2003 19:15 CST [2003/10/19 19:15 CST] permalink

Welcome to Indiana University Beautiful Campus...

No comments ...

created Sun October 12, 2003 15:15 CST [2003/10/12 15:15 CST] permalink

Biking / Monroe Lake @ Night ...

No comments ...

created Sat October 11, 2003 11:15 CST [2003/10/11 11:15 CST] permalink

Octav Was Here ...

No comments ...

created Sat October 11, 2003 19:15 CST [2003/10/11 19:15 CST] permalink

Chicago, Chicago ...

No comments ...

created Thu October 6, 2003 23:15 CST [2003/10/6 23:15 CST] permalink

Front Range @ Boulder Colorado...

No comments ...

created Tue September 30, 2003 23:15 CST [2003/9/30 23:15 CST] permalink

Tumble down the black hole ...

Wonderlab is a nice place to visit even though it is designed to amuse children still every geek has an inner child quite close as we checked this Saturday.

When visiting make sure to lose some pennies down deep in a gravitational hole or even your head when T Rex is checking how tall you are ...

And soap bubble machines were also quite good fun (maybe even more fun than XSOAP - for children at least).

created Sat September 13, 2003 23:15 CST [2003/9/13 23:15 CST] permalink

Flower That Blossomed For Me

Flowers and other plants did not seem to do too well with me ...

But now I can show one exception:

Isn't it lovely?

created Tue August 26, 2003 11:55 PM EST [2003/8/26 23:55 EST] permalink

Virus in air?

When you enter a room with your wireless windows laptop turned on, wireless card working, and with unfixed RPC vulnerability in your Windows NT/2000/XP then you may be "lucky" enough to catch a traditional virus and some of the latest Windows viruses ....

created Mon August 18, 2003 18:55 EST [2003/8/18 18:55 EST] permalink

Sun goes down and darkness falls in NY

For one day we were back to natural cycle of life. As soon as sunset it was dark. No lights except for spurious car lights and emergency lighting. Dark streets. Playing scrabble instead of working (or surfing web). Hunting for food and place to see TV. Hunting for candles. Finding place to sleep for those stranded that could not get back to Manhattan. Staying long in night and rationalizing situation and sharing theories. Trying to ignore hot and humid night without AC ...

created Sun August 17, 2003 11:55 PM EST [2003/8/17 23:55 EST] permalink

Memex: futuristic device?

If idea has almost sixty years and it is till interesting then there must be something in it. That is certainly true about memex.

First motivation for memex from "As We May Think" by Vannevar Bush from July, 1945 (emphasize is mine):

(...) The human mind does not work that way. It operates by association. With one item in its grasp, it snaps instantly to the next that is suggested by the association of thoughts, in accordance with some intricate web of trails carried by the cells of the brain. It has other characteristics, of course; trails that are not frequently followed are prone to fade, items are not fully permanent, memory is transitory. Yet the speed of action, the intricacy of trails, the detail of mental pictures, is awe-inspiring beyond all else in nature. (...)

So how such device would work? One organizing theme is about machine remembering and recalling anything that operator deems interesting:

(...) When the user is building a trail, he names it, inserts the name in his code book, and taps it out on his keyboard. Before him are the two items to be joined, projected onto adjacent viewing positions. At the bottom of each there are a number of blank code spaces, and a pointer is set to indicate one of these on each item. The user taps a single key, and the items are permanently joined. In each code space appears the code word. Out of view, but also in the code space, is inserted a set of dots for photocell viewing; and on each item these dots by their positions designate the index number of the other item. Thereafter, at any time, when one of these items is in view, the other can be instantly recalled merely by tapping a button below the corresponding code space. Moreover, when numerous items have been thus joined together to form a trail, they can be reviewed in turn, rapidly or slowly, by deflecting a lever like that used for turning the pages of a book. It is exactly as though the physical items had been gathered together from widely separated sources and bound together to form a new book. It is more than this, for any item can be joined into numerous trails. (...)

