Temporary Obsessions

My new poetry collection: In the Cloud: Poems for a Technological Age

Fri, 26 Aug 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It's been quite a while since I posted on this blog, but I have still been writing. During 2021, I started exploring some thoughts about math, science, technology, and other topics as poetry. The challenge to do this came from an online writing friend, and it turned out to be a lot of fun.

My first collection of poems is now available: In the Cloud: Poems for a Technological Age. I hope you enjoy it.

You can read a couple of samples here: "Ode to an NFT" and "River of News".

The Basics of Happiness

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In 2010, novelist Amy Bloom published an essay called "The Rap on Happiness" in the New York Times Book Review. In it she rounds up her reading of several then-contemporary books on happiness, a genre which seems to have continued strongly into the present.

She saves us a lot of time for all that reading (formatting added):

We could canvass [the authors and others] and produce the Fundamentally Sound, Sure-Fire Top Five Components of Happiness:

Be in possession of the basics — food, shelter, good health, safety.

Get enough sleep.

Have relationships that matter to you.

Take compassionate care of others and of yourself.

Have work or an interest that engages you.

That sounds about right. Nowhere on the list is necessarily making a lot of money, being famous, or having the big house.

But she also knows that feelings of happiness are fleeting, which is part of the magic:

The real problem with happiness is neither its pursuers nor their books; it’s happiness itself. Happiness is like beauty: part of its glory lies in its transience. It is deep but often brief (as Frost would have it), and much great prose and poetry make note of this. Frank Kermode wrote, “It seems there is a sort of calamity built into the texture of life.” To hold happiness is to hold the understanding that the world passes away from us, that the petals fall and the beloved dies. No amount of mockery, no amount of fashionable scowling will keep any of us from knowing and savoring the pleasure of the sun on our faces or save us from the adult understanding that it cannot last forever.

I'm guessing that an important secret in publishing is that the next 10,000 books on happiness don't add anything to the list, or that the simply end up in the same place.

Thank you, Ms. Bloom, for reading the books and giving us the short form!

Thank you, world, for my coffee

Thu, 19 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Thank you, world, for my coffee. It takes a lot of work by a lot of people for me to have it.

The coffee itself I bought as whole beans at an independent coffee shop in the next town over. It's a delightful place to meet a friend for coffee, although that hasn't been possible during the pandemic. I am thankful that they are still there, serving takeout coffee and selling coffee to be brewed at home.

Thank you, team at Karma, for supplying coffee beans.

As I understand it, the beans used in their espresso blend come from Africa. Thank you, coffee farmers in Africa, and thank you to coffee farmers all over the world. Thank you also to the people who transport the coffee to market, who move them on trucks and ships and railroads or whatever means to get them to America. Thank you to the people who make, operate, and service all the means of transportation involved.

Thank you to the people who designed, built, and service the equipment that Karma uses to roast the coffee. And to those whose work provides the electricity for the machines. Thank you to those who designed, make, and deliver the ziplock bags the coffee comes in.

Thank you, everyone, for making it possible for me to get great coffee beans at Karma.

I grind the coffee beans by hand using a hand grinder made of steel and ceramic. I thank the makers of steel and ceramics, those who refine the design of burr grinders for an excellent and precise grind, and the people who manufactured it. I have one little quibble with the design: the removable handle has a tendency to come off the grinder while you are turning it, which is a bit inconvenient. I bought it from Amazon, so thank you Internet and Amazon and all of the people who make all of those system work, even though I'm not sure that Amazon's effect on business has been all good, especially for the book business. On the other hand without the Internet and Amazon I probably never would have found the grinder at all. Even though it sounds like a lot of work to grind coffee beans by hand in the morning, it is a pleasant, almost meditative activity, without the early-morning noise of an electric grinder.

I use the espresso beans to make a faux latte. Instead of a real espresso machine, I brew it with an Aeropress, I heat milk in the microwave, and I froth it by hand with a whisk. Thank you to those who made my Aeropress, the scientists and engineers who discovered microwaves and invented the microwave ovens, those who manufactured the microwave oven and transported it so I could have it, and those who did the same for my nice whisk and the glass measuring cup that contains the milk.

Water is essential for coffee. Thank you to the town workers who operate the wells and the treatment system and the pipes that deliver water to my house, to all the workers who dug the wells and built the treatment system and laid the pipes. Thank you to the those who made and service all the parts in our house that make and deliver hot water.

I use milk to make the latte. I thank the generations of people who refined method of making lattes and roasting espresso. I thank the cows produce the milk, and the dairy farmers who take care of the cows, and the people who make sure that safe-to-drink milk makes its way from the farms to the store. I thank my wife for the grocery shopping and bringing home the milk from the store.

Of course, it's impossible to enumerate all of those who did some part of what it takes for me to have the coffee, and their part it in may be a tiny fraction of what they do. Even those with a direct step in the process are supported by many other people, and their work in turn is supported by yet more. It's easy to think of the people doing these many things as interchangeable, but all of the work was done by individual people.

Our worldwide systems for exchange, even with all their troubles and inequities, are remarkable creations. We can and we should work together to make those systems better for everyone. And I am thankful for the work of thousands—perhaps millions—for what may seem everyday and trivial.

Thank you, world, for my coffee.

Footnote: I wrote the first draft of this in a notebook, sipping my morning latte, in March of 2016. In 2018, author A. J. Jacobs came out with a book, Thanks a Thousand: A Gratitude Journey, in which he documents his attempt to thank every person involved in the making of the cup of coffee he has every morning. It's probably a great book. When I wrote this, I had no idea what he was up to.

What I wish I had learned about drawing in school

Wed, 18 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

When I was in elementary school, I learned I was bad at drawing. That turns out not to be true. Today, my drawing skill is not very high, but that's almost entirely about having so little practice at it over a very long time. Because I thought I was just bad at it.

Here's what I wish I had learned about drawing in school:

Whether or not you can draw a great-looking horse at age 5 or 6 has nothing to do with whether or not you will be able to draw well.
Drawing isn't about being the best in an art class. It's a valuable way of communicating, of helping to think things through, helping you see things, and (of course) artistic expression.
It doesn't matter what you draw to start with.
A lot of drawing is about learning to see, not about learning to move the pencil (or whatever you are drawing).
Skill comes from practice. The kids who drew "better" than I did in school? Probably they had been drawing a lot more before. Good for them!
Creativity comes with skill. Don't worry about being "creative" when you start to draw. Copying is fine. You can learn a lot from tracing.
There are plenty of techniques and tricks to learn. Artists have learned (or reinvented) these. Drawing a sketch of a person becomes a heck of a lot easier if you know a few simple guidelines about proportions and relationships of the human body.
You can draw from your imagination, but you don't have to start that way. Look at things in the world and learn to draw them. Use photographs. Getting started doesn't mean you have to start with what's in your head.
Draw to communicate any time you can. A sketch is often tremendously effective, even when it seems like a scrawl with missing details. This is another form of practice.
Try drawing to understand something you are learning, in any area. What things and relationships are involved? Diagram it!
It's OK to erase and adjust.
Don't worry about color to start.
Slow down.
Enjoy it.
Treat drawings as drafts, and try redoing them to make them better.
A "bad" first drawing can help you figure out how you want to do it. Without the bad one, you won't get to a good one.
Keep your drawings to see how you are improving.

