What else is a personal website for other than shamelessly promoting yourself and your personal projects? Other than that whole self-expression thing.
So I present, for the interest of those search engine indexers out there and my readership who have ample free time: Liber Omnia!
It mostly works and has the important 80% of features and I've been using it for a couple of months and it doesn't suck.
Back when computers were physically large, virtually small and GUIs were primitive a major selling point of one piece of software over another was how many mouse clicks were required to get things done. The most lauded software had keyboard shortcuts for most of their functionality so it took zero mouse clicks.
Keyboard shortcuts were thus burned into the minds of developers as good things. Unfortunately there is too much of a good thing. These days my major problems are not that there are too few keyboard shortcuts, but too many. In basically every major piece of software I use on a daily basis, including my terminal editor, pretty much every key on the keyboard is a shortcut to something. Every program wins at the mouse click game these days. But they all lose at the typo game.
Several times a week I'll typo a shortcut. Perhaps this is because I forgot which terminal emulator or web browser I'm in. Perhaps I just wasn't paying attention to where my fingers were on the keyboard. Perhaps something else brushed the keyboard. Whatever the reason I hit the wrong keys. Hopefully nothing too terrible happened, like closing that window or program out from under me. This is all very annoying.
So here it is. I like keyboard shortcuts. I really do, there are a few I use hundreds of times everyday. Then there are the few I use once or twice a week. Then there are the rest I only use when I typo them or to undo a typo'd shortcut. While I like the ability to have the shortcuts I do use, I wish very few shortcuts where enabled by default. I don't use most of them any they only get in my way.
This week I've travelled far to the sunny land of meetings. My favoured dinner on the first night of these trips, after I've travelled better than half the day and then put in a good half day at the office on top, is pizza. It's quick, it's easy, it's heavy to help me sleep and I don't have to leave my hotel room at all.
Pizza is also good because it is an unavoidable fact that I'll have some pizza leftover. This is just the thing to keep around should I be really lazy one night or should the hotel breakfast suck. And this means stuffing a pizza box into those tiny refrigerators.
A small minority of pizza places provide their delivery pizza in an awesome box which breaks up and folds down to become half the size. Just perfect for storing my half pizza in the world's second tiniest fridge. But alas, few restaurants do this. Instead I usually just cut the box up to fit with my trusty pocket knife.
But I flew to the land of meetings remember? Sometimes I'll risk this sharp extension of myself (much in the way my watch and shoes are) to the trials of checked luggage. I haven't lost it yet, but I fully expect there will be a day when I arrive without my luggage and the luggage is never to be seen again. But this time I did not.
You know those flimsy nail files which come with toiletry bags? The ones they include because some Victorian author claimed that it wasn't a true toiletry bag unless it contained the quartet of nail file, nail clipper, tweezers and precision safety scissors. The ones which are so thin with the merest impression of a grating surface as to barely be a file at all. That is what I resorted to cutting my pizza box with.
Some might say I have fallen to the level of a savage, but a savage would never be far from their blade. Savages know the value of a good knife. No, I have fallen even lower, here in the land of meetings, I have fallen to the level of the animals; I have resorted to mostly tearing things where a simple cut would be better and easier.
Never again shall I sink so low.
Lately there have been a few discussions about text editors sloshing around the Internet. Among this discussion was the concept of a cross platform editor. During the discussion this was meant to mean Linux vs Windows vs MacOSX, but I actually think that when discussing text editors the platforms to note are not the traditional ones. I believe that the platforms of note are:
I don't divide the editors into the standard OS, but instead by the windowing system. Looking at my use I think this is a more useful definition of platform in this case. In the past I've used an editor on all of these platforms. Especially important is the distinction between tty and the OS it's running on. I spend most of my editing hours editing on a remote machine, but I still want the same editor when I'm editing locally with a fully fledged graphical windowing system.
To me, the most important consideration of an editor isn't whether it runs on Linux and FreeBSD and OSX, but if it is accessible on the window system I have to use at that moment.
I think the future of the sum of human knowledge looks more like TVTropes than Wikipedia and a lot less than the array of publishers and unavailable papers today. However, I see the underlying technology to be much different.
Wikipedia is certainly a successful experiment in crowd sourced knowledge. It has millions of articles across dozens of languages. The articles are of varying quality, but the ones of general interest are often of good, if not great, quality. However along with several other frequently discussed problems Wikipedia has I don't see it as the direct descendant of the future of knowledge for three reasons, one technical, one fundamental and one social.
The technical limitation is perhaps the easiest hurdle to overcome. Wikipedia, as it stands, is based upon the complex MediaWiki software. This software is difficult to install, difficult to administer and sharing wiki pages or portions of pages between MediaWiki instances is difficult and time consuming. The sum of this make it extremely difficult to run a fully fledged instance of Wikipedia which keeps up to date and serves a medium-sized population, say that of a single University. As has been show time and time again throughout history a single point of failure, in this case the WikiMedia foundation, will always, given enough time, fail. Then there are the various scaling costs. Surely you have seen he pictures of a downtrodden Jimmy Wales begging for donations to keep the expensive Wikipedia servers running. Wikipedia is, no doubt, expensive to run and as it becomes more popular it'll only get worse. Decentralization would make the total running costs greater, but spread them out over a much larger number of groups, many of which could run their own copy using otherwise idle resources. All this could be fixed, but as it stands Wikipedia is too centralized to scale to the level required to be a store of all human knowledge.
The fundamental issue with Wikipedia is also a relatively simple one to solve, but likely cannot be done without starting over. From the outset Wikipedia chose to have separate language versions. There are some good reasons to do this, but also several good reasons this separation should be avoided. The most obvious reason to avoid such a separation is duplication of effort. If there is an English article on some topic and an article on the same topic in Japanese then at least two people spent time writing more or less the same content, doing the same research. Not only is this wasteful, but it is extremely unlikely that either of the two articles is a superset, knowledge-wise, of the other. Instead the English version would contain some information the Japanese version doesn't and vice-versa. Better would be combining the articles using manual and automated translation to present the text is the languages of choice for the reader. In this way there is only one article containing all the information. Manual translation help would often still be useful, but the canonical source would be available for those needing preciseness.
Finally Wikipedia is not the future of knowledge storage for the simple social reason that its community has chosen to be merely an encyclopedia. At the outset before it was known that the experiment of a crowd sourced encyclopedia would work it was a reasonably narrow to goal to achieve. Since that time the WikiMedia organization has branched out and created wikis for many other uses, such as a dictionary, a quote database, a species listing and even a text library. These are all in line with a store of knowledge, but being separate they fail to be cohesive. Lack of cohesiveness isn't the worst problem however. Intersite hyperlinks have limitations, but they are worlds better than the book references that they replaced. The biggest issue is that Wikipedia and cousins intentionally excludes original thought and original research. This limits all the discourse down to appeals to authority. If you can't find or manufacture a sufficient strong authority to appeal to then that knowledge is ignored and the article itself likely deleted. Within the scope of an encyclopedia this is likely acceptable, though it severely limits the scope and depth of what it can contain. There are many topics for which there is no formal research and the canonical knowledge of the respective community is insufficiently authoritative. Obviously this is unacceptable for a store of human knowledge versus a large index thereof.
Contrast this with TVTropes. While TVTropes has the same technical limitations as Wikipedia with respect to centralization it has solutions for the other two problems. The fundamental language division of Wikipedia is solved in a traditional, but less elegant method by TVTropes. Instead of supporting multiple languages the entire site is in English. That's not great if you don't know English, but at least you never have to read multiple articles on the same topic in different languages to get all you can out of it. More interesting is that TVTropes is not an encyclopedia at all. Instead it's mostly original research. There's a lot of sausage making which goes into this research, but the end result is undeniably amazing. This is positive proof that, at least in technical areas, a wiki based community can accomplish novel research and categorization.
The greatest weakness I see in the TVTropes model is the lack of direct storage of the original source material. I'm sure they would store the original texts and shows and games if they could. Linking to specific examples wherever appropriate. Excepting this exclusion I would posit that TVTropes is almost entirely self contained. Any definition or example required to make distinctions clear is available and often linked within the site itself. This is quite different from the Wikipedia model where you need to leave the site to view a dictionary or often the number of examples included on the site are quite sparse.
Inclusiveness and mechanisms for handling original research are things TVTropes does much better than Wikipedia. These are things which are critical for any storehouse of human knowledge. It does no good to limit such a storehouse to references to old books which almost nobody can actually access for deep answers to subtle questions.
Bitrot is a great issue affecting archives which most people learn about only after they have irretrievably lost pictures or papers to its effects. This is unfortunate because there is a simple, efficient way to avoid losing data to bitrot, but few seem to use it.
Bitrot plagues all media. Printed pictures fade, stone tablets erode and hard drives demagnetize. Bitrot is simply the partial degradation of bits of the media until those sections become unrecoverable. With low density paper or stone media this was much less serious, you might lose one letter in a word but it doesn't make the entire text unreadable. Digital media is more dependent upon most bits being correct. Digital formats are usually compressed such that changing a single bit changes the meaning of all the bits which follow it. Thus one single error can completely corrupt an image. Most of the image is still there, but without expert knowledge of the format the image is unrecoverable.
Bitrot has two primary sources. The most common is due to accumulated errors in the media it was stored upon. Burnable CD-Rs, for instance, degrade over time from exposure to light, heat, moisture and bacteria. All digital media has built in error detection, but it is of a simple sort because it must be fast and generally applicable. Under normal use it is sufficient, yet can become overwhelmed with accumulated errors in a long term storage situation. Similarly all digital media, such as harddrives or DVD-Rs or tapes, slowly degrade even when not in use. Given sufficient time their built-in error correction facilities are unable to correct the accumulated errors. At that point an erroneous bit appears. It might be that the error correction can still detect the error though it can no longer be corrected, however that doesn't need to be the case. Undetected errors are not uncommon.
As in the analog world some media lasts longer than others. Stone outlasts paper for example. With this in mind there are digital media which outlasts CD-Rs, but they tend to be expensive. On the costly end you can pay to have your data pressed into DVDs or masked into custom ROM. Such techniques will last hundreds of years with basic physical protections. They'll also out cost your car for any significant amount of data. However, even with this stable media you will see bitrot, just at a lower rate. You can't escape bitrot, just delay it.
The second source of bitrot are copying errors. In order to copy a file from one computer to another the bits might be copied dozens of times. Precisely like copying DNA every copy presents a risk of errors. There are error correction mechanisms built in, but they are simple to be fast and can't catch everything. Avoiding this type of bitrot is simple as verifying the new copy immediately after it is made. Simple, but it can double the time the copy takes.
Since you can't escape bitrot you must repair the damage after it occurs. There are three common solutions to this problem. The first is favoured by archival libraries. First you store multiple redundant copies of every file you wish to archive on different media. These days this tends to be a large array of hard drives and an automated tape library. Every file has a copy stored on many hard drives and several tapes. On a regular and frequent basis you check all the versions of every file against the others, looking for changes. This can be done somewhat efficiently using a good checksum algorithm. This method is effective, but expensive. Not only are many media required, but you have to have the man power and automation to continuously check for and fix bitrot. This is easy with only a handful of gigabytes of data, but quickly becomes difficult and ludicrously expensive as the amount of data grows to terabytes in size. The key with this method is to store many copies and check them all frequently enough that bitrot can't cause too much trouble. Both of these things are expensive.
The most common Internet recommendation for protecting against bitrot is a watered down version of the archive library solution. Instead of constantly verifying the archived data integrity across many copies many people recommend a two pronged approach. First all data is stored on multiple media, but where a library would have dozens of copies most people can only afford a handful. Instead of constantly checking and repairing errors most recommend rotating the media out as it ages. For example, having three hard drives containing three copies bought over three years. Every year a new drive is bought and a new copy created. When a new copy is created several of the older archives are checked to get a good copy of each file. The simplest schemes use voting to determine which copy is good, better schemes check a strong hash of the file contents from when the file was new and known good. This is relatively robust, but the few copies and infrequent verification carries significant risks of all copies bitrotting some small amount in different ways. In such a way the data can still become unrecoverable. This is especially true when the data has exceeded the capacity of a single media, whether that was a hard drive, burnt disc or flash drive.
The second prong of the common Internet recommendation is to come to terms with the fact that the above method won't protect everything and that you should fall back to well understood paper archival methods. Basically sort out the most important files and print them. At this point bitrot is much less of an issue and protecting paper for decades and centuries is well understood, but you can' save everything. Videos are impossible and many raw data files have no convenient printed format. There is also the issue of space. Hundreds of gigabytes of digital pictures can be held in one hand. Those same pictures printed would fill a large house to bursting.
The previous two methods do their best to detect bitrot and find a good copy to fix it. In essence they gamble that bitrot won't happen to all copies between verifications. The third method assumes that bitrot is unavoidable, but that it happens relatively slowly and independently on every media. Instead of trying to avoid bitrot it prepares to repair it after the fact. The specific implementation of this solution I use has two components. First each copy of the data has a PAR2 recovery set created for it. This uses a similar algorithm at its heart as most error correction mechanisms on digital media, the difference is that the PAR2 recovery set covers all of the files instead of a single 4KB chunk for each set. If bitrot happens randomly across all the data and the recovery data is configured such that ten percent corrupted bits can be recovered and a single unrecoverable block can make a file useless, then it is more likely that eleven percent of a block becomes corrupt and thus unrecoverable than eleven percent of the entire archive is corrupted. Using PAR2 over all the data together provides better protection than the media error correction at the expense of more computing power.
The second component of my strategy is having a small number of copies of the archive along with its PAR2 recovery data. This is needed for two reasons. The most important is to protect against total media failure. All the recovery data in the world won't help if the media is completely destroyed. Flash drives get lost, hard drives fail to spin up, tapes get turned into party streamers. Multiple copies are the only real defence against these events. I currently store five copies of my backups and it is unlikely that all five would be destroyed within the same short time frame.
Since this method makes the reasonable assumption that bitrot happens independently on different media, that is, which bits rot on one media (such as a particular hard drive) bears no influence on which bits will rot on another media (another hard drive or a cloud storage service for example). Trusting in this assumption for a relatively slow bitrot rate, even if every copy bitrots more than the ten percent which can be corrected using the PAR2 data, it is unlikely that all the same files have bitrotted to the same extent across all the copies. Instead it is likely that using multiple copies it will be possible to aggregate a set of files and recovery data where less than ten percent of the dta contained in them are corrupt and thus recover all the archived data.
I prefer this method because it is affordable, low maintenance and trustworthy. Though I currently store five copies of my backup this system is workable with fewer. I can't really recommend fewer than three full copies, but I have had success with two. If you format your archive correctly then these two copies don't even have to be identical. If you do regular backups of your archival data, say every six months, and your backup is in some append only format, then it's possible to combine the latest backup with the previous backup to get around corrupted data. You can use raw directories of files as an append-only archive format, but PAR2 has a limit on the number of files a single recovery set can cover of about thirty thousand. I personally use a log archive format where new versions of old files are copied later in the file. In this way the first N bytes of the latest archive file match the first N bytes of the previous archive version and so on back through all the versions I store. You perform this aggregation by replacing too corrupted files or sections of files with the same chunks from the other backup. Missing or out of date files will be treated as corrupt data so you don't get exactly the same recovery power as an identical copy, but with effort this can be enough to get you to the point where the recovery data is sufficient. First try this replacing missing data in a (copy!) of the latest backup from the older backup, but if fails you should also try filling missing data in the older backup as well. I've had success using this method to recover a backup off CD-Rs and DVD-Rs where some discs where unreadable. Thus this system is relatively reliable even if simply burning a single copy onto write-once media, such a DVD-Rs, on a regular basis and keeping the last handful of copies. Of course the more copies the lower the chance of data becoming unrecoverable.
The level of maintenance overhead is quite low. There is no continuous verification of the data. There isn't even any verification of old copies when creating a new archive. Instead you just keep as many copies as is reasonable and might have to do some work to combine multiple copies when recovery is necessary. The ability to combine multiple copies of possibly different ages to recover all the data in most cases makes the system trustworthy. There are better systems for other use cases, but this is the best I've seen for the private use case of ample amounts of personal data reliably stored for the longterm with a minimal amount of work or hardware costs.
Licensing intellectual property used to be something the average person just didn't do. They had no reason. Copying was too expensive, too low fidelity and generally not economically feasible. It was impossible to get a book you wrote out to a large number of people and then worry about other publishing rights. The only organizations which could publish already knew what to do to protect themselves and played above board more or less. It's not like they would even know about your hobby paintings unless you notified them.
With the spread of computers like wildfire and the proliferation of software development skills and tools that changed. Now anybody can sit at home, produce useful software and release that software to the world at large. Similarly someone can write a book and put it online to be read. Licensing now matters for the common person.
This is not an article intended to help you pick a license. There are already a good number of sources which do a much more complete job than I would be willing to do. Instead this article is about the general groups of people I understand to exist when it comes to licensing. I'll try to explain some reasoning behind each group. This post won't help you pick a specific license, but it might give you something to ponder before you decide which group you fall into.
The simplest group to describe are those who don't put any license on their creations at all. Not putting any license onto software or writing is equivalent to saying the code is for private use only. You are free to what you will in the privacy of your own home, but don't share your changes and don't even consider doing anything where you might make money. The author doesn't tend to care that much right now, but hasn't made any guarantees about not caring in the future. Often you'll see this on writing or small code projects which the author never believes will be all that valuable to anybody except for short term entertainment value.
A second group might be succinctly described as "Don't Sue Me". This group puts the minimum restrictions on their software, but does construct the license such that users of the code can't sue the original author with the expectation of winning. This is really middle ground between the first license-less group and the next group. Often authors will put this type of license on code which they think might be useful to somebody, but never as significant part of a significant commercial product. They might otherwise have chosen to not put any license on at all, but they've read other licenses and noticed that they tend to explicitly mention the lack of a warranty and consider that a prudent protection to have.
This third group comprises a large portion of the open source world. Though it's hard to objectively compare the impact of code with various licenses I would not be surprised to hear that well over half of all the open source code in the world has licenses which fall into this group. I would call this the "Free-est license" group. The details vary between license of this class but they tend to boil down to: don't sue me and don't claim you wrote this. And that's it. Just about any conceivable use of code and other creations licensed in this way is considered acceptable by the author.
There are varied reasons to choose licenses which fall into this group. Corporate funded development tends to prefer this license because it means that they can use the code however they wish without restriction. If they want to add their own magic sauce and release it as a project they can. However, it also permits them to submit their changes back upstream to put the burden of maintenance upon the community. This often results in a better public code base and lower maintenance costs for the corporation.
Individuals might choose licenses in this group because all they care about is seeing their code used. They don't mind that a company can slurp their code in, put it into a multi-billion dollar a year program and never see any return. Often if the author started in the "Don't Sue Me" group they'll arrive in this group, at least for large projects, as they become aware of the limitations in usage the less comprehensive licenses cause.
Another very good reason to choose licenses of this sort is for reference implementations. Having the clear and unrestricted Free-est licenses for reference implementations improves compatibility and speed of uptake. If any programs which would find the fileformat or algorithm useful can take your tested code and use it as they desire then other have as well, ensuring compatibility. If the reference implementation starts out as a wide spread defacto standard then future incompatibility is minimized since any competing implementations must interoperate with the reference.
The Free-est licenses have some very strong points to defend them as licensing choices. However, for some they are too free since in many cases the code will enter a proprietary black hole, never to be seen again no matter the improvements.
The other huge portion of licensed software and other creative works are with what I'll call the Share Fairly licenses. The Share Fairly licenses are more restrictive than the Free-est licenses, however these restrictions are used to force anybody who modifies (or in some case uses) the software to provide their changes to the public such that they could use or build upon them themselves. Because of this proprietary uses of such code must be carefully segregated from proprietary code. Interface the code incorrectly and you take the risk of causing the license of your proprietary code to become this Share Fairly license.
This group of licenses was originally created to provide freedoms which the Free-est licenses do not guarantee for the users of software. They do this by restricting the packagers and distributors of software. For some this is still the most important reason they choose these licenses for their works.
However not all authors choose these licenses for such high minded concepts as freedom. Other authors might choose these licenses to restrict the one way flow of work that can occur with the free-est licenses. Large corporations will tend to prefer this group of licenses when it comes to collaborating with other large corporations which are competitors in one manner or another. With a project licensed as such each corporation is required to publish their changes for all to see. In such a way they ensure that their investments into the code cannot be unilaterally taken by a competitor who doesn't submit their changes back. Such a one way flow effectively gives the unsharing participant free work. Situations like these would prevent collaboration from occurring for fear of losing competitiveness. In a way similar to corporations an individual author might choose the Share Fairly licenses to force others to return back to the community if they've received value from the software.
Other authors choose Share Fairly licenses not as the final say in the licensing of their software, but instead as a default position in the licensing negotiation. Such authors are displeased at the thought of a company take their work and making a profit from it without compensating the author in some manner, but the author still wants others to benefit from his work. In this case a restrictive Share Fairly license might be chosen as a default minimum compensation, any company which finds the code profitable must provide their changes back to the public. However should a company not wish to compensate the author by making the code better for everybody then these sorts of authors are more than willing to enter into a formal negotiation for different compensation. Such compensation could be a lump sum of money, royalties, employment or just about anything else you could imagine.
These are just the most major of the licensing groups. There are other smaller groups, such as the non-military use groups, but they tend to almost fit into one of the groups above barring some special restrictions. These are also only some of the most common reasons for choosing a license type over another, but by no means are these exhaustive. It is likely impossible to render such a list. One common reason to choose on license group over another which I didn't mention is simply local inertia. If you are within groups which predominately choose one license group over another then you are more likely when you give it little thought, to choose whatever license is most common there.
Such an article as this wouldn't be complete without a note about which camp I fall into and why. I'd likely receive questions in any case, so I may as well answer them upfront. Without other modifying factors I will choose an appropriate Share Fairly license for my personal projects. I do this because I make my living as a software developer and do not desire to see either of the extreme possible results of the other license group choices. I also view the public license as a default negotiation position and am always open to discussing proprietary licenses for compensation. I consider my work useful enough to be worth providing to the public, but it takes real work to produce this software from which I'd like to see some return. Whether this return is in users, patches or cash I care little, but I don't want to see some company consuming my work for their sole profit.
I have an interest in the mechanics and tools used to run software projects. I've used several of the most common version control system and dealt with projects large and small. I like to think that I've thought about the theory and practicalities of version control and like to think I have a solid grasp on version control as a topic. This is why it pains me to read, more frequently than I wish were true, some developer making some statement related to version control which is untrue and detrimental to the use and discussion of version control. I hope to clear up the most common incorrect beliefs in this post. I'll be discussing primarily in the context of Subversion, Perforce and Git. I unfortunately don't have extensive experience with Mercurial, but Git shares several of the same core concepts and together they are currently the best of breed distributed VCSes. Subversion and Perforce are the best of breed centralized VCSes and there are some important distinctions between the two worth noting at certain points. All three together should provide sufficient coverage of the necessary concepts.
To put a face on the prototypical developer who makes the ignorant statements about version control imagine a developer in his early twenties. He's not really worked at a large corporation, but he has done plenty of coding for small personal and consulting projects. He's only ever really used Git and reads nothing but that it's the best. Let's go over the worst of the misunderstandings about version control this developer is likely to have.
One common belief about version control is that you shouldn't check in binary files. To some, version control is only for source files. When pushed many of these developers will agree that small binary files, such as images for a website, should also be checked into the VCS, but by no means should large binary files be checked in.
Such a view is incorrect and commonly broken in several industries. Firstly it is incorrect in the belief that large binaries, such as the Photoshop sources of those website images, should not be version controlled. There are only good arguments for doing so. Large binaries are able to change just like any source file and other parts of the project are just as capable of being dependent on the large binary file as any source file. It is true that a separate tool could be used to separately version the binary files, but why do that if your VCS is capable of doing it for you right alongside the rest of your project? Why should a video maker use separate tools to track the versions of the original videos and the final renders?
There is then the argument that binary intermediate products, that is binary files which can be produced from other files in the repository, should not be checked in. In some cases, such as source files to object files, this make sense and is often then the context in which such a belief is learnt. There is little to be gained by committing the compiled output of a source file when a compiler can recreate it with no trouble. If creating the intermediate products is cheap then there is no need to commit them. But that processing is not always cheap. It is common in video game development to have not only the photoshop originals of various assets, but also the flattened and compressed versions committed into the VCS. The reason for this is because it would be expensive to pay for Photoshop licenses for anybody who needed to build the game for whatever reason. It might also be time consuming. If it takes five minutes per asset to compile from a Photoshop format to the format needed by the game then a game with hundreds of such assets may gain immensely from keeping the intermediate products. Similarly other intermediate products can take hours of processing to produce.
Even more than intermediate products, it is common in embedded products to not only store the source code of the project, but the binaries of all the tools necessary to build it as well inside the VCS. When working with an evolving tool chain it can be a great aid to be able to go back arbitrary versions and know that you have the matching tool chain. Such binaries can run into the hundreds of megabytes and often make sense to put into the project VCS.
The previous discussion about binary files brings us to an extremely common misunderstanding about version control. This is especially true in the open source and web development worlds simply due to the lack of exposure. It might be difficult to believe for people who have never worked at a corporation, but in just about every way Linux is not a large project with respect to version control.
Given a little thought this should be pretty obvious. There are many projects in the world, such as Linux distributions and embedded software, which are significant projects on their own which include the Linux kernel as a subset of their source code. Quite obviously these projects must be larger than the Linux kernel themselves. In fact, I would argue that the Linux kernel, with modern technology, is merely a medium sized project.
Consider some recent statistics about the Linux kernel. Version 3.2 has about fifteen million lines of code across about thirty seven thousand files, about thirteen hundred developers take part in each version and they submit about seven patches per hour for inclusion. A checkout size of about 450 megabytes. While the number of developers would rank this as a large project, none of the other metrics do. Fifteen million lines isn't nothing, but it certainly isn't anywhere near the size of projects which include the source of the kernel, glibc, gcc and a few other things you see in a Linux distribution or other MacOSX. Seven patches submitted per hour isn't an impressive number either and can easily be matched by a couple hundred developers working on a single project at any corporation. A checkout of less than half a gigabyte is nothing compared to projects where binaries are stored which can reach multiples of hundreds of gigabytes for a AAA video game.
Big projects are just so much bigger than Linux when it comes to strain on the version control system. Multigigabyte checkouts are normal. Lines of code in the fifty million range or more, including libraries and third party components, are not abnormal. It can be surprising the first time one thinks about it, but consider the case of KDE. It's a well known open source project which is larger than Linux in many respects and it itself probably only barely crosses the large project threshold.
Given the way that some people talk you might be led to believe that before Git no VCS ever supported branching. This is obviously not true and the idea of VCS branching support has been around for at least forty years. RCS had primitive support for it. And yet the belief that centralized VCSes such as Subversion and Perforce don't support branching persists. Often such a view is expressed in such a way that the 'normal' way to use SVN or Perforce is to develop all in the trunk or mainline. While this is a common method of development suitable to some projects, it is by no means the only solution. Much of this misunderstanding comes about, I believe, because the DVCSes have chosen to solve an easier form of branching than the centralized VCSes. I'll discuss the distinction in the next section. But first I'll show how branching is a critical component of every modern VCS, centralized or not.
For that purpose I'll define a modern VCS as one in which there is a checkout which is separate from the files as committed into the VCS history until such time that the developer consciously commits changes from the checkout into the repository. Many VCSes satisfy this definition, Git, Subversion and Perforce included. Now consider the situation where a developer has a checkout of some branch and makes some changes. Before committing a colleague commits some other changes into the same repository, assume for the moment that if using Git it is actually the same clone on the same machine in the same branch. Now before the developer can commit their changes they need to first bring in the changes from the repository and then merge their changes on top of them.
In such a situation the checkout is a branch with a maximum commit depth of one. That is, the checkout can be considered a branch which only ever has a maximum of one set of changes in it. When bringing in changes from the branch a merge occurs. This is the simplest way in which branching is a capability of every modern VCS, including the centralized VCSes. Of course Subversion and Perforce have documented and battle tested branching and merging on a larger scale.
Sometimes when a developer exclaims that centralized VCSes don't have branching they really mean what is termed local branching in DVCSes. That is, within a developer's own clone they can branch as much as they want and make commits into those branches as they see fit. It is not required of centralized VCSes, but common for a repository to either allow developers to create branches as they see fit or to have areas within the branch namespace explicitly for developers to create private branches. The end result is nearly identical in both cases. The only distinction is that DCVS local branches can remain hidden from everybody but the creating developer while private branches in a CVCS can only hide in plain sight.
As I mentioned earlier most current DVCSes have decided to solve an easier branching problem than most CVCSes. If you've only ever used a DVCS then you might be underinformed and believe that there is only one way to branch. The branch-the-world philosophy of DVCSes is certainly simple to grasp and easier to make easy related to merging and keeping track of branches, but it is not the only way. Subversion and Perforce are more flexible in this regard and support branching directories.
At first it isn't clear why you might want to branch beneath the root of the repository. Consider an embedded project based on Linux. Such a project will have a copy of the kernel, a copy of the C library and some other bits of code. Now if a new system call were added to the kernel to be used by the application code then the C library might be updated to support that system call as well. Such a change would be useful to go in all at once to ensure that you never have to deal with mismatched versions when compiling. However, since these are separate components most of the time it is also useful to build each as an RPM. Since these components also take a long time to build if you are working on the application why should you have to rebuilt the kernel RPM? One solution to this problem is to branch each package separately depending on which changes you require. Only a system which allows you to branch directories and not just the repository root give this ability.
Consider a further case where you have some company-wide documentation in the same repository as the project. It's often not useful to branch that documentation when you branch the project, build server configuration doesn't branch with the project, but it's still worthwhile to be in the same repository for other reasons. Such setups are impossible in branch-the-world models.
This is perhaps the most annoying misconception which comes from inexperienced VCS users who have only really used DVCSes. They often believe that DVCSes are special in ways which aren't true and ignore the few ways in which they differ. The only way in which DVCSes are fundamentally special is the distributed aspect. Current DVCSes keep a copy of the entire history in the local clone. This is good in some situations, e.g. on an airplane, and bad in other, e.g. the history is 500GB in size. It is dependant upon the situation whether a DVCS is better than a CVCS or not. Beyond this there is nothing special about DVCSes. Everything you can do with a DVCS you can do with a CVCS with more or less trouble. Similarly everything you can do with a CVCS you can usually accomplish with a DVCS with more or less trouble.
Version control is all about keeping track of changes. The theory is simple, you just have to look past the implementation details of the VCS you are using and think about the high level operation you are trying to accomplish. Do so and you'll be significantly less likely to misunderstand version control.
Xug. I completely forgot about my final Evolutionary Societies assignment that's due tomorrow. Ok, let's see how much trouble I'm in.
Simulate the effects of an energy peak on a Type 1 civilization. Note: This will take a day on the campus supercomputer so schedule your slot ahead of time.
Great. I didn't schedule a slot and the last one is surely taken. That's bad. But look, it says nothing about the simulation fidelity. I'm smart, surely I can take some shortcuts and get the simulation done in time. Better at least try right?
So let's see, Type 1 civilization. So limited space travel and probably no planet splitting. I can work with that. At least I'm not simulating multiple solar systems. Ok, solar system size, smaller is better but it must be big enough to not take too long. Medium sized star it is then. Need a planet of course, let's put them on the third one for fun. In the Carbon Zone of course, I need this done quickly and there is no time to wait for Silicon life. No point in simulating more than the single solar system so we'll limit the simulation to the volume of the solar winds. I like space travel so let's make sure there's a reason for these beings to go into space. I guess that means they need to be surrounded by rocky worlds, but you really do need interesting large worlds to go to space, so I'll put a few of those out there. Just to keep them guessing I'll put an asteroid belt between them. Gotta remember the energy peak though. Let's put make fusion impossible for them and put the organic peak a bit after 4.5 billion years. Add some randomness so it doesn't because obvious to there philosophers. And voila, one standard carbon life solar system. Now which corners to cut.
First the big stuff. There is no way I have time to simulate to the real quantization. I guess I'll do a hundredth of real. 10-35 should be lots. It's not near the 10-3500 of reality, but that just means that there computers will stay large, slow and power hungry. And who knows, that puts quantum effects close enough in size that maybe there will be some interesting biology out of it. Plug in the standard quantum model and I save a whole bunch on the time quantization too. Let's see how long that will take to run, say, five billion years.
A year. Xug. Man the supercomputer must be fast. Time for more cuts. Let's see where all the time is being consumed. Hmm, that's a lot of memory used to simulate the universe within non-zero gravitational effect. That's easy to fix though, just limit gravity to the speed of light, they shouldn't be reach the point of gravity control soon enough anyways. That means I can just simulate the universe delayed. That'll save a ton of memory. Not a real huge time saver though. Ok, Type 1, think really limited. No planet splitting so I can get real coarse with the internal simulation. Screw the quantum model, let's go with trivial fluid dynamics for the cores of planets. Simulating the first 10KM of crust should be lots. I don't even have to be that accurate since they won't get that far so let's use graduated accuracy starting at the space quantization 10KM down and going to the cubic kilometre at the centre. You know, let's go crazy and only be that accurate for the planet with life. The rest can just live with fluid simulation starting at 10-5 and going down to hundreds of cubic kilometres for the larger planets. If anything leaves the planet I guess I'll have to up the precision there, but that's no big loss.
So that's the bodies, but most of the solar system isn't body, it's space. If I follow the same kinda deal with space why not reduce it's precision dynamically too. It's mostly empty so I can do a 10-20 simulation for most of that at a reduced time granularity. Sure it'll have physics artifacts, but it'll all balance in the end nearly immediately. Keep them guessing. Now how long?
One month. Closer, but I still need some big gains. Let's take a look at the physics engine options to save there. Unobservable approximation. That's an option I was hoping to avoid, but there isn't really anything I can do about it. My little species will just have to live with being unable to unify physics in the large and physics in the small. That's the unavoidable when you use two different physics engines depending on the energies and precisions involved. It'll be close, but they might not even progress to the point where they'll notice. I really really hope that gets me there. I don't know what else I can cut.
A bit less than a day. What time is it now? Just after lunch, perfect. As long as my little species don't push extensively past the boundaries of their planet too much it'll be done with a couple of hours to spare to throw together some BS observations and charts.
Sometimes being a third year student means doing a rush job.
Lithium coin cell. Twelve volt lead acid starter. Gasoline. Lithium-ion rechargeable. AA alkaline. Wood. White gas. Propane. Butane. Diesel. AAA alkaline. Food. It takes a lot of different types of fuels to run a modern autumn camp. Too many types to be honest. It's a far cry from where camps started.
Wood and food used to be the fuels of the day. Perhaps with hay thrown in if you were well off enough to have some beasts of burden with you. Wood was found locally, though you often had to bring in at least some of the food and hay. This wasn't what you'd call convenient though. Having no truly portable light to travel by and needing to burn down a fire before you could cook.
At some point lamps and candles where added to the mix. Not precisely light nor bright, but easily carried light is a valuable thing. The sweet spot really came about with pressurized petroleum stoves and lanterns. No more stumbling around at night and you could be cooking in a couple of minutes on the stove versus half an hour or more on wood coals. Wood, food and white gas. Three fuels for all needs with one locally gathered. A camp setup like that would look almost modern.
But then things started to get complicated. Make no mistake, what was lost in fuel simplicity was more than gained in convenience. Flashlights sure beat a lantern for walking around and packing on a hike. Propane makes cleaner and easier to use stoves and lanterns. With white gas you can be cooking in a minute or two; with propane it's literally seconds. Matches are nice and all, but butane lighters are really nice when they'll do the job. And I'm sure few will want to trade their ATV or truck for a horse.
Convenience sure can be a pain sometimes though.
Bear safety in the woods is an important matter. If you are lucky you only have to deal with
black bears. If you are unlucky you not only have to deal with black bears but also grizzly
bears. In either case you should be safe. Here are some practical, if not widely advertised,
tips for keeping your camp bear safe. These tips are not for a light hiking camp, but more
for a semi-permanent camp with several people where you'll be staying for more than a week.
Have a fire. Fire is perhaps the most critical component of keeping a camp bear safe. With a fire you should burn all the garbage you can. This is most obvious with the food wrappings and food scraps but food cans can also effectively be burnt. The heavy food cans can be put in the fire to burn off the food residue and after they have cooled kept to bring back to a recycling centre back in the city.
Just having a fire burning, especially through the night, will also serve as a deterrent, though not absolute deterrent, and keep wildlife away from your camp.
Burn off your BBQ. Similar to the idea of fire you should ensure that any cooking surfaces are well cleaned before being put away. With pots and pans this means cleaning them shortly after finishing your meal with water and soap. For BBQs and other grills you should run them at a high power for a few minutes after you are finished cooking, scrape them and then run for a few minutes more. If it no longer smells like food it won't attract bears after the cooking smells have dissipated.
Mark your territory. Animals are intensely sensitive to smell. Use this to your advantage. Make sure to urinate around the perimeter of your camp on a regular basis. It helps if you are eating foods or consuming drinks which add, let us say body, to the urine. This isn't an extremely strong deterrent, but you'll want to do it anyways because walking in the dark is hard so it's good to have an excuse.
Drink beer and pop. If you can't prevent a bear from coming to visit your camp you can at least get some warning that they've arrived. Drink copiously and use the empties as an early warning system. This is especially useful near the areas where food is stored or cooked. If hunting you should have a pile under any hanging harvest. Ensure that when you leave you collect all the empties to return to help pay for the next case of beer.
If you have somebody known to snoring ensure that they get an extra measure in their cup. It'll most likely make them snore all the louder and who wants to come near a chainsaw running at night?
Have a Designated Teetotaller. Though you should drink so you have the empties to use as a warning perimeter there should be at least one, but preferably several people who aren't drunk and can handle a bear should one appear. This doesn't actually mean that they can drink at all, but if they mustn't drink to the point that they wouldn't drive.
Sleep with a Gun and a Big Flashlight. All of the above are really only deterrents to bears. Nothing will really stop a bear which wants to come visit your camp. In that case there is only really one thing to do. Having a gun safely at the ready. You'll need the flashlight since it'll be dark. It might take two people, one to carry the gun and one to carry the flashlight if you don't have a headlamp.
Try and have the designated teetotaller be the one using the gun.
Should things get this serious don't bother with a warning shot, the bear will either not understand it or simply come back later. Go straight for the chest shot. All the better to put two in there to be sure. Never go for the head since you'll either miss or, in the case of a grizzly, just bounce the bullet uselessly of its forehead. In the morning you must remove the corpse to some distant dumping spot.
These aren't your standard bear safety tips, but they'll get the job done if you are in a situation where the normal safety tips are not practical. Just keep in mind that in the woods the bear is a top dog and you are beneath them on the food chain.
Imagine the year is 1958. You are a 17 year old boy living in a medium size American city. It's a warm Saturday afternoon and your father has lent you his car for a couple of hours. Life is pretty good. So good, in fact, that you decide to use your gasoline powered freedom machine to visit the local burgershack with your friends.
Hamburgers likely existed in a similar form before this idyllic Saturday, but this may just be the perfect time in history to go out for a hamburger. The War is over, post-war prosperity has arrived in America and many of the previous hardships have passed. Even more importantly, burger optimization which will eventually drive the local burgershack out of business and replace the burgers with limp, dry imitations, has yet to come.
You and your friends cruise the relatively empty streets with sidewalks full of people. You pull into the burgershack and order a burger and milkshake. You pay with the money from your part time job. This is truly the golden age of burgers.
The mass of fiction and fevered dreams above was brought to you by Fatburger. Burgers how I imagine they were before fast food meant sixty seconds or less.
Computers are wonderfully useful machines full of possibilities to make one's life easier. Unfortunately most people don't know how to make the best use of their thinking machines. They only use the simplest features of the software they buy and perform many manual steps which the machine could do for them. In short they are insufficiently educated on the key to the most effective use of a computer.
The biggest key to using a computer to the fullest is that you, dear user, should use them in such a way as to forget as much as possible as soon as possible. You must let the computer do the remembering and thinking wherever practical. How to do this will be clearer with some examples.
First consider the case of email. Many people read their email, letting that email become marked read, and then have to remember which messages they still requires a response or some action be performed. This is a situation where remembering can be pushed off to the computer. Messages which don't need an action should be separated from messages which need to be read or acted upon. Move them to another email folder.
Another email case occurs with finding old email. Many email programs have become quite good at searching for old messages these days. There is no need for anything but the coarsest of email filing hierarchy. Just throw the email into a large bin after finishing acting upon it. Perhaps this is one folder per project, perhaps this is a single folder named 'Old'. It doesn't have to be complicated.
The previous two examples are more about using the existing features of the software in an intelligent way to have the computer do the remembering for you. Beyond remembering and communicating, which computers can not yet make significant savings other than speed of delivery, computers can think for you. This requires simple programming and scripting. Those of you using Windows will find this more difficult than on other systems, but it can still be done. Writing dirty scripts in bash or python or make are great ways to teach the computer how to do some thinking for you. If you are clear in how you write these scripts you can them forget how to do those tasks entirely.
Writing applications has a well deserved reputation for being aggravating because users demand flexibility and that all the sharp edges have been sanded off. Writing a basic tool which performs exactly your own task and nothing more is several orders of magnitude easier due to the specificity and ease of modification. When what you need done changes slightly you can change the script to match with ease.
Computers are also known as thinking machines for a very good reason. When used most effectively you can offload tedious but significant parts of your brain to the machine, Thus leaving you to have a less stressful and more productive life. And productivity means more cold drinks with friends.
Your communications are insecure. Criminals and governments the world over can read your emails, what you read on the web and watch you as you bank online. This is not your fault, it is the fault of security researchers. Security researchers reading too many cold war spy thrillers as children has left you without effective communications security. Your communications are insecure because security researchers are using the wrong threat model.
Threat models are the axioms, the base assumptions of the security world. They are used to design the security system by making defining what is being protected and what the attacker is capable of. Consider two threat models for a criminal organization owned warehouse. In the first model the crime syndicate has the warehouse in a country with a strong rule of law and is only worried about other criminals breaking into the warehouse and stealing the illicit goods within. In this case it is probably sufficient to make it known that they own that building and then have standard locks to deter the pettiest of criminal and cameras to identify any successful thieves. Those thieves can then be dealt with extra-judicially after the fact as a warning to the next would be thief.
The second model to consider is that same warehouse of illicit goods, but this time the police are militarized and the rule of law weak. In this case the warehouse must be defended against military raids. Locks and cameras are useless but blockades, reinforced doors and armed guards are more the call. This is quite different from the first case where all this extra security would be detrimental to the security goals. These two examples show that security assumptions are critical in having effective security choices. Choosing the wrong security model can result in less security then no protection at all. The crime syndicate would immediately lose their goods to the police if they had armed guards.
It is no different in the realm of communication security. Choosing the wrong model can expose you to insecurity or make the cost of the security outweigh the benefits. Consider two of the most prolific threat models used on the Internet, Cold War Spy and Faith in Government.
The Cold War Spy threat model is a favourite of the security community primarily for historical reasons. Over the past century, only governments did communications security and did so primarily under the guise of the military. Consequently the threat model discussed was usually some variant of: anybody can be a spy, assume every line is tapped by the enemy, leaking even one message will result in somebody dying and all users will be well trained because it may be them who pays the ultimate price for mistakes. All very reasonable if you are a military commander trying to plan an invasion and keep your spies alive. Not so reasonable if you are trying to trade emails with your friend across the country. This model is typified with the PGP model of security.
The popular alternative is the Faith in Government threat model. In this model government can be trusted. They can be trusted to correctly vet every key and certificate or delegate to equally trustworthy entities. This sounds pretty reasonable right? Your government follows the laws and doesn't need to make things insecure since they have legal methods of tapping whatever they want. Reasonable except that it isn't just your government which is being trusted and it isn't just all the employees in your government and delegates, it's every government. Corruption and privacy laws may be strong in your country, but can you say the same about China, Syria, Lebanon or Somalia? Can you trust that the certificate issuer of Russia doesn't owe somebody a favour they can't refuse or want a new luxury car? Of course you can't. This model is typified by SSL, the only real encryption used on the web for online banking and commerce.
These models leave the average person vulnerable because they ignore the situations average people find themselves in. Cold War Spy communications security is too hard and cumbersome. Nobody will die if one random email message of mine is broken. My lines are not usually tapped, especially since I move between network connections several times a day. Most people who come in contact with my messages couldn't care less and will merely do their job and otherwise ignore my messages. Cold War Spy security just isn't applicable to the average situation. The Faith in Government model is equally flawed. While I may trust my government because they can subpoena whatever they want anyways, I certainly don't trust their third rate corporate delegate run out of a derelict warehouse. This is to say nothing of trusting the governments, government officials and private persons in the various high corruption areas of the globe.
So most communications are vulnerable to criminals, foreign governments and corrupt local government employees. It doesn't have to be this way, but security researchers don't have your threat model in mind and are unwilling to accept the necessary compromises to protect them.
The modern global economic depends upon investment to operate. Money is invested, products produced and sold, profit returned. Many people know this. However I would argue that the majority of people who don't work in business or accounting or the financial services don't intuitively know this. Instead they only understand the abstract version of this, financial investment. This is greatly to their detriment.
Financial investment is the most advertised type of investment. The ads equate putting your money into their funds and pulling out a small fortune in twenty years time. This is more or less harmless as is, but is the kernel of the disease of misunderstanding. This is most evident where-ever a housing bubble is inflating. Some people go ahead and buy a house, perhaps fix it up and then quickly sell it for a profit. Once this becomes a trend people see the price of their houses going up. Suddenly houses are an investment. Put your money in, irrespective of whether you live their or not, and in a few years cash out with an extra 20-30-50%.
Unfortunately this misses out on the form of investment which is more useful to the average person with a finite budget and never as much money as they could use. I will term this kind of investment productive investment. Productive investment is paying money for depreciating assets which have a positive return on investment. Take education as an example. Suppose that a degree or diploma will cost you $10,000 once tuition and books are taken into account. The longer you have held this degree the less it is worth. The certificate may help you find a better job shortly after you graduate, but ten years later it's mostly your experience in the field which helps you find another job in the field. Thus a diploma is an asset which decreases in value an time goes on. If the new job is better and pays more then it's likely a good investment.
One example of a borderline case which is often argued as never an investment is new car. While it is absolutely true that a car will never be worth more than you paid for it that doesn't mean that it cannot be an investment. Consider the case where you already have a quite old vehicle, say a thirty year old beater. It is feasible that conditions could be such that the difference in price between a used car a few years old and a new car would be five or ten thousand dollars. If you intend to keep the car for many years, a decade at least, and the new car is very fuel efficient then it may be worth the extra cost. It then comes down to math. The extra vehicle cost versus the additional reliability, important if you drive often for a living or otherwise have a lengthy commute with no affordable alternatives such as transit, reduced repairs over the next handful of years and reduced fuel costs. It is especially important that you take into account the higher future cost of fuel since you may only be saving $0.50 per 100 KM now, but in ten years fuel could triple and you would then be saving $1.50 per 100 KM.
Of course these numbers ignore the less tangible benefits such as reduced stress, greater happiness or a vehicle which fits your needs better. And of course the best transportation investment is not having to own a car at all since almost no personal vehicle ever fully pays for itself, though the cost versus a more used vehicle may not be as great as it first seems.
Hopefully I've made clear how many things which cannot ever be sold for more than their purchase price can be viewed as investments. This is how business looks at it. You have to spend money to make money, but you also have to spend money to save money. Paying for efficiency and longevity can be worthwhile investments. Longevity especially so since a $20,000 purchase depreciating to nothing in 25 years is less expensive than a $10,000 purchase which is worth nothing in eight.
People seem to have a fetish for Life Expectancy. Not a measurement of how long they'll live, that would actually be useful, but instead the formal statistic. This comes up wherever a discussion of progress, now versus the middle ages for example, the rate of progress, has invention hit diminishing returns yet, comparisons between countries, why it sucks to be in the developing world, and many others. Champions of improvement point to the massive gains since the second world war, moving from 64 to 80 today in the developed world. People arguing that life in the middle ages was brutishly short point to the thirty year life expectancy.
All of these are strong arguments based upon a misleading statistic. Formally Life Expectancy is the mean age of death of every person in a particular time and place. Though at first blush this sounds like what you want it really isn't. It is heavily biased towards measuring the deaths of infants and young children. If a certain life expectancy is low then it is almost certain that infant mortality is high. However, the infant mortality rate doesn't matter that much except in raising life expectancy. If an infant is born and doesn't make the week that's a shame, but isn't a useful measure of what age adults tended to die, either of natural causes or not. To get at the latter you'd want a statistic more like the median age of death of any person over fourteen. The latter could be obtained using something calculated like life expectancy, but excluding anybody under fourteen. Unfortunately these useful statistics are not commonly available.
Life expectancy does have its uses, but they are much narrower than how it used as the end-all measurement of how long the average person lived. There were still people who commonly lived into their sixties and seventies in the middle ages. Even though the life expectancy was nearer to thirty years than eighty. Don't base an argument on life expectancy, it just doesn't mean what everybody thinks it does.
On occasion the topic of shell configuration has come up in discussion in one regard or another. Often I have some useful tidbit in my bashrc which others don't know about. I have thus decided to begin writing up an annotated tour through the configurations for the various tools I use on a daily basis. This is the first in that series where I cover what's in my bash configuration.
Let's start from the top.
# First unpack $TERM because it's the only effective way to move arbitrary environment # variables through ssh to arbitrary hosts. The format of the modified string is: # realterm;flag1,flag2,flag3 # Each flag will be set to it's own name as it's value. Thus, "xterm;USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD" # will result in: # $TERM=xterm # $USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD=USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD EXTRAFLAGS=${TERM##*:} export TERM=${TERM%%:*} if [ "$EXTRAFLAGS" != "$TERM" ]; then IFS=',' read -ra ENVFLAGS <<< $EXTRAFLAGS for flag in ${ENVFLAGS[@]}; do export $flag="${flag}" done fi
From what I've been able to determine there is only one portable way to move environment variables from one machine to another via ssh. While you can configure ssh to copy particular environment variables when logging in it requires configuration changes on both the client and the server. Since that isn't portable I stick my environment variables, only flags at the moment, by stuffing them into TERM which is exported by ssh by default. This code here unpacks the encoded TERM and sets it to the real TERM value.
# terminal configuaration options: case $STY in *pts*|*tty*) session_name=`sed 's/.*\.//' <<< $STY` ;; *) session_name=`sed 's/[^.]*\.//' <<< $STY` ;; esac
This code here extracts the screen session name. If there isn't a user set session name it extracts the hostname.
case $TERM in xterm*) TITLEBAR='\[\e]0;\u@\h: \w\007\]' ;; screen*) if [ ! -z "$session_name" ]; then TITLEBAR='\[\e]0;[${session_name}|${WINDOW}] \u@\h: \w\007\]' fi ;; esac
With the screen session name I can then put that and the current window into the terminal emulator titlebar like "[daredevil|6]". I use this to keep track of which session and window number I am in as I move between several sessions often and create and destroy windows regularly.
# In progress work to detect whether the terminal is light-on-dark or # dark-on-light. Very useful for things with colour. Would also be useful on # odysseus. if false; then if [ -z "$DARK_TERM" -a -z "$LIGHT_TERM" ]; then dark="1" # Default assumption of a dark on light terminal # Terminal.app dark="0" colour=`osascript -e 'tell application '\"Terminal\"' to tell the front window to get its normal text color' | sed 's/,//g'` for rgb in $colour; do if [ $rgb -gt 32000 ]; then dark="1" fi done # Xterm # echo -e "\e]11;?\007" will return something like # \e]11;rgb:rrrr/gggg/bbb BEL # Screen inside xterm # echo -e "\eP\e]11;?\007\e\\" will return as above. How can one detect # screen in xterm and is it even necessary? fi echo $dark fi
This is some work in process code to detect the background colour to give other applications I use a hint as to what colour scheme to use. It isn't used because there is no general way to determine locally, let alone through ssh, the background colour. This is a hole in the traditional terminal information model and isn't helped by the fact that most emulators claim to be some variant of xterm, even when they obviously aren't.
# Preparation for system specific configuration. These are the interm aliases # necessary so that the OS specific command names can override them if # necessary. The primary example is that the ls with colour is a different # command on NetBSD than on Darwin and Linux. alias __ls='ls' # Common configuration options: export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH" export VISUAL='vim' export EDITOR=$VISUAL shopt -s histappend # append to history instead of overwriting it export HISTFILESIZE=100000 export HISTSIZE=100000 export HISTCONTROL=ignoredups export LESS="-R" export PAGER="less" LS_OPTIONS="-h" GREP_OPTIONS_DEFAULT="--exclude=tags --exclude=ID" _GREP_OPTIONS=$GREP_OPTIONS_DEFAULT NCPU=1 # Default to one CPU # Not all greps support --exclude-dir GREP_IGNORE_DIRS="--exclude-dir=.svn --exclude-dir=CVS --exclude-dir=.git"
These are all my default settings which are more or less portable across all the OSes and systems I use. Of interest here is 'histappend', which causes bash to append its history to the history file when closing the shell. This means I don't lose my command history when closing a shell, though sometimes the history I am looking for is further back than I expect. It works fine for opening a new shell and wanting the history of the most recently closed one though. I also set the ignoredups option which doesn't save duplicate command lines, such as if I do a manual watch with the same command for some reason.
Another setting of interest is -R for less. This setting makes less pass through colour escape codes. This is most useful when using grep colouring as configued below.
Finally I setup options to ignore VCS directories by default when grepping around.
function pwd_len_limited { local pwdmaxlen=20 local pwd=${PWD/$HOME/\~} if [ ${#pwd} -gt $pwdmaxlen ]; then local pwdoffset=$(( ${#pwd} - $pwdmaxlen )) newPWD="#${pwd:$pwdoffset:$pwdmaxlen}" else newPWD=${pwd} fi echo $newPWD }
This function takes the current working directory and only returns the last 20 characters of it. $HOME is automatically turned into ~ and any path which is too long is prefixed with #. I find this as useful as having my full path in my prompt, but without the various disadvantages, such as a path longer than my terminal is wide, which having the complete path in the prompt entails. In practise the width of the displayed path is normally always truncated so it doesn't introduce much variability into my prompt size.
function is_vim_running_locally { if ps -T -o comm | grep '^vim' &> /dev/null; then # vim is running in this local terminal echo -n "&" else if [ -f /p4conf ]; then echo -n "%" else echo -n "$" fi fi }
This function sets the last character of my prompt. Normally it is the standard $. If this is a shell started from vim it will be &. At work we access the crosscompiler toolchain inside a chroot so the prompt is % inside that chroot. The indication that I am inside vim is especially useful to prevent me from editing a file, starting a shell to run some command and then forgetting I was in vim and start vim again. Before this change I sometimes found myself three or four vim instances down and wondering where my editor modifying a file went.
# Functions which do non-trivial configuration which isn't always performed function connect_to_ssh_agent { local SSHPATH="$HOME/.ssh/$HOSTNAME" # If we have a remote agent we are already done if [ ! -z $SSH_AUTH_SOCK ]; then return fi # If we have a record of starting an agent before, try connecting to it mkdir -p $SSHPATH if [ -s "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" ]; then . "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" >/dev/null 2>&1 kill -0 "$SSH_AGENT_PID" >/dev/null 2>&1 if [ $? -eq 1 ]; then # agent is dead rm -f "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" fi fi # If all else fails start an agent if [ ! -f "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" ]; then touch "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" chmod 600 "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" ssh-agent > "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" . "$SSHPATH/sa.sh" >/dev/null 2>&1 fi }
This function tries its best to always use an existing and recent ssh-agent when starting a new shell. This is most useful if I reattach to a screen session. Since the previous agent socket would then be invalid any new shells started in the old session wouldn't have a working ssh-agent otherwise.
# Mark the machines which have my fancy keyboard connected most of the time function use_fancy_keyboard { export USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD="USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD" }
This is just a function for tidiness below.
# Function which updates the settings of some environment variables. Useful when # using screen and connecting from different machines. function refresh_env { eval `cat ~/.ssh/$HOSTNAME/update_config` } # Create a file which can be processed to update various shell environment # variables which may become out of date, such as DISPLAY when a shell is run in # screen. function create_update_config { local CONFIG="$HOME/.ssh/$HOSTNAME/update_config" # We only want to overwrite this configuration file if we are at the # root of a set of shells on this machine. Ie. if this session is in a # terminal window or as the result of an ssh login. We do not want to # overwrite the configuration if a new window in screen is opened or a # shell opened from vim. However, if this isn't the root we'll want to # ensure that we read the config file to have the latest settings. if [ ! -z $CREATED_UPDATE ]; then refresh_env return fi export CREATED_UPDATE=yes mkdir -p "$HOME/.ssh/$HOSTNAME" echo "export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=$SSH_AUTH_SOCK;" > $CONFIG echo "export DISPLAY=$DISPLAY;" >> $CONFIG if [ -z "$USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD" ]; then echo "unset USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD;" >> $CONFIG else echo "export USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD=$USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD;" >> $CONFIG fi if [ -z "$LESSKEY" ]; then echo "unset LESSKEY;" >> $CONFIG else echo "export LESSKEY=$LESSKEY;" >> $CONFIG fi }
These two functions operate to that any new shell I start has up to date environment variable concerning things which may change for every remote login, even if the new shell is being started in the context of a previous login as happens when reattaching to a screen session or starting a shell from an editor. Currently this only ensures that my ssh-agent, DISPLAY and keyboard layout are kept up to date. The refresh_env function allows me to update any running shell without starting a new shell.
# OS specific settings OS=`uname` case $OS in
This section applies OS specific settings. Usually these are options for different userspaces or different ways of determining if particular hardware is available.
Darwin) export LC_CTYPE="en_US" export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH # MacPorts export HOSTNAME=`scutil --get LocalHostName` LS_OPTIONS="$LS_OPTIONS -b -G" NCPU=`/usr/sbin/sysctl -n hw.ncpu` # Detect if my fancy keyboard is connected or not if system_profiler SPUSBDataType | grep Kinesis > /dev/null; then use_fancy_keyboard fi # Version specific changes OSXVER=`/usr/bin/defaults read /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemVersion ProductVersion` case $OSXVER in 10.8.*) unset PROMPT_COMMAND ;; esac ;;
Settings for MacOSX systems. The only bit of note here is that I check to see if my ergonomic keyboard is attached. Several pieces of software I use have different key mappings depending on what kind of keyboard I am typing on. I don't tend to use MacOSX as an ssh destination so I don't take care to connect my ssh-agent or to check for a local login before my fancy keyboard.
Linux) export HOSTNAME=`hostname` _GREP_OPTIONS="${GREP_IGNORE_DIRS} ${_GREP_OPTIONS}" LS_OPTIONS="$LS_OPTIONS -T 0 -b --color=auto" connect_to_ssh_agent NCPU=`grep ^processor /proc/cpuinfo | wc -l` if [ $NCPU -eq 0 ]; then NCPU=1; fi ;; NetBSD) export HOSTNAME=`hostname` alias __ls='colorls' # Currently the only ls option is -h, which isn't supported # with colorls LS_OPTIONS="-G" connect_to_ssh_agent # sysctl requires extra permissions on some systems #NCPU=`/sbin/sysctl -n hw.ncpu` ;; FreeBSD) NCPU=`/sbin/sysctl -n hw.ncpu` ;; Solaris) #NCPU=`psrinfo | something ;; *) # Try something reasonable export HOSTNAME=`hostname`
These OSes have nothing special about them aside from some different optons supported by a couple of userland tools.
esac # Linux Distro specific settings if [ $OS == "Linux" ]; then DISTRO="" # LSB check (Ubuntu) if [ -f /etc/lsb-release ]; then DISTRO=`cat /etc/lsb-release | sed -e 's/=/ /'|awk '{print $2}'|head -n 1` elif [ -f /etc/debian_version -o -f /etc/debian_release ]; then DISTRO="Debian" elif [ -f /etc/slackware-version ]; then DISTRO="Slackware" elif [ -f /etc/gentoo-release ]; then DISTRO="Gentoo" elif [ -f /etc/redhat-release -o -f /etc/redhat_version ]; then DISTRO="Redhat" fi
Find the name of a few Linux distributions I use from time to time.
# Now we switch on the different distros because some of them are quite different case $DISTRO in Ubuntu) export LC_CTYPE="en_CA.utf8" ;; Redhat) # I don't know which Redhat support a new enough Grep _GREP_OPTIONS=$GREP_OPTIONS_DEFAULT ;; *) export LC_CTYPE="en_US" ;; esac fi
The comment really says it all and this code adjusts a few things for slight differences between distros.
# Machine specific settings case $HOSTNAME in travis) export DITRACK_ROOT="/home/travis/issues/issues" export QUEX_PATH="${HOME}/bin/quex-0.53.2" ;; daredevil) # Daredevil has an older version of gnugrep which doesn't support exclude-dir _GREP_OPTIONS=${GREP_OPTIONS_DEFAULT} export NNTPSERVER=localhost ;; multivac) export QUEX_PATH="${HOME}/bin/quex-0.59.5" export SVN_SSH="${HOME}/projects/configurations/subversion/svnssh.sh" ;; david) export USE_TINY_KEYBOARD=USE_TINY_KEYBOARD export SVN_SSH="${HOME}/projects/configurations/subversion/svnssh.sh" ;; tbrown-macbook) # Machine at Mobidia export CVSROOT=":pserver:tbrown@MobidiaCVS:2401/MOBIDIACVS" ulimit -c unlimited ;; tbrown3-macbook|tbrown3-vm32) # Machine at Tellabs export TELLABS=1 ;; usscrh5bld*) # Build machines at Tellabs export PATH="${PATH}:/home/wiccadm/bin/cc:/usr/atria/bin:/net/sunwicc01/export/home/sunwicc01/wicc/tools/bin" alias ct='cleartool' export TELLABS=1 # The build system breaks badly if done in parallel export MAKEFLAGS=" " ;; tbrown3-2|wiz|VTd-GAP) # vmbox at Tellabs export TELLABS=1 ;; sdf|otaku|benten|faeros|iceland|norge|sverige|ukato) # Machines at SDF # These settings come out of the default .profile. At least # these are the settings I didn't overwrite. export MAIL=/mail/${LOGNAME:?} stty erase '^h' echoe ;; TRAVISB-ARISTA|*.aristanetworks.com) # Machines at Arista export ARISTA=1 export P4MERGE=$HOME/configurations/perforce/merge.sh export SCREENDIR=$HOME/.screen_sockets mkdir -p $HOME/.screen_sockets chmod 700 $HOME/.screen_sockets ;; esac
These machine specific configurations aren't that interesting for most people. In fact most of these entries are defunct but I keep them around as examples of how to perform certain types of environment specific configurations without having to reach back into my VCS history.
What might be of interest will be the screen socket configuration in the last machine section. Remember how I said at work I spent time inside chroots in screen sessions? well in order to start a screen session within the chroot you must be in the chroot. This makes storing the screen sockets in /tmp problematic. Since this chroot does allow me access to my home directory I put the screen sockets under there instead so I can access them outside the chroots.
# Set things up using the above configurations. alias grep='grep --colour=always' export GREP_OPTIONS=$_GREP_OPTIONS alias ls='__ls $LS_OPTIONS' alias df='df -h' alias du='du -h' alias free='free -m' if [ -z "$MAKEFLAGS" ]; then export MAKEFLAGS="-j $(( ( ${NCPU} * 5 ) / 4 )) -l $(( ${NCPU} * 3 ))" fi
This section takes all my default settings, which are modified above for specific OSes and machines, and exports them. Some things, like df using human readable units by default, are equally well supported everywhere and so aren't (yet) factored out.
One thing I do for make is to have the default number of parallel jobs be 5/4 times the number of cores. On one or two core machines this is equal to the number of cores, but on machines with more cores it's a bit higher to ensure that the machine is maximally loaded. Sometimes IO or other delays will result in a small number of these jobs not consuming a full core worth of CPU time. To fix this I oversubscribe the CPUs a bit. I also limit make to not starting too many jobs if the load average is more than three times the number of cores. This is high enough that I'll push out any nice'd processes, but not so many that I make the box unresponsive. These settings really help when compiling large programs on 32 core or greater boxes which have background builds and tests running.
if [ -z "$USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD" ]; then export LESSKEY="/dev/nonexistant_file" fi
If I don't have my fancy keyboard then I want to use the standard QWERTY less key mappings. My .lesskey contains the mappings for my non-standard keyboard.
# Don't overwrite the interactive login info if this isn't interactive. Say if # we are logged in somewhere and then scp a file over if [ -n "$PS1" ]; then create_update_config fi
You may not have noticed, but all my bash configuration is in this single file. I find this much more convenient than having to factor it out further into things which are to be used during an interactive shell versus not. Instead I simply skip the few bits which are not appropriate in a non-interactive shell and symlink all the other bash rc files, such as .profile, to this file. This section skips one of those interactive only chunks.
if [ -z "$DARK_TERM" -a -z "$LIGHT_TERM" ]; then # Setup a default of light on dark terminals since that's what I use most of # the time. Eventually I may get some autodetection working. At least on # some platforms. Background/foreground colour detection is a bit of a # forgotten corner of Unix terminal interaction. Especially since most # terminals claim to be xterm. export DARK_TERM="DARK_TERM" fi
This is the export portion of the nonfunctional terminal colour scheme detection code.
# Second half to the $TERM flag ssh passthrough alias ssh="TERM=\"\${TERM}:\${USE_FANCY_KEYBOARD},\${USE_TINY_KEYBOARD},\${DARK_TERM},\${LIGHT_TERM}\" ssh"
In order to export my shell flags over ssh I setup this alias to fill the flags into TERM before ssh'ing. This can be slightly annoying if you ssh to an account without my configuration because it won't know about the compound terminal type. I usually have a script which sshes to the correct machine without the compound TERM though so this is rarely an issue. When it is I fix it with and "export TERM=xterm" on the remote end.
# Only set PS1 if there is one already set so that we don't set one in a non-interactive shell PROMPTHOSTNAME=`echo ${HOSTNAME} | sed 's/\..*$//' | tr '[:upper:]' '[:lower:]'` PROMPT='${PROMPTHOSTNAME}:$(pwd_len_limited) \[\033[1;37m\]$(is_vim_running_locally)\[\033[0m\]' if [ -n "$PS1" ]; then PS1="${TITLEBAR}${PROMPT} " fi
The last thing my bashrc does, if running interactive, is to combine my prompt and set it. Some of the machines I work on have uppercase hostname (ick!) so I convert all hostnames to lowercase here. My prompt isn't as ornate as some, but I find it functional. The only piece which I haven't described here are the control characters which make the final character of my prompt bold for an easy visual marker of where my prompt ends and my command begins.
Distributed bug tracking is a topic which had a burst of interest in 2008 and then again in 2010. Unfortunately, since then not that much has come of it and there is a lot of misunderstanding. Distributed bug tracking is also a relatively new concept so there are many facets which haven't been fully thought through or which are being re-invented repeatedly. This is an attempt to collect and explain all the major issues and approaches to distributed bug tracking seen in software to the current date. The intention is to serve both as starting point for those looking to use a distributed bug tracker and a summary of the major issues for those considering to write or just understand distributed bug trackers. There is also a comparison of existing software and some possible use cases for the reader interested in using a distributed bug tracker as part or a project.
Before diving in it's important to note that there are actually two definitions of distributed bug tracking competing for the term. The older, which I'll be discussing in detail below, is tracking or distributing bug information in a distributed manner much like you can track and distribute source code using a distributed version control system such as Git or Mercurial. The second definition is distributing bugs between many more traditional centralized bug trackers such as Bugzilla or Jira. I won't cover this latter definition here, but perhaps in a later post as a rise of DVCS-like distributed bug tracking will drastically increase the need for inter-tracker bug synchronization.
Over the past five or six years there have been several distributed bug trackers written which have explored various different aspects of the domain. Most of these have issues ranging from minor through major. Here I've listed all the distributed bug trackers I was able to find in the course of my research into the topic. In a later section I'll go over a matrix of their capabilities and designs.
As you can see there is no lack of early projects exploring distributed bug tracking. Later I'll compare them to each other but first I will discuss the various dimensions and design decisions which go into a distributed bug tracker and are expressed in the above software.
There are several aspects of distributed bug tracking which have parallels with traditional centralized bug tracking, such as which fields a bug should have, and several which are distinct, such as how bugs are stored relative to branches. This section will discuss only those shared issues which have direct relevance to distributed bug tracking. Issues such as bug priority policy will not be discussed as those don't differ between centralized and distributed bug tracking. Issues unique to distributed bug tracking will also be discussed.
The first issue which comes up when people first ponder distributed bug tracking is where, with respect to the code, the bug database should be stored. There are three common options. The first and most popular is to store the bugs next to the source code in a separate directory in the source VCS. This is attractive because the developers already have that source available and it's easy for the tracker developer because if there is any VCS support required it is limited to basic content tracking commands such as add and commit. Using a VCS also lets the distributed bug tracker developer leverage the existing VCS synchronizing and merging capabilities. Further it allows bug information to follow the code across branches.
This latter ability is one of the great possibilities that distributed bug tracking brings to the table. Large complex projects which have several development and maintenance branches often have difficult or complex ways in which they track whether a particular branch has the fixes for a particular bug or not. The best track which commits fix a particular bug and then leverage the VCS to determine if a particular branch has that change or not. Other systems use multiple bugs or other manually maintained fields to store such information for release and maintenance branches, usually development branches are too much work to cover using these manual systems. In the worst case the source of information is the original developer being asked to examine the branch to see if a particular fix exists there.
Obviously all the lessor traditional approaches have their issues. However even the best traditional method depend heavily on the VCS being able to effectively determine if a change exists on a particular branch across a wide array of obstacles including complex merges, rebases, double commits and changes passed around as patches, which may be manually reapplied. This is a difficult proposition and inevitably the coverage of supported cases will have holes.
On-branch storage also has the advantage of keeping the bug database with the code is that the bug database can follow the code through source tarballs and packages as they are distributed and incorporated into distributions. It is also possible, with greater or lessor merge troubles, to have the bug data follow fixes along in the patches.
The on-branch strategy is not without disadvantages, most of which are trade-offs for the advantages gained. The aforementioned bug data in patches is one such disadvantage. Since the bugs are stored beside the code any diffs or patches will, by default, contain change information related to the bugs as well. This is not always desirable and results in extra work to clean up patches or ignore bug changes. Similarly having the bug status track the code through various branches is a useful feature, but brings about the challenge of producing a summary view across the various release and trunk branches. It is also not immediately obvious where bugs against a particular release version should be filed or how to determine which branches have a fix if any have it at all.
Another alternative is to store the bugs inside the VCS in a separate branch. This approach results in a system which is more similar to the traditional centralized bug tracking paradigm. Designed this way there is only one source of bugs of which any particular copy of the repository will have a more or less up to date version.
Off-branch bug storage solves some of the issues related to on-branch storage, namely issues related to where a bug should be entered, keeping bug data out of patches or diffs and, as will be discussed later, how to get descriptions of bugs onto the branches where the bugs are. Similarly off-branch storage has as its disadvantages many of the advantages of on-branch storage. In particular off-branch storage does nothing to help track the state of a bug on any particular code branch.
Off-branch storage also suffers a few disadvantages of its own. By storing the bugs away from the code in a separate branch extra care must be taken to ensure that the bug branch is propagated. For example, systems such as git don't automatically push and pull branches other than the current one. This can lead to a project being pushed, to Github say, without the bug database being included. As we'll see later this is one aspect which may have contributed to low recommendation scores of some of the existing distributed bug tracking software since it may be the reason several appear to not dogfood themselves.
Off-branch storage will also have difficulty transferring between different version control systems. Though it may feel like everybody uses git all the time, it just isn't true. Unfortunately how branches work differs across VCSes both semantically and with respect to the interface. This can cause limitations with entities, such as Linux distributions, integrating the upstream bug repository.
The least favoured storage method is neither on-branch nor off-branch, but out-of-tree. With out-of-tree the bug database is stored in some other fashion either inside the VCS or using some other external database. One example of this is Fossil which stores the bugs as part of its distributed database, but not really in a separate branch at all. Another example are systems which take advantage of the git-note capabilities. These systems have the advantage of being clean since they don't have the clutter of bug directories or bug branches. Unfortunately that is really the only advantage they have. Storage of this form tends to be tightly integrated with a single VCS and usually even more care must be taken to ensure that the bug databases are propagated and merged correctly then in the off-branch case.
One advantage shared between off-branch and out-of-tree is that they hold the possibility of using custom merge algorithms. If bugs are stored on-branch then they must be merged alongside the source code and thus, for the most part, must use the standard source control merging algorithms. This will constrain the file formats of the bug database to forms which are feasible for basic textual merges to be successful and relatively easy for humans to merge manually when conflicts arise. Off-branch and out-of-tree, in contrast, hold the promise of using custom merging algorithms. This is theoretically possible with off-branch storage, depending on VCS support, and the norm with out-of-tree storage.
Traditional centralized bug tracking has a great freedom in how its data is structured and represented on disk. It is perfectly acceptable to require specialized tools to read the data and the data is optimized to be processed by trusted and properly configured server software, exceptions to this will be performed by prepared system administrators who take the utmost care. Distributed bug tracking has none of these freedoms.
Distributed bug tracking must operate in a world where the tracker doesn't have full control over what happens to their data or who has permissions to change it. As we'll come back to later distributed bug tracking cannot rely on authorization to ensure that only permissible states are entered, instead the best they can do is verification of change before they are integrated into the local bug database. As such one important aspect in the chosen file formats of distributed bug trackers is that they must be difficult to corrupt.
The minority of existing distributed bug trackers have the ability to rely on specialized merging algorithms. Mostly these are out-of-tree based or based upon specialized databases. The rest must at least perform acceptably without the benefit of custom merging code. This is very true of on-branch trackers where the bug changes will pass through the standard code merging algorithms and mostly true for off-branch trackers where the bug branch will likely have at least a few hops where the specialized merge tool is not installed.
The two important aspects of distributed bug database file formats are how well they merge automatically using the standard textual merge tools and, since conflicts are sometimes unavoidable, how easily they can be resolved by humans. Conflicts are unavoidable in all cases because some data about a bug, such as whether it is resolved or not, is semantic and singular. A bug is either declared fixed or not. Consider the case of bug A and a tracking policy which has three possible bug states: New, Diagnosed and Fixed. Suppose Alice, in her branch or repository clone, fixes bug A and marks it as fixed in her copy. Suppose concurrently Bob, in his branch or repository clone, looks at the bug and figures out what's wrong so he marks it as Diagnosed. If Bob later pulls in Alice's changes he will receive a textual conflict related to the bug state. If a custom merge algorithm could be used this wouldn't be an issue since Fixed obviously overrides Diagnosed.
Though the above case could be solved by a custom merge algorithm there are cases where it is not clear that any algorithm can always make the correct merge. Consider the case of the customer severity of a bug. Alice may mark a bug as Minor because it only affect two or three customers. Bob might, however, mark it as Critical because one of those few customers is the biggest customer the company has. No mere computer could ever have all the relevant information to always make the correct choice.
With these two aspects in mind there are several different file formats which have seen use in the software I've found. These can be divided to cover the span of two dimensions. The first dimension is the format of each file and the second dimension is what is contained within these files. Out-of-tree storage designs won't be covered here since they tend to demand custom merging utilities anyways and be based upon more complex databases.
The most common file format appears to be a simple markup. Simple markups rate highly for ease of human resolution since there isn't a finicky file format to worry about. They tend to be rather inflexible and difficult to code for however. Most of the formats in this class are usually too simple to have a name or look much like the INI format.
The second most popular format seems to be a hierarchical markup akin to YAML. This differs from a simple markup in that the format is more complicated, but also more flexible. While these formats don't rate badly in terms of human conflict resolution there is a risk of a missing significant character causing issues.
The least popular appears to be full serialization formats such as JSON or XML. Unless pretty printed these are nearly impossible to manually resolve. With pretty printing these serialization formats tend to be merely error prone and tedious. One technique I have seen is to use JSON with each data element separated from any other via five or six newlines. The intent here is to reduce the possibility of a merge conflict by removing the other data in the JSON file from the context of the merge.
The file format chosen is perhaps the greatest determiner of how often automatic merging will be successful and how much pain the human will have to suffer when automatic merging fails. From this perspective alone the simple markup seems the best which is possible. Since they tend to be one statement per line formats and have minimal grammar requirements automatic merges tend to corrupt these formats the least and they are the easiest, especially when the lines in the file are in a fixed order and produce nice diffs, for a human to manually merge.
There are also three major ways to arrange the storage of bugs among a number of files. The simplest from a file layout point of view is to store the entire bug database in a single file. This has advantages of efficiency, speed and ease of coding. As a disadvantage every change to any bug will modify this file thus ensuring that it will have to be merged constantly. This option is not used it many of the existing distributed bug trackers.
The most popular file layout appears to be one file per bug. This has the advantage of reducing conflicts since it is less likely that two developers will modify the same bug than two bugs in the same database. If the tracker restricts itself to singular semantic data only, such as bug state, then this can work well since any concurrent changes the data would have to be manually merged in any case. If the tracker supports things like bug comments then this format is still open to frequent file merges as different people comment on the same bug at different times. Unfortunately bug comments in a single file will cause frequent merge conflicts until the number of existing comments becomes sufficiently large. At that point it is possible to place new comments into the file randomly to give the automatic merge the best possibility of success. Most bugs to not accumulate more than a dozen comments however.
The final common layout is to use (almost) immutable objects. In this scenario each issue has a number of files. All or most files will be immutable. One way to accomplish this is to put each comment into a separate, immutable file and give each bug one small mutable file which contains the singular semantic data. Since concurrent comments are common and, in principle, easily merged automatically the comments would be trouble free. Since singular data is impossible to automatically merge in all cases the file being mutable gives the human the full power of their VCS to help them determine the correct semantic resolution. An alternative is to use fully immutable objects and a log-like structure where newer objects override older objects. Such a system is capable of always merging automatically, but when the merges are incorrect, as in the Fixed/Diagnosed example above, the human is left with minimal tools to determine the correct resolution or even receive any indication that a conflict occurred which requires their attention.
In allowing the maximum number of successful automatic merges and immediately bringing semantic conflicts to the user's attention the mostly immutable object method appears to be the superior method. Successful automatic merges have much less friction than the alternative which is important to support the adoption of distributed bug tracking.
In summary it would seem, at this time, that a series of mostly immutable object in a simple markup format would be the best available choice for the backend bug storage format.
Centralized bug trackers tend to support process automation. Process automation is the ability of the bug tracker to ensure that a bug goes from New to Assigned to Resolved and, being assigned back to the reporter, to Closed. Many projects use this to implement complex bug life cycles and bug handling processes. Distributed bug trackers don't have the luxury of supporting this feature in a reliable manner. There are two central reasons for this.
The first is that while centralized bug trackers operate on centralized and controlled servers, distributed bug trackers run on the developers' own machine. The developer won't be able to short circuit the twelve step bug process on the server, but if they are aggravated enough they'll disable the process enforcement code on their own copies of the repository. With no way to trust that every step has been performed in an allowable order the only way to confirm the process has been followed is to verify after the fact.
Unfortunately this verification comes with its own problems, even if the developers follow the process locally. Merging state between concurrent modifications can, depending on the complexity of the bug process, result in invalid or at least ambiguous states. Merging the output state of two identical but independently run state machines is not guaranteed to result in a valid state of the state machine. It is possible to verify that a valid state has been reached as the result of a merge, but that will involve manual resolution, often of a frustratingly tedious nature. Merging of bugs makes it difficult to maintain a verified bug state since the transitions cannot necessarily be observed.
In the end it seems that bug tracker automation will either be done mostly with wrapper tools or VCS hooks. As with DVCS hooks versus CVCS hooks I believe we'll find that distributed bug tracking results in the adoption of less stringent processes and additional trust put into the users of the bug database because only after the fact can hooks be executed at a canonical repository.
The oldest form of distributed bug tracking is a TODO file committed beside the code. This is usually a simple list of tasks or bugs to be fixed, perhaps with a single brief comment explaining the issue in detail. This is the simplest form of bug tracking, just a list of titles, maybe with a description. At the other end there are massively complex centralized systems with bug processes, multiple comments, attachments and more fields, both free form and constrained, than you can shake a stick at.
Distributed bug tracking covers this entire range. Simple TODO lists are not very interesting because they are simple and quite limited, massively complex systems are unlikely to succeed as distributed bug trackers for the reasons described in the previous section. Most interesting is the middle ground along the lines of a basic Bugzilla installation. Such a bug tracker support a handful of useful fields: severity, component, state, owner, etc. They also support comments on bugs and attachments on bugs. Systems of these moderate complexities are commonly found in open source applications and smaller corporations.
The handling of the metadata fields is not terribly complex. These are the singular semantic data concerning a bug which computers will find difficult to correctly merge in all situations. Having a large number of these is not an engineering challenge, but beyond some number it will strain the patience of the developer and be ignored. A large number of metadata fields may also not be as useful in distributed bug tracking as centralized bug tracking. Since relational database formats are troublesome when it comes to distributed bug storage many of them use less structured file formats, thus running arbitrarily complex queries on the bug database is cumbersome, often requiring parsing hundreds or thousands of files into memory before checking each record in a loop. This is more difficult than simply using existing text processing tools to run regex queries on the database. If a tool like grep is used then there is no point in having a field for every possible situation since all the comments will be searched anyways. This being the case I believe that only the most useful of fields will be formalized with any other data being put into a structured form appropriate for the project and placed into comments.
The issue of attachments is also not complicated other than the fact that most existing distributed bug trackers ignore this feature entirely. This is likely just an oversight due to the relative immaturity of the field. Attachments play an important role in the operation of a bug tracker by being able to store data that is too large to fit conveniently into a comment. Examples of this include logs or configuration files.
Comments in a bug tracker are a critical collaboration feature. Comments allow one developer to communicate through time to either themselves, users, watchers or other developers. It provides an organized area to maintain comments and investigation notes concerning a bug.
One particular issue related to comments and distributed bug tracking is comment order. Many bug trackers use a flat comment model where comments are made in a linear order. In a centralized model this works well since there is a definite order to the comments and there are only small windows where a comment can be posted while another is being prepared. In fact, many bug trackers detect this situation and prevent submitting the latter comment until the user has read the former comment. This is a form of real time merging. Because a consistent linear order is maintained in the views of different users the comments can constructively reference each other. However, in a distributed world concurrent comments will be the norm rather than the exception and not until much after the fact will it be possible to determine a canonical comment ordering.
It is not an insurmountable challenge to make flat comments work in a distributed world, but it is also not clear that it is the best way. One alternative is to work along the lines of email, where you respond to particular comments in a tree. This can then be displayed in a nested fashion this makes which comments are replying to which parent comments clear. Perhaps this might ease the difficulties of creating a consistent canonical ordering. One particular additional requirement of a nested presentation might be the necessity to show the user which comments are new when they revisit a bug thread. None of the trackers I investigated appear to support this at the moment.
