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February 12th, 2011review – the 100 thing challenge
January 17th, 2011
The 100 Thing Challenge: How I Got Rid of Almost Everything, Remade My Life, and Regained My Soul
by Dave Bruno
2010 Harper Paperbacks
Rating: 
I have recently been on a kick to simplify my life. I suppose it’s not so much the kick as it is the fact that I have recently started to take action to simplify my life. When I found a reference to this book while surfing various blogs it obviously caught my attention and, living the Kindled life, I immediately bought.
First things first, don’t be mislead by the title. The ’100′ is accurate; the ‘thing’ needs to be explained a bit more. Bruno is liberal with the definition of ‘thing’; for example, “library” consisted of all of his books and “underwear” was all of his underwear. He identifies this clearly in the book. During the challenge he maintained a blog (I don’t know if that’s the blog used during the challenge but it’s the one that arose during the search) where he posted his approach and experiences. He indicated readers were critical about the way he defined ‘thing’ and argued that he didn’t whittle his life down to 100 things. However, as Bruno states, it’s his challenge and it is how he decided to define ‘thing’.
[In retrospect, I was surprised that he didn't group other things into a single category, like his backcountry gear. It would seem easy to create a bare minimum set and feel comfortable with the collection as a single line item.]
I admit I was a little taken aback when I first realized this and perhaps was a bit disappointed. In some ways I wanted to see someone living the full commitment more akin to A. J. Jacob’s, A Year of Living Biblically where Jacobs attempted to live to the letter of the bible. Of course, since things like stoning people to death for certain sins are frowned upon in modern society, living to the letter wasn’t really an option, it seemed he lived as close to it as is possible. (I’m not familiar enough with the bible to be a good judge of that. The 100 Thing Challenge was far more transparent and accessible so easier to validate.)
The real challenge that Bruno accepted through this endeavor was to break his involvement with what he termed “American-style consumerism”. Loosely this amounts to the activity of buying for buying’s sake, as opposed to necessity’s sake. Bruno effectively put it at one point as
It’s the way of American-style consumerism, which demands that we strive for perfection. Anything short of “exactly right” is short of the dream life.
He also observes that, for him, the consuming was about replacement. That somehow owning certain things made up for things or experiences he felt he should have had at other times in his life. To this I can certainly relate.
As he observes at the end, the challenge enabled him to modify his behavior, simplify his life, and learn to use the freed up time to spend in more useful ways – such as time with his family.
I wasn’t so much looking to Bruno’s book in a ten commandments sort of way to tell me what the exact 100 things I would need to live. It was more that I wanted to know where to start and what problems I might expect as I started to contemplate my simplification. In that latter sense, I feel the book delivered.
The book reads more like a book we weren’t really supposed to read, almost as if Bruno wrote it to himself. It is very honest, not pretentious (though some of the acknowledgment of his affluence can seem that way at times), and a bit raw. Those qualities really are what make the book, though. It’s not a manual or blueprint. It’s not suggesting a necessary way of life and those that don’t conform are fools or sinners. It’s rather reflective and I found many opportunities to reflect on my own life.
review – the master switch
January 15th, 2011
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
by Tim Wu
2010 Knopf
Rating:
This book wasn’t quite what I expected it to be. At this point, though, I am not sure what I was expecting when I started. Overall its a great read with a lot of interesting history which Wu puts to use in the last chapter as he observes the current and future state of the web.
The impacts of monopolies and oligopolies on the various information mediums was the core of the book. There is a lot of interesting and, to me, surprising accounts of the evolution of the telephony, radio, television, computing, and lastly the web. While I was aware of some of the history behind Bell from its inception to dis-assembly and, to some degree, its reconstitution. I was not aware of its grip on innovation. Certainly wielding its weight to limit the impact of competitors was a bit obvious, the fact that certain innovations made within the company were kept hidden as they presented a perceived threat to the business bottom line was unexpected. For example, a prototype answering machine using tape storage was working in 1934.