I finally figured out that I might not be bad at drawing, and I'm drawing more. Not enough, not with the practice I'd like, but more.

User experience in warranty registration

Tue, 06 Oct 2015 16:35:00 +0000

I recently bought a Sony α6000 mirrorless camera, which I like a lot. Sony suggested doing the warranty registration, which sometimes has value on bigger purchases (especially those that may have firmware updates), so I decided to do it.

First issue: entering the model number. One might think (at least, I did) that the model number here is going to have something to do with "a6000", since that is on the box, the product literature, and so on. So I typed "a6000", and the very helpful completion gave me half a dozen matching model numbers, none of them exactly "a6000", and only one of them with a label saying what that model actually was. So I dug out the camera itself, squinted at the model number, and learned that it's actually an "ILCE6000" (the "E" seems to be very important to the system). The labeling wasn't very clear with that, but I'm pretty sure it's correct. Fortunately, the picture that showed up later for my "registered products" list looks right.

Second issue: The process collects more information than I would like to give just for a warranty registration, or that seems necessary for a warranty registration. Of course, I know they want to collect data for other reasons, but it doesn't give me a feeling of trust or better relationship with the company, especially one that has lost control of sensitive data in the past. This isn't unique to Sony, of course.

I generally avoid complaining about things on this blog—there's plenty of that on the Internet already. What I wanted to point out was that we are still building web sites and applications that are designed to be easy for the computers (and probably the programmers) to deal with, rather than working out a user experience that uses cheap compute cycles to make the process easier and more engaging for the person using it. (Actually, the fact that we still just talk about "users" is likely a symptom of the underlying problem.) This lack of attention to the customer is especially common on post-sale systems, from warranty registration to customer support. This could have been an opportunity for Sony to create a compelling experience that gets me more excited about the camera, and possibly about other Sony products. Instead, it's a dull, boring dead end that made me work harder.

Lessons I would commend to big companies (and small, but the big ones seem to suffer more from the disease): every time a customer gets in touch with you is an opportunity to build a better relationship. Every time you fail to improve the relationship pushes the customer away.

Pondering a media fast for October

Mon, 28 Sep 2015 16:50:00 +0000

I am contemplating taking a media fast for October. What does that mean, and why do I want to do it?

First, the why. For a long time, I've been feeling very scattered. Partly it's having a lot of projects in progress professionally, a busy family, volunteering service in various ways, the responsibilities of owning a home—the usual busy-ness of contemporary life. Part of it may be the common decline in the ability to concentrate as I get older. But part of it is responding to and immersing myself in the flood of bite-sized media we have today, including the constant search for the next bit of new news, from the web, from Twitter, from email, from the TV….the list goes on.

Even reading a book is hard without feeling the temptation to check my phone, to divert myself with something else. I find this true even if I am interested in the book, and even when I theoretically have the time to spend of it without a real alternative demand on my tie. I'm not the first person to observe this (and I won't bore you with links to the many people who have, even though they have done so more eloquently and thoroughly than I am doing here). But I do want to do something about this.

I remember times when I could be completely immersed in a book, fiction or non-fiction. Or spend an afternoon researching an interesting topic without itching to be doing something else. Or work for hours on a piece of software. Those are worthwhile experiences, and I rarely have them now.

Obviously, I can't control all aspects of my obligations, what I need to do, and what I have committed to. But as a first step in regaining attention and focus, I can try to change my media diet. In October, that's what I intend to do, and here's the list of what I plan to try.

No Twitter. I'm going to delete the app from my phone, which is the way I read it most of the time. (Caveat: I might occasionally send a tweet through the web site, which I don't do that often anyway, and I'll leave on Twitter's email notices about @-mentions so that I can find out about any actual conversation I might want to be in. It's @wintreese, if you're interested.)
No Facebook, except for looking up something particular. I don't actually use it that much anyway, but I'm going to turn off the mail notifications I get.
Unsubscribing from email notifications: of newsletters, blogs, advertising, etc. I want my email inbox to have messages from people I have relationships with, and I don't want to delete a bunch of messages just to see those. In other words, I want to communicate with actual people.
Filtering mailing list messages to the side. I do participate in some mailing lists, and I value those communities. But I will put them to the side for occasional reading.
Use the web only for research and answering questions. No surfing, no clicking on interesting links unless they are directly related to the goal of the web search. The pile of bookmarked URLs I have for reading later? They will remain unread. (Caveat: I do have some piles of bookmarks to unread pages related to specific projects. Those are OK.)
TV - limited to a single program at a time, deliberately chosen in advance. No binge watching, no TV as background noise.
No using a laptop or phone while watching TV or a movie. If it's not worth paying attention to, I don't want it on.
Podcasts. This may be the hardest one for me actually; I listen to podcasts almost the time when I am doing something that permits it: driving, working in the yard, working out a the gym, etc. I want to be deliberate about the listening—in particular, not using it to fill relatively small gaps of time. Those I want to keep free for thinking or letting my mind wander. This one is more of a balance than the others.
Leave the phone on my desk at home, except when I have a real reason to be using it.
No checking the phone for anything during short waits, such as waiting in line somewhere. Occasional checks for email when I'm away from the house or office are OK, as long as they are occasional. Since I don't expect to get much email to deal with, there shouldn't be much to be done.
Scrub the phone of apps I don't want or don't really use.
No playing Two Dots.
Instagram only to keep up with a small number of family and friends who like it.

Some media is OK:

Books. I want to spend a lot of time reading seriously.
Movies, with deliberate choice in advance, whether in the theater, from Netflix/Amazon, or on TV.
Catching up on my long-form web reading saved to Pocket or Instapaper. I'm actually not entirely sure about this one, but I usually save things that I want to read with attention, so I think they fit the goal.
Magazines, in moderation. That's mostly because I don't read them much now, and I would like to revisit that experience.
Paper newspapers. I don't read them that much, and I don't particularly want to resume it, but it's allowed.
Blogging is OK, although I do recognize there is some irony in that.

What do I want to get out of this?

I want to focus deeply on some things that matter to me.
I want to create space for the ideas that only come when nothing is crowding them out.
I want to be more present when I am with another person.
I want to feel like my mind is less turbulent and trying to get on to something else.
I want to read more books.

At the end of October, I'll revisit the list and see how it went.