The most popular bug tracker user interfaces are web interfaces. A web interface is convenient for centralized trackers because it is graphical in nature and has an easy communication path from the centrally controlled web server to the centrally controlled database server, often the same machine. The web interface also provides realtime feedback. The less common, but nonetheless effective, interface types often seen are CLI interfaces, email interfaces and GUI interfaces. Often these are used in concert with a web interface.
Of these there is no intrinsic argument against any but email interfaces. It is too burdensome to expect a developer to always have local email configured and to integrate every project or branch of a project into such a system. Most of the distributed bug trackers offer a CLI interface. This is a popular option because most interactions with a bug tracker during development are changing the state or commenting on a particular bug. For these purposes a CLI is more than adequate. CLI interfaces also have the great advantage of fitting well with the other CLI development tools such as VCSes, editors, build systems and test runners. CLI interfaces are also easy to script which allows developers to automate or integrate the tracker with other tools, such as their editor.
In general CLI interfaces are very convenient for the developer who is working on a bug. They are less convenient if the developer has to wade through a list of bugs to find a particular bug or otherwise navigate a large amount of data. CLI interfaces are also entirely inappropriate for users of a project. It is unreasonable to expect a user to checkout the source repository and use a CLI to see whats bugs a project has or the current state of their particular bug.
Many of the disadvantages of the CLI interface could be ameliorated with a curses interface to allow interactive navigation and modification of issues. However this would still limit the interface to textual information. A related approach which offers additional flexibility is the support a local web browser interface. If this interface has reasonable support for terminal browsers then the effect can be almost as good as a dedicated curses interface with the advantage of supporting GUI browsers with all the niceties that entails.
Distributed bug tracking brings one additional wrinkle to a web browser interface. If the bug tracker is running locally and stores its database near the source code then having multiple concurrent users against one instance brings numerous difficulties. Among these are handling commit attribution avoiding conflicts. VCSes provide tools to do this when one user uses a checkout at a time, but tend to provide no help on a finer level. The result of this is that any bug tracker intending to support this will likely end up reimplementing much of the isolation support of formal databases. Since this isn't required in the common case of a single developer working on their own checkout this seems to be wasted effort.
Thus many distributed bug trackers will have two web interfaces if they have any. One will be for local use and one will be for public use. I am not aware of any existing distributed bug tracker which provides a read-write public web interface and stores the bugs either on-branch or off-branch, but there are a several which have a readonly public interface. In a later section I will discuss possible ways in which this can be made to work when interacting with the public. If one is to write a read-write public web interface there are several design issues which need to be thought through first.
The first of these is how to get bug changes from the webserver to the source repository. A traditional centralized bug tracker stores its bug repository in a mutable database. This allows data to be deleted at will. Additionally the integrity of a separate database bug database is usually not considered as critical as the project's source repository. Thus if a malicious user comes along and fills the centralized tracker up with hundreds of megabytes of bugs the effects are relatively minor and a system administrator can easily delete the greater portion of the mess. If a distributed bug tracker stores its database in the VCS then it may not be possible to permanently delete junk data. It could be made to not appear in recent versions, but would still exist in the immutable history. A rapid increase in size could also cause severe problems as a source checkout which was less than a megabyte suddenly turns into one several gigabytes in size. Even if the checkout size later decreases back to the original size after a cleanup.
The second is related to the interface for resolving conflicts between the public interface and the canonical bug repository. Since distributed bug tracking is distributed many bug changes can happen concurrently only to be merged later. This is handled using VCS capabilities in the developer case, but it is likely that using a VCS backend to a public web interface would be cumbersome or be used differently because of the possibility of many concurrent public users. If VCS help isn't possible in the same way as the developer use case then a separate tool might need to be provided to pick and choose which public changes pass moderation.
The rest of the major issues in considering a read-write public interface are those of any other public web site with user generated content and won't be covered here.
One possible solution to this is to have some sort of staging system where the new data from the public interface for the bug repository is manually vetted before inclusion the permanent copy of the bug database. This moderation would need to either be performed frequently or have the unmoderated modifications appear on the public tracker immediately to ensure the public users receive timely interface feedback.
Though there is no specific reason a dedicated GUI interface could not be written none of the major software described does so. This is likely partially due to the effort required compared to a web interface or CLI. Modern web technologies coupled with a single user web server would seem to provide nearly all the advantages of a GUI with significantly better portability and reduced development effort.
As with the change from centralized VCSes to DVCSes global identification is a tricky subject. It is undeniable that the traditional linear numbering of bugs is an obvious method, where possible, and easier to remember when the numbers are small. Unfortunately such a system cannot be globally unique in a distributed world.
As with DVCSes there appears to be no alternative to random or pseudo-random identifiers, such as cryptographic hashes. This has proven to not be overly burdensome in practice as long as the tracker attempts to disambiguate hashes from a subset of the full string. For example the tracker should be able to determine that the bug identified by a8d82 is actually a8d82ff764188578 as long as the shorter prefix isn't shared by more than one full hash.
There are several methods that can meet this need, but the most common are encoded UUIDs and taking a cryptographic hash of the contents. Obviously these should be presented in a human readable format such as base-64 or hexadecimal. Base-64 has the advantage of being a denser representation, but it suffers from using most of the keyboard characters and both upper and lower case letters. This latter can cause trouble with typing correctly or going through some systems which may stomp on the case. Hexadecimal, on the other hand, is slightly less dense, but doesn't suffer from the case problem. Also, since it uses a limited set of characters it is easier to include in identifiers in other systems, such as version codes.
It seems that there is room for an encoding of the pseudo-random hashes which is both denser than hexadecimal and yet avoids the major issues of base-64. Perhaps something like base-36 (0-9a-z) would fit the bill, though some of those characters may be difficult to type on some keyboards in some languages.
The inability to support linear numerical identifiers would seem to be a severe disadvantage. For projects with a small number of bugs, less than one or two thousand say, this is definitely the case. Beyond that number however the situation is less clear cut. When the number of required digits in an identifier is greater then four or five or the new bug rate is more than a handful per day, then the numbers themselves become more difficult to remember and lose meaning. On many large projects bug IDs are copy and pasted anyways since they are difficult to remember and easy to mistype. A similar situation appears to have won out in the DVCS world, large project will have millions of commits and in such a situation a linear numbering scheme can be no easier to tell apart than the pseudo-random hashes which replaced them.
Above I've listed all the distributed bug tracking software, both defunct and active, I could find. In this section I will compare them briefly. First I will make any notes about the software and then I will have a summary table of the major aspects. Most of the aspects which are specific to distributed bug tracking have been discussed and explained above. After all the software has been described individually I will compare the most usable software in a table.
Artemis is a basic tracker built as a Mercurial extension. It has pretty complete filtering options including the ability to store custom filters.
Last commit/release: Feb 2012
Language/Runtime: Python / Mercurial plugin
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: Maildir per issue
VCSes: Mercurial
Custom Fields:
Comments: Nested
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: No
Bug Dependencies: No
b is another Mercurial extension with a simpler model than Artemis. Note that the last release is quite old, but the development tree has activity as of late last year. b is based off the t extension but adapted to provide for more bug tracker-like use cases. b doesn't provide a public website itself, but the hgsite extension will take a b bug database and produce a simple static website from it.
Last commit/release: Oct 2012
Language/Runtime: Python / Mercurial plugin
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: Readonly via hgsite
GUI: No
File format: Sectioned text fields
VCSes: Mercurial
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: No
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
Bugs Everywhere is likely the most mature of the distributed bug trackers. It has a reasonably active user base and seems to have most of the features to be expected of a distributed bug tracker. The project has had multiple contributors and is currently on its third maintainer since 2005. Bugs Everywhere additionally has an email interface, which is rare among distributed bug trackers.
Last commit/release: March 2013
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: Readonly
GUI: No
File format: JSON, one file per comment
VCSes: Arch, Bazaar, Darcs, Git, Mercurial, Monotone, Others possible
Custom Fields: No?
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: UUID
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: Yes
cil is another small CLI only distributed bug tracker. It provides some basic integration with Git, but can also be used with other VCSes as long as you are willing to add and commit changes to the bug repository manually.
cil uses a unique bug repository format where every issue and comment have a file inside a single directory. Each issue and comment has a link to it's children or parent. Thus adding a comment may cause a merge conflict in the issue file if another comment was added concurrently, but it will be restricted to references.
Last commit/release: Oct 2011
Language/Runtime: Perl
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: Simple key-value-freeform markup
VCSes: Git-supported but not required
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: Yes
DisTract is one of the older distributed bug trackers, but seem to have fallen off the Internet. You can find the last copy of the site at Archive.org. DisTract is interesting in that it doesn't provide a CLI interface, but instead all the bug interactions are performed from within a page in Firefox (not any other browser) which uses Javascript to access the filesystem directly. Unfortunately since I have been unable to find any copies of DisTract not a lot is known about it.
From the archived website it was clear that the author intended to have a bug specific merge algorithm, though it seems unlikely that ever came to pass.
A bug tracker which didn't make my list because it requires realtime access to a central repository but takes a similar implementation view is Artifacts for Web. The bug tracker runs locally in the browser but all the bug storage happens on a central SVN server directly.
Last commit/release: mid-2007
Language/Runtime: Haskell / Javascript / Firefox
Bug storage: ?
Dog food: Yes
CLI: No
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: ?
GUI: No
File format: JSON?
VCSes: Monotone
Custom Fields: ?
Comments: ?
Attachments: ?
BugID: ?
Multiuser: ?
Bug Dependencies: ?
DITrack is the first off-branch distributed bug tracker in this list. Ditrack is interesting in that it only support SVN, a centralized VCS. As such several of its design features are rare. The first is a linear bug ID scheme, bugs are numbered in sequential order. Each issue is a directory made up of multiple files. Each file is numbered in sequence but seems immutable. Thus each issue is the sum of the log-type entries from the files. While sequential numbering has obvious problems in a decentralized system the log structure does present an interesting solution to the merging problem. Since the bug is the combined last state of various fields from the log there need never been any manual merging since regular file merging will always automatically result in a last-wins bug metadata merging strategy.
Last commit/release: Aug 2008
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: Off-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: Read-only
GUI: No
File format: RFC-822
VCSes: SVN
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Linear
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
dits appears to be the aborted beginnings of a distributed bug tracker. Its functionality isn't very complete and it doesn't appear usable.
Last commit/release: Apr 2010
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: No
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: JSON
VCSes: HG, Git?
Custom Fields: No
Comments: No
Attachments: No
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: No
Bug Dependencies: No
Ditz is a distributed bug tracker which was, at one time, fairly popular as distributed bug trackers go in the Ruby community. Now it seems to be abandoned though several people have created personal forks on gitorious. Ditz has no native support for any particular VCS, but it does have a plugin system which has been used to integrate with Git. Of interest, especially to Emacs users, is that Ditz has an accompanying Emacs major mode. Ditz has a particular focus on grouping issues into releases.
There appears to be a local web UI "Sheila" but I am unsure of it's usability state.
Last commit/release: Sept 2011
Language/Runtime: Ruby
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: Read-only
GUI: ditz-commander
File format: YAML
VCSes: Agnostic
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: No
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: With plugin
Bug Dependencies: No
Fossil is not just a distributed bug tracker, but an entire development forge in a box. It includes a DVCS, wiki, bug tracker and web server. One might call it a distributed forge. Since Fossil stores the tickets in its distributed database there is a custom merging algorithm which is mostly apparently newest-wins, but avoids any manual merging of bug files.
Last commit/release: Apr 2013
Language/Runtime: C
Bug storage: Out-of-tree
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: Read-write
GUI: No
File format: Database
VCSes: Fossil
Custom Fields: Yes
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: UUID
Multiuser: Yes, but no ownership
Bug Dependencies: No
UPDATE 2013-06-03: As C2H5OH mentioned in the comments it is possible to add custom fields.
git-case is a bare bones proof of concept distributed bug tracker built in the style of the git porcelain. The website claims that some operations are sluggish, but no further details are given.
Last commit/release: Oct 2010
Language/Runtime: Bash
Bug storage: Off-branch
Dog food: No
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: Plain text
VCSes: Git
Custom Fields: Yes
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
git-issues is a mostly defunct tracker built on top of Git in a similar manor to git-case.
Last commit/release: June 2012
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: Off-branch
Dog food: No
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: XML
VCSes: Git
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
gitissius started off as a fork of git-issues, but then diverged significantly.
Last commit/release: Dec 2011
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: Off-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: JSON
VCSes: Git
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: No
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
gitli is really more of a single user TODO list than a fully fledged distributed bug tracker. All the issues are contained within a single file. With that setup, linear BugIDs and no comments this isn't really suitable for any except the simplest of project needs.
Last commit/release: March 2011
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: Custom text
VCSes: Git
Custom Fields: No
Comments: No
Attachments: No
BugID: Linear
Multiuser: No
Bug Dependencies: No
gitstick is apparently based upon Ticgit. This seems to be a young distributed bug tracker yet. Unfortunately I wasn't able to determine much information about how this project operates from inspection. It may be less appropriate to call this a standalone distributed bug tracker than a local web UI for Ticgit.
Last commit/release: Jan 2013
Language/Runtime: Scala
Bug storage: Off-branch
Dog food: No
CLI: No
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: ?
VCSes: Git
Custom Fields: ?
Comments: ?
Attachments: ?
BugID: ?
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
klog appears to be greatly in flux at this time so it is difficult to say much which is likely to be accurate in a year. There appears to be a great many features planned, but only the most basic features are implemented. According to the bug database a complete rework of the way the bug database is stored is planned.
Last commit/release: Mar 2013
Language/Runtime: Javascript
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: Prototype?
Public Web UI: No?
GUI: Mac OSX
File format: Key-value-text
VCSes: Agnostic
Custom Fields: No
Comments: No
Attachments: No
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: No
Bug Dependencies: No
Mercurial Bugtracker Extension uses an unusual layout for bugs. There is one directory for open bugs and another for closed bugs. Such a layout may cause issues when there are concurrent modifications such as one person modifying an open bug and another closing it.
Last commit/release: May 2012
Language/Runtime: Python / Mercurial plugin
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: INI
VCSes: Mercurial
Custom Fields: No
Comments: No
Attachments: No
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
milli seems to have disappeared during the lengthy research period so no further information is available.
Last commit/release: ?
Language/Runtime: ?
Bug storage: ?
Dog food: ?
CLI: ?
Local Web UI: ?
Public Web UI: ?
GUI: ?
File format: ?
VCSes: Agnostic
Custom Fields: ?
Comments: ?
Attachments: ?
BugID: ?
Multiuser: ?
Bug Dependencies: ?
Disclosure: Nitpick is written by the author.
Nitpick is a relatively young distributed bug tracker with most of the significant features discussed in this article. One notable feature of Nitpick not present in other distributed bug trackers is the ability to combine multiple Nitpick databases, via the foreign project feature, into a single view. This allows viewing both bugs across several project and across several branches in a single instance of Nitpick.
Last commit/release: Apr 2013
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: Read-only
GUI: No
File format: Simple markup
VCSes: git, hg, svn
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Nested
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: Yes
pitz started off as a reimplementation of Ditz.
Last commit/release: Aug 2012
Language/Runtime: Python
Bug storage: On-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: No
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: YAML
VCSes: Agnostic
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: UUID
Multiuser: Yes?
Bug Dependencies: No
scm-bug is not a standalone distributed bug tracker. Instead it ties source code to an existing bug tracker. It might be possible to use this with a locally installed tracker in a distributed fashion.
Last commit/release: Feb 2011
Language/Runtime: Perl
Bug storage: Out-of-tree
Dog food: ?
CLI: ?
Local Web UI: ?
Public Web UI: ?
GUI: ?
File format: ?
VCSes: svn, git, cvs, hg
Custom Fields: ?
Comments: ?
Attachments: ?
BugID: ?
Multiuser: ?
Bug Dependencies: ?
Simple Defects is more than just a distributed bug tracker, it is also capable of synchronizing bidirectionally with several centralized bug trackers. SD uses a distributed database instead of storing the bug repository alongside the source code in a VCS. As such the VCS support it does have is mostly limited to adding commands to the VCS command it self. Since SD is capable of synchronizing bugs in multiple ways it might be possible to use it as an intermediate step between a central project bug tracker and a locally installed centralized bug tracker for developer use.
Last commit/release: Sept 2012
Language/Runtime: Perl
Bug storage: Out-of-tree
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: Database
VCSes: git, darcs and other
Custom Fields: ?
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Linear
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: ?
Stick is another one of those distributed bug trackers which seems to have fallen of the Internet. I'm unable to retrieve the source to get much concrete information but the website makes it seem as if Stick was mostly in the idea conception phase with little actual working functionality.
Last commit/release: ?
Language/Runtime: ?
Bug storage: ?
Dog food: ?
CLI: ?
Local Web UI: ?
Public Web UI: ?
GUI: ?
File format: ?
VCSes: Git
Custom Fields: ?
Comments: ?
Attachments: ?
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: No
Bug Dependencies: ?
ticgit-ng does dogfood itself, but that isn't evident from the main repository. I had to search through some forks on Github to find the bug branch. Ticgit-ng uses an interesting approach to managing the data by having a single 'file' per field. Thus there is a file for the state and one for each comment. Not evident in the feature summary is that Ticgit-ng supports tagging issues, though it isn't clear if it supports multiple tags or only one.
Last commit/release: Oct 2012
Language/Runtime: Ruby
Bug storage: Off-branch
Dog food: Yes
CLI: Yes
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: No
GUI: No
File format: Plain text
VCSes: git
Custom Fields: No
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Hash
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
Veracity is another distributed forge in that it is not only a distributed bug tracker, but also wiki and source control. Again the bugs are stored in a distributed database which has some special logic and interfaces for helping merging along.
Last commit/release: Mar 2013
Language/Runtime: C
Bug storage: Out-of-tree
Dog food: Yes
CLI: No
Local Web UI: Yes
Public Web UI: No?
GUI: No
File format: Database
VCSes: Veracity
Custom Fields: No?
Comments: Yes
Attachments: Yes
BugID: Linear
Multiuser: Yes
Bug Dependencies: No
Only what I consider to be fully fledged distributed bug trackers worth considering for use in a project of more than one developer will find a place in this summary table for reasons of space. All the same information is available for every tracker I evaluated in their respective sections. The primary determinant of suitability is multi-user support (the ability to assign bugs to users and to determine who made any particular comment or bug report), a sufficiently recent commit or release and what appeared to be at least one mature interface for developer use. The range on project complexity these trackers are suitable for varies, but since small two man project should use a bug tracker just as large projects should I list trackers of multiple complexities.
To save space I have skipped the fields for the GUI (since none of the selected trackers have a GUI), support for custom fields (again since none of them appear to have such support) and multiuser support since that was one of the requirements and all have some such support. It is important to note that all but Fossil have full multi-user support out of the box. Fossil lacks the ability to assign a bug to a particular person for resolution, but it can be added as a set of custom fields.
Comparison part 1
| Software | Last Commit / Release | Language | Bug Storage | Dogfood | CLI | Local Web UI | Public Web UI |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| b | Oct 2012 | Python | On-branch | Yes | Yes | No | Read only |
| Bugs Everywhere | Mar 2013 | Python | On-branch | Yes | Yes | Yes | Read only |
| Fossil | Apr 2013 | C | Out-of-tree | Yes | Yes | Yes | Read-write |
| git-issues | June 2012 | Python | Off-branch | No | Yes | No | No |
| Mercurial Bugtracker Extension | May 2012 | Python | On-branch | Yes | Yes | No | No |
| Nitpick | Apr 2013 | Python | On-branch | Yes | Yes | Yes | Read only |
| Simple Defects | Sept 2012 | Perl | Out-of-tree | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| ticgit-ng | Oct 2012 | Ruby | Off-branch | Yes | Yes | Yes | No |
| Veracity | Mar 2013 | C | Out-of-tree | Yes | No | Yes | No? |
Comparison part 2
| Software | File format | VCSes | Comments | Attachments | BugID | Bug Dependencies |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| b | Sectioned text | hg | Yes | No | Hash | No |
| Bugs Everywhere | JSON | Many | Yes | Yes | UUID | Yes |
| Fossil | Database | Fossil | Yes | Yes | UUID | No |
| git-issues | XML | git | Yes | Yes | Hash | No |
| Mercurial Bugtracker Extension | INI | hg | No | No | Hash | No |
| Nitpick | Simple Markup | svn git hg | Nested | Yes | Hash | Yes |
| Simple Defects | Database | git darcs other | Yes | Yes | Linear | ? |
| ticgit-ng | Plain text | git | Yes | Yes | Hash | No |
| Veracity | Database | Veracity | Yes | Yes | Linear | No |
By analogy with DVCSes distributed bug tracking provides some new capabilities, make some older techniques easier and make some traditional centralized bug tracking methods all but impossible. In this section I'll try to cover the most common of these cases and some way to work within the limits, tighter and looser, which distributed bug tracking software as it exists today provides.
Most of the talk around distributed bug tracking is about replacing a centralized bug tracker completely. This is so for the obvious reason that most developers don't want more than one bug tracker per project. There are, however, some interesting alternative uses which are not in direct conflict with a centralized tracker. One such use is the aggregation of multiple trackers into a single one. Consider the case of a developer who works on several different projects, If these projects don't share one bug tracker then the developer must regularly check these separate trackers. Some of the distributed bug trackers described above support bidirectional communication with other bug trackers, centralized or not. As such the developer could configure a local distributed bug tracker to give an overview of several trackers.
An alternative is a hybrid centralized-decentralized setup, similar to how DVCS is used in practice in many cases. If the project or organization has a single centralized tracker a developer could setup a distributed tracker as a mirror, full or partial, of the centralized tacker for personal consumption and modification when they are disconnected or operating over a poor network link. Whenever it is convenient they would then trigger a bidirectional synchronization. Thus they gain all the advantages of distributed bug tracking without many of the disadvantages. This model is similar to individual developers who use git as an interface to a Perforce or Subversion repository.
Yet another use case, again depending on aggregation, is to combine various bug trackers for a single project. As an example consider the case where the bug trackers of an open source package and bugs against that package in the trackers of all the major Linux distributions could be combined for a more complete view of the issues users are having with the software.
The various ways a distributed bug tracker could be used is not fully explored so these are just a few examples of how they could be integrated into workflows.
One common concern with large projects moving to distributed bug tracking is how to integrate QA and project managers. The predominant view among existing large projects is that QA and project managers, for the most part, should neither need nor have access to the VCS. Bringing this stance to distributed bug tracking would imply that QA would have no way to directly interact with the bug tracker in other than a readonly fashion. The solution to this predicament is to give those QA and project managers read-write access to the VCS.
There are a few reasons such a move is resisted. Many of them are obsolete or misinformed notions based upon limitations of old VCSes or poor bug trackers. The first of these is an entirely valid argument that requiring all the QA and project managers to become experts in the VCS of choice is overly onerous. At more than one place I have seen the local VCS expert setting up special wrappers to perform only the limited set of functionality a particular artist or QA needed to get their job done and hid all the other complexity. In a similar vein any good distributed bug tracker will provide a sufficiently simple interface to the VCS for the bug operations that minimal training should be necessary.
A second common claim, especially among open source projects, is that the VCS is for source code only and everything else should be kept separate. While it is possible to have a parallel VCS repository, or some other arrangement as will be discussed below, modern VCSes are not simply source control systems, but generalized version control systems. Though some VCSes handle them less well than others, many large projects have good success storing large assets or even build chain tools into the VCS alongside the project. As such there is no reason not to also store the bug database and all the input from the QA people as well. The VCS can be viewed as the project state and not just the project output.
A final possible complaint is that the QA people may, not being VCS experts, make disastrous mistakes relating to merging or reviving stale commits or just editing the other parts of the project inadvertently. While this is true when no protections are put in place, most VCSes provide the ability to either restrict different users to different portions of the checkout tree or otherwise have a knowledgeable person double check their changes before accepting them into the main development repository.
Integrating QA, project managers and other non-developers such that they can make full use of the distributed bug tracker is not a difficult matter, it merely requires that sufficient training and protections be put in place. These less technical people will likely, however, not be pleased with purely a command line interface to the tracker. Partially this is because their use cases tend to not deal with one bug at a time but normally traversing, reading, commenting on and modifying several in quick succession. Partially this aversion will be to reduced familiarity with CLI tools as compared to the average developer. For this reason any distributed bug tracker used should also provide a good read-write local web or graphical interface for these less technical users.
Care must also be taken when it comes to helping them know which branch of development to find the appropriate bugs in. For support type staff this is as easy as having them choose the version to file the bug against first and choosing the correct bug repository version based upon that. For QA users it is more a matter of ensuring that the builds they test come along with the bug database. This is most easily accomplished with a fully automated build system which can produce QA testable builds on demand. With such a system QA is given a source tree which is trivially built into a product to test. Then QA need merely use that branch to handle with any bugs for that build.
As previously discussed a major outstanding issue, especially for open source projects, is how to provide the public with a useful interface into the project bug tracker. Few read-write web interfaces suitable for public consumption with a distributed bug trackers have been created, though no insurmountable obstacle appears to block the way in most cases. Currently I can only recommend one approach to solving this issue, namely having a readonly user web interface which is updated frequently and handling any bug modification or creation on the part of users as part of a support mailing list.
This will not be as convenient for both the developers and users as a public bug tracker, but is likely to provide better results for both parties. The users, instead of creating a new bug which is likely never to be answered if it is ever read by the developer, will interact with a developer or other support person for the project directly. This will allow the developer to not only determine if this is an existing bug, a step users often never perform correctly, but also ensure that all the necessary information has been acquired before the user leaves and is never heard from again. Many bugs in open source bug trackers are full of incomplete information and the reporting user is nowhere to be found. The user is also better off as there may be a solution to the particular issue they are facing which they will be told about immediately instead of waiting for a WorksForMe resolution of their bug, if that ever comes.
As previously mentioned the developer will be able to extract all the necessary information from the user more easily because the discussion will happen immediately instead of days or weeks later when somebody gets around to viewing the newest bugs on the tracker. Developers also benefit by having fewer duplicate bugs with slightly different information cluttering up the tracker because they'll deduplicate as they go along. An additional advantage is a greater likelihood of a user actually reporting the issue. If the recommended way for a user to report a problem is to a mailing list they are reasonably likely to do so. They are less likely to create yet another account for yet another bug tracker which they will never use again such that they can file one bug which will almost certainly not receive a response.
One critical and necessary aspect of this to remember is that responses to the users on the list must be timely and efficient. It is this requirement of good communication which brings about the benefits for both the developers and users. In fact, this method is how many commercial companies operate, the customers interact directly with support staff who navigate and fill in the necessary information in the bug tracker. The second critical aspect is that the public readonly web view is updated frequently. With an up to date place for users to track the state of their bug, look up resolutions to other similar issues or to point users when they are having a known issue is invaluable and saves developers time. Users prefer to get the answers they want without having to bother the developers and they like to see progress.
One particular issue with distributed bug tracking is that there is not necessarily a single complete view of the bugs at any time. Instead different branches may have different bugs in different and conflicting states. For example a development branch may have fixed a bug but since that branch hasn't yet merged to the trunk the trunk doesn't have that bug marked as fixed. A further example is a release branch having a bug created against it on the complaint of a user, but that bug not having made its way via merging to the trunk and so that bug exists nowhere else in the VCS. These are all examples of the power of distributed bug tracking when it is used to have bug states follow the code flow within the project.
However, sometimes it is useful to have a complete, or more complete view of the bugs. As an example, a project manager may want to know what bugs have been fixed for the coming release, even if not all of those changes have made it to the release branch yet. Perhaps the code must move from a development branch, through a QA branch before arriving in the release branch. It is still important to note the state of the bug that is otherwise marked as open in the release branch is actually closed in some branch. Another situation is one of a developer who works in a development branch. This developer would like to be able to, when he views the bug database, see not just the bug information as it appears in his branch, but also in the trunk in case some new bug or comment relevant to his current branch appears.
This cross-branch bug database merging is an important feature to ensure a wider view of the state of the bug database when such a view is useful. At the time of the this writing only one distributed bug tracker which I am aware of, Nitpick, supports such a facility directly. Indirectly it is possible to script a CLI interface to merge the bug query results across many VCS checkouts. Of course any distributed bug tracker which used off-branch or out-of-tree storage will have neither this disadvantage nor the advantage of having differing branch versions of the bug database.
Distributed bug tracking holds many possible advantages and uses which cannot be filled by traditional centralized bug trackers. But it may be that not all of this power is desired for a particular project. In many cases it is possible to configure the distributed bug tracker, with some scripting effort, to work in a less powerful mode.
For example, while off-branch bug repositories will likely have an easier interface for storing bugs that way it is possible to use an on-branch bug tracker as an off-branch tracker. Simply create a separate branch or checkout for the bug repository and write some scripts which direct the bug tracker to use that branch or checkout instead of putting the bugs beside the source code. This relatively simple step will produce an off-branch bug tracker with the bugs stored in the VCS.
Similarly a setup even more similar to a centralized bug tracker, but with the bugs stored entirely in the VCS could be setup by presenting the web interface to each developer and then directly committed to the VCS. There is even the possibility of doing these simpler setups for some users of the repository while allowing the full distributed capabilities for others, perhaps the remote workers.
In much the same way an on-branch or off-branch bug tracker can be turned into an out-of-tree tracker simply by having a separate VCS repository which contains only the bug repository.
In the beginning bug trackers started as simple TODO lists, perhaps with some notes. From there the massive environmental spectrum of bug tracking tools and processes evolved. At the extreme end there are very complicated bug processes and tools. While these sorts of processes can be translated to distributed bug tracking they are likely to be cumbersome and disappointing. Instead distributed bug tracking is better suited to simpler processes and fewer fields. Because all the bug database is available locally to a developer it is simpler to run complex queries as scripts locally. Any datum which isn't extremely common is likely better off as a formatted comment to a bug instead of a custom field with complex automation behind it.
Along these lines a simpler bug process in general is recommended. A small number of bug states, priorities and the like is recommended. If the bug process is simple enough then no automation will be necessary because the developer will have only one obvious choice and will be able to arrive directly at the state they desire. This is contrary to a common setup where the developer must first mark a bug as assigned before marking it resolved before marking it closed. For many simple bugs this is overkill and the developer will spend more time navigating the process than fixing the bug. In such cases the developer wants to be able to skip straight to closing the bug.
With distributed bug tracking it pays to have a clear and simple process. Only a handful of states are needed and most information is better suited to being in a comment than a custom field.
One issue which comes up when discussing the abstract theory of distributed bug tracking is that it would be ideal if a bug could be associated with the original commit which introduced the error across all the various branches and clones. This is nice in theory but also impossible in theory. There may be no single commit which introduced the error for one thing. While it is possible to associate a bug with any commits which do introduce an issue that is really just a mapping from bug ID to commit ID. It is possible to construct a bug tracker in this way, and it would be able to cut across branches using this mapping.
Lacking such a system the next best that can be done is to ensure that bugs are entered where the fix would be placed. As an example consider a project with a recent release and a trunk where development continued. During the release stabilization process a branch would have been created for the release while any remaining major bugs where fixed there. All those changes would then be merged back into trunk at a later time. Any bugs found by QA against that stabilizing release should be raised in the release branch. Then when any fixes propagate so too will the bug information.
In a similar way bugs in maintenance releases should be raised in the branch for that release to eventually be merged into the trunk. The fix itself may or may not still be applicable, but since some changes will be the bug database changes should be merged up as well.
Now all this depends on the particular branching and versioning strategy the project uses. If the project doesn't have maintenance releases or doesn't move changes around like that then a different location to report or modify bugs will be appropriate.
As previously stated distributed bug tracking really started as simple TODO files. As such there are ways of tracking bugs which don't require fully fledged bug tracking software, distributed or otherwise. Most of these are severely limited in several ways, but a project may not hit these limits.
Beyond the simplest TODO lists are things such as the emacs org-mode. This can work well, but may fall apart when multiple developers are involved and will make providing a public read only view into the bug database cumbersome.
Another alternative, which doesn't suffer from this last limitation, is to use wiki software to track bugs. There exist VCS based wikis, such as ikiwiki. These will tend to be usable with a standard text editor but still provide an easy rendering option to provide users on the web. Using a wiki like this will tend to make it difficult for users to find issues that may apply to them expect by reading all the existing issues.
It may seem odd to have a section which deals with the question of the value of distributed bug tracking so late in the article, but without understanding distributed bug tracking as it is currently known it is quite difficult to make a reasoned judgement on the matter. There are opinions in both directions. Proponents of distributed bug tracking focus on the isolation capabilities, offline support and bug branching, while opponents focus on the collaborative aspects of bug tracking which distributed bug tracking slows down. Both groups have points and the strength of any particular point truly depends on the project in question.
To start consider a project where all work is done on feature or bugfix branches, there is a thorough review process and all real discussion happens on a mailing list with relevant messages copied into the bug tracker manually for reference. In this case distributed bug tracking would seem to have few downsides. All the discussion happens in a broadcast medium, the email list, so every developer can easily get a sense of the current stage and latest debugging information. Since the bugs are fixed on-branches and a thorough review process may cause a large span of time to pass between the bug being fixed and that fix being merged into the trunk the ability of bug states to follow the fixes is very useful, especially if there is some tool support to aggregate bug states across multiple branches.
A different project might instead to the vast majority of its development on the mainline with all discussion occurring via the bug tracker. Here distributed bug tracking seems to have no detriment. Surely the full capabilities are not being used, but perhaps offline support is sufficiently useful. As soon as the developer synchronizes their local copy they will have all the new discussion. This does require that the developer frequently and regularly synchronize, which may be a change in workflow. This is less of a burden with DVCSes, but can be an issue for projects or developers which prefer checking in single, complete units of work as a single commit. Something like committing a few days of work at a single time instead of as several commits over those days. In these situations frequently merging in changes from the trunk may be onerous.
There is then a third case of a project with the branching structure of the first case, but the communication system of the second. That is, all work is done on-branches and the vast majority of the communication occurs exclusively via the bug tracker. This situation can cause some difficulty when using a distributed bug tracker. The time to push a new bug comment up and then have another developer pull it down can be quite significant. There are simple solutions however, the simplest of which is to have the canonical VCS repository have a hook which emails out new bug comments and state changes when those changes are pushed to it. Having the centralized bug tracker email out such information is very common already and shouldn't be an issue.
It remains to be seen which side of the argument will win out, but it currently appears that distributed bug tracking fills a real need, especially when coupled with a DVCS, and has few downsides without relatively simple technical fixes. For the time being at least, distributed bug tracking appears to be useful tool worth using.
Distributed bug tracking is a young concept, even considering the age of other concepts in the various fields of computing. As such there are many areas which have not been thought through and it is unlikely that any of the current generation of distributed bug trackers have all the features and functionality which will one day be considered essential. Here are a few ideas or issues which still need resolution with respect to distributed bug tracking.
One of the first advantages which comes up when considering distributed bug tracking is the ability for the closing of a bug to follow the change which fixes the bug as it propagates through branches and releases. This works fine with on-branch storage, but there are arguments against on-branch storage related to bug visibility and the length of time it takes for a comment on a bug to propagate to the branch a developer is watching. Off-branch bug storage, however, gives up on the ability for bug state to follow code fixes. One possible solution to this is to, with VCS support, store the change IDs which fixes the bug and then query the database to see if that change exists on the branch in question when showing the bug state.
It is appealing to store the bugs directly in the VCS of the project, either beside the code or in their own branch. For a moderate number of bugs and comments this is not an issue. However, the file layouts and formats which are the easiest for the VCSes to merge are not especially efficient and may cause issues when scaling. There does not yet seem too be enough experience to determine how this scaling should be dealt with or even how much of an issue it will become. Should old issues be archived into a more efficient format? Should old issues be deleted from the HEAD of the VCS and rely on the VCS history to retrieve it? Is there some other option which is superior to those mentioned?
I haven't explicitly called out references in the text above, but here are some websites which may be of interest where I procured some of my information where it is not original thought or extracted from the software compared above.
http://tychoish.com/rhizome/supporting-distributed-bug-tracking/
http://bytbox.net/blog/2012/10/thoughts-on-distributed-bug-tracking.html
http://nullprogram.com/blog/2009/02/14/
http://www.ericsink.com/entries/dbts_fossil.html
http://erlangish.blogspot.ca/2007/06/distributed-bug-tracking-again.html
http://heapkeeper-heap.github.io/hh/thread_298.html#post-summary-hh-1076
http://dist-bugs.branchable.com
http://evan-tech.livejournal.com/248736.html
http://blog.tplus1.com/index.php/2008/08/01/toward-a-horrifying-new-workflow-system/
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3940
http://blog.ssokolow.com/archives/2011/08/25/topic-glimpse-distributed-issue-tracking/
http://www.raizlabs.com/blog/2007/06/20/linux-distributed-bug-tracker/
There is a set of topics for which, in general, no rational discussion can take place. For these topics the majority of the population can only accept the most extreme solutions and will consistently either misunderstand any point to the contrary or consider you a monster unworthy of association. Both of these situations usually end up with lots of flaming, but very little useful discussion.
I believe it's an unfortunate gap in education which causes this. It takes a significant amount of effort and training to be able to consider positions which trigger a strong gut reaction. Instead of calm contemplation and questioning many people will respond with vitriol and hate.
I term these topics infinitely evil because a rational response to anything depends on how negative it is compared to the likelihood. Something like an expected value calculation. Under this framework the only kinds of things which can result in an inconsiderate stonewall of disagreement is something infinitely negative. That which is infinitely negative is infinitely evil. There is actually two related sets of infinitely evil topics: universal within an ideology and universal within a society.
Universal with an ideology include things like equality of women, abortion, taxes, welfare, drug use, organized crime to name a few in the common North American ideologies. An interesting thing about these ideological evils is that they work both ways. If there is an ideology where some solution to an issue here then there is often another ideology where that solution is infinitely evil. There are rare cases where one ideology is dead set on one solution, but most other ideologies are pretty neutral on the whole topic.
Any infinite evil which isn't ideologically restricted is by definition universal within the society. These are still not truly universal, but may appear so if you never leave the same social region, such as North America or the Western World. Included here are things such as sex crimes, hate crimes, crimes against 'children', murder, Nazis, etc.
Topics such as these are one part of the reason the Internet is such an echo chamber. If every discussion leads to a hot flame war in one forum then you'll likely move on until you find a spot with less disagreeable participants. Unfortunately this tends to be a group of people who agree on these infinitely evil topics. They may discuss them, but only to nod agreement at each other and discuss the finer points of a solution which,to some, is morally repugnant.
The only things which can be done in these situations is to not discuss the infinitely evil topic directly. Instead some more nuanced situation should be discussed. One will just have to hope that the other participants will see the parallels to the more extreme situation on their own.
One final disclaimer, the above is obviously a generalization. One that I've found to be true more often than not in my experience, but a generalization none-the-less.
Yesterday I watched The Hobbit in high framerate 3D. I did this mostly to see what 48FPS movies looked like. The movie itself was not bad.
The first think that happened is that my view that one shouldn't watch live action 3D films was reaffirmed. The lack of whole scene focus is just too hard on the brain. The Hobbit wasn't as bad as others I've seen, but I still left the theatre with a mild headache. I've also learnt to ignore the background entirely, which I think detracts from the film since I feel that I spent most of the film looking at dwarf noses.
The Hobbit was also filmed in some high resolution process and then downscaled. This certainly increased the fidelity of the images and made them seem much more real. Unfortunately everything seemed somewhat too bright and the additional resolution highlighted lighting discontinuities. As such, scenes shot within one set with natural lighting, such as daytime outdoor shots or indoor shots with sufficient ambient lighting, look quite good. Composite shots or shots where highlight lighting was necessary work out less well because the lighting differences are obvious and unnatural.
I think it is this high resolution process with highlight lighting which is the primary cause of complaints that The Hobbit looks too much like a soap opera. A secondary cause would be the lighting brightness required for the various light sapping processes (3D, high resolution, high framerate) interacting poorly with the inverse square law of light intensity.
The real reason I went to see this movie as I did was to watch the high framerate, just in case it ends up being a flop and fading away like 3D has done in the past. I think 48 FPS filming is a mistake.
The biggest issue is that many actions end up looking either jerky or as if they are happening on fast forward, even if the actual movement happens at a normal pace. I noticed this more during slow motions like moving a book than fast motions like fighting. This rushed feeling is quite jarring and through the entire course of the movies I saw it repeatedly. Not even two hours of practice made the effect go away. This is a severe problem that breaks the immersion in the movie world. I have a couple half baked theories why the higher FPS may cause this problem, but the solutions always seem to boil down to needing an even higher FPS, thus escaping an uncanny valley, or modifying the frame display in some way to aid persistence of vision. It's also possible that simply being more deliberate in motion fixes the issue. Perhaps there was some frame cutting for pacing which caused this issue.
The second issue I saw with the high framerate occurred during action scenes. Specifically, everything moved too fast and was difficult to follow. What's unfortunate is that this is an obvious result of more realistic projection. In the real world action happens in the blink of an eye. It takes a wealth of experience in a particular sport to be able to follow the action when you are unable to see most of it. Additionally, in the real world when your mental picture of some portion of the world is out of date you can quickly check on it, not so in movies where you can only see what the director shows you. In movies the limitations of 24 FPS and the motion blur which comes with it helps the audience understand what's happening, even if they've taken their focus off the sword of the hero to examine his facial expression. The blurry history shows what's important and what's happened over the last quarter of a second.
Both of these issues where most pronounced during camera movement. When the camera was placed at a human level and moving at a human pace (that is, slow as a snail) then it worked out more or less fine. However, as soon as the camera was moved in a way which is dramatic, but humanly impossible the jerking became severe.
I would not recommend watching The Hobbit in 3D High FPS, I think it'd be a better movie in 2D at 24FPS. This is not to say that I think it impossible, just that there are some restrictions on what the film can do. As long as a movie was shot only from a steady cam at human level with a walking camera man, avoided fast action scenes and had all the actors move slightly deliberately I think it could work out fine. It makes you wonder what the point of a drama shot in such an expensive process would be though.
In channel today the discussion turned to the Twelve Days of Van Epp. This reminded me that I had the Thirteen Days of Crackdown in the archive of my SFU account. In looking at the contents of that archive I found a couple of things worth uploading.
I present, for your enjoyment, Thirteen Days of Crackdown and Meet SFU CS.
The web has a pretty rich and varied set of ways to deliver information to a person. There are standard web pages, images, videos, interactive images, audio, tables and wikis to name a few. There is also the web forum.
Web forums are pretty much the default tool of many communities to disperse information. Often this occurs with an admin pinning a post at the top of one of the topic areas and then the appropriate senior member posts a start to this thread with some information and all the information they forgot is filled in as responses to posts from normal members.
They are the default for this sort of thing and I hate it. If you are a casual reader of the community or you arrive well after the fact then you have to read through an often lengthy series of posts in order to extract the relevant information. Information that would otherwise take mere seconds to read off a plain, up to date webpage.
And this is the best case when the community deems the information important enough to pin a thread. If that isn't the case, perhaps because you want some old information which is no longer pinned. Or maybe you want some information provided to the community by a non-senior member. In any case you now not only do you have to read through some thread spread over thirteen pages to find the information you want with clarifications, but you also have to sort through tens or hundreds or thousands of threads to find the one which has your information. God help you if you want to find any amendments in other threads.
Perhaps the worst example of this I have ever seen is at the xdadevelopers forum. There is an amazing amount of knowledge strewn about that forum. Unfortunately it's strewn about and nearly impossible to find. When you try searching for some you usually only get a series of twisty ten page threads full of comments linking to other thirty page threads. It truly is hell on the Web.
Amazing amounts of pain and suffering could be avoided simply by summarizing these important knowledge threads in a wiki. Help end the tyranny of the forums, summarize the information in important threads in a community wiki.
It's quite possible you've heard about the "Infinite News Stand". In short this is the issue faced by news providers on the Internet where there is effectively an infinite free content. The issue here is obviously how to get paid. You can paywall everything, but then nobody shows up to read your stuff. You could provide free samples, but if everybody did that there is effectively infinite free content available, so why would people pay for more of your stuff?
This is just one aspect of what I, in this post, am going to the Infinite Impersonal Internet Issue. I'll shorten that to I4 to save my wrists. I4 arises because of three facts about the world.
The first is that millions upon millions of people use the Internet for anything and everything you can imagine. In fact, it is impossible for any single person to type even one message to every user of the Internet online at any one time. There are just too many people, there are infinite monkeys.
The second is that, for any particular discussion topic, many people hold the same viewpoint. This can best be seen in popular comment sites such as Reddit. If don't look carefully at the names you'll see that the threads progress in a logic manner as if a cohesive discussion is taking place between a small number of participants. Normally nothing of the sort is true. Instead you have entire cohesive threads where a single participant will often post only once. This is but one obvious and interesting example of the substitutability of people on the Internet. It is difficult, in a practical sense, to differentiate posters except by their stance within the discussion taking place. While it is usually a safe bet that posts from the same account are the same person, it is generally unknowable if different accounts are different people. Accounts tend to be cheap on the Internet, easily produced and easily discarded. It's hard to tell the monkeys apart.
The third fact is simply that most interactions on the Internet are transitory and impersonal. While it is entirely possible to make good friends on the Internet and even to create deep communities that is not the default interaction. The default interaction is to read an article by some named but otherwise anonymous author, further read comments with random nicknames and then perhaps provide a comment yourself. Much like walking down a busy urban street you encounter a setting, take in the response of people you are unlikely to ever see again and perhaps react in your own way. Only rarely will anybody in that crowd distinguish themselves from the faceless mass.
As noted above I4 is not the only form of interaction on the Internet, but it is definitely the most common. It takes real work to construct a community and many interactions between two people before they will see the other's face. It happens everyday, but not every time.
Now what are the consequences of I4? There are many, the most obvious of which are the general ailments of the Internet: trolls, spammers, hate mongers of various sorts and echo chambers. Trolls don't care if you don't like them and ignore them forevermore; they can always troll somebody else or start a new account. Spammers don't even care if you personally respond as long as some minuscule fraction of people do. Hate mongers don't care about you; they already have their own echo chamber which tells them they are right and you are wrong.
This leaves echo chambers. Echo chambers are not unique to the Internet, but are made much larger and more numerous by it. Given an infinite amount of content produced by an infinite number of monkeys which are hard to differentiate, how does one choose which places to return to? Obviously they go where they liked the content the best. This just so happens to be where other like minded people tend to end up. You now have an echo. The chamber is simply a result from the fact that Internet people aren't particularly differentiable. Spend enough time listening to the echo, hearing it from nearly all sides and one starts to believe that everybody on the Internet believes that. The logic is simple and fuzzy: Internet people A through Z think that way and they cover the spectrum of Internet people, therefore all Internet people believe so. Echo chambers are unavoidable, but they prevent alienation. They provide a necessary shared culture.
Not all the consequences of I4 are negative. Take the dual of trolls and spammers is the newbie. The person who doesn't quite know where the fit or quite how to act. I4 allows this person an infinite number of tries under an infinite number of guises to find their place and make their contribution. The dual of hate mongers are constructive communities which combine their intelligence and effort to build great monuments. The dual of echo chambers is exposure to new ideas. These great strengths of the Internet cannot be ignored just as they cannot be separated from their duals.
The next time you see a troll ignore that identity and move on; they may return under a different nickname or move onto some other target and that's alright. If you come upon a den of hate mongers enlighten them; they'll likely view you as a troll or spammer, but that's fine Internet nicknames are free. The next time you are disliked or hated on the Internet don't sweat it; there are a lot of people on the Internet and they are all kinda blurry at this distance.
Now I don't claim to be a web developer. I don't do it for money, but I do touch web development every so often. Every time I do I am amazed at the poor design of CSS. I don't really understand how CSS was standardized being so bad.
The idea of CSS is a good one: separate the content from the presentation. It makes code in general cleaner and easier to modify in a consistent manner. This makes sense. But the implementation is halfways useless and falls well short of this goal. It isn't possible to setup the simplest semantic div hierarchy and call it a day. CSS is non-orthogonal and makes many basic presentations needlessly cumbersome to create. It is well known to be impossible to create any moderately complex layout with the ideal semantic hierarchy.
Instead there are hacks use everywhere with divs inside divs inside spans with Javascript thrown on top to get layouts which are functional and visually pleasing. Even then, some things are nearly impossible without manually pixel layout.
You think by CSS version three they would have figured out what they've done wrong and fixed it. Oh how wrong you are. Instead of fixing the major core issues of non-orthoganility, insane limitations and special cases they merely add more half-baked features. At the rate that real issues get fixed I figure that CSS version 10 will be reasonably robust and flexible.
I have no idea what kind of drugs the CSS designers are on, but it must be good.
The Internet is full of simple language tutorials and bookstores are full of books proclaiming to teach you language X in Y time period. This is not one of them. Instead this is intended to provide a shortcut to all the learning which happens as one works on a large, well engineered and well written codebase. I expect that you already know how to program in at least one programming language and further that you understand the theory of indirection and pointers. I'll cover the basics, but I'll do it at breakneck speeds. You will want to look elsewhere for formal definitions and corner cases.
Let's look at a simple example to start with.
#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #define TYPE_OF_WORLD ("beautiful") #define DEFAULT_NUM_ITERATIONS (10) int iterations_remaining(int max_iterations); /* * Utility to send say hello * * Usage: hello [iterations] */ int main(int argn, char **args) { int num_iterations = DEFAULT_NUM_ITERATIONS; if (argn == 2) { num_iterations = atoi(args[2]); } for(;;) { if (iterations_remaining(num_iterations) > 0) printf("Hello " TYPE_OF_WORLD " World!\n"); else break; } return 0; } int iterations_remaining(int max_iterations) { static int iterations; iterations++; return max_iterations - iterations; }
This simple example shows us much of the basic syntax. It shows us how to include library header files:
#include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h>
How to define constant strings and integers with symbolic names:
#define TYPE_OF_WORLD ("beautiful") #define DEFAULT_NUM_ITERATIONS (10)
How to declare a function without defining the body. This let's us define the function elsewhere later:
int iterations_remaining(int max_iterations);
How to write a block comment:
/* * Utility to send say hello * * Usage: hello [iterations] */
The proper function signature for main():
int main(int argn, char **args)
How to define a variable and optionally set it with an initial value:
int num_iterations = DEFAULT_NUM_ITERATIONS;
The syntax for an if block, how to check for equality, how to set a variable to a value, how to call a function and how to access array elements. Additionally it shows one aspect of the equivalence of pointers and arrays:
if (argn == 2) { num_iterations = atoi(args[2]); }
The syntax for an infinite for loop, how to do simple if-else, how to print text using the standard library, the fact that string constants automatically combine in C and how to break out of a loop early:
for(;;) { if (iterations_remaining(num_iterations) > 0) printf("Hello " TYPE_OF_WORLD " World!\n"); else break; }
How to return a value from a function:
return 0;
How to define a function, even one which has been previously declared:
int iterations_remaining(int max_iterations) {
How to declare a static variable restricted to a function scope along with the fact that static variables are automatically set to zero on program load:
static int iterations;
The post-increment operator and how to perform basic arithmetic:
iterations++;
return max_iterations - iterations;
Overall that's quite a busy example. The syntax so far has all been more or less plain except a few points: including header files, the function signature of main() and the static keyword. I'll leave an explanation of static until later as it is has several uses. C uses header files to contain type definitions, constant definitions, function declarations and sometimes variable definitions. There are two similar forms:
#include <library.h> #include "project.h"
The first is used for header files from libraries, the latter for header files from the current project. The distinction is a bit murky since some projects are so large as to have library like elements within themselves.
The type signature of main is more or less fixed in stone. Since C is used in so many different domains it isn't actually a fixed rule, but if you are writing a application it is a safe signature to assume. The signature has three parts. The first is the return type, int or integer. This is a signed type and even though an int is usually 32bits long on most modern computers you can only safely return values from 0-255. The exact range is OS specific.
The second element is "int argn". This is the number of arguments in the following string array. This value will never be less than one. The third element, the array of strings, is the argument list. Element zero (args[0]) is the string containing the name the program was executed under. The following elements up to elements argn - 1 are the program arguments as strings.
Though the return type of main() is an int, you can't depend on more than 7 bits being reliably and portably returned. Thus the safest range is 0-127. You can use the values 128-255, but sometimes it will be interpreted as a signed char and sometimes unsigned and so can be confusing.
C has all the basic control structures you need: do-while loops, while loops, for loops, switch statements, if, if-else and goto. Their syntax is pretty simple, but it is important to follow some style conventions to make it readable:
int func(void) { int i; int j; for (;;) { /* Infinite loop */ } for (i = 0, j = 6; i < j; i += 2, j += 1) { if (i == 8) break; if (j == 10) { continue; } else if (j + i == 15) { printf("foo\n"); } j += 1; } i = 10; do { i = i / 2; } while (i > 0): while (i < 15) { i++; } }
All this is fairly straight forward. goto will be covered later when we get to handling errors. A while loop can be used to implement an infinite loop, but I prefer using an infinite for loop instead because it is more visually distinctive. Don't be afraid to use goto for jumping out of, into or above loops. Properly placed goto/labels can make code much more obvious and simpler.
When it comes to generic loop counters do use i, j or k unless you have a good reason not to. These loop iterators are well known and short. If you are doing the equivalent of a for loop using a macro foreach-type construct the loop iterator should be named for what you are iterating over, e.g.:
list_foreach(fruit, fruits) {
/* Do something */
}
It is good practice to write and use macro'd foreach constructs with non-array data structures since they make things clearer.
The key in C when it comes to data structure is that the size of the data structure must be correct. If the size is correct then you'll be able to interpret those bytes in many ways. Some of them will even be correct. Let us start with basic data types:
#include <stdint.h> int tmp; char character; char[10] fixed_length_string; char *pointer_to_string; int8_t a; uint8_t unsigned_a; int16_t b; uint16_t unsigned_b; int32_t c; uint32_t unsigned_c; int64_t d; uint64_t unsigned_d; float f; double g;
Use the int type for a general integer work type when you don't need large values. There are various other modifiers which you may see in older code, such as unsigned short int. Don't use them. Instead use the fixed sized integers from stdint.h or the equivalent. stdint.h also has a number of more specialized types for things like the most efficient signed type of at least a given number of bits. These can be advantageous on embedded CPUs where different integer widths can have widely differing performance and code size.
A programming language with just basic types isn't that useful, so C provides struct and unions. A struct is simply an interpretation of an object (objects in C terminology tend to mean just a chunk of memory). As previously mentioned you can interpret chunks of memory in different ways, this is critical to the method of implementing polymorphic object-oriented programming in C. A union is an explicit extension of this interpretation concept. A union is simply a compiler aid to interpreting the same object in different ways. This is most useful when you have dependant data which differ in types and you want to reduce the amount of memory (or bandwidth) an object takes. It can also be useful to reduce the amount of stack space a function requires, which matters in some environments such as kernel work.
struct config_msg { uint8_t type; union { uint64_t transaction_number; char username[32]; } u; }; int func(int value) { union { struct success_msg success; struct failure_msg failure; }; int len; if (value == SUCCESS) { success.header.type = SUCCESS_MSG; success.value = value; len = sizeof(success); } else if (value == FAILURE) { failure.header.type = FAILURE_MSG; failure.value = value; failure.source = SOURCE_ANALOG; len = sizeof(failure); } return send(&success, len); }
There are a few things to note about the above example which are quite important. The first is that, unless otherwise configured, the compiler is free to add padding inside a structure to ensure that the elements are aligned. In this case that means that there will be padding (usually 3 or 7 bytes depending on architecture) after the type element. You can disable this on a per structure definition basis, but how to do so is compiler specific.
Secondly, note that the members of a union do not have to be the same size. Any memory which is past the end of a member will simply not be accessed.
Finally, a note about anonymous unions and structs or unions without type names. An anonymous union is a union which doesn't have a type name or a variable name, as is seen with the union in the function above. Use anonymous unions sparingly as they can confuse what memory belongs to which variables. Perhaps the only acceptable location is in function temporary variable definitions.
As shown above structs and unions don't have to have type names. This can be useful when creating a struct or union inside a typed struct to help organize the data. It can also be useful to construct a custom typed struct for limited use within a function. However, you should always have a variable name in that case, as in the case with the union u above.
Something you may see is typedef'ing structs, like so:
typedef struct index_type_t_{ uint8_t type; uint32_t index; } index_type_t;
I don't recommend this in general usage because it makes the code harder to read when it only saves a small number of typing characters. Using a programmer's editor and those last few characters likely aren't typed to begin with. The C language comes with a separate struct namespace and it would be foolish not to use it. Do note that there are use cases for typedef and even for typedef'ing structs when it comes to library interfaces and basic types. For example, it is entirely reasonable to typedef a uint16_t to be called index_t since that makes it easy in the future to change the size of index_t without having to check all the existing code line by line. Every use of index_t will have to be checked however, for correct intermediate uses. Some code may store the value in an int for example, which would make changing to a uint64_t incorrect on most platforms. It is good practice to use the correct type names whenever possible to avoid this problem; if you are manipulating an index_t you should use only index_t typed variables, even if it current is the same as uint32_t.
Before we move onto object oriented programming in C and interface design we need to understand the static keyword. The static keyword has two major uses: defining a variable with a known and unchanging memory location and restricting the symbol visibility of a function to a single file.
The first use, static variables, is easy to understand abstractly, but as you'd need to understand linking (which I won't cover here) we won't go any deeper than that. There are two defining properties of static variables:
Every static variable is initialized to zero at program initialization with no further work from the programmer.
Every time the static variable is used from a function it is the same variable which contains whatever value it did the last time it was used.
Static functions, as previously mentioned, restrict the visibility of that function to the current compilation unit (more or less the current file). This should be used whenever feasible to restrict the visibility of functions to their minimum necessary. Minimal visibility is advantageous as it makes it easier to refactor functions, delete unused functions and use short, descriptive names for functions and it reduces redundancy because forward function declarations for static function are unnecessary in most cases. Consider the name differences between these two functions:
int libname_component_toggle_fob(struct fob *fob) { ... } int toggle_fob(struct fob *fob) { ... } void foo(struct list *fobs) { struct fob *fob; list_foreach(fob, fobs) { libname_component_toggle_fob(fob); } list_foreach(fob, fobs) { toggle_fob(fob); } }
As you can see the shorter name is better as it makes the code easier to read. We will also be sure that toggle_fob() will never be used by name outside this file so it makes it easy to check for all instances when we decide to rename it or modify what it does.
Many people believe that C is only a procedural language and further that you need special language support to implement object oriented programming and especially polymorphism. This is not correct. In fact, object oriented programming in C is not only possible, but it is not noticeably more complex than normal C programming and is more flexible than some object oriented languages.
They key to using the object oriented style in C is that you have to pass the object you are operating on explicitly to the methods. Usually this is done as the first argument. Past that there are two ways to implement object oriented programming in C. If you don't want polymorphism it's as simple as you would believe:
struct fob { char name[10]; uint16_t num; }; void fob_init(struct fob *fob) { memset(fob, 0, sizeof(*fob)); } void fob_setname(struct fob *fob, char *newname) { strncpy(&fob->name, newname, sizeof(fob->name)); fob->name[sizeof(fob->name)] = '\0'; } int main(int argn, char **args) { struct fob *fob; fob = malloc(sizeof(*fob)); if (!fob) return 1; fob_init(fob); fob_setname(fob, "myname"); free(fob); return 0; }
Note the use of "sizeof(*fob)" and "sizeof(fob->name)". You can use sizeof on things like these and it is recommended to do so instead of the traditional tactic of defining the size and then using that, or doing "sizeof(struct fob)". Using the former forms when possible prevents errors when the type of foo is changed since the correct size is determined by the compiler. It also reduces the number of definitions which have to be exported and named.
As you can see, static object oriented programming in C isn't difficult. This form works equally well with object allocated on the heap or the stack.
If you want to support polymorphism then a bit more work needs to be done, but that's to be expected given the greater capabilities. This is a simple example of one way to implement polymorphism. With more work and some helper macros it is possible, though not always advisable, to achieve usages which require less typing.
struct fob_ops; struct fob { struct fob_ops *ops; char name[10]; int32_t value; }; struct fob_ops { void (*setname)(struct fob *fob, char newname); int (*getval)(struct fob *fob); }; static void fob_setname(struct fob *fob, char newname) { ... } static void fob_getval(struct fob *fob) { ... } static const struct fob_ops fob_ops = { .setname = fob_setname, .getval = fob_getval, }; void fob_init(struct fob *fob) { memset(fob, 0, sizeof(*fob)); fob->ops = fob_ops; } struct gizmo_ops; struct gizmo { struct fob fob; int8_t type; }; struct gizmo_ops { void (*setname)(struct gizmo *gizmo, char newname); int (*getval)(struct gizmo *gizmo); int (*settype)(struct gizmo *gizmo, int8_t type); }; static void gizmo_getval(struct gizmo *gizmo) { ... } static void gizmo_settype(struct gizmo *gizmo) { ... } static const struct gizmo_ops gizmo_ops = { .setname = fob_setname, /* Will produce a type warning */ .getval = gizmo_getval, .settype = gizmo_settype, }; void gizmo_init(struct gizmo *gizmo) { memset(gizmo, 0, sizeof(*gizmo)); gizmo->ops = gizmo_ops; } int main(int argn, char **args) { struct gizmo *gizmo; struct fob *fob; gizmo = malloc(sizeof(*gizmo)); if (!gizmo) return 1; gizmo_init(gizmo): gizmo->fob.ops->settype(gizmo, 6); gizmo->fob.ops->setname(gizmo); fob = (struct *fob) gizmo; /* Downcast */ fob->ops->getval(fob); return 0; }
Note that whenever there is a list of items that the last item, where possible, should also have the separator. That way if an item is added after the current last item in the list the code diff will be cleaner.
This example shows that while there is a bit more manual setup for polymorphism in C, that the usage isn't too onerous in practice. The reason all of this works is because we take different views of the memory object. The critical thing to remember with this is that the order of elements must be maintained. That is, in the ops structures the superclass op struct must be included first. Similarly the superclass structure itself must be included first in the subclasses.
You'll note the awkward usage "gizmo->fob.ops->getval(...)". This can easily be avoided if we have two definitions for each class's struct. The internal one which is presented pretty much as above and an externally visible one which contains the ops element first and then a filler array which brings the total structure size such that the real internal one and the interface external one are the same size. This is often not necessary as the majority of uses in a well designed system only use each (OO) object as if it were the superclass.
It may seem odd at first that error handling and documentation are in the same section, however part of being a professional is doing the annoying things which help future developers. One key component of this is having good API design. Even if you can't have good API design you can still have good error checking and documentation.
Error handling and function documentation, excepting one specific question, simple and formulaic. This is good as being formulaic helps prevent coding mistakes.
/* * Whatchmacallit the whosit. * * Whosit the whatchmacallit as long as the stars are * aligned correctly. This function immediately performs the * action. It is assumed that the caller holds the gizmo * lock. The argument howhard is how hard to try * whatchmacalliting. A valid range is -1 through 13, the * meanings of these values described in the definition of * struct whosit. * * Returns: * EINVAL - The whosit is not initialized * EDOM - howhard is out of range * EEXIST - Action does not exist * ETIMEDOUT - Authentication server timed out * ENOENT - Failed to succeed, try harder * ENOMEM - Failed to allocate necessary memory */ int whosit_whatchmacallit(struct whosit *whosit, int howhard) { int result; struct action *action = NULL, *a; if (howhard < 1 || howhard > 13) return EDOM; if (!whosit || !whosit->initted) return EINVAL; /* Grab a reference to the global list so it will * not disappear from under us */ get_list(&global_action_list); foreach_list_entry(a, global_action_list) { spinlock(&a->lock); if (action_matches(a, whosit->action_num)) { action = a; break; } spinunlock(&a->lock); } if (!action) { result = EEXIST; goto out_nounlock; } get_action(action); whosit->lock(whosit); result = check_authentication(whosit); if (result = ETIMEDOUT) { return = ETIMEDOUT; goto out; } whosit->tries = howhard; whosit->data = malloc(DATASIZE); if (!whosit->data) { result = ENOMEM; goto out; } result = whosit->try(whosit); if (result != 0) goto err_out; out: whosit->unlock(whosit); put_action(action); spinunlock(&action->lock); out_nounlock: put_list(&global_action_list); return result; err_out: free(whosit->data); whosit->data = NULL; goto out; }
When it comes to documenting a function there are a few mandatory parts. Firstly is a short description of the function. Some manuals recommend that this be a single line. I personally don't mind fewer than three lines, but it should be a short summary. After this is a more complete description of the function. This description includes any documentation about the arguments, including where to find more information if this isn't the canonical source. All side effects and other calling requirements (such as which locks must be held) are also mentioned. Finally there is an exhaustive list of error codes this function can return along with the cause of each one. This includes error codes which may be passed up from functions this function itself calls. While it is possible for a developer to walk the code when the code is available, they shouldn't have to.
An important consideration is where to put this large block of documentation. There are two different spots and which is appropriate depends on what kind of code you are writing. If you are writing code where you expect the user to have the full source code, such as if you are writing a function in an application, then put this documentation block along with the definition of the function as above. The reason for this is that it is usually easier to jump to the definition of a function than it's declaration. This is especially true if you have multiple versions of the function (for different platforms perhaps). If, however, this is a library function where you expect that the developer will not have access to the full source code, then this block should go with the function declaration on the header file.
As this example shows it is not only acceptable, but preferable to error out early and to use goto. Relating to erroring out early there is a school of thought where every function should have only one return point. This causes terrible nesting as erroneous cases pile up. It is better to use the return statement as intended early to check on preconditions.
Once the main body of the function has started though you often can't just return at random. There will be cleanup required. There are three ways to handle this. The first is to copy and paste the code into every area where exiting is required. This is obviously not recommended in the general case because code changes and copy and paste mistakes are very common. The second alternative is to nest the code such that the appropriate cleanup code is always run. This is difficult to read and modify. The recommended approach it to use goto as in the example above.
As an aside, goto is not evil and to be avoided at all costs. The original paper (Go To Considered Harmful) which decried the use of goto is usually taken out of historical context. When Go To Considered Harmful was written the predominant languages of the time didn't provide support for structured programming, that is, they didn't have language constructs for for loops, or switch statements. In such a case conditionals and goto is all most programmers had. This is obviously more confusing than necessary. Without goto algorithms are often forced to use trigger variables to exit loops or do any especially complex flow. You must be responsible in the use of goto, but it is still a tool with a valid place in the professional toolbox.
As this example shows the use of gotos allow a clear implementation of complex cleanup operations which must be partially performed depending on when the function reached an error. This is done without repetition of code and without cluttering the normal control flow. The key to this ability is the fact that the cleanup operations are listed in reverse order to when their dirtying operations were performed in the function. It is then a simple matter of jumping into the cleanup at the appropriate place on error. It is also possible, as seen above, to have special error exit status code after the final return to handle cases which differ from the normal cleanup actions.
Whenever possible you should use standard existing error codes. This makes it easier to get some initial sense of the cause of the error. ETIMEDOUT may not have a text definition which matches the use here, but it does extend the general idea of the error.
Callbacks are a common sight when dealing with complex data structures or library code. Contrary to popular opinion callbacks, especially immediately executed ones, are rather simple in C. By immediately executed I mean the callback is passed to a library function, perhaps to iterate over a complex data structure, and once the flow of execution has returned to the calling function the callback function and context is free to be released.
struct walker_context { int num_processed; int action_type; }; static int walker(struct element *element, void *data) { struct walker_context *context = data; if (!element) { /* Perform final iteration work */ printf("Processed all %d entries\n", context->num_processed); return 0; } context->num_processed++; switch(context->action_type) { case 1: action1(element); break; case 2: action2(element); break; } return 0; } int act(struct list *list, int action) { struct walker_context context; int result; memset(&context, 0, sizeof(context)); context->action_type = action; result = foreach_list_element(list, walker, &context); return result; }
We see that, for an immediately executed callback, things are pretty simple. Define the context structure your particular call back will use. Then define your callback making it static if possible. Inside this function you take the void* data passed to you and immediately convert it into the context structure the function expects. Note that no casting is necessary or should be used. Many times a NULL element will be passed in when the iteration is complete, to allow this function to be self contained in its action and as a signal when processing is complete. Usually there is a return value for "continue processing" and another for "error, stop processing".
Since the callback is executed immediately and not stored for processing later, as would be the case if this callback were to be called because of some event, we can allocate the context structure directly on the stack. Initialize the context and then pass everything to the library function, foreach_list_element in this case. That's all there is to it really.
Formatting C code is a subtle task, but there are a few guidelines:
Use whitespace. Whitespace makes code easier to parse with the dense by reducing its density.
Align when it makes sense
Use vertical space. Much like prose is separated into paragraphs, code should be separated into sections by vertical space. Doing so makes it easier to know which chunks must be digested at one time. One blank line is usually sufficient.
Don't indent too deep. Deep nesting makes logic more difficult than necessary to follow. Either reformat the code to nest less deeply (perhaps with some careful use of gotos) or factor some of the inner code out into a separate function.
Follow the coding standard. You may not personally agree with the coding standards of the project you work on, but as a professional it is nonetheless your responsibility to follow them. Starting with a good coding standard (such as the Linux Coding Standard) make life easier, but being consistent is the most important factor.
Beyond formatting there are also elements of style concerning how the code is written. In general the code should be written in the most simplistic manner which doesn't negatively effect the performance or conciseness of the code. Macros should only be used when they provide a repeatable and obvious benefit. Sometimes repetitive code is acceptable.
This article is not an exhaustive description of all the tricks and situations a modern professional C programmer may come across. Instead it is merely a quick summary. For a large set of examples you should look at the source of well written C code bases. Examples of this include Linux, QEMU, and many others. As with most disciplines the best way to learn is to watch those more experienced.
Bathtub Plains: The flat part at the bottom of the failure curve. Many electronics never make it to the Bathtub Plains when they die early. Of course, many people don't keep their electronics that long anyways.
I don't know anybody who claims to like Outlook and yet you see it used in corporations everywhere. There's several good reasons for that. I'm going to tackle the calendaring abilities. Don't make the mistake of assuming that you can replace Outlook without doing calendaring.
These are the critical requirements to match Outlook's calendaring abilities. If you don't meet or exceed any of these you will fail to replace Outlook.
The ability to look at coworker's schedules when planning a meeting.
Updating or rescheduling a meeting is trivial.
Events work exactly like email. You can email all the attendees of the event without any extra work. Just open the event and reply to all the attendees.
The calendaring must be in the same application as email. If a separate application is required then it will not be used as often as it should and the integration won't be as good as it needs to be. Corporations use meeting invitations primarily as email threads which just happen to have reminders and update the available schedule for item one above.
As a corollary to three and four above, event invitations must work with list of people. These lists should be already existing lists such as those already used for email. Nobody will create lists just for calendaring.
Moderately complex recurrence setups must be supported. If I want a meeting to happen every Monday and Tuesday forever the that should be easy. It must also be easy if I want to move or cancel any single occurrence.
Timezones must be supported mostly correct. If I send an invitation to somebody then they must see the invitation in their current timezone. Furthermore, if they proceed to change timezones then the reminder must occur at the correct time.
The calendaring must be useful enough to be used standalone to do calendaring. If it is missing any critical calendaring features then it won't be used and the schedule lookups from one won't be useful.
It isn't a web app. I know that all the cool kids think web apps are the future and no developer would be caught dead in this day and age without a 24/7 network connection. But that doesn't matter. People who use Outlook for real work and real calendaring sometimes do so disconnected (airplanes) or with bad connections (hotels or that office wifi which never really works in that far meeting room). They need to be able to work without a network connection and they need to be able to access their archives. These archives will be several gigabytes in size. Additionally, if the reminders aren't reliable then nobody will use the software. This itself necessitates a local component.
You must be able to book rooms as well as people. Sure you, as a developer may not have ever actually booked a room, but the people who spend the money have.
It must be possible to easily schedule meetings with people in a different organization than you. Back when inter-organization calendaring was a new thing this was less important. But now it matters and that means interoperating with the leader, Outlook.
Invitations must have a positive response of reception and attendance intent. No excuses.
Outlook certainly isn't the best of email clients. In fact it is likely the cause of many of the worst abuses and most ineffective email practises in the world. But even if you hate it Outlook is well adapted to the corporate environment and calendaring is one key for that success.
Recently I was reading a some posts from a developer who lives in a very rural area in a house on solar power. You can read about it here and here and here. The short of it is that he spends most of his time accessing the Internet via dialup and he has a few coping mechanisms.
It's been quite a while since I've used dialup so I was interested to try it out again, but don't actually want to have to setup a dialup account. Instead I looked up how to throttle bandwidth on my laptop. On my Mac you can turn your connection into a modem for most purposes (http, https, irc, ssh and dns) with the following script:
sudo ipfw pipe 1 config bw 3KBytes/s delay 150ms sudo ipfw add 1 pipe 1 src-port 80 sudo ipfw add 2 pipe 1 dst-port 80 sudo ipfw add 3 pipe 1 src-port 22 sudo ipfw add 4 pipe 1 dst-port 22 sudo ipfw add 5 pipe 1 src-port 6667 sudo ipfw add 6 pipe 1 dst-port 6667 sudo ipfw add 7 pipe 1 src-port 443 sudo ipfw add 8 pipe 1 dst-port 443 sudo ipfw add 9 pipe 1 src-port 53 sudo ipfw add 10 pipe 1 dst-port 53
You then turn your network connection back to normal when you've had your fun with
sudo ipfw delete 1 sudo ipfw delete 2 sudo ipfw delete 3 sudo ipfw delete 4 sudo ipfw delete 5 sudo ipfw delete 6 sudo ipfw delete 7 sudo ipfw delete 8 sudo ipfw delete 9 sudo ipfw delete 10
Have fun surfing in the slow lane and remember, you can turn of automatically loading images.
Modern telecom networks are an amazing thing. I can trade packets between two semi-remote areas across the world with ease. I can be on the move in a car on the highway and be working at the same time on a server thousands of kilometres away. It's a great thing that works often enough. Network performance has been increasing all around for years, which is good because the amount of data we want to push through the network has also been constantly increasing. Unfortunately we are quickly reaching limits of physics with respect to the performance of these networks and that will require a change in how we use the network.
The first and most obvious limit is one of energy. We all love our mobile devices, but the batteries never last long enough. Battery technology isn't making significant headway and the radio is already a significant power drain on modern smartphones. In the quest for longer battery life we will have to transfer data more efficiently and transfer less.
The second most obvious limit is the speed of light. We just can't beat the speed of light, but we are sure putting our best foot forward to match it. Currently a good latency time for the Internet is within a factor of two of the latency of light over the same distance. We can help this along slightly with better technology and more significantly with more direct cables, but we will end up at the limit sooner than later. Latency has a significant effect on the type of activities which can be performed without annoying the user. If you've ever had a transcontinental phone call you know what I mean, you are always interrupting each other while you wait for your voice to span the globe. Even today many websites use CDNs to move parts of their data geographically closer to the end user to reduce the pain of latency.
This third limitation is bandwidth. Wireless bandwidth, unlike wired bandwidth, is limited by the laws of physics to quite small bandwidths. Worse, that bandwidth must be shared by all the users near you. Thus while you can get hundreds of megabits of bandwidth to your desk if you pay enough, you'll be hard pressed to get much more than tens of megabits on any cell network.
All these limitations lead to it being advantageous to store as much of the data you are working on locally as possible. Now it isn't possible to store all of the data, but if you have 95% of it then you can save a lot of time waiting for it to be transfered over the thin straw of cellular Internet. The rise of DVCSes is just one indication that local copies of most of the required data are coming back into style. In fact some systems, like email, have worked this way from the beginning.
I would be on the lookout for things which leverage the network, but insulate themselves from slow networks by storing as much data as necessary locally. DVCSes are one example, but distributed bug trackers are also gaining mind share. It may not be long before you don't have to fear that wiki server going down or being on the other side of the world, because it's easy to have your own local copy to hold you over until it is restored.
Email is perhaps the most used communication method in the world after human speech. Email is, in many cases, the only communication mechanism worth talking about at large corporations. It is unfortunate that there is no guidance given on how to use email effectively in a corporate environment. Instead people are left to figure it out and many just continue as if their corporate email account is just a busier personal account. This doesn't scale.
Before you can effectively use corporate email you need to understand a few features of email. The first is the concept of the inbox. You may have seen a picture of the desk of a desk worker from the early 20th century. On that desk you would see a blotter (that big piece of paper in the middle of the desk, often a calendar), an assortment of pencils, pens, paper clips, letter openers and at least two baskets. One would be labelled "Outbox" the other "Inbox". The theory was that throughout the day the mail boy would deliver mail as it arrived into the Inbox and take completed mail from the Outbox to be delivered. Sometimes there would be a third basket for items which couldn't be handled immediately.
In modern email the Outbox still exists, but is usually empty as the email is sent immediately. The only times it tends to get used are when handling email offline, when the email can't be sent immediately it will be queued to be sent the next time a network connection is available, or when the email server is down. The Inbox, of course, still exists. I'll come back to how to use the Inbox effectively.
Email also has three different addressee fields: To, CC and BCC. To should contain the recipients you want to respond or act on the email. CC should contain the recipients you want to read the email, but you don't expect a response or comment. CC is mostly for ensuring that people are kept up to date. BCC is used to send a copy of the email to recipients without other recipients knowing that they received it.
One major difference between postal mail and email is that replying to a large list of people is incredibly easy. No longer do you have to write one copy of the response and then have a secretary make copies. Instead the computer does it all with a touch of a button. In the corporate environment you should never use the "Reply" button. Instead you should always use "Reply-all" and then trim the To and CC list as necessary. This requires two important rules be followed. The first is to NEVER respond to an email unless a response is required or you have something useful to add. If you receive a mass email erroneously ignore it. Responding will simply cause more mass mails to be sent out. If the erroneous emails persist respond to the sender directly, not the entire list of recipients. During a discussion it often happens that a person no longer has any useful input. Such a case could happen if somebody was added to the discussion to help with one portion of an issue which has been resolved and the discussion has moved on. Should this happen the individual may be removed by moving their name to the BCC recipient list with a note in the message about how that person is being removed from the discussion. The removed individual is removed from the discussion, saving them time, they have the opportunity to re-add themselves and everything is done politely. Future responses started using the "Reply-all" button will work as expected.
The rules to follow to make effective use of the Inbox are rather simple. The key is to keep the Inbox as empty as possible. This is easily done as long as you follow a few simple guidelines. The first is that the Inbox is not a TODO list. You can use it as such for items which will be done in the next day or two. If the action is further out than that you are better off using a proper TODO list, even if that list is on paper.
The second guideline is respond to email in a timely manner. This doesn't mean that you have to continually check your email and respond the instant a new message arrives. In fact that is a recipe for being unproductive. Instead, when you reach a point where handling email is the right thing to do you should respond to as much email as you can. After you have handled a message (which could be just reading it, a quick response or possibly a more involved action such as looking some information up) you must move it out of your Inbox into another email folder.
There are differing schools of thought on how to handle email folders. Some people have quite intricate folder arrangements. I prefer a simpler approach of a single email folder (which is not the Inbox) for each project. Given the search capabilities of the modern computer I find any more granular manual sorting to be a waste of my time. Of course if you have automated emails which are more specialized in nature feel free to setup filters and other email folders to store those items. It's useful to keep such noise out of the primary Inbox.
There are two states a message can be inside an Inbox: read and unread. When handling emails you should always deal with all the unread messages first, oldest to newest and then all the read messages newest to oldest. This ensures that messages get the most timely response, which makes your coworkers more effective and more likely to help you in the future. Here are the steps which should be followed when handling your email:
For every unread email, oldest to newest
If a response is not required move to archive
If a brief response is required send that response immediately
If a lengthy response or action is required mark the message as read and move to the next message.
For every read email, newest to oldest, including messages marked read above
Is the email still relevant? Perhaps a new message has made the message no longer require a response from you. If so move to archive folder.
Do you know what you need to know to write the lengthy response or have time to perform the action? If so you should do so and then move the message to the archive folder.
Has this email been in your Inbox for more than a week? If so put the action on your TODO list and move the message to the archive folder. If the item doesn't belong on your TODO list, perhaps because you don't actually intend to perform the action. In that case simply move the email to the archive folder.
If you follow this algorithm to handle your email you should never have a constantly growing Inbox. If you follow this algorithm and find yourself still falling behind you are likely just overworked and need to find some solution to reduce the amount of email you receive. Delegation works reasonably well.
One of the endless holy wars of computing is tabs versus spaces in code. Basically every corporate coding policies dictate using spaces. Many open source communities (such as Python) dictate spaces as well. One notable exception is Linux.
All the people who recommend using spaces are wrong. The one true way to do indentation is tabs for indentation and then spaces for alignment. Specifically, tabs should never appear after any character on a line which is not a tab. This has one advantage indenting with spaces cannot match: the programmer can view the code with whichever indentation suits them best. If you have a low resolution monitor and fresh eyes, go right ahead and use two character indentation. After you've been coding for a day and a night on your high resolution 27" monitor you can move up to eight characters. More standard coders can use four characters. That one weird guy who likes three characters will be happy too.
With tab indentation and space alignment a developer can see any of these options whenever they wish without changing the source code. All it requires is a programmer's editor and a minor configuration to your terminal which I describe below.
Eight character indentation:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
struct foo {
struct sockaddr_in ip;
int id;
char server_name[1024];
};
Four character indentation:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
struct foo {
struct sockaddr_in ip;
int id;
char server_name[1024];
};
Three characters:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
struct foo {
struct sockaddr_in ip;
int id;
char server_name[1024];
};
Two characters:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
struct foo {
struct sockaddr_in ip;
int id;
char server_name[1024];
};
All the alignment stays consistent since it is done with spaces. If tabs were used in the alignment then it wouldn't look near as good. Here we have the same code aligned with a combination of tabs and then spaces. At eight character tabs it looks fine:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
struct foo {
struct sockaddr_in ip;
int id;
char server_name[1024];
};
However, when we change the indentation to two spaces it no longer lines up:
#include <stdio.h>
#include <netinet/in.h>
struct foo {
struct sockaddr_in ip;
int id;
char server_name[1024];
};
So you should always indent with tabs and align with spaces. Most good editors should have options which make this easy. Vim, for example, lets you use hard tabs with the 'noexpand' option and by setting the automatic indentation options correctly it will automatically indent with spaces for you.
Editors are one thing, but getting diffs and the like in terminals working is another. Until just the other day I didn't know how to fix that problem easily. However, I have discovered the tabs(1) utility. It's available at least on OSX and Linux, so I expect that it is available everywhere. With this utility you can set the tabwidth of a terminal with ease. For character indentation is only a 'tabs -4' away.
