monkey see, monkey doo

It's been a year and a half since our trip to India. Time hasn't done much to blur my excitement about the country as a tourist destination, at least the parts I saw. Salwa and I were reminiscing last night about funny things that happened.

 

The trip was logistically complicated, with a couple of nasty airline connections. One of these was in Mumbai, between flying back from Aurangabad and flying out to Udaipur. We had something like six hours between the flights, in the middle of the night. . 

 

Mumbai airport - at least the part we were in - has very little seating, and isn't a great place to stay overnight. Salwa arranged a cheap hotel in Mumbai so we could take a nap and have a shower. As we left the terminal, we ignored the hawkers and went to the official taxi queue. When our turn came, we got a pubescent driver in an ancient taxi that shuddered every time he coaxed it into gear. We told the driver where we were going, and he nodded and off we went.

 

It was getting close to midnight, but we could still see clusters of people here and there sleeping on the sidewalks or walking slowly along. There was still plenty of traffic on the main thoroughfares. Each time we came to a traffic light, the driver would beckon to someone and talk to them. They'd confer briefly, both staring at my wife and I, and then break off as the light turned. The first time this happened we wondered if something sinister was at play, but by the time it because routine, we realized it didn't have anything to do with us, per se.

 

On the back streets, the driver went more and more slowly and then stopped. It turned out he had no idea where our hotel was - or even *what* it was - or where to find it. I'm not even sure he knew where he was either. My wife dug out her maps, but they were of marginal use because the labels were in English. Another half hour of driving lazily around, and the driver did manage to find the place, thanks to the generosity of many other taxi drivers. 

 

As we got our luggage out of the back of the taxi, our driver asked for 720 rupees. His meter read 17 rupees, which was then supposed to be multiplied by a time-based number on the chart mounted next to it, for an actual total of 350 rupees. We laughed out loud, and Salwa made it obvious she knew how the price was supposed to be calculated. We gave him 400 rupees, and ignored his request for another 50 beyond the 50 tip we'd already given. I guess they're used to people who don't realize they don't have to give whatever the drivers ask for.

 

Our hotel was the ISKCON Guest house, at the Hari Rama Hari Krishna Mandeer temple. Hari Krishna's are a constant source of jokes in the US, but the hotel - attached to the temple - had a reputation as being clean and cheap. The lobby was beautifully set out in marble, but the room itself was spartan at best, with rough linen sheets, and a bathroom with basic fittings. The shower, for example, just sprayed onto the floor and drained into the middle of the room. We managed to catch a few hours sleep, and had a cab called to get us back to the airport for our flight to Udaipur, which went much smoother: everyone knows where the airport is.

 

The moral of the story is, sometimes sleeping on an airport floor is a better idea than hoofing it out in the middle of the night when you don't know the language, the area, or the hotel you're going to. Even so, it was an interesting experience.

 

 

Most people have never heard of polyphasic sleep. The idea is, it's possible to condition yourself to sleep in many small chunks rather than one large one.

 

I've seen discussion of three types of polyphasic sleep schedules, each of which requires a daily routine:

 

I'm finally well after fighting a cold for a week. It was one of those cotton-in-the-head colds that keeps you from being able to think. Yeck.

 

To entertain myself, I spent time looking at old videos on YouTube. I have to say, this is one of the things YouTube is best for: I love music videos, and watching some of my favorites from the last 30 years is a great way to burn a few hours!

 

I used to watch Tiny Toons religiously. One of my favorite episodes was a series of small music videos written to tunes performed by 'They Might Be Giants.' The two that I remember the best are Particle Man and Istanbul, check them out if you're a TMBG or a Tiny Toons fan!

 

On the traditional music video front, there's Sensoria by Caberet Voltaire - it's held up surprisingly well. Safety dance doesn't fare quite so well, but is still entertaining. That got me thinking about Scrubs, which brought up the following two Turk segments: Turk doing a bit of safety dance himself, but even better, when Turk follows up The Todd trying out for a hospital music group dancing to Poison.