Tracing emacs init from an org-mode file

Fri, 21 Aug 2015 02:35:00 +0000

At about the same time I discovered Artur Malabarba's elisp-bug-hunter, which automatically does a bisection search to find a problem in an Emacs init file, I had my own init file problem to debug. Although the bug hunter looks very interesting, I had a couple of complications in using it, so I looked for another way to debug the file.

The main thing I needed to know was where in my long init file the problem was occurring. I keep my Emacs init code in an org-mode file, with a little hook to initialize org-mode and load the file with org-babel-load-file. That seems to be pretty common these days. The obvious candidate for tracing is just the headline on the org block containing the code; that's probably enough to localize the problem enough to chase it down.

It turns out by playing games with the comments that org-babel generates, we can do just that. We can tell org to insert comments that link back to the org source file into the output Emacs Lisp file with the header

  #+PROPERTY: header-args :comments link

(or an equivalent setting elsewhere; see the Org manual for details).

Then we change the way the comments are formatted, turning them into code that simply logs a message. Here's the code for that, wrapping org-babel-load-file:

  (let ((org-babel-tangle-comment-format-beg
         "(message "%file: %source-name")n")
        (org-babel-tangle-comment-format-end "")
        (org-babel-tangle-uncomment-comments t))
    (org-babel-load-file "my-emacs-init.org"))

Using let means that these changes to the variables are only in effect during the load.

Now, after Emacs starts up, we can look in the *Messages* buffer to see if any unexpected messages occurred, and they will appear under the headline of the offending code.

Happy hacking!

Book review: A Dangerous Inheritance by Alison Weir

Tue, 28 Apr 2015 00:47:00 +0000

Game of Thrones has nothing on Tudor-era England when it comes to political intrigue.^[[#fn.1][1]] In A Dangerous Inheritance (Hutchinson, 2012), Alison Weir fictionalizes the linked and somewhat parallel lives of Kate Plantagenet, the illegitimate daughter of King Richard III, and Lady Katherine Grey, a possible successor to Queen Elizabeth I. It's fiction, but Weir has hewed closely to the historical record, of which there is a surprising amount, at least for Katherine Grey. Kate's tale is somewhat more speculative, based on just a few a historical references, but the background of her story and the events in England at that time are closely based on what is know about the history.

Weir's structure is interesting, building on parallel events in the lives of the two women: marriage, love, pregnancy, and imprisonment. Separated by about a century, the author gives them a shared interest in the fate of two princes—possible rivals for the throne—in the time of Richard III. The questions of royal succession and the conflicts over it is a consistent them in the book.

The politics, power structure, and intrigues of the characters create a fascinating but confusing background. Much of the confusion comes from the history, especially from the many characters with similar names—there are several Richards, Elizabeths, and Johns, for example—as well as the different people holding the same title (say, the Duke of York) at different times. This is compounded by the English custom of referring to the people by first name, last name, or title. The names are not the fault of the novelist, of course, but they do challenge the reader in keeping track of a vast array of secondary and tertiary characters, especially between two separate historical periods.

More than once I wanted to look up more historical detail about the England Weir describes, both to better understand the historical basis for her characters, and to fill in some of the gaps in my own knowledge of that time, especially the history that the characters clearly knew. As it turns out, her history is very well-researched, which was simply not clear to me at the beginning. Still, there is much I do not know of the time between the lives of the two women, especially since that period includes the reign of Henry VIII.

In an afterword, Weir gives details of what is known and not known about these two women and the events of their times, giving a welcome foundation for the historical context of the novel. Of course, this is a novel, not a history, and Weir succeeds in exploring her main characters and their lives in politically turbulent times.

Alison Weir has her own web site, naturally. A Dangerous Inheritance is available at your local library, Powell's, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and has many reviews at Goodreads.

<<footnotes>>

Footnotes:

<<text-footnotes>>

^{[[#fnr.1][1]]} Of course, the similarities to English history for Game of Thrones are so obvious that we need not comment on them further.

Writing AppleScript with Emacs

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 20:03:00 +0000

In playing around with AppleScript recently, I started wondering if there was an AppleScript mode for Emacs. Of course, there is. In fact, one version is bundled in with Aquamacs, which is the main version of Emacs I use on the Mac. The copyright date on it 2004. Is there a more recent version?

As far as I can tell, not really. Google has a few results with actual code:

ieure/applescript-mode (This is the version linked to by the MELPA package repository as well) (last updated 2009)
a copy in the Emacsmirror github repository, which "collects Emacs Lisp packages and distributes them in [the] form of Git repositories – one per package" (last updated 2004)

The EmacsMirror version is the same as the one packaged with Aquamacs, except that string-to-int has been changed to string-to-number. The ieure version seems to have some code reformatting and very minor code changes, and does not have the string-to-number change.

For the moment, then, it seems safe to stay with the one that ships with Aquamacs. The mode is apparently very stable or rarely used, or both.

Getting better with Emacs Dired

Tue, 17 Feb 2015 17:13:00 +0000

I've used Dired, the Emacs directory editor, on occasion for a long time. Like anything with Emacs, there are the commands that get wired into your fingers, and those that you never quite remember. Here's a bit of getting better with dired.

Sometimes it's helpful to take a quick look at a file before deciding to rename or delete it:

o	open in other window (below in frame). Reuses bottom window.
C-o	Display file in other window, but do not select it.

`C-o` is especially helpful for a quick look, since the keyboard focus stays in the dired buffer.

I also found a helpful function on the Emacs Wiki page for Dired Find File Other Frame. It opens a file in a new frame, instead of just a new window. I added a slight variant to open the file read only (view mode) in a new frame as well.

  (defun dired-find-file-other-frame ()
    "In Dired, visit this file or directory in another frame."
    (interactive)
    (find-file-other-frame
     (dired-get-file-for-visit)))

  (defun wt/dired-find-file-read-only-other-frame ()
    "In Dired, visit this file or directory in another frame."
    (interactive)
    (find-file-read-only-other-frame
     (dired-get-file-for-visit)))

  (eval-after-load "dired"
    '(progn
       (define-key dired-mode-map "F"
                   'dired-find-file-other-frame)
       (define-key dired-mode-map "V"
                   'dired-find-file-read-only-other-frame)))

Finally, a little non-dired bonus hack, from the Emacs Wiki page on Killing Buffers:

  (substitute-key-definition 'kill-buffer
                             'kill-buffer-and-its-windows
                             global-map)

This changes C-x C-k to kill the windows, and frame if appropriate, that were showing a buffer when it is killed. I'm not sure it works best yet, but I'm giving it a try now.

A Trick to Sort Through Finder/Spotlight Search Results

Mon, 16 Feb 2015 16:13:00 +0000

Sometimes I have occasion to search my Mac with Spotlight for files (usually via the Finder) and then consider each file in turn for whatever I am looking for. For example, I recently wanted to look at everything I had noted about the reference manager Zotero. It's easy to get a list of all the files, but harder to check them off a list as I look at them.