Distributed bug tracking as an idea has been floating around the Internet for six or seven years now. And there have been several attempts:
Unfortunately each of these suffers from some combination of the following problems:
Being unmaintained
Not providing a graphical interface
Being VCS specific
Being a VCS (Fossil, Veracity)
Having issue formats which don't merge well
Not easily tracking the state of a bug inside a specific branch
Seeming to not dogfood themselves
I have been interested in a distributed bug tracker to use with my personal projects for several years, but the field never seemed to improve. The leading options always seemed to have one of the issues listed above. I tried a couple and found them lacking to the point where I would quickly stop using them and revert to TODO lists.
Finally I truly needed a distributed bug tracker quite severely. So I broke down and wrote one. You can find the manual for Nitpick here. Nitpick avoids all the issues above while being simple and lightweight enough start using quickly.
How can one go on a road trip and not discuss the roads? I, for one, won't be the first to start. So let's have a brief summary of the roads in New Zealand!
The roads in New Zealand are actually rather good overall. They are well constructed with clear signage which means business. If you see a sharp corner sign then you know that a sharp corner is coming up for which you must slow. The vast majority of the roads are two lane highways with grassed shoulders. There is quite little asphalt and most of the highways are chip and seal. This makes for quite a bit of road noise, but traction seemed good in most cases. At the very least water tend not to pool on the road, but you'll still pick it up with the ground suction as you pass over it. Nicely road glare is kept to the minimum.
Then there are the roundabouts. They are used everywhere possible to good effect. It's a bit of a shame that Canada doesn't have as many roundabouts as they are fuel efficient and keep traffic moving. They are fuel efficient in that except during heavy traffic you tend not to have to stop the car and then accelerate again. You also spend very little time idling waiting for a light.
Now the key to a good roundabout is size. The traffic circles I've seen in Canada tend to be too small. Roundabouts really must be large enough that the inner circle can go around at 30km/h without too much trouble.
Traffic in New Zealand tended to be light and polite. It was a lot like driving in the Maritimes. People will pull over to the side of the road to let you pass if you drive like a standard Lower Mainlander. Now I didn't drive myself, Don did all the driving, but on those long highway stretches we had plenty of time to discuss it. The New Zealand speed limit is 100km/h. I heard that there was some talk of increasing it, but I don't think that would be in New Zealand's best interest. That speed is not too slow to make good progress through the country. Overall the roads are good and nice drives, except when the high desert roads are fogged in and it's raining cats and dogs.
As with any trip you discover things you wish you had brought and things you wish you had left during the course of the trip. These are the things I wish I had brought.
The first is a small travel power bar. I had the necessary travel adapter and had confirmed that my devices would work with the simple adapter. However I only had one. In these days the standard traveller carries at least a laptop, phone and camera. Well, it may be easy enough at home to charge all three of those devices at once, but if you only have a single adapter it becomes more difficult. I do wish that I had brought a small three socket travel power bar to split the adapter. It would also help with the fear I felt when hanging my laptop charge off a wall socket held up by nothing other than the travel adapter. I will definitely bring one along the next time I leave North America.
The second thing I wish I had brought was some string or light rope to fashion into a strap for my water bottle. I really detest travelling without water, so the first thing I did upon arriving in New Zealand is buy a bottle of water to refill throughout the trip. That certainly worked well, but I had no convenience way to carry it. I was fine in situations where I could have my backpack, but that isn't always possible. Five feet of light cordage would have provided my a solution for this problem. Next time I'll make such a sling before I leave for the airport.
Many countries across the world are more or less British. This isn't surprising as most of them are former colonies of Britain. There is a definite gradient however. At the low end you have the USA. It almost seems that they made a consistent and conscious effort to avoid being British.
Take the colour of post boxes. In Canada, New Zealand and apparently Britain they are red. I think they tend to be blue in the USA; at least the postal colour is blue and not red in the USA. Then you have accent. Britain, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa all have British-esque accents. They aren't the same, but they resemble each other. The USA accent differs significantly.
Having visited neither Australia nor South Africa you must take this next comment as a baseless supposition, but I believe that among the countries under discussion (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, USA) that the next least British are the Australians. At least in the past couple of decades it has seemed that Australia has positioned itself to be more similar to the USA than the prototypical British colony.
This is partially born out with the relationship between Australia and New Zealand. It is quite similar in many respects to the relationship between Canada and the US. For one thing Australia has a larger population and seems more willing to tout its own horn than New Zealand. Then there is the fact that many Kiwis head over to Australia to try to make their fortune in much the same way Canadians sometimes do. Of course being so close there is ample tourism between the countries, with Australia having sunnier beaches. I have heard that Kiwis get similarly insulted if you believe them to be Australian.
So I believe the comparison is apt. But how does New Zealand compare to Canada on the colony scale? I would have to say that New Zealand is, without a doubt, more British. They drive smaller cars on the left side of the road, they have the British-esque accent, they eat more meat pies. They also seem to not believe in insulation or double glazed windows. I suppose it makes perfect sense. New Zealand is still a remote country and Canada has strong French and American influences.
An interesting aspect of New Zealand culture is that they appear to name things after people which wouldn't be named in that way in North America. Take Dick Smith's for example. This is a chain electronics store. I saw several example of chains or otherwise medium sized enterprises named after people. You don't see this much any more in North America.
I doubt there is any deep meaning behind this observation, but it could be because of the smaller scale of the country. With only 4.3 million people spread rather thinly over the two major islands it's likely possible for a family owned business to make a niche for itself and remain. I don't know however, it could be something else.
Whenever I travel I tend like to listen to the local radio to get a feel for the local culture. New Zealand has been no different. The first thing to note is that New Zealand seems to only have about four radio stations which are retransmitted all over the country. For example. There was one radio station we were listening to a couple hours south of Auckland. When we got out of range of that transmitter we assumed we'd never hear from the colour commentary again, which was a shame since they were pretty good. However, no sooner do we go to find a new station than we find the same people on a different frequency. In fact, we were able to listen to this station on and off down as far as we travelled. North and South Islands.
Of course I spent some time listening to Radio New Zealand. There are two stations, a traditional variety station, similar to CBC Radio 1, and a music station, which seems to play concert music, but I must confess to not having listened to it much. The content was pretty much what you'd expect. Some news, some intellectual discussion and commenting on current events. There was also one music show by request which had a quite eclectic mix.
As to the content of the rest of the stations, I'm not sure if it's the people I am driving with or just New Zealanders, but it seems that most of it is older rock. There was one country station, but that station was vetoed almost immediately. The rest of the stations we've listened to have tended to be rock from the 90's and early in the previous decade. This isn't even us being picky. Since we are touring we are covering a lot of ground and moving out of transmitter range frequently enough that we tend to stick for a little while on the first station we find.
It isn't just on the radio where I heard this older rock. At this conference we were mooching off of there was a banquet with a band. The band was quite good, but tended to cover older rock tunes. Maybe this is just because of the type of people who were attending the conference.
Listening to local radio is an interesting view into the local culture. New Zealand may be the world of tomorrow, but it's music seems to have come from yesteryear.
Today we visited Christchurch. The condition of Christchurch is better than I had feared. It seems that most of the city either escaped severe damage or has been repaired. However, a large portion of the city centre is off limits to the public.
This Red Zone is a very large demolition and construction area. Unfortunately as it is so expansive and the military guard at every entrance so alert that you can't get in to see much of the centre. This includes the Christchurch Cathedral. However, we walked the perimeter and found one street view of the cathedral two blocks away. It wasn't a good view, but it was a view.
The feel of the city is a bit odd. Many of the buildings look brand new or are recently refurbished. However, interspersed are damaged buildings and buildings which are a bit rundown. It is all lively however. It is unfortunate that we won't have much time to stay. However the obvious construction boom makes it difficult since most of the rooms in the city are taken and many roads are blocked off.
I think Vancouver would be lucky to look as good as Christchurch two years after the big one.
It turns out that you don't need to modify your subversion configuration file to use the SSH wrapper script. The default setting first checks the SVN_SSH environment variable, so you can put the path to the script there instead. This is very useful if you share your configuration files among many machines since shell has conditionals.
Local cuisine is one of the joys of travel for the open minded. As long as you don't mind asking what it is after you have tried it you will do fine. Now this is New Zealand, not a place known for its exotic tastes. What it does have are meat pies.
I am a fan of meat pies. What is not to like about a nice flaky crust surrounding slow cooked meats and vegetables doused in a nice thick, flavourful gravy? So the abundance of meat pies pleased me. In fact, you can get meat pies and other savoury pies just about everywhere except high end restaurants. Cafes, street bakeries, gas stations. They all have pies and they are all quite good.
The only fault of the pies here is the lack of vegetables. The pies could be much improved with some more carrot and peas. This problem is not restricted to the pies however. It was generally agreed among my travelling party that the food here, while good, was light on vegetables and fruit. You got ample meat and potatoes and pastry, but little of the good for you stuff. I also noticed that vegetables seemed quite expensive at grocery stores.
Other than that one fault I had, on my journey, excellent: beef, pork, chicken, fish, venison, lamb, mutton and shellfish (This bad grammar left in because it makes Courteney hurt inside). I didn't see until late in the trip that there are some free range rabbits, and so didn't get a chance to try that. Vegetables may be in short supply, but the Kiwis know their meat and potatoes.
I once read something to the effect that the truly wealthy of the world don't interact with the real world much at all. The theory goes that as they travel the world they stay in hotels which are all high end and pretty much the same, they eat high end food in French styles, they shop in high end shops which are all pretty much the same. The only big differences are the local language, local architecture and the local currency, when they bother to concern themselves with that.
Now I'm not going to claim that I have travelled rich in this way, but I believe I've had a bare taste of it. Nothing but fine meals and controlled tours for several days along with this conference. From what I've seen it's pretty true. It's an experience you can get in any large city in the world and it's quite difficult to tell where you are if you don't look for it.
I suppose it appeals to some, but I think it's something people would do not because they can or because they enjoy it, but because it is expected. It's not the sort of travel for me. I prefer to travel in minimal comfort. Rent a car, stay in affordable hotels, eat at common restaurants. Actually experience the country.
Have you ever seen the road work signs going up on a major route and dreaded the coming weeks of traffic snarls and rough roads? It would seem that isn't the way it happens in New Zealand. I woke on Saturday morning to see a major street in Auckland half blocked off with trucks parked off into the distance. When I returned into the city that evening nearly the entire street had been stripped for resurfacing. We woke Sunday to work already beginning as soon as legal. Upon returning in the evening on Sunday we saw the entire road section resurfaced. Fresh lines were painted after we returned from dinner.
That's the way road work should be done. Quick and cleanly.
I'm not sure if this is indicative of any general trend, but I have noticed a few other things related to efficiency in my time here. The first is that neither of the two hotels I've seen have built in air conditioners or central heating. I have seen or heard ads for heat pumps, house insulation, efficient light bulbs, water conservation and other minor conservation measures. As I mentioned previously vehicles tend to be smaller, but I did see a television commercial promoting fuel efficient vehicle choices and choosing just as much vehicle as is required.
I get the sense that environmental concerns are at the forefront of the public consciousness. Perhaps this is due to the previous environmental devastation which was wrought on the unique ecology of New Zealand though the centuries. There are strong movements and punishments for further destruction of the few remaining pristine wilderness areas on isolated islands.
Then there is the furniture and houses. All the furniture I have seen has been minimalistic and well made. This is in contrast to the trend of the past few years in North America of ever larger oversized furniture. I will admit to not having seen much non-commercial furniture, but all the hotel and restaurant furniture I have seen is well made. Perhaps this come about due to a relative scarcity of local wood suitable to construct furniture.
I haven't seen any house interiors, but in general the houses appear nowhere near as large as in North America. The parts of New Zealand I have seen so far are quite similar to the Maritimes in housing sizes and condition.
Meal sizes also seem to be more moderated. To be fair I have been eating at higher end restaurants during my first few days here, but even the street bakeries and cafes have very reasonably sized portions. Restaurant food seems a bit expensive which may play into it. Or they may just have better portion control. There are certainly few obviously overweight people lumbering around the streets.
I get the sense that New Zealanders are a quite efficient people who accomplish precisely sufficient outcomes with little unnecessary waste. This seems to fit well with their resource and production situation. It is quite obvious that the economy is having a rough spell. I'm not sure that this is restricted only to the recent past and believe that the parallels to the Maritimes is equally valid here.
When it comes to personal transportation in New Zealand there are a few notable differences from North America. The first is that diesel and gasoline prices are quite out of alignment with their energy ratios. Since diesel contains about a third more energy than gasoline, you would expect that diesel would cost about a third more than gasoline. In New Zealand, yesterday, the ratios were reversed. Diesel was approximately $1.56 while gas was $2.20. This is almost exactly reversed. No wonder small turbo diesel motors are so popular.
The second thing to notice is that, like much of the rest of the world, they don't have full size pickup trucks. Given the cost of fuel and size of their roads (fairly narrow with nearly no shoulder), this isn't surprising. Trucks in general are also relatively rare, restricted mostly to those who seem to actually need one. It seems that most people who have a vehicle for sports purposes have SUVs. New Zealand full size seems to be North American mid-size.
Notice that I said that only those who truly need a truck on a regular basis have one. What about the people who need to carry stuff only every so often? Well, many more cars have tow hitches here. Even the sporty car we ended up renting (4L V8 baby) has a tow rating of 1600KG. So it would seem that people here buy the vehicle they need and aren't afraid to use a small trailer when necessary. This makes perfect sense since a small trailer can carry as much as one of these trucks (though I haven't yet checked to see what the pickup trucks have as a bed load rating) for much less initial cost (you only need to buy a trailer once and it'll last many years) and much less continuing fuel cost. And yet you still have just about as much capability. Certainly enough capability for the person who buys a truck and never leaves the highways with it.
I think if you look at the vehicle choices of New Zealand you'll see the future for North America, especially Canada. For much less overall cost they maintain sufficient capability. Of course there are still large trailers and heavy trucks (which include one tons over here it seems) which can be bought when they are truly necessary, but those aren't necessary near as often as you see lifted one ton pickups with six litre diesel engines rolling down Lower Mainland streets.
Here are some things I noticed during my 26 hour journey from the door step of my apartment in New Westminster to the New Zealand side of Customs.
Vancouver airport now has free wifi which is decent. It even has, in some lounges, power points which can be used to recharge. I'm a bit surprised at this because I thought wifi and power were one of the major perks of the status and business class lounges. Note, however, that since power isn't everywhere you may be sitting at a different terminal than the one you will be leaving by. Also note that the initial boarding announcements are not made across the entire terminal, but only at the gate you should be boarding on. The final boarding announcements are made over the entire terminal though. Which is good because otherwise we would have missed our flight leaving Vancouver.
The second thing I note is that when you travel by air your passport is likely to actually get stamped. I wasn't expecting this since crossing the land border with the US never results in a stamp.
LAX also claims to have free wifi and some power points. The power points are much sparser than at Vancouver airport though. Also when I was spending an extended four hour layover there the Wifi near my gate didn't work. Maybe there wasn't actually any free wifi.
It seems that either planes have gotten quiet in general, or that they use quieter planes for international travel. My experience with domestic flights in Canada is that the noise always started to bother me a couple hours after the flight began. That didn't happen this time. I suppose it's also possible that I'm starting to lose my hearing, but I hope not.
Airline food isn't actually that bad. I wouldn't call it five star, but the meals I had on Air Pacific were quite edible and well spaced. On the topic of food, I thought it would be a good idea to buy a couple of bottles of water after security in Vancouver airport. I expected to use this a bit on the first leg, mostly on the second and suffer the third flight. This doesn't actually work. It seems that no matter that you just got off an international plane, you will have to go through security again to get onto another international plane. You may even have to travel between different buildings of the airport, walking across land from the country you are in. If you want to bring water on your flight you'll have to buy it again for every flight separately.
Suit bags are pretty well designed pieces of luggage, but they don't work that well if the hotel room you book doesn't have a full size hanger bar so that the suit bag can be hung up while open. It is also very important that you close the hanger clip inside the suit bag, or everything will fall down into a heap when you go to open the bag up after hanging it up. Go me.
The biggest problem with the svn+ssh protocol is that the repository URLs leak too much information about where the repository is. It just doesn't look clean. svn+ssh://servername/home/me/repos/foo just doesn't look good.
It happens that this is easy to fix. First write a small script on the workstation:
Put this file somewhere appropriate, say ~/.subversion/svnssh.sh and make it executable. Now you merely need to modify the subversion configuration file, usally ~/.subversion/config to set the tunnel program for ssh to be this script.
After doing this you are able to use the svn+ssh://server/foo as the . You may want to include some additional logic to support multiple servers, but that is a simple extension.
There is a class of jobs described as The Professions. This post is not about them. This post is instead about what it means to be a professional and how it can apply to any job. Professionalism, at its core, is about doing things the right way, even when doing so is contrary to human nature, personally detrimental and not obviously necessary.
Let us discuss each in turn in the context of software development. Within every professional software developer is a craftsman. Some part of the developer enjoys doing good work and feels pride in it. This is where the most obvious conflict of human nature and professionalism begins. If one takes pride in their works they feel some measure of ownership. Not ownership in the copyright sense, but ownership in the sense of defender. The original developer is the expert of that piece of code and since he feels pride in having written it, will strive to maintain its quality and form. Ownership in this sense is at odds with professionalism. Professionals must work in teams and feeling that one owns some code is at odds with effective teamwork.
Another aspect of the professional is that they put doing a good job over employment advancement or job security. This is done in several ways. The most notable is documenting the system appropriately, but it isn't externally obvious that all the necessary documentation and automation exists. It is quite easy for a developer to automate some complicated and necessary process with a bit of scripting, but then neglect to polish that tool sufficiently for use by the rest of the team. In fact, perhaps the most important indicator of the willingness to make oneself easily replaceable is the professional's understanding of the team. To a professional the team is not just the developer himself. The team isn't even just the existing people currently working on the project. Instead the team is an abstract set which contains not only the developer as they are, but the developer thirty years from now after they have forgotten everything to do with this project. Even more expansively, the team includes members not yet hired and the professional's replacement. A professional makes themselves easy to replace, often to the point of maintaining documents to orient their replacement and at time training their replacement as one of their final acts before moving on.
Then there are the things about a job which just don't seem that important. In the software world these are the design documents being kept up to date, having appropriate code comments or even providing useful explanations of what otherwise incomprehensible errors mean in particular circumstances. Perhaps most important is documenting and automating testing. These tasks are tedious and thankless. These tasks are also the key to good maintainability and a sign of a well polished development setup. A professional makes themselves replaceable and does the job to completion, not just the fun and interesting bits.
Professionalism is what differentiates software engineers from mere programmers. As with most things professionalism is a spectrum. I'm slowly moving my way towards being an exemplary professional, but I'm not there yet. I'll get there, one step at a time.
In the past shaving used to be a luxury. I've heard that men would shave twice a week on Thursday and Sunday. For centuries this was done with the equivalent of the straight razor. These days there are many different tools and products used to shave and shaving is no longer a weekly luxury taken in at a barber shop with beer and chatter. Now shaving is a daily burden required to greater or lessor degrees by polite society.
In any case there is still not a shave to be found which is better than that of a straight razor. As with many of the old traditions which used to be passed down from father to son much of the knowledge of how to use a straight razor has been lost to the majority. So I have put here the extent of my limited experience with straight razor shaving.
Rule one of straight razor shaving: Never move the blade parallel to the blade. Always move it perpendicular to the blade, like you are trying to sweep something up with it.
Rule two of straight razor shaving: Always move the blade perpendicular to the edge, like sweeping. To do otherwise will leave you horribly scarred.
The key to a good, close shave is the sharpness of the blade and the smoothness of the cutting motion. A sharp blade cuts the hair without pulling it, resulting in the hair being cut level with the skin and not below the skin. The smoothness of the cutting motion is important to keep the skin from bunching up.
There are four keys to a nice smooth shaving motion:
Practice. The following tips will help, but nothing beats practice. Without a steady hand you aren't going to have a smooth shave no matter what you do.
Pull the skin. As you shave a region just tug on the skin a little bit to tighten it slightly. This will prevent bunching of the skin by ensuring there is less loose skin to bunch.
Before you shave you must soak the hairs in hot water. This will soften the hairs, which makes them easier to cut through as well as opening the pores, which pushes the hairs slightly outwards from the skin. Shaving straight out of a hot shower is recommended, but if that isn't possible a hot towel will suffice. Use the hottest water in the towel that you can stand and keep the towels on the face for no less than five minutes, ten is better. If the towel starts to get cool you will need to use another towel.
I also recommend that you shave in a hot, humid room, such as the bathroom after a hot shower, in order to keep the pores open as much as possible and to prevent the hairs from drying out. How much a problem these two are depends on your particular characteristics.
Shaving soap. Sure you see ads all over the place for shaving creams which promise you the world. Don't believe them, they lie. The major reason to use shaving cream and the like is to lubricate the skin. If your shaving cream isn't doing that you are using the wrong stuff.
I recommend proper shaving soap. This is soap which is high in glycerin. Properly lathered this soap will further soften the hairs, lubricate and clean out the pores.
To use shaving soap (or other high glycerin soap) you must first lather it. To do so put some soap into the lathering cup. I prefer to buy shaving soap which comes already in a suitable container, but you can us a regular cup if you wish and then just cut some soap into it. You don't need much soap for each shave as the secret is in lathering it. Now you will need a badger hair lather brush, accept no substitutes. You take the brush and dip it shallowly into hot water. Then you lather the soap using this brush in a circular motion in the lather cup. You only want to use a little water, I dip my brush about a quarter of an inch, as too much water will prevent lathering and you can always add more water if you aren't seeing the results you desire. Lathering should only take a minute or two and you should end up with a rich, thick lather which sticks to the brush and the side of the cup.
Now that you have the lather you apply it to the skin using the brush in long strokes. For the most part these strokes should be up and down like you are painting the skin. You should cover all the skin you intend to shave and then a little bit. If you are a slow shaver or the temperature and humidity of the room does not allow you may wish to lather only part of the area at any one time. The lather must still be thick when you go to shave the area. If you need to reapply the soap you can give the soap a few quick lathering motions first to ensure a good lather.
Once you have finished shaving it is important to clean the lather brush properly or its performance will degrade. The proper way to clean a badger hair brush is to run it under slightly warm water while gently squeezing it with your hands. The action is allowing water to soak in and the squeezing the soaping water out. Continue this until no more soap soap comes out. Then you should get the majority of the water out of the brush with a couple gentle squeezes and then a small number of wrist flicks. It is ideal to then hang the brush in a well ventilated area so dry, but I've not had trouble with standing the brush up on its handle.
A good shaving soap is very important to a good shave. In fact, I have had excellent results with cheap disposable razors as long as I have used proper shaving soap with a good lather. A good shaving soap will also prevent or greatly reduce razor burn by reducing the friction of shaving.
The magic of a straight razor is the sharpness of the blade. This is why the single blade of a straight razor can provide a superior shave to the multibladed razors of the modern age. Unfortunately I have no good advice on sharpening a straight razor, I ruined my blade on my first attempt. I can only suggest finding some old man who has great experience hand sharpening blades to extreme keenness or to attempt proper knife sharpening system. As far as I can tell the razors should be sharpened to 17 degree angle.
Though I can offer no great advice on sharpening a straight razor I can tell you how to keep one sharp. To keep a straight razor sharp there are really three things to keep in mind:
Follow the recommendations for a smooth shaving motion above. The best way to keep a blade sharp is to not dull it in the first place. Most of those recommendations, but especially the hot water soak, are important for softening the hairs and making them easier to cut through. The softer the hairs the less wear on the blade edge.
Rest your razor. As you shave the edge of the razor gets slightly bent through the resistance of the hairs. Resting the razor is simply not using it for a time. Gentlemen of times past used to have one straight razor for each day of the week to ensure that the razors stayed sharp as long as possible. This is because the bent edge will return to almost the original position is not bent to severely and given time to rest.
If using a personal razor you should have no problem resting the razor at least a day between uses. Resting it longer will reduce the wear and so if possible it may be advisable to either shave on alternating days or to rotate between multiple razors. Additionally if you are shaving large areas of skin, such as legs, with a straight razor you might consider using several razors in one shaving session to reduce the wear.
As resting the razor undoes some of the wear so does stropping. Stropping should be done on conditioned leather only. There are two common types of strops, solid ones which are made on wood blocks and flexible ones. Which you use really depends on the layout of the shaving space. I prefer the flexible ones, though they require something to hang one end off.
Stropping should be done only at the beginning of shaving, never after shaving. You can strop during shaving if the razor is no longer sharp enough, but that will cause dulling and I recommend against it if possible. To strop you simply ensure that the strop is straight or nearly straight and lightly drag the razor along the strop, blunt end first. You should strop alternating sides of the razor. The easiest way to do this is to lightly place the razor on the strop nearest yourself with the edge pointed to you. Then drag the razor away from you towards the other end of the strop. Then when you have nearly reached the end you should flip the razor over onto its other side. Flip over the blunt edge of the razor. If you try to flip it any other way you will mess up from time to time and either cut your strop, damage the razor, dull the razor prematurely or at the very least have to spend more time stropping. You should strop each side gently about twenty times.
If your strop is narrower than you razor you will have to strop the entire blade either by moving the blade during the stropping motion or by stropping the side nearest the tang on one trip along the strop and back and the side furthest from the tang on the next trip.
The point of stropping is to realign the edge of the razor which was bent out of shape when you shave. If the edge only has to be moved back a little bit it is likely to bend easily. However if the edge has to be moved back too much some of it will break off, causing dulling. It is for this reason that stropping should only be done after resting the razor in order to keep the razor sharp.
There are a few more things to keep in mind about maintaining a straight razor. Firstly you must always remember that a knick in the razor is a bloody knick in your skin. As such it is critical that you take good care of the razor and keep fix all rust and edge damage as soon as possible. Secondly no matter how skillful and diligent and maintaining the sharpness of your razor it will need to be sharpened eventually. If you are taking care of the razor and shaving a face every day or two the razor should only need to be sharpened once or twice a year.
So that is all the theory about using a straight razor. As long as you remember Rule One of Straight Razor Shaving you should be able to learn without too much trouble or long lasting injury. I will now list out the steps I use when shaving with a straight razor. Use this as a suggestion, but shaving is a personal thing and you'll have to experiment some to figure out what works best for you.
I always try to shave directly after a shower. I always try to end the shower with nice and hot water to ensure a steamy bathroom. I find I just don't have the patience for hot towels at home. If I ever get a barber shave though, hot towels all the way. It's just a shame that most barber shops don't serve beer these days like they used to.
When I step out of the shower I dry everything except my face. I want my face as wet as possible. I keep the door closed and try to keep the bathroom as humid as possible.
After ensuring a soaked face I strop the razor. This shouldn't take more than a minute or two.
Then I lather the soap as described above. I put on a thick coating over my entire face. I find it helps keep the hairs soft even if I have to relather later.
I shave, first the left side of my face with my right hand and then the right side of my face with my left hand. Being left handed has endowed me with some useful abilities. I shave in sections where each section is mostly flat. So my cheek down to the jaw line is one section. Under the jaw and on the neck is another. Special care is taken under the nose and on the chin. Always shave with the grain the first time over. If you have areas where the hair grows in circles or changes direction you will have to go over that area once for each direction. Always lather the area before shaving it.
After every stroke of the razor I rinse the razor off with hot water. I find that this helps keep my skin warm and my pores open.
Each stroke goes from the top of my face to the bottom of my face. The razor is held between thirty and forty degrees to the skin where zero degrees would be laying the razor flat on my skin and ninety degree would be the blade sticking straight into my skin.
Never move the blade parallel to the blade. That is, never move the straight razor in a sawing motion. Doing so will cut straight into you and likely leave you with conversation starting scars. Always move the blade perpendicular to the blade, like you are brushing something with it. If you must turn a curve do it gradually.
Now that I have finished the first time over I will consider additional passes. Shaving against the grain is a way to achieve an even closer shave, but I find that I end up with ingrown hairs if I do. It appears that many men are this way so shaving against the grain is optional.
I will, however, often find some spot which I hadn't shaved sufficiently well for my tastes. These areas I will lather with soap again and then shave again. I try to avoid shaving an area in this way more than two or three times to avoid razor burn.
After I am satisfied with my shave I take a towel soaked with the coldest water I can find and press the towel against my face. I do this to cool my face, close my pores and stem any bleeding from small cuts. I'll often need to soak the towel twice. Once my face is cool I use the towel to pat and wipe off any remaining soap.
Some people suggest using aftershave at this point, but I've never seen the point. Using shaving soap ensures that any small cuts are clean along with the skin itself. The soap can also be lightly scented if you desire that. Finishing with an ice cold towel also does wonders for stopping any bleeding.
Then it is time to clean up. Since I lather in a lather cup I simply put the lather cup away. I rinse the lather brush and stand it up to dry. I ensure that the razor has been rinsed off and that there is no water left sitting on the blade. Patting with a towel or a couple of very careful flicks will remove the water. I rinse and wring the towel and hang it up to dry.
I then present my freshly shaved face to my wife for inspection. I usually pass with flying colours.
I believe that is all one can really be told about shaving with a straight razor. It is a rewarding skill, but does require practice. For somebody considering starting out shaving in this fashion I would suggest buying a new, factory sharpened razor. Though it seems counter intuitive, as long as you remember the first rule of shaving with a straight razor, a sharp razor is less dangerous and painful than a dull one.
Several months ago the US government started confiscating domain names. This started some portions of the Internet honking like a gaggle of geese. One concept which came up from this was a P2P DNS system which would be resistant to such government intervention. Creating such a system presents three difficulties:
Ensuring a domain is only 'registered' once
Allowing the owner to modify the domain at will
Distributing the domain information
The first is easily done by having a single master public key which signs the key of the domain with a date. The domain key with the earliest signature date is the correct one. This implies that ownership of the domain key is ownership of the domain. The central authority can only hand out ownership of a domain once. Furthermore lost keys will result in an unmodifiable domain.
The second requires that the owner of the key sign the updates with the domain key and a date. Properly signed version information with the latest date is the correct one to use.
The third requirement is more complicated, but there are several distributed hash tables out there which would seem to fit the bill. In the worst case some simple eventually consistent P2P system could be created with relative ease.
The reason such a system would work is that they do not attempt to completely replace DNS. Instead it merely replaces the root and TLD DNS servers. Each domain would be represented in this system by the same information which is already returned by a normal DNS query use in the hierarchical hostname search. That is, it would contain at least the authoritative DNS servers for the domain.
Though such a system could be extended to contain all the hostnames on the Internet it would grow quite large. It would seem that there is a low limit to the amount of data a person will deem reasonable to allocate to P2P infrastructure. Not extending it as such leaves the domain DNS servers as the first vulnerable point in the chain of viewing a webpage, but no more vulnerable than the content servers themselves.
Reliability is the capability of a tool to perform a specific purpose without failure. Dependability is subtly different from reliability in that it is the capability of a tool to perform the task of the moment sufficiently well. Perhaps a short listing of expectations will help:
Reliability:
Dependability:
Perform the prescribed task as often as possible
Gracefully degrade under adverse conditions
Be abusable, work on the fringe of the stated purpose
Be amiable to jury rigging either repairs or modification
Take, for example, a ball point pen. Ball point pens are designed to write on dry, clean paper. A reliable pen will do so until the ink runs out. A dependable pen, however, will also be able to write, if with difficulty, on dirty, crumpled paper. Wet paper or things which aren't paper at all, such as wood, are also markable by a dependable pen. More so even than just marking in adverse conditions a dependable pen can be used as a small lever or to push small buttons.
These latter uses don't use the pen for it's marking ability, but instead misuse the physical properties of the pen. Dependable pens have these free variables of construction, strength of the body for example, modified to be more useful in some ways.
In general institutions desire reliability, because they will have one tool for each task, while individuals desire dependability, since they have a much wider variety of needs and circumstances.
The recent Egyptian network blackout has caused a surge in interest in decentralized mesh networks. For quite a while I've personally thought that a wide spread mesh network would be great. Unfortunately while I know that such a network could be created using available technology, I don't believe it ever will. There are several reasons, but they essentially come down to two overriding reasons: geek density is too low and everybody expects real time communication. That is the won't read version.
The more detailed reasoning is based upon technical restrictions. The conceptual framework of a mesh network that I'll be using in comprised of four facts:
Every node is connects to a number of mediums. Any node may be connected to as few as one medium, e.g. using their one wifi card, to as many as ten media, e.g. a couple shared wifi channels and a handful of point to point links using directed wifi or Free Space Optics. Nodes connect primarily to other nodes geographically nearby.
Every link between nodes has approximately the same bandwidth as every other link. For the purposes of theory we can assume that every link is equally capable. For the purposes of a practical implementation we can assume that the achieved throughput ranges between 1Mbps and 100Mbps. This is a reasonable assumption as all the commonly available 802.11 Wifi protocols have achievable throughputs in this range. I deem it unlikely that a significant portion of the network will have Gigbit Ethernet links to each other.
Point to point links may use some private medium, such as a wire or focused laser beam. Broadcast links need to use radio spectrum. As such point to point links can assume to always have the nominal bandwidth available, where shared mediums must divide the available bandwidth among all the nodes using that medium.
The average distance covered by any link is 1KM. This is optimistic for regular 802.11, but perfectly possible with fixed point to point links such as directed wifi.
Let us first discuss the infeasibility of such a mesh network to support primarily real time communication, as the current Internet does. Assume, for the moment, that it takes one millisecond for a node to forward a packet. Given the assumed average link length of one kilometre the network would have a minimum round trip time of 45 milliseconds from one side of a moderately sized town to the other and back again. That isn't too bad and is slightly faster than most of the current Internet. However, most of the websites you visit aren't hosted in the same city. Most aren't even in the same province. Let us assume that you are in Calgary and wish to access a site in Vancouver. The driving distance is about 1000KM which we'll use since nobody is can afford to lay a hundred kilometre link. That means that a round trip would take two entire seconds. That isn't quite what most people consider real time.
If the problem was just latency we could all get used to it. Unfortunately we also have to deal with bandwidth. As mentioned in this paper the average number of nodes a random request must traverse is proportional to the square root of the total number of nodes in the network. This implies that the average available bandwidth for each node is the bandwidth of the link divided by the square root of the number of nodes. Take the 100Mbps assumption and scale the network to ten thousand nodes and the effective bandwidth for each node averages out to 1Mbps. Such a network would cover a small geographic area and 100Mbps is quite optimistic. More realistic may be an average link speed of 10Mbps which gives and average of 0.1Mbps, approximately 10KB/s, on a ten thousand node network. While there are certainly uses for such a network I'm not sure that people in urban areas would be willing to go back to dial up speeds.
However, if most of the network accesses can be made to traverse only a small number of nodes then the bandwidth and latency issues are dramatically reduced. This can be achieved simply by using a caching architecture where each node has a cache of the content which has passed through it. A request would then be serviced by the first node on the path which had the content cached. Unfortunately this means that real time access won't happen, but most of the web isn't real time anyways. There is still the latency problem from distant nodes in other cities or provinces with transfer of updated content taking hours. You won't be able to IM your friend in New York, but you could still email them.
So real time access isn't going to happen, that doesn't mean such a network wouldn't be useful. Local content would still be fast enough. So let us consider the requirements of setting such a mesh up. The biggest requirement for a mesh is to have the maximum possible aggregate bandwidth on each node. Since the primary factor in aggregate bandwidth of a node is the number of network mediums it uses obviously every node needs as many mediums as possible.
As explained in the assumptions there are two broad classes of mediums. Shared and private. Shared media have the benefits of being easy. All it takes is a device with a wifi card to join a shared media. Unfortunately shared media, while allowing many links between nodes, shares some fixed bandwidth among all those links and the links of other nodes using the same media. A fast 802.11n shared medium would probably only afford each link an average bandwidth of around 1Mbps unless the network was quiet. Private media, on the other hand, always provide good bandwidth to each link. Unfortunately it takes one private media for each link and additional effort for each link. A private Wifi link requires directional antennas be aimed and configuration between both ends of the link. Private media may also provide good range, such as the Free Space Optics mentioned above which are reliable out to 1.4KM.
Who has the energy and knowledge to setup numerous, or even one point to point link? Not normal users who just want to plug something into a wall and have it work. Just Geeks. I don't know that there is sufficient density of true geeks to put such a network together. You'd need at least one on every side of every apartment building and a couple on every block of houses. That's a lot of geeks talking to each other.
A successful mesh network could be built and would probably look like Freenet. Anybody want to confirm that the network assumptions are similar?
When a program is too slow a competent developer will first look to faster hardware. When faster hardware isn't possible this developer will then reach for their profiler. Profilers help a developer determine why a program is slow so that it can be sped up. But what if you are on a platform with poor native support *coughANDROIDcough* which doesn't support the tracing profiler you need? Write your own of course!
Now writing an efficient, low overhead and functional profiler is an involved task which can take a significant amount of time. Since we are all busy instead we'll do an 80% job by writing an efficient and functional profiler, but skip the low overhead. This should allow us to get the numbers we require, but will cause the program to run much slower.
First we list our tools:
gcc -finstrument-functions causes gcc to call the __cyg_profile_func_enter and __cyg_profile_func_exit functions as part of the regular function call preamble and postamble.
A small script program, trace2text, which converts from the efficient binary format to a text format which is easily manipulated.
nm -al to help convert function addresses into symbol names and source line numbers.
c++filt to unmangle the symbol names.
A small script, join_symbols.py to do a relational join on the function address in the trace between the trace line and the nm line.
A bit of shell script and awk to transform binary trace files into something human readable and usable with code folding to explore the trace.
A final small script, avg_time.sh, to take a human readable trace and produce the average amount of time a call of a particular function requires.
With these few tools we can simulate a fair amount of the power of gprof, though with significantly more overhead.
For various reasons I will not be providing significant source to the above bits. One primary reason is that, being hackish, the profiler was tuned specifically to grab the statistics I required for my particular problem. Specifically I had a multi-threaded program which processed a number of packets coming in off a network. The program was neither IO nor CPU constrained, but yet was unable to keep up with the possible network data rate because processing each packet took too long. My job was to figure out why and fix it. Because of this situation I needed to determine which function were spending time blocked on some resource in the course of processing each packet. This is in contrast to simply being able to look at which functions are called the most or use the most CPU time over an entire run.
With this in mind I will lay out one way to implement the hackish profiler and hopefully I'll point out all the pitfalls you may run across. The starting point for any profiler is in accessing the data they require. Some profilers hook into the kernel to sample what the system is doing many times a second, others hook into the function call preamble of the program in question via compile time modification. I needed the latter on a system with no support for it. Conveniently the build chain uses gcc and gcc provides -finstrument-functions. This compile flag causes gcc to add calls to __cyg_profile_func_enter upon entering a function and __cyg_profile_func_exit upon exiting a function. Each of these functions are provided with two arguments, the address of the function just entered and the address of where the function was called from. These addresses are only approximate due to automatic Program Counter movement, but are a constant increment greater than the true address. In my particular case on the ARM architecture the function addresses where one greater in the argument than as produced by nm.
Gcc does not provide these functions, so you will have to write them yourself. In my case I was interested in having a trace for each thread separately and with a minimal overhead since we are already turning every function call into at least three function calls (one for the original call, one for func_enter and one for func_exit). To this end I created a simple structure which stored the function address, call address, time and whether the function was entering or exiting (For this last I borrowed a bit from the time). Each thread had a contiguous array of these entries and when the array was full it was flushed directly to a file for each thread. The size of this array must be chosen with care, too small and the cost of the write system call will result in inaccurate numbers being recorded, too large and each write call will stall for a significant time causing spikes in the recorded timing. I ended up using a guess of 10000 entries and it seemed to be accurate enough for my needs so I didn't experiment.
It is critically important that you ensure that you do not cause infinite recursion from these two functions. There are two ways to ensure this. The first is to realize that -finstrument-functions is a compile time option and therefore any function not compiled with this option is safe to call. This includes any system library functions. The second method is to tell gcc to exclude the function from being profiles. This is done with the no_instrument_function attribute. Do note that this attribute can only be supplied in the prototype of the function and not the function definition itself. As an example this is how you should define each of the profiling functions:
extern "C" void __attribute__((__no_instrument_function__)) __cyg_profile_func_enter(void *this_fn, void *call_site);
extern "C" void __cyg_profile_func_enter(void *this_fn, void *call_site){...}
You must supply any function you write with a similar attribute to avoid infinite recursion.
With these functions written and working you should end up, after a run of your program, with a number of binary trace files, one for each thread. You will need to convert this to a text format to easily make use of the existing tools such as nm and c++filt. I did this with a small C program which took each record and printed out a line with the equivalent data. Every record was space separated. I also found it convenient to use a stack and compute the elapsed time each function took at this point since I was already sequentially processing the entire trace. The most important thing to keep in mind at this point is that the addresses must be output in the exact format that nm outputs the addresses. In my case this was %08lx, but on 64-bit platforms it will likely be %016lx. Matching the format will make the relational join easy. You should also adjust the function addresses as necessary to match the addresses of nm. Again, in my case I had to subtract one from the address supplied to this_fn.
Now you need to convert those function addresses into symbols so you know what you are looking at. What you want to do is combine every line in the text trace with the matching line of the nm -al output on the profiled executable (make sure you run it on an executable with debug symbols). I originally did this using the join command, but this requires that all the inputs be sorted upon the join field and this proved to be too time consuming. Instead I wrote a short Python script which read in the nm output into a dictionary keyed on the address and then printed out the joined line for every line on standard input. This drastically cut down the time needed to process the traces into something usable since even a short run will produce hundreds of megabytes of text traces.
Once you have the joined output you merely need to convert it into the final usable form. The first step to this is to use awk to move the various fields into the order you desire. The second step of this is to pipe the entire trace through c++filt to demangle the function names. This will turn the mangled symbol names into full function or method names with the types of the arguments. These will contain spaces so the demangled symbol name should appear after any fields you with to easily process. In my case this was the total time the current invocation of the function took.
With this trace you are almost there and should be able to extract the just about any statistic you desire. You can also manually explore the traces. The easiest way I found to do this is to take my trusty programmer editor (vim in my case) to open the text traces. The traces will be large so you may wish to use dd to extract a subset to work with. This was specifically necessary in my case because the trace files were more than 4GB in size, which vim will not open successfully on a 32-bit platform. Once you have some subset of the trace loaded in your editor I recommend that you use the code folding features to make exploring the trace simpler. In my case I used vim's foldmethod=marker with foldmarker=Entering,Exiting to allow me to fold function calls. On a medium sized project it was enlightening to see just how deep the call stack went in some cases.
Now you can compute the statistics you need to find your problem. Statistics I found useful and easy to compute include just skimming a stream of elapsed time for a function in question to get a sense of how long it took. I also produced a small script which scanned the trace and calculated the average time a particular function took, how many times that function was called and the sum of all time that function took. Exploring will give you a sense of which functions seem to be taking all the time, but be sure to examine the statistics from a significant run to smooth out spikes caused by other sources, such as the overhead of the profiling.
Hopefully this will help somebody profile when no profiler exists. At the very least writing a hachish profiler as an exercise is educational as proper profilers perform many of the same actions, just in a more efficient manner with lower overhead.
Duck typing is a magical form of typing where an object is considered to be the correct type as long as it implements the methods or messages which a piece of code calls upon it. It is also the type system I prefer. The three most relevant examples of languages with Duck Typing are Smalltalk, Python and Objective-C. Smalltalk because while it may not be the language which introduced duck typing, it certainly brought it into the mainstream. Python because it is one of the most popular languages which have duck typing. Finally I mention Objective-C for two important reasons. The first is that Objective-C is a compiled language with duck typing while the majority of languages with duck typing are interpreted or run on a virtual machine. The second reason is that Objective-C is the only language I know which has typed duck typing. I believe this latter feature to be a great concept introduced by Objective-C.
Typed duck typing provides the flexibility of duck typing with the basic error checking capabilities of weak strong typing. Specifically every object has a type and this type is statically checked against the expected types passed into functions and methods. Additionally the methods provided by a type are also checked, to make sure you don't ask a List to do the tango. All this combined with a simple way to tell the compiler that you know what you are doing strikes a great balance between power and protection.
Below I've listed most of the reasons I prefer duck typing and especially prefer typed duck typing:
You often write less code because you can avoid writing adaptor classes in many instances.
Anytime you would otherwise have to use code generation(templates) simply to handle operating on different types duck typing allows the same compiled machine code to handle an infinite variety of types; the only requirements are that the objects respond to the correct methods. Thus you avoid code bloat and multiple code paths for data structures. No longer do you need different template instantiations for bignum-object and string-object dictionaries. In fact it is possible avoid having two dictionary objects all together and instead having one instance which supports the two different key types, even if the two types share no common superclass or formal interface.
You don't even have to implement a method directly. Duck typing allows a method of last resort which receives the object equivalent of the call just made on the object to be handled algorithmically. This allows many things, two examples of which are fully transparent RPC calls on distributed objects and powerful ORMs with no code generation or manual code writing. Both of these are examples of the power of proxy objects.
With typed duck typing we do not give up the aid the compiler provides in checking that we make no trivial mistakes such as using the wrong variable or pass in arguments of the incorrect type. That is, we do not give up the aid, but can trivially tell the compiler to trust the programmer.
Formal mathematics has been proven to be inconsistent so why should we believe that the typing within our programs will be consistent? It is obvious that fully statically typed languages prevent a set of correct programs from being written. I find being prevented from writing those programs to be aggravating. There is usually a different, acceptable way of accomplishing the same goal, but they are most often significantly more work on the part of the programmer.
Programmer will move heaven and earth, while swearing, to do what they want, even if what they want is wrong. It's better to make accomplishing the goal easy such that they may learn of and correct their mistake as quickly as possible.
It is for these reasons that I not only find duck typed languages more pleasant to work in, but also more productive. Interested parties will likely find it enlightening to sample what NeXT was doing in the early and mid nineties and compare that with the capabilities of other companies of the time. NeXT made extensive use of Objective-C before in many ways becoming Apple.
Frequently when designing something the designer comes across shortcuts. Little corners which can be cut to save significant effort on their part with seemingly reasonable restrictions passed onto the user. More often than not the designer takes these shortcuts. As a user I beg you to resist the temptation and put the effort in. You may not think that the user will notice, but they will. Any inconsistency or obviously unnecessary work on the users' part will be noticed, time and time again. Do I have to hit refresh instead of changes in one part of the program automatically being noticed in another? Must I trawl through all the settings before your application is usable? Any action which can be made simpler with no loss of generality must be done so.
It doesn't matter who the user is. Programming language designers should not bow to compiler writers, but instead only to the programmers. Application designers should not bow to the programmers but instead only to the users.
The recent drive to minimalism in software and hardware is not done because it is easier. It is done because it is difficult but valuable. With a minimal set of features it becomes possible to carefully consider the implementations of features and eliminate or reduce pain points. People don't like having to deal with issues not directly related to the task they wish to perform. Don't make them.
I dislike shopping online for two major reasons. The first is that my credit card number will get stolen and it's annoying to deal with, even if it ends up not costing me any money. The second is that I strongly prefer to examine what I buy before I pay for it. I examine it for manufacturing defects.
Before the factory everything was handmade and each piece was more or less unique. In this situation it obviously makes sense to investigate everything before you buy it to check for flaws. Later came factories and uniform products. Though this is still before my time I am led to assume that there was a time when you didn't have to check these products carefully because they were all mostly the same and each one had some expert attention to detail. Expert examination should weed out most of the minor problems which must result. Minor manufacturing defects, when fixed early, will cause no further trouble. However minor problems will eventually become major problems if ignored. One further distinction is that things used to be overbuilt and so could handle some defects without issue.
In the modern manufacturing world little of this still holds true. Products are not overbuilt, but instead use the minimum necessary materials of the minimum necessary strength in order to reduce cost. Further the pace of manufacturing has gone up. Where before every piece would receive some fine finishing work at the hands of a human, now humans barely touch the products at all.
This results in manufacturing defects. Not necessarily the kind that will cause the item to fail spectacularly, but of the nagging variety which makes the action slightly less smooth, or makes boot have a rubbing stop, or just generally reduces the lifespan of the item.
I have heard that in the Soviet Union no consumer appliances arrived in working order. Instead the family handyman would have to spend hours finishing the appliance until it worked. From then on the appliance would supposedly run forever. I sometimes wonder if we are slowly approaching this state of affairs, one small item at a time.
Cheaper at all costs is nickel and dimeing us.
Recently I read Stack Computers: The New Wave and have spent a short time pondering what is contained therein. A quick summary of the technology of stack machines is that you have a CPU which doesn't have any programmer visible general purpose registers. Instead the programmer generally access to two stacks, a data stack and a return stack. All the arithmetic operations occur using data from the data stack and subroutine return addresses go onto the return stack. It is sometimes also possible to push arbitrary data onto the return stack to avoid accessing memory when something complicated needs to be done to the data stack. One example would be duplicating an entry arbitrarily deep in the data stack.
Stack machine architectures have a couple of interesting properties owing to the fact that the operands are always known in advance. The first is that you can direct the ALU to perform every possible operation before you have decoded the instruction and then simply pick the correct output. Also, since the top number of entries in the stacks are known in advance you can make use of blazingly fast register memory to avoid having to go out to memory. Also, since there is almost no state to save serving interrupts cost about as much as subroutine calls and subroutine calls cost on the order of one memory access. Finally, since most or all operations work on the top of the data stack the number of instructions is reduced, allowing smaller opcodes.
This latter is important because the linked book implies that stack machines are predominately limited by how fast instructions may be read from main memory. An additional interesting point made by the book is that stack machines may have less latency because you can't really effectively pipeline it deeply due to the constant data dependencies.
Obviously stack machines haven't taken over the world. I believe that the major reason for this is C. Though it is possible to compile C to operate on a stack machine, C makes some assumptions about how the stacks are laid out and how memory is accessed which requires that more work be done. Specifically C, or at least C code, assumes a single stack which contains locals and return addresses. Further, it is assumed that the locals may be access not only in any order, but that they exist in memory. As with register machines it is possible, in some cases, to have the optimizer figure out that the local is not accessed and need not exist in memory, but it is complicated.
Stack machines exist, more or less, solely to run FORTH, a stack based programming language. Unfortunately my limited understanding of FORTH and stack computing in general leads me to believe that getting good performance and code reuse, an aspect FORTH is famous for, requires a consistency of design throughout the system. Such a consistency almost requires starting from scratch and working in only tiny teams. Considering the FORTH style I believe that it would be trivial to produce an effective static object system and further that such a system would be, due to the extremely cheap subroutine call costs, well suited to the runtime optimized functions as used in Synthesis.
Stack machine friendly OO languages are perhaps an intriguing concept. Though it is easy to implement a dynamic OO on stack machines I am left wondering how well a dynamic OO with optional method parameters could perform.
Last week Courteney bought Metroid: Other M and started playing through it. I've been watching her play it, sometimes playing from the backseat. Since I've watched the majority of the game I'm going to write a review of it in point. Without further ado here are the important points:
The graphics are quite good, sidling right up to the uncanny valley without beginning to decline. I would declare it to have the perfect amount of detail for standard definition televisions.
Samus is much more action oriented. The first person view is no longer the primary action view. Instead you spend most of the game viewing in third person. This allows various high-energy moves to be scripted, such as lunging finishing moves and action-roll dodges.
There's a plot! Whether this is good or bad depends on if you like knowing what is going on in the game or whether you just like exploring and killing anything that moves.
The Zero Suit Samus model is too busty and thin for the character. The model looks like an underfed lingerie model and does not have the athletic body her profession would imply.
*Spoiler* Nagubal, gur oynpx punenpgre qbrf abg npghnyyl qvr. Guvf vf tbbq orpnhfr ur'f gur zbfg yvxrnoyr fhccbeg punenpgre.
Overall I would rate this game as "Would watch played again". Given that the controls have been simplified I may even consider playing the game myself sometime.
Just recently I have just finished reading The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil. The basic premise of the book is that information processing capability has been increasing exponentially since the beginning of life on Earth. Furthermore, this exponentially increasing rate of processing is going to increase, if not forever, for at least another two hundred years. By that point the human society, certainly not flesh and blood humans, will be masters of all matter reachable at half the speed of light.
Specifically, Ray Kurzweil posits that this will occur because of the Law of Accelerating Returns. The premise behind this law is that as progress marches on an ever greater proportion of every industry will be equivalent to information processing and thus able to take advantage of the exponential increases in capability.
Ever increasing mastery of genetics, nanotechnology, brain mapping and simulation, and Artificial Intelligence are noted as the keys to not only continuing the exponential path of information processing, but also to solving all the problems of humankind. Of these problems are specifically mentioned disease, poverty and death. The vast majority of the book is spent showing examples of how various important industries have historically taken advantage of the increases in information processing capabilities to progress further and then showing more examples of how technologies which are extremely primitive at the time of publishing, 2005, and are only ten or twenty years from production will ensure the continued exponential increase in information processing capabilities. A small portion of the book is devoted to debating, rather weakly in my opinion, about how it is a moral imperative to maximally develop these major technologies despite the serious innate risks.
The two primary arguments for the continued exponential increase in information processing capacity are a history of exponential increases and strong AI. The first argument is that because for all of history, recorded or otherwise, the information processing capability has been increasing exponentially it is reasonable to expect it to continue otherwise until some limit is hit suddenly. The strong AI argument predicts that before we hit the limit of human understanding we will have AI strong enough to design even smarter AI and computing machines, leading to continued exponential increases in processing capability per gram up to the theoretical limits of physics.
The historical data provided is convincing of the increasing power of hardware in terms of raw MIPS, however I believe that there is a flaw in the argument of Ray Kurzweil in that it is not raw MIPS which determines capability, but effective MIPS. Effective MIPS is the measurement of usable MIPS available after various efficiency losses are taken into account. These losses are significant and include computer architecture losses such as cache misses, communication losses such as synchronization, complexity management losses such as abstraction and innate problem limitations such as necessary serialization. Though the raw MIPS of hardware has been increasing exponentially the effect of these limitations have also been increasing exponentially. While I do not have any hard data on hand I would still agree that there is a net increase in the capability of hardware, but if this increase is exponential then at the very least the exponent is closer to a linear function than doubling every eighteen months as predicted by Moore's Law.
Though a decrease in the exponent does not entirely invalidate the argument it does drastically change the time scales involved according to the Law of Accelerating Returns. There is some evidence that the effective processing capability is not increasing as fast as Ray Kurzweil believed provided by the five years of hindsight since the book was published. Specifically the predictions of the available processing power for 2010 are off, already, by a factor of two or three.
The second argument, that we will have strong AI before we reach some limit is sound in the theoretical world. The limit which Ray Kurzweil eludes to is that of human creativity, that is that we will create strong AI before humans are unable to contain enough of the design of the necessary systems in our head to make forward progress. Whether the human mind is sufficiently capable to create strong AI before reaching our assisted limits or not is unclear. However, there are other limits which are not discussed in any depth which threaten much more than humans just not being smart enough. In chemistry there is the concept of an activation energy level. For many types of reactions if you plotted the energy of the reaction, positive for energy put in, negative for energy put out, you will see a bump just before the reaction starts to output energy. Unless sufficient energy is put in to crest the hill the desired reaction will not occur. There is a similar requirement with the development of any technology. Certainly a nuclear power station can generate trillions of Watt-hours of energy throughout its lifetime, but if you do not have the energy to build the plant in the first place you can never tap that energy, even if you already have all the necessary knowledge.
Similarly it is with information processing capability. Though we can create systems of ever greater processing capability, they will require ever greater energy to perform. In the book it is argued based on the theoretical minimums that this will not be a problem, but to achieve these minimum energy levels we require a minimum level of processing capability which we do not currently meet. Thus ever more energy will be required until we have reached the activation energy to enable low energy computing. It is much in doubt whether human industry will choose to support this level of energy in competition with the other demands on the finite energy generation capability. There is further the considerable possibility that the cheap energy provided by oil will run out before the processing capacity necessary for efficient computing is reached. Oil currently accounts for 37% of the world's energy production. The loss of this proportion of the energy supply will greatly exacerbate the competition information processing research faces and it seems likely that maintaining the current industries will take precedence over new research.
With the threat of insufficient energy supplies in the near future ultra-efficient computing may not come to fruition at all. Pushing back the timeline for sufficient processing capability due to a reduced effective rate of increase makes it more likely that the energy will run out before strong AI becomes a possibility.
Now that I have expressed my concerns relating to why I believe that the singularity may not come about at all it is important to express my reasoning behind why it should be avoided. My arguments are essentially that on the path to the Singularity lies the inevitable extinction of the human race. I will demonstrate this by referring to the destructive power of the major technologies Ray Kurzweil believes are necessary to power humanity to the Singularity. In the book Ray Kurzweil covers each of these threats and concludes that they are insufficient reasons to stop progress through two lines of reasoning.
The first line of reasoning is that these technologies hold the ability to reduce human suffering and it is thus morally required that these technologies be developed to reduce human suffering. This argument misses the point that there already exists the technology and capability to drastically reduce the aggregate human suffering in the world and that if the funds used to power technological progress were instead directed to making existing technologies cheaper, more reliable and in distributing these tools to those in need the majority of the human suffering in the world could be solved forever. It merely requires sacrifice. Though it is not obvious, I also believe that this argument, when used in the context of a specific technology, may lead to ignoring the unintended side effects of the new technology and thus cause further suffering. One major example of this is manufacturing automation. While the advantages of automated manufacturing are deemed quite valuable, cheaper goods, the reduction in the number of unskilled jobs and the resulting unemployment (It is not always possible or economical to retrain for the limited number of more skilled positions which are soon to be automated) are often ignored.
The second line of reasoning, that as long as we are sufficiently security conscious these technologies contain the necessary defencive tools, is based on two themes of invalid reasoning. The first is that we are currently dealing quite satisfactorily with the artificially created threats of computer viruses and their familiars. As counter evidence I present the Internet. Even with the best security software a person can buy a careless user will quickly have their computer infected with several virii and trojans and spam bots. Currently the only real payoff for the creators of this malicious software is money or personal information. A radical madman cannot effectively gain control of a significant number of critical military systems to be able to launch missiles. However a single crackes can easily amass a botnet of millions of nodes on the public Internet for the purposes of DDOSing or spamming. If we are unable to protect ourselves against quite limited malicious software should we attempt to allow malicious 'software' to take the much more potent form of a custom virus or nanobot swarms? With a greater effect on the real world the ideological payoffs increase greatly. Why limit yourself to getting the message out when you can devote a couple of years of your life to wipe out the heathens yourself?
The second invalid theme Ray Kurzweil invokes is quite surprising for a book which is all about the exponentially increasing power of technology. It is simply this, he makes the assumption that the new threats of custom virii and malicious nanobot swarms will always be of the same magnitude of existing diseases and threats. That is, that things which can wipe a nation off the map instantly are going to be restricted to large governments, as are nuclear weapons due to the cost of their creation, and that small threats will act pretty much as diseases do now and take sufficient time to spread that they can be detected and fought. Both these assumptions do not hold when it comes to powerful custom virii and malicious nanobot swarms.
The most critical flaw is in assuming that these tools do not provide the power to instantly destroy an entire population. The human immune system has evolved over millions of years to handle threats of the sort that exist in nature. The threats which exist in nature, on the other hand, have evolved to spread using the tools at their disposal. This means that diseases which kill too quickly are limited in their spread by the size of the village. Disease which don't spread or kill quickly enough give humans sufficient time to either defend themselves directly, or evolve at least a partial defence. Now imagine a custom virus which works like HIV, that is lays in wait for years before attacking and destroying the immune system, but instead of stopping at the immune system proceeds to destroy any tissue it has infected. Now imagine that it is transmitted like the common cold. Such a virus could kill the vast majority of the human race in a decade.
Consider further the nanobot case. Since the human immune system has never seen a nanobot it is likely ineffectual in defending against a nanobot infection. Let us further assume the best case of Ray Kurzweil's future by assuming that we have a nanobot immune system covering the Earth to prevent a grey goo scenario which is ten times more effective against novel nanobots than the human immune system is against novel viruses. Under such an assumption it is safe to further assume that at least sometimes such an immune system will fail. This is likely because the determined madman can just isolate a sample of the immune system and test thousands of nanobot/virus variants against this sample to determine a set which either strain the system's limits or sneak by entirely. If it only takes one nanobot swarm to convert a nation into goo or one virus to destroy a population then any failure is not an option.
It is further not a valid assumption that these destructive technologies will be restricted to large governments. The entire point of the singularity argument is that as progress moves on more and more of the processes of creation will be information processing based and the tools for that will become ever cheaper and wide spread. You may not be able to procure the necessary technology from your corner store, but you could certainly steal it from a University laboratory.
I believe it is clear that, given the range of mental reactions and states of all the people in the world, it is unavoidable that there will be numerous disasters resulting from maliciously designed viruses, bacteria (fast plastic eating bacteria anybody?) and nanobot swarm which will kill millions on a regular basis. Further I believe that the ideological bias which Kurzweil places in his book, that Neo Luddite beliefs are indefensible, is not near as clear cut as his flippant responses to valid concerns may have you believe.
Overall Ray Kurzweil in The Singularity is Near does a good job of playing the starry-eyed futurist, but fails to convince not only that the Singularity is likely to happen, but even that it is desirable to cause it to happen.
That isn't quite right. It isn't like looking at art floods me with strange emotions of bygone era. In my experience I do not get new emotions from art. Instead art brings out the emotions from memories I already have. When I see a happy campfire scene I am not suddenly filled with happiness from some random source, I am full of the happiness I've felt during all the campfires I've sat around with friends. I would say more accurately that art triggers emotions which are already in you because you have already experienced them.
This seems better and more accurate. But if art is merely the spark of emotion, then obviously there must be something already within the viewer to set aflame.
Some might argue that everybody may equally experience art since the emotion is always there, ready to be tapped. For is not every person able to experience the same range of emotions? While I must agree that every person is capable of experiencing the same range of emotions and must further agree that the emotions exist as part of the normal development, I disagree that everybody is equally able of experiencing art. It is not the emotion, but the connection between the emotion and the art stimulus which is critical to experiencing the full emotional power of art.
If we assume that these connections are important, then the world of art becomes clear. It becomes easy to understand why the great works of art fail to impress the general public. The general public no longer has the cultural connections to the art which existed when they were new. People no longer walk on the beach with suits and parasols. And yet the art buffs and critics have put forward the effort to understand the cultural connections so that they may experience the art.
It also becomes easy to see why older people enjoy and collect more art. The older you get the more life experience you earn, the more emotional connections you create. It is foolish to expect children to fully understand and experience the emotions implicit in a young boy and young girl holding hands and walking down a dirt road. And yet to seniors such a scene holds many powerful memories and emotions of first love and youth.
Finally, it becomes obvious why people create art. Art holds the power to bring to the forefront the emotions of a whole series of memories all at once. This creates a powerful and complex emotional mix. As we forget the negative memories the positive emotions stand out stronger.
The important message to understand with art is that even if the art doesn't change, it gets better with age and exposure. It is also important to not expect the young or inexperienced to truly appreciate art. To appreciate art requires life experience.
Imagine yourself outside on a sunny day in the shade of a tree. You go to open the book you've brought along to read on this brilliant summer day. Perhaps you are reading a novel, perhaps you are studying a mathematical text; whatever you are reading, your are reading for pleasure. Make sure you have this image firmly in your mind before you move onto the next paragraph.
Take your mental image and look at the book you are reading. Is that book some heavy fifteen hundred page monstrosity or is it a nice light pocket book? Is it some middle ground? Unless you are a glutton for punishment I would expect that you are not choosing to read the immense book under the tree and that you are doing this for more than just weight reasons.
In the not too distant past books where, in general, shorter. This doesn't mean that they contained less, just that they were concise. This is in part because before the advent of mass production of books printing large books was expensive and before the advent of computers writing large volumes of text was difficult. Who wants to handwrite the equivalent of fifteen hundred typed pages several times over while producing the manuscript? Now these limitations on book size haven't been an issue for several decades, but as with everything with a cultural component there was a lag before large books were accepted.
Unfortunately large books are not only accepted where they are necessary, but the size of a book has become synonymous with the quality of that book. This is an unfortunate aspect of the bigger is better phenomenon. There is the additional aspect of laziness on the part of readers these days. It is generally expected that comprehending a passage should take only minimal mental effort and study. In the past this was not the and you are probably aware of the image of learned men pouring over small volumes for weeks at a time.
Through my education I've come to realize two important things about reading books. The first is that any idea can be explained in any number of words or symbols, from incredibly dense mathematical notations to long wordy chapters. Orthogonal to the number of words used to describe the concept is the mental effort and time required to understand the concept. Given identical amounts of context a concept requires an identical mental effort to understand irrespective of the density of the explanation. This is not to say that the number of words does not matter. Too few and much time is wasted deciphering. Too many and much time is wasted condensing.
The second thing I have learnt about books is that being concise and useful requires focus and skill on the part of the writer and patience on the part of the reader. A writer must resist the temptation to repeat themselves and the reader must understand this and have the discipline to start at the beginning.
It is truly the concise books which add the most value to our lives. The long fantasy epic may provide many hours of frantic reading, but the pocket novel provides a pleasant, relaxing read. Even more so the short story provides thoughtful entertainment in time to wait for the bus. The difference is even greater when it comes to scholastic texts. The immense tomes of science and mathematics are often more confusing and less suitable for in depth study then the slim, focused texts.
The more I look at the world the more I believe that less is the answer, not more.
Have you ever been in the situation that where you are either required or simply desire to write something, but just can't find anything to write about? If so, you've had one form of Writer's Block. It is really quite annoying, especially if you are trying to keep a consistent blogging pace (Though judging from the number of comments nobody can actually bring themselves to read what I write).
Well, this is where I find myself. I have no trouble finding words to write with, but the topic has been eluding me for a little over a week now. It's also not that I don't have anything to write about. I have a couple of topics which I will write about sooner than later, they just aren't done percolating yet.
So what to do then? Give up on writing to the world semi-regularly? Write about the inane things that happen in my life, such as the fact that I've recently seen a store in a mall which sells nothing but toilets. Or do I head into obscure topics which fall flat even with my geekiest friends? I'm really not sure and that's why you get a small, boring post on how I am unable to write anything interesting.
There are many forms of environmentalism which differ mostly on what they wish to save. You can save the forests, but you'll have to give up the oceans and rivers to fertilizer. You can save the fish, but will have to sacrifice immense areas of land to become garbage dumps. There really is no single solution.
I would like to promote the idea of buy once environmentalism. The theory is simple: buy an item as few times as possible. Do not buy a new computer every year, do not buy something you are already planning no throwing away. Instead buy durable and repairable goods.
The industrial production system requires large amounts of energy, materials and produces large amounts of waste and pollution for every object which is manufactured. The difference in environmental costs between a single well made item and a cheaply made alternative is not large. However, the well made car, fridge, computer, can opener will outlast several of the cheap equivalents. This is obviously a net win for the environment.
There is an old saying which is relevant: A rich man buys a pair of boots for $100 dollars and has dry, warm feet for a decade. A poor man buys a pair of boots for $50 and has wet, cold feet for six months.
Buy once environmentalism is not only environmentally sound, it is also cheaper. So buy once.
Identity used to be a simple concept. You were identified by who you were and where you lived, but since nearly everybody you knew lived with you that was inconsequential. This was the case when fire was the new thing.
Later on, with the invention of agriculture and specialization, identity became a little bit more complicated. In addition to who you are where you live and your profession became important. In fact the profession became so important that it became part of a person's name. No longer was John sufficient, instead it was John Smith of the village of Foo.
Though this is more complicated than the simplest form of identity, it isn't near as complicated as identity was about to become. As villages became towns and towns became cities the law increased in complexity and the concept of identity followed suit. At some point identity split into two component: legal identity and natural identity. Natural identity remained, for a time, at one's name and profession and source town. Legal identity also started out in this way, but quickly added proof of identification, such as a signature or wax seal.
From here identity only got more complicated. Natural identity expanded to include all the goods and services and distinctions which expanding wealth allowed. These components had always been there but, as with location in the beginning, so few people travelled far enough for the distinctions to become obvious. Natural identity has expanded until it has reached the current state where who you are to real people is a composite of what you look like, which music you listen to, what you drive, where you live, what you wear, your profession, your personality, your interests and those sorts of things.
Unfortunately the growth of legal identity is not so simple or clear cut. As time and technology and the complexity of the legal system increased the simple legal identity of a name and a signature became insufficient. Fraud became too prevalent and coordination between groups became necessary to the industrial legal system. It used to be that you would only deal with businesses within your local community. As long as you did this then your legal identity could be simple because it was closely tied to your natural identity. However, the industrialization of the legal system required a strict separation of these two forms of identity.
Consequently legal identity became the enormous, contradictory monstrosity it is today. A complex and fragile system of numbers and accounts spread across hundreds of organizations now defines a legal entity. This system groans under its own weight and complexity. It both stifles freedom by being inflexible and grants freedom through easy theft. The fragility of this system is the reason identity fraud is so simple and easy. There are too many numbers needed on part of the time to create new numbers tied to this amorphous legal identity but controlled by criminals.
There is hope however. We have today the tools necessary to reconstruct the legal identity system in a way which is simpler, more robust, more flexible and more secure. There are only three obstacles which stand in the way of public key cryptology from reforming legal identity. These are inertia, the legal system and the police state.
The latter is reason enough to prevent such a reform. Conveniently the former two are obstacles of sufficient strength as to likely be insurmountable. Sometimes imperfection is the correct solution.
In the beginning there was the fire. People sat around the fire to cook and chat. Times were good. Some time later alcohol was discovered and alcoholic drinks devised. Some time later cam the public house. From this point on all forums of discussion have gone downhill.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that more modern discussion forums don't have their advantages. It is undeniable that email allows discussion with more people than the pub and that instant messaging allows discussion when people are otherwise supposed to be working. However all the more modern forums lack at least one thing that the pub provides.
It may be useful to split this discussion into two parts: realtime and non-realtime. This distinction is important because it divides the people who may discuss into those who have little better to do or are discussing alongside some other task and those who are giving their full attention to the discussion. Of course this is a generalization, but a useful one. Also note that we will only be covering methods of holding a discussion, not conversations. Discussions are between more than two people.
The realtime discussion methods include: party telephone lines, IRC, party-line IM, radio. These can basically be divided into text only and voice only. Text only realtime discussions often have the problem that since people type much slower than they speak. It has also become the norm to supply text conversations as whole lines or sentences instead of letting recipients read as the sender types. This is done to make it less painful to read so you don't have to watch every typo being made. Old talk systems used to work this way though. Voice communications don't have this packet problem, but it does make it difficult to split the discussion off into subdiscussions become there is often only a single channel. Realtime voice communication has the additional benefits over realtime text communication of inflection. I'm sure everybody has experienced that offhand remark which was intended to be sarcastic and was taken as a personal attack.
Non-realtime systems have a bit more variety. One thing you don't see much of is non-realtime non-text communication. I believe that this is mostly because it is a pain to do and doesn't provide sufficient gain. It may also not occur simply because people haven't thought of it yet (Maybe it is time for the Web 2.0 Video forum?). This leaves mostly text based methods. Of these the most common are: usenet, email, web forums, BBS's, blogs, social networking sites and article comments. Now some of these have mostly fallen out of fashion in the past decade, such as usenet and BBS's, but they are all still in active use. Mostly these systems are divided into two major categories: messages come to you and you go to the message. Many of the former are the older systems, usenet and email for example. These are differentiated in that each user uses some software to connect to a server which contains all the messages waiting for them to read. These messages themselves originate on many systems from many people. The latter type of systems, where you go to the messages, are mostly the newer style systems. These include web forums, blogs, social networking sites and comments.
The major advantage of the systems where the messages come to you is that it takes less time to collect the messages and there is more flexibility in viewing them. If I can't stand reading a flatly threaded discussion with dozens of participants then I can use a threading client. However there are also those who can't stand threading. Using our own software gives us both the ability to view messages as we desire. It is difficult to explain the rise of the other form of mechanisms, where you need to go to the messages, except in the context of the increasing view that the entirety of the Internet is nothing more than the Web.
Now how do these modern methods compare? Well the current voice methods are expensive and time consuming, though broadcast only forms are starting to gain prominence. Specifically amateur podcasts and video blogs can be quite successful when they keep a tight focus. Blogs and comments tend to go together, but it may be argued that this is more the foil and the discussion. The major problem with comments is that they are too dispersed and activity in them dies out quickly. Social networking sites are a bit better in this regard, but they are not conducive to indepth discussions mostly due to cumbersome interfaces and in some cases length limits.
In many ways I find it difficult to top the capability of the old timers of the Internet: usenet, email and IRC. They have really covered the bases as far as I can see. IRC handles most of the realtime discussion needs. IM tries to be as effective in discussions, but tend to end up muddled and difficult to coordinate. Though it has fallen from the public eye I truly believe that no forum of discussion with random strangers has topped usenet. There are places to talk about any topic on usenet and the capabilities of modern readers far exceeds those of any web forum. There is also the fact that the discussions can be global in nature. Sometimes it's nice to discuss only with your friends, but you'll often hit limits as you discover that your friends either all agree on a topic or just don't care about some topic.
Finally we have email. People complain about email all the time. They don't like the SPAM, it isn't fast enough, it isn't pretty enough, etc. Yet for all this there has been no true competitor which has gained traction. There are no systems which are able to handle the volume while still providing quite good reliability (sure the message isn't guarranteed to arrive, but 99% of the time it does and email handled server outages pretty well). No other system does this while also allowing large and varying lists of reciptients and allow true offline capability with attachment. In fact, perhaps the greatest complaints about email come about because of terrible email readers (Webmail and Outlook are not good tools by any means) and the lack of authentication.
Authentication of email is an interesting problem. On the one hand a large part of the robustness and flexibility of email comes from its store-and-forward nature and yet a large part of its utility is the ability to send from nearly any server and email claiming to be from nearly any domain. That is, it is not only possible, but common for a business to handle moderate volumes of email without them hosting and maintaining their own mailserver. Furthermore, what mailserver they use is often inaccessible (for sending outgoing email) from their workstation. Instead they go through the office ISP's mailserver to send their mail. A system which didn't work this way could certainly be made to work, but at an increased cost and complexity.
One consequence of this is that there is no association of an email address and the sending computer. This results in a sizeable chunk of the SPAM. It is important to note that SPAM happens even when there is little doubt that the actual sender of the message is the authenticated owner of the account. Now there are solutions to this problem, but not many people use them. The best solution which I am aware of is PGP/GPG. These allow messages to be signed to have some guarantee that they have been sent by who claims to have sent them.
I believe that the only reason these have not really taken of is two fold. First the need is not so acute in most situations that it is worth any effort to rectify. This is becoming less the case as more and more is being done online, but is a reason nonetheless. The second reason, in my opinion, is that the proponents of these systems have been too zealous in achieving perfection right off the bat. Any tutorial you read will give you complicated rules of thumb with scary warnings in an attempt to have you construct a perfect and watertight web of trust such that this web of trust can be used to conduct the most confidential and important of business communications. This is really the wrong tactic to take. Instead they should simply promote the most basic use as a toehold. Instead of admonishing users to use a strong pass phrase and protect their private keys like they were priceless jewels they should recommend that, unless you have a need for further security, they use no passphrase and make sure that every computer account they send email from has a copy. These programs could help this along while still maintaining security if they tagged such private keys which have no passphrase in some special way. That way those who desire security will know not to put any trust in those unprotected keys.
In fact, if the big webmail providers automatically created a key and automatically signed every message it would increase the security of email in general by more than all the promotion of encryption software to date. Would this provide perfect security? Of course not, but some security is much better than no security.
Now back to discussions. There exist realtime discussions on IRC, though those have issues with long, in depth discussions because people are usually not focused solely on the discussion as they would in the pub. There exist email mailing lists, but they don't have the level of privacy that a pub provides. There also exist a small number of optionally encrypted mailing lists. There are perhaps the best fit for good discussions when you are unable to take it to the pub. Sure secure email doesn't have beer and doesn't have emotion, but it does have the participants focus.
Thus, in my search for valuable conversation I have created a mailing list. This list is a private mailing list, but notify me if you want to be added. This mailing list also supports encryption. This means that anything may be discussed there, safe from prying eyes. Hopefully is gets comes valuable discussion on any interesting topics.
Imagine, if you will, that you are in a world where the performance of a single processing core is no longer increasing. Instead every device has an ever increasing number of processing cores, each of limited capability. As I'm sure most of you realize we have nearly reached this point. Those of you who have been paying attention will also realize that the current common systems for allowing concurrent computing have limitations. Functional programming just never caught on, threads are difficult to get correct, pipelining can only soak up so much processing power and the other systems are more specialized with the consequent limitations. Research is being done into programming models which are not functional and not serial, but there is no convincing evidence yet that they will remove serial languages from the seat of domination.
So what can be done if we wish to stay within the confines of serial progamming languages. Obviously we cannot stay strictly within the serial paradigm. What we need is something which operates concurrently, but looks as if it is being done serially. Along this lines I believe that the most promising avenue are promises. Promises are basically delayed subroutine execution. When these subroutines are first called they return a token which is used to access the result of the computation. If the result is ready when it is accessed then processing continues as if it were always available. However, if the result is not ready then execution waits until the result is completed. During all this time the computation has been queued for execution and, ideally, completed.
Promises have an interesting interaction with the popular language feature: exceptions. Exceptions, as many of you are aware, are non-linear program execution constructs. Specifically an series of statements are checked for exceptions being raised. If an exception is raised then execution leaves the normal flow and enters an exception handler. Now this works, in modern languages, because there is the assumption that code executes serially. One necessarily makes the assumption that once all the checked code has been executed that no more exceptions may arise as a direct result of that code. It is possible that the results of that code was incorrect in some way and later code will react badly, but that is an indirect result.
Promises break this state of affairs, because the execution of all the statements is not guaranteed to occur before the primary flow of control has left the checked section of code. There are five differing methods of dealing with this.
Pretend that the exception occurred when the primary thread was within the checked block. In this case you call the exception handler for the checked code section. The primary problem with this method is handling execution which has occurred after the checked section. The ideal case would be to enclose all computation within a transaction and roll back that computation. I haven't yet thought too much about those systems, but I have the feeling that these systems are necessarily equivalent to functional programming along with all the associated problems.
Don't pretend that the exception occurred anywhere in particular. Instead raise the exception within any checked section which is in the primary thread whenever the promise happens to raise it. This has the obvious problems of being entirely useless because an exception may be raised at any time. There can be no assumptions made about the flow of execution. Only the top level exception handler of a thread would be generally useful.
Pretend that the exception occurred at the point when the result of the promise was accessed. This loses much of the advantage of exceptions. Instead of having logically removed yet geographically associated handling of exceptional situations the programmer is required to handle exceptions when they are accessed. This really breaks the geographic association of error handling code with the highest useful level of processing which caused it. This variant of promise exception handling does have the advantage of making it obvious to the programmer what processing has been done and needs to be undone. The biggest problem with this is spreading the error handling code over a large volume of code, likely requiring multiple handlers be written for each user of the result.
I suppose it may be possible to attach an exception handler to each promise, but then this is conceptually identical to the first option.
Not have exceptions. This is perhaps the most radical option, mostly because exceptions have been seen as the greatest advancement of serial languages in the nineties. Now in some ways the end result of this choice is similar to the previous option. The error is communicated to the primary thread at the point the promise is accessed. The primary difference is that the error does not automatically bubble up the stack if there is no handler. Instead all errors must be handled as soon as the first access. This enforces more disciplined error checking (See how well that worked in C?), but does make handling error which must be passed up more cumbersome.
The final way to handle exceptions is to not pass them to the primary thread at all. Instead there can be a, per promise, option on whether to retry the promise, cancel the primary thread or communicate with some error handling thread as to how to resolve the failure. This error handling thread could either provide a valid result to be used, cause the promise to retry, terminate the thread or maybe something more complicated such as rolling back a stack limited transaction. This latter option assumes that there exists some section of processing which is easily functional in nature and allows easy rollback.
The question is what should be done in a language where any call which is expected to take more than a microsecond is automatically promoted to a promise. Such a language may be able to take advantage of implicit, short term concurrency in code. Concurrency which is otherwise too expensive to exploit by more traditional means. However the exception problem must be resolved. Almost certainly the first two options are unacceptable. The first option results in the exception handlers being called in entirely unknown situations. Any amount of processing may have occurred before the result of the particular promise is accessed. The second option has a similar problem and the additional problem that exceptions become unusable to check and handle recoverable errors. This second option makes it impossible to use exceptions as flow control, which is convenient in certain situations.
Which of the three remaining promise safe exception models is the most useful, with the fewest gotchas? I'm not sure, but at the moment I am leaning in the direction of not having exceptions for recoverable errors, but instead having exceptions handled in a thread top-level exception handler for serious errors only. Errors such as IO failures, memory exhaustion or the like. I believe that such a compromise will allow exceptions for what they are best at, handling truly exceptional situations, while providing the least number of surprises in dealing with promises.
Thoughts?
This past weekend I read Accelerando by Charles Stross. The central theme of the book seems to be a story of human life in the time surrounding technical singularity. It also covers other topics which include: autonomous corporations, intelligence augmentation, capitalism in a post-scarcity world and immortality through consciousness upload. I find several of these interesting and may discuss them at length later. In the interest of expanding my reader base to those who don't believe in reading more than two paragraphs I'm going to comment only on the first couple of pages.
I highly recommend reading the first couple of pages and considering if you are enough of an information junkie to enjoy living like that. For those who aren't enough of an information junkie to have read that, basically the protagonist has reality augmentation glasses so he is constantly deluged with information. I couldn't live like that. That life seems so spastic.
Later on, after technology has progressed, the humanoids are branching and merging their consciousness to perform all the tasks the need. This includes, in one case, living several simulated months when meeting a new person. Oh how I have often wished I could do that.
Everybody should be given the opportunity create their own theory of economics. There are the common views of economics, the predominant views of capitalistic economics and several less popular theories which get media time every time there is a crisis which shows the failing of the current leading choice. This is one reason everybody should create their own theory of economics, the current ones aren't perfect. The other reason people should create their own theory is that the popular theories are popular not because they are more correct, but because they enable some to make money off gaming belief in the system itself. Here is my theory.
As I see it there are two sorts of activities one can partake within an economy: producing wealth and conserving wealth. Producing wealth always involves changing physical material from one shape or form to another, but it is important to note that not all manipulation of physical material creates wealth. Conserving wealth, on the other hand, does not necessarily involve physical manipulation. Conserving wealth is simply that, doing something more efficiently so that it requires less wealth.