 

I've said it before, I'll say it again. The internet is my favorite thing ever, the universal library. It's hard to believe the days and nights I spent as a kid waiting to record snippets of my favorite songs from the radio onto cassette. Now literally everything in the world is available online, you can find it instantly, sample it for free, and buy it to keep it. Life is good :)

 

 

 

It's been *ages* since I've written on here. As it's the holidays and I'll have a bit of time on my hands (once I get my computer working again), I hope to remedy that situation.

 

A side note. Most of my blog posts are written with search engines in mind. Sometimes this can work against you. We went to Sharm El Sheikh recently, and I was curious whether our favorite hotel really had broadband yet or not. I searched, hoping to find information about it. Unfortunately, the only relevant article I found was from myself, talking about how I *hoped* they would have broadband soon. Ah, the irony :)

 

I just read an excellent interview with one of my favorite authors, William Gibson. While I can't give him credit for me getting into computers, I can certainly say he helped me think about them in a different way, and to stretch my electronic horizons beyond games. The guy is amazing, and has a quite unique perspective on being human, as well as our near future.

 

If you haven't read any of his books, you might want to give them a try. Certainly no cyberpunk enthusiast can claim to be such without knowing their roots. Neuromancer was the seminal start, but his latest books - although not necessarily sci-fi as such anymore - are also quite engaging.

While not so rabid a Harry Potter fan that I dragged myself out of bed at midnight to get the book, I did have it by 10am the next day. Mostly I wanted to make sure I read it before I tripped across any spoilers in the press or other places. For example, when the last one came out, a nitwit was running around WoW yelling "* dies at the end!" (with a name instead of *). This is no doubt the same sort of fellow who enjoys making people angry in games, griefers they're called.

 

But I digress.

 

No spoilers in this blog entry, out of deference to those who have yet to read the series or this book in particular.

 

The Harry Potter books, for my money, have ranged from very good to excellent. This one definitely weighs in at the 'excellent' end of that scale. Rowling always intended seven books for the series and this is the seventh. It's a fitting conclusion for the Potter series, though I have to say I'm sorry to see it over with. It choked me up more than once. It's always hard saying goodbye to characters and a world you've come to love.

 

The book is as big as any of them - 759 pages in hardcover. It starts strong and stays strong. There were a few hundred pages near the end of the first half where it wasn't as engaging (though still quite good), but I couldn't manage to put it down for the last half. Like the other books before it, despite its size it's quite a quick read.

 

Here's to Harry Potter! If you're into it and haven't already bought a copy, it's well worth full cover price.

It used to be that "made by hand" was a mark of quality. In many ways, for the older generation, I guess it still is. Recently, though, I've come to question whether this is still warranted.

 

As little as 30 years ago, mass production techniques were relatively coarse, with questionable quality control. The marks of mass production were plain on most items: prominent seams on plastic items, off-center joins on assembled pieces, shoddy stamping and finish on metal items. Nothing a bit of post-production finishing couldn't have fixed, but nobody bothered.

 

From my perspective, things have changed quite a bit over the last few years. Even cheap consumer goods appear to be made to a high spec. Even if they're not incredibly robust, they're good looking: they meet the objectives of their assembly.

 

Now, rather than equating "made by hand" with high quality, I tend to read it as "not popular enough to be worth mass producing, your quality may vary." Undoubtedly there are marvellous things being produced by artisans and labelled "made by hand." I'm equally certain that for every one high-quality product, there's a hundred low-quality one whose main selling points are uniqueness and quirkiness rather than quality.

 

I'd argue, however, that even the uniqueness is an artifact of the number of pieces being produced (not many people can have one) instead of an explicit personality imparted to each piece. It's human nature, and certainly capitalistic, to produce goods as quickly and efficiently as possible if you're making many of them. You do this by finding a routine or groove and sticking to it.

