It’s made me do something I should have done a long time ago, take a step back. I’ve been so close to problems that I’ve just been running. Running to stand still, as the old saying goes. I think it was partially the environment I found myself in. I needed to focus on getting work in and out as quickly as possible that I would grasp onto the first reasonable solution and run with it. Luckily, most of the time it was the optimal or near-optimal solution. But sometimes it wasn’t.

The other day I realized that a few technologies I haven’t used in years — decades — were possibly very useful for some tasks I had. One of them is an old compiler technology. It allowed for the creation of parsers quickly and easily, much more so than lex and yacc. I dug into my archives and discovered, much to my chagrin, that they were damaged. No matter, I had older backups. They too were corrupt. It seems that I’d been backing up a long-corrupt copy of the software. I was bummed.

I knew others may have kept copies so I asked around if they had old copies. The answer was that none had. Then one of my old friends said he’d been sent a copy by a mutual friend who was sorting his archives. He sent it along. Eureka!  An old, but hopefully salvageable, copy! I created a directory, dumped it in and attempted to compile it. No go. Something was amiss. A quick look at one of the .h files quickly showed it corrupted. Argh! No justice!

My only hope now was that my corrupted copies were corrupted elsewhere. Unfortunately, my versions were for another style of parser generator and not the one I was sent. I figured I’d reconstitute the corrupt .h file best I could. I went at it. And then started dealing with the various errors and general C nastiness that occurs when you attempt to compile a decades old K&R style program. Joy.

Little by little I got it to work. Then I got to one file that had a comment in it. With my name affixed. It seems that the copy I was sent was actually the translation I had performed from the original Pascal version to C. The corrupt version I had was of another instantiation of said program that was originally coded in Fortran, that I, too, had converted to C. The file I was staring at was the dependency file. It had dependencies for a wide variety of ancient machines from Honeywell CP-6 to PDP-11 based Unix, VAX-based Unix, old BSD Sun, Amiga, Windows 3.1, DOS, and on and on and on. I looked at it, fired up Google, and quickly replaced all the dependencies with modern code. In one place I was able to eliminate hundreds of lines of weird system dependent code with a simple variadic macro! Woo hoo!

I compiled it, it compiled, then sort of ran and then seg-faulted. Luckily I more or less knew why — damn pointers! — fixed it and ran and it worked!

Now, I have an old version that doesn’t even support include files. But that’s OK. One of the things that isn’t corrupt is the modern parser generator, so I can bootstrap myself a modern version! That’s a job for the coming weeks.

And why am I all enamoured with this old parser generator? Because of what my old prof mentioned regarding a problem I’d had with building a policy editor at my old startup. I tried a number of ways, none worked. He looked at me and simply said: Decision Tables. I nearly knocked myself out with the forehead slap. Duh. Sometimes old technology can solve a new conundrum. This old parser generator is fast, slick and easily extensible. It’s perfect for the Relational Growth Grammars I want to play around with. If it does what I think it can do for me, it’ll save me oodles of time and provide me with a flexible solution to creating parsers for growth grammars as opposed to what many people do at present which is create custom parsers for each problem set.

Time will tell. But right now I’m looking at some operational code, a set of algorithms and ideas to implement, and possibly a revival of some old code for a new purpose. And, yes, I’ve backed it up. I’m not so stupid as to not do that this time around!

Of late I’ve been reading the news regarding discoveries of new planets. Fascinating stuff, to be honest. A tinge of jealousy strikes me with each passing article. But I choose to live this life of an astronomer vicariously. If I can’t do it myself, I can at least stay up on things sort of. I haven’t the hours to do so properly, maybe when I retire I’ll revisit it more fully but that is many years away.

The most interesting thing about these planetary discoveries around those far flung stars is that most — if not all — of the star systems seem to be very unlike our own. They have odd planets, huge gas giants, gas giants close to their primaries, etc. Not many seem to have planets that are fit for the type of life we’re accustomed to that requires the right distance from the primary for liquid water to exist and a reasonable temperature range.