When I am done with each file, I tag it with a color (usually gray) using a quick right-click, and extend the search to include "Tags is not gray" ^[[#fn.1][1]]

As I tag each file gray after I look at it, they automatically disappear from the list. When I'm done, I do another search for gray (which is now a saved search) and remove the tag from all the files.

<<footnotes>>

Footnotes:

<<text-footnotes>>

^{[[#fnr.1][1]]} Note that "Tags" doesn't show up in the main criteria list by default, so look for it under "Other". You can check the box to make it show up on the main criteria list for future searches.

ProfHacker's 25 Verbs to Use Instead of Email

Thu, 12 Feb 2015 15:37:00 +0000

We use email for many different things now: sharing information, links to entertainment, making requests. Not all emails are the same, so we shouldn't write them the same.

The ProfHacker blog at The Chronicle of Higher Education has a nice short post on "25 Verbs to Use Instead of Email" that helps frame the purpose of a message, which in turns guides how to write it.

Next time, don't just email someone. Respond, invite, share with, or amuse them.

Some useful perspectives for OmniFocus

Tue, 10 Feb 2015 16:18:00 +0000

One of my favorite TV programs of all time was The West Wing. When it comes to getting things done, I have often wished for the software equivalent of what happens with President Jed Bartlett finishes one thing and calls, "What's next?" Ideally, finding the next thing wouldn't be difficult, and it wouldn't require reconsidering a myriad of possible things to do.

We haven't reached that degree of AI yet, so the next best thing would be a way to organize what you have to do in a way that brings up a small set of choices for what's next, so you can decide based on whatever combination of priority, urgency, deadlines, energy level, and possibility makes sense in the moment. I have even mused about trying to write a program that does this, but it never got high enough on my own to-do list.

Instead, I've been using OmniFocus from The Omni Group to keep track of things to do for a long time, with varying degrees of success. As with many powerful programs, figuring out to make it work best for you can be a challenge. After a lot of experimentation and daily use, I have settled on a few perspectives that help keep things moving without spending too much time simply dealing with the to-do list.

<<outline-container-sec-1>>

The "Due" Perspective

<<text-1>> The first one is "Due". It lists the actions that are due soon, which I use for two things: tasks with deadlines and for reminders of long-term recurring tasks (like "pay the accumulated bill"). The setup for "Due" is:

Don't use project hierarchy
Group actions by Ungrouped
Sort actions by Context (It doesn't really matter to me which sorting is used; I try to keep the list of possible due actions short enough that the sorting is not important)
Filter by Due Soon
Filter by availability Remaining. Allowing any remaining task to appear means that I can see something that is due, even it got blocked by some other task in a project.
Filter by duration Any duration
Filter contexts Remaining
Sidebar selection: All contexts

Also, I often set the defer date for an item to the date I want it to appear, with the due date set to a couple days later so that the configuration to show upcoming due items doesn't cause it to be shown earlier than I want. For real deadlines, I usually set the due date a couple days in advance anyway, with a defer date (if any) that gives me plenty of time to take care of it.

<<outline-container-sec-2>>

The "Top Flagged" Perspective

<<text-2>> The second important perspective is "Top Flagged". I use flags to designate the items that I want to tackle on a particular day. This is, in effect, the list of things I want to do today. Most days, I start at the top and work down, since I try to keep my most important projects at the top. I also try to write tasks that can be completed in a reasonable time block (usually less than half an hour), rather than big amorphous tasks like "Write bestselling novel." In this way, I can also get to the less important tasks soon enough.

The setup for this one is similar to Due, with the following differences:

Sort actions by Project
Filter by status Due or Flagged
Filter by availability Available. I want to see only tasks that I am able to do now.
Sidebar Selection: A selection of the contexts relevant to getting my main tasks done. Include whichever ones are most important and possible for you to work with.

Sorting by project means that I can use the organization of Projects in the sidebar to give me a sense of relative priority in the projects as I scan down the list.

<<outline-container-sec-3>>

The "All Flagged" Perspective

<<text-3>> The third one is a slight variant of "Top Flagged". Sometimes during a review, or as part of capturing a new idea, I'll flag an item that isn't the next available action for a project. It's a note to myself that I need to deal with this soon, even if I don't want to rearrange the tasks to get it to the top. It's also useful for parallel projects, since OmniFocus only lists the first one as "next."

It's just like "Top Flagged," except:

Filer by availability is Remaining
Sidebar Selection is blank, meaning that all projects and contexts are available. This ensures that I don't miss anything.

This perspective is most helpful when "Top Flagged" is empty, or nearly empty, since all of those items will show up here as well.

<<outline-container-sec-4>>

Getting perspective, fast

<<text-4>> OmniFocus lets you customize the toolbar to include your own perspectives, using the View->Customize Toolbar menu item. Here's the main part of mine:

<<outline-container-sec-5>>

Keeping things in perspective

<<text-5>> OmniFocus is a great place to create a complete list of projects and tasks, but it can get overwhelming to look at all of it to decide what to do next. Perspectives can limit what's in view to make it easier to focus on what's important at a given time and decide what to do next.

Taking care in writing with statistics

Thu, 05 Feb 2015 17:43:19 +0000

This morning's Wall Street Journal has an article on page A3 entitled "Computer-Based Tests Put Typing Back on the Curriculum" (on the web, it is "Common Core-Linked Tests Spur Schools to Teach Typing" — subscription required), an interesting discussion of how the computer-based testing associated with the Common Core curriculum implicitly assumes sufficiently good skills in typing to write answers for the tests.

One of the challenges described is the disparity in school support for computing, particularly between higher and lower income areas. The article states:

The most recent numbers from the U.S. Education Department show that schools with 75% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch have, on average, 170 computers in the school, compared with 209 computers in schools with less than 35% of students eligible.

The data suggest a problem, and the conclusion is probably correct. Unfortunately, the data as presented do not give sufficient information for us to reach that conclusion: we don't know how the schools compare in size. The most useful measure here would probably be the ratio of students to computers. A school with 1000 students and 170 computers is probably in better shape than a school with 2000 students and 209 computers.

Perhaps this was a problem in the Department of Education's presentation of the data; we don't have enough information about it to know.

In any case, when we write with statistics and other data, it's important to make sure that the story from the data supports the points we are trying to make.

Close Encounters with a Bad Startup Sound

Mon, 19 Jan 2015 16:31:02 +0000

Episode 148 of the fabulous podcast 99% Invisible is about trademarked sounds (yes, it turns out you can do that). It's a fascinating 16 minutes on sound design.

One of the sounds mentioned is that startup chime used by Apple for the Macs. Back in the early 1990s, some people at Digital Equipment Corp. (aka DEC) wanted to add a startup chime to DEC's workstations. They thought the obvious choice was the notes for the initials: D,E,C. Sonic branding direct from the name! What could be better?