It is critical never to confuse wealth and money. Money is a medium of transfer of wealth, it is worth something only so far as it can be exchanged for goods or services. Money is also not the only medium of exchange, you can buy thousands of dollars worth of skilled labour with beer, pizza and friendship. Money is also not an effective store of wealth; events within the economy make a fixed sum of money have a varying value over time. The current economic system favours decreasing the value of money as time progresses.
Now there are two sources of wealth: raw resource extraction and human labour. Obviously most activities involve some amount of labour, but in many cases it is quite minimal, such as selling software online. Conserving wealth is simply making some action require less wealth. This is most often saving labour, as in the case of many machines or improved engineering to reduce the amount of material required. The reason reducing labour is more common is because reducing the labour necessary to mine iron makes iron cheaper, which makes steel cheaper, which makes mining equipment cheaper, which makes iron require less labour. Cycles of this form and more complicated occur throughout the economy.
To clarify the distinction between producing wealth and conserving wealth some examples are warranted. What is traditionally considered resource extraction, logging or mining for example, produce wealth. On the other hand, nearly all of the 'white collar' careers produce little to no wealth, but instead conserve wealth. That is, lawyers don't create anything of value, but they reduce the costs of making agreements between parties with disjoint needs. Programmers tend to create little value, but tend to save significantly on the costs of communication and processing and, to a lesser degree, increase efficiency overall. In between these two extremes you have a range of production versus conservation values. Restaurants are a good example. Restaurants take some raw materials and produce a meal. The restaurant itself did not create or procure the raw food so they are not primarily producing wealth. Additionally the restaurant isn't entirely replaceable by making a meal at home because the meal is often better or cheaper or the venue is more relaxing or some combination. Thus a restaurant is a mix of producing wealth, improving the value of the raw food, and conserving wealth, saving the time of the patrons or wasting less food or providing some level of experience which would be difficult to do at home.
As may be evident in the previous example, entertainment is a wealth producing activity. It is a straight conversion of labour into wealth. Note, however, that mass-produced entertainment is primarily conserving. One is always able to spend their labour creating entertainment for themselves, but producing it and then providing it to others saves people from this task.
So now that we know what the two forms of activities are we should discuss how their value is determined. Wealth production is valued based upon supply and demand. This supply and demand is similar to, but distinct from, the common supply and demand mostly in that it does not produce a curve in two dimensions, but instead in three dimensions: supply, demand and value. While the physical constraints are loose, that is there are plenty of easy to access trees, then supply will meet demand at a nearly flat value. However, as supply becomes limited the value increases. While the demand remains high or continues to grow the value will increase. In the case of the two extremes, high demand with high supply or low demand with low supply, the value will remain high. This latter distinction from the more traditional definition occurs because of labour costs in switching professions, handling small orders and the like.
Conservation of wealth also has a value. However that value is limited to the value of real resources, labour or material, that can be saved. If a skilled builder can build a cabin in half the time and using half the wood then that is the upper limit on the value of his specialized labour. This is to draw attention to the distinction between specialized labour and general labour, the labour of the non-specialist. Or even the labour of the specialist in a field other than their speciality. As an example, anybody can paint walls, but that does not make them a painter and it is likely that the professional will do a better job quicker and cheaper in terms of wasted materials.
That is my theory of economics as it stands. It is not a complicated theory, but then again neither are the leading economic schools. What is complicated are the consequences.
So what are the consequences of this philosophy of economics? The first is that labour is expensive. So expensive, in fact, that the majority of the wealth of the world is spent avoiding labour at all costs. One need look no further than automobiles, trains, ships, electric generators, the telephone, computers or any communication mechanism. The bulk of technology has been created to avoid having to pay a person to walk or carry or think. The second is that the only constant profession is farming. Other resources will become limited and be abandoned for new materials, for every labour saving job there is some person trying to save the labour of that job. The world will continuously strive to do more with fewer people while at the same time increasing the number of people. Wages will continually fall in real terms because, although labour is expensive, anybody will sell themselves cheap when starvation is the alternative.
Also, programmers will continue to try program everybody out of a job. I believe that one day they will succeed. When this comes to pass let us hope we have all joined the leisure class.
While by no means the most numerous and certainly not the most physically imposing, the human race is the single most powerful force on Earth. We've done it through the use, and dependence upon, technology. One need only read my previous post, featured right below this one, to see that there are challenges ahead caused by this very technology. The greatest threats are the ones which hold the possibility for a short disruption of the economy.
Now how does this relate to population density? That's easy. The more dense the population the smaller the area of ecological disruption and the fewer resources which are necessary to put toward transportation of goods around the economy. However, as part of this the greater the population density the greater the dependence upon the smooth operation of the economy to ensure that the people living in these areas get the goods they need to survive. Conversely, the lower the population density the greater the proportion of resources which need to be put forth to transportation in exchange for a lesser dependence upon a smooth running economy.
To see this in action consider water. In a high density city water is supplied by a small army of technicians which ensure that it is cleaned, filtered, pumped and delivered. In most rural areas each household has their own well to supply their needs. Now on a per capita basis the city people are less ecologically damaging, but if the economy has a hiccup then the water may very well stop flowing.
Next consider electricity. The vast majority of people have electricity delivered to them by the massive machine that is the economy. However, then the power goes out in the city large areas quickly become inhospitable. All those sealed office towers quickly gain tropical climates without constant air conditioning. The upper floors of skyscrapers become accessible only to the most athletic. Many places become too dark to move around in when the lights go out. Similar things happen in lightly populated areas, but there is also significantly less dependence on those areas. If there are no lights you can move to a window. If it is too hot you can let air in. Nowhere will it be necessary to climb twenty flights of stairs.
Perhaps most importantly is the availability of natural resources to make up for economic shortfalls. In a city there is only a small amount of burnable material on a per capita basis. In the woods there is plenty.
This is all important because there is no perfect solution. Living in higher density areas will reduce the environmental impacts of economic activity, but increases the sensitivity to disruptions caused by ecology and other factors. As such cities help prevent economic disasters, but are much more sensitive to them. Living on a farm makes it easy to support yourself, but, unless you are farming, you will be spending significant amounts of time and fuel commuting.
In the middle we have the suburb. In any civilization ending disasters the suburbs is where you want to end up after the majority of the human population has died off. They are not as good as farmland to support yourself, but will have ample precut firewood (furniture), shelter and other leftover bits of technology (bikes, lights, pots, etc.). Unfortunately suburban living is nearly expensive, in terms of resources per capita, as farmland, but is just as dependent on the economy as the cities.
This is the core of the problem of choosing the correct population density for survivability. Choose high density for prevention at the expense of greater damages. Choose low density for lesser damages at the expense of lesser prevention.
Every age has its various challenges, naysayers and preachers of the coming doom. The present is no different. For those who are not on top of the current list of issues I summarize them below. As in all cases forewarned could lead you to become forearmed.
I present these threats to civilization in order of exacerbation. That is latter items, should they come to pass, are likely to exacerbate the difficulties caused by some of the former items.
Solar Superstorm. The Sun has solar storms which can increase the strength of the solar flares and solar winds. These, in turn, touch the Earth's magnetic volume. Apparently once every couple hundred of years the Sun has a very strong storm which causes extreme activity around the Earth. The effects include the Aurora Borealis being visible in New York city, long distance powerlines being charged with large inductive currents and general dysfunction of the electrical grid and radio spectrum. Watch out for blown transformers and wide spread, long duration power outages.
Emptying of the Seas. Man has fished the seas of the world for his dinner since the beginning of civilization. However in recent decades the demands placed on the oceans have been steadily increasing. This has led to overfishing and the collapse of various fish stocks, such as the Cod. There is little sign of this slowing as the fishing industry continues to move to less desirable species to fill their holds. Watch for seafood becoming an unaffordable treat.
Agricultural breakdown. With the rise in industrial agriculture and the decline of the family farm the tendency of farming has been towards maximizing production per acre at all costs. This has meant pesticides, chemical fertilizer, engineered crops, immense irrigation projects and minimization of fallow land. Industry has optimized agriculture and as with all optimized systems any unexpected change can bring the system down.
Add to the current demand the increasing demand for Western style diets full of variety and animal products in China and India and you have powerful pressure to increase production. This will lead to further optimization and industrial farming on marginal lands. Watch for shortages and increased prices.
Empty Aquifers. Perhaps the single greatest invention in the history of man has been irrigation. Irrigation freed farmer from dependence on rain. It has allowed marginal land to feed the world. Unfortunately much of this water, especially in the plains of the world, comes from underground aquifers. Though these aquifers do replenish over time, they do so at a lesser rate than we are currently emptying them for irrigation. It is expected that in the near future some of the aquifers in the breadbaskets of the world will become empty. Watch for failing crops in the heartland of the USA and reduced production from southern California as two of the first difficulties.
Aging global population. No matter how hard people try, they can't stop getting older. Couple this with a declining birthrate and you end up with a population who's average age increases with every passing year. Civilization has not seen a population where more than half of the living people are retired. This brings with it several challenges. The most difficult of which is economic. Will the economy function when the half the population does little productive work? Where will the money comes from for pensions, health care and education?
For the young this is a great opportunity because labour and skills will be a seller's market. For the old it is less clear. Those who have saved nearly nothing will find themselves working until they die. Those who thought they had saved enough will find every service suddenly more expensive than they predicted. Those who invested in real estate may find prices dropping as retirees sell en mass to pay for their retirement. The infirm will perhaps be hardest hit as there won't be enough people of working age to hire a sufficient number of nurses and other aides.
Watch for stiff competition for workers causing wage increases and inflation and labour shortages all around.
Peak Oil. Peak oil has been touted since the seventies as coming any year now. It has not come yet, but we are thirty years closer. Modern civilization is brutally dependent on oil. It is used in the manufacture of fertilizer, plastic and machinery of all sorts. Some food is even made from it. Oil runs our transportation systems and some of our electrical grids.
Peak oil is not running out of oil. Peak oil occurs when the production of oil, how much is pumped out the ground, cannot be further increased to keep up with demand. The industrialization and westernization of China and India are rapidly increasing demand. When peak oil has arrived the essential structure of the economy, both globally and locally, will change. Watch out for the end of air travel, increased prices across the board and the rebirth of rail.
Climate change. Though there has been much talk in the media about climate change, there has been little discussion of what the cause of the real difficulties is. All the difficulties caused by climate change, whether it is hospitable deserts becoming inhospitable or rising sea levels or more powerful winter storms, are only problems because they are change. Civilization has optimized its functioning on certain assumptions of climate. It has also proven that is can withstand fierce storms which occur on a frequent basis, just look at places hit with hurricanes every year.
The difficulty comes mostly from holding out through the adjustment period. Some lands will require evacuation. Others will become more productive. Watch for mass moves and general upset of all the components of civilization. Especially watch out for the newly impoverished who have been forced to abandon their lands, possessions and ways of life.
Peak Energy. Similar to peak oil this is when the production of energy, mostly electrical energy, cannot keep up with demand. Most of the good energy sources are near capacity. There are few good valleys left to damn, nuclear has political problems and renewable sources require decades of heavy research. Watch for drastically rising electricity prices, the return of battery powered appliances and rolling brownouts.
Good for nothing young people. Since the beginning of time older people have been claiming the next generations are of a lesser sort. This time is no different. As in ages before the young people of today are: disrespectful, blasphemous (both religiously and ideologically), lazy, lacking in vision and generally good for nothing. Of course most of that has come about because the have been pampered compared to their parents. However, there exists the seed of a will to live and succeed inside every person, no matter how useless they appear. Watch for changing definitions of success, intergenerational struggle and, ultimately, adaptation to the new world.
Revenge of the exponential. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the global economy has been growing exponentially. The exponential function is perhaps the most misunderstood function and has the greatest impact on the life of the common person. Compound interest, inflation, population growth and resource consumption are all examples of things which have been growing exponentially for decades or centuries. When the exponential system meets up with bounded physical limits there will be trouble. Watch out for painful economic restructuring likely resulting in all existing virtual asset investments being wiped out.
And those are the major issues, as far as I am aware, which will come to the forefront in the next twenty years and should be well into full swing withing the next hundred. The outlook may appear grim, but the costs of persevering are not insurmountable. All it takes is a strong will, sacrifice and ingenuity.
As you may be aware the RCMP has been on a big recruitment push for the past couple of years. According to this source part of the reason for this is because there was a big recruitment push in the seventies. Well, those recruits are getting ready to retire. That article also alludes to reduced interest in the profession. Now it is not only the RCMP which has this recruitment problem, municipal forces have a similar problem to a lesser degree, but the RCMP has it the worst mostly because they offer lower wages and remote posts.
To understand the core reason nobody wants to be a police officer you need to first understand that, to most of the public, a cop is a cop. To most there is no relevant distinction between the RCMP, the Vancouver Police Department, the LAPD or bylaw officers. This is important because I firmly believe that policing suffers from a serious negative image. Do not forget, however, that though an image may not be entirely accurate they tend to be more representational than fictional.
In the past, police where firmly viewed as upstanding members of the community. They were friendly when doing their rounds and helped people. More often than not they were a voice of reasonable authority who could be trusted to act in the interest of the community. This is significantly less true today.
Today the direct interaction people have with police tends to be restricted to getting a ticket for something they consider perfectly reasonable. This is the single greatest problem of the modern police force. No longer do people consider the police friendly and reasonable, but instead they are viewed as speed bumps in the course of living a reasonable life. Worse than this limited interaction is the relative increase in surveillance caused by the increase in population density and unmarked cars.
It used to be you could drive ten minutes from home and be in a rural area where there was little fear of being caught. If you wanted to drink in a field you did so. If you wanted to do a bit of drag racing you did that too. Mostly nobody got hurt. If you did that now you would often find that the cops would show up, either because the are cruising around, or because somebody called them. If your fun if often ruined by police you won't think much of them.
Then there is the recent increase in unmarked cars. So called ghost cars have a legitimate purpose in formal, undercover investigations. However, I have noticed many such cars pulling people over. Such actions can be construed as the first steps to a police state and are definitely not friendly. If police hide their presence to the community at large they should expect to be treated like any other group which hides their job from the public, namely criminals.
Those are the reasons people have a negative direct experiences with police. If the direct interactions are negative, the indirect interactions are downright terrible. As noted above to the public all police and all police forces are the same. This means that anytime a person reads a story of views a video of police brutality, corruption, use of unnecessary force, unreasonable TASER use, speed traps or police provocateurs they see all police as untrustworthy.
Police have a serious image problem as being against freedom and the public. It is no wonder that recruitment is down. A much more severe problem, which I have not seen addressed, is the self-reinforcing nature of the problem. If fewer good people wish to become cops there will be fewer good cops. With fewer good cops the impression will tend to be more negative. Not all these problems are the fault of the various police forces, if the politicians demand that there be no tolerance, then there will be no tolerance. Many of these problems have solutions within reach of these forces, they just need to start serving the entire community again.
When a profit seeking venture unleashes an innovative product the world is full of possibility. The first time a significantly more reliable car rolls of the production line, the first time a new search algorithm is used by the public or the first time that AI makes a stock trade the world changes. Suddenly the life of some is better. This is the first stage, taking over the world.
Then comes success. This is when everybody wants this new car, uses this new search engine or that AI starts making money. The product is on top of the world. The venture is profiting handsomely from the growth. This is the second stage of success, profit.
If the product didn't exist in the real world this would be the end of the story. The growth, by definition an exponential process, would continue indefinitely. Most people believe they live in in this ideal world and they base their actions on this assumption. It is for this reason that nearly every venture fumbles in the third stage. The real world has limits, there are only so many people to buy cars, only so many searches only so much money.
The third stage is dealing with the fact that the world has been taken over. Everybody owns a car which is equally reliable and efficient, most of the searches are done using this new algorithm, the AI now controls a significant portion of the worlds' money. The growth doesn't necessarily end at this point, but the rules of the game have changed. Once everybody owns a car far fewer need to be made, but making them less reliable means fewer older vehicles will be replaced. When most of the searches are done using the new algorithm creators of web pages include less metadata explicitly for the computer. Why add numerous links when you are just a search away? When the AI is a major force in the economy the rules of that economy change, old heuristics become invalid and new ones appear.
Those who fail to plan for the third stage are doomed to decay. This decay may be slow because of the massive reserves gained in the second stage, but decay of the product is unavoidable. Those who plan will simply silently replace the product with another new one.
Planning too far into the future is a waste of energy, but in the life of a product (1. World Domination 2. Profit 3. Saturation) it is important to take the next stage into consideration.
If I were the leader and had a majority in the House of Commons there would be some changes. The first and most significant change would be my goal to be a one term wonder. I believe that the largest source of dysfunction in any political system are career politicians. If you are worried about re-election then you are unable to focus on solving problems. If you don't solve problems effectively then you need to worry about being re-elected. It is a vicious cycle. The only way out is to not consider re-election an option. Aiming to not be re-elected has the added advantage that enemies can be garnered without fear. The ever present enemies of solution is slightly depressing.
I start by not wanting to be re-elected and only needing to conserve my political capital for the length of one term. This shouldn't be that difficult. The Conservatives seemingly haven't had any political capital for three elections. What do I do with my improbable power and freedom? Make things better.
I start by moving the age of consent back to where it was ten years ago. Nothing good has come from coddling children and nothing but bad has come from the extension of childhood.
Along the same lines I'd reduce the Federal minimum drinking age to fourteen. So many teenagers already drink from this age that it isn't effective. Even worse, they are forced to do in it secret. Things done secretly are never done as safely nor with as much moderation. Reducing the drinking age has the added benefits of pushing the frequent binging to a time when they have less money and are, for the most part, unable to drive. Nothing makes it easier to avoid driving drunk than having lots of practice.
Following this line of thought I would make drinking in public legal. Plenty of other countries allow drinking in public and their society hasn't fallen apart. Again being forced to secretly drink in public worsens the situation. When you can't bring beer you are forced into the water bottle filled with vodka. Public intoxication will still be illegal.
Next on the agenda comes automotive fuel efficiency. I am not entirely certain of the rules at the moment, but they certainly do not please me. I would set the minimum combined city/highway fuel mileage to 30 MPG for cars and 20 MPG for light trucks. These minimums would be increased by 3% each year until such time that liquid petroleum fuels are no longer used.
Having set personal transportation toward improvement I would turn my eye toward public transit. The Federal government is unable to do much directly, however I would pressure the appropriate governments to not fund transit via taxes raised of automobile use. It is counterproductive to have transit funded by gasoline, parking, insurance and other taxes. How can an effective transit system be developed in any region if every improvement and ridership increase reduces funding for that same system?
While there are happening I would move forward with policies to decentralise the Federal Government offices. At the moment a large majority of the Federal Government is housed in the area of Ottawa. This made sense when most of the information required to run the government was on paper and the postal system was slower. In the present, however, most communication is done using digital documents. Having all the offices in one geographic area is an inefficiency. How many hours are wasted each day because of traffic in Ottawa? How many processing delays exist because all the work is done in a single timezone? How much economic harm is done by funnelling so money into southern Ontario at the expense of the outlying regions? Much better is distributing the work.
This work I would distribute to small towns all around the country. Putting these new distributed jobs into large cities will, in time, recreate the centralisation problem we already have. Small towns have the additional benefit of likely requiring lower wages due to lower costs of living. A prime candidate for towns to place government offices are towns in the North. Many people in the North are unemployed seasonally and having consistent jobs will reduce unemployment rolls. The North is all wired and it doesn't matter how bad the winter storm is, you can still make it across the town of one or two thousand to the office just a handful of kilometres away.
In moving the government offices I've reduced poverty in small, remote towns and the unemployment rolls. I've possibly even saved money in the long run. How else can I improve the countryside? Infrastructure is how. Specifically building or upgrading rail/highway/fiber links between communities. Of these three the least important is the highway. I propose to help pay for this infrastructure through hiring the unemployed in the areas. Additionally I propose an opt-in programme for prison inmates where they will agree to work in a labour camp to work off their term a third faster. Inmates may be paid, but it will be well below minimum wage. Having inmates work should ease the burden on the prison system. Nothing reforms a person like five or ten years of hard labour.
Speaking of criminals I would immediately shutdown the long gun registry. It is immensely expensive and provides no benefit. Criminals just don't use hunting guns.
Relatedly I would rewrite the way corporate fines are computed. Instead of whatever system there is in place now I would institute a statistically rational punishment scale. It works like this: First take the maximum amount of money breaking this law may have saved the corporation and quadruple it. To this add twice the cost of all cleanup and restitution. This is the cost of any fine levied. Should this fine not be paid all senior management goes to jail and the assets of the company seized for government auction. Things should settle down a bit after the first multi-billion dollar fines are handed out.
Copyright. Copyright from the government's point of view used to be easy. Only those with lots of money and corporate backing cared or produced valuable content. With the rise of computers this is no longer true. I would push an updated bill biased to the consumer. Overly large media conglomerates already have more than sufficient power in the form of Loonies.
I have in mind many other things which I may do, but I am not yet entirely convinced about all of them. The final thing I would do as Prime Minister, before being run out of office by those who hate the Canadian people, is do my best to diversify Canadian trade away from the USA. I just don't feel that the USA is reliable enough.
The best thing about the holiday season is the abundance of baked goods and other treats. The second best thing are the long periods of time off and the distractions from regular life. Mostly these are family from out of town or feasts. This year the calendar was arranged well. Even though I have on vacation time I ended up with a four day weekend. During these four days I discovered, or perhaps rediscovered, some unsurprising facts.
The first and perhaps most useful of there is that computers are the cause of all the ills in my life. During the break I barely touched a computer at all and I was happy. It is a unfortunate that while computers seem to be the source of all the frustration in my life they are also the source of all its necessities. I am not yet sure what I will do about this rediscovery. Perhaps I'll examine and fix the aggravating factors. Perhaps I'll not touch computers as a hobby. Perhaps I'll try to make my living some other way such that I can still enjoy computers.
The second of the things that I discovered is that happiness is spending a lazy Sunday with a fresh book on a comfortable couch. I have been quite busy the past couple of years and haven't have the chance to read for pleasure much. In the past few of weeks I have found time to read four books among my other chores. I believe that I will attempt to keep this up, though perhaps at a more sustainable level. Reading until two in the morning before work is not necessarily a positive thing.
Rediscovering reading has also clarified the direction my media consumption has been heading in since I left for my trip. I have, for nearly a year now, been avoiding visual media of all kinds. I have been avoiding TV, movies, pictures and everything on the Internet which isn't predominately text. I have instead been reading, listening to podcasts and talk radio. I never listened to much music and am listening to even less now. I find these more restrained and thoughtful media reduces my stress level.
This leads me to a blog entry I had considered writing, but I never got around to and I will summarize here. After having listened to two CBC podcasts, one the Ideas programme of a newspaper speech and the other a Rewind series of podcasts concerning the history of Public Relations, it occurred to me what the future of the news industry may be. The primary issue with news today is that they mostly print press releases, for various reasons. This, coupled with the ever increasing number of minutes of news reporting, has led to news becoming a constant stream of informationless data. The only future I see for news is for the industry to drastically increase its signal to noise ratio, starting with a stiff cut in the amount of data output. Newspapers will not become extinct, but instead return to weekly printings of news, not just reworded press releases, stock prices and sport scores.
The final discovery comes about because I watched Avatar in 3D. I am impressed by how far technology has come in crossing the uncanny valley since Final Fantasy. There are only a few spots where the unrealism is jarring. 3D movies, however, I feel don't add enough and is only a gimmick. One thing these film makers need to learn is that with a 3D movie you can't direct the attention of the audience through the use of focus. The entire volume must be in focus at all times. Doing otherwise gives viewers who want to look at the scenery eye strain. I know it'll be a while before I watch another 3D movie.
Information has come up a couple of times among my friends in the past short while (see here, here and here). The solutions and problems discussed seem to revolve around ignoring you aren't interested in to make more time for those which you are. Apike makes the suggestion of ignoring aggregators in preference for primary sources. Curtis just wants to read everything without setting his brain on fire.
My view on this whole debate is different. I avoid information overload in three ways: filtering aggregation, categorization and prioritization and finally quick filtering. Through the application of these three techniques I learn about everything important without spending my life reading.
First we have filtering aggregation. This is getting most of my transient information, that is news and gossip, from other people. People who filter the Internet for me. In this class I read Slashdot, certain sub-Reddits and a few other sources. I fully realize that I don't see every little piece of news on the latest gadget that I'll never see, but I am OK with that. When picking aggregators it is important to keep in mind your general interests and acceptable volume. I find that older sites tend to do better at filtering the useful from the inane and transient. This is likely because being older it has attracted an older crowd which has learnt the lesson that you can't know everything. Volume is critical, no site which ever has more than twenty-five items a day should be considered, especially when viewing the constant stream.
It is important to distinguish two separate ways in which you can use an aggregator. The first, which is the most common now in the days of RSS, is to take every article posted and use that as the articles to read. The second, which has fallen largely out of favour, is to take snapshots of the article lists once a day. This latter method works especially well with aggregators who keep popular links up longer. I find that Reddit is best read this way and I only read the top page once a day of each sub-Reddit I follow.
The second technique is categorization and prioritization. Most of the articles and content on the Internet loses value incredibly quickly. An article which is inspiring and groundbreaking on day is valueless by the next week. It thus becomes easier to pick out only the most valuable information the older the articles are. This lets us make use of the powerful tool of prioritization. By prioritizing the articles with respect to relevance we ensure that we only read what we have time for. Any articles which don't fit within my fifteen minute morning reading session are left until I have more time. Later when I get to reading it time has passed and articles of lesser importance have accumulated. This provides two ways of making our lives easier. The first is that the articles are older and so of lesser value. This means that more of them will fall below the minimum value threshold and not be read. The second important fact is that there are more of them. When a topic has a sudden burst of articles it likely means that something of interest has occurred in relation to that topic. That topic becomes worth reading. The other topics which have few articles concerning them are less likely to be interesting. The third advantage is that if you wait then most of the interesting comments will have occurred in the interesting articles. Do not underestimate the power of interested and knowledgeable commentors to provide value to an article. In fact, I often read Slashdot articles solely for the (filtered) comments.
Categorization and prioritization is all about delaying. With the addition of an extra twelve hours it quickly becomes obvious which topics had something interesting happen and which didn't.
The final tool is quick filtering. This is the only technical aspect of my strategy. In dealing with large volumes of information, most of which is of little value, it is important that filtering be a quick, efficient process. The first requirement is that whatever software you are using be quick. Any delay in processing your commands is unacceptable. If you use a web based RSS reader I would recommend you try some other reader. Ideally the delay between you skipping this article to the next article appearing would be 20 milliseconds or less. If you can feel a delay it is too slow.
It is also important to minimize the information you, the slow human, use to filter upon. Ideally you will filter upon only the text in the subject. There should be no date (does it really matter if it happened today or last week?), no author (generally more interesting authors should be in a higher priority group) and certainly no body text. Making reading decisions solely on the quality of part of the subject may seem harsh, but there the basic fact is that an author who cannot write a concise, interesting subject are unlikely to have written anything truly original or interesting. Filtering by subject line also eases the constant delays of refocussing your eyes or having your computer process your command. If you can ignore a full screen of articles with a single keyboard command then it matters less that it takes your software one hundred milliseconds to switch to the next screen.
That is the strategy, don't look at what you can avoid seeing, don't read now what can be left until later and be able to quickly ignore anything which got past the previous filters as quickly as possible. With that you'll be reading significantly less than you ever imagined possible and not missing out on anything truly ground breaking. Remember, people on the Internet are like a flock of birds, anything truly interesting will set them off into a repetitive flurry that lasts two or three days. It doesn't matter if it is the original article or the hundredth response to it which catches your attention, you can always follow the links back to the source.
There is one more factor to take into consideration. For the health of the Internet it is not possible to only read heavily filtered lists of articles. If everybody wanted to read only the best one percent there would be nobody to read through the remaining chaff to find the gems. You should pick your favourite topic and read that topic unfiltered, keeping in mind to pass along articles which others would find interesting. You only need read the level to which your interest and time allow. If you can read all the source articles, go right ahead, but remember that people are needed at every filtering level to ensure that only the most relevant and important articles make it to the top.
In fact, I'd probably pay somebody to provide me a list of the twenty most important articles from yesterday.
What did we learn from my last entry? Firstly that my initial computed layout wasn't very good.
The other thing I learnt is that it is impossible to keep a coherent thought when it takes the majority of one's mental power just in the struggle to put those thoughts down.
I won't be blogging much until I pick and get good at my new keyboard layout.
Warning! The following is an incomplete thought and will be full of errors.
Feature creep is a term which describes continual addition of features to a piece of software. This occurs even though the software already meets the needs of the vast majority of its users. Feature creep is detrimental because each feature makes the program as a whole slower and require more resources. The end result of feature creep is the eventual collapse of the software or the creation of new software which serves the same purpose. In general software grow without bound until it is too cumbersome to update and too cumbersome to use, at which point it is dropped for some other software.
In our increasingly computerized world it is bad enough that all the software we create eventually becomes too complicated to operate. Unfortunately feature creep is not restricted to software, it merely advances fastest these. No, feature creep stems from Western society and can be seen in all its aspects from engineering, to law, to education, to the very norms which create the society itself. This creep is not known as feature creep, but instead by the more positive sounding progress.
Examples of feature creep are easily found in life. Take phone which now surfs the web, plays games, organizes your time, takes photos, watches movies, does email and a host of other things. The scope of a phone has broadened. Now some of these features are useful to some people sometimes. Yet even those features a person doesn't use costs. Those who do not need colour still pay for the battery cost. The law contains so many loopholes and special cases to satisfy small groups that an expert is needed to navigate it. It now takes a considerable effort to find a basic car, that is without AC, power seats, a high performance engine and other things. These are a few examples of areas where it is difficult to find things without 'features' which are of no use to many people.
It seems that nobody can accept the way things are as good enough. Perhaps not enough people realize that at some point you can only improve one aspect at the expense of another?
Though I haven't mentioned it, I have been using a Kinesis Countoured keyboard for a couple of weeks. This is all part of my attempt to avoid RSI.
I am not content to just get a fancy keyboard. I am also changing the layout. I am currently trying out one layout which I computed. So far it it frustrating beyond belief, but that is mostly because 10 WPM is significantly slower than I otherwise type. I'm not sure if I will stick with this layout, try a different one, or fall back on DVORAK. Time will tell.
Well I've been home for two weeks now and have finally gotten the last of the trip stuff squared away. And so without further ado here is the sum of the remaining wisdom and observations I have gained from the trip.
The first things I am going to cover is that Canada is really big. In fact, Canada is so large that our epic trip turned out to be too epic. We had originally planned to travel into the territories. Alas this turned out to be impossible. By the time we had finished travelling through the provinces it was late August. In the North the winter comes early with snowstorms starting in September. I figure that our epic trip which we originally thought would take approximately five months would actually take more like eight months.
Canada is more varied than the United States in some respects. While the United States is more varied in climate it is less varied in culture. In Canada the climate is approximately the same no matter where I went. Sure there are some differences between the forests, prairies and tundra, but not that much. At no time did I feel that the landscape was alien.
The culture has an east-west gradient though. Well, not precisely east-west. With the exception of Ontario the culture becomes more stereotypically Canadian as you move east. Small, close knit communities become more common and you get a sense that good society is the goal more so than individual well-being.
Then there is Ontario. In many respects Ontario is the most American of all the provinces. This is more about feel than anything which is easily mentioned. It is a start to say that the road system resembles the States more than any other province, commuting is a way of life and a number of other factors which I just cannot articulate.
The most beautiful place in Canada is PEI, hands down. It really embodies the best of Canada: the beauty of a green spring, bright sunny summers, abundant locally grown produce and the snow that I love so much.
Unlike the US the wealth of the average person seems more or less consistent across the country. Those in the west tend to have larger houses, but those in the east tend to have larger lots. There are far fewer run down houses and drying towns.
Now there are a few interesting facts about North America that I've learnt on this trip. The first is that no matter where you go you will find somebody has driven there from British Columbia, Ontario, Quebec, California and Florida. It doesn't matter how far from home they are, they will be there and have driven there.
Contrary to popular belief the Quebequois are not all jerks. I'm sure that some of the stories of the abusively rude are true, they cannot be as common as we are led to believe. However, I can confirm that there are people there who do not speak enough English to depend upon. Well, it is either that or the majority have realized the best way to punish Anglophones is not to finger them, but instead to refuse to speak any English. Yes even if this means suffering through their half remembered high school french from ten years ago. Being rude about it just sets people against you.
To some the automobile is the ultimate symbol of freedom. If you subscribe to this view I can assure you that it simply is not true. You are only as free as the amount of gas in your tank. Fuel is the leash to the freedom of your car. After this trip a 4X4 will never have quite the same sense of freedom.
The final great piece of wisdom is related to travelling. We were travelling for nearly six months. We had only a short break in the middle at home. This is too long. The trip started to become a grind after the end of the second month. I strongly recommend that no one travels for more than two months at a stretch. This goes doubly so if you are moving a lot.
In the end this trip cost a fair amount. Of the receipts we got I've totalled the travelling costs up. This is not the complete cost of the trip as the cost of equipment and automotive repairs before we left are not counted. Also there are likely data entry mistakes, lost receipts and illegible receipts. These values should be more or less accurate though. First the USA.
Fuel (including ice): $2340
Attractions (including parking): $913
Food (both restaurants and from the grocery store): $1105
Accommodations: $2130
Miscellaneous (including vehicle repairs and cash withdrawals): $1360
The total for the USA is $7850 in US funds. There is some overlap in that we spent the cash we took out from time to time on item for which we received a receipt. Next up is Canada.
Fuel: $3559
Attractions: $834
Food: $1135
Accommodations: $1984
Miscellaneous: $1266
The sum total is $8779 in Canadian funds. Taking the exchange rate into account the total travelling cost is somewhere in the area of $20, 000.
The trip was well worth it. Though I will never do a trip such as this again I will remember it for the rest of my life. And after all this Courteney is still agreeing to marry me. Who would have thought.
In closing I would like to thank all those who helped us along the way and all the family we saw as we moved across. The trip would have been much more difficult without you. For those who have followed us on our journey I hope you have enjoyed it. Pictures are up in the gallery for the Canadian portion of the trip for those who wish to look.
Now it is back to regularly scheduled life.
Finally we are home. Stay tuned for a final summary post and a link to the pictures from the Canada portion of our trip.
Today I didn't spend all day driving! The first thing we did after getting out of the campsite was to visit the legislative building of Alberta. It is much as you would expect and is similar to the one for BC except that they are a pinky-beige colour.
Then we visited the West Edmonton Mall. Courteney had never been there and wanted to go there to claim that she had been there. We played mini-golf there and I beat Courteney by ten strokes.
Then we drove westward. We should be home tomorrow in the afternoon and that is making both of us happy.
Driving a brick against the wind all day is not only annoying, but also not fuel efficient. Getting closer to home though. Edmonton falls prey to the prairie city problem. That is massive sprawl. Worse is the fact that it is sprawling in a circular pattern. This means that it is crisscrossed with highways, all much like the last. It's annoying.
In more touristy news we saw two things of interest today. The first was a Naval Reserve Base in Saskatoon. That's right, a naval base in the prairies. We also saw the largest pysanka (Ukrainian Easter Egg) in the world and I tell you, dear friends, that it is larger than the largest ball of twine in Minnesota.
Well, not only did we make it out of Ontario, but we also drove across all of Manitoba. There was also another item which we checked off the list.We ate at a Red Lobster. It isn't a terribly exciting item, but now I can stop wondering about those commercials. We ate at one of the ones in Winnipeg, more seafood at the mid point of Canada and nearly as far from an ocean as you can get and still be in Canada.
Nothing went wrong today. This is awesome. We continue our way west and are almost out of Ontario.
Well, my day sucked. First I had to wait to get my tire patched. Then my truck decides that it wants to stall a lot. This happens most when I back up, which is the one time I cannot go quickly because I cannot see out my back window very well. Then I get a leaking brake line.
In general it is impossible to get a mechanic to do any work when you want it to be done today. They are always busy. Perhaps I should have been a mechanic.
Anyways, I get lucky and manage to find somebody to fix it and it gets done early enough for me to still make some distance. My truck is starting to show its age and it worries me that I still have five thousand kilometres left to go.
Well, I drove a whole bunch and things were going well until I got a flat tire. It was late in the day so I put my spare on and continued on to the campsite. I'll deal with it in the morning.
The wheels on the truck go
Round 'n' round
Round 'n' round
Round 'n' round
The wheels on the truck go
Round 'n' round
All through the day
The gravel on the road goes
Ting, ting, tonk
Ting, ting, tonk
Ting, ting, tonk
The gravel on the road goes
Ting, ting, tonk
All through the day
The Courteney in the truck goes
Zzzzz, zzzzz, zzzzz
Zzzzz, zzzzz, zzzzz
Zzzzz, zzzzz, zzzzz
The Courteney in the truck goes
Zzzzz, zzzzz, zzzzz
All through the day
The gas into the truck goes
Glug, glug, glug
Glug, glug, glug
Glug, glug, glug
The gas into the truck goes
Glug, glug, glug
All through the day
The radio in the truck goes
Warble, warble, warble
Warble, warble, warble
Warble, warble, warble
The radio in the truck goes
Warble, warble, warble
All through the day
The wheels on the truck go
Round 'n' round
Round 'n' round
Round 'n' round
The wheels on the truck go
Round 'n' round
3, 973, 823 times!
I also saw a chopper with long horns on the front. Awesome.
Well, the ferry arrived late. That's unavoidable. None-the-less we made good time and drove the nearly six hundred kilometres of highway to Labrador City over the gravel highway. This highway was often good (capable of 90 KM/h), sometimes poor (70+ KM/h) and only rarely bad (less than 70 KM/h).
We arrived in Labrador City looking for a room for the night as I had promised Courteney that we would stay in a motel or hotel every night in Labrador. There was not a room to be had. Every room in the town and the towns within an hour drive was booked solid. Apparently contractors, likely for the mines, have taken every room.
So since there are no rooms available and the bugs are quite numerous we are in an abandoned gravel pit spending the night in the truck. After this night is over the only type of lodging we would not have tried would be a hostel.
Tomorrow promises to be a high kilometre day as we try to hurry our way out of Quebec.
I didn't make an entry yesterday because nothing happened. We didn't even leave the room. Having no money in a small town sucks. One can only talk to the guy at the gas station for so long.
Today we got up at a reasonable time and packed up truck. This evening we are finally on the ferry to Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Of course this is yet another bad experience on a ferry on this end of the country. First we need to check in at five in the evening. Then they eventually start loading us. Now we didn't get a berth because there are none left. This means that yet again we are looking to sleep on whatever chairs can be found.
Well, even though we started loading shortly after five thirty the boat didn't leave the dock until after nine. I have no idea whatever could have held up the boat so long, but this means that we will not make it into Goose Bay on time and this will set back our travelling.
Well, this is the second of four days in Cartwright. We are waiting for a ferry and we have reservations on the Monday night ferry. We slept in late, did laundry and otherwise killed time.
Throughout this trip we have travelled and acted according to our whims with minimal planning. We don't make reservations and really don't plan more than a couple of days ahead. Today this easy living has caught up with us.
On this trip there is one more ferry to take before we are solidly placed on highways all the way home. Well the ferry we need to take only runs twice a week, Saturday and Monday. Today is Thursday. We arrived in town in the morning and discovered this. We tried to get a reservation for Saturday, but the ferry is full. We now have a reservation for Monday and need to kill time in this small town until then.
So we have time to kill. We spend about three hours today chatting with the attendant at the gas station. This was rather unexpected and nice, but is only a start. Pete is a nice friendly guy though. This will be the hardest few days we've had. Not only is this town of 700 short on cheap activities to do, it is also hundreds of kilometres from anywhere unless you own a boat. It is going to be a long weekend.
This morning we awoke at the brilliant time of five AM and I got to watch the sun rise. After getting cleaned up, fed and packed up we drove to the ferry to Labrador. A few hours later we were in Quebec, which is where the ferry lands, and mere minutes away from Labrador.
We decided to stop for lunch and where swarmed by small biting flies, it sucked. It does however remind me of how few bugs there were in Newfoundland. We came across almost none and at no time did we need to retreat or use bug repellent. It was quite nice.
So we've made it to Labrador, where the trees are short, the flies are numerous and the highways are gravel. At least they are well maintained gravel where you can often do 90 KM/h without trouble. Other than that there isn't much to say yet except that the towns tend to be small.
Today we drove. And saw the only confirmed Norse settlement in North America.
That is we have finally reached L'Anse aux Meadows, the Viking settlement from 1000AD. The archaeological site itself isn't terribly interesting, but like most digs they are carefully covered over for their protection. They are just shaped mounds in the ground which look like the wall plan.
Though that may not be very interesting there is plenty around it which is. The first is the visitor centre which is really a small museum which explains the find, shows a few artifacts from the site and has a few more which relate items which would have been here at the time, but which were too valuable to leave behind. There you can learn such interesting tidbits such as that the Viking's didn't have a compass and navigated mostly by guts and the sun.
On this site a short distance from the dig itself there is a reconstruction of a few of the buildings using the local materials which would have been available. This is staffed by recreationists who are quite knowledgeable. It is also stocked with accurate replicas of all the period items and tools. It is quite nice to see and worth the trip.
The trip itself takes you through a national park, several long stretches of wilderness and many small fishing villages. It is all nice to see and if I had significantly more money and time I think it would be educational to spend a couple of weeks in such a town.
With this tomorrow we need to get up early so we can attempt to travel to Labrador.
Today I was disappointed and we will not be going to France on this trip. We awoke early to travel to the ferry which goes to St. Pierre, an island of France. When we arrived we discovered that the schedule requires an overnight stay. Unfortunately as this ferry is a pedestrian ferry it means that we would need to stay in a hotel and eat three meals in restaurants. This is not in the budget.
In fact, as of yesterday we are on our reserve funds, with our primary travelling supply exhausted. Now the reserve funds are more than sufficient to get us home. It merely means that we cannot partake in any expensive activities. The only stop which this will likely affect is Churchill. Churchill is only accessible by train, which is expensive, and this requires a hotel, which is also expensive. Now going up to Churchill without going on a tour is more or less pointless, but this is also expensive. We will look at the costs, but at this point it is seeming unlikely to occur.
Well, after leaving the ferry terminal we took the long way around the southern peninsula we were on to reach the Trans-Canada Highway. Thus began our day of driving. It is easy to see that we covered a significant distance today and will cover much the same amount again today. Truly most of our days from here until we reach home will consist of us driving most of the time. This is alright and I was expecting it, but it will be more or less boring. At least we are heading home.
As I was mentioning in my last entry we were staying at a bed and breakfast. Well this morning the breakfast part came about. It wasn't near as bad as I thought it would be, there was one other older couple there having breakfast with us. Breakfast was good consisting of tea/coffee, French toast, biscuits, banana bread, fruit salad and the various condiments. We had a nice conversation and ate breakfast. We were heading to leave and started to chat with the hosts, but we had to cut that short to make our boat tour.
The boat tour was touted to show us Puffins, Courteney's second favourite bird, and whales. Unfortunately there were no whales, but there were over a hundred thousand Puffins and tens of thousands of other birds. It is quite a sight to see a small rocky island full with birds. The birds were nearly shoulder to shoulder among the entire length and height. Courteney enjoyed it and that is all that truly mattered.
After that we headed to a peninsula on the southern end of the island. We are going here in order to see about visiting St. Pierre, a small French island off the coast of Newfoundland. It is quite a long drive with a stretch in the middle of over two hundred kilometres without a gas station. I am thankful that I bought those gas cans to save us from having to use our propane.
We made it as far as Grand Bank, which is fifteen kilometres from the town where the ferry leaves. There we went to see the Provincial Seaman's Museum, which just had a single special exhibit on. This exhibit was a set of blown up lantern slides (precursor to the slide projector) detailing the trip of the first explorer to reach the North Pole. The story they tell isn't terribly interesting, but the slides themselves are coloured. During this time only black and white photographs could be taken. These are basically black and white photographs which have been transfered to glass and then had colours painted on in certain parts. The effect is quite nice and I found it almost better than a colour photograph would have been.
We then had to leave Grand Bank to travel back to a provincial park to camp. The area we are in is rather empty of people. It is rather nice. It is also much as I expect Labrador to look like. The trees are stunted and closely packed where they exist. Where they don't is full of low lying brush and grasses. There are small ponds and streams all over the place and in general it is quite rocky. This is perhaps the first time since we left the desert that I have seen a truly new type of terrain.
St. John's is like many older cities in that the roads are rarely straight and there are many odd intersections. We spent the majority of the day circling around St. John's trying to find things and on Signal Hill.
The first thing we tried to find was the legislative building for the province. We could find no strict listing of such a place and after trying a couple of places which seemed like they would be likely we gave up and left it to be found later.
Instead we went up to Signal Hill, just outside of St. John's and overlooking the harbour and city, to see what was there. The first stop on this hill was the Parks Canada visitor centre. In here we saw a bunch of stuff about the history of the hill. The primary use of this hill was to look over the harbour and bay to then alert the city to the incoming ships. This was a military post as at all times a watch for enemy ships was kept.
On our way out of this centre we just caught a traditional military tattoo, that is a musical military exercise. This was cool to see. They had people dressed up and marching like the Newfoundland Regiment of Foot from the late eighteenth century. They also played out a mock battle with the muskets firing just powder. They even had two old mortars and one eight pound cannon. The cannon, when it was set off, produced the biggest smoke ring I had ever seen. It rolled away from the cannon for at least thirty seconds.
Then we went to the top of Signal Hill to the Cabot Tower. The Cabot Tower was finished in 1900 to replace a previous wooden tower that had burnt down and close the temporary tower. It was a nice place and had been used for many jobs in its time. Mostly a signal tower to keep a watch on the water it was also used as a firewatch, radiotelegraph office, soldier ready room and most recently gift shop and small museum. Now when we went in it was a fairly nice day as it was clear but overcast. Less than half an hour later when we left the tower the fog was thick. About an hour or two later it was clear again. That is weather on the ocean for you.
Once we left there we glided down the hill a short ways to the Johnson Geo Centre. This is your average geological activity museum except that it is build underground. Three of the four outer walls of the exhibit area are made of the bedrock. We went here specifically for an oil gallery they have which explains the processes of finding, drilling and processing oil. We saw that and a few other things which mostly focused of Newfoundland and Labrador, as these sorts of things tend to do.
Finally we headed to find the legislative building again. We had found that it was called the Confederation Building when we were at the Parks Canada Visitor Centre on Signal Hill so it was easy to find. It turns out that it is a pair of huge buildings done in as a sixties style skyscraper. That is to say that they are large, square and plain. They are truly the least notable of the legislative buildings of the provinces I've scene (all of them excepting Alberta) except that they do not appear to be the seat of an old and prestigious institution. I consider the style quite unsuitable for such an old settlement as Newfoundland.
With that we said goodbye to St. John's and headed towards our next destination, Witless Bay for a boat tour to see more Puffins. The tour itself leaves out of a town called Bay Bulls about five minutes away, but we were unable to find accommodations there. Instead we are in Witless Bay proper and will need to drive back in the morning. Now camping around here is scarce and we couldn't find a place that fit our needs and because of our rough night last night minimal camping will not do. In the end this means that we have ended up in a bed and breakfast. As far as I know neither of us has ever been in a B&B before. I am left unsure of the etiquette, it's a lot like staying with a relative you haven't seen for many years. You are never quite sure of the rules and norms.
It is certainly an experience.
Another day of driving and we not only passed through the down of Dildo, but also made it to St. John's. The town of Dildo we visited merely because of its name. St. John's we are in because it's St. John's.
We arrived in town in the late afternoon because we slept in to recoup from our poor sleep the night before on the ferry. This left us little time to do anything. So we found a place to stay. At first I thought that we would be required to find a motel or the like for the night, but we found a campsite in the end which was close. Courteney is having a rough time with the camping and I unfortunately raised and then crushed her hopes of sleeping between a roof and a mattress.
We ended up going out to dinner because it was raining slightly and Courteney was in a bad mood. We ate at some quiet pub on Water street. After dinner we went back to the campsite instead of exploring the supposedly lively bar scene because Courteney was in a bad mood and this had put me in a bad mood. Even though it had rained quite heavily when we were gone and Courteney was fearing the tent would be soaked, but when we arrived back the inside was quite dry.
It wasn't the least comfortable sleep I've ever had, but the night on the ferry ranks high on the list. But no matter, we made it. And then we proceeded to drive our butts off. The ferry landed at nine in the morning, local time. As we didn't have anything to put away or anything of that sort and we had had breakfast on the ferry we just drove off the ferry and basically didn't stop. That is how we covered two thirds of the distance to St. John's from the ferry terminal in just one day of lazy driving.
The first thing that you notice when you see Newfoundland is that the coastline is quite rocky, but just out of the water it is green. The entire island is either rock or green. Driving through the country reminds me strongly of BC. It is hilly, green, covered in trees and you see exposed rock face from time to time. Now the hills are not as high and the trees not as tall, but it is still a strong resemblance.
Newfoundland is also the only place on the trip so far where I have noticed a strong, identifiable accent. Everywhere else the accents where not so strong as to make you step back and think carefully about what you just heard to make sense of it. In the end it isn't terrible as there are just two critical things I've noticed. The first is that you need to pay attention at all times. Unlike what I consider normal Newfies seem to head straight into the content with the usual introductions. This means that if you aren't paying explicit attention you will miss something important.
Now I've heard that the best way to make yourself appear to be smarter is to simply talk faster. Now if this is the case then Newfies must seem like the smartest people on the planet. They just motor. Maybe my brain is addled by too much West Coast leisure living, but they go. I don't think I could match the speed without some serious practise. But like all accents you get over it after being exposed a few times.
Shortly we will both reach St. John's, that magical city which has the honour of being the most easterly city in Canada which we will visit. This means that after we leave St. John's we will be heading west and home. Soon we will be coming close instead of going farther.
As I haven't explained why the ferries to Newfoundland were so backed up I will explain briefly. Firstly one of the ferries had some sort of explosion or fire in its boiler room. This put it out of commission and threw off the schedule. The other ferries pushed through to make due, but were unable for some reason, even with every ferry full to the rafters. Instead when we checked up on our sailing they were seven hours behind. What this meant is that our 6:30 PM sailing didn't load until midnight and didn't leave the docks until 1:30 AM.
Now the ferry we were one felt more like a small cruiseship than a ferry. Firstly most of the space in the ferry was taken up with private cabins, all of which were booked. Secondly, this ferry had a restaurant, not a cafeteria. It also had a health club and a casino. Now this left almost no room for normal seats. This being an overnight sailing (when they leave after dark they slow down and take seven hours to arrive) everybody was cramming into the undersized lounge in order to find a spot to sleep. Courteney and I found a spot, but it certainly wasn't comfortable because the seating is a continuous couch that encircles the deck like a serpent, there was no truly straight section longer than three feet.
So we had this sailing which we had expected to be at 6:30 in the evening. This meant that we had many hours to spend around town before we could line up at the ferry terminal. First we slept in two hours. Then we packed camp up leisurely. After that we went to Canadian Tire to complete my collection of five five gallon jerry cans. Now when my truck is full of fuel I have a range of something like fifteen hundred kilometres. Now half of that is in propane which is impossible to find in some places and so I would like to use that only as a last resort as T may not be able to replenish it. After doing that and filling my truck to the utmost with fuel we went to a public library for five hours. Finally when we could read no more we wandered a mall for an hour before finally just sitting in the mall parking lot with the windows down and the radio on.
On the road killing time can be the most difficult thing, especially since there are no truly comfortable spots to sit and wait. The truck is too hot, some places require visiting a parking meter every few hours, malls are boring, there are no good movies out and the world has a depressing lack of publicly accessible couches. We managed, though just barely.
Our second day of killing time went rather well considering the amount of time we had to consider what we would do. In the morning we had a fine breakfast (but only because we could leave the dishes to be done later) and then headed off on a boat tour. We went out to a pair of islands known as the Bird Islands. They are just two small rocky islands which are raised out of the ocean. There used to be a lighthouse, keeper and keeper's cattle on these two islands, but now there is only an automated lighthouse and birds. Thousands of birds.
We went specifically because Courteney wanted to see Puffins, which we did in spades. We also saw a great number of bald eagles, several breeds of seagulls, razorbills, a blue heron, a whack of grey seals, a few dolphins and some other birds which I cannot recall the name of. It was quite an enjoyable three hours. And quite affordable as well, something like thirty dollars a ticket. The captain was knowledgeable and our three hour tour didn't turn into many years of comedic antics.
After returning we went back to our campsite for lunch before heading off to the east side of Sydney to see the Marconi National Historic Site. This is the site of the first attempt at a trans-Atlantic radio service. It is quick, but descriptive and has a model of the site as it was during the attempts. The radio signals used longwave and required not only enormous amount of power (there was a 75kW generator on site for this purpose), but also enormous antennas. The model showed an inverted square pyramid nearly two hundred feet on a size and over two hundred feet tall made of hanging copper wires. It would have been quite the site to see in the day.
They also had an amateur radio operator there, but we didn't see what he was up to.
We then returned to our campsite to make dinner. Along the way I picked up two jerry cans and will be picking up at least two more in order to ensure that we have enough fuel to make it across the northern sections of the provinces. Life can be difficult with a gas tank that is half the size it should be.
This morning we awoke in the basement of Sam Grant Senior's parents' place. They had kindly offered us a floor for the evening and showers in the morning. Sam Junior and Erika were heading home this morning and needed to be out early. We awoke in plenty of time to see them off and after a few minutes of packing and showering we were off as well. The plan was to arrive at the ferry terminal and wait for a ferry to Newfoundland. That was the plan.
What actually happened is that we arrived, waited in line, reached the from of the line and was then told that the ferry was entirely booked up for two and a half days. This was quite a surprise and needless to say we are not in Newfoundland this evening. Instead we bought that ticket and then had to figure out how to spend another two and a half days.
The first thing we did was continue to finish the Cabot Trail. I had been told around the fire that we had missed the best portion by not completing the loop. On the way to doing this we stopped in at the Alexander Graham Bell National Historic Site. This was interesting to see as he did much more than just the telephone. Perhaps the most ahead of its time was the hydrofoil and hydrofoil boats.
We then continued and finished the trail. I believe I was misled because the south eastern quarter of the trail is not anything special at all. The best portion of the trail is really the section which is bookmarked by the gates of the National Park there. We unfortunately were in too much of a rush to stop in any of the side roads, but there are plenty that promise to be excellent.
This took us into the afternoon so we planned to go on a bird watching tour tomorrow and found ourselves a campsite for the next couple nights while we wait for our number to come up at the ferry.
On Cape Breton in Nova Scotia there is a relatively famous route called the Cabot Trail. This trail goes up and around the north west side of the island. We spent the majority of the day driving to and along this route. It is quite the spot with many spectacular views. We drove about two thirds of the trail. We went up the west coast from the rest of Nova Scotia and got off to go to Sydney.
The reason we went to Sydney is that a number of the Grants are out on vacation in the area. These are friends of the family so we wanted to stop in and see them before we head to Newfoundland. The real reason for the rush is that two of them are heading back tomorrow morning. We did make it and spent a couple of hours sitting around a fire in their aunt's/sister's backyard with some of their other family. It was good and welcome to see some familiar faces from home.
On our way north on the Cabot Trail we also hit the root of a parade. We arrived about two minutes after the parade started and were three cars from where all the floats were turning onto the route. Thus we got to see most of the parade from a short distance, even though we weren't on the route. After the final float had passed by traffic continued with us in it travelling at the pace of the parade. It was fun at the beginning, but the parade didn't travel smoothly and instead stopped and started. It took us about an hour to reach the end of the route and by the end of it I was tired of stop and go traffic in the hot sun.
When you put your mind to it one can get a lot of site seeing done in a single day. We started today with the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic. This is a museum which covers maritime history from sailing ships, steamships and more modern diesel ones down to shipwrecks. It isn't too big and not repetitive so it was enjoyable. They have a nice collection of small sea boats, most of them small sailing vessels of the sort used by the common man in the past. There is also an entire steamship sitting at the wharf to be explored. We spent nearly four hours there and enjoyed it quite a bit.
After that we walked around a bit in downtown Halifax in order to find what amounts to the legislative building in this province. They call it Province House here and like the other legislative buildings for the maritime provinces it is rather small. I suppose this is to be expected.
Finally we went to a vegan friendly cafe elsewhere in Halifax for a late lunch. This was a pie stop. We both had a bowl of rice/noodles with ample vegetables and differing sauces. This was besides the nachos. If you ever want a truly good plate of nachos you need look no further than the nearest vegetarian restaurant. I'm not sure why, but they make the best nachos. Anyways, after stuffing ourselves on rather good vegan food we proceeded to the vegan pie.
Now some might not know the amount of animal based food that goes into the average pie: eggs, milk, lard, cream and any number of other things. Of course vegans refuse to eat anything of the sort so I was unsure of what a vegan pie would taste like. On today was the cocobanana pie. It had banana and coconut in it. It was rather good. The crust was what I was most interested in and it was alright. It wasn't flaky at all, instead it was crunchy. It also wasn't as dry as I had expected. It was alright.
We are making progress towards exiting Nova Scotia. All we have left on our list to do here is to see some of Cape Breton. I'm not sure why, but people keep on asking if we are going to go there or not. We'll find out soon enough.
At this point Courteney and I are getting tired of travelling and site seeing. The greatest evidence is that as we go along the time we spend at each site gets shorter and shorter. Also some things which made the list we decide are not worth our time. An example of the latter happened today. We originally had a blacksmith shop on our list. However, when we arrived at the town where it was supposed to be we had some small amount of trouble finding it. Instead of putting a lot of effort into looking we both easily agreed that it wasn't worth it and that we could move on, which we did. Long term travelling is quite hard and is taking its toll on both of us.
In fact, in some ways I am beginning to consider myself a professional tourist. I have perfected the art of being quick at service counters, reading attraction maps and generally getting around without spending too much money and missing anything. I'm even getting angry at the lesser amateur tourists. This happened when we visited Peggy's Cove today. Peggy's Cove is home to a picturesque lighthouse and a small fishing village of about two hundred people. The main street it narrow, winding and lined with boulders the size of large cars. It is also an immensely popular tourist attraction. When we arrived there were easily five hundred tourists wandering around the town, blocking traffic and generally being a nuisance. I feel sorry for those who live in Peggy's Cove and could never live in a similar situation.
We saw the lighthouse and got some postcards and lobster flavoured potato chips. The latter aren't that bad, as long as you don't mind a bit of a fishy taste.
Then we moved onto Halifax and the first stop was the Alexander Keith's brewery tour. This theatrical tour is much as one would expect: introduction by a costumed lady, movie outlining the history, pretences of meeting Mr. Keith, beer tasting and entertainment while drinking said beer. Somewhere in their we even learnt how beer is made. It was fun and the hour went quickly.
I have lost the patience to waste a day away. Travelling and constantly having something to do or something to see or somewhere to go has done this to me. This morning we went first thing to find a mechanic to do my brakes to avoid the disappointment of yesterday. We ended up finding a slot at the Canadian Tire in town, but not until after three in the afternoon. This was at quarter after nine in the morning. So we had most of a day to kill.
We had arrived in this town from our drive yesterday after not getting our brakes fixed because we needed to be here anyways to see the world's smallest drawbridge. Now most tourist attractions, no matter how small and inconsequential, tend to be clearly marked. The rest which are not clearly marked generally have at least one sign off the nearest major highway pointing the way. The drawbridge had no signs. All we knew is that it is in a small town called Sandford just outside of Yarmouth, which is the large town of which Arcadia is just outside of. Well, not knowing where it is, but Sandford being a small town we thought we would just drive through Sandford and see it. Well we drove through it, and the next town over and one more town over. The highways around that spot are not terribly well connected. So we make another look of the town and try two side roads as we go through town. On the third side road after travelling down it quite a bit we end up at a wharf. As part of this wharf and associated breakwater there is a pedestrian bridge about twenty feet long that parts in the middle. It was a draw bridge. No signs, no plaque, nothing but the world's smallest draw bridge.
So we slowed down as we drove by to see it. This all told took about half an hour. Having no further plans for the day and plenty of time to spend we headed back into Yarmouth to find the local tourist information centre as they tend to be good sources of information on where to kill a few hours that isn't a mall or movie theatre. This time not so much. Not unless we wanted to go through some of the three or four small museums. What we did find was an old lighthouse that was opened to the public with a small museum in it. This was a bit of a drive on narrow, winding roads through an old fishing village on a peninsula.
It was much as you would expect. There was a small cafe where we had lunch because it was raining fairly hard. We both had some fair tea, a bowl of fish chowder and some bread pudding. The pudding was delicious. Afterwards we went for a short walk around. Courteney's hair was blowing in the sea gale. It was also foggy all day so we could only see about a hundred feet into the ocean before it became greyed out.
After we finished there it was still only two. So we headed back into town to wait it out. We ended up going into a dollar store in the hopes of finding some cheap citronella candles and candle holders. We did find a few things. After that we went back to the truck where I listened to a couple of podcasts and Courteney worked more on her latest needlework project, a stuffed dragon.
Finally the appointed hour came and we could drop the truck off. We did so and then proceeded to wander the Canadian Tire. We did so for a while and commented to each other on various things. We paid special attention to the citronella lamps as we were going to try them. After wandering for an hour we returned to find the truck finished. So we got the keys, bought the lamp and lamp oil and moved to the truck to make some distance before it was time to make camp.
We did make about a hundred kilometres. When we stopped the first thing we did was setup the lamp and candles in an attempt to keep Courteney from getting bit. I've often heard people claim that they don't work at all and I'd like to disagree. They do work, especially the lamp with a large flame, but not over near the distance one might hope. I found it better at up to three or four feet from the flame. That isn't quite the backyard protecting distance, but is better than nothing. An important thing I noticed is that as long as I stayed within the protection I would be fine, but if I left and came back mosquitoes would follow me in. So the most effective use of them seems to require that there be a lamp or candle every few feet and that all areas of travel be covered.
Hopefully they help enough to make Courteney stop being miserable.
Today was a day of disappointments. First we drove over two hours through the scorching heat in my air-conditionless truck to see the world's heaviest lion in Aylesford. Unfortunately the lion died sometime in February when we were still making up our list. We instead walked around the zoo and saw a few other animals. It was at least nice to get outside in the sun, but the sun was so strong that without our hats I fear we both would have fallen to heat stroke.
After the zoo we drove, again through the hot sun, in search of somebody to put new brake pads on my truck. They are due to a change, but I am unable to do them myself because I don't have a few necessary things and I don't really have room to want to haul them home. Alas we found nobody who could do a while-you-wait job. So we need to travel one more day with squeaky brakes.
Then after that was done and we were to travel towards our next destination not only did we travel through more bright sunshine, but on our way there we entered heavy fog. So not only did we suffer most of the day with sweating ourselves into puddles we didn't even get to enjoy a nice warm evening because it got cold! Talk about disappointing. Especially since when the sun is blocked or has gone away out come the mosquitoes.
Hopefully tomorrow goes better.
Well, we have finished visiting PEI. All that we really had left was to see the legislative buildings. We did that, but only after Courteney bought a purse and a silly hat. We also saw the latter two thirds of a free musical show about the history and important elements of PEI history. Only then did we take a look at the legislative building. It is rather small, but then so is the province. It also served as the place where the Fathers of Confederation set about creating the Dominion to protect the British colonies from American influence.
Other than that we took a ferry over to Nova Scotia. We started quite late and so didn't get out of our campsite until after eleven. We spent a couple of hours in downtown Charlottetown and so didn't have time to do anything after the ferry docked. Thus there is little for me to report.
The great advantage of PEI being small is that you can get a lot done in a single day because you never spend that much time travelling between destinations. Take today as an example. First we went to Cavendish to look at some Anne of Green Gables stuff. Specifically we went to the farm which served as the model for Green Gables and has been restored to represent what it would have looked like at the time the book was set. It was a thing to see.
Then we went to Charlottetown to buy tickets to the showing this evening of Anne of Green Gables, The Musical. After that we headed to the edge of town to visit the Cows Factory. For those who don't know Cows is an ice cream shop which makes excellent ice cream; it has even been rated as the world's best ice cream by some magazines. Then we went to a small town a short distance out of Charlottetown to find a campsite and have dinner before going to see the show. That is a lot of stuff to do in a single day.
At Cavendish in the Green Gables National Historic Site we went around and saw some scenes which are famous from the book. The barn has been restored, the house setup much as it is in the book, the Haunted Woods are there as is Lovers' Lane. Now I've never read the books, but this is what I am told. In the gift shop we found a couple things of note. The first is chocolate covered potato chips. They are delicious, though likely not healthy in the slightest. The second is Raspberry Cordial, a drink which is apparently a favourite of Anne. We bought four bottles and have drank one, it is not half bad.
The next stop of note is the Cows Factory. This is really a factory with a storefront. We took the factory tour and saw how they make their shirts (to some they are almost as well known for their shirts full of puns as their ice cream), ice cream and their cheese. I didn't even know that they made cheese, but I suppose that is because they don't sell that at their Whistler store. It was a nice tour and everybody got a free sample of ice cream at the end. Of course that isn't enough and we both got ourself a cone before we left. I got a Don Cherry in a waffle cone coated with chocolate and sprinkles while Courteney had something with pineapple and mango in it.
Then we went and got a campsite for the night. Just as we were rolling in it started to rain a small amount and in the nearby bay there were a few lightning strikes. It promised to be a fun night, but passed by quickly and caused us no trouble.
Finally we went back into Charlottetown to watch the show. This musical has been running for the past forty-five years. That is a pretty long running show. It was rather funny times and quite good. I also know what all the short actors who don't make it in movies end up doing, playing children in musicals. The effect was quite good. We both quite enjoyed it. I don't think it'll ever stop playing, so if you find yourself in the area you might choose to watch it.
Today we drove to PEI. It used to be that you couldn't do this and instead needed to take a ferry. Well several years a long bridge was built called the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to PEI. That is what we drove on. I had heard that it had eight foot walls on either side which prevented any sort of view. I am glad to say that it isn't true. It does have solid concrete walls, but they are only three or four feet high and out of a truck you can see over them easily. I was the entire island of PEI from end to end on our way in.
Upon arriving you enter a town called Gateway Village. It is named for an obvious reason and is really only a tourist place.
Our first major stop, excluding a gas station and a grocery store, was the town of O'Leary on the western side of the island. We went to this small town to visit the Prince Edward Island Potato Museum. When we arrived we found a Potato Blossom Festival in progress and had missed the parade by a handful of minutes. This meant that we got to see a number of the parade floats and the like dispersing. There were a number of old tractors, a poor person in a potato costume roasting under the strong sun and a bunch of other things.
After a while we eventually got past the traffic caused by the ending of the parade and reached the museum at about one in the afternoon. There are some museums which you are surprised that they exist and find them a bit odd. This was one of them when I added it to the list of places to see oh so many months ago. On going through it, it is entirely reasonable. Not only is it the single largest crop on this island, but the potato is the fourth largest crop in the world and is highly nutritional. The potato is native to South America, but the Eastern Europeans eat the most of them. Generally the potato only became a popular crop when famine hit. It turns out that potatoes can grow just about anywhere.
I also found it surprising that so many ailments afflict the lowly potato. From the Colorado Potato Bug which has been spread by people across the world to the Late Blight that devastated the Irish. After going through the museum it seems surprising that any potatoes make it to our table in the end.
Unfortunately the potato museum was the only stop in PEI that doesn't involve Anne of Green Gables in some way. PEI truly only has two main exports: potatoes and Anne.
There are many aquariums in North America and we have visited three of them. Today we visited the third. This was the Aquarium and Marine Centre of New Brunswick in Shippagan. Most aquariums only really have tropical and otherwise exotic species. I believe this is because they are nicer to look at and harder to come by. This aquarium is different. It is filled with species from the ocean surrounding and rivers contained in New Brunswick. It is nice, for a change, to sea fish that you can actually find in Canada.
Of note I saw my first whole Atlantic Cod, a live lobster that must have weighed twenty-five pounds, an albino lobster and a blue lobster. This is among other local species like Lake Sturgeon and Haddock. It was unfortunately raining lightly with a strong wind so we didn't spend much time watching the seals, even though Courteney likes them.
After returning back and watching TV channels go off and on the air (likely because they are sent out by satellite from Toronto and Toronto was having severe thunderstorms) we had a nice dinner. Courteney's Grandfather had us sampling one of his strong and young blueberry wines. It'll be good in a few more months, but was a bit rough yet. Finally after all that one of his close friends came over to see us for an hour. I can't quite remember her name, but I think it was something similar it Gracie.
This was our last day in New Brunswick and tomorrow we are destined for P.E.I., the land of potatoes, sandstone and Anne of Green Gables.
Since we have entered Ontario we haven't really had much sun. It seems that this part of the country hasn't had much in the way of a summer. This morning was alright so we went on a short tour of the town. It is a nice small town.
We also went to a small island called Midling Island. This island was house to a quarantine centre for the Irish immigrants who reached this side of the Atlantic sick. We had a nice lunch there and then made our way home.
Once there we let lunch settle and then I helped cut the front lawn. This is the first time that my offers to do work of some sort have been accepted. Oh well.
Right now we are just relaxing, watching the news and awaiting the rain that is supposed to arrive at around dinner time.
After a loud night of rain and wind amplified by the tarp covering our tent we awoke to a relatively sunny day this morning. We made a breakfast as best we could with our limited supplies. We have been staying at peoples' houses for such a long time that we have run out of certain foods, such as pancake batter, and others have gone bad, such as our milk. This means we don't have a whole lot to work with. We made due though and had some bachelor's egg and toast.
There were two tourist stops on the agenda today. The first was Magnetic Hill. This is a hill where you roll uphill. It is quick, but actually quite a neat effect. When I return I will post the video I took.
The second stop was the tidal bore in Moncton. A tidal bore is a tidal wave which moves inland in a river and raises the level. The wave we saw was only perhaps six inches high, but it did move upriver with good speed and did raise both the rate of flow and the water level. As the tides change so does the height of the wave. Construction on the river has decreased the height of the wave since the mid sixties, but there are longterm plans to fix this and bring back the multifoot tidal bore.
Both of these attractions didn't take long to see so we made our way to Miramashi where Courteney's Grandfather resides. We made it here quite early and he was not yet back from fishing so we went to the local library to read some of the magazines. Libraries are an often forgotten way of passing time while travelling. Only rarely is a library card required to read inside the library and they tend to have a number of periodicals that are up to date. We spent two and a half hours there and it was quite good.
After that we went back to Courteney's Grandfather's place and he was there. We proceeded to chat for a while, eventually had dinner and then chatted again. We really have no plans but to spend a bit of time here so seeing what we do tomorrow will be interesting.
We are back on the road again for another day or two on our way to Courteney Grandfather's. Which is just fine because the weather was poor this morning. We woke to a light rain and a good amount of fog. After packing the truck up and saying our goodbyes we headed east. Our first destination of the day was Hopewell Cape, where the Hopewell Rocks are to be found.
These rocks are more or less pillars which have been eroded out of the cliff by the tides. The tides at that point are forty-seven feet or thereabouts. The difference in height is so great that even with the tide going out for half an hour it went down perhaps four feet. At the Hopewell Rocks are some which are called the Flower Pot Rocks. These are true pillars which widen at the top with trees and grass growing on top.
It is even possible, when the tide is low, to walk beneath these pillars in the mud. Unfortunately the timing of the tides didn't work to our advantage at all. We arrived shortly after high tide at about one in the afternoon. We spent perhaps an hour and a half walking the paths and gazing at the Bay of Fundy, but when we left it was still nearly two hours until the tides where low enough to walk.
Instead of waiting we continued onto Moncton. Though we have two things to see in and around this city we saw none of it. Instead we got pelted by heavy rain and got an oil change. Nothing spectacular, but not everything about travelling can be exciting.
When we arrived at the campsite for the night it was raining cats and dogs while we sought a dry spot to pith the tent. Luckily the rain broke for a couple of hours shortly thereafter so we were able to set the tent up and eat dinner while staying relatively dry. Of course afterwards it started to rain quite heavily again before ceasing for a time. We brought two tarps with us to deal with heavy rain. However, one is so large and we are able to set the tent out upon it and then fold the other half of the tarp over the tent completely. We are kept quite dry when we do this no matter how much it rains as long as we roll the bottom bit up to prevent a puddle from forming underneath us.
Oh how the time flies. Today was spent visiting a friend of Courteney's mother, Ruthie, on the other side of St. John. We chatted there from about eleven until one thirty before heading back here. It was nice to meet her and Courteney seemed to enjoy talking to her. After we returned Courteney proceeded to bake another pie. This time it was strawberry-rhubarb.
While she was doing that I was fiddling to fix Maynard's Internet connection and burning a couple of DVD's of pictures to mail home as a backup. Network access has been much rarer at campsites here in Canada than in the USA. This isn't a problem at all except that it means that I have been unable to copy my pictures back home for safekeeping. So I will make use of the postal system instead.
After that was done and with some help from Courteney while I was burning stuff we got Maynard's Internet to not only work, but work wirelessly. This has been causing him undue trouble for the past two weeks.
In the evening there was another family dinner, this time a stir fry and swish kabobs. I truly think I've misspelled that. This dinner was good and everybody had a good time.
This ends our stay in St. George and the St. John region. Tomorrow we are up early to make our way north east to Moncton.
I made my entry too soon last night. After I made my entry we ended up going to one of Gloria's child's house. He is of course an adult. They were having dinner so we chatted for a couple of hours. During this is was noted that there were fireworks last night. So we went back to Maynard's house. Shortly thereafter the fireworks were to start so we were whisked off there.
It seemed like the whole town showed up and the fireworks were quite good. Part of it was that we were quite close and could feel every explosion. But even the number, variety and combinations of fireworks was quite good. They lasted perhaps twenty minutes or half an hour before we made to leave. Of course as with anything like this there was a short traffic jam.
Today we did three things. First we went back into St. John to see that Carleton Martello Tower. This is a tower that was first built for the War of 1812, but was then used to fend off some Fenians, hold misbehaving soldiers during WWI before they shipped out and then as a fire control centre during WWII for the defence of the harbour. It is a nice tower.
After that we went to a salt water beach called New River. It was nice and sunny and we spent a couple of hours there. The water is from the Bay of Fundy which is connected to the Atlantic Ocean. The water was very cold, but it is the North Atlantic. The day was good and we flew a kite for a short while on the sea breeze.
I could have stayed the rest of the day, but we needed to return because Courteney was to make a pie for dinner that night. She did and made a nice blue berry pie. Dinner was back at Gloria's son's. Dinner was burgers and salad an corn on the cob. We also sampled a number of homemade fruit wines which were quite good. All in attendance raved at Courteney's pie. A number of them complained because they had a Weightwatchers weigh in tomorrow.
And that was our day. It was quite nice. Before I go tonight I am going to express my thoughts on if we are going to get to travel much of the North or not. The first thing to know is that the North is cold and consequently snow and ice comes early in the year. This really means that if we haven't entered the North by the beginning of the third week of August we likely shouldn't because we are likely to hit cold weather. We just aren't equipped for cold weather. Courteney has clothes only good down to about zero and I only have things good enough for about ten below on me. With the current time of year, how long it took us to get here, how much more east we have to go and taking into account just how immense the North is I currently do not think that we'll be able to make it during this trip. I'm not happy about this, but I do not have the money to outfit ourselves. I still hold hope, but I am getting ready to accept it.
Today was another day seeing Saint John. The first thing we saw where the Reversing Falls at high tide. The Reversing Falls is a section of the Saint John river which runs backwards when the tide is high or coming in because the tides are so high. After we saw that we went to go through the New Brunswick Museum. This is something Courteney wanted to see. It had a variety of things in it including the art by Canadian Artists, a hall of whales, a portion on the history of industry in New Brunswick and a few other things. The history of industry was particularly interesting because I haven't seen the changes of industry through time laid out before.
We wandered around the museum for not quite four hours and saw most of it. After exploring the museum and getting Courteney away from a stuffed puffin we made our way. Back to the Reversing Falls. It was by now low tide and not only was much more beach and rock above water, but the falls where travelling in the opposite direction. This caused a number of large whirlpools which we watched.
After spending a few minutes looking at the falls, which are more just reversing rapids at this point, we headed back to St. George for dinner.
Now normally I don't mention what we have for lunch unless we ate at some particular restaurant. Today I am making an exception because we had something special. For lunch we had lobster sandwiches. It is one of those odd lunches. Though I am told it used to be only the poorest who ate lobster, I am sure it is now only those who are well off. It was good and surely something different.
For those who don't know St. Stephen is where Ganong, the chocolate company, makes their home. In this town there is not only a Chocolate Festival(in August so we don't get to see it) but also a chocolate museum. It is for this museum that we came to this town. We did visit the chocolate museum. It isn't an enormous museum, but does have good information on the history of chocolate, how chocolates were and are made as well as a bunch of stuff about the Ganong company. There are also free samples placed throughout. It was a pleasant way to spend the morning.
After the museum we visited the original chocolatier shop. It is still selling chocolate and we picked up a few things. We had half the box of chocolates after dinner.
With that we left St. Stephen and headed East. It was still early so we headed to Saint John. This is the city where Courteney was born and lived for several years. Consequently we have a number of things to see. On our first afternoon there we saw the City Market and King's Square. King's Square is a nice little park with a few monuments and the like. The City Market is a covered open air market similar to the one on Granville Island. The ceiling is made to look like the hull of a ship upside down. We walked through that and thought we saw lobster for three dollars a pound. Alas upon further inspection it was crab which was three dollars a pound and not lobster.
After seeing those couple of sights we headed to St. George to stay at a couple of Courteney's family. These two, which go by the name Gloria and Maynard, live in St. George which is about half an hour out of Saint John. We got there at about three thirty. We chatted for a while and then went out to get some lobster from a local fish market. It ended up being not quite eight dollars a pound. Then it was back to their house for a lobster feast.
I've never had a full lobster before, in the West it is just too expensive. So I needed to be shown how to eat one. Conveniently I had two old Maritimers to show me. I quite enjoyed it, but it is no means a tidy meal.
I must reiterate, New Brunswick is small. Instead of only being able to make a single stop in a day we made nearly two. First we drove a short distance to Fredericton. In Fredericton we had three things to see. The first was the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. This is a medium sized gallery founded in the 1950's. In this we saw a number of things. The first two were some temporary exhibits of native artists. In one of them there was the oldest birch bark canoe in the world, built in 1825. It had spent 180 years in Ireland and was only recently put on temporary exhibit in Canada and most recently has been repatriated.
Elsewhere in the gallery there are a number of pieces from painting masters and a number of items from the medieval and Renaissance periods. This includes one tapestry which is perhaps twenty feet square and is one of three surviving of the original set of twelve. They used to decorate the dining room at the French Palace, but this one was found in an old chest. It depicts a hunting scene from the time of the Holy Roman Empire perhaps five hundred years ago. There is also a number of pieces of furniture that were interesting to see and were well built.
After going through that museum we walked to the truck for lunch; we had parked it in a public parking lot near the city hall. After a fine lunch of moldy cheese and a peanut butter and jam sandwich without the bread we proceeded to walk to see the Garrison district. The Garrison district is the historic district. We walked around there a bit, but it wasted as interesting as I had thought it would be. It may have been our experience in historic settings and the fact that being a Friday not everything was running.
Instead of spending much time there we took a walk along the river. We picked up two ice cream cones and walked for a way before returning. It was nice, though the day was rather grey. At least it didn't rain. Unfortunately because there wasn't near enough sun we couldn't make use of the sun dial on the side of one of the old buildings.
Leaving Fredericton we went to St. Stephen. This is just a small town, but has a few stops which I'll describe tomorrow after I see them. Instead I'll describe the things we did in St. Stephen since we arrived too late to do anything but set down.
Firstly we took a brief tour of the city looking for propane. Auto-propane is sometimes hard to find and even though New Brunswick is small I do need to fill up eventually. We did find it, but at $1.11 per litre. We are running on gasoline and I haven't decided if I am going to fill up at such a costly price. We had also planned on camping tonight. Alas there appears to be only one campsite near this town and that is closed. I am not sure what could cause a campsite to become closed, the only real costs are the land and labour.
With our lodging plans for the evening being changed we needed to find a motel. Conveniently this town is small enough to have the single visitor centre easily found. We stopped there and had a nice chat with one of the ladies there about the available motels and other attractions in the area. We eventually decided on a motel somewhat outside of town. When we arrived the price was fine as motels go, but no motel will ever beat camping. This motel was first built in the fifties and is the nicest non-chain motel we have stayed in yet.
Now motels mean we cannot cook our own food. Instead dinner was to be found at a nearby diner. Courteney chose a lobster roll, basically a sandwich. I saw a seventeen dollar seafood platter. I like seafood and when in the Maritimes seafood is everywhere. Well, that platter almost killed me, it was all that I could do to finish it. I won't make that mistake again. Seafood is cheap here. Tomorrow I'll see about finding my way to a fishing dock to pick up some lobster for dinner. Apparently they can be had there for about five dollars a pound. That should be fun. But since my dinner was so large I could only watch while Courteney had a nice chocolate cream pie.
Today we left the first of our language ordeals and entered New Brunswick. We made it through our short trip of French surrounded by people who can manage broken English when necessary. On our way back we will spend a much greater amount of time in Quebec and northern, small town Quebec at that.
Also, New Brunswick is quite small. We drove from the north-western corner to nearly the centre in a day and still managed to see the world's longest covered bridge in Heartland and the world's largest axe. The covered bridge crosses the St. John river and heads into a small town. It is well over a thousand feet long and takes a noticeable time to drive across. It takes perhaps five or ten minutes to walk across.
As a single lane bridge it isn't necessarily the most practical, but since it has been there for more than a hundred years I don't see this town getting another bridge or getting rid of this one. In the visitor centre nearby we bought postcards and Courteney found a large plush lobster and found it so irresistible that she bought it. I'm not sure what she is going to do with it, but she has it.
After the bridge we drove a ways and arrived at a town with an axe so large that it is hard to describe. It was a double headed axe nearly to scale that had an axe head perhaps fifteen feet wide and two feet thick.
We will be in this province for about a week, even though it is so small because Courteney has family to see and a number of sites she wishes to show me. It may be a nice change not to need to drive so much every day.
Quebec City is old. This would seem obvious from the fact that it recently celebrated its four hundredth year. However other cities through which we have travelled which are well over two hundred years old don't feel near as old. I believe that it is due to the French pattern of three story buildings made of stone which makes it feel as old as it does. Firstly the buildings are large enough and well constructed enough that tearing them down to put up a new building isn't worth it. Being well constructed also reduces the likelihood of them falling down. Then there is the stone. You just don't see stone construction often in North America. Lots of brick it is true, but brick shows its age much quicker.
In any case we visited Quebec City today. Specifically we stuck to Old Quebec, which is the nicer spot anyways. It is full of, as mentioned above, three story stone buildings. It is nice. I had been there once before during a Coop term when I was flown out. I didn't see much then though. We had a few things to see while we were in the city and as we arrived near noon lunch was the first on our agenda.
