Word of the Day: Hagiography

hagiography, writing devoted to recording and glorifying the lives of saints and martyrs. This form of Christian propaganda was much practised in the Middle Ages but has few equivalents in modern literary equivalents apart from G. B. Shaw's play Saint Joan (1923). By extension, the term is now often applied to modern biographies that treat their subjects reverentially as if they were saints. A writer of such works is a hagiographer.

QOTD

The worst thing about new books is that they keep us from reading the old ones.

Joseph Joubert, 1754-1824

HV71 Swedish Hockey Champions!

My favorite hockey team became the Swedish champions yesterday! And what a victory it was.

They've been the favorites from the the very start of the series in the fall. And they lived up to the expectations by dominating the series, being the number one throughout the whole season. They've left the other teams to battle for second position.

The playoffs started well and until the final there wasn't really any problems. In the final they met Linköping HC which ended up second in the series, a very good team. It was good to see these two teams meet in the final as they had been the best two teams during the season.

The final is played best of seven matches and started out with LHC winning the first two games. Things were looking a bit slim. The third game when to sudden death and luckily HV71 managed to win which was just what they needed. In the two next games HV71 dominated the game and there were times when LHC must have felt completely humiliated, especially when HV made three goal being one man short during a single period. Those kinds of things just don't happen, in particular with teams as good as these. The match had now turned, HV71 leading three games to two.

The final match became a very even game with HV suffering from a lot of penalties. LHC also had their share of problems with referee decisions not going their way. After full time they had two goals each and HV71 was one man short for the first two minutes of sudden death. LHC had been playing well at the end of the third period and the match seemed to be going their way. But HV being experts in killing penalties didn't give LHC much of a chance. After five minutes of sudden death they managed to finish off the match. It wasn't the most beautiful goal in the history of hockey but it made them the Swedish champions.

Even though I'm heavily biased I must say that it was some time since there was such a worthy winner in the Swedish hockey league.

Fun city name

Department of fun city names is proud to present: Batman.


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Paul Graham released his much haussed programming language Arc some time ago. The general reaction was very negative, people had had very high expectations and were very disappointed. Defending himself, Paul Graham writes that this reaction is to be expected, the stuff he makes is often so ground breaking that people don't realize there is something important there. And he goes on to explain his six principles for making new things:

I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

This got me thinking about how I tend to make new things. I agree completely with points a and b. Point c doesn't always apply for me. Sometimes I do things just because they're fun, intellectually stimulating.

As for points d, e and f I usually do the opposite. I try to find the perfect solution from the get go and I usually don't release things until I'm completely satisfied with them. This is not how I would like to work though. I think they way Paul Graham does things is much better. I guess I'm afraid of the critique I will get from delivering imperfect solutions, especially to problems that don't seem important. I have to work a bit on my trust issues.

In the end, Paul Graham's article doesn't explain what important and overlooked problem Arc solves. I'd really like to know because I don't think it looks that impressive either. So please, mr. Graham, instead of just calling us dumb, please explain why your solution is such a stroke of genius.

Kim Hartman

It's the second week in a row with a major snooker tournament. A feast for all snooker fans. I thought it appropriate to write about something snooker related. So I'm going to say a few words about the man who singlehandedly has popularized snooker in Sweden.

Kim Hartman is the Swedish snooker commentator for Eurosport. He has a very unique way of commentating sport. Most of the time he is simply silent and when he talks it's in a very gentle paced baritone voice. It's simply music to the ears to hear him talk. On top of that he come up with the most colorful and sometimes whimsical expressions to describe the play. This has even rendered him an own fan site containing quotes from him. Here's a translation of one of my favourites:

To play snooker with a pool cue is like playing golf with a shovel.

Kim Hartman's style has become very popular; papers start recommending watching snooker to listen to Hartman, I've heard of seniors who have no interest what so ever in sport watching snooker all day long and he has been chosen the most popular commentator on Eurosport. So, without any real effort, just commentating the sport he has done an amazing job of popularizing snooker in Sweden. Quite a remarkable feat. I wished you all could have a chance to hear him.