At the core of this is what Wu calls the ‘Cycle’ which is the oscillation of an industry to oscillate between being open, where all are free to participate, and closed, where the industry is tightly controlled by a few corporations. One example used is the movie industry that began with independent filmmakers, distributors, and movie houses, evolved to be tightly controlled by companies that oversaw the entire production to exhibition pipeline, and again found its way to a more open economy.
o’reilly school of technology
November 22nd, 2010I recently completed a course offered by the O’Reilly School of Technology (OST), specifically, Python 2: Getting More Out of Python. Overall, it was a decent experience and, if the right course was available at the right time, I would consider it again.
The primary reason I decided to try one of their courses because as my time as a professor continues the amount of online activity that is part of each course increases. I’m still of the opinion that online courses, especially asynchronous ones, will never fully replace the classroom experience. I’m pretty sure I will find myself fully online with some classes at some point. Given that, it only makes sense that I explore the option and experience it from a student perspective.
I can’t recall exactly how I happened upon the OST’s website. I do know that I mulled the idea of taking a class for a while. On one visit they were offering the course at a significant discount so I decided to take advantage of the price reduction. The fact that I have been tinkering with Python some recently made the opportunity even more timely.
OST is partnered with University of Illinois Office of Continuing Education. The arrangement seems to be that OST is able provide a trusted front end with the stable and experienced platform offered by the U of I. The O’Reilly site offers the more complete story. The benefit to the academic underpinnings of the U of I is that a student receives continuing education credit. Certificates are also possible if you complete a specific sequence of courses. A letter of completion is available (you have to formally request it) indicating you completed some number of continuing education units (CEU). For Python 2 is was 4 CEUs.
Registering for a course requires you also obtain a lab account. This is a fee in addition to the course cost. Your account remains active as long as you continue to pay for it. After you have completed a course and your lab fee has run its course you can opt to keep it open (i.e., keep paying), freeze your lab account to be used at a later time (this retains all of your files), or cancel it completely.
The lab environment gives you access to a desktop in their cloud via a remote desktop connection. For Python, an instance of a tailored Eclipse distribution runs immediately. All of your work is performed in the Eclipse shell. When you log into your space, your desktop is otherwise empty. There are a handful of things you can do that will cause a few icons to appear on the desktop but there isn’t much you can do with them. The Eclipse shell is what gives you access to your lessons, labs, and quizzes. Aside from the fact that I prefer to learn technologies in a dual monitor environment, it’s not a bad set up. Where I could I did the homework on my local machine and copy/pasted into the OST setup. I found that more efficient. There were some assignments and exercises involving MySQL that I couldn’t do. I could have set up MySQL locally or ported the examples to use SQLite. Also, some of the lesson exercises required files accessible from the environment which I didn’t feel like trying to duplicate.
It’s worth mentioning that I am proficient with Eclipse and felt comfortable with their specialized version. The lessons contain all the steps you need to perform your various tasks. They usually were explicit the first time they were mentioned and assumed at later points. It would have been useful to have provided a link between the references and the explicit instructions. There were a few things specific to their set up I had to do and had to hunt down the more complete instruction set.
The flow of the course consisted of reading a lesson and following the examples that were developed. Each lesson included two quizzes and one lab. The quizzes were three or four questions each and very straight-forward. The labs were standard homework problems. They were basic but, in some cases, involved. I tend to be very diligent and embrace literate programming which resulted in more time invested than was necessarily required.
The grading scheme was a little campy. I can’t comment on the entire system but all I received were green smiley faces and the comment “Excellent!” I thought about throwing an assignment just to see what would happen but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. In the end, though, the letter I received from U of I reported the grade as ‘A’.
I had minimal interaction with the instructor but when I contacted her she was reasonably quick to reply, roughly a day for email. Similarly, the grading was done in a timely fashion. She and one of the support personnel did help me troubleshoot a problem I was having with my home configuration of Eclipse and Python.