Unfortunately, D,E,C is parallel to the first three notes of the iconic theme from Steven Spielberg's Close Encounters of the Third Kind from 1977. Although the actual notes are G,A,F, F (octave lower), C, for those familiar with the movie, the D,E,C startup almost demands the completion of the sequence. Rather than a soothing, inviting soundscape as the system was booting, it created an unfulfilled tension.

As far as I know, the tones were never used in a shipping product.

The Practice of Cloud System Administration

Fri, 19 Dec 2014 13:52:00 +0000

Building and operating large-scale cloud computing systems is becoming more common, but that doesn't make it easy. A new book, The Practice of Cloud System Administration: Designing and Operating Large Distributed Systems, Volume 2 by Tom Limoncelli, Strata Chalup, and Christina Hogan can help. It's a comprehensive look at the technical, organizational, and people issues involved in creating and managing big—really big—cloud computing systems.

I had the pleasure of reviewing the manuscript, and then interviewing the authors for Pearson's InformIT. There's a good review of the book at InfoQ, and the book's own web site is at the-cloud-book.com. You can buy it at Powell's, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.

Joe Bob says check it out.

Finding Newton's Principia is Harder than You Might Expect

Tue, 16 Dec 2014 21:03:00 +0000

<<outline-container-sec-1>> tl;dr Bottom line: If you want to read a good translation of Newton's Principia, you almost certainly want Cohen and Whitman's: Barnes & Noble Amazon

<<text-1>> In 1687, Isaac Newton published Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica, a foundational work of science originally written in Latin. Finding an English translation turned out to much harder than I expected.

A simple Google search for "newton's principia" turns up unsurprising links on the first page: the Wikipedia entry, a scanned ebook at archive.org, the SparkNotes summary for those interested in cramming for the test, an entry in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (don't start clicking links here if you have something else to get done), a link to Amazon (not linked here for reasons that will become clear), a one-paragraph item on Pearson's abbreviated Infoplease, a color scanned copy of Newton's own copy of the first edition at the University of Cambridge's digital library (which the detailed description understates as "with manuscript notes by the author!), a Project Gutenberg ebook of the first edition, and a page on Principia in an online exhibition from the University of Sydney of important works in the evolution of modern thought.

As it turns out, the most useful thing would probably have been to skimmed through the Wikipedia article to find out about translations, but it didn't occur to me at that point that the answer would be so complicated. A quick search for "newton principia pdf" turned up links to various scanned versions of the Latin editions and some old translations to English. Having failed to quickly find something readable, I searched both Barnes & Noble and Amazon. That's where the search gets to be extraordinarily confusing, because of various editions in Latin and translations into English.

The first edition was completed in 1686 and approved by Samuel Pepys (then President of the Royal Society) for publication, which actually occurred in 1687 (the date in the front matter is the day Pepys gave his imprimatur for it). According to Wikipedia, Edmund Halley (then clerk of the Society) paid for the publication because the Royal Society had already used up its publication funds for Francis Willughby's De Historia Piscium (The History of Fish). It also turns out that later Halley was not paid for his clerkship as promised by the Royal Society, but was paid with copies of/The History of Fish/. Newton also published a second edition in 1713, and a third in 1726, shortly before Newton's death. The third edition was thoroughly revised from the first, although most of the changes came between the first and the second. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a discussion of some of the differences, as does I. Bernard Cohen's A Guide to Newton's Principia that accompanies his translation.

All of those editions were in Latin. The Principia has been translated into English only a few times for publication: by Andrew Motte in 1729, by Robert Thorp (Book 1 only) in 1777 with a second edition in 1802, along with a version of Motte's partially revised by Florian Cajori published in 1934, and modern translation by I. Bernard Cohen and Anne Whitman in 1999. Motte's translation was revised by N. W. Chittenden for the first American edition in 1846 (scanned copy). There is also an online translation by Dr. Ian Bruce at 17th Century Maths, and there have also been various translations of portions of Principia.

In addition to the scanned Latin texts already mentioned, the definitive Latin edition now was edited by Alexandre Koyré and I. Bernard Cohen with Anne Whitman, and published by Harvard University in two volumes in 1972 as Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica: Facsimile of third edition (1726) with variant readings. The accompanying Introduction to Isaac Newton's "Principia" is available as a reprint e-book.

Cohen critiques both Motte and the Motte-Cajori translations the Guide. Cohen also wrote an Introduction to Newton's Principia, originally published by Harvard University Press. It is hard to find, but there is a 2013 reprint, as well as used book stores. The Harvard Gazette published a short article about Cohen and Whitman's translation when it was published by the University of California Press in 1999.

So all of this explains why there's not a good English version available online–there's really only one choice, and it's Cohen and Whitman's. But that's not the end of the problem: it's hard to figure all this out on either Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Both sites conflate various of these versions in reprints together, including the comments, so it's not at all obvious what you're getting. The descriptions and the comments don't always refer to exactly what is displayed. Some of the commenters have been kind enough to specify exactly what they are talking about, so there are some clues. But beware the one-click purchase here!

Bottom line: If you want to read a good translation of the Principia, you almost certainly want Cohen and Whitman's: Barnes & Noble Amazon

Bonus link: Brent Nordist has his own notes In Search of Principia about finding a free online translation.

A program to tell me when library books are due

Mon, 20 Oct 2014 20:27:00 +0000

We frequently get books from the library, and it sometimes gets hard to keep track of what's due when. So I wrote a Python program to scrape the web page for the local library system (Minuteman Library Network in eastern Massachusetts). It's old enough that it scrapes the "classic" interface, which I also find easier to use. The scraper is very primitive, picking things out of the HTML with regular expressions, but it does the job.

Given a file listing library card IDs and PINs, the program prints a list of books checked out, along with a note for any books on hold that have come in. I use it with a cron job on a Linux machine so the results are mailed to be every night. It's available on github at treese/booksdue. As noted in the README, the only Python package dependency is mechanize, for pretending to be a web browser.

This kind of program is a reminder that APIs for data make it possible to use the data in different ways, without the application vendor having to do all the work.

Some of my columns from ACM Network Magazine

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 20:04:20 +0000

From 1998 to 2009, I wrote a regular column called "Putting It Together" for the NetWorker magazine published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). The magazine has been discontinued, but here are some of my favorites from that time. Each one is a PDF of the column as it appeared in the magazine.