I do hope things change, but the more I watch the news reports the more I wonder if maybe Sol System is rather unique. Maybe Drake’s equation is way off. Maybe most stars have planets but most have systems that are so unlike ours that they have no hope of harbouring complex life. Maybe instead of Sagan’s millions of possible Earths there are but a handful. All the more pity for those of us with a fondness for SF or a desire to communicate with other intelligences.

Today, on the Astronomy Picture of the Day, you can find a little animation of the latest discovery HD 10180. 5 planets. Impressive. Even if complex life there is unlikely.

You read that right. 120 pages. And, yes, I’m talking 8 1/2 x 11 inch pages.

Now, it’s not the horror story it might appear, although if delivered via Canada Post it surely would have arrived in a box and would have been photographed for posterity. No. It came in electronically.

Who’s bill is this? My daughters. And, what, pray tell is on that 120 pages? Well, I can say there are more than 5 hours of talking. That’s right. 5 hours of yakking on her iPhone. In one month. There’s also nearly 7000 text messages. And Bell has kindly provided each one its own line item on her bill so she can examine it in all its glory, when it was sent, to whom, how long, etc. The only thing that would have made the bill more entertaining would have been if Bell had kindly documented the actual texts, and not just provided the litany of connections. But then the bill would probably be 500 pages. And in today’s day and age, she could probably have published it what with “Shit my dad says” having started off as nothing  more than a series of tweets.

No matter. I just have to share. And me, being me, I figured the correct thing to do is actually figure out how much time she’s spent texting. Roughly speaking it works out to about 40 hours. That’s right. 40 hours of texting in a month. That’s a full work week. Her reaction, for the curious, was a boisterous laugh. It’s highly entertaining to her. To her brother and her parents, it’s downright confusing. How can anyone text that much in a month? Like, wow, to quote the current generation.

Now, the delicious irony for me as a parent is this same child keeps telling me that:

a) I don’t know where all my free time goes.
b) I can’t help around the house, I’m too busy working two summer jobs (true, and yet …).
c) I can’t find the time to read a book or watch a good movie.

and on it goes.

Well, I think she now sees that she may have 2 part time summer jobs, but she has a part time job keeping Bell’s lines busy. I’m surprised the poor iPhone hasn’t melted from all those texts.

It is utterly amazing that my other child, a young man, probably rings up, oh, 10 texts a month. I have no idea what the average is for a household, but I’m sure my daughter, by herself, has ensured we’re in some upper echelon of usage. If it were Chapters, they’d give us a Lifetime discount card! A “Frequent Texter” card. Super Elite, no doubt.

Perhaps it runs in the family, this obsessiveness. This desire for connectivity. My wife, bless her, has always been a network wiz. She makes others look like amateurs and can walk into any room and quickly get to know everyone, and then awe them (frighten them?) by remembering not just their names, but their spouses names, their kids names, their pets’ names, and at times even birthdates, etc. It’s a gift. She claims she’s not as good as she once was in this regard, but I think her rolodex is simply full. She still maintains more information in her head than I do in my computer contacts list. It’s that scary.

So no surprise with my daughter. 7000 texts. A record she proclaims, no exclaims with much glee. Her prior record? A measly 5000. Bah. Nothing.

Unfortunately, I now fear she will try to better her record. Besides, 10,000 just has a nice ring. I wonder if Bell will ask us to switch carriers? I’m sure our postal carrier would have wanted to change routes if she keeps ringing up those types of usage numbers and he had the sorry task of delivering us her bill.

I’m sure you’re all wondering about how much this record cost her. How much was the total on the bill? $110. Not even $1/page! Quite a deal, if you ask me. Especially considering the above.

And when you realize that Bell (and Rogers and the rest of the phone cartel) figure a text is worth about $0.15, you realize she’s gotten off easy. Because, at $0.15 per text her bill could have been more than $1000! And, yes, she also has nearly unlimited talking, too. Smart girl, that one. She knows what to get considering how much she uses the phone. When it dies, it’ll have been well used (abused?). I figure, between texting, calling, and Internet — plus the TV she manages to squeeze in — she must be engaged with some form of electronics 80 – 100 hours per month. And still gets her sleep and, somehow, manages 2 jobs and a life. Something’s gonna have to give come September when she enters 3rd year. But perhaps she has plans to just have 2 days added to the week to ensure she has the time necessary to do everything she wants to do. She’s stubborn enough to try, and maybe even succeed.