In Quebec City there is a restaurant called Restaurant aux anciens Canadiennes. This is is a pie stop. So we stopped in and both had the daily special of a bison meat pie. It was quite good. Now the last time I had been in Quebec City I had a beer which was the darkest stout I have ever seen. It is called Boreale Noire and it is black. For those who know it is even darker than the Black Plague. Being back in town I spoiled myself to a bottle over lunch. After the meal it was onto the reason for eating there, the Maple Syrup Pie. It was quite good, but not near as sweet as I had feared. It was quite tasty.
After lunch we went on a walk around the Old City. Our first stop was the wall. Quebec City is not only the oldest, but if I am remembering correctly the only remaining walled city in North America. It is a stone wall perhaps fifteen or twenty feet tall.
After this we went to look at the Citadel. We saw a bit of it, but not all of it because it is still an active military base and home to the French-Canadian regiment. We could have taken a guided tour, but Courteney didn't feel up to it. That is certainly a place to be posted. The Citadel is on one end of the Plains of Abraham, where the historic battle which caused New France to become a colony of the British occurred.
Finally we walked just outside the walls of the city to reach the parliament buildings of Quebec. They take a bit of liberty in using national terms, but I suppose that is what many consider themselves. It is of an entirely different style than the legislative buildings which I have seen to this point and is really just an enormous stone rectangle with a large stairway to the front doors. It is nice, but rather uniformly grey.
That pretty much covers the sites we wanted to see in Quebec. We will likely travel back through Quebec on our way to the northern portions of the provinces, but have no listed stops. We are currently near the New Brunswick border and will begin exploring that province tomorrow.
I have often wished that I could speak French fluently. Alas, due to a lack of practice I cannot. Although I took French for the majority of my elementary and secondary schooling. I believe that I got rather reasonable and conjugation and forming sentences. However, I was always slow and my vocabulary is as small as you would expect. Even though I know a few people who speak French I feel too bad to make them endure conversations with me speaking at a two year old level. But being here in Quebec and having to deal is bringing back small snippets of highschool French.
So we are both making our ways with what little French we remember from school, the cereal box French we know by heart and what our little phrase book helps us out with. When we arrived here at the campsite we met a nice man across the fence who decided to talk to us. We know but a little French and he knows but a little English, but we made due and managed to have a slow and stilted conversation.
Earlier today we were in Montreal. We didn't have any particular stop so we walked around the downtown for a couple of hours. We had lunch and took a look at how expensive Just For Laughs tickets were. The lunch was good, the tickets about eighty or ninety dollars a person per show. This meant that we couldn't see a show, but perhaps next year. The downtown was quite nice and I think that if I knew French I could live there with relative ease. This means that there are two places I could go which are big for my industry: Vancouver and Montreal. The third, Toronto, didn't appeal to me at all.
The Canadian Museum of Civilization is deceptively large. Enormous I would call it. We spent the entire day there and only finished seeing perhaps two thirds of what is there on display. We had fun and I got to enter another new province, Quebec.
This museum has a number of neat things and displays including the Canadian Postal Museum and a linear history of booming industry and life in the various Canadian Provinces and Territories. The history itself moved east to west and yet was mostly linear in time. It is a bit funny to see the development of Canada happen moving to the west in a progression over time. Especially since most of the eastern provinces had plateaued before a more westernly province really took off.
There is also an exhibit of Egyptian artifacts which Courteney quite enjoyed. These are the things on permanent display that we saw. We didn't have time for the permanent displays on the Natives of Canada or the historic people of Canada or the Children's museum. There were also a few temporary exhibits which we saw. The first was an exhibit on mythical monsters. These included dragons, unicorns, sasquatch and the like. It was pretty nice and covered a number of creatures from countries and continents which I had never known, such as Mexico and Australia.
The other temporary exhibit we saw was the Royal Stamp Collection. It was interesting to see and showed mostly the very old stamps from when postage stamps where the new thing. It is a bit odd to think that postage stamps haven't existed forever, postage hasn't always been cheap and it used to be the receiver who paid.
We finished looking around at about five in the evening and were both exhausted. Stacy came to my Grandparents' after work and said goodbye, which was nice. It impossible for us to expect others to rearrange their life when we arrive because we can give no notice, but she put the effort in anyways. They all did really in that they mostly showed up for dinner on Saturday.
This ends our stay in Ottawa. We have seen all the family in this part of the country and have seen all the sites we desire to see. Tomorrow morning we are heading back into Quebec to the city of Montreal. It should be an interesting thing to see, I just hope that the French doesn't trip me up too much. It should be alright in the parts we are going this time, but on the way back we are planning on heading through the more northern parts of Quebec where English is a foreign language.
Cheese curds and sunshine where the big things that happened today. We woke up and moved ourselves to the Dugay's again. Once there my Uncle Jim was kind enough to drive us to St. Albert's. St. Albert's is a place with an awesome cheese factory which packages and sells fresh cheese curds. These are also known as squeaky cheese because they squeak when they are fresh. One the way back we picked up a sandwich each and returned to their house to eat and have a couple of beers in the sun. It was quite nice.
We had come prepared to take a swim in their pool, but it was too cold because they've have rather cool weather the past few weeks. They even fed us dinner which was also nice as we could talk more than we did the previous night as we bounced around a bit trying to see everybody.
It is a nice change to be woken by the sound of thunder and being able to roll over and go back to sleep. In a tent we don't have that luxury. Today was a wet one. The weather rotated between overcast, raining lightly and pouring cats and dogs. It did this all day, even after we had left the cottage. This unfortunately means that we were mostly stuck inside the cottage until we left in the early afternoon watching satellite TV. Such is life however.
After returning to the city there was a family dinner at the Dugay's (the family of one of my mother's sisters). It was good as it meant that I got to meet several family members who I would have had to seek out otherwise. As you might imagine with people's work schedule that would be difficult. It was nice to see everybody. I've now met all the new children of the family and I believe that I am the first in my immediate family to do so.
I even got Grandpa to drive out to his daughter's place. This is a trip which people apparently find it difficult to get him to do. Now this also meant that I couldn't stay quite as long as I would have liked, but that is alright. We are going back there tomorrow in order for us to get some cheese curds, which are only good when they are fresh and squeaky.
The Canada Science and Technology Museum is similar to Science World in Vancouver. Both of us enjoy playing with science toys so we spent the morning and half the afternoon visiting it and having fun. I had been there once before perhaps ten or fifteen years previous when I came out to visit my grandfather. We had plenty of fun watching the electricity demo, though unfortunately Courteney didn't get up to try the Vandegraf Generator. One day I'll get a picture of her using one.
Of course most of the exhibits have been changed from when I was there. This time around they had an exhibit about Canadian Inventions (bug repellent!) and a photographer by the name of Karsh. Both where rather interesting. I especially liked the radio and telegraph exhibit.
After leaving the museum we went back to my grandparents' place and my Aunt Katie and her husband Ken where there. It was good to see them and we talked for about an hour before they had to leave.
After this Stacy showed up to take us to the Cooper Cottage where Amanda and Cory are staying. There we had a few beers and chatted by the fire. I wish we could have had more fires during our trip, but it just hasn't been practical. So that is what we did.
As I was saying before my grandparents live just minutes from downtown Ottawa so today we spent in centre town, as they call it. First we went to the Parliament buildings. When we arrived we caught the tail end of the changing of the guard. We saw them march down the lawn and then off on the street. There were lots of people crowding around as people tend to do. Well a police officer came running to clear the troop's path of onlookers. After this had been done the troop started to march out, towards the road and the line of onlookers. Well, the lead man was marching toward a particular group of onlookers. And marched towards them. And marched further towards them with no indication that they were going to stop. When the leader was about fifteen feet away from the onlookers they started to get nervous. At ten feet some started to back up. At five most were starting to freak out as they would assuredly be run over. At three feet the leader turned, stamped his foot and continued on his way. I am certain that man enjoyed doing that.
After this the huge crowd of people dissipated we went to get ourself a free tour ticket. After getting it we had an hour before it started so we went ahead and took the self guided tour around the buildings. We saw all the various monuments and the like that are placed around the buildings. The most beautiful building there is the Parliamentary Library. It is also the only original building which remained after the fire in 1916. You'll need to wait for my pictures or find pictures yourself, but it is quite the library.
Eventually we finished the walk and had a bit more time to spend before our tour started so we sat in a shady spot and listened to the musical bells in the tower. It is actually an instrument operated by directly connected pedals. It is quite the thing and are as capable as a piano. Except that some bells weight nearly three thousand pounds.
So our tour started and went much as you would expect. We saw the house of commons, the senate room, a couple other small rooms and the inside of the Parliamentary Library. The library is all one up inside with intricately carved wood where the rest of the building is stone.
Upon finishing the tour we hit the boutique, as they call the gift shop. We bought a couple of postcards and two maple syrup lollipops. These have got to be the sweetest lollipops I have ever tasted. Even Courteney with her sweet tooth can only have a little before putting it away. They are likely to last at least a week, if not two.
Leaving the Parliamentary buildings we went to wander a bit downtown. We ended up in a pedestrian mall and checked out a few shops. On one end of this mall was the War Memorial and the grave of the Unknown Soldier, which we saw. On the opposite end was the Currency Museum. This was on our list so we took a peek.
Inside they had the history of money with artifacts related to the times laid out. It was interesting to see, especially the progression in the quality of coins from rough lumps to roughly stamped coins to the well shaped coins of today. Also interesting was the early history of money in Canada. It started as beaver pelts with the Hudson Bay Company having all their prices in beaver pelt equivalents. At one time Quebec (as a colony of France) used playing cards because there wasn't enough coin to go around. It is somewhat amazing that money made of playing cards could have worked, but it did.
This museum also has a large selection of bills and coins from all modern times and places. This means that I saw a thousand dollar Canadian bill. There was even for a time a fifty thousand dollar Canadian bill that was used only by banks. It is a bit of a shame that electronic funds transfers like debit and credit cards have done away with the thousand dollar bill, but I guess life must move on.
Thus ended our first full day in Ottawa. We still have many more things to see and we'll be here a while more. My grandfather picked us up and took us back. We had a nice dinner of salad and spaghetti and then wiled the rest of the evening away chatting and reading. It sure is nice to not have to drive far to get places and not have to setup camp when we are done the day. We will be sure to enjoy this while we can.
Well, we really did nothing today except drive from Port Perry to Ottawa taking the scenic route. It is some relatively nice farm country, but not much else can be said of it.
We have arrived at my Grandparents' house and will be staying here for a few days. They have lived here for decades and so the house is conveniently located minutes from downtown and most of the things we have to see in this city. It will be good.
The most noticeable change from the last time I was here is that the enormous maple tree in the backyard has been replaced by a small maple tree. Apparently the old one had begun to split and was threatening to fall own on the house in a stiff wind.
Another day and another two attractions. The first was the Canadian War Heritage Museum in Brantford. This is a smaller museum, but it had a nice collection and lays out progressions of wars quite nicely. Again it was staffed by a veteran, which I still find full of pressure. It was good though. They apparently also have a couple of the old military vehicles that are still in running condition, but they hadn't been moved for the season.
Those heavy vehicles all have relatively weak engines. The largest vehicle there had a mere eighty horsepower and the most powerful engine was less than a hundred and fifty horsepower. You'd be hard pressed to find a new pickup truck with less horsepower than any two of the vehicles there combined. It sure makes you wonder why newer vehicles need so much power.
After leaving the museum we headed to the Reptile Zoo which we missed yesterday. It was fairly nice and had a reasonable collection of snakes, lizard and a few other things of interest. The most interesting was the albino alligator which was on loan from another zoo. There was also a pair of Nile Crocodiles, which are huge. The largest one was at least twelve feet long. Not something I'd like to meet in a river. Finally there was a group of half a dozen small alligators one of which was quite active and would follow us from one end of their tank to the other.
Unfortunately we were unable to get in contact with a number of the friends and family who live in the area. We have finished seeing the sites we have for the area and tomorrow we move onto the Ottawa region. We would like to stay and see the people we missed, but though we have no fixed schedule we cannot afford to stagnate.
The resting place of the Stanley Cup is the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto. Today we went there. It is much as you'd expect with artifacts from all the ages of hockey and notable moments. The moments in history I found more interesting than most of the moments. There are also some video games, some hockey games (such as playing goalie against a video opponent) and two vaults of trophies. In one they display replicas of current minor hockey trophies and actual retired trophies. In the other they have not only the original Stanley Cup, but also most of the modern professional cups in either replicas or actual. The replicas are all quite good. When we were there the real Stanley Cup was in Pittsburgh. Had it in been in house we could have touched it and had our picture taken with it.
The Hall of Fame also has a gallery on international hockey, which I found interesting. Finally the Hall of Fame has an extensive gift shop of branded merchandise for most of the teams. If you ever want to get a pencil or alarm clock or scoreboard lamp for the fan in your life check this place out.
After we had gone through the Hall of Fame we headed to Niagra Falls. The Canadian side is absolutely better. Not only are the falls better, but the views are better. Of course we went on the Maid of the Mist boat and not only did we get wet, but we also enjoyed it. It is well worth the money.
We didn't spend long at Niagra, but enjoyed it nonetheless. After Niagra we tried to visit a Reptile Zoo, but we didn't have the address and our GPS Navigation box failed us. Tomorrow.
Toronto is a very large city. Even if I hadn't known this before arriving there is no mistaking it from the streets. There is just something in the way big city streets are laid out, paved and how parkings works that is different from any other type of city.
Well today we went to Toronto. The original plan was to go up the CN Tower, then the Hockey Hall of Fame before going to Medieval Times for dinner. Unfortunately the line at the CN Tower to go up to the top observation point was well over an hour long and by the time we finished there it was nearly two in the afternoon. Medieval Times opened its doors to get tickets and seats and examine some of the things they have there at two thirty. So we walked to check out the hours of the Hall of Fame, but could not go in because we needed to find our way to our dinner-theatre.
There are a couple of things other than just the observation decks at the CN Tower. First there is the short movie describing its construction, design and a few anecdotes from people involved in the project. I didn't know, but the practical purpose of the tower is to be used at a broadcast and telecommunications tower. Build an antenna tall enough and you can transmit over skyscrapers. The movie is worth watching.
Then there is a simulation roller coaster which has a theme of a futuristic tree factor and mill. Unless simulator rides are your passion I wouldn't recommend spending time doing this. However, the ticket which gets you everything also allows you to skip a bunch of the line to the elevator up and so is likely worth the few extra dollars.
So we'd gone up to the main observation deck, looked around and then waited in line forever to go up to the tallest man-made observation deck in the world. After coming down it was time to go to dinner. Medieval Times is a dinner-theatre that is fairytale medieval themed. That is the knights are chivalrous, the king doesn't have gout and the evil prince plays fair most of the time. Even dinner is themed. Firstly there are no cutlery, you eat with your hands. I quite enjoyed tearing my half chicken to bits in order to consume its delicious flesh, but I imagine some in the audience didn't fair so well.
The show itself is a mix of horsemanship demonstrations, knight skill demonstrations, plot and tournament fighting. The horsemanship was pretty cool, they crab walked a horse and had a horse walking on only its hind legs. There was also precision formation riding. The knight skill demonstration was mostly done on horseback and included catching large rings with a lance at speed, spearing a target at speed, passing flags back and forth at speed and catching a small, four inch steel ring, at speed. I quite liked the latter one as it is truly difficult and only one got it.
I would rate Medieval Times as a place to go and a thing to see at least once.
Today was a rest day in order to help Courteney get over her cold. We just mostly hung around my Aunt Debbie's place. We did go and see a movie, Transformers, which wasn't bad and then spent a couple of hours reading and enjoying the sun which came out while we were in the dark theatre.
So Courteney is well on the mend, but I am getting a cough now. Sometimes we just can't win.
After an easy day of driving we arrived in Port Perry. Well, we arrived in Oshawa because we were looking for a movie theatre. We didn't find one, but we did find propane for fifty cents a litre, which is good.
Anyways, we eventually arrived at about two thirty to a warm introduction at my Aunt Debbie's house. She put on a nice dinner. Tyler even showed up with his family in tow. It was nice. We spent most of the evening chatting, though Courteney did help my Aunt with some knitting.
Tomorrow is going to be a rest day to ensure that Courteney is all better before we go to Niagra falls. She has been getting better, but isn't quite a hundred percent.
Yesterday was Canada Day. Most municipalities in Canada, especially the larger ones, have fireworks the evening of Canada Day. We were even lucky enough to arrive at a sizable town. Unfortunately because Courteney is sick we had to go to bed early and did not get to watch the fireworks.
Everybody in Ontario should own a canoe. Ontario is so full of lakes, streams. creeks and rivers that everybody should spend time touring their waters. Now of course this is much easier than it used to be since the invention of DEET. According to Wikipedia DEET was invented by the US military, so let it never be said that enormous military budgets haven't helped make the world a better place. Driving through this country I wish for two things. Firstly that I had a canoe on me. Secondly that Courteney didn't hate bugs or water near as much as she does. I'm going to need to find some outdoorsy friends.
Well today was another day full of driving. There was a short break in the middle of it when we saw the big nickel. For those who are unaware there is a giant nickel (made of nickel) in Sudbury, Ontario. Sudbury is known for its nickel mining so I suppose it makes sense. Anyways, this is a scale nickel approximately fifteen feet in diameter. It is something to see, especially if you are feeling touristy. Other than that we have really just driven. I am happy that tomorrow is the last complete day of driving for a while as I am getting tired of sitting and seeing nothing but highway for hours on end.
In other news Courteney was a bit better today than yesterday so she is likely getting better. Perhaps she'll learn to listen to me yet when I tell her how to improve her situation, whether that'd be by going to bed early or by looking where she is going to sit before sitting even if she left just a minute ago.
Today was all about driving. Or at least, it was all about driving once I got a miserable Courteney to have a shower, eat her breakfast and dry her hair. Courteney is slow on the best of mornings. On mornings when she is sick she is downright glacial. She is still quite under the weather, though she is not so bad once she gets moving.
As I was saying today was all about driving, as can be seen from the number of kilometres we covered today. There isn't anything we really want to see in this area until we hit Sudbury and we are pushing to reach to reach family not only so we can mooch a warm bed (to heal Courteney of course), but also to see them. This is important because unlike the USA portion of the trip where I had the second half of funds meant for Canada to fall back on if things got expensive in Canada the trip ends when I run out of money. Courteney being sick doesn't help matters at all because she is even more miserable than normal when the thought of camping when it is raining comes up. And of course cheap motels cost two to four times as much as the average night of camping. It will also be nice to see the family I haven't seen for a number of years and won't for at least a couple more after I get married because I'll be too broke putting together a home.
Hopefully it stops raining soon, Courteney gets better soon and propane gets cheaper soon. I am quite surprised to see that propane isn't near as cheap out east as it is in the Lower Mainland. Back home it is always at least thirty cents per litre cheaper. Out here is is more like ten cents and I have even seen it more expensive at one station. There is something wrong with being charged nearly a dollar a litre for something which was fifty cents back home when I left.
Also, Lake Superior is very big.
It turns out that Ontario is larger than I first believed. Or rather, what I call western Ontario is bigger than I first believed. In some ways it is perhaps a country in itself. It certainly has a much different feel in this part than the other parts of Ontario I have been in on past trips east. Perhaps this explains why people out here tend to not take into consideration the needs of the actual western provinces, simply because western Ontario is already so different that they consider it impossible that anything could be as different again.
Let me start at the beginning however. The reason I discovered that western Ontario is so much larger than I first believed is that Courteney is sick. It isn't anything serious, but Courteney doesn't take well to being sick and travelling is hard enough on her already. So I thought we might push our travel a bit in order to arrive at my Aunt Debbie's house sooner such that she would have a warm place to get better. I thought it couldn't be more than eight or nine hundred kilometres away from where we stayed last night, Dryden. Well was I wrong. It was actually sixteen hundred kilometres and our GPS claimed it would take twenty-two hours to drive it. So we'll see when we actually arrive. Until then I'm not sure how I'm going to keep her warm so she gets better.
Speaking of my GPS. The GPS contains within it a directory of services and businesses from what I believe to be all the world. How useful and accurate it is really depends on where you are. The maps themselves are pretty complete; as I mentioned previously it has at least some of the US Forestry Service roads in it. Something I may not have mentioned is that it contains mapping information for Europe and when searching for cities we have occasionally been forced to ignore results from Russia and Europe. Now in the USA the business directory seemed pretty good. If it didn't find something we were looking for in a particular small town, then it didn't exist. In Canada, however, it has been less good. It is fine for larger cities, but it falls down on the smaller ones. One example which was annoying is motels in Golden. We knew there were plenty of motels in Golden because we had driven by them, but when we went to search for a list of them to make a decision the GPS turned up only three.
It is always annoying and frustrating when you cannot trust your tools.
During the drive today we saw two moose, several deer (only one on the road) and one wolf. It is surprising how much wildlife you don't see in the Lower Mainland. I find myself wishing wildlife on the highway was a legitimate worry where I lived.
We started the day by visiting the Royal Canadian Mint. They have a tour where they show you the facilities and the various steps needed to mint coins. The tour is from an elevated and enclosed platform. I learnt a few things. The most interesting is perhaps that the Canadian Mint makes coins under contract for a number of countries, even a couple of coins for the USA. Also the original poppy quarter was the worlds first coloured coin. Finally most new Canadian coins are stainless steel with a coating of nickel and iron. Thinks I didn't know.
The mint also has a coin boutique, should you be a coin collector and want something new and special. They have a few other things. The most fun is the option to hold a solid gold brick. That's right, half a million dollars and twenty eight pounds of gold can be in your hands. Of course you can't leave with it, the chain and armed guard makes sure of that.
The mint also has an interesting souvenir. They've taken one of their old stamping machines and hooked it up to stamp a stainless steel blank with the mint logo and the current year.
And so we left the prairies and headed into Ontario. In preparing for the next bit of the trip we took a look at the map. The first odd thing you'll notice is that the people from Ontario call the western part of the province North Ontario. This is odd because we are driving at about the same level as Kelowna. The second and perhaps more odd thing is that not only is Ontario large, it is also empty. Find a road map of Ontario and look at the highways. There is nothing in the northern two thirds of the province. Yet if you look in similar places on the west coast you'll find highways well into the north, you can even drive all year round beyond the tree line. I truly wonder why there is nothing in northern Ontario.
This just in: You can make butter with regular 1% milk if you shake it enough. I went to the truck this morning to fetch the things necessary for a cereal breakfast only to find that our milk had gone chunky. Not the chunky that happens when it has gone bad, but instead the chunky where all the fat in it had grouped together leaving whites blobs floating in a pale white liquid. We opted to not have cereal and instead had cereal bars. This is how we started our first full day in Winnipeg.
Today was a historical tour of two of the National Historic sites in the area. The first was Lower Fort Garry. This fort is a short distance north of the city and is an HBC fort first put into service in the late 1840's. They have perhaps eight buildings all decked out with period furniture and living articles. Most of the buildings are also manned by actor-guides in period dress. Each actor has a story to tell about what part they are playing in fort, but they are also quite knowledgeable with respect to facts that a person in their position during the operation of the fort would know. It was quite a nice experience and I highly recommend it to anybody in Winnipeg with half a day to kill.
After Fort Garry we paid a short visit to the Riel House. This is the historic house of the Riel family, most famously Louis Riel. It is setup for the year 1886, the year after his execution. There we found a guide in period clothing who was also quite knowledgeable. I'm not sure if this is normal for National Parks, but I like it. It was especially nice at the house because it turned eight hundred square feet of tourable house into an entertaining and educational hour long tour.
The most interesting portion of the Riel house is the minor historic point that it records. This is the French system of agricultural division. In the English system farms are made square in shape. The French system has long narrow farms instead. This is more sensible than it first appears because each farm was ensured access to a river for water and transportation. Each farm also had a variety of land available for use, from fertile land next to the river for vegetables to heavily forested land up to three kilometres from the river banks. Each farm tended to be 250 metres wide and three or more kilometres long. I think it is an extremely well thought out system that is good for self-sufficient or nearly self-sufficient family farms.
The final thing we had before retiring to our room for the evening was a slushie apiece. Winnipeg is the slushie capital of the world after all and it is only fitting. Things went about as expected with them, we both got a far amount of brainfreeze, I became fidgety (perhaps the 1.2 litre cup was a bad choice) and Courteney simply felt ill. It's all ended alright though so tomorrow is another day of adventuring.
Today was one of those days in which we are forced to consider the more mundane tasks of life. Tasks such as laundry. So we spent a couple of hours sitting in a laundromat. While heading back to the truck for a snack while waiting for our laundry to finish I discovered that my grill had caught something slightly unusual. In addition to the normal variety of bugs and the odd leaf I discovered that I had caught a bird. It took over twenty-eight thousand kilometres of watching small birds flying into the highway to take flight, but I finally caught one. I am quite surprised it took this long.
After dealing with the necessary chores of laundry and scraping a bird out of my grill we arrived in Winnipeg. Before finding a room for the next couple of days we ate dinner. One of the things that I put on my list of things to do was to eat sushi in the prairies. Early in the second half of the trip we decided to wait until Winnipeg to do this because it is really in the middle of the country. So that is what we did for dinner. It was not bad, but as you might expect rather expensive. This did mean that they put the effort into the small things. Things such as having good green tea and raised floors with a hole around a table for your feet. This gave us the appearance of kneeling at the low Japanese tables. That was neat.
Now we are tucked away in a cheap motel for the next two nights. Two nights is really the minimum amount of time it is going to take to see all the stuff we need to see here. I had considered camping, but it was raining all day. Earlier in the day as we had just finished our laundry it started to rain hard. We had to fill up on propane before leaving. As we waited in line and for the man to pump the propane the skies opened and started throwing lighting and thunder around. I got soaked waiting outside.
For this reason we aren't camping now and will stay in a motel. It also means that we are guaranteed a shower. Unlike in the USA it appears that most campsites have pay showers. Now we never have much change because we use it for small purchases, parking and the like. Just something interesting.
This afternoon we left Regina and continued east. In the morning we saw the RCMP Depot and Heritage Centre. The Heritage Centre is basically a museum which explains the history of the force and has a number of artifacts from various eras.
It is an interesting thing to see, especially in the equipment that the early force was equipped with in their patrols of the north. They truly did not have much in the way of equipment. Perhaps the most useful things they had were their rifles and their red serge. In some ways I wish that the RCMP still wore the red as a regular uniform, but can see the argument for wearing a more modern uniform.
After perusing the museum there was the Sergeant's Parade, which we saw and a short guided tour of the base afterwards. It is an interesting tour to take. It doesn't travel far and wide into the base since it is an active training base.
We finished with the RCMP at around 2:30 in the afternoon. We then left town heading east. We ended up at a campground in a small town just west of the Manitoba border. When we arrived there was already a good swarm of mosquitoes milling about and the number only increased as the day wore on. We quickly put up the tent, cooked dinner and ate. In the end we finished up at around 6:30 and hid in the tent.
Now I have often heard that mosquitoes are bigger in the east and the north. I never quite believed them, but now I have seen it for myself. The mosquitoes we saw were about twice the size of the ones I have seen in the south western area of British Columbia. This is bad, but for the first time in my experience bug spray has been successful at keeping the mosquitoes at bay. Usually all it seems that bug spray does is annoy me. It certainly worked this time and was only 25% DEET. The bugs are taking their toll on Courteney though. She is seriously mentioning her desire to end the trip. She is going to go on as far as she can, but this evening she has claimed that Churchill, Manitoba is likely the end of the road for her. We shall see.
Today we arrived in the big city of Regina. To get here we had to drive about a hundred and fifty kilometres of road, most of it good. There were few bends and those that did exist seemed put in place more to keep drivers awake than to avoid anything.
The first thing we did upon arriving was visit the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. This is a relatively small museum that has the focus of the province of Saskatchewan. It covers the geology of the area, the native culture of the province and the environment through time. It starts with rocks, goes through natives, then through dinosaurs and the ice ages before arriving in more modern times with animals and environments you'd see today. It was nice to see.
By the end of it Courteney's back was hurting and my watch read 3:30 PM so we decided to get a room for the night and perhaps let Courteney lay down before dinner. Upon arriving I checked out the weather channel as I always do when it is available. It was now that I discovered that it was in fact 2:30. We had half the day left. Courteney had recently mentioned how she wanted to see the movie Up, while it was still in theatres. So we went to a theatre.
Upon arriving it turned out that the first showing was not until 6:30. We had a bunch of time to kill. To do so we went to the legislative buildings. Since we will be travelling through all the capital cities I thought it a good idea to at see all the buildings to round out the trip. We did this and then wandered around a garden nearby and eventually rested on a bench beside what I believe was a river for a while.
After tiring of this we travelled to a nearby pizza place for an early dinner. This we had and we finished up at just after five and still had lots of time left. We has passed a blood donation clinic on the way to the pizza place so I thought we'd stop by and I'd give some of my blood to kill time. Well we found it again, but it had closed at one PM today. I'd give blood more often if they weren't always closed whenever I have the time.
Well, after this we returned to the movie theatre and proceeded to waste forty-five minutes wandering the adjoining mall. When it came time to go and get our tickets, however, we were in a Walmart and had some difficulty returning to the mall. Yes, we got lost in Walmart. We eventually found our way out, watched the movie, enjoyed ourselves and then found ourselves back at our motel for the night. Tomorrow we see the RCMP museum and perhaps a tour of the grounds before we head out of town for Winnipeg.
The town of Moose Jaw is somewhat bigger than I expected. I expected a small town, but not one of the tiny farming towns we've seen around. Instead it is perhaps what counts for a medium sized town out here, they even have parking meters on the streets.
We went to see the tunnels of Moose Jaw. These are what started out as steam service tunnels and were later used both by Chinese immigrants and bootleggers. Both of these tours are historic in nature, but they are not the stuffy tour you would expect. Instead they are, more or less, tour plays. Of course nobody tells you this before the tour starts. The bootlegging tour is entirely a play, where the Chinese tour is only half a play and half a tour full of explanation.
We did the bootlegging tour first and I ended up being chosen (you didn't expect them to let people volunteer did you?) as Charlie, the regular there at the speak easy. Well we go through the club, Al Capone's office and bedroom. Then we meet the guard who brews, and sells, Al Capone's 195 proof private reserve.
It was interesting and well done. As a note it turns out that Charlie is a long time drinking buddy of the guard. It was fun.
The Chinese was more formal in places, but that is likely because acting out what the Chinese did would be difficult and involve burning our hands and days of backbreaking labour.
After doing this we left the city in search of a place to stay. We had some time so we decided to head a bit south. In the end we ended up heading down a badly maintained highway until we were merely a hundred kilometres from the border. On the way we passed through a lot of farmland and I drove around a lot of broken pavement.
Willow Bunch is a small farming support community. It is big enough to have a motel, at least one gas station (we've passed towns without those) and a pub. It also has a museum, but I'm not sure why. As we were very near town we saw a sign leading so a historic park with petroglyph's. It was only eighteen kilometres down a gravel road and it even looked like it'd been graded in the last couple of years. On the way there we passed through an even small town which goes by the name St. Victor. Victor is a one street town and though it is paved in town, it is gravel on either side. I'm really not sure how that town survives, but if anybody is interested there is a house for sale.
Anyways, we go up a hill to see these carved rocks. They are horizontal sandstone rocks and are exposed to the elements. Thus the actual carvings are faint. Somebody was nice enough to place a modern replica with deep carvings for us to examine in detail with ease. We saw and looked and we took in the view of the plains as this was on an actual hill which was perhaps two hundred feet above the rest of the plains. It was nice.
So back we head down eighteen klicks of gravel to the town we had decided to actually stay at. We head to the regional park and tour it trying to find a suitable spot. I was quite surprised at how nice the park was considering the area and what sort of money must be available. Well we set up and ate dinner. Just before cooking dinner we notice that the time on my watch and the time on my cellphone do not match up. They differ by an hour. For the time being we choose to go by my watch.
Well, the world's tallest tepee isn't quite what I expected. Firstly I expected the world's tallest tepee in Medicine Hat to be enclosed, it wasn't. It was instead an exposed skeleton of structural steel. This was the first disappointment. Secondly I fully expected the tallest tepee to be a gift shop visitor centre or liquor store. All we got instead was half a dozen paintings and some plaques explaining the painting. All the paintings represented important events or elements of native culture in Alberta.
Other than that we didn't really do that much. The drive from Rosedale to Saskatchewan is really quite relaxing. The road is good and the small hills keep things interesting enough. Unfortunately sections of the highway become rather rough in Saskatchewan. Also the parts of Saskatchewan we have seen are mostly flat, but not near as flat as the jokes would have you believe.
Judging by the distance we've covered since we left and how much more distance we have left to cover I am beginning to wonder how long this leg will truly take. It may still take the three months that I first guessed because we have a number of stops and family to see, however it may be significantly less driving than I first anticipated because the stops we have have been rather tightly grouped so far. In some ways this is good, travelling less distance means it costs less and we can do more, but in other ways it is less good, the trip doesn't feel even with some driving and some seeing everyday but instead has lots of driving with lots of seeing. The lack of an even mix will probably be more tiring and I worry about that.
Today we took our leave of Calgary. We woke up, showered and started to pack up while Grandma made us a nice breakfast. After eating and chatting for a short while we finished packing and loaded up the truck. We made it out at about ten thirty in the morning.
Our first stop was the Royal Tyrrel Museum. Because we got out a bit late and had to wait a short while to fill the truck we didn't arrive until nearly one o'clock. So we moved around the museum and took a look at the dinosaurs and related things. It was nice and enjoyable. Courteney had never been and I had last been there about eight years ago.
So we finished going through the museum at around four thirty. Courteney's back has been bothering her for the last couple of days and was bothering her as we left so we went directly to a campsite to stay for the night. We've had large meals for the last couple of days so we ate small with some soup and fruit.
Today was a lazy day. Because it was fathers' day the Barnerts put on a huge breakfast with omelets, potatoes, waffles and fruit. We gladly took part. We ate and then lazed around talking until about noon when Courteney and I began our trip back to my grandparents'. Once there I had a shower and read while Courteney baked a couple of strawberry-rhubarb pies.
Later family members started arriving for the dinner Grandma was putting on for us. The turkey was good. Eventually dessert came, we the delicious pies still warm from the oven and everybody was well fed. There was much conversation and, as it was a Sunday, they started to roll home around nine.
This was fine because both Courteney and I were quite tired. We went to bed shortly after the last group left.
After a great breakfast of bacon and eggs we headed out to the museum we failed to find yesterday. It was actually called the Military Museums. It is a pretty nice museum with sections from most of the branches of the Canadian Military. It is too large to fully see in a single day. Instead we took our time through one of the museums, carefully reading every plaque and examining every artifact. The rest of the museums we went through an skimmed most of the artifacts, stopping to carefully examine certain things. There are a lot of things I missed.
After I walked Courteney's feet off we went for a late lunch and a couple of beers with Shane, Wes and Wes' girlfriend. I had a good steak sandwich. After that we went back to Shane's place to kill some time. We played video games for an hour or so and then played with a small, primitive motorized bike that was there. This bike has perhaps a two horsepower motor and no real suspension to speak of. We had fun motoring around the block for a while.
Now it turns out that Shane bought a six and a half horsepower motor on a whim a while back. Well, having fun on this little bike has put the thought into Shane's mind to make use of this motor. The most popular thoughts of what he should motorize is a barrel, a refrigerator box and a carpet. The barrel is perhaps the most practical, but the magic carpet is the coolest. We'll see what he comes up with.
After leaving Shane's place we made a quick stop at the liquor store and then onto the Barnert's plot for dinner and a bonfire. A nice large fire was built and fun was had. We went to bed late and slept deeply.
Today we made it to Calgary. A trip that can be made in nine and a half hours and we made it take six days. We arrived in the late morning. Our first stop was up the Calgary tower. It has a nice view of the city and out onto the horizon in most directions. It was fairly nice, though the glass floor isn't as nerve wracking as I remember.
After that we tried to find what we knew as the war museum. We were unable to find it and so instead went to the World of Science here. We thought it would be much like Science World. In some ways it was, but it was mostly more for children than Science World. We stayed an hour and a bit and saw what there was to see, but I wouldn't recommend it.
After that we headed to my grandparents' house. We were greeted in the typical style with hugs and a nice dinner. We stayed up too late talking.
We spent most of today taking in our beautiful national parks. First we went to Lake Louise. It is a very nice lake. We walked an easy path around the shore to the far end from the town. We tried to meet Mark and Karen for lunch, but they weren't answering their phone when we called. That's fine though, we'll see them in Calgary.
After Lake Louise we moved a short distance to Banff. There we took in a garden they have here built around the administration buildings, the original national park site of the hot springs and a couple of other things along the road. It is truly a nice park and I feel that I have underused the park system.
Mostly we walked around a bunch and took in the scenery. One other thing we took in was my hatred of RVs. I truly hate RVs. They are clumsy monsters of vehicles often driven by people who have never driven anything bigger than a sedan. Of course they can't stick to the straight main roads. No, they are inclined to take the narrow, twisting mountain roads of the parks and boy do they take them slow. I don't understand why you want to take what is basically a house on wheels to a campsite. Is it truly camping if you have all the luxuries of home?
This is not to say that I don't see the allure of having a camper, I truly do. Set up and tear down a tent everyday for three months and you get to see how nice it would be to sleep in your vehicle. In fact I am perfectly alright with camper vans. They are not unwieldy, slow and overly full of comforts. In fact if I ever do this sort of trip again, but on a different continent I would seriously consider renting a camper van. But there is no way I'd consider an RV.
So I was wrong in my remembering which side of Golden Roger's Pass is on. It is actually on the west side where Field is on the east side. So we back tracked halfway to Revelstoke in our quest to visit the visitor centre there. It was interesting to see.
As you can see above we made quite a distance of driving today. What I find odd is that though I drove more than most days of driving in the USA I didn't find it near as tiring. I'm not quite sure what to attribute it to exactly, but I have a few guesses. The first is that the drive itself is much quieter. Not only is there much less wind, but there seems to also be a lot less road noise. The road surface is all asphalt, instead of primarily concrete, and thus much smoother going, with significantly less vibration. Now I did replace my front tires, which were going and that has probably helped with the vibration significantly.
Well, after seeing the centre at Roger's pass we headed to the small town of Field. Now I have often driven past this town on our way to Calgary. It is a small town just off the side of the Trans Canada highway. I always thought it was a small town of workers, construction workers, rail workers or miners. I thought it the kind of place where there is one seedy motel and one rough bar. How wrong I was. It is a small place, but there is nothing cheap about it. It also seems that half of all the buildings in the town have a guestroom in them for rent. Not all that cheaply either. So as it was raining and Courteney would hate me otherwise we headed back to Golden to get an affordable motel room.
This brings us to the end of the day where we grabbed dinner at a 50's themed diner. Tomorrow we head into Alberta.
Of all the places I've seen the area around the town of Creston, nestled as it is in a valley in the west Kooteneys, is perhaps the most livable. The valley floor itself is fair sized and fertile. The mountains provide variety and sport. According to one person who lives here the weather is also quite nice with high twenties in the summer and only rarely getting colder than negative ten in the winter. There is always snow, but not usually more than four or five feet. It truly sounds like a nice place to live.
The reason that we have taken the extra long way to Golden (not that we've arrived yet) is to see the glass house. This is a house made mostly of glass bottles and mortar.It was built by a retired mortician in the early fifties. It has a grounds with several retaining walls and what look like guard towers as would be found on a fairytale castle. That is except that the walls are all made of empty sixteen ounce bottles of embalming fluid. There are over half a million such bottles. It is something worth seeing. I forgot to ask if the builder threw stones.
Really the glass house was the only thing we saw today other than driving through the countryside. It is a nice countryside and is pretty full of wildlife. We are making our way north now back to Golden such that we can take Roger's Pass through to Banff. One interesting thing that I forgot to mention yesterday is that apparently road travel across the Rockies was not always as easy as it is now. I'm not talking about hundreds of years ago either. Apparently up until the mid-sixties travel by vehicle was treacherous at the best of times on the Trans Canada and everybody took either the more southern pass or travelled through the USA.
We have also seen perhaps a dozen bikers travelling along the stretched of Trans Canada we have driven. I suppose it is a common challenge, though I didn't think it at the time that my friend Trevor did it. Well, the sun is going down and the bugs coming out. This means it is time to retreat into our shelter for the night.
I have gained a greater appreciation of shelter and the nuances thereof. There are a few things that one could need shelter from: wind, rain, cold, heat, bugs, sunlight and lighting. The least important I have surprisingly found to be sun and cold. A tent only protects against a few of these things, namely bugs, wind and rain. Though they can protect against the sun they get so hot as to be unlivable. The only thing I wish tents provided protection against is lighting. There is nothing quite as draining as setting up a tent for the night with the expectation of rain and the threat of lighting. Retreating into the cramped cab of my truck just isn't comfortable. All the outdoor advice I have seen in regards to thunderstorms say to take cover in a building with plumbing or a car. A tent is neither of these things and yet people have lived for thousands of years before the invention of either plumbing or cars. I wonder how they made it and why a similar reasoning cannot be applied to tents.
I am considering setting up a lighting rod at a distance of fifteen feet or so from my tent, but I don't know if this is both far enough away not to get shocked as it is grounded as well as near enough such that the tent is contained within the radius of attraction.
Today we a busy day. We visited the Last Spike, the Enchanted Forest, the Revelstoke Dam and still made over 250 kilometres of driving.
The Last Spike, for those who are unaware, is where the Canadian Pacific Railway met the east and west portions during construction. It is truly a stop everybody must make at least once in their life as they travel the Trans Canada highway. We have both been there before, but decided to make a quick stop in order to take a picture of it on our trip. It wasn't even out of our way.
After that short stop we arrived at our first planned destination, the Enchanted Forest. The enchanted forest is more or less a short nature trail which has many small (and large) statues of characters and scenes from fairy tales. We saw many familiar things. I had been there once before when I was young, but Courteney had never been and wanted to go. It turns out that this forest was started by a sculpture who created a place to display her work. At first it wasn't open to the public, but eventually it was as traffic increased on the highway. It is a fine way to spend a couple of hours. They even have several buildings which are in interesting form that you can enter and peer out of. They are child sized and so make a tight fit for us two, but we had fun in a couple of them.
The third stop was the Revelstoke Dam. We took the tour and saw some things. It is a self guided tour and so is more of a set of exhibits, but that's fine. The educational toys here are better than the exhibits at Hoover Dam. They are currently installing a fifth turbine to add to the original four (the dam itself is designed for up to six turbines) in order to increase generation capacity and help reach the new government policy of energy self-sufficiency by 2016. Compared to building a dam it is a small project, but installing pipes big enough for two lanes of traffic is a project no matter what.
Finally we drove a bit. We are currently detouring to the very south of the province in order to reach Creston. We should be there tomorrow. We have pretty much fallen back into our travel groove and things are going fine. I'm sure people in Calgary are wondering how we could be taking so long to travel what is otherwise a ten hour drive.
Today is the first day that I realized that we truly different from other tourists in that we get up early. This morning we woke up at six, showered and ate quickly. We were heading out at seven thirty. Our first destination was Hell's Gaate. We arrived shortly after eight. We though this a reasonable time. We were wrong. The Hell's Gate Airtram doesn't start running until ten. So we proceeded to sit in the truck and kill two hours.
Finally the tram started running and we bought our tickets. All the attraction is is crossing the Fraser canyon. It does involve a drop of nearly two hundred feet and there is a little toursty area on the other side with a gift shop, candy shop, some signs and a small museum. You also get to look at Hell's Gate, which is a section of the Fraser river, pretty close up. It is certainly neat to see, but won't fill an entire day out.
Specifically Hell's Gate is a section of the river where one side is a shear cliff, the other side is a steep grade and the river in between travels at up to twenty-five miles an hour when the water is high and more slowly over rocky rapids when low. Before the modern boats no canoe and only a single steamship ever plied these waters. The ship was a paddle wheeler and took 150 Chinese labours pulling it on rope to aid it. I was quite surprised to read that.
Finally there is a suspension bridge which crosses the river. It is the second bridge because the first was washed away a few decades back when the river reached a record height of 207 feet (when we were there it was 170 feet deep). I didn't think rivers could even get that deep.
Well we left Hell's Gate and went back to Hope in order to take the newly detolled highway five to Kamloops. We did this because we thought it would be shorter. After driving it I am no longer sure, but we made it. We are now heading as far east as Revelstoke, then we will head south down to nearly the border to see a few sights. Travelling through the mountains really makes the roads odd and any loops are large and out of our way.
This evening is also the first evening that we are camping again. Last night we stayed in a motel because Courteney feared heavy rain and it did feel rather muggy. I agreed mostly to let her ease her way back into the mood of travelling. No rain came, but I did get a chance to watch the Weather Channel and see that not only was nearly all of Southern Canada having the possibility of thunderstorms yesterday, but also that it is supposed to rain on us for the next four days. Conveniently it didn't rain hard at all today when we were driving, though we did get a light sprinkling a couple of times.
Now being camping we see the bugs and I am reminded about a bug that is very common up here in Canada, but which I saw not at all in the USA. This is the humble fly. We saw very few or none of the black fly and its relatives the house fly, deer fly and horse fly. Well, there are flys here and I expect we won't get away from them at all. I really hate flys more than mosquitoes because some of them take chunks and most of that hurts.
Well, that is all for now, tune in soon for more entires just as exciting as this one.
Finally, we have left for the second leg of our journey. It has been a long road fraught with truck repairs, frustration, waiting and delays. We even had delays leaving today. First loading the truck took far longer than I think it should. This is not to say that we could have done it much faster.
Then I had lost a propane connector bit which I bought to make setting up the stove easier. So we had to pop into Langley City to pick up another. Then I had to buy more car insurance and there was a line. Then, thinking we had everything we headed east. Upon arriving in Abbotsford I recall that I didn't take the bear spray from where I had set it before leaving for the first leg.
While we could easily stand in not having bear spray in the USA because there are significantly fewer bears there and we were planning on sticking primarily to the well populated areas this is not true in Canada. First of all nearly all of Canada has bears, where only a portion of the USA does. Secondly we plan to spend more time taking in the wild. This means we will not only camp in less populated and built up areas, but we will also go hiking in the woods. We will of course take precautions to avoid a problem, but if a confrontation should occur I want more than a pocket knife as my last resort.
So we had to turn around and pick up the spray. Then we headed back towards our first destination, the Hope slide. We arrived a little after four and went to see the slide. It is a large slide and not only filled in a small lake, but also raised the floor of the valley by up to seventy metres. It is amazing what the side of a mountain sliding can do.
This first day of travelling did not go as well as I had planned, but tomorrow should be better. Soon enough we'll get back into the travelling groove.
Since I've been home a few things have happened which are of note. Perhaps the most important has been my attempts to leave on the second half around Canada. I thought this would be a simple matter of getting my truck a tuneup and an oil change, extending my vehicle insurance, buying some food and leaving. In the abstract that is exactly what happened. As always the devil is in the details.
The first detail is that I made an appointment to get a tuneup on my truck and the other minor work. I dropped my truck off first thing in the morning under the expectation that it would be done late that day or early the next. This was a Wednesday. Come Thursday afternoon I call to see how my truck is coming along. I am informed that it is next in line to be seen. If they weren't going to get to it until late Thursday why the hell did I make an appointment in the first place?
But there isn't anything to be done about it. They claim it will be done by the end of the day Friday. This isn't that helpful because I am graduating on Friday and have placed to go in Burnaby and Vancouver afterwards. The mechanic is closed on weekends and I have no chance of getting my truck until Monday. At this point I had hoped to be leaving the Tuesday after graduation.
The truck isn't ready Friday and it isn't ready first thing Monday morning. Instead it is ready at the end of the day Monday. So leaving for Tuesday is shot because I still need to extend the insurance, put a new pair of tires on the front wheels, buy food, pack up and still have enough time in the day to get somewhere before dark.
So I move back to wanting to leave Wednesday. Tuesday morning I go to extend my insurance and my hopes are crushed: my truck failed Aircare. This was unexpected. Sure my truck has never once in the entire time I've owned it passed Aircare the first time. However the solution has always been to give it a tuneup and this time I did that before running it through Aircare. This depressing fact led me to needing to get it back into the mechanic. The very same one which took so long in the first place. I use this particular one because my truck runs on propane and this mechanic has a propane person. They haven't been that bad for time before this summer.
Anyways, I can't get my truck in before Thursday morning. I again hope that it'll be done by the end of the day, but to no avail. In fact, as I write this is is after noon on the following Friday. The importance of the noon number is that though I went food shopping and sorted the stuff we need to pack and all that while waiting for my truck to be fixed I still need to extend my insurance, fill up on fuel, buy ice and drive somewhere. Getting the truck after noon doesn't provide enough time to do all that and make it a suitable distance away.
So now I find myself having to kill time for another evening. Having full days of spare time sucks. This sucks especially when there is nothing worth watching on TV and because I am leaving for an extended period 'any day now' I can't really start putting serious time into any of my private projects. I'll just have to set them aside. So I mill around aimlessly.
And that ends caps off the complaining for the moment. Now I get to summarize the other events that have happened since I got home. The first is that both Courteney and I graduated and where given our degrees. It's been all but finished with since October, but it there is something truly final about a ceremony which makes hundreds of people uncomfortable for a few hours. Courteney ended up with a Bachelors of Arts and myself a Bachelors of Science.
Courteney also spent a couple of days looking at places and we took a tour with the catering manager at one of the places. There is now a date and venue for the wedding (June 19, 2010), but all other planning is being put off until September at the earliest after we get back.
The only other thing of significant note is that Nathan, one of my brother's friends, left for the middle of nowhere. I haven't mentioned this here yet, but over the past couple of months he has been preparing to be flown in on a float plane to some small lake 'near' Burns Lake. He is going to stay there for fourteen months, living all alone except for his dog. He will build a log cabin, chop his wood and generally be separated from civilization for the most part. It is going to be some adventure.
There were of course the required send off parties and he is up there now. He was supposed to bring something similar to our bleeper and use it to notify people where he has decided to setup his cabin. We over here have yet to receive any response, but he left a lot of things to the last minute and may have forgotten to set it up so a number of people got his messages.
He won't be entirely alone the whole time. Sometime during the summer a friend of his is going out there for a time and there are embryonic plans to put together a snowmobile expedition during the winter to visit him. Of course nothing can be done until us in the outside world know where to find him.
I suppose this will do for an entry. I'm sure many people didn't make it this far down into the entry. For those of you who did I commend your stamina. Don't worry, baring permanent delay of the second leg of the trip my next entry will be written on the tiny rubber keyboard and consequently shorter in length.
Before I begin I am announcing that the wait for pictures is over. When viewing the blog just click on that handy Gallery link to see the trimmed results of the USA.
Well, we've been home for a little over a week. In that week I've rested and had time to look back on the first leg of this long trip. Several things come to mind worth noting, but none so unexpected as the realization that travelling is hard work. It truly is.
Then there is the appreciation at the immensity of several modern networks. The road system, electricity, telecommunications, postal service and fuel; these are the largest networks in the USA. By far the largest is the road network and the smallest the fuel network. It is easy to imagine the difficulties caused by this disparity. Equally astounding is how cheap the postal system is. For less than a dollar I got a postcard from the middle of an inhospitable desert in the southern United States to my home in Canada, a trip of several thousand kilometres.
No matter what anybody may say there is an undeniable difference between the USA and Canada and the people who make up those countries. There is no single large distinction that one can point to, instead a wide gulf is created through many small, important differences.
And though there is a difference between my home and the places I travelled and though vast geographic distances create difference in the people even within a small part of the United States, for the most part people live their lives in much the same way no matter where you go.
Though we may joke about the litigious nature of the USA it is certainly true. Lawyers advertise frequently on billboards, milk contains a warning that it may contain milk and nearly every service or product you come across is foam padded.
The most important structure in the entirety of the USA is most certainly the Hoover Dam. Without that dam southern California would be unlivable. The fertile farms there, which produce approximately sixty percent of all the fruits and vegetables, would quickly turn into dust. This critical nature of this structure is sorely underestimated.
When it comes to roads there are a few important differences to note. The first is that the west coast does not believe in guard rails and the east coast in street lines. The streets in urban areas are, as a rule, terrible. The speed limits are much closer to the maximum safe speed for the given road than in Canada. Speeding not only costs in fines, but is actually dangerous in many areas.
The United States is a place to visit and contains lots to see. And yet, after touring it, I have firmed my belief that I would not like to live there. This travelling has not made me appreciate where I went as much as where I came from.
Home. After a long time we are home. Not much interesting except that the dude at the border was cool. Stay tuned for pictures.
This town we are staying outside of is themed like an old Bavarian village. It is a bit interesting to see old style Starbucks signs. Other than that nothing much interesting happened today. We are just driving home and will be there in the afternoon tomorrow.
Well. Today I have nothing to report. We woke up, ate, packed up and left. We drove all day before arriving here, just east of Idaho. I expect that we will be back in the Lower Mainland in two days. Other than that we did nothing and saw mostly nothing.
Oddly enough though, I was previously tired of travelling and was doubting my resolve to go through with the Canadian portion of the trip. This feeling has come to an end though and I am, if not chomping at the bit, fully willing to do it. I never thought driving could be at all restful. Perhaps it is some more familiar scenery.
This is perhaps the most famous of all the American parks. Firstly it is large as American parks go, looking at the map I estimate it covers about nine hundred square miles. I have also learnt on this trip (but cannot remember where) that this park contains the only remaining complete ecosystem in the USA. And that is only after the reintroduction of wolves a dozen years ago.
Finally, and perhaps most famously is Old Faithful. The geyser here that blows her lid with striking regularity. In fact it blows approximately every hour and a half. We, of course, saw this spectacle upon arriving. It is something to see, but I wasn't terribly impressed.
We didn't actually do much else today because the park is large and all National Parks have a low speed limit of forty-five miles an hour in general. So it takes a long while to get anywhere. What driving through this park has made me think of is back country camping. I think I'd like to try it sometime.
I also don't believe that I've mentioned it before, but the price of gas is noticeably rising down south of the forty-nine. I'm taking this as my cue to leave. And since this park is the last item on our agenda we will do so with good speed.
Wyoming, while not as flat as the Dakotas, is certainly emptier. This is both good and bad. It is good in that the only roads that get anywhere are primary highways and so have fuel at convenient intervals. It is bad in that there is not much to look at. This is not to say we saw nothing.
What we did see were something we have sorely missed, mountains. This country lacks decent mountains over its majority. Not since leaving Utah have we really seen a proper snow-capped mountain. We were both excited to see these mountains in the distance. We didn't reach them as we viewed them a few hundred miles off. That is another nice thing about this particular state and the current weather, you can see forever.
We also saw Mount Rushmore. While it is surely a feat of artistry and something to see, it is something to see once. It is also smaller than I thought it would be. I guess that most photographs are shot to make it look imposing and majestic. I just think it is an interesting sculpture. The depiction of Washington is pretty good and does make an impression. Jefferson is alright. Lincoln appears unfinished (which it mostly is) by having the natural rock begin too close to his chin and end to far on his head. Roosevelt just got a bum deal. His bust is in a nook that makes it difficult to see him. The additional distance also makes him seem smaller. Perhaps the best part of the carving is the profile view of Washington, a facet I didn't even know existed.
The sculptor of Mount Rushmore, talked about the monument as something that would leave a mark for thousands of years into the future. This seems fairly reasonable because it is carved into natural granite. However, annually a maintenance crew goes out to patch cracks in the monument. It is all fine to talk about people viewing the sculpture ten thousand years from now, but is it going to be true if it needs yearly maintenance?
It sure is a long haul driving straight and steady for hours on end in a land where the only distinction is between land and sky. But we keep trucking towards our rest.
A note to those travelling through the rural areas of USA: the county roads tend to only have small local gas stations and those are all closed on Sundays. I nearly ran out of gas twice. In the future though it may take longer I think I'll stick to the larger highways.
Well, South Dakota isn't as flat, but the roads are just as straight as North Dakota. If you want to pick up some bad driving habits drive in the prairies. No need to stop at every intersection, you can see for miles. Two hands on the wheels? Nah, it's all a dead straight line anyways. Speed limits? They exist, but there will never be anybody to check on you.
It takes great effort to not become a bad driver here.
As we've been driving about we have been checking out the welcome signs of the small towns around here. Many of them say something to the effect of "Great place to visit and live". I'm not sure, but it often sounds slightly desperate. Almost like they are trying the best they can to attract people. Perhaps they are trying to retain people. I can see it easy for a young person to leave. These small towns seem to already have enough businesses and seem to have few jobs, especially non-agricultural jobs.
What is most interesting about this is that I have seen several ads for going to school; from state colleges to certificate programs. These are things I just can't quite explain.
North Dakota is flat. I mean board flat. It is also not unlike the desert, except that it is green with more cows. It is nearly as empty though. But other than that we basically just drove.
Well, that is except or visiting the centre of the North America. That is, in Rugby North Dakota is the geographic centre of North America. This point is equidistant from the most northern point of Canada and the most southern point of Mexico, From the westernmost point to the easternmost point. It is just one of those little odd roadside tourist attractions.
Conveniently the flooding of the Dakotas has stopped and withdrawn some. There is still ample evidence of recent flooding, many fields are still flooded and the medians in the highway are currently small ponds. Continued flooding was my greatest worry about this area. When were early in the trip they started to flood. I thought this was alright because it would be over in a week or so. Three weeks later as we made our way to Florida it was still flooding and I was getting slightly worried. It is bad enough that I don't know exactly where I am going (often all I know for sure is the compass direction), but far worse to not know which roads are flooded and impassible, which are just flooded. Driving back and forth it tiring and stressful as we reach the end of our tank of gas.
Yesterday we did the most touristy thing imaginable. We went to see the world's largest ball of twine. It was pretty big. We didn't send much time there because it is just a ball of twine inside a covered structure. It is sure something to see though.
In fact, that is basically all we did except drive. It's some nice country, but there isn't too much here other than farms. Another reason we didn't do much is that it was windy all day, raining most of the day and was quite chilly (five degrees with an expected low of negative two). Instead of attempting to find a drive-in movie theatre as we had originally decided we hid ourselves under warm clothes and blankets in the tent.
In fact, right now it is still chilly enough that I can only type a line or two before my fingers are too cold. With that I'm putting on my gloves.
I ate way too much yesterday. On our list of places to see and things to do we have these pie places. Now usually they are well spaced and we only get to one every week or two. Not so yesterday. Yesterday we had two pie places to eat at: one for lunch and one for dinner. Now of course if you go to a restaurant and haven't eaten lunch yet you will order some before dessert. This is fine. However, having done two in one day and having a rather large dish at the second place proved to be too much and I was digesting through most of the night.
We first visited Johnny's Cafe in Omaha, Nebraska. The pie we were to have there was the pecan pie. It was quite delicious and exceptionally creamy. This was our early lunch. We then moved on at a leisurely pace north through Nebraska and Iowa into Minnesota. (Nebraska is much more hilly than I had thought.) In Minnesota we examined the large variety of pie available at Lange's in Pipestone. I ended up eating a Sour Cream and Raisin pie, which was much acclaimed, after an enormous plate of veal parmesan. The pie was good, but I was too full to finish it.
Something I've observed when visiting small businesses is that some of them frame their first dollar. I'm assuming it is the first revenue they made. I have no comment on it, it is just interesting and something I haven't seen before. Another observation is that I am beginning to believe that the USA is a country of highways. It seems as if everybody lives within a few miles of a highway and commutes on those highways to work. I wonder if Canada will be similar.
Thunderstorms are something that are often enjoyable to see. Not quite so when camping. This is especially true when every campsite seems to have taken a forest and cut down all the trees. This makes it too dangerous to sleep through the storm. If the trees were larger and more plentiful right next to where out tent is planted it wouldn't be a problem. Instead when the flashes get close we need to move out of the tent and into the truck cab. It is just a bench seat and so isn't too comfortable.
This is what we did last night for an hour or so. It is such a pain. When I woke up this morning I thought at first that it was going to be a nice day. The sun was up and though it wasn't bright it was still early. It was also not raining. Well, soon after getting up it started to rain gently. This was fine. Then after we had finished our showers and breakfast it started to rain harder. This is not great because we had to take the tent down, but it was workable.
Well, when had just begun to pack the truck up we heard the first distant reports of thunder. We picked up the pace, but even with our practice we can only move so fast. As we packed up the storm moved closer and closer. We had everything packed away except a tarp and the tent and were merely five minutes from being done when the storm arrived. The space between the flash and the sound was less than a second.
So with the tent and tarp unpegged and floating there we retreated to the truck. Conveniently the storm passed quickly without wind and fifteen minutes later we had the tarp and tent loosely thrown into the back of the truck and we were off. Taking down a tent in a thunderstorm is exciting, but I wish campsites had more tall trees.
So we drove through heavy rain for a while. At times it got so heavy that the road looked like a long puddle and the windshield spent more time blocked than clear. This eventually gave way to on and off rain. We listened to the weather report that claimed heavy rain and thundershowers and so chose to sleep in a motel this evening. Upon arriving we also learnt that we had spent the entire day travelling through a tornado watch area. We are beyond it now, but according to the Weather Channel tornadoes are happening a couple of hundred miles south of us and are nearly happening in areas we had driven though.
I guess I don't get to see a tornado on this trip, but I do get an uninterrupted nights sleep tonight.
Today we visited the flea market. The three most common items were: socks, women's bags and bras in variety packages of five or six. I had never been to a flea market before, so this was an experience. Though it claims to peak at thirty thousand people, this day it didn't have anywhere near that. It is still early in the season though.
We just walked around and looked through a few booths. We ended up only buying some fruit and Courteney got an Indian outfit, perhaps for belly dancing. The booths contained a surprising amount of day to day stuff. I didn't expect to see so much in the way of papers, pens, soap and the little knick knacks that always seem so expensive to buy and so necessary.
We then made our way towards Omaha. We didn't make it and am still a day or two away, but we are right on the Iowa border. Unfortunately they are calling for rain and possible thunder showers tonight so we could only have a simple meal and had to hide away in the tent.
You have got to have great respect for those Amish. Not only do they stick to their beliefs and use only horse buggies and bicycles to get around, they do it while being passed several hundred times a day by people in cars. That takes dedication.
They do eat well though. We had lunch at an Amish style restaurant They had a meal option which they called family dining. This is likely close to what their meals are actually like. Firstly it is all you can eat, a good start to creating a meal that fills you up. Then it has a selection of good hearty meats such as fried chicken, meatloaf, smoked ham and roast beef. This is rounded out with mashed potatoes, beans, chicken stuffing and thick noodles. Topping it all off is gravy. We had the fried chicken and meatloaf and it was delicious.
We had decided to stay until tomorrow so we could see one of the largest flea markets in the USA, which happens on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. To pass the time we walked around the local tourist town and checked out the shops. One thing I noticed is that man things around here are unusually cheap. We saw a gallon of pure maple syrup for $45US, which we didn't get because we would never finish it. We perhaps bought a couple of things we shouldn't have (I bought an oil lamp), but it was a nice sunny day.
Cold though. Even when the sun was up it topped out at about fifteen degrees and once that sun went down it got cold quick. I'm not sure what happened to Spring, but it doesn't seem to have yet arrived in force around here.
It it interesting to see professional buildings such as doctor offices with an occupied hitching post and sections of parking lots reserved for horses and carts. It is also worth seeing a small combine being pulled by six draft horses. Unfortunately we took no pictures to respect their religious beliefs against them. We will see what we can see at the flea market. I expect we'll see more examples of Amish production there.
Interesting fact: Indiana has the greatest population of Amish. So we are back in Amish country. This time I actually believe it because I've seen a few horse drawn carriages and 'driveways' setup for horses. Yesterday was laundry, grocery shopping and driving. The drive was nice through some small farms. We even passed into Michigan for a short while.
Trying to find groceries was a chore. The particular town we were in was a medium sized town, probably thirty to fifty thousand people. Yet the section of town we were in had us pass by two closed grocery stores. Most interesting was a shopping centre we stopped at. This was obviously a rather new centre, likely less than five years old and well maintained. The only reason we could tell it wasn't brand new was the worn, cracked and patched parking lot pavement. This shopping centre seemed empty and dying. It seemed that every second unit was closed, the parking lot was basically empty and the shops that were there were closed. Even more telling, the central building which looked designed for a large store was for lease.
On this trip we've seen many spaces up for lease and an especially large number of gas stations shut down. It wasn't even that long ago as they mostly appear modern and those which left a price up show something in the three dollar range. I wonder how many towns we've passed through that are dying and we didn't even realize it.
Back to Amish country. Since we are in Amish country and they are known for their handmade goods we are going to do a bit of shopping. Well, more looking with a willingness to buy rather than buying, but I don't know a word for window shopping where we bring money.
There is another day of driving past us. We drove a fair bit yesterday for a good reason. As you may be aware the NHL playoffs are happening right now. We are also near both Detroit and Chicago, which both have teams in the playoffs. We were notified of a few game dates in this area by Jesse so we thought we might try to take in a game. Because of this we drove a fair ways yesterday in order to be close enough to make a game in Detroit or Chicago. Unfortunately there are no tickets to be had at this late date for Detroit (the game is tonight). We are also having no luck for seeing the Canucks in Chicago, but still hold hope that a few more tickets in our price range will be released. But it was a good theory.
This morning we got off to a late start because Courteney was dangerously low and that required some time to rectify. Not that an early start matters at all today because we don't have anywhere to be. So instead of touring Motor City while waiting for the game to start I am writing this from a Laundromat, waiting for our huge bag of laundry to finish.
Today we visited the American side of Niagra Falls. Niagra Falls is surely a large waterfall. I have heard and can confirm that the American side of the falls is not as good as the Canadian side. Though the American portion of the falls itself is fine, view is not. The USA has no land from which to view the falls head on. They even built an overlook structure to get halfway there. The Canadian side however, has a nice park on the other side of the river from which one can see the entire falls.
When we arrive on the Canadian side we will know for sure which side is better. Both sides have an attraction that gets you wet. The Canadian side has the Maid of the Mist boat ride into the falls. The American side has an elevator down to the base where they have a walkway setup to go right up near the falls. We did this Cave of Winds, but didn't get that wet because the top platform right near the falls was closed. Every fall they take the platforms down to avoid damage by the massive ice accumulation which occurs there.
Well, we are well on the home stretch and I am feeling that to be a good thing.
Today is a rest day. I've been tired lately, travelling is more work than I had expected. I also am coming to believe that two months travelling at any one stretch is the maximum length. Any longer and it threatens to become a routine.
Again on our drive we didn't see too much of note. What we did do was drive through a mountain range and look at what the Americans do for resort towns. Basically the entire mountain range was small town strung along the highway with more motels and restaurants than would otherwise seem sensible. I am beginning to become awed at the extent to which people live in areas that, at first glance, seem to offer no sufficient means of making a living.
During our rest day we basically just sat and read or watched the fire, or read by the fire. It is surprising how long a small pile of wood can last if you keep the fire to the minimum necessary to warm two people.
Yesterday was another pretty generic day of driving. We did have to stay in a motel because all the campsites are closed for the season. The northeast is filled again with small towns separated by small segments of highway.
We are on the home stretch now and I am finding myself becoming bored. Perhaps this is because I am tired and there is little to see from the highway other than trees. Hopefully this gets better when we approach another destination. The next destination is Niagra Falls, from the US side.
So we didn't quite turn the corner. At least we got to the corner. (Completely unrelatedly my normal email addresses are working again) So today we begin the home stretch. The original plan was to arrive back home, stick around for three or four days doing repairs and cleaning and then heading off again. With the way the timing is working out it seems that we will instead spend a couple off weeks at home doing this, that and the other thing while we wait to convocate.
I have remembered the observation that has bugged the hell out of me. I'm not sure if it is only an American thing, but I haven't really seen it in Canada. This is that whenever an American parks illegally they put their hazards on like it makes it better. It doesn't. I've even seen once or twice (on television) people arguing a parking ticket on the grounds that they have their hazards on. Silly. I had also not seen double parking before and it annoys me something fierce.
But the drive yesterday was mostly uneventful. We have seen some old towns and small villages, but not much that is exceptional. The houses have started to all have second floors, but they are also small and old.
These north eastern states are all small. Yesterday we drove through Rhode Island. Looking at the map Rhode Island is a city-state such as the Ancient Greeks had. We also stopped at a place in Boston on the beach for some clam chowder. It was good and hot. Also nice and thick. Courteney is going to have to look for a thick clam chowder recipe because the one she has is a it too soupy.
We also drove past MIT. I had wanted to stop and look around the campus. Unfortunately we arrived on a Sunday, which is bad, and in the late afternoon, which is worse. We couldn't find any parking and there was some sort of sporting event happening so we just gawked as we drove by.
We are nearly in New Hampshire and I expect that we'll turn our final corner in the United States today.
I'm not sure what it is, but it appears that the Americans like their strip clubs. We often see three or four along our short path through town. They mostly represent themselves as gentlemen's clubs as well. I very much doubt they spend much time drinking scotch on an overstuffed leather chair while smoking a cigar and discussing world politics. In fact, it seems that either a region has more tiny casinos than you can shake a stick at or more strip clubs.
Something slightly different with respect to the roads in this region of the continent is that they like round-abouts. More than that though, they use round-abouts with traffic lights on the circle. I find this exceptionally odd.
Something I find funny are the signs which say no parking on this street during a snow emergency. Now around here I expect a snow emergency to require several feet of snow in only a couple of hours. Firstly how is one supposed to move their car when they are buried up to the hood in snow? Secondly, as with all old towns there is no parking, so where do the cars go?
Today we toured though some of New York. Perhaps it was more accurately Manhattan. In any case we saw Times Square and briefly thought we were in Japan. We saw Broadway and were tempted to see a show, until we saw the cost. Unfortunately we missed the May Day parade by ten or fifteen minutes, but we did see the back end of the final marching band.
We also went up the Empire State building. It is an ornate building. The view is good, but it was grey and drizzling when we went up. Buildings just don't have the same work into decoration put into them these days. They are all far too utilitarian, especially considering how long they continue in use.
We also shopped at the Nintendo World store. It used to be a Pokemon store and perhaps a third of the store still is. Courteney had fun looking around. They had a small display of historic Nintendo stuff including ROB, but alas no Powerglove.
Finally we took a walk in Central park. It's a fairly nice park. I am amazed that it was zoned off early enough to be such a large chunk in the middle of the city. Though the park we walked in had frequent large, stone hills.
I said I'd have other things to say about New York and here they are. Firstly there are often more cabs on a street than private vehicles. It is an experience to be a lone blue truck in a sea of yellow. Secondly, here is how a New York cabbie (and even a city bus!) changes lanes: First change lanes. Well, no. There are actually two steps, first put two tires into the lane you want, then change lanes. It seemed that the only traffic directions that are followed are one way streets and red lights. Courteney commented that it looked like a dance. I responded that this is good except that I'm driving the clumsy fat man.
New York also has excellent deli's. I didn't expect this, but New York is the first city I we've visited that I could see myself living in. I just wouldn't own a vehicle.
And with that I have a couple of observations. The first is that American drug commercials are much more boring than their Canadian counterparts. There is very little entertainment and a long list of side effects. I think that television ads would be much better all around if all industries were required to to the same thing as drug companies.
Well, we escaped from New York and are fast approaching the north-east corner of our trip. Until tomorrow.
Well, we have arrived in New York. In driving here I have learned a couple of things. The first is that New Jersey is basically a suburb of New York City. Once I heard parking in New York described in two ways: if there is a free spot it is illegal to park there and if find a spot look at it every half hour and if you see the entire city looking for a new parking spot do the same. Now I haven't seen the latter, but the former is entirely true. This city doesn't have any parking.
So we arrived in the afternoon and managed to find parking and a hotel room. Inconveniently they are not the same company. After putting our stuff away we grabbed a late lunch and then walked to see the Statue of Liberty. On the way we passed Wall Street. though not the portion in the financial district. We got to the park and looked upon the island from a distance. The ferries had stopped running for the evening so we couldn't get there.
On the way back the skies opened up. Not the nice kind of opening either. It just started pouring. Now we didn't have an umbrellas because we left them in the parking garage. We also didn't have our coats because it was nearly twenty degrees out and too warm. Needless to say we got thoroughly soaked during our twenty minute walk back to the room.
I have a few more things to say about New York, but they'll have to wait until we are done playing tourist tomorrow.
Today we visited the NSA Cryptological Museum. It is a small museum placed inside an old motel. It is right near the main NSA buildings, which are interesting to see from a distance through the barbed wire topped fence. The museum is primarily historical, with many examples of the machines used throughout American history. I found the machines and developmental history from WW2 to the present (that's right, they have some examples of current technology (well, current visible technology) on display) interesting to see.
The height of the museum, however, must have been the two working, open to the public Enigma machines. I of course wrote a short message. Unfortunately not all the lights were working and the ? represents that situation. My message is "VMSM BESN GILE GFT? LSHG RXRX VE?T LNSP", unfortunately I don't know which rotors or the plugboard configuration so I couldn't decode it easily. It was nifty to use though I wish it had a teletype output like some other encryption machines there.
It takes three to four hours to fully examine everything in the museum and so isn't an onerous stop like some other museums.
After the museum I got an oil change, I needed one after over fifteen thousand kilometres of driving. Now I just need to figure out why my gas gauge is only reporting the propane level (and not the gas level which is what I normally want) and things will be fine.
In driving to this particular campsite we passed through the Pennsylvania-Dutch region. I have been informed by Courteney that the Amish frequent this area. We did see one horse and buggy sign, but no actual horses or buggies.
Yesterday we did the tourist thing around Washington, D.C. Our first stop was the Washington Monument. It is basically just a tall stone tower. There was a tour available, but the timing didn't work out.
Then we went and looked around the Library of Congress for a couple of hours, including the tour. That is a beautiful library. Everything is quite ornate. The main reading room is a beautiful finished oak and stucco room. Perhaps the coolest thing that I saw there was the grooves worn into the marble steps. That is how you know that it is a well used library. The Library of Congress is also a public library and if I were a citizen and had the time I could get a library card there and access to the thirty million books.
After the Library of Congress we went to the museum of natural history. That was nice and they have some good collection. We didn't see all the museum, but instead focused on the hall of mammals, the dinosaurs and the gem exhibits.
An interesting fact about Washington is that all the large government buildings are made of sandstone. This is a stone that erodes quickly in wind and rain. I think it a bit of an odd choice for the construction of a city that is intended to last forever.
Now as I said yesterday parking is at a premium in Washington. Yesterday we didn't drive to these various destinations, we walked. The city isn't as bad to walk, though it is a bit too spread out for easy walking. We likely walked ten or fifteen kilometres including walking around the various spectacles. It wasn't that bad, but my old running shoes are not made for walking.
We did see the Whitehouse briefly, but didn't have time to walk past it and instead drove past it on our way out. As you might imagine the lawn and surrounding land is not designed with the tourist in mind, but instead for segregating the President.
Well, we are done with Washington and I am happy. There is one more thing that I saw lots of which I failed to mention yesterday: men in suits. There are men in suits everywhere.
Yesterday we drove a bunch and went into Washington D.C. We tried to make a tour of the Library of Congress, but traffic and the lack of parking made us miss it. We then though that we would at least see the Washington Monument. Unfortunately there is nearly no parking there either. In the end all we accomplished was driving around wacky streets through rush hour traffic for an hour.
For those who may not be aware Washington, D.C. is just a city. During my impromptu driving tour all I really saw where the following: large imposing mortar and block buildings, road blocks, association branches, black SUVs with tinted windows, restaurants and police standing around impeding traffic. I'm not even going into the layout of streets and intersections, but I will say that gridlock is nearly unavoidable.
If the city is any indication then the government it contains is badly designed, badly run, inefficient and specifically designed to make it difficult for outsiders. I can't wait to truly see Ottawa and compare.
Today is more touring, but this time on foot because driving is a frustrating waste of time.
If you've been following the weather in the northern USA you may have noticed that the weather just isn't that good. Specifically North Dakota appears to have been flooding for the past month or two. I am beginning to get concerned that we'll need to find our way through that mess. It might be fun, but would make camping difficult.
Today was the second day getting up at six in the morning. We woke before the sun and Courteney didn't fall asleep all day. There is hope yet.
We just covered some ground today. We have no plans for either of the Carolinass and so are moving to our next destination, Washington, with good speed. Really we didn't see much at all today except forest and highway.
My observation for the day is that Americans really like air conditioning. Nearly every building has it and people will leave their car running while parked for extended periods just to keep their vehicle cool. What I find most odd is when it isn't terribly hot, perhaps thirty degrees Celsius, and you can see the water nearly streaming out of the condenser of people's vehicles. I am amazed that they consider cold air so valuable and fuel so cheap that they would do that. I wonder what is going to happen when energy becomes expensive.
Americans also have an extreme aversion to taxes. You have likely heard hews of various Tea Parties. Now taxes are neither good nor terrible. I believe that part of the dislike of taxes comes from the badly run programs which it funds. I further think that most of these programs are badly run either because they are underfunded or they have a partnership with a private party. There is a strong, nearly religious, belief that private enterprise is necessarily more efficient than government. It seems to be taken to such extremes that even when a government office is efficiently run it is screamed that a private business could do better.
The final observation is that the United States is very religious. Not necessarily Christian, but religious none the less. There are many tarrot and palm reading shops. Every paper has horoscopes. I am beginning to believe that something in their culture requires one to hold religion in their heart. Something to dwell on.
Well, yesterday we did stuff! The first thing we did the previous night was to decide that we would try and solve Courteney's bug problem by shifting our schedule to avoid them. This means we are getting up earlier and stopping earlier such that we can be fed and in the tent before dusk, when the bugs are the worst. So yesterday morning Courteney saw 6:00 AM for the first time in a long time. I hope she gets used to it, because she was falling asleep all day.
After dragging Courteney out of bed we went to see Savanna Georgia, specifically the historic area. It is a nice place with some interesting architecture and construction. I especially found the old brick paths and cobblestone roads interesting to see and walk on. This got me thinking that eventually I would like to see the old cobblestone roads in Europe, the ones with grooves worn in by ancient wagons.
After walking around for about two hours we headed out to South Carolina. We actually entered South Carolina twice. The first time we missed taking a picture of the sign because we didn't expect it to come so soon. So we had to turn around and cross the state line again.
Our first stop in South Carolina was a park on the coast where Painted Buntings are reported to hang out. We went there and looked around for a bit. Unfortunately it is a swampy forest and Courteney didn't want to go too deep. So unfortunately Courteney didn't get to see a painted bunting this time around.
After that we drove for another hour or so to our camping spot for the night. Here we saw an odd looking bird that we dubbed the turgoosen. It looks like a goose, but has a red flesh mask around the eyes and an odd colouring. We looked it up and it is some sort of duck, but turgoosen is a much better name.
Yesterday was a short driving day because we miscalculated how long it would take us, but we had booked a motel room. Hopefully this won't happen again since we are back to camping. We are going to try avoiding the bugs that make Courteney break out by shifting our day to be earlier. That means that this morning I woke at six and Courteney at 6:30. She'll get used to this time of day existing eventually.
The drive yesterday was uneventful. After arriving at the motel around 2:30PM we checked in, did some minor sewing repairs and headed to the pool. We enjoyed ourself until the threat of sunburn became too great. In all it was a quiet restful day.
I think I will soon have another round of observations so stay tuned.
Today we visited Universal Studios. It's a nice park and they have put a ton of effort into theming the buildings. Most of they day is hurry up and wait. Walking quickly from ride to ride just to sit in line for anywhere from ten minutes to over half an hour. I am sure glad we didn't arrive on a weekend.
There are a couple of interesting rides. The most fun is the Men in Black one. It is just a rail shooter, except with real rails and we do the shooting. The most advanced must be the Simpsons ride. It is just a large advanced simulator. It begins as a roller coaster and for the first ten or fifteen seconds I truly believed and felt that I was on a coaster. It was wild.
The most surprising thing I saw was a projection of a person onto something I can't explain. It appeared very life-like except for the fact that the person was flat. I wonder what sort of screen it was, I didn't see anything that could act as a screen.
In some ways it was a good thing that we spent a lot of time standing in line. All the lines are covered over so you don't bake in the sun. It was supposed to be ninety degrees Fahrenheit today and I would believe that it got that high. I sure am glad I had my hat.
We had lunch at a fifties-themed dinner, which was neat and my hat looked right at place.
I forgot to mention that at the Space Centre I had the opportunity to see a 3D Omnimax movie for the first time. I am able to report that it worked surprisingly well. Live action segments worked less well than computer generated segments. This is because in the latter everything is in focus and you can look at whatever you wish. With live action some areas are not in focus and where uncomfortable to focus on.
It'd make an interesting interface for a video game and I can see that movies may eventually turn to 3D.
Well, today we saw Seaworld. Seaworld is a nice place, but nearly nothing like an aquarium. Though there are some exhibits and places to see animals they are not the focus. Instead it is the shows. They are all well put together. The big show is the Shamu killer whale show, but make no mistake about it, the best show is the dolphin show.
It really is a pretty nice place. There are enough shows to fill most of the day and enough to see to kill the time between shows.
After Seaworld we went out to out birthday dinner. We went to a seafood place (watching them all day made me hungry). It was good and plentiful. We even split a piece of key lime pie instead of birthday cake. This is certainly one of the more low key birthdays I've had.
I saw the most unexpected thing yesterday: BC plates. We were leaving the Kennedy Space Centre, walking through the parking lot an we passed by the SUV. It entertained us both for a good fifteen minutes. Especially since we saw them leaving and arranged to be on the road right in front of them so they knew we were there as well. I didn't think anybody else would be crazy enough to drive down.
Anyways, we saw the Kennedy Space Centre. We only had half a day there so we didn't see the entire park. I would say that we saw approximately two thirds of it. The part that we did see seemed to be heavily biased towards videos. I suppose that is alright, just different from any other educational exhibit I've ever seen.
In traveller news, Courteney is allergic to mosquito bites and bug bites in general. She has had a case of the hives for a couple days now. Before that certain bites would swell to enormous size and stick around for a couple of days. It is quite sad and she has gotten itchy. We've gotten some antihistamines, but she still is covered in bumps and itches when the medication wears off.
We have no idea how we are going to deal with this.
It is hot here in Florida. It isn't as bad as I imagined it would be, but it isn't nothing. Yesterday we drove for several hours and didn't leave the urban area until late in the afternoon. The entire coast from the tip of Key West up to about fifty kilometres south of here is all urban. We travelled for somewhere around four hundred kilometres without leaving the city. Madness.
We didn't do much other than drive yesterday, all day. However, since we almost never left the cities we didn't cover much ground. The lower speed limit, traffic lights and traffic itself held us back. It sucked.
