The Rovers and the Voyagers

Every once in a while I wander over to the NASA page on the Mars rovers. You probably remember those guys - six-wheeled semi-autonomous robots we sent off to Mars several years ago, figuring they'd run for three months before the Martian environment killed them off. Well, they're still running around on the red planet, five years after their three-month warranty ran out, and I'm frequently amazed by that. When Mars and Earth are on the same side of the sun, 50 million miles separate them. Read that again: 50,000,000 miles, when the planets are close to each other.

Mars's temperature averages about -60 C, or -81 F. That's cold. There's little, if any, oxygen (though I suppose that helps prevent corrosion), and dust storms are fairly frequent, which is a problem if you're solar-powered (as the rovers are). And these guys are still running.

And then I think about the Voyager spacecraft. The Voyagers, who were launched when JFK was president, are each now over 8 Billion miles away - that's billion with a b (Voyager 1 is 9.9 Billion miles away). And they're still collecting and sending data back, and still fueling discoveries.

Wow.

Mars Rovers: http://marsrovers.nasa.gov/home/index.html
Voyagers Spacecraft: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

Set your computer free

Historically, music has been mixed with a rack of filters, amplifiers, and such, and many computerized mixers seek to reconstruct the tactile mixer. Ethan explores a simpler method: using the computer to set the software free from the hardware. It's a design technique that might work well in other arenas, too.

No, it's not okay

Often, when a computer is unable to comply with a request, it brings up an error window to tell you as much. All fine, though I'd of course prefer that the computer do as I ask, but that can't always happen. What I don't care for is that I have to click 'ok' to clear the window. What if it's not okay? Don't I get a choice here; can't I register my dismay?

Hooray for open code

I'm not sure how, but my Firefox profile corrupted. I created a new profile, but the generic bookmark toolbar of the new profile stubbornly refused to be overwritten by my imported older toolbar. The solution? Open the profile's bookmarks document in TextEdit, pull out the code that gave the generic toolbar precedence, and give that code to my toolbar.

Hooray for open code!

WALL-E

I saw WALL-E last weekend (the weekend before the 4th, that is). This movie has had a long period of advance advertising, with cardboard WALL-E models in theater lobbies and such, and when I first saw those models, I thought that this was a sort of cartoony Short Circuit, and I wasn't really interested. Even when I learned that it was from Pixar, I wasn't intrigued, which indicates a shortcoming on my part, since Pixar generally puts out a good, thought-provoking product. But I caught a review in the paper (The New York Times, I think) and leared that the movie, though animated, digs into some very real issues: what is the likely outcome if we human beings continue in our present path of consumerism and laziness. The outcome is potentially bleak, and all the more so as we don't really seem to notice what it is that we're losing. Just now, for instance, in one of my rare free moments, I'm sitting here at the computer blogging instead of playing with my ca

I don't know about you, but I'm in favor of armed kangaroos

While developing VR helicopter flight training software, Australian techs included some kangaroos, they being a common sight in Australia. As they were using object-oriented programming, they did this by taking the object they had used for the other terrestrial creatures, which happened to be enemy soldiers. Unfortunately, since this was object-oriented programming, the kangaroos inherited all of the coding that underlay the basic enemy soldier: including the capability to fire back at the helicopters.

Urban legend states that the kangaroos fired stinger missiles at the helicopters. Snopes disagrees, stating that the glitch was discovered very early in the programming - so early that weapons had not been programmed in any further than firing the default profjectile: a large multicolored beach ball. My interpretation of this is that no pilot trainee was ever faced with a beach ball-wielding kangaroo, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was left in as an option that could be activated, if so desired.

If Star Wars was an RPG

Less than a week ago, I stumbled on Irregular Webcomic, a series of several occasionally intertwined comic strips done with Lego minifigures and figurines made by someone else for RPG purposes, whose subjects cover many of the things I was into as a teen (and in a closeted way, I suppose I still am into). The comic has published close to 2000 episodes, so it took me two or three days to get through them all, but that's because I had other things to do as well (e.g. work, clean out the cats' litter box). The comics also include humor at a variety of levels, some of it based on misunderstanding, some of it meta, some of it involving early 21st century physics - basically, marvelous stuff for geeks such as myself and several of my friends, and in cases where an understanding of science is necessary, there's often an explanation given below the strip for the uninitiated. Check it out for yourselves.

