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.

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.

The web, Wu describes, is different from telephony, radio waves, and film that has enabled it to resist the Cycle for as long as it has. He credits a good bit of its resilience to the fundamental, distributed architecture on which it was built. However, with the rise of some of the web’s key players – such as Google and Comcast – there is a threat. Such companies represent a “master switch” that, if pulled, could change the face of the web in a moment.

Noting the threat to the openness of the web given recent concerns of net neutrality, Wu poses some interventions based on history of the Cycle in different industries to ensure the openness of the web remains intact.

Not expecting the history discussions I was a little taken aback by their richness and depth. In retrospect I found them very compelling but while reading found myself at times wanting them to wrap up. Had a read a more in-depth review of the book it might have become apparent. Knowing that now, I would have engaged the book in a different way.

For those that like to cut to the chase, the last chapter of the book is the place to go. It’s well written and can stand on its own. However, if you don’t read the rest of the book you probably won’t completely and fully appreciate the arguments. Plus, you will miss out on some fantastic tales.

Wu spoke at Harvard University in Jan 2011.

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.

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.

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.

While I certainly enjoy the online access to articles I want to reference, having the material appear solely on the web will significantly dilute what DDJ had to offer. Sure, the articles will be of the same quality and the ability to provide even more to the reader will be attractive in some ways but the print offered something special: limited space.

The fact that the print version could only include so many articles to span so many pages meant that article quality had to significantly enter the equation. Having effectively infinite space to store and offer content means that there there is less incentive to not publish articles. I have a hard time believing that the average quality won’t diminish. The other thing about the limited space is that there are starting and ending points and a very simple way to navigate the content. Reading the magazine left you with a sense of accomplishment when you finally read that last article.

The bundling of a small number of articles is not to be taken lightly. The editorial staff would have to find balance among the content or weave together articles that offered a common thread. I think this is important. You can’t replace the collective works of Vonnegut with a compendium of a handful of chapters from each book he wrote. A book contains coherent, logically related content that makes little sense when read only in pieces. I feel the same way about CDs. While I can see the attraction of to scouring iTunes and buying a handful of singles, I think it does the artist an injustice. As with magazines and books, the artists, or so I would like to think, decide on a subset of their creations bundled together to convey a story or a set of emotions. The songs gain meaning from their neighbors.

There is another added benefit to the hardcopy. As I spend most of my day interacting with my machine, staring at LCD renderings, listening to fans and disk grinds, I find it a well-needed break to pick up another form of media. With a printed magazine, I am able to tuck it under an arm and go anywhere to read. I can move it closer or farther away. I can write on it. I can rip things out. I can share a tangible thing with another human being. I am unshackled from looking at the immense world through a tiny little window.

I also like the fact that most print journals tend to be uncluttered and certainly free of moving, talking and expanding ads. There are times when the ads get in the way but for the most part, they are benign. The real focus is the content.

Aside from the print/digital conversation, there is also the issue of DDJ appearing as a subset of InformationWeek. As DDJ and Software Design had different audiences, it’s even more the case between DDJ and InformationWeek. I also think that InformationWeek just doesn’t offer the depth in its articles that DDJ did with theirs.

Though the print version of DDJ has met its demise, there are still many other publications that remain and are worth a read. One of which is the Communications of the ACM. It recently underwent a transformation in terms of its content and presentation and it was a marked improvement. I couldn’t be happier with the results; it might be that it hearkens back to the days Software Development (for me anyway).

So it goes. I’ll always have the back issues that occupy half of a shelf in my office.

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.

The book uses Python, with assorted third-party libraries, and assumes the reader is either comfortable with the language or is capable of learning it they follow along. I happened to be in latter and took this as an opportunity to learn Python.

In the introduction, Segaran points the reader to an introductory Python book and then provides a brief summary of some of the “quirkier” aspects of Python syntax: lists (arrays), dictionaries (hashmaps), blocks defined by indentation and list comprehension. The first three are pretty simple to understand but list comprehensions can be a bit awkward. In general, much of the syntax goes unexplained which can be problematic for the novice reader.

As the book progresses, more sophisticated uses of Python syntax and constructs appear which probably should have been given some treatment in the introduction. Basically, if you are going to discuss lists, dictionaries and comprehensions, it’s probably worthwhile to mention, say, lambda functions.

Beyond the syntax concerns which could arguably be dismissed by the introduction’s caveat is the techniques and algorithms introduced. The descriptions of the algorithms and their purposes are generally decent in the sense that you can get a feel for how the algorithms work. Plus, the code provided by the book does help illustrate things some. The problem, though, is that the algorithms and code are rather intertwined. This is a mixed blessing: The book does a good job of explaining the explicit example but it’s not trivial to generalize.

