joel's thoughts

So, I’m poking around Heather’s blog, following links to other folks’ sites, and Kevin tells me to:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Okay, but this gets tricky. You see, the nearest book is O’Reilly’s vi Editor Pocket Reference. I turn to page 23, and am immediately faced with the question, “What constitutes a sentence?” Fully three-quarters of the page is the remainder of a table of program options, of which line 5 reads, “shell (sh) /bin/sh“. If, however, I go down to where there is actual prose, looking for the fifth sentence takes me to the next page and reads:

Each attribute is separated from the next by a tab character and consists of two colon-separated subfields.

So there you go. I thought I’d take another stab at it and grab the next-nearest, more actual-booklike book, which turned out to be the Perl Cookbook (O’Reilly again). It’s borrowed, as I’m only a Perl wizard wannabe, but it’s nearby nonetheless. The what’s-a-sentence question still comes up, though, but this time there’s a block of code in the way. Counting the previous three sentences, I get to line two of the code:

($var = <<HERE_TARGET) =~ s/^\s+//gm;

But if you take the entire code block as a ‘sentence’ (and one could make such an argument), then the fifth ‘sentence’ on the page is:

The substitution is straightforward

And there you have it.

Sheesh. I’m such a geek.

There’ve been a few things lately that I’ve thought I should get around to posting, and I still may, but right now I wanted to let you know that Andi’s just posted something you really should read. Yes, I mean now. Go.

Not much going on lately. I felt like I should post something so you didn’t think I’ve been spending an entire month grieving over my cat :P. I still miss her, but Katie and Keesha have been keeping my litterbox-cleaning skills from fading out ;). They’re cute, and they’re fun, but they’re teenagers, and not declawed like Sheba was when we adopted her. We’re hoping our furniture and carpets survive.

In other news, I’ve recently started an open source project I’ve called JTax. Yes, think TurboTax or TaxCut, only cross-platform (meaning it will run on Windows, Linux, and Mac) and free.

What’s open source? And why would you just give it away?
In a broad, general sense, software consists of a series of text instructions called “source code” that are compiled into a program or “executable”. (Note for grammarians: Yes, “executable” is generally an adjective; here, it’s not. Language is like that.) Whenever you buy software from a company like Microsoft, all you’re really getting (and all the computer needs) is the executable. The source code that created the executable remains Microsoft’s business secret, and for good reason. They spent a lot of time and money creating that software, and their business model depends on the fact that you can only buy it from them. If the source code were freely available, anyone could change it and sell it on their own, and Microsoft would soon be out of business.
The downside to that is that if there’s anything wrong with the software, or if you think of an improvement, you’re out of luck unless Microsoft does something about it. The open source software (OSS) movement is centered around the idea that you should have the ability to fix or modify your software. A common rhetorical question thrown out in the OSS community is, “Would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?” It’s not a perfect analogy, because having access to your car’s engine doesn’t allow you to create exact clones of your car and make a profit that should have gone to Ford. But it’s a useful question for trying to explain our mindset.

In a nutshell, open source software is software which provides access to the source code to anyone and everyone for fixing and improving. It’s usually free, although it doesn’t have to be. There’s lots of open source software out there, most notably the Linux operating system and the vast majority of software written for it. The Mozilla web browser, of which Netscape is the commercial, value-added derivative, is also open source. I feel like I’ve already gone on too long about this, though, so if you’d like to know more about what open source is, check out the Open Source Initiative website.

So why would I give away my work for free? Well, for one thing, I’m doing this as a hobby in my spare time. I don’t have the time or resources at my disposal to create a commercial product that could compete with TurboTax or TaxCut. And I like open source software in general, and like the idea that anyone can improve my code or pitch in and contribute their own. Basically, money isn’t my motivator here. I’m doing this for fun, and want to do it in an open and public way to see where it goes.

So, that said, JTax is currently hosted at Sourceforge, an incredible resource for open source developers. They provide an unbelievable amount of features and resources, completely for free. The JTax project page is here, but at some point when I scrape up a few extra pennies I hope to buy the jtax.org domain. There isn’t much to see at this point because I haven’t released any files yet, but I’m getting there. And I have no illusions that I’ll have something workable out in time for this year’s tax deadline, but I will be looking for people who have copies of this year’s TurboTax or TaxCut to help me verify my algorithms and such. If anyone’s interested, drop me a line. My email address is <my first name> at <my last name> dot net.