Today and the next few days are looking to be better though. This is mostly because we are going to drive little and take in a few of the attractions of the area. The current plan (because we have already bought tickets) is to see the Kennedy Space Centre, Sea World and then Universal Studios. Each will be on a day by itself. Disney has lost out on this round of sightseeing. It is targeted mostly to younger children, is more rides and shops than anything and is incredibly expensive. A single adult ticket for a single day to the Disney park in this area (I can never remember if it is -land or World) is $120US. For what a single day there would cost us we could spend a night in a higher-end hotel or eat at a restaurant where formal dress is required or travel for a week.
It is outrageous.
Except for melting while driving since my truck doesn't have air conditioning we had a rather nice day. First we got up and hung out on the beach for an hour or so. I could almost have stayed all day, but it was getting very hot and the water there is too shallow to take a dip. So we moved on and headed south. After a fairly short drive we arrived at the most southern state park we walked to the beach and took a look around. We didn't actually see the marker for the most southern point because we didn't find out it existed until we were already on our way north. It isn't a big deal.
Then we started the third leg of our journey and are heading north. We haven't seen anything new yet because we didn't make it out of the keys, but we should today.
I am beginning to appreciate one more thing about the desert and that is thee lack of bugs. We didn't notice it at the time when the were missing, but I sure notice the mosquitoes and no-see-ems when they are here. I hate being part of the food chain again.
Camping is easy when it's cold, hot, muggy, windy, sunny and overcast. Camping is easy when dry, raining or snowing. On rocky ground or soft ground, camping is easy. Biting bugs make camping hard. I fear we have just entered the hard part of camping.
Florida is hot. Yesterday it was 32 degrees in the shade during the afternoon. At least the humidity wasn't bad. Yesterday we did a couple of things. The first was wake up, eat and shower, though not necessarily in that order. Then we drove east.
Yes, yesterday we arrived on the east coast of North America. We aren't quite as far south as we need to be before we head north, but almost. We took the toll road called Alligator Alley across what I believe is referred to as the pan handle. It's a good driving road and the $2.50 toll isn't that bad considering that it saves over thirty miles of driving. However, you see nearly nothing. The side of the corridor is about a hundred feet off the road and fenced off. It was really the wrong road to take on this sort of trip. We would have been better off taking the slower US highway. Oh well, live and learn.
But we did arrive on the east coast near Miami and headed south into the Keys. From the hundred miles or so of the coast that I've seen it looks like one large urban/suburban area, all the way down the coast. There is no break between cities and little or no natural forest left. It's a bit disturbing.
The keys themselves are interesting. They are just one street highway towns with an east and a west beach. Seriously, all the ads locate the stores by the mile marker on the US1. It was neat when I was able to see both beaches through the trees at the same time. This would be a nice place to vacation for a longer stay if it weren't for two problems. The first is that there are stingrays in the area and you must shuffle when moving in the water or risk being stung and speared. This is made worse by the fact that the ocean around here is very shallow. Courteney and I had walked perhaps two hundred feet out and the water was just above our knees. This was with the tide in. Being so shallow really makes it cruel with the sun pounding down. It was 3 degrees in the sun when we arrived in the late afternoon.
There are advantages to the area though. Though there isn't much in the way of stuff to do if you don't like strippers or beaches there is the most clear view of the sky I've yet seen. There are many more stars than you see in most places. It is truly more on par with what I had thought a clear desert night would be like. Alas all the places in the desert suffer from rather severe light pollution. This might be the best view of the stars we are going to get on the trip because Key West seems heavily populated and we could see some night glow from that direction and the Arctic will have twenty-four hours of daylight when we arrive.
Relatedly, though the stars are familiar they are in different positions. I guess this is to be expected when one is six thousand kilometres from home.
Yesterday we left the hospitality of Stacy and Jimmy to continue our journey. We continued south. Courteney didn't much enjoy the driving yesterday, mostly because she was behind the wheel. I was in the passenger seat handling all the regular navigator duties as well as emptying my head of cat induced guk.
Up to now Courteney has held onto the dream of bringing her cats when we move in together. Not a chance. The three days I spent being slightly allergic to the cat Mystic saw me being completely stuffed up and not sleeping right at all. It was so bad that now I have a cold. Likely because my immune system was otherwise occupied fending off cat smell.
I likely have more to say, but it is hard to collect thoughts when I have an aching overpressurized ear and have to empty my nose every five minutes. There is one thing I have been wanting to broadcast and may have already. If so please excuse me. It is perhaps a sign of the times when as many as every fourth billboard is an advertisement for advertisement.
Yesterday was another day at Stacy's. We spent it travelling around a town called Treasure Island. Treasure Island is really an island with three miles of beaches and a bunch of shops. It'd be a fairly nice place to go and spend a weekend partying, especially since you can drink in public. We had a pretty good dinner at a restaurant-bar right on the beach.
After dinner we went to take a walk in the Gulf of Mexico. The Gulf is much warmer than my previous short dip in salt water. It is really much like a warm lake. So Courteney and I walked in not quite up to our knees because we hadn't brought swimwear. The sand is very soft and very white. I can see how it gets full on sunny weekends.
We where also given a tour of the local police department by Jimmy, Stacy's husband and office in the Treasure Island Police Department. It is a pretty nice place, but a bit of a drive from where they live.
While driving I also heard something on the radio. A car dealership offering -0.9% financing. That is a sure sign of the times. At least to car companies money is worth more now than in two or three years, which breaks an important assumption of the economy. In some cases it is a better investment to hide money under a bed than other investment options.
Well, yesterday was the second day staying at Stacy's place. Yesterday we went to the Aquarium. I haven't been to an aquarium in years, perhaps since elementary school. The variety of life in the sea is amazing and many of them look oh so funny.
We got of to a bit of a late start, but managed to see most of the wildlife, but not most of the shows. That's fine though. Seeing everything a park or aquarium or what have you is truly a tiring experience.
After going through the aquarium in Tampa and having a nice dinner in a shopping courtyard which allows open liquor we went back to the house. It was a pretty quiet night though Stacy made us watch Twilight. I didn't get much out of it, but it's a movie for teenage girls. Apparently there is a second one coming out, I don't think I'll be first in line to watch it.
And this is the second full day of living with a cat. For those who aren't aware I am slightly allergic to cats. Courteney of course loves cats and would very much like to have one when we eventually move in together. I'm not sure how that's going to work out. I've been stuffed up since I got here. I wasn't always allergic, so maybe I can work out of it.
Yesterday we arrived in Palm Harbor at Courteney's sister's place. Stacy met us with open arms and a hug. The drive was pretty uneventful and we spent the afternoon just chatting. There wasn't much planned so we had an easy dinner in and an easy evening. We basically just chatted more with a trip to a local bookstore chain for some change of scenery.
After getting back we watched a bit of TV, specifically a show called The United States of Tara. It an interesting show, but I'm not quite sure how to describe it yet.
Yesterday we continued our way down the western side of Florida. I can't say much interesting happened, because it didn't. We ended up getting an early start because the threat of rain had caused us to put everything that could go away in its place before we retreated to the tent. There was little to cleanup and only cereal for breakfast.
We made good time and arrived in Old Town in the early afternoon. This even though we lost an hour due to time zone changes. We lazed the afternoon away eating discount Easter chocolate, reading and playing video games. The weather was nice, though I found the humidity uncomfortable during the drive.
And that is pretty much it. We are about a hundred miles shy of Courteney's sister's place and will make it with time to spare today.
If all my entries were like that all my readers would leave and never return. In the interest of keeping those eight people happy it's time for a new section in this blog. I like to call it "Things Which Disturb Travis". This first incarnation will deal with advertising. One would think that advertising is pretty much the same between Canada and the USA. We have many of the same major stations and relatively similar cultures and laws.
This is true in general, but there are specific cases which give pause. The first are the hospital ads. I had never expected advertisements prompting you to choose one hospital over the others. Yet it is so. Even more surprising is that they prompt you to choose their hospital over another when in an ambulance! I'm not sure it is entirely ethical to suggest that people who are heading to an emergency room choose a particular hospital over the closest. If you truly have time to waste travelling then perhaps you don't quite need an ambulance?
The particular advertisement I am referring to is radio ad (we see very little television) where one actor has had a bit of chest pain and his concerned wife 'foolishly' suggests that they go to the nearest ER. The husband then says something about her not loving him. She retorts by mentioning that he had said he thought it was just heartburn.
I find the message that you should go to the hospital when you just have heartburn even more reprehensible than the one that you should waste an ambulances precious time to travel to a further hospital.
I think that's enough soapboxing about that for now. I'll just mention the other two sorts of ads that I've seen that have weirded me out. The first is an ad for a toll bridge. Who advertises a bridge? If you need advertising then perhaps you shouldn't have built a toll bridge there. The other are ads for cosmetic surgery. I'm not sure why we don't see this in Canada and perhaps I just haven't paid attention, but why is this necessary on a billboard?
Some things here are a bit off. Though when I listen to their talk radio there are two things that are worth mentioning. The first is that there is no such thing as liberal or even centrist talk radio; it is all right wing or extreme right wing. The second, keeping the first in mind, is that there appears to be no distinction in the American political sphere between socialism and communism. None at all. I find this interesting at a time when the US government is slowly moving towards nationalizing the largest corporations in the insurance, banking and automotive sectors. Very interesting indeed.
Yesterday we entered Florida. Our introduction to the self acclaimed sunshine state was dark grey skies. Further, when we stopped to camp for the night it was raining. Not a light sprinkle and not a torrential downpour, but somewhere in between. This gave me a good opportunity to try my tarp canopy off my truck idea. Basically I have a bar that clamps to the window opening of my camper on the box of my truck. To this I tie a tarp which is help up on the other end (or in the middle depending on how windy it is and how much covered area I need) is help up with two extending poles.
It worked fairly well, though the ground was soft and the pegs holding the rope down came out a couple of times.
After making and eating a fine dinner of soup and grilled cheese sandwiches on my tailgate we proceeded to setup the tent under the tarp. The rain had gotten lighter as we were doing this until it eventually stopped. We were undeterred and kept with our plan of strongly tarping the tent. In the end we had our tent inside a large pup tent. All prepared for the worst rain possible we retreated to the tent.
It is important to realize that upon arriving and asking for a tent site the keeper questioned our sanity. In the last three days the area had received over twenty inches of rain. Many roads and most fields were flooded. We being young and sure of ourselves held our course.
The rain never did return and though the ground was still exceptionally wet in the morning the sun peeked out to warm our backs. I hold that we brought about an end to their biblical rain.
For those who are not keeping up with their calender holidays yesterday was Easter Sunday. In Canada this usually means that most places of business close early and you can expect to gain five pounds before monday. Not so in the United States. In the United States it appears that nothing except gas stations and movie theatres are open.
We are moving towards Courteney's sister's place. We needed to call her sister in order to coordinate our arrival. I don't know how many of you have ever made a long distance call on a payphone using coins. I have and it is an expensive and painful experience. First you need to, generally, put in four or five quarters to connect the call and receive two or three minutes of talk time. Then you need to keep feeding the machine quarters about the approximate rate of two a minute to keep talking. With this in mind we set out to find a payphone that took credit cards. They are fairly common in Canada. Not so in the USA. We went to all the regular hangouts for fancy payphone: corporate gas stations, malls (which were both closed) and movie theatres. Nada. Instead we discovered a payphone with a dollar for ten minutes of USA talk time.
So we put in our money and get, an answering machine. Oh well. We move on to our camping destination for the evening.
We arrive, I call my parents from a different payphone (I call collect though and don't have to suffer entering a mountain of quarters I don't have) and we set about making Easter dinner. Since it was Easter dinner we went all out. We had half a small ham with an orange marmalade glaze, mashed potatoes and a green salad. We even had dessert. It wasn't Courteney's usual dessert fair of a pie. Instead we just had a third of a large honeydew melon.
As we were finishing dinner it as starting to rain slightly so we retreated to the tent. Now I refuse to put up a tarp unless it is really raining because often it rains, but not enough to actually need a tarp. I'm a lazy person and hate doing work I don't need to. Thus the tarp didn't get put up before we retreated to the tent.
Well, at about one in the morning it started to pour with thunder and lightning. This meant I had to get out and put the tarp on. I convinced Courteney to help me, which was nice. The tarp went up quickly and though the tent is damp we did not get wet. Of course now I need to fold the tarp.
I suppose that it is time for an update on the housing situation here in the United States. You may remember that several weeks ago I commented on how small the houses all were. Well, I am nearly done half my tour of this country and I don't believe it has really changed. Most of the houses I have seen are a small single story. In fact I have seen a good number of mobile and modular homes, which are small by their nature. I did see relatively large single story houses in Louisiana, but that was in a rather affluent looking farming neighbourhood. I had expected more two story houses their, but didn't see them.
Something to consider is the price of a double-wide modular home here. I have seen ads showing them as starting at $45,000. I can see how that may be attractive to some in lieu of a larger house on a larger plot.
We had a late start today. First we went to the all you can eat breakfast this KOA we were staying at put on. Then we leisurely tore the camp down. Then we went on a short, un-scenic tour trying to find a visitor centre to find out what we could spend a couple of hours doing. We did this because we didn't want to cover too much ground today.
After failing to do that we visited the only attraction we know is in this town: the Grand Ol' Opry House. So we did that and walked around the mall that is nearby for an hour or two.
Looking isn't really all that fun if you don't have any money to spend. So we went and found a minigolf course. After a gripping eighteen holes I stood as the victor and fun was had by both of us. This particular course had one hole which started on the second floor of a small building and put the ball through several pipes and four or five green areas. It was pretty neat.
After that we headed to a state park in Alabama. Now I used to think that pay showers were the norm in state parks when we started the trip. This is because that's all we saw in Oregon and California. However, the last few parks that we have been at, if they've had showers they've been free. It may have been the case that it is only the desert states which charge for showers. But then there is the one park in Nevada we stayed at which had free showers. In any case, having a free shower everyday is nice.
Today we left Mississippi and entered Tennessee. As can be seen from the mileage we didn't do much other than drive. We did however stop in Memphis for lunch at another pie restaurant. Their famous pie was banana cream. It was pretty good.
We both had toasted sandwiches for lunch and regretted it. You see last night Courteney made a quiche for dinner using my makeshift oven. It turned out well, but very hot. We both burnt our mouths eating it. This of course makes crunchy toasted bread a uncomfortable thing to eat.
After Memphis we drove to Nashville. The land in between is much the same as Mississippi, that is mostly flat farmland. Unfortunately we arrived in Nashville too late to get tickets to the Grand Ol' Opry show; I doubt we could have afforded them anyways. Instead we just ate dinner and then went to bed around eleven.
Our next goal is to make it to Courteney's sister's place. We are trying to time it so as not to arrive early in the week. We fully realize that people have jobs. I have no idea how we are going to manage this timing when we are in Canada and have many friends and family concentrated in a small area.
Mississippi is a long name. It is also mostly flat. We didn't do much yesterday except drive and we didn't see much except farmland. That's alright though, we did break ten thousand kilometres and are well on our way to Memphis and Nashville.
We did have some excitement though. At about one in the morning there was a thunderstorm here. Now so far we've been lucky and not had any bad weather. Sure some days were chilly, but there has been nothing more than a light sprinkling of rain and some wind. I didn't mind the thunderstorm at all. It rained a bit, but not terrifically hard. We didn't even feel it necessary to put up a tarp. We did get up and out of the tent to go and watch the storm.
I haven't seen a good thunderstorm since I moved out of Calgary. The milder climate of the lower mainland just doesn't promote thunderstorms. So I was quite happy to sit in the truck watching the storm through the windshield for a couple of hours before heading back to bed.
I have decided that the interstates are more tiring than driving the smaller highways. There is almost nothing to see, the roads tend to be rougher and, in my case, the higher speed limit doesn't matter. So all around the interstates seem only good for truckers and commuters.
Louisiana is small. So small in fact that we drove most of the way across it, taking a scenic route and still ended up in New Orleans in time for dinner.
This is the first time I've ever seen real swamp. It was a bit of an experience. If you look at it from a distance or don't pay too much attention it looks like the trees are growing our of flat dirt. This is not the case. Upon closer inspection you see that what you thought was solid dirt is actually still water thick with floating scum. How deep the water is varies from inches to feet but either way you are going to get wet.
The highways through this swampy country are also built in a fashion I consider odd. Reasonable enough are the built up sections where the highway is on a mound. Somewhat odder is where the entire highway is sitting on raised concrete platforms. These platforms go on for miles in some places. This is not to speak of the interstate going through New Orleans.
This interstate doesn't go through the city so much as above the city. It covers an immense area of the city with a platform raised perhaps fifty feet in the air. It is such an immense amount of effort to build a road which requires constant monitoring and repair to avoid becoming entirely impassable because of a chunk of missing concrete.
Anyways. We had dinner in NOLA, as I've seen the city referred, on Bourbon street in the French Quarter. We had some good cajun cooking while sitting on a patio overlooking Bourbon street. We also walked around a bit. It's an adult playground in that area, perhaps more so than even Las Vegas. I prefer Bourbon street to the strip though. It just seems like a more livable playground. Courteney phrased it as less artificial. Unfortunately the area is like Las Vegas in the regard that it takes considerable money to get the full experience. It takes money to sit in the various bars and clubs all day drinking and listening to live music.
I think this is one spot I will return to at a later time to experience more fully.
Now to finish my metaphor from last night. In football everybody wants to be the quarterback, the man who is in charge when it is time to succeed or fail. If you can't be this person then you hope to be the star of the defensive team, Even then you don't get fame equal to the quarterback. Finally if you can't be either of those you just keep your head down and work hard to give the quarterback all the credit.
Now in hockey it is a bit different. Though there are leaders and there are stars there is no single position which is the centre of fame. The captain of the team could be a centre or a defenceman. Each player has a role to play, but that role varies depending on the context of the game. Each player is also given the flexibility to make a positive difference at any point in the game.
The point of this is that in hockey there is a team and each player can make a positive play for the team. Each person can accomplish something and be acknowledged for it. In football, however, the blocker doesn't get congratulated when they keep their target at bay. That is their job and they can't improve upon it. Instead all they can do is screw up and let their block go. They are scapegoats.
My impression of the culture of the United States is that there are winners and sheep with no middle ground. I don't find this same attitude in Canada where most people are seen as having a positive contribution they could be making.
This brings up another brief thought on the security precautions that are now prevalent in the US. They seem to be more about getting people used to being treated like cattle than actually accomplishing anything to increase safety. I foresee a negative future if this trend continues.
As I write this I can't remember the name of the town I am in. Look for the name when I get back into the truck to be placed in parenthesis. Right now I am going to call this Small Town Texas. And it really is. On the way to this campsite we passed a restaurant called Dolly's Quick Food. It is all farm country around here.
This campsite itself isn't necessarily a campsite. The book we have lists it as one, but there is no cost, no marked sites and no signs of any sort. All there seems to be is a poorly maintained bathroom and a community sized picnic table. I'm sure it'll be alright and we did come equipped for all variety of campsites.
Unfortunately we won't have any chance to make use of the tables and chairs and lights we packed. This area of the country is a bit more swampy. This means mosquitoes. We decided it better to avoid being eaten alive instead of camping in comfort. This means we put up the tent in record time and ate peanut butter and marmalade sandwiches for dinner inside the tent, protected from the bugs.
We did end up spending the entire day at the space center. It is pretty touristy, but does have some cool artifacts from the early years of space exploration on display. You can even touch a rock from the moon. It would have been fairly expensive except we were directed to the CVS Pharmacy across the street for some half off coupons. The center also has twilight tickets which allow entry in the last two hours of the day and the entire next day for a reasonable price.
The only really annoying part of the day was the security surrounding the tram ride. They have some cars which take you one a short tour of the NASA site itself. There are two major annoyances though. The first is that there are two tours which overlap. This means you would spend a bunch of time, perhaps as much as half a day, waiting in line and seeing the same things twice. Then there is the security. They waste immense amounts of time searching everybody's bags and putting everybody through a metal detector. This is silly enough, doubly so because they let you roam freely at the end of the tour in the rocket park.
The rocket park is where they have three rockets of display, including the Saturn V. It is at the edge of the campus and as far as I can tell unsupervised. Silly. Also, the security guards weren't paying much attention to what was happening and I believe it would have been easy to pass contraband across the road barrier.
Oh well, just more pointless, useless, time wasting pretend security. The rest of the center was worthwhile, interesting and entertaining. I'd recommend it to anybody interested at all in space exploration or history, but it is a full day if you want to take your time and experience the majority of what they have to offer.
Finally some philosophy. I am beginning to believe that the favoured games of football in the USA and hockey in Canada may be a good metaphor for some differences in the cultures. Now I may have heard this before, I don't claim this to necessarily be original thought.
I would go into the metaphor tonight if I weren't cooped up in a tent, hunched over trying to type in the dark. Instead I'll expand on it tomorrow night. Since tomorrow promises to be a driving day I should have plenty of time to ponder the best wording. We will also be leaving Texas.
Until then keep reading.
Again this is an entry for yesterday. This is because we were busy yesterday. First we drove perhaps a hundred miles east to arrive in the Houston area. Then we did laundry. After that we ended up popping by the Space Center here for an hour.
We didn't realize it was on the list and so we will be returning today. All this stuff meant that we didn't arrive at a campsite until late in the evening so there was no time to write an entry then.
We have officially left the desert though. I, at least, am glad. The desert is beautiful, but also harsh, dry and alien. We have securely entered forested areas again and this campsite we are staying at even had some slightly muddy ground.
I am also hoping that the change in scenery to something I am more used to will make things better. For the last couple of days I have begun to feel slightly homesick and sick of travelling in general. Never let anybody tell you that extended travel isn't hard on the mind and body.
Yesterday we drove a bit and saw the Alamo. I had thought that the Alamo would be one of those old forts several miles from town. I was wrong. The Alamo is actually in the middle of San Antonio, right near downtown.
The majority of the missionary-turned-fort had been build over, but the church and what was once the barracks stills remains. It is a bit odd to consider it as a fort. The walls are only eight or ten feet high and perhaps three feet thick of mortared stone. But a fort it was.
I didn't get that much out of it. Perhaps I would get more if it were part of my culture. It was free and I did learn that Spain and Mexico used to own the greater portion of the southwestern United States. This explains the heavy Spanish influence I've seen all over the place.
After leaving the Alamo we headed east a bit more to arrive at a state park. The park was mostly empty. During the night it was us, the park hosts and two pushy geese.
I repeat my statement that Texas is full of nothing. We had to drive about eighty kilometres to find a tire place. But we got there, bought a new tire and the small one is now snug back under the bed. Automotive excellence.
After we got that chore finished we headed to a state park in this area which is apparently an excellent place to view Painted Buntings. These must be Courteney's favourite bird because she has wanted to see one for years. So we arrived at the park and walked around with binoculars, water bottles and hats in tow.
Unfortunately we returned to the truck with empty water bottles, sweat soaked hats (it was about 35 degrees Celsius here today) and no bunting sightings. It turns out that they are not due to arrive for another week or two. Our timing was just a bit off. It was a nice walk in any case. We did learn that there is a migration group which mates in Florida; perhaps we will catch them there.
That about sums up today. I am currently having some email trouble at my regular addresses. If you want to get a hold of me I can be reached by a tertiary account, the username is travisb, the domain is sdf.lonestar.org.
As a note I am well pleased with my antenna eared laptop's wireless reception. Until next time.
I once saw an old cartoon which depicted the construction of the great civil projects. The Hoover Dam and the Interstates specifically. In this cartoon it showed a mass of men and machines moving across the landscape, levelling everything in their path. At the time I thought this was exaggeration. Today I learned differently. Today I saw half mile sections of large hills dug out. All to avoid a slight bend in the road.
Obviously at some point in time, if not today, Americans consider nature something to be overcome. Not something to admire and work with. I'm not sure that I will ever quite understand it.
That is not all we saw today. We also saw some sheep. More interestingly we also saw a small oil field, perhaps five or six pumps, surrounded by a wind farm. I thought it a nice juxtaposition. We had seen a couple of wind turbines dismantled on trucks heading in the opposite direction. One blade was an extra long load filling a truck. They are likely quite the sight up close.
We made a good distance across the nothingness that is western Texas. At times there was nothing around except the road and the horizon. We would have made more distance except that we had a mishap. For some reason the truck started to vibrate a lot. About thirty kilometres past Ozona we pull off the Interstate to take a look.
It turns out that my front driver side tire grew a bulge. I'm not sure why, but it may be due to overinflation. When I began the trip I checked the tire pressure in all the tires, but it was quite a bit colder up there. When I stopped and saw the bulge I checked all the pressures. They were all up around 40psi, I had originally filled them to about 38 and had checked back in Oregon that they were below 40 when warm.
Anyways, off the highway I throw the spare on and limp back into town. Quite literally limp. Even though I have a full size spare it isn't the same size as my regular tires. I once thrashed my spare and picked up another out of a rack of miscellaneous tires. So it has a diameter that is two or three inches smaller than my other tires. So my truck has a limp.
Well, tomorrow I get to hit the tire shop before driving a few dozen miles to our planned destination for this evening at a state park to find a male painted bunting.
It happened so slowly I didn't even notice it. I have started to think again. I am well on the road to recovery from burnout.
Over the last couple of days I've had subtle, but undeniable urges to create, to code. I haven't had the urge to code for perhaps a year and instead did it out of rote necessity. This change makes me happy.
Today was mostly just driving. We drove through Truth or Consequences, an interesting town name if there ever was one. The town itself isn't that interesting.
We also drove into Texas. They say that everything is bigger in Texas and I'm willing to believe them. Of course I've only really seen one city and a hundred miles of nothing.
I did however see a couple of interesting things. The first is that the highways here have two speed limits for each vehicle type: one for day and one for night. This is in addition to the different speed limits for passenger vehicles and trucks. I think this is not a bad idea, especially when sections of the highway have a daylight speed limit of 80MPH. I certainly don't trust most people to travel no faster than they can see.
The other is that some sections of the highway through El Paso have both a speed limit and a speed minimum. I've never seen that before.
Finally I have some photographic proof of a difference in emission standards. We saw an old RV which would leave a large cloud of brown fog behind it whenever it had to go up even the slightest hill. It was actually pretty disgusting.
I suppose I had one other thing. About sixty miles east of the Mexican border we passed through a border inspection station. They were obviously looking for illegal Mexican immigrants. I have to question how often they actually find any at that checkpoint. I mean, if you've made it across the US border into Texas and want to make it further inland do you stick to major highways all the way, do you try the rural highways or do you simply hike around the checkpoint through the dozens of miles of fields and mountains? Surely the locations of the permanent checkpoints are widely known among those trying to import themselves.
Well, there is no long entry this time around because there hasn't been much to see. I am sure hoping Texas gets more interesting soon. At least it is warmer and providing a cause to wear my new stylish hat.
Until tomorrow.
This entry was made in the morning before leaving because it was exceptionally windy and threatening worse.
Yesterday we travelled the greater section of New Mexico that remains. We did that while keeping ourselves busy on side trips. The first trip was to a small town which sits on the continental divide. We stopped in briefly for a slice of pie, which is only fitting for a town which goes by the name Pie Town. The restaurant was a small country cafe with perhaps six tables. The pie was good and Courteney found herself a book of pie recipes with which to experiment.
On the way back to civilization we stopped in at the National Radio Observatory. In order to reduce noise from human radio and electronic sources it is situated in the middle of nowhere. It was fairly neat to see the large dishes, example images and an explanation of how it all works.
I'd like to describe more, but find myself incapable. So I will move onto where we camped. We camped in a state park called Elephant Butte. It is just outside of a city called Elephant Butte and just off a nice little lake called, imaginatively, Elephant Butte Lake. I didn't expect to see a lake in this part of the country, but here it is. We stayed in what is described as a developed camp spot. This means that there is a permanent structure on the campsite. It was big enough to put the tent entirely inside with room to spare and was looking to storm in a big way so we did so. In hindsight this may have been a mistake. The storm never came, but the wind sure did. This structure had a concrete floor, so we couldn't peg the tent down. As an alternative we weight it down and tied it to the structure. This kept the tent mostly stationary, but it would still shake and the loops where the tent is meant to be pegged shifted position regularly with a screech. We made it through the night though.
In the morning we were greeted by many bird of perhaps half a dozen varieties. This was a nice change.
Today we did several things. The first wasn't especially fun, but is something that I do because I like eating. That is we went grocery shopping. After getting this chore out of the way we went onto something a bit more fun: Hat shopping.
Now I've only known Courteney to enjoy two types of shopping. Shopping for books and shopping for video games. However, she had a grand time when we went to shop for hats. Even though it was a small shop it had probably two dozen different styles of womens hats. This is beyond the regular assortment of mens hats. Now going in, as I've mentioned, I knew what kind of hat I wanted and the only decision I truly had was the colour. Courteney on the other hand had made no decision and so tried on every hat in the shop, often to comedic effect. Pictures will come eventually.
I decided on a brown wide brimmed fedora and Courteney decided on a blue and green wide brimmed straw hat, even though the Outback hat looked just as good on her. With this chore done it was time to pay Santa Fe a visit.
We went to Santa Fe with one goal in mind, to eat pie. Courteney has a book full of pie recipes from restaurants and bakeries all over North America. One of these pies is a giant apple pecan pie. This is the pie we went to eat. It was indeed enormous. Courteney and I shared a single piece and it was a good idea. The slice was as large as a normal slice of pie, but the pie itself towered at least four inches tall, perhaps even five inches. The restaurant itself is situated in a small historic square in Santa Fe, near the cathedral. It is a rather nice spot to have lunch and take a walk. Anyways, the pie is topped with a delicious Mexican caramel and pecans. The filling is made up of spiced apple slices, cut real thin. It was excellent pie and Courteney will have to work up the bravery to make it in the future.
As we began to digest our meal and desert we headed south towards our next destination. Along the way we passed a Girl Scout building. After some turning around due to a misunderstanding on my part, we arrived at this building looking for the fabled Girl Scout cookies. They are rumoured to be good, perhaps even better than the mint cookies of the Girl Guides. Unfortunately it turns out that they stopped selling cookies last weekend. Both of us had forgotten that they have these stores and so we never sought one out. This is one item which will have to remain on the list for the foreseeable future.
Beyond that we just drove. Today we covered a number of miles because there isn't much out here. New Mexico is good, as far as I see, only for raising cattle. And cattle don't make interesting landscape.
New Mexico does have something going for it though, it is the coldest spot on the trip. Since it seemed when we first entered the state that the entire state was at seven thousand feet elevation above sea level it is fairly high. The highs while we have been here have been in the mid fifties (cool) and the lows have been a little bit below freezing.
We woke today to fresh snow. I suppose this should be no surprise, but it was a nice one. We spent most of the day driving and where in four different states today.
This is only possible without a monumental drive because we drove through the only four state corner in the United States. It was a bit interesting.
Other than that we only saw more desert. Now for those of you who haven't travelled through more deserts than I can count you mustn't make the mistake of thinking of all deserts are the same. There are in fact many nuances. Is it sandy or rocky? Are there mostly shrubs, trees or cacti? What colour is the rock, I've seen various shades of grey, yellow, red, pink and even green. Is it a deathly dry desert like Death Valley (a well deserved name) or a relatively wet desert like the Interior of British Columbia? Finally, is the desert as flat as Saskatchewan, Alberta or BC?
Each combination produces a unique type of desert. I feel that by this point I must have driven through most of them. Both of us are getting rather tired of deserts. Of course the most interesting desert I have seen is the forested desert near the Grand Canyon. It is a desert, but with a fully fleshed forest. Sure I didn't get the pine needle floor that I'm used to, but it was a forest that was also a desert. An exceptionally dry desert that reached lows below freezing both days we were there.
It has finally become sunny enough, for long enough on this trip that it has come time to finally get a hat. After much consideration I have decided on a wide brimmed fedora. This isn't quite as good for keeping the sun away and the head cool as a straw cowboy hat, but it is more practical in city settings and for keeping in the small cab of my truck.
We are staying in the world famous Albuquerque Holiday Inn. Alas, the towels are not oh so fluffy. Though the room is slightly nicer than the rock bottom economy motels we have previously stayed in, it is certainly not worth the extra cost. My faith in Weird Al has been diminished.
An interesting fact people may not know about me is that I have never driven myself through a drive-through. Not a bank, not fast food. Today I did a first. I ate at a drive-in. Down here in the USA there is a fast-food chain called Sonic. They are a drive-in. Our experience almost went perfectly. Except that the booths are very narrow and so when in the booth we couldn't open the doors wide enough to get out. The speaker system was also too quiet, which caused problems ordering. Finally, because I couldn't understand the voice I didn't quite get that cash was accepted at the booths. This was made more confusing by the card reader and keypad at the booth. So after hitting cancel on the keypad when prompted to enter a card to pay the bill I assumed that the order had been cancelled. I then backed out of the tiny booth to park and go into the restaurant. Just after we parked the server came out with our food. Cash was exchanged for food and everything worked out.
I still haven't recalled my previous observation, but I do have another one. This one is brought to you by the convenience of having a television. If you watch television here you notice something quite different from in Canada. The first is that there is more news. Though, interestingly, it is all repeated. Secondly, everything is sensationalized. The news, advertisements, everything. I believe this explains some of the culture of the USA.
Secondly, in listening to the local radio stations I have come to the conclusion that there are many country songs which we never hear on the radio up in Canada. I have no philosophical extrapolation of this observation, I just thought it interesting.
Again there was no entry for yesterday because Courteney was freezing and needed warming up. You didn't miss much because we spent the entire day at the Grand Canyon, walking most of it.
The Grand Canyon is a major tourist attraction and has been for years. It certainly shows. It is the most well established park I have ever seen. Most of the paths up on the rim and in the village are paved and level. Most of the shops are gift and souvenir shops. There are also many ranger run activities and talks everyday. There are even shuttles moving around the park. It is all rather commercial.
It truly seems that all the park is setup to entertain the less physically capable tourists. It would seem that the only thing really worth the entry fee is hiking down the canyon. Unfortunately Courteney vetoed that idea so we only got to walk around the rim.
I think it would be nice to do an overnight hike into the canyon. This requires a permit that you can get up to four months in advance and some lightweight equipment I don't have. But still.
This travelling is beginning to make me think that I'd like to take up adventuring, or at least backcountry hunting.
I have a couple more things to mention about our mostly offroad trip in getting to the Grand Canyon. I was actually very impressed with the GPS guide I have here. Not only did it have the long dirt path marked, it also had all the National Forest roads (which are all gravel). That is not something that I expected a regular unit to have on it.
Today we left the Grand Canyon. In searching for a suitable camping park within the range we felt like driving we ended up entering Utah. The drive up here through Monument Valley was nice, even though it was mostly covered in a dust cloud. Entering the south eastern corner of Utah is quite a nice view of small canyons and exceptionally red rock.
An interesting fact that about Utah that I am extrapolating from a single sample is that the lowest grade of gasoline is 86 octane. The midgrade is what I consider to be the normal 87 octane.
As I was saying Courteney was freezing last night and so I ended up warming her up. Now due mostly to her laziness I ended up sleeping in my sleeping bag for the first time. The night was cool, with a predicted low of negative two. That sleeping bag is sure comfortable. Sleeping on one's side is a bit tough, but other than that it is a dream. I can't understand how Courteney is cold in it.
I had another observation about Americans, but I have forgotten. I'll likely think of it again.
Some days the most exciting part of my day is looking at all the exotic bugs as I scrape them out of my radiator. Today was not one of those days.
Today we left my grandparents' apartment and headed towards the Grand Canyon. Now instead of sticking to the I-40 like all the other boring tourists we thought we would take a small state highway that coincides with a section of the historic route 66. Now after driving on this for a while north we went further astray on another highway into a Native Reservation. This was fine and a pretty nice drive.
After this wee had to start heading east. Our road atlas shows one road heading east towards the Grand Canyon from where we were. Now it marked it as an unpaved road. This was fine. It made a large scale map and so is likely just a gravel road, right?
Wrong. This road, using the term loosely was actually two ruts worn across the rugged fields of a ranch. This was fine, I only expected it to be like that for a few kilometres before we got back onto a graded road.
Well, that didn't happen for nearly sixty kilometres. And though I had fun leaving the flattened trail for some time where I made good use of my truck, it did grow old after a while and Courteney was not much a fan. I expect if you read her entry for today you will find her making the most of her vocabulary to complain.
We finally made it to the Grand Canyon and did so in time to see the sun set. It's quite a sight, but the scale of it hasn't sunk in yet. We'll do some exploring tomorrow. For tonight though I expect more complaints. The forecast is calling for a low of negative nine degrees celsius. That is the coldest camp yet by a long shot. At least we have plenty of sleeping bags, clothes, blankets and a heater if things get really bad.
Well, it's getting too cold to type so that is all for this installment.
Today was our first rest day. That is why the odometer on my truck hasn't changed. This is not to say that we didn't see things. In fact my grandparents' took us around to see a few of the sights in the area.
The first was the London Bridge. Yes we did in fact see the famous London Bridge of the song. I was much surprised to learn that the bridge now resides in a desert in the southwestern United States. It turns out that the person who founded this town thought the area would make a good vacationing area. In order to do that he needed to get people to come and see the town. To do that he decided to buy the London Bridge, dismantle it, ship it across the ocean and then reassemble it. Finally he dug a trench underneath the bridge to create an island in the lake.
It must have worked because the town, founded in 1963, now has a population of about fifty thousand people.
We also drove about an hour to see a town called Oatman. This town was once a gold mining town, once a stop on Route 66 (in fact to get there we drove on a piece of the now defunct Route 66) and now a tourist town. The major reason it is a tourist town is because there are mostly wild burro (donkeys) walking the streets and a bar where the walls are covered in dollar bills. The donkeys originally where the workhorse of the mine, but was released into the wild when the mine closed. The bills are each marked with a person's name and sometimes a date or origin. The entire bar is covered in bills and finding a place to put ours was difficult.
That was just about all we did, I did say it was a rest day. We of course also talked with my grandparents.
I also have a reader comment. Please keep them coming. Everyone I receive pushes me a little bit further towards using some real blogging software with actual comments and a real RSS feed. Eugene responds to my entry here:
There's a shop called Sanrio around various malls in the Lower Mainland that are also filled with pink and cat-faced things. You just don't venture out into the areas filled with Asian people.
In terms of the American Dream, it seems to have warped from "house, car and a comfortable life for your family" to "buy big, buy now, worry later." It has drowned them in debt.
Well, if I can't understand one store, I am astounded that there is a chain. In fact I believe that the store was called Sanrio as well.
You seem very correct with respect to the American dream. Unfortunately for them when you always take the most that you can get you eventually need to pay the piper. If that isn't happening now it will eventually.
Today we saw the Hoover Dam. It is considered an engineering marvel and it perhaps is. When we first arrived we were told that there were no tours and that was disappointing, but we pressed on to see the small museum. There we learnt several interesting things such as hardhats being a new thing with that project. I was amazed to learn the amount of work that was done with steam powered machinery and men on wooden boards suspended by a single rope. I especially liked the full scale model of a generator. It is interesting to see how many layers are necessary in a generator.
After we had seen approximately half of the exhibits we received the news that they had opened the tours. This made us happy. After finishing the exhibits we upgraded our tickets to go on the most expensive tour of the dam. This tour took us into the gallery of the generator room and then through some of the tunnels inside the dam. This was somewhat interesting. The dam itself was designed with tours in mind and large sections of floor is a nice, finished floor.
I'm not sure if the tour was worth the $30 per person, but it was nice to see and get out of the heat.
What was annoying was the security. It was more of the same reactionary security. I can see why some people would like to protect it though. This dam is one of many which controls the Colorado river. This river used to be unpredictable and vicious. It would regularly flood massive regions of the Southwest and then merely trickle the rest of the year. Without this dam and the rest of the system the Southwest United States could not exist. It would be flooded every few years and little food could be grown there.
Should the Hoover Dam become inoperable Las Vegas would likely go dark and much of the USA starve.
We are now seeing my grandparents' who vacation here in Arizona. We looked over our proposed route and have decided to make tomorrow our first rest day. This means we will only do light tourist things and not travel that far. Tomorrow we will see the London Bridge.
Here we find ourselves on near the Nevada-Arizona border. We spent a few hours walking the strip in Las Vegas today. Though this is a young man's town we saw numerous old people. I suppose it is also a city where it helps to have disposable income, especially if you want to take advantage of all the drinking, gambling and sex.
For a city in the desert it is certainly green. Even more than the numerous palm trees and shrubs every casino seems to have a fountain, some of which are immense. The amount of money. time and other resources that have been spent to build this adult playground.
In any case this city isn't something that can be truly experienced on a trip like this. Firstly there are the shows, which we can afford neither the time nor the money to get tickets to all the shows. There are five Circ-du-Solei shows and many other magicians, comedians, dancers and others. Let us also not forget the free street shows put on by the casinos and hotels on the strip.
In the few hours we spent there we only saw a little bit. One day I'll have to spend a week here to truly take it all in. Though I did gamble in Vegas, it was only a dollar because it just doesn't fit in with the trip.
Tomorrow we will visit the Hoover Dam. That promises to be a worthwhile tour.
Now it is time for another episode of Thing Travis Notices about Americans. In this instalment we will discuss RVs. Though I have discussed this before I have some new insight. The first is that it appears that are public lands in the USA. I hadn't thought this to be the case. Secondly it appears that tenting is disallowed on all public lands, but RVing is acceptable. I'm not sure why this is, but it is.
Perhaps it's because Americans like travelling with all the amenities of home. I've even seen RVs with portable satellite dishes. And here I am quite enjoying a low technology trip.
We are in a state park a distance outside of Las Vegas. We arrived in town too late to make a tour and needed to do some grocery shopping. I am glad we did. This park is full of brilliant red rocks. All these rocks and mountains are eroded into interesting shapes. When the pictures are up you will see what I mean.
This is yet another day in the desert. That damn dust gets into everything. It finds its way through zippers and floods in if you open the door for even a second.
But the views are worth it. It is hard to imagine just what emptiness looks like. This is it. You can see for miles and there is nothing there. No trees, no buildings, no water and often no vehicles. At least the mountains off in the distance have interesting colourings.
I would strongly recommend that those into photography spend a week in this desert. Just play with framing nothingness and hard shadows. Bring plenty of water and a polarizing lens.
We arrived here yesterday, but I was too wiped to make an entry.
We spent the day travelling through desert country. First the parts of the Mojave desert off the Interstate, then Death Valley. Both are pretty nice drives, especially to experience nothing. There is so close to nothing out here that I can't conceive of ever living here.
All that is here is wind, dust and sun bleached rock. And yet there are people who live here. It brings new meaning to scratching out a living.
Though there isn't much here other than wind and dust we did see a few things. The first is that we drove through a small sandstorm. That was fun. Visibility was just like light fog and you could hear the sand bouncing off the door.
We also visited the lowest point in North America. It is 278 feet below see level. It's a dry lake area, which means it is rather flat and the old lake bed is covered in salt. I am also glad that we are making the trip in spring instead of the height of summer. Currently it only reaches about 25 degrees, but the record during summer is 57 degrees with a more normal maximum of 49 degrees. That is way to hot for me.
In a land of nothing the entries are short because there is only beauty in the rocks. Pictures will come eventually.
Yesterday was a long and exciting day. First we spent the majority of the day walking around the San Diago Zoo. We walked for nearly eight hours straight, but we managed to catch the two major shows. The sea lion show was pretty good. It consisted of a brief appearance by a hawk followed by a well trained sea lion performing a few tricks and finally an arctic wolf.
We took many more pictures than perhaps we should have. I'm sure I'll have endless fun sorting through them when we return.
The San Diago Zoo is world famous and touted as one of the best zoos in the world. However, I'm not convinced it's better than the Vancouver Zoo. Though the San Diago Zoo has a large collection of birds Vancouver has more large mammals. I also found that the signs in San Diago are not nearly as informative as the ones in Vancouver. In San Diago all each sign said was their range and threat level. The signs at Vancouver, however, have that same information presented as a map with the addition of peculiar facts and average ages and weight for each species.
Now the San Diago Zoo does have certain species that the Vancouver Zoo does not such as giant pandas and of course many tropical birds. I believe for the most part this is because of the cooler climate of Vancouver prevents housing these species outdoors as is done in the San Diago Zoo. Also certain species like Pandas and some Australian species either cannot be exported except by special governmental decree or are difficult to keep in captivity.
Though the location of the Vancouver Zoo precludes certain species from being affordable it does give one advantage, the advantage of space. Most of the cages at the San Diago Zoo are rather small and give severely limited vantage points. This is especially true of the large mammals like lions, tigers and bears. When I was last at the Vancouver Zoo the cages seemed bigger and gave many vantage points as many of them could be viewed from at least two sides of the rectangular cage. The San Diago Zoo also has the annoying tendency to put the cages above the pedestrian so you cannot see over or around many of the foliage and landscaping.
It is expected that animals at a zoo will be animals and not active at all times. So it is disappointing when the cages are designed in such a way that when the animals are resting they are difficult or impossible to see.
Then there are the shows. For a zoo that seems to present itself as an amusement park, perhaps even more than an educational park the shows at the San Diago Zoo were slightly disappointing. They consisted mostly of bringing three animals out briefly, walking them around a small stage, having them perform a few simple tricks and then taking them off stage. There is little explanation of the animal. Also for a Zoo with such a large bird population it is surprising that there wasn't any falconry. The Vancouver Zoo has a falconry show that I like.
The San Diago Zoo may make a better amusement park with its gondola and bus tours, but I feel that Vancouver makes a better educational experience and a better animal viewing experience.
So that was the first part of the day. This lasted from about 9:30 AM when we left our cheap motel which was two kilometres from the Mexican border until about six when we pulled our tired feet into the truck. Having done that it was time to find somewhere to sleep. We had spent the last few days in motels because we were in large cities and decided to camp for a change of pace and to save cash. Staying in a motel tends to be just slightly less than three times the cost of camping.
So we head north out of San Diago, having finished out run down the west coast. We may yet go to Mexico, but no to Tijuana with their current gang war going on. About two hours on the highway (really a highway since there are so many around here) we get to one place. Unfortunately they don't take night registrations and we cannot stay. So we head to a state park about an hour and a half away. At first we believed it to only be thirty klicks, but we were wrong. Instead it was about sixty miles of driving. Even worse, it was near the summit of a mountain and we spent about forty-five minutes driving up this mountain. Surprisingly there were houses most of the way up this mountain. After passing the summit of the road we were on at five thousand feet we then dipped a bit down to the park. Arriving in the dark of light, hungry, we made a quick dinner, setup the tent and slept. This explains the lack of an entry yesterday.
Even though we arrived in the dark in the middle of nowhere the park was partially full. This is a distinct difference to the other weekend camps we had in more northern parts.
I was certainly surprised at how much in the middle of nowhere people lived. There is no way any commute to anywhere could be less than forty-five minutes and every commute is steeply uphill. Yet people do it.
When we were leaving we discovered that that mountain is actually a pretty busy place, especially with motorcyclists and bicyclists.
Well, today was a driving day. We are currently heading towards Death Valley and Las Vegas and are on schedule to stay overnight in Death Valley tomorrow. We are currently in the Mojave desert. The land here is not quite flat, but certainly empty. Just off the sides of the interstate are 4X4 parks. We are camping in a regional park just outside of a ghost mining town here. Unexpectedly we found it full of jacked up trucks. I suppose it makes sense given the generally smooth nature of the landscape. Even a stock 4X4 could make its way without getting stuck in most places. There are of course the more challenging rock and cliff sections for the skilled.
That is where we find ourselves. Setting up the tent was an interesting feat. At the time we had strong winds, perhaps as strong as seventy miles per hour. Now is the time I'm glad I brought those strong tent pegs and all that rope. The sky is clear in this land the locals call highway land and just as soon as it is dark enough we will check off another item from The List, truly seeing the stars.
Now before I forget I must mention a couple of things that slipped my mind in previous posts. The first is that in Little Tokyo in Los Angeles we came across a shop I can only describe as a Hello Kitty store. Nearly everything in the store was pink and I saw almost nothing that didn't have a cat face on it. I never considered that such a store could exist.
Secondly, there are a much larger number of old cars down here. I was sceptical when I talked to a clerk and heard that my truck wasn't that old. But then I came further south and saw it to be true. It's rather amazing the see how a small change in the climate effects how things age.
Finally, since the sun has set and the stars have come out to play, it seems that there is not as much wealth in the USA as the travel brochure would have one believe. Everywhere I see cheap land I see small houses, the cheaper the and the smaller the houses. While in the cities I've seen with expensive land I've seem endless wastelands of highway, expensive cars and large houses.
I'm beginning to think that the American dream is just that, a dream.
After the very busy couple of days we have had a low key day. There are a couple of days without entries because we met one of Courteney's friends in Fremont. I have been told her name as either Honey or Sakura, I'm not precisely sure which is just a handle and which is her name.
We arrived back at our motel late in the evening and had to go straight to bed because we had what will likely be the longest single driving stretch of the trip. We woke up early in the morning and left for Los Angeles. Courteney's friend Annette is there, but she was leaving the area for few days for a University orientation. Inconveniently her leaving would have happened at precisely the time we would have arrived there if we had kept us our leisurely pace.
So instead of missing her we woke up early and proceeded to drive nearly four hundred miles in a single day. We made it and arrived on Saint Patty's day. Annette had just had her birthday and was holding off on the party until Courteney got there. We arrived at our motel room at about six in the evening and shortly thereafter we went to a bar to have a party. It was good and everybody there seemed to have fun. We of course closed the bar down.
After arriving back at our motel we needed to sleep and rest for the day of sightseeing that was to happen. We did that and ended up going several places. I'll have difficultly naming all the places we went, but I do know a few. We went to the Santa Monica Pier, Little Tokyo, Hollywood and highway.
LA isn't so much a single city as a large number of small cities which have just grown to touch each other. Now all these areas are connected by highways. There are many of them and they are all at least eight lane highways, though at times some are twelve lanes. This is because of the unsurprising fact that everybody drives everywhere. In fact we probably drove more than a hundred miles on that tour seeing day and it didn't appear to be too far out of the ordinary.
It was fun and we did see a lot. Especially the airport. As I mentioned Annette was travelling away. Well she left on a redeye yesterday. We dropped her off for her 11:30 PM flight. However, it is a large airport and we walked partially to the terminal and partially took a shuttle. To return to the car we thought it would be smart to take the shuttle that roams for that purpose. This would have been good except that upon getting off the shuttle we didn't know where the car was in relation to us. Not having a car we needed to walk to find it.
That was a bit of an adventure. It turns out that we had not parked in the correct lot. Nothing bad happened, but we did end up with an hour long walk around the perimeter of one of the parking lots. Those lots are large. Oddly enough there were nice wide sidewalks around every block, even though I can see no reason anybody would consider it a good idea to walk around the outskirts of the LAX airport.
After this rather exhausting day playing tourist we returned to playing traveller. We took a leisurely drive from the outskirts of the LA area down to San Diago via Ontario. I know it's a bit corny, but I like driving through areas with names matching places in Canada. This was an easy drive and much shorter than the previous driving day down the LA.
We ended up getting a motel less than two kilometers from the Mexican-US border. It's a rather interesting place. I even heard a bilingual radio station. Not too far from this motel is a beach. Since we are turning east in the next day or two it was important to make our way to the ocean for a swim.
Earlier in the day it was looking to be a nice day for a swim. The sun was shining and we were half roasting in my truck. I've since discovered that though I may not have air conditioning turning the fans on helps quite a bit.
Alas, when we arrived at the beach there was a massive dark cloud hanging overhead. It was dark and windy and cold. While Courteney didn't brave the water, I did manage to make my way out until the water was up to my knees before I could no longer feel my feet. The beast was shallow. It might not have been the nice sunny swim I had hoped for, but I have been in the Pacific on this trip. I will of course get another chance in Tofino to have a proper swim, but that's a ways away.
Tomorrow we do the zoo. It promises to require a lot of walking.
There is no real entry today because Courteney's friend Annette and her boyfriend showed us around the town all day and we arrived back at our motel too late to type much.
This is an interm entry. Currently we are sitting here in a laundromat watching our laundry spin in circles.
Today was a rather full day of checking things off the list. We covered the University of California Berkeley campus, Infinite Loop and partially the Computer Museum in Mountainview. Berkeley is a rather older than I expected. The campus is fairly large and has a surprisingly full road system. The campus is very similar to the UBC campus with a mix of ornate brick buildings, more modern concrete monstrosities and a few new steel and glass buildings.
Infinite Loop is just a road , but the geekier among my readers will get the joke. We did get pictures of all six addresses on Infinite Loop. All of them are of course part of the Apple campus.
Now we were only able to partially see the Computer Museum because it was closed for a private event. We did sneak in and take a peek at some of the historical pieces, but they closed that section down and caught us. That was unfortunate. Well, perhaps I'll make it down this way again in five or ten years. As a note for anybody who is considering making their way down, if you arrive one the first or third Saturday of the month there is a live PDP-1 demonstration.
Also it is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays.
Finally we have arrived at the first listed stop on our trip. It may seem odd that we don't have any places we want to stop on the way down until San Fransisco, but that's the way it is. Out stops on this trip tend to be more landmark related and less people related. That is we'll stop and look at the Grand Canyon and the giant redwoods and the Goldengate bridge, but we won't make specific time to take in a Broadway show.
So today we made San Fransisco and saw the Goldengate Bridge. We feared for a while that it would be fogged in and we would be unable to see it at all. This is a very real fear because Courteney's parents were here a few years ago for three or four days and not once could they see the bridge. Not from afar and not even while walking on it. It was also raining lightly and foggy when we were coming in of highway one.
Now that is a rather nice highway as long as the weather is fair and you are in no rush. There are no shoulders and in most places there is no ditch or any other land at all. The road often ends at a cliff's edge. Guardrails are in short supply as are straight stretches. It isn't nearly as bad as I had been told, but I wouldn't like to travel it during bad weather. I imagine that if it snowed here at all that highway would be closed often. Funnily enough there is a speed limit that is radar enforced (at least that's what the signs tell us). I'm not sure why it'd need to be enforced at all, if you drive too fast you'll quickly find yourself off-road and let me tell you that it gets steep quick.
With our arrival in the first big city stop we again find ourselves in a motel. This is a requirement since there is nowhere to camp. It is also nice to shower because even though the state parks have showers they are coin operated and we haven't procured much coinage yet.
There are no observations about the USA today because I was preoccupied with keeping between the yellow and white line all day. I imagine I'll have several in the next few days as we do long stints of boring driving on the Interstate in order to fit our travel schedule in with the schedules of a couple of Courteney's friends who live in this area.
As a bonus it's time to deal with reader comments. I know that many of you find it annoying that I don't have comments on my blog. I will eventually fix that, but until that day in the indeterminate future please feel free to email me. When I do get access to read my email I will post the comments here.
I did receive one comment from Phil that the reason we only saw full service gas stations in Oregon is because that is the state law. That is something I didn't know.
Now for those of you who like to play stalker there is something new to help you track our progress. Just before we left my parents' purchased a GPS messenger device. With the device any time we press a button we can send our current location to a group of people. It also comes with a handy map of where we are and were on Google Maps. If you find this sort of information exhilarating you should go to lists.travisbrown.ca and subscribe to the trip list. This list will sooner than later be receiving a copy of all the messages we send. We tend to send two or three a day. Note this before you subscribe. Of course it is a mailing list and you could discuss with other members of the list should you desire.
{If you have any problems please email me at travis on my vanity domain.
This is definitely wine country. We spent a good portion of today driving past vineyards separated by narrow winding mountain road. We drove the head of the number one highway. That is the highway that follows the coastal cliffs in many places. Now we only travelled about forty miles and we travelled the northern most section, but it is nowhere near as bad as I've been led to believe. Perhaps it gets worse more southern. Of course we were driving pretty slowly because my loaded truck isn't as nimble as most vehicles.
Now this isn't to say that we didn't see any trees today. In fact we saw plenty since the road still travels through the woods. We did however stop at a redwood you could drive a vehicle through. Alas my truck was too tall with the cap on to make it through. It was only an inch, but an inch versus an immovable ancient tree ma as well be a mile. At least we got to see a few cars and small SUV's drive through.
I suppose that I should fill this blog in on what we did yesterday because I couldn't blog with Courteney thinking she was freezing to death. As I mentioned we saw lots of redwood trees and didn't make much distance. They are certainly large trees. We saw one that was over nineteen feet in diameter. It is difficult to explain the scale of these trees. What I found most interesting is that because these trees are so long lived, on the order of fifteen centuries, they grow into many odd shapes. As you will eventually be able to see on the gallery when it is up some grow horizontally and often what appear to be miniature trees sprouting off eighty feet off the ground.
I was also somewhat surprised to learn that the legend of Paul Bunion is the legend of this area and of the logging of the redwoods. It's bit odd to visit the birthplace of a legend, even if I only know it vaguely.
Tonight and last night we stayed in state parks. These parks are mostly right off the highway and don't provide free showers and don't have cell phone reception, but are pretty nice otherwise. I like that fact that there are no bright lights. It lets me hold that all these flashlights I brought serve a purpose. Courteney thought me crazy for bringing so many. They are also nice and quiet. Now this is likely only happening now because it is a bit chilly for the average fair weather camper to take a vacation. I'm hoping it doesn't get too busy during the rest of our trip. It is nice to be able to drive and stop and see things until we are tired or it is getting dark and be able to easily get a camping spot. I think the trip will be a lot less fun if we can no longer choose to stop and forty-five minutes later have found a spot and setup camp.
Of course, this doesn't mean that we are alone at these campsites. Last night we shared the campsite with a number of late-night arrivals. I imagine they are travellers and partiers. It was a Friday night after all. This night we are only really sharing the campsite with a troop of Boy Scouts. I expect that we'll see a few late night arrivals yet.
And now it's time for more random observations about the United States and how it is subtly different from Canada. The first is the proliferation of RV sites. It often seems that there is a sign for an RV campsite every ten miles or less. Perhaps Americans like to travel in comfort. I've even seen portable satellite dishes set beside a truck camper. Now perhaps I'm an odd person who quite enjoys leaving most modern amenities when I camp, but I don't much see the point of spending hours driving a small mobile home to some new destination only to arrive and spend my time sitting inside watching the same old TV and movies I could get at home. I can imagine it even less if they did as we are doing and moved every day or two.
I'll take my current set up of limited access to the world at large and the minimum of electronics necessary for a trip of this magnitude.
The second observation for today is that there are relatively few retail debit machines. That is that it is difficult to find explicit mention at a retail counter that you can pay with debit. Everything and everybody takes credit cards however. I am beginning to see why the average number of credit cards in an American's wallet is eight. Unless you want to pay for everything with cash you need a working credit card. If you can only get cards with a low limit and you only pay when the bill is due you could find yourself often being at the limit or worrying about reaching the limit of your credit card.
This new realization makes it rather worrisome to the population here. I recently heard the the credit card companies themselves are now requiring and have been bailed out by the government. Should those companies be unable to continue and a significant number of them go out of business I foresee problems in the average person paying for the essentials of life.
Well, while Courteney continues to crochette I'm going to log off and enjoy the dark silence. Until next time and when I next get network access continue awaiting our GPS tracker messages, which we have dubbed bleeping. Bleep you later.
Well, I imagine if you take a look at Courteney's travel blog for today you will see griping about last night. You see we camped for the first time last night. Unfortunately Courteney caught a chill and it took a while for it to go away. It didn't help that it reached a low of three degrees Celsius during the night (As a note all temperatures I quote will be in Celsius unless otherwise mentioned). I was of course the gentleman and gave her use of my sleeping bag which is rated to -18 while hers is only rated to zero.
I slept relatively well, though I did wake up with cold shoulders and stole one of the extra blankets I had packed for just such an occasion.
We proceeded to pack up and things went well. We did a significant amount of driving today and left the state of Oregon. We did this by taking highway US199, which is a nice drive with a section of narrow, windy mountain road in the middle. That road is nowhere near as bad as some I've driven and is fun. One thing to consider is that there are some sections which look like they should have some sort of barrier, but don't. I find this a bit odd, but I'll just continue to drive between the lines.
We did take one short detour down a mud road into a state park late this afternoon into the edge of the old growth forest. We walked around and it was nice. Part of the reason we covered so much ground today is that we want to reach the old growth redwood forest at the height of daylight. From the sampling we've seen here it looks like it'll be lots of fun.
It's time for more observations about the USA. First is that I have yet to see a self-serve gas station. Every station we have gone to (Which is now at least one a day because we are driving solely on the small gas tank) has been full serve. It was a nice surprise the first time, but I sorely miss the chances to get out and stretch my legs while doing something productive. All gas stations also appear to charge for air, which annoys me.
The second observation of the day is that drive through coffee places are common. This shouldn't surprise me, but they do. I suppose it's because all they do is serve coffee to drivers. And they are not Tim Horton's. I just don't want to believe that something can continue to operate solely on selling to impatient drivers.
The final observation of the moment comes from a short chat with the lady at the counter of the campsite we are staying at tonight. It appears that people in the US really dislike people on welfare. It is also evident that welfare works differently here. Also interesting is that apparently in or near Sacramento there is a tent city appearing in a cancelled housing development. The city is so large already that the city is considering putting in services such as water and sewer. I find this amazing,
Well, we may have travelled a few hundred kilometres further south and while it is warmer already it still is a bit on the cool side (11 degrees) and so we are going to hide in the tent. Until tomorrow.
Well, we made it out of the brilliant ocean vista and have moved inland some to try and see something other than the coast.
I've seen further proof that autopropane is expensive. I saw a listing today of it at $3.50 a gallon. Though it means we need to fill up more we will continue to run on gas.
Tonight is also our first night in the tent. It's still slightly chilly. The thermometer is reading 11 celsius as I type this after dinner. A bit on the cold side but we have good sleeping bags and additional blankets. The only worry is that it was very windy when we got here this evening. We parked the truck to block the wind as best we could, but it may very well change direction.
It is significantly easier to move around in the truck with the tent, sleeping bags and sleeping pads out of it. We are certainly setup for camping and motelling is in many ways more difficult.
I have more things I've noticed about the states. The first is that in many areas you see four or five gas stations all down the same street. In one spot I saw three corners of a road with gas stations and two further down. I find this to be madness. Even in some of the smaller towns I've seen three gas stations in a row. I can certainly see how somebody can put significant effort into knowing which station nearby is the cheapest at the moment.
Finally, most of the houses in the towns we have passed through are all small ranchers. Perhaps it is just me being odd, but I expected a more even mix of one and two story houses. I am left wondering if this will continue into the rest of the US.
It had to happen, the camera battery is dead. I know we should have charged it at the motels, but we didn't. So now we find ourselves with a bit of time to kill at a beautiful view point on the north Oregon coast.
I should expand on the beach walk yesterday. It was a nice walk on a beach where the tied
appeared to have recently gone out. We saw a bunch of sea life including mussels, barnacles
and these little oddities:
We found out not to long afterwards that these are some sort of jellyfish.
I've had another thought on why there seems to be less speeding here. It appears that the speed limits are set closer to the good weather maximum safe speed. I've found myself automatically slowing down in several sections below the speed limit simply because the limit is a bit fast in my moderately loaded pickup. The lanes also tend to be narrower. This may not be the reason, but it is something I've noticed.
Well, I'm going to take in more of the beautiful vista while waiting for the battery to charge.
Today was the first full day of travelling. It started late because we decided to sleep in until nine. We didn't get out of the parking lot until nearly eleven, but we had to do some reorganization of the truck. It was just too hard to get stuff in and out. It is better now, though still difficult.
We are spending our second night in a motel because it is still too cold to camp. I am hoping to get camping soon because most of the difficulty in getting to the stuff in the back of the truck is because of the tent, chairs and sleeping mats.
I bought fuel for the first time in the USA today. I got gasoline at $2.13 a gallon at a full service station. I imagine they've never seen a truck with such a small tank. I also found autopropane and filled up. That didn't end up nearly as inexpensive and cost something over $3 a gallon. I'm not sure I just got taken for a ride because it was an RV park or if that is the going rate. In either case I'm going to run on gasoline until I see that propane is cheaper. Conveniently this makes my conversion all the more worthwhile investment.
Just after we got gas I went to add a little bit of air to my tires. However, that plan changed when I saw the price tag of seventy-five cents. What is the world coming to when gas stations are charging for air and an outrageous sum at that?
Everything is going alright and we are figuring things out. We spent most of today driving a couple of smaller highways into Oregon, but walked the town and beach of Cannon Beach in the late afternoon.
Little known fact, Oregon has outlawed what we consider the standard BBQ propane tank connector. I'm not quite sure why. Also there seems to be significantly less speeding here on the highways than in Canada. I'm not sure if this is because there are more police or for some other reason.
Before I go I should mention Courteney's travel blog for those who wish to see how Courteney is doing. It can be found here
Finally, the big trip has begun.
The last few days have been stressful and without sufficient sleep. However I finally managed to leave. As I type this Courteney is on a motel bed crocheting while I listen to a podcast piped through a boombox.
We had originally planned to leave for 10 AM, however packing the truck up takes far longer than anybody ever thinks and so we didn't leave the driveway until 2PM. But leave we did and we've got a few kilometres behind us with many more to go.
We are going to start the trip slow, early to bed and late to rise for the first while in order to recover from the preparation for this trip.
This just in: the CBC podcasts are pure awesome.
In other news, March comes a lot quicker than one might think. This is especially worrisome because I currently have plans to leave in the beginning of March. What this means is that I'm going to be a very busy person with trip preparations. Luckily I have my fiancé to help with the preparations and research.
Combine that with moving back to my parents' place and you'll find it perfectly reasonable that I haven't blogged in a while. Look out though, come the beginning of the trip I expect to blog every day or so. I may not necessarily upload everyday, but I'll write something.
Until I have more time to think and write.
As I've mentioned before I love snow. As of late we've had a large amount (over three feet in some places). I've found this great and have taken much joy in driving around in four wheel drive.
But that isn't what this post is about. That is just what I tell my RSS readers who only see the first paragraph because I'm a lazy person. What this post is actually about is a quick summary of what has happened since my last post. And so very quickly:
I was laid off from Threewave two months early. That kinda sucks, but for the moment I've found other work and things will be alright.
Christmas happened and fun was had by all. Especially fun in the snow.
I proposed to Courteney. She said yes.
As previously mentioned I found other work. I'm currently coding some macros for an engineering company for their engineering software.
I've decided and succeeded in getting off my ass and started to put together a business presence. To this end I've gotten a phone with a plan, I conveniently got to keep the same number. I've also gotten myself a domain and some hosting. I am now the proud owner of the vanity domain travisbrown.ca. There isn't much to see there yet, but I've been busy and haven't had much time to do stuff. I will sooner than later get to putting content other than what I already have on my other webspace there.
That's about it and there isn't anything terribly new or interesting there for those who have talked to me in the past couple of weeks, but it's important to mark it somewhere for all time.
One interesting issue of getting laid off was the possible changes implied in my trip. These possible changes include shortening the trip, or starting later in order to save up more to make up for time lost do to spending time finding work. There is also the possibility of moving out earlier than expected should Burnaby not be an advantageous place to live when travelling to work.
Nothing has been decided yet so only time will tell what changes in my life schedule need to be made.
And also because everybody else is making note of it the USA is in serious trouble. I've read a few sites (which I unfortunately do not have links available at the moment, but if I find time in the next couple of weeks perhaps I'll dig for them) which lead me to believe that it is going to be worse than many people believe. The evidence I have seen leads me to believe that there is going to be a severe depression on the order or worse than the previous depression. It will likely be worse for many people because the modern citizen of the United States is incapable of living independent of the grocery store or other retail conveniences. I do hope I am wrong, but I fear that I am not.
Now may be a good time to start planning, but not yet purchasing, investments into the United States or survival equipment.
Many years I roamed these halls,
Many years ago.
Many feats of victory,
Many feats of woe.
The burden of the texts so great
I would never see the light
If not for the enlightenment
Seeking I here came.
Alone the task's impossible.
So let us not forget
Those who led us to the cup
Reading, storytelling, improvising profs.
Several friends have come and gone,
Friends of every sort,
Several stayed through thick and thin
And they will never fade.
Together we made our mark,
Bringing this chapter to an end.
After I crossed that stage
Away I left, anxiously, paper tight in hand.
What the future holds no one knows,
I know but one simple thing:
My time spent here I spent not in vain
Nous Sommes Prets.
Barring any unexpected failures or bureaucratic problems I am done school. I've finished my last exam. All that remains is some paperwork and walking across the stage. My last exam was HUM 102, Classic Mythology, which I took by distance education. To say the least this was not a difficult exam. The fast that this exam was so easy has left me with a lingering feeling that I'm not done. I didn't experience any rush when I left the exam. I felt no immense release nor did I feel drained. Instead I felt nothing and proceeded to head off to work.
In many ways I wish that my last exam would have been one of those epic exams that I have experienced in the past. An exam where I went in, knowing much, but not knowing much more. Nervous about what was on the exam and how I would do. Then after sitting down, proceeding for the entire three hours to write down answers, skip questions and derive answers from first principles and vaguely remembered facts. Exams like CMPT 379: Compiler Design, CMPT 401: Operating Systems 2 or CMPT 408: The Theory of Networking.
Perhaps it's fitting and normal that my Undergraduate degree would end more with a whimper than a bang, but that doesn't mean I have to be happy with my epic letdown.
Yesterday I handed in my final assignment of the semester. The semester which is hopefully the final semester of my academic career. It wasn't a flashy graphics assignment, nor was it a grungy computability theory assignment. It wasn't even a fun math assignment. Instead it was a paper for a class which I don't really like on a boring subject matter that I'm not terribly interested in. It's a bit of a letdown really, but only in the movies do you see fireworks at the end.
So now I no longer have any homework to do in the evenings. For the first time in years I am left without any particular tasks I need to accomplish after I get home from a long day at school or work. Also, unlike the previous times I've not been actively doing school, my day job isn't hard labour and doesn't get me home at nearly 9:00 PM. Instead I have something of a cushy desk job with a commute that is, while not short, not long. Also the hours are pretty much fixed and I won't be doing overtime here. What am I do to?
Certainly the first thing is to get a regular schedule going for all those things for which I need a schedule, such as working out. But this still leaves me with several hours each evening. TV doesn't appeal and I would tire of watching other things every evening after a couple of weeks. This leaves me with hobbies. Sure I have a bunch of programming projects on the go, but I don't know if I'm going to have the discipline and mental energy to code after I get home from my programming job.
If I don't have the mental coding energy what to do? There's reading, but that requires finding time to hit up a library with a reasonable fiction section, something I'm not sure my schedule will make easy. I do have other hobbies I would like to take up, automotive work for example. Alas I do not have a shop let alone a garage and so that is a bit out of reach. I also want to take up electronics and HAM. Though I don't know if I'm quite ready to commit immediately to scholastic study again after I've just gained my freedom.
It is a problem for which I can't foresee what the solution will be.
There are few things which I enjoy quite as much as a well crafted piece of machinery with some heft to it. In distant times past these tools would have been made of brass and hardwoods. In less distant pasts they would have been made of steel. Unfortunately today they are made of plastic and don't have the same feeling of heft and indestructibility.
It's a bit of a shame really that most tools and machines these days are composed of flimsy steel panels and nylon parts. Machines these days just don't have the sort of feel in which I can place my confidence.
There are three types of programming: exhilarating, tedious and frustrating. All programming has these three components. What differs is the proportion. Programming for school is either mostly exhilarating or mostly tedious with very little frustration. Programming for work is mostly tedious, some frustrating and minute amounts of exhilarating.
This is something you aren't taught in school and should be.
There was one more thing that I experienced during my hunting trip: quiet so near silence that on several occasions I heard the flapping of a bird's wings two or three hundred meters away.
Last weekend I went hunting for the first time. It wasn't quite what I expected. There was the expected hiking through the woods. I had expected more of it, but the terrain wasn't really suited to extensive hiking. There was also a bunch of sitting around waiting, which was fine.
The waiting was actually pretty nice. I quite enjoyed sitting quietly listening to the sounds of the woods. Not having to think about anything is nice.
The weather was nice. It was bright every day and neither snowed nor rained on us. It was warm the first and the last day, reaching 10 degrees. The second night was a bit chilly with the thermometer reading -10 when we awoke. The upside of it being chilly at night is that we have an excuse to have a fire so hot it forces you to sit ten feet back.
Something which wasn't so nice was the near complete lack of animals. Over the whole weekend I saw a single Moose Cow (not legal game), one small black bear (also not legal), one grouse (I didn't have a gun small enough) and a few chipmunks (not something you hunt). So this means that I didn't bag anything, nor even get a single shot off.
I did enjoy it though and will go again. I do believe that it's a hobby I can get into.
Finally, a quick summary of things which happened while I stood still. A chipmunk played peek-a-boo with me. I watched a grouse slowly bob its way towards me while I sat in the truck.
There are many skills in this world and while I am decent at a number of them there are many more at which I suck. Frankly I am not good at juggling, dog training or mad science. This doesn't bother me though, mostly because I don't feel that these skills are important at the current time. Perhaps in the future they will and then I'll feel bad about sucking.
There is one skill I suck at that I wish I didn't. The great art of telling a yarn escapes me. I can't seem to tell a story well for anything. When I begin speaking, putting all my skill into the telling the room falls silent. Unfortunately as I finish the room stays silent and an uncomfortable silence follows.
I don't know why I just can't seem to tell a story, but I certainly have some ideas. Perhaps I'm too direct to the point; it might very well be that I don't embellish properly. Maybe I just tell the wrong stories. Whatever the reason I don't like it.
Alas. Improving would seem to be a difficult thing because I find myself in so few situations where I can attempt a good yarn. I truly do need to get better, especially because the Trip (it now warrants capitalization) should result in numerous stories, giving me the advantage should any recollection of tales occur. It will all be for naught if I can't tell them right.
In many software houses it appears that Perforce is the source control of choice. This includes at Threewave where I am currently working. Unfortunately I really hate it. I just can't stand using it. It is fairly slow, though not unreasonably considering the size and number of files in the project. Even my metric Subversion isn't all that speedy. The GUI is buggy and crashes on me at least once a day. It doesn't breed confidence if the tool which is supposed to save the project from terrible disasters crashes on a regular basis. The difference tool is also slow, not so much in determining the difference, but in showing them. It will often hang temporarily for between twenty seconds and two minutes while scrolling.
It also requires that files are read only unless you've checked them out. This has upsides and downsides. Upsides include not writing to files you haven't checked out. Being forced to check them out means you know who is working on what when. Downsides include not being able to edit or modify files that you don't want to commit. This means that often compiling something will fail because it needs to write to some file that you didn't expect and fails. There are configurations around this, but they can only be correct in a general sense and not every specific case.
Something highly annoying is that I can find to clear way to say "I have done bad things, undo everything I've done and make my version identical to that which is committed". Perhaps I shouldn't be doing those things, but I like knowing that no matter how bad things get I can easily go back to a known state.
Additionally Perforce doesn't automatically attempt to merge files when you update your local copy. It also, at least in the GUI interface, offers no concise listing of files which require this sort of attention. More than once this has resulted in me doing some work, go to update and merge any changes in so I don't fall too far behind, have changes for some file I'm working on not be automatically merged. I will then compile to test and get inexplicable compile errors, odd runtime errors or, is I'm unlucky, nothing wrong. After wasting several minutes recompiling from scratch and checking to see that the files are in fact there I will end up remembering this misfeature and solving the issue quickly.
I just find it non-obvious. Though perhaps the worst problem I currently have with it is that I don't have faith that the GUI interface won't touch the central repository until I submit. I am getting the feeling that this is the case, but there are certainly situations where changes which feel destructive can occur.
I hear people rave about it though, perhaps it'll grow on me.
My life is being stolen, thirty seconds at a shot. That's a real shame because this is the only life I got.
In the beginning was the cassette. It was slow, unreliable and cheap. I have no firsthand experience but I am led to believe that spending five minutes loading games off cassette sucked. Hard.
Then came the floppy disk. This was significantly faster and more reliable. However, faster still means that there were loading times. It's just that these loading times were on the order of a minute, a vast improvement over five.
Then we come to the pinnacle of loading speed and reliability: the cartridge. Carts are wonderful. Reliable as long as you blow on them before putting them in, quick as can be. In fact they are nearly as fast as memory. This means there are no noticeable loading times. It was great.
Alas games have become too large for cartridges and the expense has proven too great. This led to the current state of affairs, optical media. Optical media include CDs, DVDs, BluRay and the specialized discs the Dreamcast, PSP and Gamecube use. With this we are back at lengthy loading times. In some ways it is worse even than cassette. Whereas with cassette you would have a single long loading time optical media promote many, shorter loading sessions. The average game session looks like this:
Put disc in and hit start
...Loading
See title screen, select game mode and start game
...Loading
...Loading
Start playing
Move to a different room
...Loading
etc.
You can see where this is going. I'm wasting my life staring at loading screen fifteen or thirty seconds at a time. Some games, such as Okami, attempt to ease the pain by providing minigames during loading screens. This is nice, but unfortunately I have yet to see a game that provided a large variety. An alternative which is also nice is not having loading screens but, as in Metroid Prime 3, have doors which trigger loading and not a loading screen. This is better, but eventually gets old as you stand at a door waiting for it to open. The same thing happens in other games and elevators. Bunny hopping gets old quick.
Now why do these loading times exist? They exist because developers want to load lots of data all at once. Moreover, they want to do it all at once and only when not doing something else. I don't quite understand this. If we take a look at the current generation of consoles and compare the amount of memory versus the transfer rate off disc we can compute how long it takes to completely fill memory.
Wii: 88MB divided by 5MB/s (a conservative guess) = 17.6 seconds
XBox 360: 512MB divided by 15MB/s = 34 seconds
PS3: 512MB divided by 10MB/s = 51.2 seconds
Now these are mostly meaningless statistics. The transfer rate is the maximum streamed rate, a rate which is only sustainable if there are no disc seeks. Also, beside initial load, memory is never entirely empty. There is always some significant chunk consumed by objects which will never be unloaded. Things such as the executable, the user's character model, common textures, etc. Then again, I see no reason that I should be made to wait. Surely the developer can predict ten seconds ahead where I may go and load the data as appropriate.
Today I saw some place that I just must eat at. Heart Attack Grill. For real pictures see fishki.net/comment.php?id=41912
At work I've been using Python for the past handful of weeks to write an internal tool. The roller coaster of emotion that I've gone through is interesting.
At first I was somewhat annoyed by it. The significant white space was a bit jarring. I am very used to using { and } to get things done. During this period I was generally impressed with the documentation.
Then my opinion changed. I no longer minded the significant white space or the near entire lack of parenthesis. Things were going well and I was making progress. I was having to use the documentation more and finding it often less than helpful. Examples are few and far between, there are nearly no cross references and it is really only API documentation. Now this is great if you already know how to do what you want but just need a refresher on the arguments and return values. If you don't know how to do what you want though, then they are just a waste of time.
I blame this on a new found reliance on the Internet. It seems that most simple problems can be solved by searching on the Internet. This appears to make people even lazier with documentation than normal. Of course the Internet is pretty useless if what you want to do is supremely simple or not simple at all.
However, as of today my views on Python have changed again. I now accept that the documentation sucks, but most of what I want is near enough to a standard C API that I can figure it out. I accept the whitespace and lack of parenthesis, even though it still bugs me and I expect it to screw me up when I go back to C++. Currently I dislike Python. The typing is too loose and even simple things which should be checked at compile time are left to runtime. This results in me either wasting significant time starting the app, working with it, having it crash and then fixing a small typo before beginning again. That is annoying enough. What's aggravating is when I accidentally reverse arguments. I don't get useful error messages at run time. I get things like 'Type bool not iterable' or 'Expected subclass of Foo' where I was subclassing Foo but one method which was called didn't have the correct number of arguments.
I think Python had a number of good ideas, but it just isn't stable enough. Anytime I change anything anywhere near the core of this App I fear breaking something else and must run through a comprehensive test to reassure myself. Alas more often than not my fear is justified and some simple to catch error in another, ever so slightly more strictly typed language trips me up. Really it just seems that in Python you can never rely on what should be an isolated change from breaking something else.
This is all to say nothing of how you add data members to an object. I really don't know how any large project could be written in such a thing.
There are a lot of pigeons in downtown Vancouver. There are a lot of stupid pigeons in Vancouver. Not only do they not even attempt to flee until I come within two or three feet of them, they often waddle away. When they do decide that flying is the mode of transportation they prefer to escape the mighty predator they fly in front of me. Not away, but crossing my path. I think they'd be easy to catch.
Similar to the situation at UVic and their rabbits I am left wondering how many people eat these domesticated urban food sources. Surely there are some hungry homeless people willing to eat some easily available poultry.
I imagine that at least some of those birds have eaten things which are not good for them. How poisonous could they be?
Recently I went about reading through the entire history of a lengthy blog (dadhacker) and have come to a terrible realization: the web has no sense of permanence. Specifically beyond two or three years in the past nearly every single one of the links from that blog points to 404's. This includes internal links! Now this is a problem if you ever want to link to something which you then go onto describe, discuss, disagree with or merely note. It is nearly guaranteed that the link will go dead.
Oddly enough this fact reduces the value of small, inconsequential posts even more than their short length does.
Now it used to be the case that professionals would have large libraries of material that they had come across. Newspaper clippings, trade white papers, niche magazines, etc. For the past few years I've gotten the sense that this has ceased with people assuming that because the information is available with negligible cost and difficultly today that it will continue to be that way in the future. Unfortunately it is quickly becoming apparent that this is not the case. As more information is cross linked the likelihood of some important piece being lost to the bit bucket increases. Unfortunately most knowledge is still primarily linear in nature and losing one component may mean losing the thread that makes the rest relevant.
I'm not sure what can be done on the larger scale about this, but I think I'll start my personal digital library of interesting articles before those gems are lost forever.
First the obvious news: I've switched blogging technology. What used to be LyX with an export to HTML is now some custom M4 macros and make turning a nice simple text formatted blog into a shiny HTML/CSS blog. Now these macros do more than just a blog. They also do a whole website, but the rest of it is mostly under construction.
The big reason for the sudden change is threefold:
I'm not working on a Coop job full time for the next six months and blogging at work is going to be difficult if I am stuck using LyX. Using a text format I can blog over SSH with ease.
Carrying LyX around is a pain in the ass and is partially to blame for the lack of updates. It's hard to work up the energy to blog when I can only do it during my limited time at home.
I'm planning an extended trip where I will blog frequently and want to include pictures. Including pictures in the HTML export using LyX is painful, but if I write my own system I can make it work as nice as I want.
That's all for now, but do look forward to more frequent blogs. I'm going to try and blog at least once a week, more if I can sneak the time from work.
