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

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