It would be hard to comment completely on the content. I haven’t had other courses so I would be extrapolating a little too far. The syllabus is available for each course so you can preview the topics. The Python 2 course had a reasonable content. I thought a couple assignments were mostly busy work but most were decent. To be fair, though, I have a lot of experience with a number of languages so take that opinion with a grain of salt.
digital + physical
December 24th, 2009The title comes from Alan Reiter’s recent article, “Amazon Fosters Emergence of ‘Digital+Physical’ Sales”. I completely agree with the premise: there would be considerable utility in being able to access content in multiple forms even for a modest upcharge.
When Amazon first launched its Kindle, I put together a handful of thoughts on the idea. I also commented towards the end that bundling the digital and physical would be a powerful approach. This was two years ago and there hasn’t been much movement on this front.
It’s still true that you some texts are eligible for the Amazon Upgrade. This feature enables you to access electronic versions of the physical book you purchased for a small fee. Aside from expanding the number of books that are upgradable, it seems that this service is mostly forgotten. The idea was good but it fell short of being really useful. The problem, of course, is that you have to be online. Further, similar online services were launched, such as Safari, which provide online access to a lot of books, though they are typically technical. As well, Safari is subscription based (per-month or annual payment options) which might be less price competitive in the long run. That said, if you belong to a University or corporation, it is possible the enterprise purchased a site license giving employees/students access.
The most obvious connection is to merge Amazon Upgrade with Kindle. Given the lack of information on the issue on Amazon’s site, that hasn’t happened and it doesn’t seem to be happening any time soon.
It would incredibly useful to have Kindle, online and physical access to content, especially for those of us in a technical or education field. Kindle certainly provides the most flexible access to content. However, neither the Kindle nor it’s larger sibling, Kindle DX, is the best format for all texts, especially high-resolution, color-dependent graphics. While book images and graphics are typically sufficient, the online environment can offer much greater resolution and even significant improvements in annotations (publisher, author or everyone generated). This includes inline errata which, for technically oriented books, could prove invaluable. (Ever tried learning a new programming language from a book with grave errors? Math texts with wrong answers or conclusions?) From an educator’s point of view, access to online content would enable graphics and passages to be clearly displayed in the classroom for discussion.
For the record, I don’t think the Kindle is key in this endeavor. Ultimately having online access to and third party storage of your media means less to personally manage and that is the attraction.
I do understand book/music/video publishers’ concerns about lost revenue: purchase a hard copy, get the digital access, sell the hard copy to a friend for a reduced rate. I have read more articles than I care to count identifying the need for these domains to develop a business model that meets the needs of the times but I have yet to see one suggested that really addresses the problems on both sides (comments welcome if you know of one). Maybe it just comes down to publishers taking a hit on their bottom line. I haven’t really thought this through.
In any event, as Reiter discusses, the opportunity is ripe for the change. Hopefully a solution, good for both producers and consumers, isn’t far from emerging.
dr. dobb’s deceased
February 13th, 2009I received a notice in the mail today that Dr. Dobb’s Journal will, as of the February 2009 issue, no longer be providing the hardcopy magazine. Instead, it will transition to an all-online publication. There will still be some DDJ print appearing the InformationWeek once a month. This was a big surprise to me though it seems it’s been common knowledge for a while.
DDJ was one of the few independent technical publications I subscribe to as it is, in my mind, one of the best produced. I carried the issues in my bag for weeks and read an article when I had a short break in the day. I usually read most of it, especially the regular columns.
I find the cancellation as disturbing as when I found out Software Development was no longer to be printed and was absorbed by DDJ. I viewed DDJ at that time, as I do now, to be a great publication but it wasn’t Software Design. They overlapped but definitely hit different niches.