I haven't blogged for a long while. I seem to be getting worse at this. Now the reason that I've gone so long between entries is due to the hellishly full semester I have just finished. I suppose that a overfull semester is a fitting ending to my full time academic career. Yes it's true, I've finished my last full time semester. It was tough and my final day on campus was bittersweet. I enjoyed a leisurely walk down the mountain (facilitated by my blank U-pass) as I moved into the limbo between full time student and alumni.
It's a bit odd. In previous years I'd been bitter about my education at SFU. I kept feeling that I was getting shafted without recourse. With the ending of a semester with no breaks I had some time to reflect on the change that has occurred in the last year and a half. I no longer feel that my time has been a waste and even though the final stretch was the busiest and most hectic of my entire stay.
Inertia is a powerful force. It makes endings hard because a comfortable place is left in exchange for the unknown. Beginnings are also difficult, the not nearly as powerfully because limbo is a terrible place.
Ok. So perhaps limbo is a terrible place to live, but it sure is a nice place to visit. I did visit for the two weeks between semesters. The first weekend seemed to last forever, I must have been living at a reckless pace. The time off was nice, do some chores, hang out, eat pie. Two weeks of it is certainly enough though, I was getting a bit antsy and had run out of things to do and people to bug in the general vicinity. One thing I have yet to learn is how to have nothing to do for great lengths of time.
I came out on the other side of the limbo just fine and started my job for the next six months today. I'm working at Threewave Software. They are a game company downtown. Specifically they take a game from a major publisher and add multiplayer components such as network and AI code, special multiplayer game play code and maps. Now I've only had a single day and I spent half this day out to lunch or playing video games while awaiting access privileges, but it appears to be a reasonable place to work.
At the very least I'll have plenty of time on a bus to do the readings for my last two classes or perhaps even some private project coding. These two courses are 100 level distance education courses in the liberals arts and so shouldn't be that straining as long as I keep up on the readings.
So ends the first post of the final semester of school. Stay tuned for more regular updates as the evenings are freed from the weight of homework.
Finally summer has arrived. It is only two months late and still hasn't reached its full brilliance, but its here. Conveniently it chose to arrive after my first crunch week of the semester. This was caused mostly by CMPT 419, which is the hardest course I've ever taken.
Not last weekend, but two weekends ago I took Courteny down to Seattle to watch Avenue Q, an awesome musical with puppets. I heartily recommend it, though I know few are willing to make the long journey down.
Other than being pulled aside a the border because I have a propane truck the trip was reasonable. I don't quite understand how they stand those concrete interstates. Conveniently the suspension in my truck got worked in and was running smooth after a few minutes. If it were not for that I would have gone crazy. It's a pretty easy drive though.
Now I did that on Saturday. The leading Friday we went o the country fair near Courteney's house. The was lots of candy and some things to see. Courteney's belly dancing class did a presentation. It was pretty good and good practice for her upcoming show at a restaurant tomorrow.
Other than being annoyingly busy not much has been going on. If this post seems rather shorter than others it is because I am typing on Odysseus (my XO) and the small keyboard slows me down considerably. I'm not a fan of typing slowly enough that thoughts slip away, but some might call it an improvement.
My interesting thought for this entry is that people are too fearful. Fearful of things which are unlikely and fearful of things with minor or non-existent consequences. This appears to be in part because they have been trained to be fearful; this accounts for the fear of larger things, such as the threat of theft. More insidious is the cause of fear of more minor things. People fear smaller things because they lack understanding and faith in themselves. People fear losing a job because they do not believe themselves good enough to get another in a short period. People fear leftovers in the fridge because they do not understand the capabilities and tolerances of their body. People fear the loss of property because they do not know what is truly important and what is merely nice to have.
Insurance is the capitalistic solution to fear. Oddly though there is a fear that in collecting rates will increase. I wonder if those who are wealthy buy proportionally, more or less insurance? Certainly they have more assets and so are exposed. They also have more money and are thus able to ride over larger bumps more easily without aid. I wonder how insurance rates scale.
In summary people fear and I wonder if they have the courage to live.
One would think that with the lack of homework the first couple weeks of school would be easy and relaxing. The school part was. However I had a bunch of other things going on that made it not so. Firstly I've begun and made good progress on reloading my XO with Slackware. Power management isn't quite dealt with yet and the wireless still has many problems. All in all though I am going to call it a success. In fact, I am writing this entry on my XO while sitting through my most boring course this semester.
The other thing that has sucked up all my time in the evenings has been getting various books ready to put on my XO for adventuring. Specifically this has involved scanning the Firearms book, the CORE book and because I'll reference it in class my MATH 308 text. The scanning is done, but I still need to write the script which will go from raw scans to nice DJVU documents.
Speaking of boring classes, CMPT 454 is terribly boring. Conveniently it gives me ample time to work on the XO installation or when that is done blogging or working on one of my projects. The project most likely to get worked on is my newly open sources insaneFS. I've put it on Sourceforge and it might even get popular after I fix a couple of the current problems such as making it work across real networks and between machines.
I am quite glad that I am reaching the end of my current TODO list. Being busy all the time is a bit of a bummer and makes it difficult to spend time out in the sun. This year won't be as bad as last year because I have this nice XO which is brilliantly readable in the sun. Of course this requires just sitting there, which isn't really how I'd like to spend the time. I suppose using a computer in the sun, while less worthwhile than doing a sport or work of some physical sort, is better than sitting in my dark room hidden away.
It was sunny and hot last weekend and Andy looked upon me jealously as I sat on the lawn surfing the net and checking my email. I expect I'll get even more use as an ebook reader once I have the necessary automatic power management configured. At the moment I can make use of most of the features, but must do so manually. While this is annoying it has given me a useful chance to determine what I want the laptop to do under different circumstances.
On a less boring stream of thought I've had an urge to write a game lately. The specific genre is still fuzzy, but I think simple or short games are out of the running. Problems with this urge include my nearly complete lack of artistic ability and having no plot or system in mind. The former problem is unlikely to disappear until after the game has been otherwise completely produced and artists can be convinced of the worth of the project. The latter problem has a solution, but not one that comes from me. Instead I need to find somebody who claims to have awesome idea for a game and is willing to actually put it to paper.
Finding such a person is difficult. Not only does it involve a significant amount of work (Designing an entire game system, writing the entire plot, deciding on characters, etc. results in no less than a hundred pages of writing and could be almost arbitrarily larger.) but it forces this person to think hard about how fun, consistent, logical and immersive their idea is in actuality. Facing a concrete realization of an idea one has always holds the risk of finding it lacking.
This issue is certainly surmountable. The tough decisions don't end there though. Once the game system has been decided and the plot is roughly written and the characters are taking shape one must decide what system to target. It might seem obvious to target the most powerful system available, but this ignores differing input options (PC = mouse while console = joy-pad for the most part) and perhaps the most important fact of creative life: constraints lead to creative and ingenious solutions. PCs have little in the way of constraints. This means that the programming and designer can do just about anything they desire, but that won't necessarily be fun or original. Using a more powerful system also raises the expectations, Commander Keen may look fine on a PC from 1990 or a SNES, but would be seen as utterly repulsive on a PS3.
It is a well known and perhaps the most important problem in game development today that high resolution art is difficult, time consuming and expensive to produce. This is where choosing a limited machine, perhaps akin to a SNES, can show advantages for the amateur game developer. However, choosing a limiting machine can also cause problems when it comes to doing things which push the limits. Though it might be completely possible to twist an underpowered machine into wonderful acts it requires significant programmer time and tends to be interesting to a peculiar type of individual.
I'm not sure which stance I'll take or even if I'll proceed to the planning stages. It is a difficult question.
Again I've not posted an entry for some amount of time. Unlike last time, where laziness was my excuse, I have an excellent reason this time: Exams. You see, final exam period started and during this period I get busy. Specifically I have lots of studying to accomplish and as has been the case for a full year now I still have work to fit in. It used to be (before work) that I did my eight hours of studying a day, goofed off for a few more hours and still managed to get at least nine hours of sleep a night. Since I've started working I haven't managed this. I think it's the three hours a day that's stolen directly plus the forty-five minutes used up in commuting both ways that tips the balance.
All that's over with however, work finished this past Friday and four hours later I walked out of my last exam of the semester. Exams went interestingly this year. The first two were pretty easy. Partially because the courses aren't especially difficult and partly because I showed up expecting a three hour exam only to be informed that it was merely two hours in length. This happened twice and was a pretty nice surprise. The third exam was a full three hour exam. In fact, it was more than a three hour exam. Generally in a three hour exam you have some small number of people leave early. Not this exam. Not a single person left early. This makes me less unhappy that I didn't actually finish; I had a quarter of a question left.
I had the BCNet presentation and it went fairly well. I won something (they haven't told me how much), but I will be attending the BCNet conference this coming week for free which is at least something. I'm not sure how interesting it will end up being, but I'll take a free experience anytime.
I had planned on reloading my XO with Slackware and spending time configuring it at the conference but my Mother is borrowing it for her trip down to Sandiago this week. I guess the laptop will be starting its worldly travels without me. Now I am convinced that I need to reload it because the software that it comes with annoys me every time I touch it. It's a bit of a shame that I probably won't be able to wait until the update with proper power management is released, but I'll have to try and make do.
The final note is that tonight is the FAS Formal. I don't think it'll be quite as impressive as in the past, but it should be enjoyable all the same. As I type Courteney is putting on her face, a rather involved operation. This is the last FAS Formal I'm going to attend so I didn't want to miss it. I'm sure there will be pictures after the fact, I fully plan on seeing whether it is possible to fill my camera on a single charge.
It has been brought to my attention that I haven't made a post to my blog in well over a month. Now the reasons for this are all pretty plain: too much school work, no working laptop, lack of ranting energy. I'm sure you get the picture. Most of those excuses are about to disappear however! My XO, which I have been awaiting eagerly for five months has finally arrived. This will solve my lack of laptop and if I have a laptop I have nearly no excuse for not making frequent blog entries because all I need to do it waste slightly less time surfing the web.
Now having this new toy will require a chunk of time to configure. How much time really depends on whether I end up liking the pre-installed OS or not. I did buy it for the hardware after all.
Now that I've covered the large gap and how I'm going to fill it in the future onto what you really wanted to read, what is valuable at a University. Specifically this is concerning what I believe is valuable to undergraduate students. Now I'm sure everybody has heard about being active with other students, going to parties and otherwise being social as some important things to do. I would think that most people wouldn't need to be told this, but perhaps I think too much of people.
What I am now strongly for is taking Arts courses. Not necessarily Fine Arts courses, but those are fine as well. Courses in the Faculty of Arts (or whatever the equivalent is at your school) are a good start, but there will be other good departments to try stashed elsewhere (Communications at SFU is in the Faculty of Applied Science at the time of this writing). Taking courses such as these are especially important for those who would otherwise not take them. Mostly these are Engineers, CS, Math and the hard sciences.
I've been led to believe that these courses are worth taking because I've taken a fourth year level Canadian studies course. This is an upper division class and even though I was terrified by the assignments (Writing a paper? I haven't written anything longer than a proof in three years!) I have come to enjoy the class. The readings are not as onerous as you think and even discussing in class is not the end of the world.
I'm not sure if I would call this experience broadening, but I certainly found it to be much more enjoyable than the average CS class. My advice to current and future undergraduate students in highly abstract or technical fields is to take Arts courses, especially upper division ones (the lower division ones all seem to suck), to ensure that you get the most enjoyment out of your educational experience. If you are having fun you'll learn more and make more friends. Who doesn't like friends?
What is one to do when they think up new, interesting, challenging projects faster than they can complete them? I find myself in such a conundrum. I have three or four projects I would really love do to (distributed filesystem, Python to Objective-C compiler, sound card as a modem, ultimate programming library, etc.) but each one would take a minimum of one full time month of work. Now I do work on them as I can, but with school and homework I have limited available time.
One way of dealing with these is to put them on a list and accomplish them one at a time. This has the advantages of always having something to do and eventually they'll get done and not be forgotten. A severe disadvantage is that I currently am thinking up new projects faster than I could hope to complete them. Sure they might eventually get completed, but it'll be in the same way as an infinite list eventually ends.
Another option is to just pick one at a time and ignore all the rest of the ideas. This has the advantage of eventually reaching the end of the list (one item can't go on forever) and I'll never feel like I'm ignoring some great other project I could be doing. On the other side of the coin I would be forgetting a number of project ideas, some of which may be more worthwhile than the project I dedicated myself to earlier. There is then always the worry of reaching a time when I have finished my current project (whether a project can ever be finished is a different question for another day) and nothing new comes to mind. Sure it seems like I have an endless stream of new ideas right now, but I worry that one day my mind will become less flexible and be stuck in the proverbial box.
The third obvious solution is to start various companies to implement my grand ideas and try to do something with them. The advantage is that all my ideas get done or proven infeasible relatively quickly. The disadvantages are many. First I'd need to be pretty wealthy to accomplish this because hiring people is expensive. Secondly I would miss out on the rush of actually doing the project myself; would I be satisfied being nothing more than an idea man? Another problem is that having a business work on a project generally requires some sort of possible profit; I do suppose that an existing company could be used to accomplish things of no monetary value.
Now I'm not a fan of either of these options. The final option is one which everybody would love. Quick work, leave school and spend a few months doing whatever the hell I want. This is a nice option, except for the starving part. I suppose if I got a nice sugar momma I could handle it.
Unfortunately in the end I think I'm going to have to live with a compromise. Either start a business doing something profitable and eventually construct an R&D department to do these projects for me or write my list but post it publicly in the hope that somebody else will accomplish some of them. I'm thinking that the former option is nicer but the latter option seems more likely.
What is one to do when they have more ideas than time?
Today I'd like to talk about Shiny New Things Syndrome. The symptoms of this syndrome include irrational protectiveness, minimal use and negligible strain of the object. This syndrome rears its head in most people upon the introduction of some new object.
Now, when an object is new it is perfect, pristine, unsoiled by life and use. The operation is flawless, the finish like a fresh snowfall. The Shiny New Thing has seen no use, no wear and is a sight to behold in its beauty. As with a newborn babe there is a protective instinct directed towards this artifact of modern industry and it is loved from first sight.
The Shiny New Thing is often procured as a replacement for an older, well loved object. The love directed to the Old Broken Thing was not the delicate love of a cultured lady, but instead the love of a rough worker. No presumption of frailty nor weakness was construed; instead the abuses of life were taken for granted, a few knocks par for the course. The love of the Old Broken Thing is not the love of the Shiny New Thing. Such a love is based not upon utility nor experience nor trust in capabilities. It is the love of aesthetics, dependent upon ephemeral perfection.
The Old Broken Thing was filled with purpose and fulfilled its destiny to the best of its capability. The Shiny New Thing also has a purpose. The Shiny New Thing also has capabilities, perhaps exceeding that of the Old Broken Thing. The Shiny New Thing, with its unfulfilled destiny, begs to be used and is denied. Aesthetic love prevents use for use shall submit the grime of experience. Aesthetic love prevents abuse for abuse shall mar perfection. Aesthetic love prevents familiarity for familiarity bequeaths trust and trust bequeaths use.
The world is driven by many forces of which love is but one. Eventually a time comes when Shiny New Thing is thrust into the spotlight, no other Thing will do. Love cries to no avail. The perfection is gone, pristine landscapes marred by the slightest degree and the soil of life clings irremovably. Aesthetic love is diminished.
So it is for Shiny New Thing, use begets imperfection. Imperfection diminishes aesthetic love. Yet it also grows character and with it a new kind of love, both harsh and dependable. Over time the shininess grimes over, the newness ages away leaving only trust and character. Stripped of the Shiny, stripped of the New there is only the Thing.
Seriously though, why do people treat new things as if they are fine china? Should not a tool be used properly as a tool from the outset? I try to fight against Shiny New Thing Syndrome and sometimes I even succeed, but I will never understand it. Perhaps some people are just too attached to stuff.
After any break there is a period during which you are doing stuff, but the real work hasn't started yet. As I have progressed through my academic career this period has been getting shorter and shorter. This semester the breather period felt to be six minutes long. In reality it was probably a single full day, but certainly less than a week. This is one of the reasons I haven't blogged any. The other reason I haven't blogged any is because where I would bring my laptop up to school with me once every week or two I haven't had it. I lent it to Courteney because I didn't really have any serious use for it and was quite content to not have the temptation to carry it around.
She thoroughly enjoyed having it. Unfortunately the situation only lasted three or four weeks because my laptop is broken at the moment. The back-light refuses to turn on. The current estimate for the repair is about $300 (so I'm still winning at the Extended Warranty Lottery) but I don't really feel the need to pay that right now since I don't actually use it. Sure it sucks for Courteney to be thrust into the technology able and then have her fall out of it for no fault of her own, but there isn't much to be done.
Not much of terrible interest has occurred with respect to school except that CMPT308 was canceled for having only two students registered. This has required me to take up another course to put into its place. This course is CMPT365 Multimedia. I wouldn't have otherwise taken this course, but my options were slim because I has already filled up most other time slots with work or other classes. This is the first course in a while that I've taken that I have no interest in. Especially annoying is that assignments are based upon effort (which I have little will to put forth) and that they involve programming. I wanted to avoid doing any programming this semester for a couple of reasons. First to work on my filesystem and thereby get fame and fortune. But secondly because I do have an exceptionally busy schedule which approximates a full work week during the day and I don't want coding homework to push into my precious time on the weekends when I can see Courteney and friends (usually mine, but if she wants I would see hers).
Related to the Society there was a LAN party which was rather good. I got my much needed Quake 3 fix. It also turns out that I am the resident shutter bug. I guess it's about time since I push a lot for people to fill the gallery. I also won the CSSS Award, which is very nice and relieves several worries that I had. I also have finished my handoff to Phil of all Sysadmin responsibilities and things seems to be going well for him.
My filesystem hasn't seen much progress, but I have gotten back into the feel of coding and should be able to put more energy towards it next week. I spent all my spare time in the previous week studying to take my CORE Exam (Hunting) and my Firearm exam. I passed and have sent the paperwork in. Now I just need to wait a couple of months for the paperwork be go through and I'll be able to start hunting. I am excited about that.
My brand/website hasn't made any further progress, but those aren't really important until I need to get my filesystem out there and that can't happen until time consuming simulations run. That should give me ample time to go over the layout once more and fill in the content. After that it's a simple matter of getting hosting.
I should write more often. Perhaps I will after I get through the next couple of days.
Welcome to the new year. I haven't written in a long while, mostly because of exams, work, shopping and my normal holiday computer avoidance. So here is the normal and rather boring holiday wrap-up.
Firstly I did my shopping. I got it done in three days worth of shopping, none of them full. In fact, Courteney's gifts were done much easier than normal. I got her some hairbands, a lump of coal filled with candy and a nice white gold emerald ring. She seems to like it.
As with any holiday season I do something that's seasonal and perhaps childish. This season Courteney and I made a gingerbread house. There will be pictures later. It turned out well and was certainly tasty, though it took two adults the better part of two days to construct and decorate it. I think the directions were wrong in claiming that it's a nice diversion for a child and adult team.
The high points of the gifts received are the small point and shoot camera my parents' got me, the cook books (one of which is How to Boil Water) from one of my sisters and the nice book Courteney got me. It's called the Rough Guide to Canada and not only is it interesting to read it will also be useful in planning my continental trip. The final high point is the massive favourite, the small mountain of socks.
Now onto the second portion of this entry. As some will know I have been working on a website recently to give myself a face on the Internet. This is all part of constructing a brand which I can use in my future professional life. The site is coming well, but I have come to an impasse. I need to get business cards and I've a couple of unanswered questions. First I need a logo, I find that cards without some sort of graphic are empty and perhaps too plain. Of course my card will be rather plain in general because I find that sort more powerful. Now I don't have much in the way of graphic design skill, so I am currently at a loss, though perhaps initials will save the day.
The second question I need to answer is the material. Should I go with the exceptionally common double sided porous cardboard? This is the type of card often just printed at home on an inkjet. I think this might be a bit tacky. Should I instead go for the single sided semi-laminated material? This material is really only writeable on one side, the back side. This has the advantage of keeping the contact information side clean while still giving somewhere to add additional information.
The third option is some more exotic material. Certainly these are more expensive and tend not to have any space on them to be written, which is a negative. However, they are also more memorable and perhaps more robust. Materials which might be considered are plastic and metal of some sort.
These are the two things which must be considered. Of course I cannot go forward until I have acquired an appropriate domain to place a professional website upon.
This entry comes from my notebook (my Little Book of Big Ideas) which I carried with me while I was working at MDA. I carried such a notebook because I found myself with ample time while commuting and waiting for stuff. Now the odd date exists because I can't quite remember when I wrote this down. It was between May and December 2006. Actually I only wrote the the catch phrase as an index into my internal hashtable of memories. All the rest is me filling out the content for your own benefit.
What is Wrong with Java:
No Preprocessor. People seem to have a hate on for preprocessors these days. Sure you can do some crazy things with them and it makes it harder for new people to get into the code quickly. However I feel the benefits outweigh the possible dangers. The way Java forces code to look to have debugging output is terrrible and too verbose.
I would also argue that additional developer efficiency by macroing common textual functions out is more useful than the fact that it takes a developer another day or two to start being useful on a codebase.
Incomplete Partial Compilation. Some would argue that one great advance of Java over C++ would be the lack of header files. Now in some ways this is truly useful. In others it causes no end of pain. Without header files of some sort (human readable or not) it becomes impossible to do proper partial compilation. If there is any set of classes which are intra-dependent they must all be compiled in the same compiler run. Now any reasonably complex system will have such referencing. It is really painful to have to recompile thousands of lines of Java when changing an unrelated method just because the only way Java can check for consistency is by compiling or having already compiled an up to date version of the class file.
URL based namespaces. URL based namespaces are good in that they are the closest thing that exists to a globally unique identifier that is human readable. They suck in that they are really only globally unique if you are a large corporation whose domain will never be up for sale. If you are anybody normal person you are not so lucky. Lots of people change domains, or have more than a single domain.
URL based namespaces are also unwieldy and long. I don't really have an alternative to URL based namespaces other than entity name spaces, but those have other problems.
The Assumption that Package Structure makes a good Directory Structure. This one really annoys me. If you want to have a nice package structure you are forced to put your code into an identical directory structure. Now this might make sense in huge corporations where faceless drones code day in and day out producing reams of code. High quality software isn't produced that way. High quality software is produced by a small team of talented developers. Small teams produce small code which makes those forced directory requirements a pain since you end up with more directories than files
This is another entry from my Little Book (See the date?). Now I should qualify this by saying that I've never run a company and have worked at very few companies. I have, however, seen a few people in academia and read a bunch of crackpots (See here, here and anybody who gets linked here') talk about running a company. If you can't produce a worthwhile opion from reading, pondering and discussing then who can claim to have such an opinion?
How to be better than your competition:
Hire better people. This one seems obvious, but there are several pitfalls I think most people find easy to fall into.
PHDs are worthless. Now of course this is a broad generalization, but there are three kinds of people with PHDs. Those who are brilliant but can neither communicate nor operate in the real world. Those who are overspecialized and useless. And those who got a PHD just because it'd be easy and was something to pass the time.
You want to higher only the latter category, but these people are rare. Usually they got the PHD after getting a career (likely starting on the ground floor) or are too busy making mountains of money on their own to be interested in working for somebody. It's a shame that really smart, capable and motivated people are able to make more money than any company can ever offer.
Not all hope is lost however. You can't find these people, but they are attracted to certain corporate atmospheres (usually one that is best described at anti-corporate).
Hire people who know they are too good to take shit. I once read a page that rang true and claimed that hackers (the productive kind (generally considered to be the smartest of the bunch)) dont know exactly how good they are'(Check out the "Recognition" Section (As a completely off track comment, I think every paragraph in a bunch of HTML text should have an individual so you can link to the relevent bits of large essays. (Did you know that Paul Graham comments out parts of his essays? Read through the source sometime and you'll see some interesting, though low power comments. (It's comments like these that tempt me to use reversable footnotes, unfortunately they suck and don't keep the reading flow correctly.))) , but they do know they aren't incompetent. Now you may be asking what constitutes shit? That is simple. Mandatory uncompensated overtime, average pay, long commutes, stressful work environment, insufficient tools, beaurocracy and stupid people. All of these count as shit. It wears on the good people and makes bad people thrive.
Now the hardest part of all of this is making sure you don't hire people who aren't brilliant. This requires that you be willing in all cases to leave a position open, perhaps for months or years. This is hard for most companies, especially since this almost requires that people always hire (not try to hire) only those who are smarter than them. That's tough.
There is hope though, hire straight out of University. This requires significant work, but can yield great dividends. The hard part is getting to know who is worth it.
Doing this isn't free, in fact, it'll cost a significant amount of engineer time. Give talks often at the local Universities on interesting topics. Keep these talks strictly techinical. The goal of these talks is to scare off those who aren't hackers. If they can't grok the technical stuff, you don't really care about them. Now you also need to give out money. Specifically you need to give out money for high quality technical projects. This means looking for projects that aren't flashy, just considered impossible.
Have Better Processes
Avoid beaucracy. Beaucracies exist to eliminate waste and inappropriate use of resources. In their attempt to accomplish this they waste far more than they could ever hope to save. They also encourage mediocre employees and detrimental politics. Just say no.
Automate. Automate everything. In fact, you should have a programmer who's job it is to write or modify software to eliminate any work that is at all repetitive. Even the secretaries shouldn't have to do anything repetitive.
Don't waste time with commercial tools and insufficient hardware. If you use commericial tools you'll be limited in what you can modify and automate. They are also expensive, often expensive enough that putting one of your developers onto an opensource project is faster and cheaper, especially in the long run.
Reduce the impact of IT. IT is the bane of productivity. They setup systems and take time to accomplish stuff. They also cost money. So reduce the number of IT people you have. My current view is that the best way to do this is with Thin clients and overpowered central servers.
Centralize Your Knowledge. In most companies if you want to know something you need to ask somebody who has been there a long time. In severe cases if you want to get anything done you need to know who to talk to which requires asking somebody who has been around long enough and had a similar problem. This is an immense waste of time. Instead you should have a single repository of all knowledge in your company. All sourcecode should be available to every employee. Every report must be available at a moments notice, don't skimp on the search system. Finally, every employee should have an up to date skill and project profile available to every employee. This will speed up finding information which improves the process and reduces the damage of a losing a senior employee.
Christmas is a-coming and what would a holiday in the modern world be without commericialism? And that means stuff. Endless piles of stuff.
I like to consider myself something of a minimalist. I don't buy it unless I need it right now, I don't take it unless I'll use it and I don't keep it unless it 1. Works 2. Is useful. In fact, the most enjoyable chore is emptying boxes and closets and sheds, throwing all that stuff in a truck and taking it to a dump. I think it's the act of destruction.
Now I know not everybody is this way. In fact, I think it likely that it is the norm. Beyond just having tons of useless stuff that they never use, is also carrying tons of crap around at all times.
Numerous people I know drudge up to school with backpacks bigger than they are. Of course, they need them to carry those serving platter sized laptops. Admittedly the laptops have shrunk in size since I first started , but they've only really gotten thinner. Now all those people who bought the huge laptops no longer use them and certainly don't carry them around if they can avoid it. Contrast this with my laptop which I still carry often.
Now when I started school I got a small courier bag. Before I got a laptop it held just a spiral bound notebook, some paper and some pens. It was great. It held everything I needed and wasn't bulky. Then I got a laptop. Where most people would buy a new bag, probably one of those massive padded laptop bags I just kept using the cheap courier bag.
Now times have changed slightly. I no longer need my laptop quite as much and frankly I don't like using it. It's not near as social, which is the major reason I head up to campus now. For the first part of this semester I successfully avoided carrying anything more than a spiral bound notebook and a single pen. It worked great. I failed during the latter half of the semester, but I had a coding project. I have all theory courses next semester so I should be able to use it even less.
The main reason I didn't like taking the laptop was not because it's a large laptop, it isn't. It was because I didn't want to carry the bag. Perhaps this'll get better when my OLPC arrives, it has a built in handle.
Ending this tangent, some people just keep too much stuff around. I've even noticed this when it comes to vehicles. I drive an 87 Chevy Pickup. I love it. In fact the only thing I wish it had was a continuous speed range for the windshield wipers. That's it. My truck lacks all but the most basic creature comforts. It has a heater, it has AM/FM/Cassette, it has windows that open and that's it. It's awesome.
New vehicles however are full of things I find unnecessary. Sound insulation, air conditioning, more speakers than I have fingers and heated seats. Who really needs heated seats?
Huge electronics, piles of crap and massively complicated heavy vehicles. I just don't get them.
I love popcorn. Whoever thought this stuff up is a genius.
I apologize, it's just that I can't stop eating from this bag of popcorn in front of me. I do have other things to talk about though. Mostly it's about how this is my crunch week. It's even actually a week this time, which I'm happy about. From yesterday to next Thursday I had two assignments and a project to finish. I finished one assignment yesterday, but haven't even looked at the other one. The project for 401 is going.
I think I'll have enough done for 401, not quite as much as I wanted at first, but enough. Now that it works I'm really considering putting a bit more time into it and polishing it to make it usable. I think I could do that and then release it onto the world and see what happens.
I've come to the realization that I am tired of school. The long hours are burning me out and crawling to the finish line is getting old. This might just be the regular crunch time pessimism though. It could also be the fact that I can see beyond convocation and am really excited. So excited, in fact, that I am starting my preparations. So far this is mostly pondering and planning, but I am also slowly working on an actual real website to get my web presence bootstrapped. Mostly, however, I'm making the website so that when I've left school and am traveling all around people will have something not quite so ugly to look at.
I'm not doing it in the standard way however. I'm writing all the tools to produce it, though I'm unlikely to release those for general consumption.
If I seem a bit harebrained I do apologize, but I've been writing the report that has to go along with my project all day while the project itself ran tests. It has been rather mind-numbing to put to paper all the information which has become obvious truths during the past couple of weeks of me working on it.
The final thing I wanted to broadcast to the world is a thought about starting and intellectual group. A couple of weeks ago a speaker from EA came to SFU to give a talk about parallelism in the game industry. He said a number of interesting things. Now some people went to the talk expecting answers; in a way I feel sad for that kind of person, it's a sure sign of institutionalization (One can sure append a number of suffixes to some words in English.). Now the point is that several days later I partook in an invigorating conversation that stemmed from this talk. It was with a couple of people whom I consider to be quite intelligent. Unfortunately the discussion was cut short by external factors.
Now this conversation has put it into my head that perhaps I should round up half a dozen or a dozen such people and attempt to get a regular discussion over a pint going. I'll have to think about it more, but I think it'd be something completely worth doing. I used to geek out in the Common Room often, but as of late there have been few good opportunities for geeking out there.
More eventually.
Wow. Has it really been that long since I last blogged? I must have been slacking off.
The major reason I'm blogging now is because I have stuff to say. This used to not be important, but recently the existence of my blog escaped into the big wide world. Unfortunately this means I have to at least make an attempt to be interesting. Damn you people. Being interesting while also keeping up my 1500 word posts is hard.
First I'm going to scare the technically minded by mentioning a crazy dream I had last night. First it started with me driving around in my truck. I felt like I was in Surrey, but it was too hilly for Surrey. Anyways, I'm approaching a convenience store in my truck. Off to the left (across the parking lot from the store) is a pretty steep hill, let's say 50 degrees from horizontal. There isn't really any parking, so for some reason I veer left. I must've been traveling at a pretty good clip because upon turning left I fly up this steep embankment and bounce around a ton. (Play some ExciteTruck. It was like that but without the flying.). Anyways, I land at the top of this embankment after managing to avoid all the trees. Now the top of this hill has a road running over it, so I'm actually sitting on the shoulder and my truck is approximately perpendicular to road. The my sketchy friend sitting next to me (When did he arrive?) says something to the effect of "Awesomeness you crazy fucker, but there's a spot down there". I then proceed to drive down the hill again having fun all the way.
Then I'm parked and my sketchy friend and I are sitting on the tailgate eating something. We were doing something else, but it gets a bit fuzzy here.
Later at night I'm looking out a window at my truck parked across the street. Oddly my truck is parked on its driver side door and I think this entirely normal and reasonable. Looking out I see the homeless guy from UHF and he's walking around pushing one of those rolling baskets like older people who use the bus are want to do. Then I go and sit on some stairs near the front entrance. Now that I think about it the front entrance appears very similar to the rental house my family lived in when I first moved here, except it wasn't on a corner and was instead down the block a house or two.
Do you have any mounted jewels around? In a ring or earring or watch perhaps? Go take a quick peek at the mounting. It might be metal stubs which are wider at the top than the bottom that are holding that stone into place right. If you have a square stone you'll see that there are four stubs, one for each corner or side.
Now I'm sitting on the stairs and I look down and see a tooth on the floor. While reaching to pick it up I'm distracted by somebody coming by. I've got no idea who he is, but he's got the look of a middle aged tradesman. I go back to looking at the tooth on the floor to pick it up and notice that there are now about a dozen teeth. I think they are mine, so I run to a mirror and look. (If I was cruel I would insert a meaningless comment in here to waste time and break what little suspense there is. I'm not cruel so there is actually meaning here. Specifically this is the climax of the whole dream so if you didn't feel the excitement already you really should get into the feel because it is all coming to an end soon.)
Looking into the mirror I see my face. My gums have turned into fleshy jewel mounting stubs, four to a tooth and each as tall as a tooth. Each stub looks like it must be incredibly painful and my teeth ache just thinking about it. Well over half my teeth are missing, leaving only gaps between the fleshy stubs.
Right here I woke up, though that's fucked up, rolled over and went back to bed. If you didn't think I was crazy for talking about jewelry mountings before, you probably think I'm crazy now.
Now that I've scared off the technical people I should scare off those who braved their way through that story by getting technical. CMPT401 is a course about Distributed Systems. It thus makes sense that if there were to be a project it would be to construct a non-trivial distributed system. There is such a project and I am doing it. I have decided to write an efficient peer-to-peer filesystem. Most people consider this impossible, or if not impossible certainly out of the reach of an undergraduate with only four weeks. Appropriately I'm calling it insaneFS (thanks Allen). I think it will also be positive proof that being young is where it's at. We know enough to do the impossible simply because we don't know enough to think it's impossible. I was going to get technical about the whole thing but have decided against it because I really should be working on it instead of writing this blog. I'll just have to hope that my warning about technical content was scary enough.
Should I successfully complete insaneFS I figure it'd be good for at least 5 minutes as the king on the Internet. With filesharing being so huge it would be rather amazing to solve the major problem with Bittorrent (the current champion), which is finding the file you want. Well, that and the dependence on a central tracker. Neither will be problems for insaneFS and I think that it might be able to actually realize the point of this whole World Wide Web, which is access to the entirety of the sum of human knowledge and information.
This past weekend has been a very lazy weekend. Well, I shouldn't say that, the past two days have been very lazy. Today I did nothing of value other than sleep in. I'm OK with that though.
Yesterday I had Thanksgiving dinner at my parents'. It was good. Not much work got done, but it was nice to spend time with people. I had picked up my Wii the Friday before and set it up there. It was one nearly the entire time. I'm sure they'll enjoy it.
Saturday I took Courteney through a corn maze. It rained a bit and we both got pretty wet, but we eventually conquered both mazes (after some misadventure) and left right before it really started to poor. After going on a search for French bread we spent the next couple of hours crying as we made French Onion soup. By that point it really hit the spot.
Not too much else has been happening. Work and school have been work and school. I'm busy all the time, but not necessarily too busy. I think I am at just about the right amount of business.
Sorry for the lack of deep thoughts today, but I just am too lazy to think about writing very much. Perhaps I'll blog again soon about something real, like how I am against Daycare or responsibility free health care. Until then though, enjoy these few thoughts.
Well, so it wasn't a single day of not blogging. I got really lazy and just didn't feel like writing anything. So I didn't. But I said I'd finish and I shall. Just give me a second to figure out where I was. ... Wedding, right.
I've covered the gift opening, party and ceremony. This doesn't leave very much. Before the ceremony we all took a load of stuff from my Grandparents' house to their new house. They currently live on six acres out in the country, but have sold and bought another house in a suburb somewhere. So we loaded the pickup truck and then proceeded to unload it after a tour of the house. It's pretty nice, though they didn't really downsize all that much, only a hundred square feet.
There isn't all that much more to tell. I flew in Friday night. I am further convinced that airport security is a joke. They seem to not be able to detect knife blades which are standing on their side or end. I also forgot to tell my boss I wouldn't be coming in to work on Monday and has to send an email from the country side outside Calgary Saturday night. Everything worked out alright though.
So that'd be the story of the wedding between my cousin Shannon and Andy in Calgary. I was going to talk about further plans for travelling around the continent, but this whole story has become long enough and perhaps I'll delve into that next week.
So much for blogging once a week. I know why I haven't done it of course. In the past I would blog on the bus or on campus. Now this semester I am trying to not bring my laptop up to campus unless absolutely necessary. What this means is that if I want to blog I need to either go into a lab (requiring I leave the Common Room unnecessarily) or do it when I get home after school. Now obviously leaving an area of laziness and discussion isn't something I'd do. I like talking to people too much, especially when they disagree with me in a civil fashion. This leaves doing it at home. Now this is fully reasonable. I spend plenty of time on my computer at home and should be able to carve out some time to put my thoughts to nobody in particular down on digital paper. It's just that I haven't had this time for the past couple of weeks.
In the first week of classes there was Froshweek. Now during this week I could have blogged, but I didn't need to because I blogged at the beginning of that week. In the second week I had to work late Tuesday because I wasn't there Monday because I was at a wedding, which I'll discuss later. Now Wednesday I got sick. Now I did the smart thing and slept as much as possible because it's the beginning of the semester and I can't afford to be sick. There goes that week and no blogging got done.
Now last week was the third week. I wasn't sleeping as much since I had slept off most of my cold already. What I was doing was homework though. At the end of the first week and beginning of the second week I had received my first homework assignments for all my classes. I didn't start them of course, but that's normal, especially when I'm sick. So last week was spent madly working to get CMPT401 and MACM442 homework done. CMPT401 went not terribly, but I spent a fair bit of time relearning socket programming, I haven't really touched that in a few years. Cryptology (MACM 442) took a bit longer. Not because the assignment was especially difficult. Mostly because I was using Maple and Maple is terrible.
I'll try and be brief about how Maple sucks. Firstly its interface is dreadfully slow. This was made worse by the fact that I don't have Maple (and am not even sure if I want to steal it) and so was using it remotely from fraser. This just crawls sometimes. Next the editor in Maple is awful. Non-intuitive and different from everything else in the world for no good reason. Thirdly the programming language in Maple is backwards; it can't make up its mind as to whether its math or a real programming language. Finally the parser in Maple is atrocious. I spent an hour trying to debug a name overlap error because Maple wouldn't tell me the name.
Anyways, I got the homework done in time and as long as I don't get sick again I'll be able to easily keep up. So now you know why I've been so long in blogging. I will do better. Weekly entries shall return.
So school is in full swing and as you've already read I've had a runin with homework, but I don't think it'll be that bad in the end. Work is going, but there really isn't much to talk about there, same old shit really.
Now as to where I was when I should have been working two Mondays ago. I was actually in a car travelling between Calgary and Vancouver. I was doing this because I have to return eventually from my cousin's wedding. The gift opening went alright, I haven't been to my Aunt Joan's house in a while. There was plenty of food and I had some pretty good cabbage rolls.
The wedding reception was at the Palacer in downtown Calgary. It's a pretty fancy hotel and if it weren't for the suit I was wearing I would have felt underdressed. The food was good as one would expect. Desserts were plentiful and excellent. They had a chocolate fondue fountain which was something to see. They also had a tartette with a bit of gold foil sprinkled on it. I can now truthfully claim to have eaten gold. The speeches were spoken, nothing to particularly special there. Though the bride had asked my father to make a speech and he declined, which made our half of the speeches a bit light.
The partying part went well and we actually have met a family which closed down the reception with us. That's the first I've been to where that has happened.
The wedding ceremony was held at a medium sized Catholic church. Though the wedding was a Catholic wedding it only took forty minutes. I didn't really mind it, but some of the older family members in attendance who had attended other Catholic weddings seemed relieved. I don't really understand this. Perhaps I just have a romantic notion that the wedding ceremony should be memorable in some way. It would seem to be hardly memorable if the whole ceremony is over in ten minutes. I think I'm actually a fan of a forty minute ceremony. Though really the bride and groom should not be given chairs, it ruins the mood and casts a dark cloud over the audience.
So here I am at my first Catholic wedding ceremony ever. Things are going quite fine. The Minister has a bit of an Eastern European accent, but that's nothing terrible. Then out comes a language I don't know. Sure I recognize it as Eastern European, but I am not an expert on languages. I listen a bit and peg it as Ukrainian. At the end of the ceremony it's mentioned that the language of the other prayers was Polish. Thus Travis discovers that the other family is Polish.
I think guessing Ukrainian is not bad. Geographically they are rather close so I'd imagine they would use similar sounds. Of course, I had also never heard Polish before.
Well, I'm getting rather tired now, so I'll start the story of the wedding tomorrow. Until next time.
August is over. As is pretty normal for my Summer I didn't spend any time on a computer that I could avoid. I think I did pretty well since I was unable to make time to blog any. I'll try as best I can to summarize my month, but will most likely forget stuff. This post will be mostly boring, but later this week I think I have a rant coming on.
So what I did in the first week was... I really shouldn't have waited this long, I forget entirely. ... After checking various calendars I have determined that the first week of August was spent in class finishing off my crunch week. The second week of August was spent in exams, fully explaining why I don't remember any of it. The third week began with an exam, but that was pretty minor. Then I had work and a couple of meetings.
I should mention that during the weekend between the end of classes and my first exam I boogied off to Chase which is where my parents' rented a cabin for a couple of weeks. I only ended up staying Friday night and all of Saturday, but it was nice and worth the 900KM of driving. Hooray for being irresponsible.
Work went just fine, it's the meetings that warrant some words. First I had a meeting with a professor at SFU (Alexandra Fedorova) concerning work on a project of hers. The meeting was rather uninteresting, she basically gave me a short lesson on multithreaded processor cores and a couple of obvious challenges concerning them. There was some other stuff, but nothing too important. I don't think I'll partake in her research, but I'll wait until she sends me a proposal for the project that I'm most likely to work on first.
It's a shame about the research though, it would have been a good experience, but I really want to be done with school and the research area isn't too terribly interesting to me.
The other meeting I had was a Forum meeting, where not too much was done, but I am getting the firm sense that some people on Forum are out more for their own good than the good of their DSU's. I find this disturbing and will try to work against it.
At the end of the third week of August (August had three weeks this time around) I finished work and Courteney finished her exams. Then the fun began. It was at noon on Friday the 17th that my summer really started in earnest. Of course I am fuzzy as to what I did and when. I do know that there was more than one game of backyard badminton, I even defeated Courteney once. I also know that we went out biking a couple of times and did some walking.
There were, of course, a couple of big things we did. We went to the Zoo. That was pretty good, we spent five or six hours walking around and saw all there was to see. It was an enjoyable day. We saw lions and tigers and bears. We also saw a raptor show where they have birds flying free and catching stuff. That was neat to see. Though the Vancouver Zoo isn't as large or full as some other zoos I liked it. At the very least we were able to see all the animals and a couple of the shows and not have a terribly long day.
The other major thing we did was go to the PNE. This I know we did last Tuesday. Again we did pretty much everything all in one go. We did rides. Courteney hadn't done many rides in the past so it was mostly new for her. I got her on the old rickety wooden roller coaster, which was good. We also went on a bunch of other rides. Most of them in fact, excepting the ones which go upside down. Courteney isn't much a fan of inversion. She did really like "Starship 3000", which is a centripetal force ride where you spin really fast and eventually slide up. It was fun.
Of course we didn't just do rides, we also went through the Agricultural display. I really do like those agricultural displays, it's kinda a shame nobody else around me really does, though Courteney seemed to like it well enough. We saw some old tractors. Those old tractors really weren't that powerful. Most of them were ten horse power, which I find rather interesting. I guess people knew how to get more out of less power back then. We also saw an absolutely massive steer. His name was Peter the Great and he weighted over three thousand pounds. He must have stood over six feet tall. I was amazed. We also saw eggs which weighed in at nearly 200 grams. That's a very big egg.
After the Agricultural barn we went to see a few shows. We saw a Mounted Troop light horse demo, which was cool. I was most impressed by a horse pinwheel, those things are nearly impossible with people. After that show we ran over to see the SuperDog show. Courteney liked it and it was pretty nice to see was beautiful well trained dogs. Unfortunately most of the show consisted of competitions between dogs. I would have preferred more solos showing off each dogs unique skill. Later in the evening we also saw a heavy horse demo which was nice as well. There was also a bike/quad race/trick demo which was pretty nifty, but nothing terribly special.
Having seen enough shows for a bit we moved onto rides (which I have already discussed) and seeing the marketplace. At the market place I ended up buying a neat wind up flashlight/radio/wailing alarm/cell phone charger and Courteney ended up buying a wooden 3D puzzle/sculpture of a phoenix.
After we were mostly rided out we moved onto games, that way we wouldn't have to carry all our winnings on rides. The most classic carnival game of all is the hammer smash. So of course I had to try this. Unfortunately I don't have enough experience smashing things with a large hammer to win, but I did score high enough to win a hammer of my own. It's nice and squeaky. The second most famous class of carnival games are the aiming games. In these you throw some sort of ball and knock targets down. You may not be aware, but I have terrible aim when throwing. I tried a couple because Courteney liked the prize, but I failed. In fact, though we tried a few more games of various shapes we didn't succeed at winning anything until I went for a game of total chance. I ended up picking the right month and won Courteney a sizable stuffed tiger. So things were good.
All in all it was a pretty good night, though I would have liked a better fireworks show at the end of the evening. Fun was had and still hammer fights often break out.
Now after the zoo but before the PNE Courteney had a day during which she needed to do stuff, and conveniently Shane was in town at his grandparents' trailer so I went off to visit. This was on the twenty-fifth. It was a dreary day, but that didn't prevent catching up and beer drinking to occur. It was good catching up. It also turns out that Shane is on the path towards hunting. He's a bit further along, but that's fine. Perhaps we'll go hunting some time. He also showed some interest in traveling around Canada for a month or two. Who knows. I don't really have much to write about this day, but it was pretty nice, even if the weather sucked.
That pretty much concludes the summary of my summer break. The only other stuff I really did was sleep a bunch and study my firearm book some. I hope to get in to try the test sometime in the first week of school before things get busy.
Crunch time at SFU is actually a crunch time and that is why there was no blog last week. There's one this week because this is the last week of school and I therefore have a bit less homework. This past weekend I went to Toronto for a wedding. As I get older those flights across the country get easier and easier to handle. The weekend was a busy one, as trips of that sort are and here is a quick summary. Friday I woke up at the ungodly hour of 4:40 AM to get ready and leave for the airport. We arrived with time to spare and promptly decided on getting breakfast at the White Spot they have there at the terminal inside security. Only moments after we order they start boarding our plane so we got the food to go and rushed onto the plane. After arriving at the Toronto Airport we started driving for two hours through rush hour traffic to get to my Aunt and Uncle's house in Port Perry, a small town outside of Toronto. Upon arriving there we proceeded to eat and drink until everybody was full, then my cousins, Courteney and I went out to what appears to be the only pub in Port Perry for a few pitchers of beer. Much fun was had and I came to the conclusion that my family is more fun that most of my friends, a sad realization. The high point of the drinking was when the supposedly responsible one there drag straight from the jug and ended up being the drunkest.
Saturday we got up early, eight in the morning Toronto time, to get ready for the wedding. That went off pretty well with the women scurrying around for hours while the men just slid into their suits a few minutes before we left. All the women ended up looking lovely, Courteney even painted her toenails after a little bit of cajoling from my side. Then there was the ceremony, which went pretty well except for a cicada being ridiculously loud at one point and drowning out the ceremony. The weather was good, warm but not too sunny so those of us dressed in jackets and long pants didn't die.
After the ceremony there was a bunch of milling about and snacking before dinner, then more milling after dinner waiting for the first dance. After that the party really got started with dancing and drinking well into the night. I ate way too much.
Sunday was basically eating and talking and gift opening. Flys where captured and attached to hairs and fun was had by all. Monday was basically flying home.
So that's the summary of my weekend. Now onto specifics that are worth talking about. I think I have come to the conclusion that I really want to travel around Canada and start a Start-up. Unfortunately both of these things really need to happen at the same time. I guess I could try and keep a nest egg for if the start-up fails, but what do I do if it succeeds? I think maybe I should just go traveling while waiting for others to get their act together. Now the whole reason I think I've come to the conclusion is that I've started mentioning it to people. This means I'll probably end up doing it, just like that time I told people I'd shave my head and then just did one day without any fanfare.
I have been very busy lately so I'm going to try and steal some time on my bus ride up to school to write a bit. If this seems a bit short it's because I only had seven minutes to write it.
The past couple of weeks I have been very busy. I have had Constitutional change stuff happening, midterms, homework, social callings and mechanical failures. I'm pretty sure that I am just about done all the work necessary for the Constitutional change, I have a diff style listing and everything. The listing is a third the size of the Constitution.
School has been rather crazy, with midterms and homework all happening at the same time. It should settle down this week though because I'm done all my midterms and my final CMPT320 assignment is due tomorrow. Hopefully this means I can catch up on sleep.
Work has been pretty boring. I don't have any real high priority issues to do so I'm working on background stuff. I guess this is OK as it makes it pretty low stress.
On the social front I've been too busy. I missed Andrea's birthday party at the beach yesterday because I had to work on my CMPT320, that kinda sucked. I did make it out to Courteney's Fathers fiftieth last night though. That was alright, a typical adult party with lots of food, mostly conversation and only moderate amounts of alcohol. I'd like to say that it's little like the parties we've had of late, but that'd be lying. I think all my acquaintances have turned old on me; I'm having none of it and will need to do something about it. At our last party we ended up playing Mario party on the Wii. This is certainly not the type of game which promotes late nights of drinking.
I suppose I should comment on the mechanical failures for the record. I've owned my truck for six years. I've owned it since before I could legally drive it on my own. In all that time my truck has been good to me, it has never broken down without plenty of warning. Since it's been so good it ended up getting a paint job. Now it looks really sharp (which reminds me that I should wash it this weekend, all that construction makes it dirty really fast). However, last Thursday I was doing some running around and on my way home it failed me. The engine died just west of the Portman bridge as I was going home. It wasn't an expensive part, but the failure is what irks me. It'll get fixed though and it should be reliable for a while longer. I guess I can only expect so much from a twenty year old truck.
Before getting to the topic of discussion let me say that I have been rather busy. This has been the reason I haven't blogged in a couple of weeks. Here is a quick summary of what happened: I had a midterm, three or four assignments, I got a cell phone, got my truck back and all shined up, Announced the constitutional changes to all the world and have generally not slept enough.
School has been occurring, sometimes easily, sometimes with great difficulty. In fact, I didn't even make a dent in last week's math homework because I just couldn't manage it. I think my math mojo, as Courteney called it, is gone. Then again, lots of people where complaining about the difficulty of the assignment so perhaps it's not just me. The current assignment is also easier which makes me think that the previous one was just overly difficult.
Work is also happening, at three hours a day there isn't much to talk about. It's really the same email, fixing frustration cycle that occurs in most of IT. Nothing new here. What is new is that I am coming to the realization that computers are not only the source of most of my stress in life, but that they just aren't worth it in the first place. this has led me to slowly devolve in how I use a computer. I used to use all the whiz-bang toys and spend lots of time doing random things. I don't use it like that anymore. Instead I use basically a text editor and IRC most of the time and little else. I don't use many graphical applications and I try not to kill time on it. I think eventually I will begin using the computer like it's the eighties again, text only and not as a recreational toy.
Speaking of toys, I've been considering getting my gun and hunting licenses. Courteney thinks I'm crazy and seems to be opposed to the very concept that guns can be a tool and not just a weapon, but I'll just ignore that. I have been feeling constrained by urban life and really want to get outdoors and accomplish something. To this end I'm going 4x4 camping which should be lots of fun, I just hope I don't break anything expensive. I also want to hunt. I think it would be an excellent experience and I do like deer and moose meat. So I'll probably get a gun license, and once I have that a gun (being left handed it isn't safe for me to comfortably use any gun I could borrow).
The final things I will mention before I get onto the topic alluded to in the title of this entry I will note a disturbing trend. When I first started writing in this blog I used to write about interesting things. I had rants and reasoned opinions. Lately, however, all I have is the same summary of what's been happening in my life. In fact I get the sense that the quality of these summaries has been decreasing, gradually moving towards emo. This is a trend I do not like. I'm not sure how I'm going to reverse this terrible path. Perhaps I should find time to rant again, I have a few smoldering, but none of them seem to be of the sort that my readership will care to read. This is especially true since those rants will make me seem less connected to reality than I already am, who in my circle of friends wants to discuss the design of electric off-road vehicles. I have enough trouble finding people who car to have deep discussions on technical concepts in computers or computing science. Now that I think about it maybe I should move onto Usenet more, there are always interesting discussions happening over there. Doing this does work against my plan of eliminating computer time.
Enough of that. Now onto road construction. I really hate road construction. For the past two months the sewer on my block has been getting replaced. This involves tearing the street up and doing work on it. I have no idea why, but this is taking an incredibly long time. The two worst parts of road construction is the lack of parking and those terrible compactors. Now I park on the street. My truck is full size and doesn't share driveways easily. With the road closed and heavy machinery moving around all day it just isn't feasible to park on the street. Luckily there is an abandoned lot across the street from my house where I can park; the only problem is that construction in that abandoned lot could theoretically start at any time. I think it won't start until well after the road construction is complete, but who knows. The second major problem I have with road construction are the dirt compactors they use. These replace the bucket on back hoes and vibrate. The problem is that they vibrate, and when they do they vibrate an area, usually large enough to contain four to eight houses. This means that every object in the house which could rattle at all does. This is incredibly annoying and really pisses me off. But there is nothing to be done about it. I understand why they need to use a compactor, if they didn't vehicles would sink into the fresh holes, causing problems for the car driving demographic (ie nearly everybody around here). But it appears that the sewer replacement is winding down, at least near my place so perhaps I'll be able to return to normalcy soon.
With that I will stop writing and move onto other things, like the latest math homework which I need to get done, or perhaps I'll finally get the constitution stuff off my back. Until next time (hopefully next week).
This past weekend I had the house warming at my place. It went very well, we probably had thirty people show up at various points. There was lots of food going around. Aimee bought way too much. At least people liked my salmon, which I am still eating leftovers from since I cooked two fish as one was slightly freezer burnt. Noah even showed up. This would have been more amazing had he not made a short appearance in the Common Room the Friday before. But he looked to be in good health and had apparently traveled down the way of Mexico. I'm sure more of the story will come out as time progresses.
In different news I got my truck back. It drives like a 4x4 truck and not a sports car anymore, which is nice. My Dad also arranged to have it repainted and some other body work done. Now it's all shiny and dent free. It looks pretty good, but will look awesome once it gets back in for the final buffing and touch ups. Though now that it has a new paint job the wheels and rear bumper, which didn't get replaced, looks kinda bad. I'll probably replace the rear bumper, but I want to see if this 4x4 camping trip Andy and I want to go on ends up happening or not before I replace the rear bumper. No sense is finding one that's in good shape only to bend the hell out of it pulling somebody free.
On the ever present computer front the network at the new place has finally been setup and is in a state of stability. This is good and will let me work on my other computer setup project which is to get jupiter doing all my email. I already have jupiter running Freenet. It seems alright, about as good as the previous one. It's just only really good for message passing right now, but I did read a good story I pulled off it last night. I think there is hope.
Beyond that things have been going not bad since my last post. School is going, emails are being read and sent. I am seeing friends. Sure this isn't quite the slack summer I originally envisioned, but I guess that's what happens when I replace all the time I saved commuting with work. I guess I don't have much more to say at this time and I should get on my MACM homework. So until next time I shall be off.
So I didn't finish the last blog post. That's why I didn't upload it. Instead I'm going to finish it here. You are advised to read the previous entry (right below) before reading further in this one.
Where was I? Oh yes, forgetting to speak. I've been finding myself stumbling over words and the like and am going to try talking more in an effort to not forget how to speak. I hope this goes well, I don't think I could make it as a mute.
Another thing I've come to realize is that when short on sleep naps are amazingly delicious. I had one the other day and I felt amazing after waking up. In the past I've avoided taking midday naps as a waste of my time, but perhaps that is one solution to my sleeping problem. Instead of coming home and doing stuff perhaps I'll take a nap. The only problem with this is if I sleep too long I may end up not sleeping at night which will make things even worse.
Though I believe that I had more to say I can't remember now. It turns out waiting two days can make you forget a lot. Oh well. I will end here and write again some other day.
Lately I've been busy. So busy that I haven't necessarily gotten the eight hours or more a night that I should. I've also not had a lot of downtime. I believe that the last serious amount of downtime I had was when I was moving in. It may not seem like downtime to most people, but I find menial labour relaxing. What this all adds up to is short term memory problems. I am starting to forget stuff, I probably already discussed this previously perhaps even on this very blog. I am finding myself forgetting what I was going to say and often repeatedly asking the same question. I am also stuttering. I used to not stutter very much at all, but that is beginning to change. I have begun to find myself having trouble pronouncing even relatively simple words. Worse still is the fact that my vocabulary is shrinking. I find myself unable to spell word I used to use regularly.
Now I have been noticing the spelling thing for a while and though that starting to read would help with it. It didn't really, I still have trouble spelling useful words like "prominent". It is quite sad, but I do read faster now, which is at least some benefit.
I have also noticed the stuttering for a while, but I chalked it up to the eight months I spent at MDA where I didn't speak much and thus getting out of practice. However, I have been in school for five months now and it has not improved much. Maybe I need to speak even more, I'll endeavour to become interesting and get some interesting oral conversations.
Lately I have been incredibly busy. Between getting things setup at my new place, work, school, school work and finding time to workout I have had very little spare time. This is why I haven't blogged much. I am finding ways to make better use of what time I have though, I have started reading my comics on the bus again. This is made more difficult by the wonderful weather we have been having lately, but I'm not one to complain about sun. I suppose I could start making use of my bus rides down the hill and write blogs or the like on them. Perhaps I'll try that tomorrow.
Work is progressing. I think I have just about found my groove. I have actually started writing down all the things which weren't written down and I had to find out the hard way. I have also begun automating some of the more tedious things I have to deal with. So far this has been limited to installing several software packages, but I hope to eventually have a computer do all my work while I just receive a pay-cheque.
School has been progressing. The school work has been difficult to keep up with lately, but I think that is more todo with the fact that I have been trying to minimize the time I spend on it and do other things. It may come to be that I need to take Sunday mornings or something to do homework. This does put a rather terrible damper on going outside with Courteney, but she needs to work anyways. Perhaps I'll talk to her about figuring something else out. In either case not much can be done beyond talk until my truck is repaired and I have full mobility between here and there. Midterms are coming shortly. In fact I have the first math one next week. I don't really understand why math courses have two midterms. It all seems a bit excessive to me. It certainly mucks up scheduling of assignments, work and basically everything. My biggest complaint about school so far must be that I have a math assignment due every Wednesday, which is amazingly inconvenient. Even worse though, is the due date schedule of my other classes. CMPT320 assignments are due on Tuesdays for obvious reasons and MACM300 assignments are also due on Wednesdays. This means that my Sunday nights and Mondays are very busy with homework. I don't have much of a chance to do homework Tuesday nights because I get home at about nine PM, eat, work out and then suddenly it's midnight and I must be off to bed. Maybe I just need better scheduling.
Today was my first active day as the Forum Rep. for Computing Science. By this I mean that I attended my first Forum meeting. Not much of anything happened, we basically just got shown the ropes and then let out. I'm getting paid though, which I am unsure about. I've never before considered work done for the Society as the sort of thing one got paid for. I could perhaps spend the stipend on beer or some-such, but with my schedule I don't know if I'd have time. Maybe I'll just need to suck it up and keep it.
While I'm on the topic of the Society I should mention that I have begun spearheading Constitutional change. I have put forward a few very controversial ideas, most notably forcing the alternation of meetings between the Burnaby campus and the Surrey campus. There are currently three camps on this issue: Dan and I, Marcel and Allen and then everybody else. Dan is with me in thinking that this is a good move and will force more equal attention on both campuses. Marcel and Allen claim it will be the downfall of the Society, but I think they are lazy and thinking of themselves and not the greater good of the Society and all its members. This is good of course, an idea is not great until it has detractors which believe it to be the downfall of society. At some point soon I'll have to write up a great argument to win over supporters. At least this has spurred new discussion about Surrey and how the CSSS will relate to it, hopefully I can force the issue enough that something happens with it.
I believe that's all I have time to write about now. Perhaps I will write more tomorrow after work while I wait for the renamed Shadow Day to both occur and end.
If you are wondering why it has been so long since my last posting it's because I've been busy. Not only has the new semester of school started, but I've also started work and moved. All this accounts for are late nights and full days. I'm pretty much moved in now though. I only really need to pick up the rest of my bar and put the network together so I can start doing real work again. I think things should turn out mostly alright. I have a couple of doubts about Aimee though. I find my self having difficulty putting them into words, so I won't though I may at a later date.
The new place is nice and close to school. So close, in fact, that I no longer have time to write these blogs on the bus. That is one reason why I haven't written one for a while besides the being busy thing. I suppose I'll just need to put a conscious effort into getting them done.
As for work it's alright. It's all pretty much standard tech fare. The only real problem is that it feels like the whole system of there is only barely holding together. Everything is done in an adhoc manner. This does make things difficult because while sometimes I have access to the machines, other times I don't; this means I need to wait and interrupt the person to get things fixed. There's also the fact that the tech office isn't really set up appropriately, if you need to find something you have to go to a different room and hope that it's there. Really it's just a mess. My biggest complaint so far though has been the weekly reports. Every Friday I am supposed to send in a report detailing what I did, which department it was for, etc. Well this is all done totally by hand. No help whatsoever. So throughout the day I need to keep tabs on what I'm doing on paper, then at the end of the week I spend half an hour or so filling out the spreadsheet and playing with the numbers until they all add up while still giving me a reasonable amount of time to answer emails and the like. I don't think I'll be able to stand that. Perhaps when I'm a bit more caught up I'll spend some time to write a little program to do most of it for me. At least this semester they just started using an issue tracker, before that it was all done via email and sticky notes.
Classes are going. I think I last wrote that I was taking four classes. Now I'm only taking three. I attended the first hour of the first three hours CMPT475 class, decided I could take it, left, dropped it and went home. I don't think I'll attempt it again. The major reasons I dropped it are the project, the large team project (8 or 9 people!) and the required use of shitty Microsoft software (MS Project). I think those are reason enough not to take a class, especially after just doing compilers and nearly completely finishing that huge project.
All in all I think the semester will go well, I just need to settle my schedule down next week and get a groove going so I can get some side projects moving. I also need to get out and enjoy the sun. I think that'll work out pretty well though as I've moved and shouldn't have too much to do outside class homework wise. The only problem is that fact that MATH342 has homework due nearly every Wednesday. But that's all for now, I'll try and write sooner than later this time, but until the network is setup producing things on computers feels like the stone age. I don't know how I survived before version control.
Thus ends my summer break. You may have noted that I haven't blogged or made much of a network presence since my final exam. This is mostly because I haven't been on a computer much since my final exam. Instead of the normal aimless surfing and idling on-line I have been doing things. I have been outside when appropriate. I have been on computers, but only for short periods of webcomic catchup or playing Red Alert 2. I have spent lots of time with Courteney, I feel that I have nearly caught up with all the time I missed during the spring semester. I have also been doing somewhat annoying chores like working on my truck, looking for a place and cleaning (something I basically ignored while writing my compiler.
All in all it has been not a bad break. I ended up finding a place and move out next weekend. I did spend time with Courteney and that was good. I also caught up on my sleep. Now just because my summer break is done doesn't mean summer is finished. In-fact it has barely begun and I'll have plenty of time to make good use of it. Excepting work I have Thursdays off each week. Combined with my relatively slack semester I believe that I should be able to have the weekends off to do stuff. That'll be nice.
Speaking of work, I do have a job. I am now a grunt tech support person for the Math and Statistics Department. The hours seem good and the pay is ludicrous, just the way I like it. At the very least it'll keep a roof over my head, food in my stomach, gas in my truck and gifts in Courteney's hands. Now one would think that getting a job with the University would be an easy thing. It ended up being one of the most annoying jobs I've ever gotten. First they asked for my references, fair enough, except that I didn't have any prepared and in the end only had two: Noah, who is still MIA and Andrew Dlugan from my Coop term at MDA. So a rush home and some rush emailing and I get the references in. Then they want more references. I explain why I don't have anymore (At Sunco I bounced around a lot, at Impact the foreman moved away, at Bluecollar Blaine has gone into the RCMP.). After that they want even more information about where I've worked and what I did. Apparently all my recent relevant experience that I had on my resum wasn't enough. So I sent that back. Finally that was enough, but it probably involved more back and forth communication to get this job than I had on the phone during the entire eight months at MDA. Jeez.
Moving onto moving. As I mentioned I had been looking for a place. Aimee, Andy, Eugene and I wanted to move in together. Eugene and I to get out of our parents' places and move a little bit closer to the hub of activity, Andy and Aimee to get more space. We ended up going out to see places three times. The first day was a bust, the second day more successful (we saw the place we ended up getting) and the third day we saw an awesome place for cheap, but we didn't get it. So now that we have a place we need to move in. I'm moving in next weekend. That will be annoying. I don't believe I can fit it all into a single truckload, I just have too much furniture to bring. I'll certainly try though. All in all though, it's looking to be shaping up well and should be fun.
With my new found job I have decide to get my truck fixed. I am tired of having to deal with the steering problem, the unnecessarily rough ride and the couple of spots of rust which greatly annoy me. My truck also failed Aircare. So it's going in to get fixed. I'm starting to not care how much it costs.
My most recent purchase has been a badminton net. Courteney likes badminton so I should be able to convince her to play often, especially on days which are nice, but she would otherwise not feel like doing anything. The only problem is that I'm not good at badminton. Actually, I'm terrible at it. So in the three games I've played against Courteney I've been whooped. Perhaps I'll improve with more practice.
As I mentioned in my last post long ago Courteney has gotten a new bed. It's only a double, not the queen she was originally considering. That's fine though, a double is all she really needs. The mattress is very tall. When you look at her bed it looks like she has a box-spring and then two mattresses. It's all because of the memory foam. Apparently the demo model was incredibly comfortable, but her new one isn't broken in yet so I don't know. What is funny though is that Courteney needs to literally climb into bed. But she seems to like it so far and there is no way that it could be any worse than her previous bed, which was just a worn out mattress on top of a sagging frame. Hopefully she is less tired during the summer because of better sleep.
It's 7:35 AM and I am on a bus to SFU Surrey. I have been on the go continuously since February. I am worn out. I can feel exhaustion behind my eyelids. I have considered mid-day naps on several occasions. I find my mind wandering while studying to more pleasant and stimulating things (programming language theory if you must know). I often find that I'll stop reading in the middle of a sentence and just sit there, staring, thoughtless. Sometimes I even absentmindedly read several pages and can't recall a single concept from those pages.
I need a vacation.
The only upside of this all is that I'm sleeping well for the first time in a long time. I guess that's something.
In other news, Courteney has finally admitted that her bed is terrible and probably causing her to not sleep well. At least she has a new bed on order. I've also planned most of my trip to Victoria and now just need to find a map of Naniamo and the surrounding area and then hop on a ferry next week. Before that though, I have several errands to accomplish: find a lock for my canopy, change my shocks, move the concrete thing beside the house and sleep, lots. This should all be easily accomplished this weekend.
After that though, it's time to get out and enjoy summer. I've warned Courteney that I will do the Grouse Grind this summer and head to the beach. Hopefully she prepares herself as necessary.
I've admitted an application for the ACS help-desk job. I don't know if I'll get it, but there are at least two positions opening up. It would be nice.
The final thing I'll discuss (sorry, no deep thoughts this time) are my plans for the summer semester. I have too long been out of the Common Room. Thus I intend to become a regular, but more than that I intend to bring a deck of cards and spread the game.
I'm going to nap on this bus now.
Hell week ended last Friday. After doing a short 24 hours stint in the lab I handed in my compiler. It wasn't finished, some major functionality was missing, but that's OK. Considering what I'm told people accomplished in the past not finishing is the norm. I'm not entirely sure about this class, but I can hope.
Now that hell week is over we are into my second favourite time of the semester, exam time. So I've nearly caught up on my sleep and have spent a fair bit of time outside. I've also watched probably a dozen episodes of the Soprano's with my father, which is nice.
I have an exam today, and exam tomorrow and then a couple of exams which are nicely spaced next week. I think they'll all go fine. CMPT300 (tomorrow) may be a bit rough because of the timing, but I think it's doable with a hard night tonight after CMCPT383.
Besides exams I am also looking at houses/apartments with Eugene, Aimee and Andy as well as planning my semester break. We go out checking out houses this weekend. As for my break, it is shaping up to be rather busy: the conference at SFU at the beginning of May, a trip to Victoria for a couple of days to be a tourist/help Christina move, probably power-washing the other house, some yard work at my parents' house as well as spending time with Courteney. Busy I shall be.
All in all though it should be good. I'll have a reason to get out of bed and will certainly have things to do when Courteney is off on the Exec Retreat.
Other things which need to get done either this break or at the beginning of next semester is find a part-time job so I can support my living out lifestyle. I'll submit a few applications for jobs up at SFU this week (they are always pretty sweet and slack) and if that doesn't pan out look elsewhere.
All in all I am looking forward to the next semester. I have a theory heavy load so I won't be spending my days inside staring at a computer, instead I can be outside reading a book. I'll be loving at home so I could do plenty of stuff and not have to travel for days to get there. I will also not have to deal with the zoo that is home right now.
The biggest issue is that part-time job. I will really need to as I intend to keep my truck running while moving out, always an expensive proposition. This reminds me that I need to put my truck in my name right after exams, there goes probably two grand to insurance.
Most pleasant of the summer semester though, is that I'll be able to spend a significant amount of time with Courteney, most of it outside doing physical activities. Sure she doesn't think she'll be able to handle it, but I think she doesn't have enough confidence in herself. She'll do fine except for being a bit sore the first week.
And that is really the state of Travis. Looking for work, looking for housing and looking forward to the end of this semester. Until next week.
I am writing a compiler. I reiterate, I am writing a compiler. It's due this Friday and I still have several major stages to start and finish. What this all means is every spare hour I have being devoted to coding like a madman. It'll be a long haul to this Friday, but I think I'll make it. I have most of my other assignments as done as they are going to get so I can focus. With this in mind everything I am about to tell you happens when I am too googly-eyed to do more coding.
This past Friday night I went to the Chershire Cheese with Courteney, Aimee, Andy and Eugene. It was good and we had many a fanciful conversation. We discussed what's wrong with the Society and what I should do during my Presidency (I decided to run by the way, there just wasn't anybody else who I think would do a good job.). Some good ideas came up. The idea I like best is a hat of power idea. Basically whoever is in charge at any event or activity wears a funny hat, probably one of our sombreros. Other things that came up which I think are nice to note are how if you are intelligent and/or rich you should procreate in abundance. Something else that came up was that Eugene is looking for a roommate and Aimee and Andy are considering moving out (I'm not really sure why, but there you go.). The idea of all of us moving into a house appeared basically out of nowhere. I'm not really sure how I feel about that, one of my reasons for moving out is that it's too loud and busy at home.
On Saturday I slept in and then went to see Courteney. We went on a nice walk in the sun and wore poor Bailey right out. Afterwards we chilled on the front lawn eating sunflower seeds. I really hope to spend more time relaxing outside in the summer semester.
The only other thing which happened was that I went to see Margo and it turns out I am three semesters short of graduation, credit wise. We'll see how the scheduling works out and if there are any other courses that I really want to take. I think I'm likely to be done next fall, maybe Spring if I do another Coop.
Then there is my Presidential candidacy. As I said I am running only because nobody else appears to be able to do a reasonable job. My only competition is Ted, who is well meaning, but not really experienced at high level Executive positions, and Sepand, who is experienced but a bit shady. Thus there is me. I would have run against Allen, who would have been my greatest competition, but Dan convinced him to run for VPO instead.
I really should work on my election speech sometime today.
This past week has been a very busy one. As mentioned previously I had a wedding to attend in Calgary this past weekend. I did attend and it was good. The food was good, the ceremony wasn't bad and the reception was excellent.
The trip up was interesting. My Mom was driving so we drove during the day and could see things. Usually my Dad drives, we leave the house at about 6PM and can't see anything until we get there. On this drive through the mountains I saw many things. I saw that every town appears to have a tourist attraction. Well, except Field, but that's to be expected. Field is more a village than a town. Something this trip made me realize is that there is a large amount of stuff to be seen on the highways in this country of ours. I think if we had actually stopped in every town to see what their tourist attraction is it would have taken us another day to get to Calgary. This driving was nice and took up the entirety of Thursday.
Friday morning we (my Mom, Kelsey, Courteney and I) went to Okotokes to see Karen. We saw her new dog, which splits people into two camps, cute and ugly. We then went to lunch at this little place famous for its soups called The Route 40 Soup Company. It was very good. I had a wonderful beef sandwich with some lamb stew on the side. We also shared a plate of poutine. It wasn't the normal artery clogging stuff, but a nice plate of seasoned fries, some delicious melted cheese and a very light gravy. If you are in the Okotokes area you should stop by and grab a bite.
This restaurant serves locally grown food. I like the concept and wonder if there is anything of that sort here in the Lower Mainland. They are also considering changing to a seasonal menu, in which they would serve only food which was in season locally, which I think could be interesting.
The afternoon and evening of the Friday was the rehearsal dinner. Now there wasn't any rehearsing and all of the close family was invited, so I'm not quite sure why it was called the rehearsal dinner. It was good though. We has well over thirty people crammed into my Aunt Pam and Uncle Jim's house. I should mention that before we arrived at the rehearsal dinner we picked up my Dad, Courtney and Jesse at the airport, they had elected to fly instead of driving with the rest of us.
The Saturday was pretty much all wedding. Everybody looks handsome and the festivities were good. That's about all I have to say about that.
Sunday was a full day. I went out to breakfast with Shane and his girlfriend dragging Courteney along. It was good to catch up, but it didn't give us much down time before the gift opening. After breakfast we had the gift opening. I didn't really pay attention to what they got, but know that my family got them silverware. After the gift opening we left. Now there had been a bit of freezing rain during the gift opening. When I went out to move the truck so we could leave right after all the gifts were opened I slipped on the stairs. (Apparently painted wooden steps get slippery.) This results in a nice scrape on my left wrist where I bent my watch band from the fall as well as a black bruise on my butt which is somewhat larger than a twoonie. Now I have to get my watch fixed.
Other than that we just had a long drive home through the mountains at night. We did take a detour because the Transcanada between Field and Golden was closed due to a mudslide. On that detour I discovered that Radium is larger than I would have expected and though there is civilization out there on Highways 93 and Highway 95 it is well spaced.
In the end the trip went well. Major downsides include people getting sick, namely my Dad and Mom. I also think we wore Courteney out with our fast paced lifestyle.
Just before I end I'll give an update on how school went last week. I did end up getting everything with a due date done, but I had to leave Compilers without getting much work done. I now feel behind and pressured, so I'm going to spend a significant amount of time at the keyboard this week catching up.
Not much has happened in the past week that's worth mentioning. Basically all I've been doing is homework in an attempt to not fall behind when I go to Sarah's wedding this weekend. This has made me realize something though. If I truly wanted to, I could get an additional 25% more work done in my average work week. Mostly this comes from actually doing work on Friday and working a long day on Sunday.
Even knowing this, I don't think I will. I enjoy my off time. I enjoy not doing work, or doing work ineffectively so I can socialize. I guess I'm not cut out for working long hours all day every day. But I already knew this; I am firmly a forty hour employee.
There is one thing I did this past week I should quickly mention. I attended the Giants game this past Friday against the Chilliwack Bruins. The game was alright. The first period was a bit of a blowout, Chilliwack taking the entirety of it. The latter two periods got better as Chilliwack started putting up a fight. In the end it was 8-0 though, which kinda sucks. Something I noticed, however, is that the seats at that rink are small. Very small. I think the only person who fit into the seats without being uncomfortable was Courteney. It was really funny seeing the taller among us fit into those seats.
For the rest of this week I just have high intensity homework as I attempt to complete this weeks homework two days early. All because I am going to the wedding this weekend and leaving Thursday morning.
Now for a random thought. Recently I have been reading a number of blogs online, mostly people's opinions on programming languages, technologies and the like. Some of those bloggers appear to write a large number of entries. Sometimes it seems that they are writing two a day. I don't know how I feel about reading the opinion of somebody who seems to make a living just having one.
I am the sort of person who, upon looking at a process or piece of software, sees faults. I see inefficiencies and wasted time. I see unreasonable limitations. In general I see problems with all the software I use.
Now I am also the sort of person who can't stand those problems. They grate at me, stealing my soul one minuscule bit at a time.
The third trait of mine is that I find doing nothing very difficult. Nearly impossible. Now this isn't to say that I can't sit still, I certainly can and do, but I need to be accomplishing something while doing so; it may be talking with somebody, watching an interesting programme on TV or just resting, but it needs to be something.
These three traits, when taken together, cause me to dream up many software projects I would like to do. Some are complex, design and implement what I consider a more productive (ie. less annoying) programming language or add advanced programming aides to my programming editor, some are simple, write a better set searching file sharing system, and some are just plain time consuming, rewrite Freenet but in a way that doesn't suck. Unfortunately I have no time to do these things while attending school and taking a heavy coding load. Which means that these ideas just keep piling up.
This large backlog of projects of which I'd like to check the feasibility exacerbates my problem of not being able to do nothing. It's impossible to do so when it feels like I have so much that I could be doing.
I don't quite know how I'm going to solve this problem. Perhaps I'll take a fall semester full of theory courses so I can save all my personal coding for my personal projects instead of doing homework. I would do this during a summer semester, but the sun will make me want to get outside and do stuff, undermining my efforts. The only problem I foresee with this situation is the fact that I need to find a part-time job. If this job involves coding I'm not sure how much pleasure coding I will feel like doing.
All things to consider.
Last night I had a piece of chicken right before I headed off to bed. I blame that chicken for the weird dream I had. It involved a cut rate school with a terribly teacher, Courteney, the teacher insulting Courteney, Ted Tate narrating, my steel toed work boots, me beating the teacher up and then some crazy punishments for pummeling the teacher.
It made more sense while it was happening.
As you may have noticed I haven't been keeping up with my weekly postings the past couple of weeks. There is a perfectly good and reasonable explanation for this, unfortunately it's true. The reason I haven't posted is simple: I was in crunch mode. Last week I had two large assignments and two midterms; the week before that I spent preparing for the crunch week. Those weeks have passed and I am nearly out of the woods. All I have this week is my constant Compilers homework, only a single midterm and a Comparative Programming assignment. Sure my weekend will suck a bit as I push to get math done, but I figure that after Monday I'll get back into my groove where I am not working too much, but never stopping for too long.
Anyways. Winter is making a last stand against Spring. Just yesterday it was chilly and snow fell from the sky. Not very much kept around on the lower elevations, but SFU got a good dumping. As of this writing I'm not sure quite how much there is, but there was at least and inch and a half when I left at 10:30 yesterday morning. Snow is nice and this last bout really makes me less worried because before that we had cherry tree blossoming, which is a disturbing thing to see in February.
Aside from the weather not too much has been going on in my life (see above about the crunch week) but there's enough to at least fill out this post. This past Friday I went to a Undercoverwear party run my Aimee. It was interesting and I'm still not sure if I'm comfortable buying sex oriented products from a friend, but I did anyways. I would list the products here, but some of my readers aren't allowed to know yet.
I suppose I should briefly mention that the downward spiral of the Society still continues, though Marcel didn't get recalled, it wasn't even close.
Other than that I've just been having urges to do expensive motor sports. I really want to go sledding again (and will if the weather gets better). I also want to do some offroading. I know I can't afford to go 4x4ing, simply because you always break something, but I want to anyways. Maybe I'll win on the first lottery ticket I've ever bought and be able to build a vehicle just for that.
Now some of my readers may wonder why I (a reasonably well educated, mathematically oriented) person am buying lottery tickets. I know that they are mostly a tax against people, but this one is slightly different. I bought in with my brother and father. We bought those Millionaire Life ones (one million dollars a year for twenty five years). All that is pretty standard, except that the tickets cost more than a regular lottery, a single line costs $5 while $20 gets you seven numbers. The big difference, however, is that there is a guaranteed single winner (or was that at least a guaranteed winner?). Either way it means that the odds are much better. A normal 6/49 type deal often goes many weeks without there being a winner and could go years without there being a single person who takes home the jackpot. This makes it a bad idea because you are betting against the full odds of the numbers, one in sixteen million. With a guaranteed winner you are only betting against the number of other people who bought it, so I'd guess probably two to three million numbers. Much better odds for a better payoff. Perhaps I should actually run the number if I can find the number of tickets sold afterwards, but I think it would be interesting to do an expected value calculation on it.
The final thing I will comment on at this time, while I sit waiting for the bus at the Park and Ride is what I spent Saturday doing. I spent eleven hours on Saturday playing a single video game. (In writing that last sentence the bus came.) Now for those of you who don't know me, I don't really play video games. A long session for me playing a game is four or five hours and I will then not play a game for the next week or two. This makes that length of session amazing. Now I did swap out with Courteney near the end, but I spent over nine hours at the controller. I/We was playing Okami. It's amazingly good. I could probably even work up the energy to play another ten hour session, but I don't have the time. I suppose what makes the game so playable is the fact that there is very little grinding. Most things you have to do are either walking or interacting with your environment in an interesting way, you paint. Now some people think that walking around is another form of grinding, and that's true, except that Okami provides numerous distractions along the long three minute journey. You have treasures to dig up, you have animals to make love you, you have optional enemy battles, you have cursed areas of the map to restore. Each distraction takes between ten seconds and a minute usually, providing a good amount of variety. The character improvement system is also rather interesting. Instead of gaining levels by defeating monsters you improve either by buying time in a dojo for training or through the praise you get from all those distractions. Not that you really require massive amounts of character improvement anyways, though the enemies do get harder as you go along, most of the character improvement is actually player improvement. The player gets better at dodging and the like. As an example. Ten hours into the game there is a spot where all your equipment and special powers become unavailable (drained away by evil), so you go about fighting with no weapons and no magic. Note that at no time has any character traits improved other than the amount of life and ink (which are basically auto-filling magic points). Even then, the same enemies you have been fighting all along are not impossible, not weaker, they just take longer and it is perfectly possible to defeat them with minimal (no) damage. I found that rather surprising. In most RPGs you would end up entirely useless in a similar situation.
That and sometimes it's just cool to run around as a wolf.