An extra bonus is that Hartman has started writing comments on Eurosports Swedish homepage eurosport.se so we all get even more colorful quotes from him that way.

Brilliant short animation

A Pointless Comparison Between Three Random Shows

There are three American shows that I watch at random intervals: Letterman, Leno and Conan O'Brien. Which one is the best? I don't have an opinion on that specific subjection but I have a lot of opinions on what they're good and bad at. Here's my list:

• Best Interviewer. It's definitely Conan. He can be both serious and hilarious during the same interview and he usually has good questions. Letterman is second with Leno a boring third.
  
• Best Band. I think it's impossible to grade musicians, all the bands are good. However, there is one band that plays the best music by far and that is The Max Weinberg 7, Conan's band. I'd say Leno's band comes second and Letterman's a distant third.
  
• Best Writers. All shows have a crew of writers to write the funny parts in between the interviews. Leno has by far the best writers. They're doing some real comedy on that show. It actually makes you laugh. Letterman comes second here. It's not that funny but not as poor as for Conan O'Brien. His writers staff should be fired immediately. It's mostly just absurd, gross or stupid, only once in a while funny.
  
• Best Sidekick. This is rather a matter of who is the least bad side kick. Kevin Eubanks is quite OK as a side kick for Leno. Max Weinberg mostly does weird stuff but he is not as annoying as Paul Shaffer.
  
• Funniest host. Conan O'Brien win this one hands down. The way he can make jokes ad lib is second to none. He is totally hilarious on a regular basis. Letterman comes second here I think. I just don't think Leno is that funny without a manuscript.
  

I don't have a winner although Letterman has never been a favorite of mine. I think it will be interesting to see how it goes when Conan takes over Leno's show next year. Hopefully they can take the good thing from both shows to create something thoroughly entertaining.

How come I watch these shows? We don't have anything like these shows in Sweden and some channels show the American shows at times which suit me quite well. But I don't watch the regularly.

The Future of Science

From Kevin Kelly, former editor of Wired via Phil Wadler's blog.

"Technology is, in its essence, new ways of thinking. The most powerful type of technology, sometimes called enabling technology, is a thought incarnate which enables new knowledge to find and develop news ways to know. This kind of recursive bootstrapping is how science evolves. As in every type of knowledge, it accrues layers of self-reference to its former state."

What I got for Christmas

This Christmas I got a lot of toys or toy like stuff. I thought I'd give a sample of what I got:

• A unicycle
  
• A Picoo Z mini helicopter
  
• A powerball
  
• A complete collection of all the Calvin & Hobbes strips
  
• A replica of Darth Vader's lightsaber
  
• A Tiggr Hand Puppet
  

It feels like a bit of a jackpot. Lot's of fun stuff to play with.

So close, yet so far away

I use Gmail as my email client and it works really well. One thing that I'm really surprised by is how well keyboard shortcuts works given that it is just a web page. Google has been adding shortcuts successively and now you can do almost anything using just the keyboard which I think is nice. Today I say that they added the final touch to this: a help screen showing all of the keyboard shortcuts. To quite from the announcement: "It's easy to remember: just type "?" any time you have a question about a shortcut and need a reminder." That's just perfect! Now I can control Gmail pretty much entirely from the keyboard, and I can always just press "?" when I don't remember a shortcut.

Except for one small detail.

Continuing to quote from the announcement: "Then click anywhere off the shortcut menu in Gmail to dismiss it." Aaarrggghhh! So to dismiss the keyboard shortcut help screen I have to use the mouse?! The reason for having this help screen in the first place is to help me as a user use the keyboard more. Using the mouse shouldn't be necessary here!

Irony.

I hope the Gmail team have an easy fix for this and can implement it quickly.

EDIT: Sorry for my whining. There is a way to get the screen go away using the keyboard. Press escape.

New Blog

I've mentioned before that I've been thinking of starting a new blog which focuses on what I do for a living, namely computer science. Well, today it happened. The blog is called Computational Thoughts and the inaugural post is Learning Monads in 1996.