One area in which the book could use a little expansion is how to interpret the results of a particular technique. For example, clustering is presented pretty much at face value without much expansion on how to use the end results. It would also be useful to discuss tuning of the algorithms as well as really how to balance the trade-offs between different techniques; for instance, when discussing decision trees both Gini impurity and entropy are introduced, or in the second chapter, “Making Recommendations”, both Euclidean distance and the Pearson Correlation Coefficient are used. In both cases it is mentioned that trying both approaches and examining the results will lead to which provides the better tool for the job.

I do realize that some of these issues are just the reality of having a finite space in which to deliver the content. The book would be immense if all such conversations were had. Also, experience plays a major part in deciding how to best handle a particular analysis problem and that is hard to convey in any book, especially one such as this that is targeting readers who haven’t had much experience with the techniques.

One improvement that could be made is to add references. Obviously Segaran is drawing from a lot of experience and his knowledge evolved probably by reading other spins on data mining and general statistics. Sharing sources at specific points in the text to direct the reader to more complete explanations and examples would be extremely valuable.

And I have to say that the book’s source code is horrific. Of course, in the interest of fairness, I readily admit that I am hyper-anal about the style of my source code and the elegance of my data structures. Also, I suppose it could be argued that Python is a prototyping tool so worrying about literate programming is not part of the approach. Still, if code has to be read by someone other than the author – as is the case for every reader of the book – clean code is desirable.

I imagine that having to fit source code into a standard page width and not wanting it to span numerous pages is necessary. Such constraints probably lead to writing compact code rather than worrying about readability.

Not to be all negative, there is a lot of positive things to be said about the book. First and foremost is the content. It’s a great collection of topics. Segaran pours a lot into the book, especially the real-world applications. Each chapter is generally stand-alone and includes explicit examples that access data available on the web. While I wasn’t able to access all data and APIs, for example, I wasn’t able to get an API key for Hot or Not, for the most part everything worked well.

Segaran also provides a list of suggested exercises at the end of each chapter. Some are challenging. The nice part about the exercises is it gives a nice starting point for reaching a little farther. I also found this useful in the class the book was used.

Bottom line: Though there are a few rough points, the book is an absolute blast. It’s one of the most unique texts I have encountered in a while and it really opens a world of possibilities for the inclined.

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

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.

As I looked around the room during Martin’s address, heads of many faculty (I’m assuming) were nodding fervently as Martin made some of his key points. The dramatic pauses he introduced were filled with hushed-but-audible approvals. Martin was reading from the methodology scriptures and there was everything but a feverish “AMEN!” bubbling from the audience.

I have observed this phenomenon at other times, in other contexts as well: political speeches, motivational speeches and sales pitches. There is also the problem of faulty logic but that’s a little outside of this discussion. What, then, makes an audience respond well to non-novel content? At this point, my only explanation is that there are many people who like to hear what they already know. If the content is already in their repertoire – or at least very close – they emerge feeling confident, that they can easily discuss the address with their fellow attendees. Basically, they feel comfortable. They feel good as their knowledge has been reaffirmed.

The success also depends on the person giving the address: the more popular the speaker, the less dependent is the success of the address on the actual content. Not everyone could have delivered the address that Martin did. The same content, tone and delivery style adopted by someone unknown with obscure credentials would not have been as successful. In part, for some, hearing someone they greatly admire state things they already know provides a small connection, perhaps providing a sense that they have made a smaller step towards greatness.

The problem is that this limits progress. After attending a talk (or reading a book), not reflecting on what was new in the message can lead to an inflated perception of self. What incentive does someone have if their perception is that they are on the edge because they believe they and the expert are of like mind? In actuality, having an improved sense of self due to an identification with an expert is only valid if your ideas were not formed via some influence of the expert prior to such identification.

To make matters worse, once someone has achieved greatness, the work required to remain great is considerably less. That is, the idea that enables someone among the masses to walk among the elite must be incredibly significant. However, an idea from a member of the elite can still be perceived to be more meritorious than an idea from a member of the masses even if the former is in fact less meritorious than the latter. This has to do with marketing (and politics).

This worries me. But the world has progressed, faltered and recovered despite the fact that such things occur. It’s more that such behavior could eventually be applied to a problem that leads to an unrecoverable disaster.

^* Martin is, without a doubt, a dynamic speaker. His approach, though, was too big for the moderately sized lecture hall that we occupied. It would have fit more appropriately in a theater. In a large venue, the sweeping gestures and dramatic pauses have to be exaggerated to be able to ripple through the crowd and be perceived by those in the remote corners. In the smaller room it’s overwhelming. To be fair though, I don’t react well to the overly dramatic and often find it distracting from the purpose at hand. But, hey, I’m a bit of a cynic.