Politcal Animals (who are not us)

This article in the New York Times, describes the 'politics' of animals such as monkeys, elephants and whales based on fairly new observations in the wild. This kind of article reinforces the fact that humans are in the continuum of animal behavior and not some distinct branch. For modern humans, this quote says it all:

“The paradox of a highly social species like rhesus monkeys and humans is that our complex sociality is the reason for our success, but it’s also the source of our greatest troubles,” he said. “Throughout human history, you see that the worst problems for people almost always come from other people, and it’s the same for the monkeys. You can put them anywhere, but their main problem is always going to be other rhesus monkeys.”

Are we still evolving ?

From an article in the New York Times:

"Researchers analyzing variation in the human genome have concluded that human evolution accelerated enormously in the last 40,000 years under the force of natural selection."

I have just finished reading a book about the 'cave paintings' in France that were done during a period from 33,000 to 12,000 years ago: The Cave Painters: Probing the Mysteries of the World's First Artists. My assumption (and the book's) were that the painters were pretty much like us.

So this premise of continual evolution is not something I'm buying into ... quite yet. And indeed the article continues with:

"The finding contradicts a widely held assumption that human evolution came to a halt 10,000 years ago or even 50,000 years ago. Some evolutionary psychologists, for example, assume that the mind has not evolved since the Ice Age ended 10,000 years ago."

So stay tuned because:
" ... other experts expressed reservations about the new report, saying it is interesting but more work needs to be done."

Down to Seeds and Stems Again

So twice in this past week I dated myself by using the term "Down to seeds and stems". The first was with Lynn (and I forget what the context was), the second was just now with a co-worker referring to the fact that the issues I have left for the next release are 'piddly' ones.

So I looked up the song and it's one by Commander Cody here's the lyrices at CowboyLyrics.com

I won't quote 'em all, but the last verse is representative:

first line spoken, not sung]   
Well my dog died just yesterday and left me all alone.
The finance company dropped by today and repossessed my home.
That's just a drop in the bucket compared to losing you,
And I'm down to seeds and stems again, too.
TAG:    G                 F           C
Got the Down to Seeds and Stems again Blues.

Of course it's been close to 30 years since I've been literally down to seeds and stems, but it's curious that I'm still using it as a figure of speech...

Social Networking Services - myspace vs facebook etc...

So Microsoft invests $240 million in facebook and makes its 23-year old founder worth $3 billion: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/25/technology/24cnd-facebook.html?hp

The founder says "MySpace is not based on authentic identities. Facebook is based on who you really are and who your friends really are. That is who marketers really want to reach, not the fantasy you that lives on MySpace and uses a photo of a model”...


However, the first article I had noticed a couple months ago about "myspace vs. facebook" was this one: Viewing American class divisions through Facebook and MySpace

Note: this is a little 'dense' so you can skim it (like I just did). You can find comparisons by googling "myspace vs facebook". The top hit (as of 10.24.2007) is Facebook Hammers MySpace on Almost All Key Features. I have sites on both: the bob-i-lynn band on myspace and my own personal site on facebook. For an old-time band, myspace works well - the calendar is smart - and we know a lot of fellow musicians with sites in it. We've actually gotten a few gigs directly because of it. One of these was the Stone Arch Festival ; in fact I joined facebook when the woman who booked us for the festival invited me. I now have a total of 17 facebook friends - mostly nieces and nephews and 20-somethings from a folk camp I go to (plus Al Franken - the one friend who is almost as old as I am;-))

In an attempt at viral marketing, I've added a few music apps to facebook ReverbNation and 'Entertainment' which have entries for the 'bob-i-lynn' band. The RevebNation has 3 fans, while Entertainment is stuck at one (me). However, I may be approaching it wrong - the 'Hammers' article says:

Music: MySpace wins, but only just - we all know that every band ever has a MySpace account . However, with the new Facebook apps you can add your data from music tracking sites like Last.fm and iLike: in fact the top app on Facebook at the moment is the iLike app.

I suppose I'll check out 'iLike', but I don't think it will function as a web site in the same way as MySpace does. Even if you are not a MySpace user, you can view most of our content (schedule etc) - for facebook, you actually have to join to see anything but a name and picture.

In any event either site works as a time sink and I'm sure total productivity for the US is suffering for it (but then most of our 'productive' time produces too much crap anyway).

The importance of a rapid compile/build/test cycle

So this is strictly a software engineering topic; but the fact that I am dealing with an extremely long compile/build/test cycle means that I have plenty of time to post to this and probably my other blog today.