To be honest. I’m starting to wonder if there aren’t two of her…

And, yes, this is the joy of a young, intelligent daughter who has the gift of gab — both when using her vocal chords or when she lets her fingers do the talking…

Sigh.

For those of you with young daughters, be forewarned. Get unlimited texting and as many talk minutes as possible. You might beat her record of 120 pages of phone bill but at least you’ll also enjoy the low cost such a record entails. The mere thought of the horrors that may have awaited the opening of that bill this evening are not even worth contemplating…

It all reminds me of Mike Stivick’s famous retort when Gloria brought something home that was labeled “New and Improved!”: “What was the old stuff, then, old and lousy?”

It’s almost as if someone wants to dissuade me from consuming candy. Can’t say that’s a bad thing, but for a candy company it seems like a bad move to irritate long time customers by destroying the very flavour they grew to love. It’s just so New Coke as to not even be funny. I wonder if the quantity of corn syrup has been upped? I did notice that some candies have corn syrup ahead of sugar now, and maybe that’s why I find it unpalatable.

– Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled

If we knew what we were doing it wouldn’t be called research.

– Albert Einstein.

To put it into Daniel Pink’s words:

When it comes to motivation, there’s a gap between what science knows and what business does. Our current business operating system–which is built around external, carrot-and-stick motivators–doesn’t work and often does harm. We need an upgrade. And the science shows the way. This new approach has three essential elements: 1. Autonomy – the desire to direct our own lives. 2. Mastery — the urge to get better and better at something that matters. 3. Purpose — the yearning to do what we do in the service of something larger than ourselves.

And that presentation I linked to earlier? Probably the coolest thing I’ve ever seen on YouTube and the coolest presentation I’ve seen in a very long time. Wish I could draw that well and explain concepts that eloquently.

The academic elites failed us with their utterly asinine ideas of risk control. It was grounded on the idea that all risk took Gaussian distributions, which is just totally wrong. Very high IQ people can be completely useless. And many of them are.

And this might well apply to IT security, too, where all too many academics figure we can actually control risk.

• The main point of doing any programming work is that there must be some exquisite blend between beauty and practicality. There is no need to sacrifice either one of those. And people who are willing to sacrifice either one of those don’t really get what computing is all about.
• I invented the term Object-Oriented, and I can tell you I did not have C++ in mind.
• HTML has taken us back to the dark ages wherein it presupposes a browser that understands its formats. This has to be one of the worst ideas since MS-DOS.
• Objects can act like anything!
• The most pernicious thing about languages like C++ and Java is that they think they’re helping the programmer by looking as much like the old thing as possible but they’re hurting the programmer terribly by making it difficult to understand what’s powerful in this new metaphor.
• A language that essentially forces you to develop outside of the language, requires you to compile and reload, is a dead end for building complex systems.
• The Internet from the time it started running to this day has expanded by a factor of 100,000,000 and as far as anyone can tell there is not one physical atom in the Internet today that was in the original ARPANET. And, there is not one line of code that was in the original ARPANET that is in the Internet today.
• The Internet is a system that has replaced every line of code and every bit across 30 years and never had to stop.
• When we think programming is small, that’s why your programs become big. That’s why you get pyramids instead of Gothic cathedrals.
• How does Java expect to survive if it has no meta system, no way to load new things on the fly.
• The more the language can see its own structures the more liberated you can be from the tyranny of any single implementation.
• We don’t know how to build systems, yet.

Sure, it may be 13 years old, but sadly much of it still holds true. And not much having changed means he could give this talk again and everyone would nod their heads at the sad state of the computer industry.

And to show you they’re stupid questions, here are my answers to these interview questions.

1. How many golf balls can fit in a school bus?

Why would you care. You’d have to buy them and then get them in there and then clean up afterwards, which would result in opening the door and having all the stupid balls fall out going all over the freaking place. And I’m not even going to get into short bus, medium sized bus, long bus. Thus, the correct answer is “None” since only an idiot would even contemplate how many golf balls can fit in a school bus.