2000-Q4 Data Collection and Consumer Privacy

2001-Q4 Its Ten Oclock - Do You Know Where Your Data Are

2002-Q4 Web Services for the People

2003-Q2 Programming Literacy - Is it for everyone

2004-Q2 The Coming of Sensor Networks

2005-Q3 Once Collected, Data Isnt Private

2008-Q3 Being Too Connected

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:43 +0000

2005-Q3 Once Collected, Data Isnt Private

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:23 +0000

2004-Q2 The Coming of Sensor Networks

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:19 +0000

2003-Q2 Programming Literacy - Is it for everyone

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:16 +0000

2002-Q4 Web Services for the People

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:14 +0000

2001-Q4 Its Ten Oclock - Do You Know Where Your Data Are

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:08 +0000

2000-Q4 Data Collection and Consumer Privacy

Fri, 26 Sep 2014 19:54:02 +0000

Showing off a JavaScript popup in Wordpress

Wed, 07 Aug 2013 01:35:12 +0000

This is just a test. Mouse over the text example to see the popup.

Tax Policy: A Modest Proposal

Sat, 05 Jan 2013 21:45:58 +0000

I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that most members of Congress don't have much direct interaction with the tax system. They've got accountants to do it, and they look it over and sign the forms. Probably with a “man, I'm glad I didn't have to do that” sigh of relief. Then they're on to talking to the next lobbyist or something.

Near as I can tell, the biggest problem with the income tax system in the U.S. isn't whether it's progressive, or flat, or whether the rates or too high or too low. No, the problem is that it's too complicated. I'm not even sure that full-time experts (i.e., those accountants) actually understand it. TurboTax is magic in terms of making it possible for consumers to do the taxes, but even it bails out on the fine points of the AMT.

The complication causes two problems (aside from enabling a large business sector that derives its income from helping people and corporations pay less tax). The first is that the richer you are, the more you can avoid paying. The second is that you don't actually know if you're doing it right, and there's probably something you did wrong that they can hunt you down for, if they decided to do so.

Therefore, we present a modest proposal for how members of Congress should prepare their taxes.

All members of Congress shall be required to submit their taxes on time, without extensions. In preparing their taxes they may use:

Pencil, paper, and a pen for signing their their forms and checks.
A four-function calculator.
A telephone to call the IRS help line, using the regular hold queues, with no indication that they are members of Congress.
Their paper copies of records and receipts.
They must complete the AMT calculations for the record, whether or not it appears that the AMT will apply to them.
For each tax benefit, they must write out, in legible longhand, “The XXX tax deduction/credit does not (does) apply to me.”

I imagine that if these rules were adopted, the tax code would be rather simpler in short order. In the current economic climate, I also imagine that this would be denounced as a job-killing proposal because of its effects on the employment of accountants.

Is Emacs hard to learn?

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:13:31 +0000

For years, even decades, there's an idea floating around that Emacs is hard to learn. I've always been a bit puzzled by this, because the basics don't really seem that different from most other text editors. The commands and keys to use are a little different, but they're not any more arbitrary than any other editor. The focus on keyboard commands is different from what one sees today, but special keys like arrows all work. So why does it seem hard?

I suspect there are two main reasons for this. First, there's never any end of learning in sight. There is always something more to learn about what Emacs (or an add-on package) can do, and so you never feel like you have learned it all. Second, there's always someone who will tell you, probably in an unfortunately condescending way, that there's some magic keystroke or M-x command that will do something fancy for you.

Which is a shame, because being able to do more with text, quickly and efficiently, is real power. It's not that Emacs has a steep learning curve. Emacs has a practically infinite curve with no asymptotic limit. And that's something we should value in software.

(Of course, XKCD has weighed in on this.)

On the word "graffle"

Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:16:42 +0000

If you use, or have heard of, the diagramming program OmniGraffle on the Mac, you might have wondered "What the
heck does graffle mean?"

Googling around, I found that the usual story is that it's a cool sounding nonsense word chosen to contrast with "Visio". The Wikipedia article on OmniGraffle quotes the former president of the company as saying as much.

The other day, I came across an idea that may explain why the name works so well.

I was listening to a Teaching Company lecture by John McWhorter about the changes in language. He happened to mention that "le", as in "dribble" was once a suffix denoting repeated action. For example, "drip+le" in Middle English, more or less, meant "repeated dripping"–or "dribbling". You can find a bit more about this online.

Which, of course, means that "graffle" would mean "repeated graphing". A perfect name.

I don't doubt that the word was made up as described, but I've always thought the name was better just a nonsense word. So maybe the linguistic construct just resonates with the scraps of language we have rattling around in our subconscious. Or maybe I'm just making it up.

Netflix Confusion

Thu, 25 Aug 2011 16:07:11 +0000

I've been trying out the Netflix streaming-only service, mostly using a Wii to display on the TV. It doesn't have everything I'd like to see (many titles are still available only through their DVDs), but it's got plenty to keep me (and the family) busy.
The web site says I can put my account on hold while I'm on vacation, so I did that while we were away. I expected it to work like my newspaper subscription: while I'm away, I don't get those papers, and I don't get charged for them. Seems fair, and I'm glad the newspaper business works this way.
When we got back, I checked my account, and the billing date hadn't changed. A little bit of googling didn't clarify how they handle it, so I called customer support.
Turns out, for streaming only, it doesn't have any effect. You can put it on hold all you want, and they still bill you on the next scheduled date. It's completely pointless.
Well, not quite. After a discussion with the customer service agent, I learned that if you have a hold that crosses the billing date, billing is delayed until it restarts. So if your vacation is conveniently scheduled across a billing date, you might get partial credit for you. But that seems like an odd policy (although it's sort of obvious about how that's easy to implement in the code for the billing system).
I had a nice discussion with the customer service agent about it. She both explained the situation and took notes on my comments about it, which is far better than most phone customer service usually goes.
Turns out the Netflix “Contact Us” page is also rather confusing. The first few links, such as “Questions about a charge?” take you back to your account information page, which is where I started. Only the final link “Call Customer Service,” actually gets you to something that resembles actual contact. So the information is there, but it's concealed by things that may be helpful, but are not actually “contacting us.”
Bottom line: don't bother with vacation holds on streaming Netflix, unless you're going to be away on your billing date. Or unless they change the policy, so keep an eye on that.

Choosing which email address in a Mac address book group

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 17:54:27 +0000

Found this out after a bit of Googling, so I'm recording it for posterity here, too:

Suppose you've got a group in the Mac address book for sending emails, and suppose that some of the members have more than one email address. Which one gets used for sending the emails?

To choose (which you can do separately for each group), select Edit->Edit Distribution List from the Address Book menu. Select the group, then choose the email address you want for each member, if the right one isn't already shown in bold. You can select only one per person.

It also turns out that to do this after adding a new group, you have to restart Address Book. Not obvious, but good to know. Thanks to "RT11 Guru" in the Apple forums.

Oh, and apparently none of this works for smart groups. Maybe they are not quite so smart yet.

Speculative Horizons

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 01:36:49 +0000

At the library the other day, I happened across Speculative Horizons, a short fantasy anthology edited by Patrick St-Denis. St-Denis blogs at “Pat's Fantasy Hotlist”. The book includes original short stories by Brian Ruckley, Hal Duncan, Tobias S. Buckell, C. S. Friedman, and L. E. Modesitt, Jr. The lead-off story, “Soul Mate,” by C. S. Friedman sets the tone of short but unexpected twists for the collection. It was thoroughly engaging, and most of the stories linger in the memory, whether you like it or not.