Finally what really matters is ability to organize, recall and share knowledge and that idea what was well captured in this example:

(...) The owner of the memex, let us say, is interested in the origin and properties of the bow and arrow. Specifically he is studying why the short Turkish bow was apparently superior to the English long bow in the skirmishes of the Crusades. He has dozens of possibly pertinent books and articles in his memex. First he runs through an encyclopedia, finds an interesting but sketchy article, leaves it projected. Next, in a history, he finds another pertinent item, and ties the two together. Thus he goes, building a trail of many items. Occasionally he inserts a comment of his own, either linking it into the main trail or joining it by a side trail to a particular item. When it becomes evident that the elastic properties of available materials had a great deal to do with the bow, he branches off on a side trail which takes him through textbooks on elasticity and tables of physical constants. He inserts a page of longhand analysis of his own. Thus he builds a trail of his interest through the maze of materials available to him.
(...) And his trails do not fade. Several years later, his talk with a friend turns to the queer ways in which a people resist innovations, even of vital interest. He has an example, in the fact that the outraged Europeans still failed to adopt the Turkish bow. In fact he has a trail on it. A touch brings up the code book. Tapping a few keys projects the head of the trail. A lever runs through it at will, stopping at interesting items, going off on side excursions. It is an interesting trail, pertinent to the discussion. So he sets a reproducer in action, photographs the whole trail out, and passes it to his friend for insertion in his own memex, there to be linked into the more general trail. (...)

It seems that linking creates such trial and good search engine is tool to recall trails and now blogs are making easier to create trials but still this is long way to go ...

There are other tools that try to do this but so far I have not found yet one that works for me ... where is my Memex? so i start forgetting what i can easily recall:

(...) Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his records more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursions may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important. (...)

created Sun July 20, 2003 7:08 PM EST [2003/7/20 19:8 EST] permalink

Space Invasion in Newport, RI

This was fantastic day and seeing current state-of-the art kites floating over Newport is not much different experience than seeing UFOs. This time we made amazing number wrong turns but overcam all stumbling including longer-than-expected cliff walk almost during night and arrived safely to be able to put photos online.

created Sun July 20, 2003 6:50 PM EST [2003/7/20 18:50 EST] permalink

The Last Of the Great Indoorsmen?

Another species identified for extinction classifed and identified by Dave Johnson:

(...)This is all great and the only thing really causing any stress is the ProJSP book, but I don't think I'll have to miss a day at the beach to wrap up my changes to my two chapters. My Dad and I have our laptops setup in the kitchen and the only thing that really interferes with my works is the constant derision and calls of "hey nerd-boys" and "get a life" from our wives. This really doesn't bother me at all. I always arrange to bring a laptop along on vacation. I'm not like Raible. My idea of a vacation is tinkering with all things digital, which, coincidentally, is also my idea of work. I'm the last of the great indoorsmen.(...)

It can not be- I would consider myself another one - and I suspect there is more ...

created Tue July 15, 2003 6:25 PM EST [2003/7/15 18:25 EST] permalink

TRANSFORM-INTO-A-GEEK FORMULA

How to become a geek effectively? Sisi Liu has now a simple answer to question . No need even for the pill (and this pill was invented before Matrix was it?).

This works kind of opposite to ACME Nerd Suppressant [cached]

Now it doe snot work on men, does it?

created Tue July 15, 2003 4:25 PM EST [2003/7/15 16:25 EST] permalink

Time is the scarcest resource

Time is the scariest resource and it should be treated as the most important factor when considering any task. From interview with Jim Gray:

(...) You see this today. Two groups start; one group uses an easy-to-use system, and another uses a not-so-easy-to-use system. The first group gets done first, and the competition is over. The winners move forward and the other guys go home.

That situation is now happening in the Web services space. People who have better tools win.(...)

However it is also important to not simplify the problem we try to solve or we have something very easy-to-use but useless ...

He also talks about phenomenon of scale when doing software development and I find this estimate quite interesting:

David Patterson: What do you think is happening with databases in terms of open source? What is the Linux of databases?

Jim Gray: I think it's exciting. Very small teams built the early database systems. A small team at Oracle built the original Oracle, and there were small teams at Informix, Ingress, Sybase, and IBM.

Twenty-five people can do a pretty full-blown system, and ship it, and support it, and get manuals written, and test it. (...)

Now the trick is to be where action is and to be part of such team :-)

created Sat July 12, 2003 5:43 PM EST [2003/7/12 17:43 EST] permalink

Fire And Motion

So instead of writing code i read email and surf web not unlike Joel. He captured specifics and concerns about programmers productivity quite well in Fire And Motion.

However what really struck me was this piece of his experience:

(...) When I had a summer internship at Microsoft, a fellow intern told me he was actually only going into work from 12 to 5 every day. Five hours, minus lunch, and his team loved him because he still managed to get a lot more done than average. (...)

When I had a summer internship in France lots of years ago there was this guy who was apparently very good. He was very good but he did not show up to work however as he did exactly what they wanted at the end of the internship so they really loved him...

My personal theory is that surfing web, emailing or in general reading and thinking is what really matters for programming. Writing code is just an end result, an artifact produced to capture what was created in days of hard work of thinking that may have looked like doing nothing but were required to accumulate into written code.

created Fri July 11, 2003 6:12 PM EST [2003/7/11 18:12 EST] permalink

On writing scientific theses ...