2. How much should you charge to wash all the windows in Seattle?

To paraphrase Dr. Evil, One Trillion Dollars. Why? Because I don’t do windows and besides, it’s always raining in Seattle so what would be the point of washing the stupid windows.

3. In a country in which people only want boys every family continues to have children until they have a boy. If they have a girl, they have another child. If they have a boy, they stop. What is the proportion of boys to girls in the country?

I guess genetics and anthropological evidence would have to have been completely ignored by the person who came up with this gem. So I peg that person as a super geeky computer type with no comprehension beyond that of using numbers or programming. Thus, they probably want some complex mathematical approximation when it’ll remain 50/50 courtesy of nothing more complex than, oh, the probabilities associated with coin flips.

4. How many piano tuners are there in the entire world?

Some number greater than zero. How many more? Who cares, other than the moron interviewer. Knowing or even determining this fact is a waste of resources and time better spent on anything else, including wondering how many angels dance on the head of a pin.

5. Why are manhole covers round?

Ah. The manhole question. Easiest answer is because Microsoft needed a stupid question to ask during their interviews to make them sound smart.

6. Design an evacuation plan for San Francisco.

Go East. If you get wet you’re going the wrong way, turn around and go East. You’d think the fine folks at Google would realize where San Francisco is located. Sheesh.

7. How many times a day does a clock’s hands overlap?

No idea and don’t care. Besides, my clock is digital so the question is so last century.

8. Explain the significance of “dead beef”.

A hexadecimal question. How quaint. Next up, we’ll ask questions about those weird little 1s and 0s and what they mean.

9. A man pushed his car to a hotel and lost his fortune. What happened?

Someone with too much time on his hands and nothing productive to do with it wrote a stupid riddle.

10. You need to check that your friend, Bob, has your correct number but you cannot ask him directly. You must write the question on a card which and give it to Eve who will take the card to Bob and return the answer to you. What must you write on the card, besides the question, to ensure Bob can encode the message so that Eve cannot read your phone number?

I’ve been through this before. I don’t use Bob. Never have. Besides, Microsoft doesn’t even sell it anymore so I don’t really care if my “friend” Bob has my correct number or not as he’s stuck in whatever binary hell Clippy and him share.

11. You’re the captain of a pirate ship and your crew gets to vote on how the gold is divided up. If fewer than half of the pirates agree with you, you die. How do you recommend apportioning the gold in such a way that you get a good share of the booty, but still survive?

Soooo, I’m a crappy captain that lets my crew vote on how the gold is divvied up, eh? Sure I’m the captain of a pirate ship. Sure I’m a pirate. Sure that all adds up. Be gone demon of stupidity before I put my sabre through you.

12. You have eight balls all of the same size 7 of them weigh the same, and one of them weighs slightly more. How can you find the ball that is heavier by using a balance and only two weighings?

If I had 8 balls I’d be off to the urologist. Especially if one suddenly was larger or heavier than the others.

13. You are given 2 eggs. You have access to a 100-story building. Eggs can be very hard or very fragile means it may break if dropped from the first floor or may not even break if dropped from 100th floor. Both eggs are identical. You need to figure out the highest floor of a 100-story building an egg can be dropped without breaking. The question is how many drops you need to make. You are allowed to break 2 eggs in the process.

Where did you get these wondrous eggs from? And how, pray tell, will the little birdie escape the uber strong egg? This is a question to make you feel stupid? I just feel sorry for the idiot who had to recite this as a question.

14. Explain a database in three sentences to your eight-year-old nephew.

Ooo. Ooo. I’ll answer this one right. “It’s like a toilet where shit goes in and you can later get the shit back out.” There. See, one sentence. I’m therefore 3 times more efficient than the interviewer could ever hope to imagine! What do I win?

15. You are shrunk to the height of a nickel and your mass is proportionally reduced so as to maintain your original density. You are then thrown into an empty glass blender. The blades will start moving in 60 seconds. What do you do?

I don’t answer physically retarded questions, especially ones that are scientifically implausible. Or is this the story line for another bad Hollywood movie where they mangle all of science?