Me and my 'quaints

Sun, 19 Dec 2010 04:03:01 +0000

According to Facebook, I've got quite a few “friends”. If you asked me to write down a list of friends, I wouldn't have nearly so many. I know all of my Facebook friends, and I've even met most of them in person. But Facebook distorts the meaning of the word now, making it sound like there's are relationships that don't really exist.
I'm not the first person to make that observation, of course–not by a long shot. In fact, recently I was listening to an interview with an author making the case that we should revive the term “acquaintance” for our Facebook and other online friends (with the exception, naturally, of our real friends). (I wish I could remember the interviewer and author, but the names continue to escape me.)
The problem is that “acquaintance” sounds so formal. “My Facebook acquaintances” doesn't roll off the tongue, much less the fingertips texting a tweet.
So let's call them ‘quaints'. It sounds almost the same, only shorter. And it works in all the common Facebook usages:
“I've got a lot of Facebook quaints now.”
“Why don't you quaint me on Facebook?”
“She unquainted him after they broke up.”
So, if we know each other, quaint me on Facebook.

A Novel in a Month

Tue, 30 Nov 2010 15:32:47 +0000

Just passed 50,000 words on a novel for National Novel Writing Month. It's not done, and it might not ever be. It's a lot of fun–you should try it next year.

More about the experience later.

AppleScript to convert Excel files to CSV

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 16:04:36 +0000

On occasion, I need to convert Excel files to CSV for parsing by other programs. A little Googling turned up a script from Jason Garber posted here. I'm including it here because it's (1) short, and (2) I had to tweak it a tiny bit for Excel 2008:

  # Convert Excel files to CSV.
  # Original from http://jasongarber.com/articles/2007/06/23/convert-excel-to-csv/
  # Minor modification for Excel 2008 dictionary to use "CSV file format" instead
  # of "CSV" in the save command.

  set theFolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose the folder that contains your Excel files"
  tell application "Finder" to set theFiles to (files of theFolder)
  set fileCount to count theFiles
  repeat with i from 1 to fileCount
      set fName to text 1 thru -5 of ((name of item i of theFiles) as text)
      if ((name of item i of theFiles) as text) ends with ".xls" then
          set tName to (theFolder as text) & fName & ".csv"
          tell application "Microsoft Excel"
              activate
              open (item i of theFiles) as text
              save fName in tName as CSV file format
              close active workbook without saving
          end tell
      end if
  end repeat

Thanks, Jason!

A Starbucks dead zone

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 17:30:30 +0000

There's a "Starbucks dead zone" west of Boston, almost centered on the DoubleTree Hotel in Waltham. You can see it on Google Maps. When I looked at the search, point A in Waltham is a bookstore with a cafe that serves Starbucks coffee, not an actual Starbucks store. If you look closely, you can see the other matching dots around the west, in Bedford, Concord, Sudbury, Wayland, and Wellesley. It's not a perfect circle, but it's a nice ring.

NBC can't do math

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 22:51:41 +0000

On a story tonight about large serving sizes of cheap food, NBC noted that the average dinner plate has gone from 9" in diameter in the 1960s to 12" today, "or 33% larger". But, from a food point of view, it's area that matters, and a 12" plate is 77% larger in area than a 9" plate (because area grows as the square of the radius).

Do the math, NBC!

Intuit can't download tax data from Intuit?

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 23:19:26 +0000

My business uses Paycycle, owned by Intuit, for processing payroll. But Turbotax, made by Intuit, can't import W-2 data from Intuit.

What's up with that?

Then again, Turbotax data import this year isn't impressive. It crashes downloading from one brokerage, and gets mangled names for securities on another one.

Programmers of the World, remove the hyphens!

Fri, 22 Jan 2010 20:29:40 +0000

Like many of you, I've written code for web sites. How hard is it to remove spaces and hyphens in credit card numbers and phone numbers? Usually, it's a one-line regexp. And some test cases. Don't forget the test cases.

People make measurably fewer mistakes when they can punctuate long number strings. It's easy enough for us to let them do it.

So write the code.

Loading JNI libraries on the Mac

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 21:28:31 +0000

I've been trying to build a simple JNI library from C code on the Mac (Snow Leopard). Compiling it seems pretty straightforward, but the Java library loader isn't happy. I can call
= System.load("/tmp/jnitest.jnilib");=
which works fine, or
= System.loadLibrary("jnitest") // or System.loadLibrary("jnitest.jnilib")=
with java.library.path set to "/tmp", which doesn't work.

I've given up trying to understand it for now. I spent way too long googling on the Intertubes for information, which points to problems with Java 1.6 on Snow Leopard, but I didn't find anything that was even consistent with this behavior. On the other hand, I can at least make progress for the moment, since the JNI calls work.

Browsing code with Aquamacs Emacs

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 13:32:53 +0000

.. -- mode: rst --

I'm working with some C, C++, and Java code now, so it's time to get Emacs set up to do that nicely on my Mac. Getting all the pieces working was trickier than I expected, so here are some notes about it. I wanted to get a working setup that includes ECB (the Emacs Code Browser) and JDEE (the Java Development Environment for Emacs). Both of them use CEDET (the Collection of Emacs Development Environment Tools).

Started off with a clean installation of Aquamacs, a nice adaptation of Emacs for Mac OS. The JDE plugin for Aquamacs is nice, but the current version of ECB needs a newer version of JDE, so I didn't install the plugin.
Installed ant-contrib package for JDE to use::

sudo port install ant-contrib

Ant itself was already available.

Checked CEDET out of subversion::

cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@cedet.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/cedet login
cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@cedet.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/cedet co -P cedet

Followed instructions in cedet/USING_CEDET_FROM_CVS (The Mac ships with a terminal-based version of Emacs 22, which is good enough to compile the CEDET Lisp files.)::

cd cedet; make EMACS=emacs

I started off with the basic CEDET configuration from the setup page.
While I was at it, I installed Exuberant Ctags using MacPorts and enabled it in CEDET::

(semantic-load-enable-primary-exuberent-ctags-support)

Started up Aquamacs to make sure everything is working. (It's handy to run the terminal Emacs to work on the files while all this starting and exiting is going on…)
Now install JDE dependency elib: download from the JDE SourceForge site. I am using the source directory directly instead of installing the package on the system, so just run make in the directory, and add the directory to my own load-path.
Followed the directions in jde/doc/install.html
Create a ~/.jdee-config.properties file for Ant to use::

cedet.dir=/Users/treese/devel/emacs-programming-environment/cedet
elib.dir=/Users/treese/devel/emacs-programming-environment/elib-1.0
prefix.dir=/Users/treese/devel/emacs-programming-environment/jde

Configure and build with ant (double-check the build.properties file after configure)::

ant configure
ant build
ant dist

Add the dist directory to my load-path.
Add (load ”jde-autoload“) to Emacs startup.
Checkout ECB and byte-compile it::

cvs -z3 -d:pserver:anonymous@ecb.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/ecb co -P ecb
cd ecb
make CEDET=../cedet

The CEDET value should be wherever you have CEDET installed. I just pointed it to the source directory I'm using.