Before I begin with the subject matter of the title I shall give small updates concerning last weeks entry. Firstly, I believe I have mostly broken in my new shoes. This is a good thing. They are now very comfortable. I even believe that the callus on the back of my heels, which I grew because of my previous all day shoe (my running shoes) being ill fit for walking, is starting to go away. I am even able to wear my shoes for my normal twelve hours and not have them feel sore or tired at all. I think I could get used to this. The shopping I did for Courteney seems to be bearing fruit as she seems comfortable enough, though it hasn't completely gotten rid of her neck aches. I don't know quite what can be done about that, but maybe more time will help. And my crushing workload, while not crushing, is indeed busy, giving me a nice constant stream off coding to do. Unfortunately this makes those days where I do nothing either because I am sick of homework or am just plane sick, as with this past weekend, troubling and dangerous. I am keeping up well enough so far and am not worried yet.
Now for the political upheaval. For those of you who frequent the services of the Computing Science Student Society up at SFU you may have noticed how things appear to be in shambles. Well things are in shambles. I believe that this is for two reasons. Most significantly very few Executives hang around in the Common Room this semester. This causes problems because those who are responsible don't realize there is a problem and the Society activities in general aren't very visible. I believe this leads to reduced excitement and awareness which leads to reduced volunteering and meeting attendance which causes further reductions in volunteering. It's a vicious cycles.
The second major cause, in my very humble yet educated opinion, is that the Vice President of Resources, Marcel, isn't up on campus much at all. He has probably the most regularly required duties of any executive. He needs to keep the photocopier in running order and the pop machine working. Those things needs to happen everyday. He also needs to keep the Common Room tidy and attractive. He does have help in the daily tasks, but must personally take care of ordering pop and calling for maintenance. He hasn't been doing this. Instead it appears, and has been confirmed by close friends, that instead of performing his duties (which don't take very long at all if you keep up on them) he has apparently been playing video games. Not working, not school, but games.
This state of affairs came to a head in yesterdays meeting (which Marcel didn't attend) when complaints were voiced. This eventually resulted in his recall being put on the next meetings agenda. Now my name is behind the motion and actually I regret doing it at this point. The political thing to do would have to lodged the complaints in the minutes and then bring up recall at the next meeting. Though that does require that I attend two more meetings, which is a hard thing for me to do because of the scheduling.
Meetings times are the final, bonus, reason I believe the Society has hit a hard run. Currently meetings are scheduled for terrible times, Monday at 4:30. Firstly that is too late for most people to make it and Mondays don't allow people to find out about the meeting the day before. The could still find out the day of, but there have been no signs posted. It turns out that nobody in the current executive appears to have payed attention to how things were done before and they certainly haven't considered why things where done that way.
I am currently in my fourth week of school and things are fine.
CMPT379, which was supposed to be a crushing workload has turned out to be very manageable so far. In fact if it wasn't for me getting distracted for the first week of classes writing a ray tracer in our made up language I wouldn't be behind at all. I am led to wonder why everybody always claims the loads in Shermer's classes are so huge. Am I just better than those who complain, I doubt it. Do I manage my time better, perhaps; organization is one of my strong points. Whatever the reason I never seem to find things that bad.
CMPT300, also a course which is supposed to be hard, has turned out to be relatively tame. This may be because I haven't done the second assignment (which involves concurrency (something generally considered hard)), but we shall see.
CMPT383 has been very easy. The assignments are mostly trivial and the course material currently is focusing on a couple of different programming paradigms. I do worry a small bit that the midterm and exam will end up being painful as a lot of the information is a bit abstract and I've heard claims of impossible exams. The exams being open book (the universal book, not just the text and notes) also has me worried. I suppose I should find some time and construct a couple of nontrivial functional and logical programs to ensure that I get the gist down.
MATH242 has been very easy so far. We started with logic and moved from there to proofs and functions. All of that has been pretty easy, going back to what I did in MACM101 and MACM201. We are currently moving towards more interesting material shortly, perhaps next week after we finish the current foundational material. The homework for this class has been easy so far by my normal math standards, only requiring about an hour a week to accomplish. I expect that this will increase as we get into more difficult material.
Outside of classes things are going, though I'm not terrible happy about them. I find that I do very little socializing Monday through Wednesday because I am bouncing between campuses so much. I know that the last time I took classes at Surrey I swore I wouldn't do it again - I just don't learn. This is most likely the final semester at Surrey though because there shouldn't be any other classes offered here I feel I must take. I will also hopefully be moved out making Surrey classes less appealing by actually increasing my commute. Thursday I end up doing some small amount of socializing, mostly with Courteney, Aimee and Andrea. Thursdays are very slow around here, much slower than usual. I think this might be because the lower division computing students all have mostly MWF schedules with minimal loads on TR. Fridays I do the bulk of my socializing because most people are up here and looking to avoid doing homework in light of the weekend. This day is alright, but I find it somewhat unsatisfying. I suppose my schedule this semester just conflicts with everybody I would like to see. I think I'll have to try harder to make my schedule overlap better next semester.
As I seem to be making note of my weekly weekend adventures with Courteney I should mention that we went shopping on Saturday. I looked for shoes. I found a nice pair of R-somethings-or-others, full leather, water-proof, on sale for $100. This is the most expensive pair of shoes I have ever owned. I think they'll last though and be very comfortable for walking (much more so than running shoes) as soon as I break them in. Until they are broken in I'll be in pain though.
The shopping Courteney did was for foundational undergarments, aka bras. I have had enough of her obviously misfitting bras and was convinced it was causing her sore neck and back. Finally after much stalling she found herself ready to go shopping my way. So we went to a lingerie shop not in a mall and got her measured up. An hour and a half and two or three dozen bras later I left the proud owner of two expensive bras while she left knowing her actual size, which were nowhere close to what she thought they were. Only time will tell if she likes them better and if they help with her neck trouble, but at least she knows how bras are supposed to fit now.
It isn't often that I enjoy being wrong. Most of the time I try to avoid it. Conveniently I was wrong last week about when all my homework was due. I had thought that all four of my classes has assignments due on this Friday. This would have been all but impossible with CMPT300, CMPT379 and MATH242 having assignments which take considerable amounts of time. Luckily I was wrong and now this week doesn't have the soul crushing load I first thought and I will be able to actually socialize some.
Something else that happened last week was that I upgraded Subversion up at SFU. This broke the half copy LIDC was using from my directory. Now LIDC has tried getting ACS to install Subversion on Fraser, but it just hasn't been working out. ACS is useless in nearly every regard and are totally unwilling to install any software, even if it was placed out of the way. Anyways, this break caused quite a stir in LIDC since they are using SVN as their source control for a project which must run on Fraser. Rob Hetzler came to the rescue, however, by suggesting that LIDC compile a version which has no external dependencies. It turns out that nobody in LIDC could do such a thing and so I got a call (well, not actually a call, more of an email). $100 to compile a piece of open source software I already had running on the same machine. The work itself took about fifteen minutes (Yay $400 per hour billing rate), getting paid took much longer. It turns out that the University has this Independent contractor contract which the fine manager at LIDC thought I had to sign. This contract required $1, 000, 000 general liability (something which I can in no way afford). So actually getting paid required me to run around trying to find this manager to talk with them and saw me digging through some University policies to see if I actually had to sign it. In the end though I found a policy which supported that I didn't need to sign it and all was well. In two or three weeks I expect I'll see a cheque.
The final topic of today's entry concerns working out while staying in. As I may have mentioned I bought a Bowflex home gym the Friday before school started. I have been using it four or five times a week as has nearly everybody else in my household. It will probably suck for them when I move out and take it with me (I got a folding model for just that reason). That is the point of this paragraph.
The point of this subsection, however, is that starting last Friday Courteney voluntarily did a work out. Not only that, but she did another (not quite as good, she was in low spirits) one last Sunday. I find this to be a promising turn compared to the sedentary girl I've come to know. I hope it continues. I especially hope she does the stretching I've shown her, I am very afraid she'll hurt herself with her current flexibility level.
That's about the skinny of it, but as a final random thought I think I should start running, it's the only cardio activity which I think actually works, mostly because my body is ill suited to it.
This past weekend I attended the Taboo Sex Show with Courteney. Through this I learnt a few things:
Women must really like sex toys. Sure there were only a few basic designs which were endlessly copied and modified, but a dozen basic design leads to hundreds of modifications.
Sex shops sell lots of female sex toys. They truly must to be carrying the kind of pared down stock we saw at the sex show.
At any convention there will be seemingly unrelated booths. I saw a few limousine booths (both normal car and SUV/truck), a RockStar booth, a hot sauce booth (I tried the medium and it was good, but had a long lasting after burn), a couple of psychics, what looked like a real-estate booth (I was really confused by this one as they appeared to possibly be offering actual services, but I'm not sure of what sort.), a couple of speed boats and I think I saw a florist.
There are far more male enhancement for her pleasure products (clitoral stimulators, cock rings, etc.) than there are strictly male toys (sex dolls, fake vaginas, etc).
If I had to put a number to it I would have to say that about a third of the products for sale at the show were for couples (Massage oil candles, Karma Sutra cards (great for those who aren't much into deciphering ancient poetry.), the swing (This looked rather interesting, but you'd almost need to have a separate room setup for sex.) and sex bedding (bedding that's waterproof, meant to keep your actual sheets clean; now this is a good idea.)).
Pole dancing is crazy.
That's about all that I learnt from the Sex Show that can be placed in point form. While we were there we also saw various forms of dancing (Burlesque (Women in the past wore many garments), Belly dancing (I don't quite understand how this particular dancer didn't knock herself out) and Pole dancing (crazy gymnastics). We didn't end up attending any seminars because there schedule conflicted with the schedule on the main stage.
Through the entire event I only saw a single nipple that wasn't printed on a box. Even though the Burlesque dancers ended up topless they had those nipple tassels (I don't quite understand how they get those to spin.) The nipple I did see was from the female stripper we passed by. I only saw a single nipple because there was a crowd, I think she was giving a lap dance.
Well I am back at school. Though I thought this would be a great time it's not. Instead it's only good. I guess the week of nothing I had has coloured my view. It might also be that my schedule appears pretty crappy right now. Maybe it'll clear up.
My schedule this semester is what I would describe as not good. I attend five days a week with me bouncing between campuses Monday through Wednesday. So those days kinda suck. It also appears that I won't be seeing much of Courteney at school this semester, but there is half a week before that's for certain. I do hope that I get to see her, otherwise I might end up bored. Now I used to have a four day week, but after attending the first class of HUM102 I came to the decision that it isn't what I'm looking for. Combine that with my sudden urge to graduate (all my friends are close or there) and I swapped it out for CMPT383. This does mean that I now have a heavy course load. Hopefully it'll be alright.
Outside of school things have been going. I bought a Bowflex. This means that I should hopefully be sleeping better and maybe I'll add a bit of slack to my belt. I am still figuring out the program I want to do on it, but something with five days a week.
In preparation for school I had thought about starting to try getting my Sparcstation working as a third monitor for those textual things which take space, like IRC. I haven't made much progress, but I do have the cross compiler installed. Hopefully I get something going before my homework starts.
This past Monday I took my class 5 drivers test. I passed, not without a few demerits (mostly not always shoulder checking on right turns and cutting corners on left turns), but I don't care. Now I can drive with alcohol in my system. This means I can have a beer or two without fear.
I suppose that's all for the moment because I have to work on improving my blogging system for those out there. With work done I plan on blogging more since I have the bus rides to use.
Today is my last day at work. As I sit here I am waiting for my exit appointment to come. My desk is bare. My filing cabinet is empty. My personal effects are packed away in my truck. Sign a few papers, hand in my keycard and keys and I'm done. On to my week long vacation then back to school.
Thinking back on my eight months at MDA there are lots of things I learnt. I learnt how to use many of Vim's powerful features. I learnt something about dealing with people. I learnt that I can hack it in the real world. Those are positive things to learn. I've also learnt some negative things: I hate commuting, I dislike waiting and sitting there with nothing to do is something I find very painful.
Overall I'd say that out of the eight months I spent at MDA six were worth it. That's not bad considering how much time I spent surfing the net or otherwise avoiding work. The final thing I've gotten out of it is probably a nearly guaranteed job. They really seem to like me here. I'm not sure if I'd come back, if I did I'd need some changes with the office setup and computer setup.
Now my final two days at work were pretty slow. They were between Christmas and New Year's Eve, so most people were away. This meant that if I wasn't doing something it felt even more boring than usual because there weren't even any conversations in the halls to listen in on. I survived though.
Speaking of Christmas I should tell my eager reader how it went. Things went pretty well, for some reason I ended up not getting much sleep, but that's alright. Gifts were exchanged, bird eaten and enough cookies and pies consumed to make a dentist rich. Courteney seems happy with her jewelry box and earrings, which is good. I wasn't terribly worried, but you never know. She got me a traditional tinfoil samurai helmet, well, she made it. It's pretty nifty and much better than my previous tinfoil hat. She also got me a nice pocket knife that's not quite three inches long and very sharp. I've used it every day I've owned it so far. It is an awesome gift. Something I didn't ask for, didn't realize I needed but will use on a frequent basis.
My first real use of the knife was cutting the lights off my truck. Just like last year I decorated my truck with leftover outdoor lights. This year I had tied the lights to my truck just in case I needed to drive with them. I ended up not needing to, but had the fun nonetheless of cutting them off the morning when I went back to work (yesterday) while it was fairly cold out. Nice and sharp though, cuts right through those zap straps.
On the topic of things attached to my truck I shall briefly put down my plans to move my truck cap out of Sunco's storage area and onto my truck. I even got the necessary clamps (the ones the truck came with were stolen) this past week. I just need to find time and some help to move it down.
With school starting again on the eighth I think I'll find myself a bit busy. I have sort of been ignoring my desktop these past eight months. Not only did I not need to display size, but with my laptop battery being recalled I figured I may as well use it some. So this means that my desktop is in a state of disarray. Not everything is connected. Things which worked in the past aren't. I've also decided to use my Sparcstation as a third monitor, which will require work to get running with my desktop. Oh well. A couple of days hiding in a hole and I should have most of the things worked out. I should also order my free replacement battery sometime soon.
Well, last night I had some topics of ranting all built up and reading for writing, but I have forgotten most of what I was going to say and am running short of time here at work. So instead I will mark down the news that my friend Adam is finally getting paid. Well, rather the company he works for has published so he will be getting paid. And moving out, which is something I am considering and going to soon work upon.
Until next year.
As some of you may have noticed the Lower Mainland got cold and snowy last week. It's actually still snowy now, though none of it is falling and most of it is slowly melting. Now even though you probably know this I love snow. Some crazy people hate snow (I couldn't imagine why. Perhaps they drive too much?) but I love it. As you might imagine my spirits were thusly lifted two weekends ago when the snow started falling. Even greater was driving in the snow.
The first time I ever drove in snow I spun out. It was an interesting experience. I partially blame the fact that the Lower Mainland doesn't get normal snow the first day. Instead it gets greasy snow that's more slush than not. The rest of the blame rests on my shoulders. I had no experience. After that things didn't get too much better. Most of the snow on the roads melted so driving was mostly fine (though you needed four wheel drive to get up the driveways). That is, however, until I went to leave one day back to SFU. I was in a bit of a rush and didn't let my truck warm up enough. My truck also didn't have any antifreeze in it. So when I went to move in my rush I froze it. Not only did it stall, but it wouldn't start up again until it had warmed up. With that lesson learnt I now have plenty of antifreeze in the radiator and always let my truck warm up.
But back to the presentish. So it was snowing. And there was driving to be done. Since the last time I drove in slushy snow I have grown somewhat wiser. This of course makes it more fun. So that night I threw my truck into 4x4 and went to pick up my sister at work. It was OK. There was a bit of slipping when going up 216th street, but that was expected. Courteney ended up staying that night because I wasn't about the venture onto Surrey roads with nothing but fresh slush.
The next day I did stuff. Most of that day was consumed by heading to Science World with Candace (my cousin who has been living with us since September) and Courteney. We saw the sights, an OmniMax movie about ancient Greece (I had forgotten how huge that screen is) and we also saw BodyWorlds 3. BodyWorlds is the one with the skinned people. They are in a variety of poses and show tons of cool stuff. The most interesting thing I found was just how small the organs are. It turns out that a significant portion of the body is fat and muscle.
After Science World we headed back home and did stuff. The drive home from Surrey Central was fun because I had forgotten to clear off my vents so my windows were fogging up. Live and learn. Later that evening I had to drive Courteney home. By then the snow had been falling long enough and it was cold enough that the slush has stopped appearing and the snow was sticking as snow. So I head into Courteney's culdesac and come across her car. Stuck. In the middle of the culdesac. It was pretty funny. So without much fuss I continued on and drove up onto her driveway. It had at least ten inches of snow so I left some very nice tracks.
Now that first weekend when it was snowing I tried driving my 4x4 RC Van over the snow. It didn't work too terribly well. The Van doesn't have very much power, not that the cold batteries helped any. It worked OK on t he back deck, but nowhere else. Later in the week though, the snow stopped falling and got packed down on the road. Wednesday I spent a good hour or so driving my van all over the road in front of my house. It was pretty good fun, especially since I had spent a chunk of the morning chipping snow off the driveway.
When last weekend came I played in the snow some more. On Friday night I visited Courteney and basked in her hot-tub for an hour or so before I had to go pick up Kelsey from work again (Though she had left two hours early and I wasn't aware). On the Saturday I spend the morning and early afternoon walking in a park around 200th and 16th with Courteney. We had a nice four hour walk through the snow. With a break in the middle for hot chocolate it was good.
Unfortunately those four hours would come back to haunt us. I couldn't life my left leg the rest of the day. Courteney faired somewhat worse. She was hobbling around, probably still is. She did well though. Very few people would have continued for the entire four hours. I do hope that the swelling in her calves goes away soon though.
Well the cold snap kinda went away and now the rain has come back. Slowly the packed snow and ice is being washed and melted away. I'm not very happy about it. Especially since having a truck I need weight in the back of my truck or I spin my wheels and just about anything. Well I used snow as weight, being plentiful. Mother nature was even nice enough to start me off with some in my box. It does happen though, that the snow in my box is melting much faster than the ice on the side streets. So I've been slipping more often.
The one good thing about the snow starting to melt is that a crush has formed. This crush is strong enough to support my van. Running it over unbroken snowscape is pretty fun. I really like how only three wheels are usually touching. It can also be very challenging. Though most of it is unbroken there are usually foot prints or splatter spots to run over. I spent an hour or so doing that on Sunday with Courteney in her backyard. It'll make me sad when the snow finally melts, but maybe my van will do fine on dirt.
There is hope though that the snow will come back. I know that the ground is cold enough for it to stick. We might even have a white Christmas for once.
Leaving the snow for a while. Work is almost over. Just a couple more weeks and I will be heading back into school mode. Even though work has started to pick up again I find myself unable to work up any enthusiasm. Maybe knowing that it doesn't matter if I leave stuff undone (well, at least not to me) has drained me of it. Maybe the past two months of doing almost nothing has left me too lazy. Maybe I'm just burnt out at this boring working thing. Who knows? The important thing is that I'm almost done. It's not that I've not had some good moments (I did like the 'late' night, last minute debugging sessions). It's not that I've not learnt anything. I just have had enough. At the best of times I find sitting down to write documentation to be tedious, especially when it's documentation about the design of something and actually coding it would be faster (as a side note: Sometimes people argue over stupid things. I've seen situations where more time was spent in meetings arguing whether to do something or not than the feature took to implement.); now I even find it tough to work up the motivation to code. I blame the latter on the fact that it's in Java though. I come across language limitations (mostly the lack of functions and a nice preprocessor for macro goodness) nearly every day. Places where I could save myself time, or not have to copy and paste, but can't.
Now it's not that I don't feel like coding. Everyday I sit there, aimlessly surfing the net to waste time while I think about coding my own things. I guess I won't make a good Java coder. Sure I can get stuff done when I get into it, but the first time I would normally use a function or a macro I fall right out of it and am useless for the rest of the day.
As you may or may not know this past week saw a large storm in the Lower Mainland. Now this caused a power outage at my home. This power outage began Wednesday at about 1 PM and ended on Friday at about 4PM. This is a bit long, but considering how long traffic lights weren't working for, it's not terrible. What made it terrible, however, is that three times the streets on either side of my house has power, but we didn't. That's annoying. Especially since BC Hydro didn't know we didn't have power.
Not having power I made do with whatever battery operated devices I had around. Unfortunately my laptop only had a third charge left, which equates to about an hour of Earthbound, so that didn't last long. I did fix my 4x4 RC van I've had since I was about six though. I did play with that a bit and annoyed Bailey plenty with it, but what I really want to do is use it outside, but I can't do that while it is still raining.
After I exhausted my laptop battery and tired of playing with The Van, I turned to reading by candle light. This isn't as easy as it sounds. We only had those really short tea candles. Being so low they don't project much light onto the page. So I turned to playing with fire. Playing with fire is fun, especially when there is nothing else to do.
Now one can only play with candles, putting soot on the ceiling, for so long. So by Thursday night I was bored stiff. Luckily my girlfriend, Courteney, is so awesome. She not only baked fresh cookies, she also delivered them to my house along with some taller candles useful for reading by. Awesome.
The cookies were very good and it was nice to know that the outside world existed.
Other than that not much has really been happening. I find it progressively more difficult to find material to put here, hopefully more interesting things will happen when I'm back in school. Speaking of school, I have finally registered after half a week of Go.SFU not believing that CMPT379 is actually being offered.
Ladies and gentlemen, the terrorists are winning.
This much is obvious to anybody with half a brain. What isn't obvious to those missing the hemisphere of grey matter in which often resides logical thinking is what to do about it. The answer, as obvious to most after a bit of thought, is to ignore them. This may sound odd at first, but look as the words - terrorism, terrorists. Terror, or more correctly fear, is their goal. If you change the way you live they have been successful. If they cause you to spend additional time or resources they have been successful. If they inconvenience you over any length of time they have been successful.
The worst indications that they are doing something right are the news and air travel. Now the news is worse because they always sensationalize for their own profit which just makes people more likely to change their lives. Air travel is just plain silly. Additional restrictions get put upon passengers when there is no point. If you want to be dangerous on a plane there is nothing to be done about it. Weapons are easy to improvise if you only wish to threaten or at most critically injure a small number of people.
I could go on, but since only intelligent thinking people read here, I shant. I will, however, close by saying those poor poor Americans are digging their own grave.
Onto the rest!
I've been slowly getting busier at work. It's about time. It's still not even at fifty percent though. Not only do I find myself waiting upon other people often (for such a meeting driven company this project doesn't ever have the right number) so the design goes slowly and the choice of programming language (Java) makes the coding go slowly. This is not only because Java is a terribly slow language to code in, but I also dislike it so much that I become disheartened just thinking about coding in it and let me tell you, not having my heart in it makes me work really slowly.
To fill my time at work I've been doing lots of web surfing. Mostly I don't actually do anything or flit around Google Groups looking for posts on programming language design or discussions of various features. The odd time I'll head over to Wikipedia to look something up and end up spending two or three hours of my work day getting lost in the maze of articles. I would have done this before, but I only had IE to browse with and Wikipedia is the kind of site which requires tabs to be worth the effort. I've also been doing my hour long lunches, but that's pretty old news. The one other things I've spent a nontrivial amount of paid time doing is planning my next semester of schooling. You sure can tell I love my job when the highlight of last week was me going through course offerings.
That's really all work has been so let's move onto the State of Travis. The State of Travis is not a glorious utopia, in fact there is no State of Travis. I really should work on that. Instead I think I'll summarize my status. As will be most evident if you have read this blog or talked to me about work I am not being productive. Not being productive (which I define less as producing something of value, but more as gaining value (so watching a movie can be productive while producing reams of code at work can be unproductive)) makes me antsy and feel unsatisfied. I have also not gotten any great deal of what might be considered exercise as of late. Put more simply I haven't exerted significant amount of physical energy in a while. The effects of this on me are two fold: I feel antsy and I don't sleep well. Not sleeping well makes me lethargic or listless. I don't like being listless. To summarize, the 'doing stuff' front isn't going so well.
Not all is lost however, there's always the contentment front. This is effected by many things. The most notable negative aspects currently are: lack of socialization (actual vocal conversation is minimal), long commutes, long days and the afore mentioned lack of doing stuff. Not so good so far. The positives aren't too shabby though: my truck isn't broken, my dog and girlfriend like me and the source of most of my current previously mentioned problems is going away in a month and a half. Thus things begin to look a bit better. Overall I'd say that while I'm not great I'm certainly getting by with light at the end of the tunnel. Summarized: The Contentment front is Ok.
This leaves me not looking good, with luck perhaps the third and final facet of my life will raise me up to at least a solid Alright. Now the "Going Somewhere" front. I would characterize this as average. I have a few goals; some I can envision a path towards (moving out) while others I don't know how to get there (cross Canada road trip). So far that isn't too bad, I have a game plan for the short term goals and I know I need one for the longer term ones. Things aren't quite so rosy though. There are several areas which I don't know where they are going. Things such as my relationship, my degree, my career and my residence are all without firm direction. Some those unknowns are long term (career, residence) and not so important right now. Others get more immediate by the day.
The State of Travis is... meh, but check back in two months.
Earlier in the week the R&D budget for the next year was announced. This led me to think what I would spend the R&D money on. A somewhat circuitous route later I arrived at a nice short article and a sound bite. I wrote these yesterday at work for work and have since decided that I'd like to keep them. Putting them hear seemed fairly obvious for what is a blog if not somewhere to plaster random writings that a few terribly bored individuals may one day read?
First the sound bite: "If you never do anything different how can you do anything better?" This came from my (unvoiced) recommendation that some research money be spent on process as opposed to technologies.
Now the short article. Note that it isn't recommended for general consumption.
A Case for Large Shared Machines
In general all but the most demanding scientific user leaves their computing resources underutilized. well over half the time. This is especially true for those who have very high peaks when it comes to those resources. Thus the image processing person who requires a machine with eight gigabytes of memory or hundred of gigabytes of temporary storage a few hours a week is wasting most of the machine. Get together a dozen or so of these people and you find that a significant amount of money was spent buying similar wasted machines.
Now imagine that instead of twelve separate machines these people pooled for a single machine. For less money those twelve could share a four or eight processor box with sixteen or thirty-two or sixty-four gigabytes of memory and several terabytes of disk space.
Not only did they save money, but should one require ten or twelve gigabytes of memory some time it is no problem. With individual machines they would have been out of luck.
This is only taking a single application and finding benefits. Now let us consider a slightly different scenario. Those twelve memory hungry users share a single machine. Now the box has more processors than they need because there is a memory per processor limit. Thus they use most of their memory but little of their processors.
Now comes along a new project. This project is writing a simulator. It doesn't need much memory, but will use all the processing power it can get. This projeect would normally have had to buy an expensive machine, but they can happily co-exist with the imaging people. The project or department saves a considerable amount of money and end up with more processing power than they could have afforded otherwise. So not only do they save on the machine, but the developers waste less time waiting for the computer.
But then comes a third project. I doesn't need much memory and it doesn't need much processing power. What it needs is disk space. Instead of buying a new machine capable of handling the dozens of terabytes of storage the project requires and then the storage, the project only buys the storage and adds it to the communal server. Again money is saved, all the users of the machine benefit and when the data hungry project is done the communal server still has the space it bought.
The above story does ignore three advantages:
Fewer computers means fewer techs to maintain them.
Pooling funding to buy better machines mean the serve longer, prolonging the purchase cycle.
The majority of people don't need much memory, don't need much CPU time and don't need much disk space. These people cost almost nothing when sharing on the large server. To fully take advantage of this thin clients must be used to offload all the normal desktop duties to the shared server.
Winter has come. Contrary to the reports I was receiving the weather will not be nice and sunny straight through to December. Instead it has already rained hard a few days. I've even had a short power outage. I do have hope for this winter though. It has been hitting negative temperatures at night and last night I had to scrape truck windows to drive Courteney home. I can hope that this cold streak continues so we'll get some snow.
On the school front there was a Special General Meeting to impeach seven directors of the SFSS. It went well and people were surprisingly upbeat considering it was two or three degrees out as we sat in the Convo Mall. I have also come to appreciate just how much stalling can be done at a meeting like that. The other things I've come to realize is that a mob is unstoppable, whether they are in the right or the wrong. Oh well. All seven of the directors were impeached at that meeting so now all that needs to be done is to wait for the courts to rule the meeting legal.
On a less political note I am really looking forward to school. You (all one of you) are probably very tired of hearing this, but it's true so I shall continue to say it. I do have something to add however. I have decided to go all out and take both CMPT300 with Brad and CMPT379 with Shermer. That semester should be full of programming. I'm not sure how bad it's going to be though, I heard stories of nonstop coding for CMPT361 with Shermer, but other than a couple of long weekends it never materialized. I'm sure it'll be fun though. Now all I need to do is find two other courses I can take without burning out in a single semester to fill my time. It's good that I'm doing this tough semester first though. It's a good time to get those courses out of the way. I have pent up energy from my eight months away from school, I know how bad it is in the working world and my plans to move out over the summer semester leave me not necessarily wanting to do too much then.
I suppose I should mention that I've been reading numerous books lately and dislike the inter-library loan system. It just takes too damn long. It has however created an interest in my part for ready made collections which consist of everything particular authors have written. I don't know where I'd find such a thing, but I'd like one for a few authors or at least series. It does make one wonder why you don't see more of those sorts of things? Such as everything Larry Niven has written, or the entire Discworld series or other large series. All those books in a single package at some nicely reduced price so the student I'll become again can afford them.
Other than reading a lot and doing stuff with Courteney. Things such as carving pumpkins or innocently suggesting she attempt a pumpkin pie from fresh pumpkin (she used the cut outs from the pumpkin carving, it turns out seven pumpkins worth makes enough for a single pie) or playing an RPG together. Unfortunately the weather has turned against us so outdoor activities are getting rare. I think this is going to cause me trouble as I get over-energetic due to the cold and Courteney gets sluggish as she moves into her near hibernation winter state. Perhaps it won't happen. With us not going to school we can actually do stuff on the weekends that doesn't involve long hours doing homework.
On the topic of video games I have come to the conclusion that I don't play many of them. This has been reaffirmed after seeing where Courteney was in Earthbound. Now I've been playing Earthbound for going on three months now. I haven't played very much nor have I gotten very far. Courteney started playing a couple of weeks ago because she has reached endgame in Kingdom Hearts and finds it so boring she cannot play for any length of time. Courteney is now significantly farther into the game than I am. So I must not play much at all. Well, either that or Courteney plays plenty to the detriment of her TODO list.
I think I'll end my rambling here. I don't believe I have much else to talk about. I really should try and work up a rant about something. It just seems that since I left school I don't have near the ranting energy I used to. I suppose it's possible that I am just not bugged as much by what's going on around me. I find that difficult to believe as I'm stuck using Windows all day while I work around a lumbering bureaucracy which seems incapable of getting anything done right the first time around. Though I guess it could be I don't truly care because there is light at the end of the tunnel and nothing which happens now will matter in the slightest in two months.
As those of you who live in the Lower Mainland may have noticed the weather has been very good. Warm and sunny during the day. Clear and chilly during the night. Perhaps my memory is acting up, but I don't believe that this sort of weather is at all normal for the middle of October. It should be cold and rainy almost nonstop until Spring. It isn't though. Now this warm weather isn't necessarily a bad thing, as long as Winter comes back with a vengeance and freezes us for several weeks. If it does it means that we'll get snow like we haven't seen for over a decade. This would be awesome. I truly do like snow.
If Winter doesn't bite back the New Year will be filled with problems. The most serious, from the perspective of somebody reliant upon municipal water, is the lack of snow. Without a good dumping there won't be much water next year and we'll be on conservation status from the first day of Spring until September or October. I'm not a fan of this because it means yellow lawns, dirty vehicles and if things get really bad (like what Tofino saw this past Summer) business could be shutdown. Now this latter possibility is hugely troubling as there isn't enough water transportation capacity to ship sufficient water in as was done in Tofino.
The two other, less immediate though more troubling, problems which will come about are the furthering of the Pine Beetle infestation as well as large uprisings of Global Warming Apocalypse cults. This is not to say that I don't believe in Global Warming, I do. It's just that not only am I not convinced it's entirely our fault but having crazy cultists running around is not likely to promote the cause such that those who can truly make a difference do.
Though I take Global Warming seriously I am far more worried about the Pine Beetle problem. I like trees. I am also aware that once the beetles get far south enough it's all over and they'll probably take over the entirety of North America until the next ice age. Though one would think that it'd be easy enough to construct a final refuge for the trees. Take a large plot of land, clear (totally, entirely, to the dirt) a perimeter wide enough to prevent the beetle from making the trip. Maintain this perimeter until such time that the beetles are defeated or enough of the surrounding forest is dead that you can clear more area and plant more trees. Repeat this enough and you have a forest recreated in the wake of the beetle plague.
It may not come to that though. Perhaps something will kill or at least hold back the beetle. I'm not aware of what that might be (I currently only understand that the cold kept them up north), but something may yet be found or created which can stop them.
Back to snow. I really like snow. It's so much fun. Winter in the Lower Mainland always sucks because there is little if any snow. Everything is all grey and depressing. I think the weather of Calgary is so much better. Mostly overcast with the odd sunny day, but since the ground is covered in white everything it plenty bright. Even better than the fact that things are bright is the fact that driving becomes fun (OK, maybe only if you are looking for fun, but driving in the rain is never fun) and there are so many better outdoor activities one can do with snow as opposed to rain without getting sick. Perhaps I'm not one to live in the Lower Mainland. Maybe I'd be better off finding someplace with ample snow during the winter but plentiful sunshine during the summer. Calgary fits this bill. It even has the bonus of actual thunderstorms on a regular basis which are fun as well. The only problem I have with Calgary is the fact that it's very dry during the summer (I used to be able to handle it but now I dry out really quickly, I might be able to grow used to it again) and that damned prairie wind. That and the lack of trees.
That seems to rule out a lot of interior Canada. Maybe Northern B.C. is where I should go? Or the Interior. Though job prospects for my field seem limited, but I've not looked into it.
While on the topic of snow I should make it be known that I have recently been feeling the urge to take my truck into some snowy area and 4X4. I might get a chance to do so in the near future (as soon as there's snow) if I end up driving up sometime when my Dad goes snow sledding. He has just recently bought a sled and is just waiting to use it. I'm not sure how likely me actually driving there is (though I could go out alone) as I don't know how deep we need to go before dropping off the sleds. We'll probably go out with the Grants (they are from the Yukon and have a great deal of experience) who won two or three sleds. If the starting point isn't too far off the road we can take the sleds on a trailer. If it's any more than a little bit off good roads then we will need three trucks for four sleds (there is one platform which allows a truck to carry two sleds at once). I suppose we'll see what happens, but going sledding should be fun.
I am becoming more aware as time goes on that I have cycles, about a year long, on which I get urges. After about a year without doing any sort of strenuous exercise I find myself feeling the urge. After about a year of not doing any down to earth blue collar work I find myself with the urge to do some. Lately I've been feeling the urge to work on my truck. Now this would be no problem if I had the tools and knowledge to do so without the risk of breaking something. I have neither. I also don't have the freedom to leave my truck alone, broken, while I figure out how to fix it because I have places to go.
Having a vehicle is addictive. When you don't have one you make do because you haven't ever had anything else. You arrange your schedule around rides and do things which are close to home. Once you get a vehicle you have freedom. You can go anywhere at anytime. Unfortunately going back to a life of restricted movement becomes very difficult. I know I'd have a huge amount of trouble without my truck. Unfortunately vehicles are expensive to run and expensive to fix. If something goes wrong getting it fixed right away can be difficult and getting to work to afford fixing it can be equally troubling.
Speaking again on urges. I've lately had an urge to have some of the finer things in life (read: new stuff). Mostly this has been centered upon me disliking my desktop and wanting a new truck. It's not that I don't like my truck. I do, even though it often seems that I'm the only one. It's just that I think I'm getting tired of vehicle maintenance, something a new truck will let me avoid for a few years. As for my desktop, I hate it mostly because it is so loud. It's also that I've had a bunch of time to ponder the finer points of computer construction and use. This has led me to the current view that Macs are worth the money and annoyances. Money in that they are more expensive than PC hardware and annoyance in that they are as tweaked to me as a Linux/*BSD machine would be. I'm sure this'll pass as soon as I'm done working and fall back into the starving student mode of being.
Ah the starving student mode of being. How it makes me save so much money simply because I now that my time is worth less than money. It's good that I shall be returning to that mode shortly as I am beginning to get used to making money and being able to spend it without any thought to the future. Eh, we'll see how things go.
So it is the beginning of October. It is also the beginning of the next phase of the project I am working on at MDA. Now I will not be employed at MDA until the end of this phase, I will instead be leaving about two thirds through. Back to school I shall return. I am very pleased by this fact. I find my self tired of the long commute, tired of the terrible IT infrastructure and tired of the whole monotony of not really doing anything interesting, but instead wasting time in meetings which accomplish nothing while I wait for others to catch up. I suppose I just don't find work here intellectually stimulating enough. Not being physically stimulating for obvious reasons I would say this job isn't stimulating in any way. At least the past couple of weeks have been slow at work, really slow. So slow I've been surfing the net and working on my own stuff for nearly all of my ten hour days. (Also, hour long lunches are a good thing.) To this end I've been working on an HTTP web server component in Objective-C for a while. It's coming along nicely and I truly do find Objective-C and the Foundation Framework to be awesome. It has been a joy working on something stimulating enough, especially in a language which isn't horrible (C++ is horrible, especially when you need to write your own low level data structures.) I have also proven that there is a limit to how much one can surf the internet before feeling hungover.
Unfortunately the slow period at work will probably only last another couple of weeks (that's when the Project Manager gets back and will probably start pushing for actual work to be done) At that point I think I'll be even more tired of work. But I have started vaguely counting down to January, when I get to return to school.
I have been sick lately. Not for very long, only since last weekend, Saturday night, but sick nonetheless. What I find somewhat surprising is just how fast it went from a tickle in my throat to my voice is gone and I have no energy. That only took a few hours. Now I do take some blame for getting sick. I didn't exactly do very smart things that day. I got little sleep, I did moderate exercise (moving couches downstairs, that was a pain) and I slept with the windows open (to avoid the paint fumes). But that was fast. I'm almost over it now, just a bit more phlegm to come up and out. Apparently on the first night I was sick my voice lowered quick a bit. Courteney claims I was around the lowest octave that a piano plays. I don't believe her, but then again I don't know what the pitch of my voice is normally (Damn you bones sound dynamics!).
Speaking of moving couches. A couple of weeks ago my parents went shopping for a new TV and entertainment centre. They bought it but had to wait for it to be delivered. This kinda got them up and running to finish the basement. So they painted and bought couches and the like. Well yesterday the TV arrived and me, being the most technically inclined, was set upon putting it together. I did so and things where good. The problem with HDTVs are that you can really see visual problems with standard media, I wish they had put a better noise reduction system in, is a Gaussian blur that hard? Well I put it together after having made a trip and spending a large sum on all the wires we needed (I got a DVI-HDMI cable for about $100, I'm kinda happy about that, other prices I've seen had them at about $150+). So after dinner we all go downstairs to show my Dad the new TV (he didn't know it was coming in) things are good and they enjoy themselves. While this is going on I'm running around getting my desktop unhooked and attached to the new TV. My desktop has the only DVI output in the house and I have this one movie which is at full HD quality. Seeing that on the big screen was amazing. It is so much sharper than regular TV. I'll have to hook it up again on the weekend to actually watch through the movie on the big screen with everybody. It is something to behold.
--- Bonus material --- Aren't you lucky? I'm going to talk about things which weren't eluded to in the title! I This extra bit also costs you nothing. So things have been happening in the world. Courteney found a job, which is good. Apparently it's a hugely boring job, but what can be expected from a data entry position? It's good though, full time work is always good. Hopefully she'll come to see how much time it takes though, I don't know if she's ever had a full time position for any length of time before. I also hope the spiders don't get her, apparently they are the size of mice.
Now that I'm done with that interlude I'll move onto the heavy matter of the day: The Failure of Capitalism. The overriding goal of capitalism is profit. Profit is the amount of money charged over and above all costs, including those related to the labour put in to add value to the raw materials. Now profit is taken at all levels of the captialistic economic structure, profit upon profit. In a huge circle this happens, eventually the suppliers of raw materials end up paying a higher cost for their tools than they did previously because their output materials cost more than previously. This circle continues until every person in the society feels the effects. This effect has a name, inflation. Now it is claimed that inflation isn't necessarily a bad thing. This is only true if you have enough economic sense and power to beat inflation through investation. Otherwise you end up becoming poorer as time goes on because you are making less in a real sense. This is inflation eating into your wage, often invisibly. I believe that this is why there are always strikes from large unions where they end up making a three year deal for some single digit percentage increase. This increase usually doesn't beat or match the rate of inflation. (This is where I think many of the problems seen in the modern civic service, such as health care, originate. People making less and less until it isn't worth it anymore.)
It does strike me as odd that fixed percentages would be agreed upon for such short time periods, especially when the costs involved in a strike could be avoided simply by having a longer ten or fifteen year deal which guarranteed to match the rate of inflation based upon some agreed metrics (It should be noted that measuring inflation is a black art that nobody gets right.). This would prevent the working people from getting poorer as time went on by invisibly making less on the paystub. This is one harm caused by the concept of profit.
The second harm caused by the idea of profit, which is gaining more than the effort you put in, is the rich getting richer. It is simple to see that profit only goes to the business owner. A single business owner will have several employees at a minimum. Thus as time goes on that owner receives more wealth from the business than the workers. Since this happens on massive scales, think Microsoft or GM, a very few are getting much richer off the efforts of a number of workers. Now it is easy to see that a large disparity between the working class and the upper class (oh how tempting to say proletariat and bourgeois) is a negative thing to happen to an economy as the workers of the society become unable to afford the luxuries which make life worth living (luxuries such as time off or friends or families or good working conditions). This is the second form of harm caused by the idea of profit.
The third harm caused is inefficiency. If one believes that it is a right to take disproportionately compared to the effort put in then one will promote inefficiency whenever possible. Inefficiency is a source of waste and waste can be a source of profit by doing less work for more gain. Now those who preach the glory of capitalism claim that competition is what eliminates these inefficiencies. Competition is supposed to cause one entity (corporation or person it makes no difference, another absurdity to be dealt with another day) to work ever so slightly more efficient, resulting in a lower cost and more business. It is a local maximization which is supposed to eliminate the waste. This is however an impossible claim. Ignoring for the moment waste caused by people for political or selfish reasons I will turn to mathematical reasoning. As I mentioned above the whole efficiency of capitalism is grounded in the belief that local maximization, such as a purchasing officer choosing between a number of pen suppliers, will end up with the global system being exceptionally efficient. In the mathematical world this is known as a local search. Local searches are provably unable to find a global maxima of an arbitrarily complex function, such as the economy of the Western world. This is especially true if hill climbing (always looking to go higher and never going lower) is the method and only a single area is used to start the search. This is not to say that a reasonable or even good solution can't be found by this method, but it can't find the best method except by improbable random chance. Thus the entire system creates inefficiency compared to an appropriate global search, one that takes all factors into account.
Now this might sounds like I am promoting a central economic decision making body. This isn't quite true. Though I do feel that centralized control will eventually come about and will bring prosperity, I don't yet believe that computer technology is up to the challenge. I say this because the automation isn't there yet. The infrastructure to track every product created or consumed isn't there yet and even the processing power required to optimize on a regular basis is barely there. This lack of power I think will result in some bad decisions when tough decisions need to be made.
So no, I am not yet claiming that central control is the answer. I am instead claiming that profit will result in the downfall of the current economic system and possibly the governmental system for how does it operate if not out of self interest?
And that your Communist thought of the day.
So last week, on the fourteenth, I had the first demo of the project I'm working on at MDA. This means that I've come to the end of two weeks of madness. Long days sitting at a laptop keyboard in a meeting room while they all look at the projector so we can see what's happening and get some group debugging and integration and testing done. Now on a normal project things would go back to normal after a short rest time for those who did do the long hours to get back to their normal loading. For the rest of the team this is happening. For me, however, it isn't. I hold a coding position for the most part. This means that I'm supposed to code, but my whole coding purpose was to code towards the demo, which is over. Couple this with the fact that the planning for the next project cycle won't even begin until October and the lack of a bug tracker and the fact that the first demo was a prototype, most of which will be thrown away or rewritten and you end up with my situation: absolutely nothing to do. Most people would say that this is a great state of affairs, go to work, sit there for eight to ten hours and get paid. Normally I wouldn't complain, except that my office is severely lacking in creature comforts.
This brings us to my rant of the day. I have come to the conclusion that creature comforts matter. Not just a little bit, but a lot. Possibly more than just about anything else. What has brought me to this realization is this article and the fact that at MDA there is very little in the way of creature comforts. Sure they supply free coffee, microwaves and the like, but I classify those more as person comforts than creature comforts; you are very unlikely to to come across a dog finding the shared fridge a comfortable place to sleep (Unless maybe it's a sheep dog in the heat of summer). What I instead define as creature comforts are more basic things: where you sit, what you touch, what you see and what you hear. I'll do a quick rundown on the list of things wrong with my particular set of supplied creature comforts.
First where I sit. I sit at a generic office chair, that is, hard, barely adjustable, at the wrong height with arms that don't move enough. This results in me having to choose between no back support (I don't like being a question mark) or sliding off the front of my chair (This is hugely annoying since my jeans stick and I end up sliding down, my jeans moving in uncomfortable ways (You mean your belt buckle isn't supposed to be inside your belly button? Madness)). This annoys me. Other things which annoy me to no end with this chair are that the cushion on the bottom is amazingly stiff for an old office chair which has been sat on for hours each day for its entire life. This chair also squeaks and creaks and pops every time I move in it. This means last point I'll get back to shortly. I'll move now onto my desk. My desk is also terrible. It is also a generic office desk in an L shape (Made for right handed people only, which causes me no end of grief). What's wrong with it are that the keyboard tray is at the wrong height for just about anybody, is too far from the meat of the desk (So when using it you look like a T-Rex with stubby arms if you also need the mouse), but only if you don't use the space provided on this pull-out for the mouse. You can't, of course (I tried), since on the closest edge of this tray, along the entire width is a half inch tall lip. Now when using a keyboard this is fine as the buttons on the keyboard are higher than that and proper posture demands you have your wrists off the table. When using a mouse, however, it doesn't work that way. If you don't have your wrist on the tabletop you'll never get anywhere near a reasonable level of control. This is where that lip brings unbearable pain as it crushes your wrist under its own weight and gives you terrible carpal tunnel-like troubles. Now the levels of the desk are (when combined with my chair) wrong. I require a block for my feet so my knees don't hurt from always hanging down. The final thing wrong with my desk is that since I can't sit on the desk which has the keyboard tray since it sits docked below the surface and I have trouble fitting my massive thighs (thanks skating) beneath it I sit on the other part, the utility area meant for pushing paper. This means that my monitor isn't at the right height both because there isn't a built in stand for it, but also because the shelf above the desk prevents me from stacking things to create such a shelf. This results in a slight neck cramp as I'm always looking down a bit. Again, annoying.
Now to describe the problems with my mouse and keyboard. Both aren't all that great. The mouse is some monstrously humped optical beast. This not only makes my wrist bend more into a right angle when using it, but is also uncomfortable.. The optical portion also isn't that hot since from time to time it'll get stuck between grid points and oscillates. Annoying. Then there is my keyboard. A standard number it has only two problems: sometimes it stops working and the keys must be pressed is exactly the right way or they stick. I think this comes about since the keys follow along a track which is at a slight angle so that those tabs at the back of the keyboard (Why do those things exist? I don't find them at all comfortable and they are terrible for ergonomics and a person's future survivability in general) can be used without terrible sticking of the keys. Now this is all fine and dandy until you don't use those tabs and want to push those keys off axis, then you just end up with sticky keys which adds a bit of annoyance to every keypress.
A quick peek at the monitor I'm staring at is not better. Firstly, it's still a CRT, no business should be giving programmers CRTs in this day and age. Also note that it's a single monitor, not a dual headed display and not a massively huge single monitor (Not that I recommend a single huge monitor anyways, most major window managers don't deal well with them and thus require that the user deal with tons of energy wasting manual window adjustment). The monitor itself is a reasonable 19" variety, but it has a poor frequency range and can thus only display at 1024x768 while also maintaining a refresh rate high enough for me to consider looking at it for more than fifteen minutes a week. This makes getting any actual work done difficult as I can't fit all the context on screen at one time. Luckily there isn't too much I actually look at, other than the terrible florescent lighting when my office-mate is in since he apparently doesn't believe in desk lamps.
Now onto the most fun, what I hear. The most annoying thing I hear is my monitor. It has the attribute of most aging CRTs pushed to their limits of whining on a regular basis. Mine whines when there is too much white on the screen. Lovely. The second most annoying thing I hear is my office-mate! He is often having coworkers over and spending a couple of hours discussing things with them. I suppose it's not all his fault though, there is no form of hotdesking available here, you can't even log onto any PC but you own! But that hardly makes it better. Third on the list of annoying sounds I am stuck with is my chair. Even the slightest move completely destroys the silence of the room. I like silence, especially when concentrating since I find I like listening in on conversations of others at the end of the hall or in the hall over. Then again, being able to hear all those conversations is terrible when I don't want to hear them since the way the A/C is setup in the building if I don't have my door open I'll burst into flame.
Having (hopefully) grasped what kind of environment I am working in I hope you can realize that I have spent a goodly amount of time at work considering how much my work environment sucks. I find it fully reasonable then that creature comforts be considered important. I believe this ends my rant against how my work environment isn't all that great.
But enough of that. I shall rant shortly about traffic. Traffic sucks. Traffic sucks and none of the city planners seem to be able to fix it. Traffic sucks and nobody seems to want to fix it. Traffic sucks and the organization responsible for fixing it doesn't want to spend the money to fix it. There, that does it.
I believe I shall call that a day, there is little time left at work and I have a few articles to read yet. (As an aside, I think I use too many parenthesis'. What do you think?)
Though it may not seem so, blogging on a regular basis is hard. I'm not speaking of the angsty preteen type blog where you talk about how your cat hates you, your parents are unreasonably mean and your friends all suck compared to you. I'm talking about something which resembles an intelligent monologue. It is just hard, talking about nothing doesn't quite work and one only has so many rants floating about in a usable state. So today's blog will be about security. Not because I recently had a bad experience with security and not because I believe that security is worth it at any expense.
I will instead rant about security because I have a few strong, mostly intelligent words concerning it and in today's world everybody seems to be talking about security measures and I don't think I should be left out.
There are two types of security. The first type is the cheapest, easiest and thus the most common. This type also costs society as a whole the most, but each individual the least. This is the Airport security model. Just make everybody waste a lot of time while you check for harmless items, such as water, while you spread rumors about how effective they are.
The second type is military security. In this type of security people actually ask what you are up to, cannot be gotten past with sufficient complaining and generally are very expensive. This type of security is only used when true security is necessary.
The first type of security, while common, is worthless in preventing people from doing what they want. But it makes people feel safe so it continues. It's a shame that people believe it helps. Even while laptops are allowed on a plane. I suppose people don't realize that the modern Lithium-Ion battery is only a tiny bit of soldering and a paperclip away from being explosive. Or the fact that if a person really wanted to bring explosives on board they could smuggle it in their bowels, cavity searches aren't likely to be required in any near future. Or how about the fact that you can use parts of the plane itself (door shards anybody?) as a weapon far more dangerous than any of those items upon the restricted list.
It's really quite sad that people will believe such worthless attempts and place their faith in them, especially since any person determined enough can find a way past any simple passive security. All it takes is ingenuity.
Today was probably the last night I will leave work and still be able to see the sun. I'm kind of sad at this fact, I like the sun. I guess not much else can be done about it though. The sacrifices I make for working a four day week.
Other than that I headed down the Kamloops this past weekend with Courteney and the rest of my family. It was pretty good. I had a good number of awesome tube rides, I managed to amaze people by getting up on my first try in two or three years on a wake board. I also got to go water skiing for the first time in a long while. That was nice. It's a shame that more video taping wasn't being done, I won't feature all that great in the highlight reel, when I get around to making it.
On that note I think I am becoming more of a Mac head. I find myself wanting to use Expose' more and more often. I also find myself finding uses for those wonderful standard Mac apps like Mail, iCal or iMovie. I don't know if this is a good thing or not, but besides being expensive it can't be that bad.
I also came to a realization that I find quite profound. Capitalism is like a local maxima search, often good enough, but nowhere near optimal.
I find my thoughts pretty unorganized right now. Let's move onto my cousin who is moving in with us to attend BCIT from a small town just outside Toronto. That should be interesting, though I don't think I'll see her that often. Me with my barely home schedule and her with her hardcore school program. It should be fine anyways.
Hmmm. The one things I really worry about with Winter coming is the lack of exercise I'll have to endure. I think I'll have trouble convincing Courteney to head out when it's cold and blustery outside. Maybe I'll just need to go out by myself nice and early. Maybe I'll just find some more physically challenging indoor activities to do, hopefully Courteney doesn't mind too much.
I have to give her credit though, she did survive the summer with me doing it my way. Most people would have given up after the first three hour walk in the hot sun, or the two and a half hour bike rides which result in a butt so bruised standing is painful. She also survived me making her go into the sun and be outside for most of the day, even though it usually burnt her. As my Mom says, she's a trooper. I just hope that she asserts what she wants more often. I was truly happy when she suggested mini-golf, but you already knew that.
I suppose this shall have to suffice as I must be up early to be off to BCIT to help my cousin find her bearings on the Lower Mainland transit system.
I find myself unable to really structure my thoughts enough to make a worthwhile title, or to even predict what I'm going to talk about. So I'm just going to wing it and see what comes out. Since I've started working full time for some, admittedly short, period of time I've come to realize a few things:
Even developer workstations sit idle most of the time, but when they aren't that machine had better be the fastest thing around.
Computers are plenty fast in every respect but the IO system. I find myself constantly waiting for the IO system.
I hate Windows. I truly do. I hate everything about it. From the reliance on the mouse, to how terribly it multitasks. I am constantly amazed at how few things my workstation at work can do at once before grinding to a halt.
I hate mice. Really I find mice(computer) to be absolutely not worth my while during the normal course of events. Taking my hands off the keyboard feels like the greatest waste of time. I really believe that we should dump this WIMP interface and instead go to multiple xterms (or the like) with keyboard controlled interfaces with eye focus tracking hardware for moving between the windows.
Optical mice have this terribly annoying feature. Every so often they buzz. Not an audible buzz, but a vibration of the cursor as the mouse finds itself on the cusp of a state and ends up shaking back and forth in time with the minute vibrations which always exist.
VIM is awesome. I often find myself wishing that the whole digital world had a VIM-like interface. From the instant searching, to the motion keys, I just love VIM.
The only problem with VIM as an IDE is that when searching for a particular method/member it doesn't take class into account so you end up having to cycle through unrelated, but identically named functions and it won't find member variables. Not that this is really surprising, it's good enough most of the time and it's right a good 75% of the time with appropriate ranking. Also, I haven't seen an IDE (though I haven't looked) that does better. I know for a fact that Visual Studio uses a similar method of method look up, but their ranking isn't as smart. The one other small thing I'd like is a class hierarchy browser, but that's hard and, again, not many IDEs have them, though XCode might.
Some people are too stupid to be useful even to sign papers.
I could so setup a software development house to run so much more efficiently than what seems to be the norm.
I have increased my typing speed considerably. Now I just need to work on my error rate.
On a slightly more technical note during one of my "I'm bored at work and want to read something interesting" stints I surfed upon a website devoted to disproving that Object Oriented programming is the best thing since sliced bread. A lot of the things said there make quite a bit of sense. If there's interest I'll spread the link around. As an alternative the person offers a procedural approach combined with relations. It makes a damn bit of sense.
Hmmm. Lately I've been dreaming. To some this might not sound odd, but for me it is. In the past my annual average for dreams I remember having has been around five. In the past couple of months I've had at least a dozen dreams which I've not only remembered having, but even remember facts or images. This is a bit off. It also has given me a much better sampling as to how weird I am. My dreams are crazy. Perhaps that's why I'm just a bit off the norm.
I am not a huge fan of puzzles. I just recently completed a thousand piece irregular bordered puzzle with Courteney. It took about two months of consistent effort, but that's only four or five hours a week. But I don't think I'll feel the need to do another large puzzle for quite some time. It was fun though.
So summer is nearly over and it's been not bad. Sure I have failed at some of my goals, but all in all it's been fun. I got a bunch of bike riding done, got some sun and spent some outdoors time with Courteney. I am, however, left wondering what I'm going to do about the Winter lack of physical activity. I've barely gotten enough this summer to keep me sane, I don't know how I'll handle the winter when convincing Courteney to go outside will be difficult. She'll already tell you if asked that I've nearly 'killed' her on a few occasions. I'd join a gym, but I don't have time for the commuting. Maybe a piece of home gym equipment is the answer. The problem with that is when I move (hopefully sooner than later) I probably won't have anywhere to put it.
I suppose I could take up running, but I've never been a distance runner and think that the first couple of months would be hugely painful. There's also my knee situation (ie. I'll probably be in a wheel chair when I hit thirty or forty because my knees have become useless (damn ice sports)), which isn't conducive to running. Though the last time I ever did any large amount of regular exercise my knees actually got significantly better. Maybe they are as bad as they are because I don't put significant pressure on them. In which case the gym set is the way to go because that's the only way I can put a worthwhile amount of weight on anything really. It's also this that causes people to comment that I seem to be able to do what are considered labourious activities seemingly forever. Most things just aren't hard. This also causes me trouble since I have a hard time sleeping unless I'm exhausted. So maybe I'll do the gym thing and figure something out when I move out. I don't really need any space for other things.
Also, though Mac OSX is sexy I have become pretty aware of how wasteful the fat desktop is. It's a shame Apple doesn't have a think client protocol. Of course, they also don't have any server large enough to power it.
Finally, working four days a week is pretty sweet. If I didn't have to work ten hour days it'd be downright awesome. If I ever started a business it'd be short days all around. Probably not four day weeks, since I find I am only productive for about six hours a day, but four six hour days of coding and one eight hour day of coding and meetings is what I think would work best.
Also, Discworld is an awesome series of the Fantasy genre. Light hearted and seriously fun.
Life is all about firsts. Like this past weekend. For the first time in my life I entered a lingerie store. Admittedly it wasn't alone with the intention of buying something racy (Which would have been even more terrifying. How does one go about buying clothing for another which intends to make one's own blood boil while at the same time causing the other person to feel sexy, wanted and not objectified? Sounds like thin ice to me.). I instead went in with my SO such that she could make a few purchases. I would have been able to avoid it too, but a sales lady notified us that today - and today only! - was 15% off as we passed by, so we had to return. One thing that I did notice is that though I thought they would have had some benches near the dressing rooms, they didn't. I find that somewhat odd, but perhaps as this was more of a functional shop than a lacy shop it makes sense that they wouldn't promote displays.
Now that was the end of my Saturday. I suppose it's only fair that I make some short notes about the beginning. The early Saturday (OK, so not quite early, but noon or 1PM) was taken up with mini-golfing. Courteney really wanted to go as she hadn't been for a good while. There was something different about this excursion though. For the first time, in a long time, Courteney was very decisive and stated (not we should or could or I'd like, but we will) that we were going mini-golfing on the weekend. She then went about arranging vehicle access and the like. This was rather nice. It's pretty nice to not need to figure everything out and drive there. So she drove us out to Castle Fun Park in Abbotsford. We played a couple rounds of mini-golf (she won the first one by six strokes and I won the second by four, but I got a hole in one) and then headed up to the arcade for an hour or so. It was nice and probably one of the most relaxing times I've had in a while. I guess feeling that I'm pushing her along was really draining me.
Now onto a more sorrowful note. Since graduating high-school I have felt my writing abilities slowly leaving me. It started out slow enough, not being able to remember a couple of spellings here, writing an awkward sentence there. In recent months, however, it seems to have accelerated. I find myself less able to spell correctly and thusly depending upon aids more frequently. This in turn worsens my ability to spell. I am also missing my previous succinct style of writing. This I blame less upon my lack of writing and more upon my exposure to academia, which seems to pride itself of being unnecessarily verbose. I do find it sad that I am losing my ability to write well. This is partially the reason I have taken to writing this blog. Practice is proven to help, but I feel that it isn't enough. There isn't enough volume to be put into these few pages. Even more worrisome than the lack of volume is the lack of negative disenforcement. When writing by hand there are great incentives to write well from the get go because correctly grammar takes so much effort as you must rewrite a fair amount of text. Handwriting is even better for improving spelling because using a dictionary is a time consuming task if you use it to check spelling. I have also come to realize that I enjoy hand writing. Sure I may be terrible at it, but it's enjoyable. Perhaps I should take to writing some sizable book by hand, it's to bad OCR technology won't be able to process my handwriting for many years to come.
I hate computers. Now for those of you who know my daily routine this might come as something of a shock. Certainly somebody who spends such a considerable amount of time using, tweaking and mastering that technology cluster known as computers could never hate it. Well I do. The reasons seem obvious to me: cumbersome, difficult to repair, expensive to operate, entirely pervasive, essential for life in the modern world and it seems that at least half of the people who use them are so incompetent that they should be banned from doing so. Taking a second look at this list I am reminded of the automobile. Those chemically powered wonders which have made life so much easier since their introduction.
Now this brings me to the title. The current trend in the computer, not computing, world is to make the computer as much like an appliance as possible. I find this absolutely ridiculous. The only facet of a computer which resembles a washing machine, dryer, oven, toaster or dish washer is the magnitude of the price. In every other respect I find computers to be much more like cars: there are many models, each of which come with many sub-options; many people buy much more computer than they truly need, a similar trend as seen with soccer Mom SUVs; computers require regular maintenance, though an knowledgeable DIYer can handle everything; it takes training to operate, cars need licenses and some days I think computers do too, you can get buy without them only the most knowledgeable individuals can do so without being disadvantaged and both need constant attention and control to accomplish anything useful. Now all of this makes sense, especially since I hate driving almost as much as I hate computers, yet I am capable of operating and accomplish necessary tasks with both. My singular wish is that the general populace, or at least the computer rags, would give up on appliances and move onto cars as their goal.
Enough of that, let me move onto another annoying aspect of my life I have become aware of, namely the sad state of affairs in the software development world. In every abstract field of human endeavor as time processes the level of the concepts used by the practitioners in that field increase. That is to say that in mathematics the real number line gave way to vector spaces which gave way to groups, in physics natural elements gave way to Newtonian physics which gave way to relativity. Similar trends, where more powerful concepts express what in the past required numerous special cases in a simple form, occur in all such abstract fields. All fields that is, except software development. In software development we started out writing everything as we needed it from scratch each time. Then we moved beyond that to reusing datatypes. Now as the present is we seem stuck a mere baby step beyond that. Sure we use libraries which contain all sorts of functionality which might have been written from scratch in the past, but all of them make enormous and complicated assumptions on how they will be used, resulting in huge interfaces. This results in severe pain and a thick layer of conversion if the design of the program doesn't fit the ideals of the library writer. Now I find this deplorable. One would think that with so many projects failing and programmers having been shown to have a consistent production in statements per time unit no matter the language or paradigm (assembly or procedural or object oriented or generic programming as examples) that library writers would strive to simplify their interface and get more done with less code, but they don't. I blame the currently popular static typing languages such as Java or C++. They just put too many constraints on the programmer which require many lines of code to work around and if there's one thing which kills creativity and productivity it's tedious code necessary to work around language restrictions. This is why my current preferred language is Objective-C. Objective-C just makes things work the way I feel they should. Add that it is a very simple language and I can't understand why it isn't more popular, but maybe Apple's new found popularity will change that.
Now onto less ranting. Now I have a long drive to and from work. During these drives my mind often wanders. One day last week it wandered onto what I might do after I graduate. Now I know that to most this is a terrifying topic to ponder, but I fully realize that I am not one who could become a lifetime student. I have seen what those my age have done, accomplished and procured by taking a different path through life, whether that is working or apprenticeships. Quite frankly I'd like a bunch of those things, like the truck, the house or the toys. So I am unafraid about considering the post-SFU time in my life.
While considering this I came to realize that once I begin my life as a productive member of society I will be burdened with responsibilities which will prevent many freedoms. Like the freedom to disappear for months at a time. So I was led to think upon what I might do in the time between school and work. What came to mind was a trip. I'm not talking about the normal sort of trip people go on before starting work, you know the one where they head to Europe or Asia for a month and call it good. No, I'd like something grander, something unusual, something worth remembering. I'd like to see Canada.
All of it.
Now I'm not talking about just hitting up all the major cities and attractions during a month or two stint. I'd like to hop in a truck and zig-zag my way up and down Canada out east and back again, taking in all there is to see and do along the way. I expect that such a trip would take at least six months, but eight is more likely I think tenting my way all across Canada passing over every area through both summer and winter would be an awesome experience. I'll have to think on it a bit more, but if current fuel prices and increase rates hold I think it'd cost about fourteen thousand dollars. Which is really not bad since two could travel for nearly the same.
I remember what it is I was forgetting. Network security around my place of work is crazy. You can telnet out no problem, but try and SSH anywhere and you need to fill out paper work and wait a week. Absolutely nuts.
And it's over. I am no longer productive. I have given up trying to work at anything near my maximum efficiency. I think I have come into my own with respect to working their. I waste at least three hours a day, out of ten, surfing the web, reading Usenet, idling on IRC, reading mail-lists and chatting on IMs. All this wasted time and I am still the most in demand person on my team. It's a bit disconcerting actually. Admittedly the one older person on the team I expected as such. He's an old time philosophy major and hasn't hit code in a long time. What I find surprising is that I seem to be the person on the team with the most encompassing view of the system. Maybe this comes from that fact that the head engineer has been gone on vacation for a month and I've been left in charge of the legacy core.
Speaking of this legacy core, I have come to the conclusion that some people just shouldn't be allowed to design or code. This code is some of the nastiest C++ I could imagine. It's a terrible mix of half assed object oriented design, with hundreds of unnecessary classes, copy and pasted code, uncommented code and global variables. I am nearly scared of looking at it.
So that brings me to the end of the end of my productivity. What I've done instead is ponder language design. I've been doing it a lot lately. Perhaps it has to do with the fact that I have been working with what are probably two of the worst languages for large development, Java and C++. Slowly but surely I'm getting very fed up with features of those languages. Perhaps I'm just getting bitter and cynical. I'll spare you all my complaints concerning Java and to a lesser degree C++. Instead I'll move onto how I've been reading a lot lately.
Man have I been reading a lot. I have been on the longest reading binge I've been on for years. I just continue to read. I suppose having an incredibly boring half hour lunch helps some. It makes me miss the construction lunch, when people actually sat together and talked. I just don't think that a large company is for me.
I attended my cousin's wedding two weekends ago. It went pretty well. I have come to the conclusion, however, that Red-eye flights suck. Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I have trouble sleeping on moving vehicles. Fun was had on the other side of the country and I had my fill of cheese curds. Sweet squeaky cheese curds.
I had something else to say, but I can't remember it, instead I shall share my recent urges to go fully redneck. Recently I have been wanting to go hunting, go four wheeling and most difficult to resist I have had urges to find a field on which to rip a few ruts. As I can't remember what else I wanted to say I shall leave it for now.
Time does fly. It's been a good while since I last blogged. Sure nobody reads it yet, but if I don't blog now how can I point to something when I'm rich and famous? Now onto why time flies. Put simply I've been busy.
Work has been busy. We finally blew right past our first deadline which got the other team members moving a bit. Unfortunately it was too little too late, so we'll probably blow two or three other before we start getting something done. I am learning just how good XDMCP is at giving you a very useful desktop over 100MBit Ethernet, very. Unfortunately I am learning how badly Windows is as a user workstation. It can't even work well at a dumb Xterminal. So I've wasted time and effort and keystrokes dealing with that.
On a related front I've learnt that Solaris makes a reasonable working system. Unfortunately they don't have the GNU tools (at least in Solaris 8, which is what is installed, but the new machine --- one month and counting --- will have Solaris 10 which comes with the nice GNU tools) contain many niceties which save a good deal of time. One thing that I've found though, is that the filesystem seems very slow. It might be that it's misconfigured, so much on that system is, but they recently completed some IO upgrades. Which brings me to the thing that really sucks about Solaris, things break stupidly if you run out of disk space. Now one would think that a professionally managed system wouldn't run out of disk space without something being done, but that's what happened until I told them so. Useless.
Leaving work I've been busy with many a thing. My weekends have mostly been taken up with Courteney. I've finally convinced her to partake in physical activities. She doesn't complain much, but they certainly are hard on her. But that makes me even happier that she's putting forth an effort. A beneficial aspect is that for the first time in three or four years she has a tan. Now there were a couple of rough starts as she wore clothing which left an odd tan line --- like the hole on her chest from her dragon necklace. Still, she's starting to even out and I think she'll be somewhere near even by the end of the summer.
So that's been my weekends. My nights have been taken up doing things around the house. A couple weeks back we did the retaining walls in the backyard, so I helped a bunch with those. I've cleaned my room some and have finally gotten nearly all the things I brought home from Res out of the boxes and bins, putting them where they go. Last week my time was taken up making up for the long weekend. My commute to work is terribly long, over 80KM a day. To help I only work four days a week, but those are ten hour days. Now when a long weekend comes up it's a stat holiday which only counts for eight hours of work. For those of you who aren't too hot on math that means that I am left with two hours of work to spread our over three working days.
After getting that done I've spent a bunch of time reloading my parents' aging PC. I am getting tired of it, but this time I remembered to do it right. I've reinstalled everything they need on a regular basis and have taken an image. All that remains is for me to copy all their stuff back. In theory this makes it very easy for me to reload at some future point by skipping all the tedious installing of Windows. Knowing my luck though the machine will die before then. Now that'd be a blessing in disguise because I've vowed that when their current machine dies they are getting a Mac.
In my spare time at work and at home I've done a couple of small Society things. I've started a Course Wiki. There have been some problems, but I'll eventually work through them.
I'm not sure if I've written it down or not, but as of a couple of week ago I'm staying on at MDA for the eight months total, an additional four months. I'll probably regret it, but I expect that after the middle of September work will slow down again, giving me more time to deal with my ever growing TODO list. Hopefully my new found after work energy will help me dwindle that list down to something manageable.
I do believe that's all for now. I think I'll try to write here more often, especially since I forget so many good rants and ramblings. The first thing I think I'll do though, is make that TODO list, right after just this one little thing.....
So I was busy for two or three full days since the last entry. Sadly that passed quickly and I now have to sit on my ass waiting for other people to get something rolling. It is slightly depressing to think that the entire corporate world operates like this. It's too bad things don't operate more like in academia, interested people getting stuff done. I now miss the ability to take charge of whatever I want and running with it such that some progress is made. Alas.
At least my 25 hours of work in a 40 hour week leaves me plenty of time to surf the web and read many a wonderful thing. Shortly I might even be visibly productive on all this wasted company time, though I don't see the company gaining any benefit. As soon as I get a ssh gateway setup on port 443 somewhere I'll be in business. I'll finally be able to make some progress on all the small projects I want to do, like finishing that \latex addition to the Society forum or making progress on my reimplementation of Freenet which has been stagnant since exams started in Spring.
Speaking of work and academia I have yet to decide whether I'm going to extend this work term to eight months. It's been offered, but this commute is long. Even with the four day week I've started recently I don't know if I can afford it. Replacing nearly my entire brake system should help with the gas mileage (the brakes were dragging), and the four day week reduces the trip distance by over 80KM/day while letting me drive at a more fuel efficient speed on my way home. It's still over 320KM per week, which will take a toll on my savings. There is also the issue that I am already starting to miss school. All this waiting doing not much of anything is making me antsy to get working on other things.
I suppose I'll need to make up my mind sooner or later about the work term, but my gut feeling right now is that it'll come down to how much more they are willing to pay. I don't see it being worth the cost of commuting to work here, but perhaps I could get them to pay me what the commute costs me and then some. Unfortunately this option seems unlikely given the project financial situation. Something else to worry about is that they haven't really seen what I can do, which weakens my bargaining position. All I really hold right now is being their resident expert on a legacy codebase, but they have a support contract for it with the original coders. It's unfortunate but I don't think I'll have time to show them that I can code before I need to make my decision.
Onto happier things it will come to pass that I'll get the three things I was hoping to get out of this Coop term: coding, not in Java on Unix. Sure my own biases came to play when they sent me to make recommendations, but even without them I would still recommend from a time standpoint to go the way they currently are. Having done this does make me feel slightly guilty about leaving since they will be hard pressed to find somebody with the required skills for what they are currently paying me. Well, that's something they should have considered before going off and taking my suggestions, it's not like it's something I consider on a regular basis and actually didn't mention it at all in my evaluation of the situation.
Something else working here has brought to my attention is ergonomics. It turns out that it's not a priority at all here. There was no training at all, not even for the word processors or programmers. We have bad chairs, desks which are made for paper shuffling and not computer use, the monitors aren't setup at all properly, the lighting is terrible for glare and it's impossible to get a good setup even after you get there. You really have a choice of fucking up your wrists or your neck because the monitor can't be lifted up enough to put it at the right level. You are always looking down. At least with the eyes you might be able to get the agreement of your officemate to turn the overhead lights off and work by the light of your monitor and desk lamp.
Speaking of officemates I've been pretty lucky with mine. He telecommutes most of the time and when he does come to the office it's not until noon or one. So I, as a lowly Coop student, get an office nearly to myself. This is pretty nice and it does make reading on company time easy, but when I'm tired of reading or feel that wasting over half the time I'm here is too much it can make for a lonely time.
Before leaving the corporate world I will comment on one final thing which has been bugging me. The choice of software and configuration of systems here astounded me. Firstly all the software is Microsoft if possible. Now I find this bad enough for reasons I'll rant about at a later time, but then you have people complaining about things which are non-issues on every other platform. Take the example of the security people here bemoaning laptops and email and USB sticks as security risks with no simple solutions. Now when I heard this I was terribly surprised. All those three problems have easy solutions. Laptops should, but currently don't, have their harddrives strongly encrypted. Email should be encrypted by default and configured to be annoying to send unencrypted messages. USB sticks are the simplest things to solve. Simple disable them. Sure on Windows it's a pain in the ass, but on every other system it's a simple security change. The incompetence of the configuration makes me wonder how all those people who are responsible have significant clearances. It makes one wonder who's being paid to watch out for IT advances when things Apple solved in a user friendly way years ago still plague the infrastructure today.
Outside the corporate world things are moving. With the Society I am receiving as much spam as ever, but I'm responsible for only the smallest amount of it, which is nice. Also there has been movement to start a CSSS wiki aimed at covering all the courses an aspiring Computing Scientist needs. It's just getting off the ground now, but I think it'll work out well. At the very least it'll give me one more thing to keep myself busy with.
Leaving the Society we come to the end of this ramble with the rest of it. The short of it is that besides being drafted as a labourer to do yard work (Which is very fulfilling actually. I am coming into the belief that I get more enjoyment out of labouring than just about anything I do.) Courteney and I have begun our summer activities. Considering that she usually shies away from any physical activity at all I am most pleased that she has left her lethargic indoor life (at least when she's with me) for something with a bit more outside in it. We have only done some walking and bike riding so far, but the weather hasn't been terribly great during most of the weekends. I think getting her outside this summer will work well though. I'll manage to get her tanned, that's for sure, but she'll need to learn to wear shorts or there'll be trouble. Well I just hope that she agree to do the future activities I have considered --- swimming, Frisbee, more bike riding, some hiking --- like she did with the first bought of bike riding. I think she'll take it a bit easier in the future though.
When we went riding the first time it was just around Fraser Heights. I let her lead so she could set the pace and because she knows the area. Possibly because she wanted to show me some sights we ended up travelling in some steep hilling areas. Now these weren't easy areas, especially for someone who hasn't ridden a bike in years nor done much in the way of physical activity which is high power and low speed. She claimed she wasn't too sore the next day though, so maybe things'll be fine. I just know that it'll take a few trips before I'm used to the bike seat again.
I have come to a stark and incrediably annoying realization, the business world is full of slow people. I entered the white collar workforce with the expectation of work. How sorely I was disappointed. Over the four weeks I have worked I have only been one third busy. I have actually read some interesting things, browsed a lot of Slashdot, hung around the forum for a good long while and done not too terribly much of anything. Even worse, it doesn't look like more work is near on the horizon.
If you've ever heard the phrase hurry up and wait you'll know what's going on. I have these deadlines to meet and yet the things I require seem to take forever to get done. It even took three days for me to get an email forwarded. Absolutely ridiculous.
I suppose I was somewhat spoiled with the high paced University lifestyle. Though I never quite thought that Academia could be considered fast paced. But I suppose I shouldn't be terribly surprised, I always knew that business was full of inefficiencies and management overhead so grievous that I've wasted well over half my time. What I find even worse is the fact that even though the information is right there, me sitting there with enough answers to inform them, they go and make rash decisions based upon how they think they would create such a system. It also turns out they were wrong and the decisions they made out of ignorance are going to cause so much waste.
Perhaps I should not take the offer for a second semester. After only a month I have already nearly had enough. It doesn't help that it's an hour in each direction under light traffic, eighty kilometres a day. Let me tell you that it gets old extremely quickly. Oh well, things are looking good for me to arrange a four day week - which will help with the commute quite a bit - leaving me with the fifth day of the work week for other projects. Maybe I'll get some serious work done on my Freenet reimplementation, maybe I'll just get all the house wiring that I was supposed to do quite a while ago done. Maybe I'll just start working out again and finally get some good sleep.
So this is my second blog entry. Not too terribly much has happened, more work but some progress has been made on the blog end of things. I can now export to HTML. I'm not terribly happy with the output of TTH, but perhaps I'll look into other options eventually.
Beyond that not too terribly much is happening. I don't know why I even started this entry. I fear I have become the worst of the internet dwellers - the pointless blogger.
Oh dear.
With this sentence I have brought about an end to the blogging fad. This might seem like a powerful statement to some, but it is yet an undeniable fact. In the years past I have always been reluctant to participate in fads, but when I eventually did the fad lost its power shortly afterwords. I would compose a list, but fads are terribly embarrassing and hard to admit that one took part in them. Suffice to say I have proof. And this, paragraph now, is the beginning of what might be called my blog. If the past is any guide at all blogging will thus fall out of favour with the masses of the internet in six to twelve months.
Now let's revisit this blog in particular. You'll note that it doesn't follow any of the norms for blogs today. There is no spot to comment, the pages are statically generated and if I ever get energetic also available in beautiful PDF form. The reason for this is simple, I dislike unnecessarily dynamically generated content. So I dislike people using PHP scripts where straight HTML/CSS will suffice. I also hate other places where HTML would server perfectly well, but some other technology - such as dreaded Javascript or Flash - is used in its place. Those things just annoy me to no end. Which is why I have decided to write this 'blog' not using Wordpress or some equivalent, but LyX, a wonderful fast way to write simple documents.
Well, that's enough of that. I suppose I should get onto the events which have led me to join this annoying internet fad in the first place. Now as everybody who read my previous blog entry knows I have recently begun working my first Coop term at a well known engineering firm. I'm, eventually, going to be the primary code monkey on a Research and Development project which involves a funding organisation, a couple of Universities, the company I work at and a specialised commercial entity. Interestingly, when I arrived the project was a month behind schedule, which means that the design which should have been completed before I arrived wasn't. Thus I have been granted a glimpse into the design phase of a major Engineering company. What I saw terrified me. As a quick reference the eventual goal of this project I am part of is to create a simulator, so one would think that speed of execution would be at least a secondary concern. The design I saw had more buzzword acronyms than I thought could be placed into a small four person project. The high level architecture for this simulator has two network based communication protocols: web services (using XML, which is another rant) and this distributed simulation framework originally out of the US military called HLA. Now I heavily dislike XML for reasons which will be reserved for another post sometime, but I will describe what I know of HLA right here. On my second day at work there was a presentation on another project at this large engineering firm which used HLA. The sum of what I learnt is that this project simulates a couple dozen objects as they interact with the world over this HLA framework. The objects are simulated at a very high level and one would think that this means very little processing power is truly necessary. This project requires twenty high end PCs and barely makes real-time performance. I find this absolutely appalling.
Now I brought up this performance problem and how reasonable performance will never be achieved with the proposed architecture. There was some discussion which resulted in the decision to go ahead with the slow architecture because it was an R&D project and the company wanted some exposure to the technologies. How this makes sense I have no idea as nobody other than me will learn anything by actually constructing this horrendous beast and I'm gone in less than eight months.
So what I learnt in the first week of work is why modern software is so unbearably slow. What I learnt in the second week is that even though this company has created many large and complicated systems for very powerful and paranoid organisations they have in place no standard requirements for internal documentation, source control and the like. It is starting to feel like CMPT275 all over again. Though this time I don't think I'm going to take a leading role in getting a reasonable system working. The last thing I learnt within the first two weeks of work is that the corporate world has no idea how to do the things it needs to do efficiently. Take multithreaded document writing. You'd think there would be some wonderful software which helps this by notifying of conflicts and making sure nobody loses any changes. You'd be wrong. They use Word and manual collation. I'm frightened. I know there are better options out there because I've used a few, even the most basic text format and source control is better than what they have. Oh brother.
Now not all is terrible with my Coop so far, they did send me to Quebec City in my third week there. Quebec was fun enough. I was busy nearly the entire time so I didn't get a chance to walk around and see the city, but I did learn one interesting fact; Quebec City is the only walled city in North America. Beyond that I attended two all day meetings which I feel weren't very worthwhile to myself, I spent two days on a plane and ate some very expensive meals. This brings me to the most depressing part of the trip. Not the fact that the whole day meetings were massive wastes of time fraught with people having not read nor understood the material they were meant to before hand, but the fact that two of the meals I attended cost a very significant portion of my wage. The cheaper one cost approximately one forty hour week, while the other was approximately 75 hours worth. This is just demoralizing. I understand that Coop students are meant as cheap, barely skilled labour, but seeing the better part of a month of my salary go towards two meals with not a thought is very hard to swallow. I don't know what I'll do about it, but that alone makes me doubt staying for the full eight months and instead leaving after four. At the very least I don't think I'll work terribly hard for them, they just don't seem to value my time enough.
On a happier note I have finally gotten time to begin learning how to shave. Now this might come as a surprise, but what I mean is how to shave with the shiny, sharp straight razor I got from all my friends for my birthday. I've been at it two days now with minimal success. I haven't actually gotten shaved all that much, but I have also avoid any large open wounds. I will continue my trials and have vowed to not shave by any other means until I have gotten at least a single reasonable shave with this straight razor.
I suppose I should be off to bed such that I can get up and go through my terrible hour long commute to the job for which I have already lost my passion. Except more rants shortly.