It’s similar, too, to when I was deemed no longer eligible to receive Embedded System Programming, which apparently is now Embedded Systems Design, for free. The subscription rate isn’t horrible ($55 as of today) but, for me, it was more the principle. I’m not actively working on embedded systems anymore and really would have no reason to purchase products from the advertisers so I can see the reasoning.
The cancellation is just unfortunate on a number of levels.
review – programming collective intelligence
January 12th, 2009
copyright O’Reilly Media, Inc.
Programming Collective Intelligence: Building Smart Web 2.0 Applications
by Toby Segaran
2007 O’Reilly Media
Rating:
Late last spring, maybe early summer, I picked up a copy of this book. I didn’t really have time to engage it until a little before the fall semester started as I included it in a class. The more I worked through the text, the more I realized that this book is a lot of fun. It’s not for the novice or those who want things more fully explained.
Still, if you want to learn a great deal about how to perform mining on data openly (mostly) accessible on the web with the understanding the technical details are often left to the reader which may mean much investigation outside the text, I highly recommend it. As I said, it’s fun.
remodel
September 4th, 2008When I upgraded to a new version of WordPress a conflict occurred between my theme and the new engine. I finally figured out how to at least get in and establish a new theme. I’m working to get the old theme fixed and back in use.
The theme I was using was a modification of the k2 theme. I didn’t really do it in an optimal way which meant I couldn’t simply upgrade k2 itself. This will give me a chance to correct the problem.
So it goes.
Update! Alright. After having initially resolved the problems, I finally found a little time to sit down and craft a post. Trying to reach the dashboard, more problems surface. So, after some time, I’ve managed to get enable the default template and things mostly look normal. But I’m too agitated to write. I’ll get back to it.
– Hal
keynote sermons
May 1st, 2008At CCSC-CP 2008, the keynote speaker was Robert Martin, the president/CEO of Object Mentor, Inc, as well as author of a numerous books and articles. The main thrust of his talk was that code needs to be developed in an agile manner with testing to be the forefront activity. This was motivated by stories of “rotten code” that is typically solved by management’s response to the developers “beating the drums of redesign”. Martin has been in the software business a good while and has had considerable exposure to software projects of, what my guess would be, almost all varieties. So, certainly, he speaks from experience.
By the end of his presentation, though, I personally didn’t feel that I had learned much or heard anything that I haven’t heard or read before. In fact, I would say that there wasn’t much Martin offered that couldn’t be found in books that have been stocked by most Borders for years. The theatrics of a seasoned speaker aside*, his address seemed to be received very well by many in the audience. I would assume that students found his content novel or perhaps at least an independent validation of what they were exposed to in their classes (oddly, though, the students in attendance of such events are probably not the ones that need the validation).
But why would the professionals in the audience derive so much pleasure from the talk? I would hope that they found nothing groundbreaking in his message given the content consisted of mainstream topics that have been around for roughly a decade. It must be the presentation style.
So what makes a successful conference keynote? It seems that you need to either provide the audience with information they find novel and relevant or you need to find a way to resonate. Success in the latter approach seems to be the conference equivalent of a Sunday sermon.
review of “data quality”
April 25th, 2008
copyright Springer
Data Quality : Concepts, Methodologies and Techniques
by Carlo Batini and Monica Scannapieco
2006 Springer
Rating: 
This semester I had the unpleasant experience of being told by the campus bookstore, the day classes started, that the book I intended to use for my class was no longer in print and used copies were not available. I originally geared the course towards design philosophy and incorporated the book, Software Design, by David Budgen, an excellent book and its unavailability is incredibly frustrating.
As I was unable to quickly find a suitable replacement, I decided to take the course in a slightly different direction and find ways to discuss in more depth than I had before the notion of “quality”. To this end, I found Data Quality. After working through the text, I found it to be broad enough for incorporation into the class and serve as a starting point for deeper discussions but it also was unexpectedly dense, a bit discontinuous and, probably the most important, appears to contain significant errors which is why I could only rate it 3.5.
I still recommend the book as I think it contains good material but it’s important to know what to expect.