Goodbye, my friend. You are sorely missed.

Back in October the Washingon Post had an article about some researchers at Duke University working with monkeys and a robot arm. Essentally they implanted wires in the monkeys’ heads that let a computer record some brain signals. Then they let the monkeys play with a joystick that controls a robot arm in a full 3-D range of motion — they learned to use the arm to pick up objects and move them, including varying their grip on the joystick to vary the grip used by the arm. The whole time the computer was recording the brain signals and the corresponding robot movements.
The researchers then unplugged the joystick, and when the computer saw brain signals it recognized it moved the robot arm accordingly. That in and of itself is astounding, but it gets better. While they’re watching, the monkey realizes on her own that the joystick isn’t necessary anymore and simply stops using it, controlling the robot arm entirely with her mind.

Let that sink in a minute, and think about the possibilities. Enabling people with paralysis to accomplish complex tasks is one area with immediate potential, but it’s far bigger than that. Imagine all the things you could do with more accurate and responsive control of a robot arm (or two, or…?) than you could ever get with manual controls (i.e. via a joystick). Obviously you wouldn’t want to have hundreds of wires sticking out of your head, and you wouldn’t want to have to stay attached to a computer, but I believe these are resolvable limitations (the no-wires-in-the-head one being the trickier of the two, of course).

With that bit of news coming out only months ago, Canadian site CANOE is reporting that:

Researchers at the University of Calgary have found that nerve cells grown on a microchip can learn and memorize information which can be communicated to the brain.

With the monkeys, it was one-way information — the computer just “listened” to the signals the monkeys’ brains put out. Now we’re talking about going the other direction — generating signals that the brain can pick up and, in theory, understand. As my friend Craig rightfully stated, the implications of the first discovery are staggering. The implications of this latest accomplishment simply make my mind reel.

The building where I work is directly under one of the landing approach paths for Dulles airport, and my cube is next to a window looking north such that planes on approach suddenly materialize over my head and gradually get smaller on their way to the runway. I see a pretty wide range of planes throughout the day, from tiny Learjets to fullsize 747s.

Yesterday one of these came banking into the approach from the east. My brother used to be in the Air Force and had told me about them, but I’d never seen one myself before. Man, those suckers are huge.

I can see the headlines now:

NATION’S CAPITAL BROUGHT TO STANDSTILL BY 1/8″ SNOWFALL

Absolutely crazy. This time, though, I can’t blame it on people who just don’t know how to drive in snow. The roads really were pretty bad, particularly in the neighborhoods. It’s been below freezing at night for most of the past week, making the ground cold enough that hardly anything melts, so the little bit of snow made it almost like driving on a sheet of ice. There were of course reports of all kind of fender-benders and such, and one SUV on I-66 hopped the curb, went through a fence, and landed on the Metro rails early this morning. THAT fouled things up for awhile.

So anyway, I’m still alive and no, I haven’t forgotten about posting. Got the flu for Christmas and kept the cough for New Year’s — nice way to spend a two-week vacation, eh? I think I’m perhaps starting to get tired of the cough, though, so maybe I’ll give it up one of these days.

Work has been interesting the past few days since I got back, too. No one big project, just lots of little things popping up here and there like a whack-a-mole game. One day I feel like I’m on fire and could take care of three-week projects in plenty of time to be home for dinner, and the next I sit and stare at my laptop knowing what I need to do and not having the faintest idea of how to start. The girls had a couple of rough nights that got us very little sleep, though, so my brain’s performance has been spotty at best. Two decent nights now, though, so hopefully things are looking up. At least this (a gift from my lovely wife) is making my desk a little more fun :).

Bush’s future is looking up.

The President has been catching some flak lately for his apparent personal inability to capture Saddam Hussein and/or Osama bin laden. The crowd of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have been sure to point out this flaw in Bush’s performance, his approval ratings have been suffering of late due in large part, we are told, to this fault, and the media, who are always up for a good failure story, happily report it all. It would seem that Bush just wasn’t giving the right commands to the right people, or was misinterpreting intelligence information, or just maybe wasn’t eating the right breakfast cereal with the secret decoder ring that would have made it plain as day where to find both men. Naturally the public was concerned about this insufficiency, and one must assume (given the criticism) that the problem would be resolved were one of the candidates running the show (granted, in some cases the problem wouldn’t exist — Saddam would still be in power).