Just as some people say 'you can't be too thin or too rich' (I'm neither); the computer a software engineer uses cannot be too fast (or have too much disk space or memory for that matter). For normal programming I use Eclipse and have learned to use it well enough to maintain a pretty short time between making a change and testing the results of it. For Java, Eclipse checks my syntax as I go, sort of like this editor checks words that are mispeled [sic]; underlining mistakes in red and listing all compiler errors and warnings. In same cases I can run unit tests within Eclipse and get results in a few seconds. For other things I might need to run an actual ant build, but that is usually well less than 20 seconds - even a clean build is done in a minute.

However, today we are preparing for a new 'total' build and I need to make and test a change in the InstallShield script. We used to have a build engineer to do this but he left about a year ago and I haven't been given the means to replace him. This particular fix involves updating our software which InstallShield determines based on the GUID of the previous install. If I forget to update the GUID before I build I don't hit the code I want. Of course the build takes over 10 minutes; and if you forget to change the GUID (like I just did), it can take about a half hour between the time you make the change and the time you 'test' it. Testing is actually doing the install which takes at least 5 - 10 minutes (even thought I'm skipping as much as I can). Thus I spent all morning and will probably spend the rest of the day implementing something that probably represents a half-an-hour actual coding time. Although I could theoretically multitask, my past experience shows this to be usually counter productive.

If I thought I would be doing a bunch more InstallShield work , I could create some test environment but at this point that would take longer than to finish the thing I'm working on. AND I don't need InstallShield for my resume - I need a build engineer! 'cause once I finish this, I will actually do the build which is another long (and boring) task.

We should get paid for sleeping

According to an article in the New York Times, one of the purposes of sleep is to help you think:

Now, a small group of neuroscientists is arguing that at least one vital function of sleep is bound up with learning and memory. A cascade of new findings, in animals and humans, suggest that sleep plays a critical role in flagging and storing important memories, both intellectual and physical, and perhaps in seeing subtle connections that were invisible during waking — a new way to solve a math or Easter egg problem, even an unseen pattern causing stress in a marriage.

Read the rest here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/23/health/23memo.html?8dpc

This is no news to most software engineers and computer programmers: on countless occasions, I have ended the day 'stuck on something' after spending hours banging my head on a (metaphorical) brick wall -- the next morning I come in and solve the problem within minutes.

During the dot-comm era it was common for programmers to work 60-80 hour weeks (I'm sure this culture persists at many companies now); however, I always maintained that this was counter-productive: I preferred the concept that 'the best programmers are lazy programmers'.

Of course now that I have scientific proof that leaving a problem at proper quitting time and 'sleeping' on it is the best strategy, I will start logging my sleep time as productive time and get my 60-80 hours in that way.

My two sons

I always hesitate to reference a column by David Brooks as he is one of the NY Times 'conservative' columnist; however, his piece on The Odyssey Years yesterday struck a chord. According to Brooks the Odyssey years are a new phase of life:

There used to be four common life phases: childhood, adolescence, adulthood and old age. Now, there are at least six: childhood, adolescence, odyssey, adulthood, active retirement and old age. Of the new ones, the least understood is odyssey, the decade of wandering that frequently occurs between adolescence and adulthood.


We have two sons: Alex is 28 and Tommy just turned 22 (Oct 10th). Tommy is definitely going to have many Odyssey years - currently he is a bike messenger in San Francisco and lives on a sailboat. Alex may be running against type. He completed College in 4 years and started working a software Engineer at Adobe right out of college. Of course he has delayed marriage, but there is now a serious girl friend in the mix.

I'm not sure of Brooks' experience, since he writes:

Yet with a little imagination it’s possible even for baby boomers to understand what it’s like to be in the middle of the odyssey years. It’s possible to see that this period of improvisation is a sensible response to modern conditions.

When I was coming of age in the late 60's and 70's there were plenty of baby boomer's committed to an Odyssey life style. (Has he never heard of hippies, woodstock, back-to-the-land movement?). Lynn and I were married right after college but neither of us started a traditional career until our thirties (arguably I was 40 before I had a 'career').

So I guess all-in-all this is nothing new to me.

Here are some pics of Tommy and Alex:

Captian Tommy:



Tommy at the 2007 National Bike Messenger Races in San Francisco (he placed 14th out of 400):



Alex and Beth:

Note: I googled 'The Odyssey Years' and as near as I can tell Brooks may have coined it. There appears to be a fair amount of traffic in on-line forums on the topic so I guess I'm just adding to it.

After I wrote the title I looked this up:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Three_Sons