The gentleman behind Irregular Webcomic, however, is also involved with Darths & Droids, a reimagination of Star Wars as an RPG. [Ed: those ignorant of RPGs may stop reading here.] Ah, yes, you think, another RPG set in the Star Wars universe. But no, not exactly. This comic imagines that there is no such thing as Star Wars, that Jedi Knights and the Force are character classes and phenomena dreamed up by the GM, and regarding which the players have no clue ("It's a type of Monk named after a cheese. Lawful Good, unfortunately.") and part of what is so marvelous about this version of events is that it allows the writers and readers to ponder over and poke fun at some of the peculiar decisions made in writing those six films. Or, one film, so far, as they're only about as far as the beginning of the pod race in Phantom Menace. So, check them out, to.

Online editor

As writing moves away from traditional publishers run by professionals with on-staff editors to at-home and on-line printing with no editor save the writer and his computer, editing has fallen by the wayside. In some cases, this doesn't really matter. Whether an email contains a few misspelled words or not doesn't really matter - we understand the trade-off between efficiency and accuracy. However, in some cases we want someone else to look over our work before we submit it, and we'd like that someone to be more than the squiggly red and green lines we might find beneath our misspelled words and gramatically incorrect phrases. This need becomes even more urgent as our own editing skills atrophy through lack of use.

Someone has capitalized on this need. Gramlee (TM) employs a staff of independent editors who promise to turn around smaller documents (less than 4000 words) by email in under 24 hours (longer documents may take longer). How good they are I don't know, but the notion of an online service of this sort appeals to me, for although I have a fair understanding of grammar and spelling, I am not perfect, nor am I a very accurate typist. This sort of service may be of use to me for my more important writing (e.g. my thesis), though I think that I'd want a single editor, rather than a pool of editors, to work with for my novel, assuming that I ever get said novel to a point where an editor would be called for.

I can also see the use of such a service for others who lack the time or skills (or inclination) to edit their own work. This might particularly be of use to those who are struggling with the intricacies of English either because it is not their native language, or because they haven't been taught how to properly communicate with formal, or even semi-formal English. Some of my SAT students, for example, have great difficulty with the basic rules of grammar (more on that in another post) and their college essays would benefit from professional editing. Unfortunately, I suspect that many of the students who are most in need of this service are those who are least able to afford it.

There is also the question of misrepresentation. If a college entrance essay is supposed to give a sense of the person who wrote it, might the use of a professional editor be misleading, if not unethical? Or perhaps the point is more the ideas and their articulation, rather than the raw mechanics of writing that an editor would be concerned with. In either event, I don't think that I can recommend this service to my students (not that they could use it for their exam essays) as it probably conflicts with my status as a Test Prep Company employee. Further, having not used the service myself, I can't vouch for its quality. Nor can I say that it is better, or cheaper, or faster, or what-have-you-er than its competitors (if it doesn't have competitors yet, I expect it will within the year.)

And, I am forced to acknowledge that my own application essays were looked over by a professional secretary who was well-schooled in spelling and grammar (viz, my mother), and I expect that many of my fellow students at the time had similar help from their parents or teachers. So, I suppose that schools expect there to be a certain amount of editing. That being the case, perhaps mentioning the availability of such a service might be acceptable, if I don't mention any specific service.

Freeware, free software threaten Microsoft

The New York Times is reporting what many computer users already know: freeware and free software have grown to become a real competitor for Microsoft's products. But the Times goes one step further, and states that it now appears that M'soft is taking notice, though analysts debate how much notice M'soft is actually taking. It's about time.