It is interesting idea to just put all elements of typical scientific paper as shown in this good spoof of scientific theses [local copy]

Results can be quite intriguing - for example let take a look on related works section:

"Many researchers have attempted to solve such philosophical debates but have been proven unsuccessful. An attempt to determine why the chicken crossed the road showed inconclusive data and resulted in the loss of all test subjects due to traffic fatalities (Hoyman 2001, Larsen 1987)."

Now only if all scientific papers were that short (and funny!) ...

created Mon June 30, 2003 5:13 PM EST [2003/6/30 17:13 EST] permalink

Myth of US Vacations?

Russell Beattie takes a good look on vacation in US and Europe:

(...) Now, the opposite of this concept is true as well - imagine how harsh it is for someone to go from Europe to the U.S. My wife doesn't really understand yet what a 24/7 society like the U.S. is like. She talks about future vacations when we're living in the U.S. and I shake my head softly. "I doubt we'll have much," I say. Even if we do have vacations, they'll never coincide. And undoubtedly something "important" will be happening at work and we'll have to spend half our vacation calling back to voicemail or checking emails. The fact is that vacations are always just short breaks, not true downtime. By the time you're just forgetting about work, it's time to go back.(...)

It seems that the only loophole may be when you stay at university and have three months of vacation (not counting Christmas). The rumor has it that it is even better in Australia ...

created Sat June 28, 2003 2:10 PM EST [2003/6/28 14:10 EST] permalink

Future so bright I need sunglasses?

Future so bright i need sunglasses? And it is not that summer is getting hotter but I feel that there are so many possibilities and paths to follow and so much to improve that it is so mind boggling that I need sunglasses to look into future ... as if nothing since 1998 changed :-)

created Tue June 24, 2003 3:48 PM EST [2003/6/24 15:48 EST] permalink

Heart of Science (And Fiction)?

From interview with Michael Swanwick [cached]:

(...)Scientists often start from an intuition or an emotional preference and work outward from there. Logic is only a tool, like a chisel or a gas chromatograph, that they use in their work. Far more central to the enterprise is intellectual honesty, the ability to admit that they may possibly be wrong or, even better, that the guy with the opposing viewpoint may be making a valid contribution. I saw an auditorium full of people give John Ostrom a standing ovation after he made the introductory statement at a symposium on the early evolution of birds. It was a powerful, emotional thing to witness, and afterwards the guy next to me leaned over and said, "Did you notice who was the first one on his feet?" And he named a man whose theories were in direct conflict with Ostrom's. But he could still applaud the integrity of Ostrom's work. That was extraordinary.(...)

on appeal of dinosaurs:

(...) That's an easy one. It's because dinosaurs are (a) monsters, (b) real and (c) safely extinct. It's an unbeatable combination! My paleontologist friends hate it when I use the M-word, but let's be honest here, that's the appeal. There's a story that Kenneth Carpenter saw a Godzilla movie when he was a boy and immediately decided that he was going to devote his life to studying such creatures. Then, when his parents gently broke it to him that Godzilla was imaginary, he switched his loyalties over to dinosaurs, as the next best thing. Decades later he discovered a new species of theropod and named it Gojirasaurus. Thus keeping a better faith with his younger self than most adults do. (...)

and on advantage of science fiction:

(...)But in science fiction you've got a readership that's willing to let you sprawl. So long as you're entertaining them, they don't mind if it takes you a few extra pages to reach the end. This is why so much literary mainstream short fiction feels so much tighter than SF does. The advantage here is to SF. You can take that slack the reader has given you, those extra pages, and use them to cut a few figures, try a few things out, maybe invent something new. That's a priceless gift for the writer.(...)

all together very interesting author and writes short books so well worth checking out!

created Mon June 23, 2003 7:55 PM EST [2003/6/23 19:55 EST] permalink

Note to myself: check your dream job before you start learning it ...

This looked pretty insightful to me (from How Vienna Escaped the Cubicle) :

(...)I had also spent some time shadowing doctors. I went to Stanford Hospital and followed doctors around on their shifts. For the most part, their work consisted of a lot of bureaucracy. The everyday life consisted of filling out forms, and then filling out other forms, and then dictating forms to other people.

I know that everybody probably gets disillusioned with their career at some point, but I got disillusioned with mine before it even started.(...)

created Wed 18 June 2003 5:10 PM EST [2003/6/18 17:10 EST] permalink

Einstein Brain In Matrix

Hack Into Einstein's Mind: Einstein Archives Online

created Wed 21 May 2003 23:44 CET [2003/5/21 23:44 CET] permalink

Multitasking Or Creating Time and Getting Important Work Done?