 

The next time I see "made by hand" on a label, I'll remain suitably unimpressed, and wish the manufacturer enough success to move to an automated assembly line :)

 

 

 

I've been travelling a lot for work recently. In the last four months I spent 41 days on the road, and I'll be taking another week-long trip sometime soon.

 

Travelling for work is a good way to get a lot of stuff done, but it's also a great way to burn out. Two trips ago, I worked both for my work time, and during my entertainment time: work was too accessible, and there was too much to do, so I did very little EXCEPT work. As a consequence, I was exhausted when I got back to Cambridge.

 

My next trip out, I did two things for my mental health: stayed at a hotel further away (and a little more pleasant to spend time in), and re-enabled my World of Warcraft account. Despite the dangers of addiction, I figured having something to tear me away from work would be a good thing. And it was.

 

Now I'm back in Cambridge, and I'm still playing. I've managed to keep WoW from being the huge time sink it used to be, thanks to a bit of moderation and the fact that my wife isn't playing this time around. Still, I play a couple hours a day, in the time I'd normally be playing other games. Which is a shame, because I've got six XBox-360 games waiting for attention. Ah well.

 

WoW is still an amazing game. They added a large expansion 'Burning Crusades' since the last time I played, and it looks amazing. So much more to see and learn! I'll be extremely interested to see how much longer it remains the dominant MMOG.

It's Monday morning, and I've managed to drag myself into work at a reasonable time. It's been a rough couple weeks as the stress and the number of things to do build up. Ironic, since I've got a job I love.

 

What do I mean by 'a job I love'? Four days out of five, if I was independently wealthy, and among my many options one was coming to my job and doing what I do for no pay, that's what I'd do. I believe strongly in what I'm doing, it's intellectually challenging, and I feel like I'm working to change the world (albeit in a relatively trivial manner). It's a good feeling most days.

 

One of the challenges of a job like this is the danger of investing too much of yourself in it. In my case, I've got no kids or external obligations pulling in any other direction. This makes it easy to get sucked in. Setbacks in the job start feeling like setbacks in real life. When something big doesn't work out, I'm devastated, and spend days or weeks moping around both at work and at home.

 

Last weekend I explicitly distanced myself from work. I normally check email a dozen times a day, I didn't touch it for two days. Instead, I played games, mowed the lawn, made cookies (a few of which actually got cooked instead of being eaten as dough), and watched a dozen 'lost' and 'house' episodes. By the end of the weekend, I actually felt human again, ready to come in and do what needs doing this week. And maybe, just maybe, enjoy it.

 

Beware the job you love: if you wind up hating it, you'll have only yourself to blame.

 

 

Despite my lack of faith in the space program - and the validity of space travel as a national goal, vs other priorities - I've still kept an eye on the private groups working on building a private rocket. The group I've been watching the longest is Armadillo Aerospace, run by John Carmack, more famous for his work on Doom and Quake than his space enterprises.

 

Up until the X-Prize was won, he updated his site every week with progress his team made towards a viable rocket, through a variety of fuel and engine technologies, and vehicle shapes and goals. After the X-Prize was won (by someone else), the updates dropped to once a month.

 

Even so, I find myself looking forward to each status update, and checking his site repeatedly as the right time of the month rolls around to see what's happening. It really paid off this week, when I was treated to a movie of their spacecraft taking off, flying up 50m or so, and then landing on a separate concrete pad after about 2 minutes of flight. It doesn't sound like much, but a controlled vertical rocket flight of this magnitude is something I haven't seen since the DC-X met its end famously many years ago, and it's an amazing achievement, especially for a small (if well funded) group of amateurs working only on weekends!

 

If you're interested, check out Armadillo's news update, or just go straight to the movie.

 

Congratulations Armadillo, I'm looking forward to seeing how you do at the XPrize-Cup lunar lander challenge this fall!