I say this for a few reasons. First, if M'soft is recognizing that it has real competition, it might pay more attention to quality control. Second, this suggests that Microsoft's monopoly may be starting to crumble, which would be good for competition. I expect there are many programmers who have hitherto refrained from creating or releasing their products because they doubt that they can prise any customers away from M'soft. Third, this also proposes that off-site data holding is becoming increasingly available. Where previously I had to have my floppy disk, Zip disk, laptop or thumb drive with me if I wanted to work on my [insert name of paper or project here], now I merely need an internet connection; the paper is saved on someone else's computer, and I access it through the 'net. Fourth, though I recognize the right of a software developer to charge for his software, I don't enjoy paying for software any more than anyone else. Perhaps even less so than some people, my finances being what they are.

More on this later. I have to go teach cell bio.

Re: your mail

I used to be kind of embarrassed about the amount of email, much of it unread, in my email inbox. Then I read this article in the online Wall Street Journal, having been directed to it from this blog entry. Knowing that I'm not alone makes things a little better (I rejoiced when the school said it would delete all email older than 3 months from their servers this past summer. Unfortunately, they haven't made good on their promise).

Part of the email problem, it seems, has to do with too many people emailing out "free brownies in the kitchen" emails. But a lot of it has to do with indiscriminate use of "Reply to All". Last year someone forwarded a message to a previously little-known listserve here at the school, and everyone responding to it felt obliged to Respond to All, generating 20 or 30 emails regarding whatever the original message was about. People who found themselves on this email list now had 20 or 30 extra, unwanted email messages, and wanted off of the listserve - "Please take me off this list" they wrote, and hit "Reply to All". This, of course, generated more email in everyone's inboxes, prompting more "Get me off this list" email, and eventually the "get me off this list" emails outnumbered the original messages by at least three to one. By the end of the day IT had shut down the listserve for the weekend. When they restarted it Monday morning, several more "get me off this list" emails appeared before the whole thing finally died out.

Now, the school does provide a spam blocker with their email service, but that only catches email that is either flagrantly spam or comes from the company that holds my student loans. All of the friendly fire slips through. My solution is to sort directly from the inbox to the trash: "reminder - talk on psychoceramics of middle europe", trash; "sublet available", trash; "For sale", trash; "[No Subject]", trash. "For Sale" deserves special note. It looks helpful, on its surface - "ah, this person is selling something. Is there anything that I want?" Trouble is, there are things that I want - a new printer, a '73 Pacer in lime green; but I have no idea if this person is selling them. "Car for sale," or better yet, "1973 lime green Pacer for sale" would be more helpful.

Some people take their jobs too seriously

The Medical College, in its infinite wisdom, decided that all of its students' computer accounts were security liabilities, and decided that their passwords now need to be changed every 90 days. The initial setup also required using three or four of the following: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols. No more than four characters in a row could be repeated from any of the past two passwords. Or maybe it was three - I can't get into my account right now to read the requirements, so I don't have access to the email instructions.

This isn't the first time this has happened.

I really do wonder what The Medical College thinks is so valuable in our accounts. I also wonder who's making the security decisions, since the real vulnerability of the accounts has not been addressed; while I don't know of any student accounts being hacked, about once a month someone forgets to log out, and a facetious classmate makes use of this by sending an embarrassing email from the unlocked account to the whole class. Why don't logins expire after a period of inactivity, if the accounts are so valuable?

Monday I get to go in and inconvenience the IT staff when I ask them to reset my password. In the interim I will not be able to clean out my inbox and my email will meet and exceed the storage limits set by IT's administration, no doubt creating computing havoc in some corner of The Medical College's empire.

For the moment, though, it's kind of nice not to have email access - all those problems that I can't learn about and so needn't address.

Maybe I'll suggest that we be required to change our passwords every 90 hours, instead of every 90 days.

Subject line, anyone?

I really dislike receiving email with no subject line. If you can't be bothered to include a subject line, why should I be bothered to read it?

Note that a subject line of "hi" is just as bad, in 99% of cases. If you're writing me to ask to borrow my flux capacitor tester, then your subject isn't "hi", it's "[can I] borrow your flux capacitor tester?"