We all are struggling with multi-tasking, getting projects done and prioritizing work. However more work is there then more important it become to follow this advice:

Make sure you know your boss's priorities. What does he need now? Too often the boss says everything, in which case, go to #2.

What is strategically important for the company now? Note that this is not strategically important for your group, but strategically important for the company. Talk to your boss, yes, but then focus on what helps the company most.

and if enough background data is available then

Kill the projects you need to kill. Too often we have too many projects hanging around, or products we support because we always have. Stop that now, and only support what is strategically important.

Work on things that bring in revenue (or contribute to revenue) now.

time is the most precious resource so it is good to think about creating time it can be as simple as:

not attending meetings you don't need to attend

allowing interruptions from voicemail, email, pager, cellphone, and blackberries at specific times, not when the interruptions come in

allowing people at the lowest level of the organization make decisions about their work, so you can make decisions about your work

created Tue 20 May 2003 12:47 PM CET [2003/5/20 12:47 CET] permalink

Social Software And Tools That Shape Us

i have just read Are You Ready for Social Software? and i liked it, especially this aspect about building it:

Kenneth Boulding, the economist, humanist and social scientist, once wrote: "We make our tools, and then they shape us." That is what social software is doing. It is changing the way that we socialize.

"Are you two, er . . . teachers here or something like that?" Driscoll asked.
"Sometimes," Shirley answered. "Ci teaches English mainly, but mostly down on the surface. That is, when she?s not working with electronics or installing plant wiring underground somewhere. I?m not all that technical. I grow olives and vines out on the Peninsula, and design interiors. That?s what brought me up here?Clem wants the crew quarters and mess deck refitted and decorated. But yes, I teach tailoring sometimes, but not a lot."
"I meant as a regular job," Driscoll said. "What do you do basically?"
"All of them." Shirley sounded mildly surprised. "What do you mean by ?basically??"
"They do the same thing all the time, from when they quit school to when they retire," Ci reminded her mother.(...)

now only remains to discover cold fusion, or nanotechnology, or have clean start and get it done and not get bogged down but other issues ...

created May 18 2003 Mon 4:48 am CET [2003/5/18 4:48 CET] permalink

Back home

It is good to be home! ..

created may 10 2003 fri 8:15 am cet [2003/5/10 8:15 CET] permalink

Hello Octav

Hi to Octav!

created apr 15 2003 sun 2:30 pm cst [2003/4/15 14:30 CST] permalink

Singularity, Intelligence Amplification, and Future

Interesting thoughts (cached) and compelling alternative to AI - IA (Intelligence Amplification):

When people speak of creating superhumanly intelligent beings, they are usually imagining an AI project. But as I noted at the beginning of this paper, there are other paths to superhumanity. Computer networks and human-computer interfaces seem more mundane than AI, and yet they could lead to the Singularity. I call this contrasting approach Intelligence Amplification (IA).

and it will be even more interesting to see if we witness singularity by estimated year 2030 ...

created apr 6 2003 sun 9:06pm cst [2003/4/6 21:6 CST] permalink

taking red pill

Microsoft is hiring lot of people including interesting positions in XML Messaging team where one could work in close proximity of Don Box ...

created apr 6 sun 2003 9:06pm cst [2003/4/6 21:6 CST] permalink

How to find your place in life ...

what are you good at and what is that you do in life may not be the same thing...

Like Don, you'll be a lot happier if you aren't fighting the value system around you. Find one that enforces a set of beliefs that you can really get behind. There's a powerful transformative effect when you surround yourself with like-minded people. Peer pressure is a great thing when it helps you accomplish your goals instead of distracting you from them.

interesting read to remind about important question (local copy)

created april 4 2003 fri 10:20pm cst [2003/4/4 22:20 CST] permalink

funny, funny, funny dancing skeletons

created fri mar 21 2003 4:40pm est [2003/3/21 16:40 EST] permalink

exploring time travel and meeting myself one minute older

what if time travel happened not on long range but minutes or days scale, would i call myself Friday me or tomorrow Saturday me (what is tomorrow when time travel is possible ...)

this is explored in my all time favorite Lem short story 7th Voyage (local cached copy) from "Star Diaries of Ijon Tichy"

we typically imagine space exploration to be done by group of serious people and treated as serious topic but what if the group consists mostly of you at different ages:

(...) Meanwhile the arguments continued. The sight of such inaction, such wasting of precious time, drove me to despair, while the rocket rushed blindly on, straight ahead, plunging every now and then into another gravitational vortex. At last the ones wearing spacesuits started slugging it out with the ones who were not. I tried to introduce some sort of order into that absolute chaos and finally, after superhuman efforts, succeeded in organizing something that resembled a meeting, in which the one from next year--having seniority--was elected chairman by acclamation.
We then appointed an elective committee, a nominating committee, and a committee for new business, and four of us from next month were made sergeants at arms. But in the mean time we had passed through a negative vortex, which cut our number in half, so that on the very first ballot we lacked a quorum, and had to change the bylaws before proceeding to vote on the candidates for rudder-repairer. The map indicated the approach of still other vortices, and these undid all that we had accomplished so far: first the candidates already chosen disappeared, and then the Tuesday me showed up with the Friday me, who had his head wrapped in a towel, and they created a shameful scene. Upon passage through a particularly strong positive vortex we hardly fit in the cabin and corridor, and opening the hatch was out of the question--there simply wasn't room. But the worst of it was, these time displacements were in creasing in amplitude, a few grayhaired me's had already appeared, and here and there I even caught a glimpse of the close-cropped heads of children, that is of myself, of course--or rather--myselves from the halcyon days of boyhood.
I really can't recall whether I was still the Sunday me, or had already turned into the Monday me. Not that it made any difference. The children sobbed that they were being squashed in the crowd, and called for their mommy; the chairman--the Tichy from next year--let out a string of curses, because the Wednesday me, who had crawled under the bed in a futile search for chocolate, bit him in the leg when he accidentally stepped on the latter's finger. I saw that all this would end badly, particularly now as here and there gray beards were turning up. (...)

read to find out how multiple Tichys were saved by ...

created fri mar 14 2003 12:31pm est [2003/3/14 12:31 EST] permalink

How to get it all done (continued)?

Benefactor of mankind--thank you! (Score:4, Funny)
by EnlightenmentFan (617608) on Tuesday January 28, @02:29PM (#5176294)
(http://betsydevine.weblogger.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday January 21, @01:55PM)

Now I can set up computer #1 to play an infinite, obsessive
game of Tetris on computer #2, leaving me free at last to sit
down at computer #3 and get some work done. The $200 for
webcam and other hardware is cheap for an invention like this,
with the revolutionary potential of the wheel, or fire, or
even pizza delivery.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

and even more optimistic conclusion: those fast CPUs we have can be actually used to solve old problems:

Now, in 2003, technology (particularly CPU speed) has reached
a level that makes finishing this particular project almost
trivial.  Recently I have had some free time, and I am
going through some of my oldest personal projects and
finishing those that can be finished -- just so I can
have some closure.

when i was reading article i reloaded page and it seems that author had to shut it down because of 50x higher fees when over limit and huge traffic generated by some dead brain stupid cracker ...

created tue mar 11 2003 11:50pm est [2003/3/11 23:50 EST] permalink

How to get it all done?

created mon mar 10 2003 1:50am est [2003/3/10 1:50 EST] permalink

Small, Bigger, and Very Big World

If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I'd tell him would be to stick his head up and look around. I didn't really grasp it at the time, but the whole world we lived in was as fake as a twinkie. Not just school, but the entire town. Why do people move to suburbia? To have kids! So no wonder it seemed boring and sterile. The whole place was a giant nursery, an artificial town created explicitly for the purpose of breeding children.

created mon mar 03 2003 11:40pm est [2003/3/3 23:40 EST] permalink

Life goes on ...

I had million things to do, like be depressed, go to the gym, do 3 weeks worth of laundry( if i could help it, it would be 4-5 weeks), go to Whole Foods for weekly grocery shopping, catch up on the blog world, etc. etc.

created sat feb 10 2003 2:20pm est [2003/2/10 14:20 EST] permalink

Life in cubicles

And I said, I don't care if they lay me off either, because I told, I told Bill that if they move my desk one more time, then, then I'm, I'm quitting, I'm going to quit. And, and I told Don too, because they've moved my desk four times already this year, and I used to be over by the window, and I could see the squirrels, and they were married, but then, they switched from the Swingline to the Boston stapler, but I kept my Swingline stapler because it didn't bind up as much, and I kept the staples for the Swingline stapler and its not okay because if they take my stapler then I'll set the building on fire.

created sat feb 10 2003 2pm est [2003/2/10 EST] permalink

best man for (programmer) girl?

So, all those females out there, I mean, i have so many girl friends who complain there are no guys out there, or guys are hard to meet. Hey, make the trip to the world of programming.
The best and the brightest and the most original of all the guys are in the world of programming

created sat jan 18 2003 10am cet [2003/1/18 CET] permalink

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