Add the ECB directory to load-path. It's easiest to then add::

(require 'ecb)

for startup. I don't start Emacs that much, so it's cheap to do it that way. Besides, computers are fast now.

Enjoy.

Dear Dell: Stop the paper!

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 02:41:07 +0000

Dear Dell:

These days, we all want to cut costs. And save the environment. How about you do both at the same time?

Stop sending me paper mail. Postcards? Don't need them. Catalogs? Likewise. If I need a Dell PC, I know where to go. (Frankly, I haven't needed one in a while, since I mostly use Macs, but I have bought them on occasion.) Actually, the last ones were for someone else.

I have followed your website instructions about 5 times over the past year, and it's not getting through. I called another company about a similar problem, and they stopped. Calling doesn't seem to work with you, Dell.

Heck, if you insist, I'll even put up with getting emails from you. At least the bits get recycled. (And I can filter the email. Oops, forget I said that.)

Sincerely,

Don't Want Paper

What's next?

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 03:15:15 +0000

Last week, SiCortex ceased operations and started an asset sale process. There are various accounts around the net; CNET has a decent brief summary. I've been with SiCortex since just after it was funded in October, 2004, and it's been a lot of fun. We had a great team, a fascinating product, and some of the best customers anyone could hope to have. For the next short while, I'm still with the company to assist with the asset sale process.

After that, what's next? I'm starting to look at several things, both new startups and established companies, and taking some time to do that. In the interim, I'll be updating the site for my consulting company, Serissa Research, and possibly taking on some new business there.

What's interesting? I'm not really sure yet. One of the consequences of focusing on a startup for a while is the fading of what else is happening. And one of the consequences of a forced change is a chance to look around again to see what really is interesting, from many points of view–technology, business, and value. Some of what I'm looking at will show up here, and some of it shows up in my column in the ACM's NetWorker magazine.

So drop me a note if you've got something interesting.

(Yes, I know the link to SiCortex above will be dead sometime soon. But you can't not link on the web!)

Learning iPhoto 09

Sat, 14 Feb 2009 16:34:20 +0000

I've been playing with face recognition in iPhoto 09. It helps with tagging photos, but it wasn't clear to me exactly how to get going with it. Curiously, there is no match for "face" in the Help, so that was not, um, helpful. Fortunately, Gizmodo is helpful, with "iPhoto '09: The Definitive Review and Tip Sheet".

Now iPhoto should be done guessing photos of my oldest daughter, so I'll get back to telling it when it's right.

Update: the problem was that the help cache was out of date. Here's /how to clean it. Now the mystery isn't why there's no help, but why this problem lingers so long in MacOS./

Making vCards from an LDAP directory

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 04:00:12 +0000

We've got an LDAP directory at the office with names, phone numbers, and email addresses. It's handy to get that all into my address book, which can import vCards. So here's a Python script that does just that: ldap2vcard.

Web site rants, part 1

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 00:58:54 +0000

I'm sure this will be a regular feature (web site rants, that is).

The support web site for Canon printers (and probably other products) has a search timeout. I was trying to find some helpful information about how to get my Canon Pixma iP1600 to actually feed paper, instead of just grinding for a while. It's never been very good at doing that. I went away from the computer for a few minutes to see the block structure one of my daughters built. I come back, and the search session has timed out.

There are lots of web sessions I want to time out (my bank account comes to mind). But a search in the printer knowledge base? What's up with that?

Failing at spam

Wed, 31 Dec 2008 20:00:16 +0000

I got some spam the other day. It told me I need "professional web site design":

You Need Professional Website Design!
If your website and campaign elements don't look and feel professional you can bet your loosing money. Today's online generation expects and demands high end professional graphics to project quality & trust.

Three grammatical errors in the first sentence. Now we're off to a professional start. I don't think I'll be going there for site design any time soon…

Bicycles

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 23:38:17 +0000

I ordered a Jamis Coda Sport today, for riding with the kids and for occasionally riding to work. The manager at Harris Cyclery in West Newton recommended it to me, and a test ride convinced me. I had also been looking at the Trek 7.3 and the Specialized Globe Sport. For bike shopping in the western suburbs of Boston, I found the following places interesting:

Harris Cyclery
1353 Washington St.
West Newton, MA 02465
+1 617 244 1040
A very serious bike shop; also good for beginners.

Spoke-N-Wheel
119 Boston Post Road (Route 20)
Sudbury, MA 01776
+1 978 443 6696
This is the first place I went. I called to make sure they were open on the evening before July 4, and the person said yes. When I got there an hour later, they had closed early, and were closed all weekend. I would have liked to see what they had, but I decided not to wait. They also have stores in Westborough and Waltham.

Landry's Bicycles
790 Worcester Road (Route 9 eastbound)
Natick, MA 01760
+1 508 655 1990
This is where I looked at the Trek and Specialized bikes. They knew a lot about bikes, and I liked the store a lot. They have a couple of other stores in the area as well.

International Bicycle Center
71 Needham St.
Newton, MA
+1 617 527 0967
This is a pretty big shop, and they also knew a lot about what they were doing. I test-rode the Trek 7.2 and 7.3 bikes there. They have another store on Brighton Ave in Boston.

REI
Route 30 in Natick
+1 508 270 6325
As you might expect, the staff knew something about bikes, but not as much as at the specialized shops. I was surprised that REI was selling not-quite-as-good bikes for about the same prices as the bike shops.

Places I haven't been, but came across in looking for places to shop:

Ray & Sons Cycle & Ski
183 Main St.
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About

Sat, 08 Dec 2007 04:30:46 +0000

Welcome to my personal blog! I'm Win Treese, and I write here about whatever seems interesting at the time. My major projects at the moment are researching a book on the history of Maxwell's Equations, and exploring some algorithms in image processing.

I have previously done consulting work on various aspects of computer and network security, served as Director of Programs and Project Management at Boston University's Hariri Institute for Computing and Computational Science & Engineering, led software development at high-performance computing startup SiCortex, worked on e-commerce systems (especially security) as Vice President of Technology for Open Market, one of the earliest Internet commerce software vendors, in systems research at Digital Equipment Corporation's Cambridge Research Laboratory, and served as Chief Systems Engineer for MIT's Project Athena. Of those, only MIT and BU are still operating.

I can be reached by email at treese@acm.org or on Twitter as @wintreese.