Lucky for Bush, he found the right box of cereal Saturday morning, and Hussein is now in custody. Not much from the candidates yet save for the occasional congratulations (what else can they say?), but the public was eating it up. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey showed Bush’s approval ratings go up a full 6 points from Saturday to Sunday, when the arrest went public, and an incredible 15 percent more people felt that the country was now headed in the right direction.

Unbelievable. I can’t believe we, as a country, are having this discussion. Whether or not to go to war in Iraq? Sure. Whether or not the current response to the security situation, or lack thereof, is making progress? No problem. Whether or not the administration has a workable plan for getting Iraq back on its feet and pulling out? Reasonable people disagree. But whether or not Bush himself is doing a good job based on whether or not our soldiers and intelligence people can locate one individual in all of Iraq and another individual in all of the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan*? Gimme a break, people!

I’m not saying his numbers should have been higher before or should be lower now. I just find it somewhat disturbing and oddly amusing that the public’s perception of the man some have called the most powerful in the free world has hinged so closely on the ability of a tired old man to hide in a hole in the ground.

*At best — for all we know he’s sipping margaritas in Tahiti. 😛

So here’s the thing that made me finally get off my duff and start posting something. Found this opinion piece in the San Francisco Chronicle (via this post on Slashdot) questioning the wisdom of schools nationwide spending boatloads of cash on putting computers in classrooms while simultaneously laying off teachers and closing school libraries. Ever since I saw a webcast a few years ago of a speech by Cliff Stoll (author of, among other things, “High Tech Heretic: Reflections of a Computer Contrarian“), I’ve had fairly strong reservations about the use of computers in classrooms. I think Oppenheimer hits the major points fairly well here, though if this were a book I would hope to see some specific hard data to back up some of his claims.

What it really comes down to is this: what exactly are you trying to teach the kids? What most people think of as “computer skills” can be taught to kids in much less time and with far fewer resources than we’re throwing at them. Employers can train new hires on the software-du-jour. They can’t (economically, at least) train them to think critically, communicate effectively, or handle numbers accurately. Are we teaching kids skills they can learn just as well later in life at the expense of abilities they only have a short window to develop? There are all kinds of things traditionally available to kids in school that are extremely difficult if not near impossible to pick up as an adult. Think languages, musical instruments, art, etc. These are the things that are losing out in the “budget crunch” while spending on overpriced, short-lived technology continues to go through the roof.

Those of you who know me know that I’m far from a “Luddite.” I’m a programmer, I run Linux, I dig gadgets, etc. But a computer is as much a “good” thing as a gun is a “bad” thing — it’s not. It’s a tool, albeit a rather powerful one. There’s a saying that “when you have a new hammer, everything looks like a nail.” It seems that schools have found a really really expensive hammer, and I’m afraid of what’s getting pounded out of the budget to support it.

Hmm…there’s probably a political cartoon in there somewhere. Too bad I’m not an artist…

Well, here we are in December already, and I’m just now getting to posting something. I bought this domain back in February of 2001, got hosting space for it in February of this year (2003), and set up the blog software (Movable Type) in April. But I never started posting because I wanted to tweak a few things and get it set up the way I wanted it to be first. Meanwhile Andi’s been posting for a month and a half and I keep thinking, “hey, I oughta post something about…” Which brings me to this, the twelfth month of the year, and that elusive time to persue perfection remains unfound. So I’ve decided I’ve just been rather silly about the whole thing, and I should just post what I want and worry about tweaking and fiddling later (including thinking of a better title than “Joel’s Thoughts”).

So here I am! Feel free to stop by as (in)frequently as you like, sign my guestbook, comment on my blindingly brilliant or (more likely) incomprehensible posts, and in general make yourself at home. Fair warning, though — I’ll be all over the map from my kids to politics (heads up, Jeff 😉 ), tech, faith, and anywhere else my fancy leads me. Should be an interesting ride…