Our understanding of the universe

I have a lot to say about our current understanding of the universe. But I won't. I'll just show the following comic which sums it up pretty well:

The Vista Problem

So I've been running Vista for a little while on my new laptop. Not that much I should add though as I almost immediately installed Ubuntu as well. But every once in a while when I want to use iTunes or play one of those games that only run on Windows I tell grub I want to start Vista.

I'm not very impressed with Vista. What's the difference compared to XP? A bit of eye candy and an annoying dialogue that pops up every now and then to ask if I really do want to install a program (or something similar) when I'm trying to install a program (or doing something similar).

I hear Vista isn't selling so well and I'm not surprised. Why would anyone want it when the only thing it does is get in the way? We were promised lots of cool things like a new file system to rule them all. But feature after feature were cut until only DRM was left and I don't know of any computer used who had that on his wish list for new OS features.

John Dvorak's hypothesis about the failure to produce something new in Vista is that Microsoft has gotten sidetracked with all kinds of other projects. He thinks that Microsoft is looking too much at Google and losing sight of it's core business. I doubt that. Microsoft is a big company and it can do several things at once.

My hypothesis is the following: Microsoft is finally paying the price for backwards compatibility. The reason Microsoft can't deliver the new features they promised for Vista is that they're simply too difficult if they have to maintain backwards compatibility at the same time. Their codebase is deteriorating because of all the hacks and special cases they have had to insert just to make sure old programs work. And Microsoft has shown that it can be done, at least to some degree. But the deterioration is bound to catch up with them some time and I think this time has come. I think the only way for Microsoft to stay alive in the OS department is to cut backwards compatibility. Only then will they be able to add some new interesting features. On the other hand, cutting backwards compatibility will mean that it will be just as easy for people to switch to any other OS as to Microsoft's new one and that doesn't sound so good for Microsoft either.

Hmmm. If I'm right Microsoft has painted themselves into a corner. Not that I mind though.

Word day

As I have mentioned earlier I like to learn new peculiar words. And usually these new words show up one at a time which makes it easier to learn them. But today I've come across a whole fountain of exciting words and I'm not quite sure how to deal with it.

It all started out nicely when I was reading a research paper which had some exceptionally well written prose. The research content was good alright but it was equally readable for the language. So, in the middle of the paper I come across the word "chutzpah". Never heard of before but clearly derived from Hebrew. Clearly a useful word.

As a matter of fact I've taken two lessons in Hebrew. I have a friend who is pretty much fluent in Hebrew and he was going to give a course in it. Since he had very little teaching experience he wanted to practice lecturing and for that he needed some students. I happily volunteered. But I can't say I remember much of it now though.

The next word that showed up today was "trifecta". Exotic alright and semi-useful. But two words in a day is one too much if you don't want to spend too much energy on learning them.

But then the real killer came. A link to the site wordsmith.org. A complete treasure trove of cool exotic words. But it might be a bit more than I am ready to handle. We'll see what I do with it. Btw, I got the link from the freakonomics blog which have provided exotic words before.

Bourne Ultimatum

Finally! Finally, finally, finally! I've been waiting sooo long to go see this movie. And tonight we finally saw it. The Bourne Ultimatum.

This post will contain some spoilers so if you haven't seen the movie yet you should go see it right now and then come back.

Ever since I heard that Ultimatum was being made I have been eager to see it. I've seen the two first Bourne movies several times and I still enjoy seeing them. They are not your ordinary type of action movies, they have a smartness which I think is unparalleled in the genre together with some very well portrayed characters. And of course a truckload of sweaty action. All together they are among my favorite films which I come back to and watch over and over again. So you can imagine my expectations on the third movie.

Do Ultimatum deliver? Oh yes. Paul Greengrass, who made Bourne Supremacy, is back to make the final installment as well. He is now my hero. My current feeling is that Ultimatum is the best movie in the trilogy and to achieve that is no small feat. He has managed to step up almost everything. The fights are sweatier than ever, the surveillance scenes are more intense and the car chases... what can I say. I didn't think there was much to add in that area but apparently I was wrong. The only thing which hasn't been ramped up is the character development. But that is only natural as we know several of the characters quite well by know.

The movie contains quite a few references to the two earlier movies, most of which are rather subtle. For example, Bourne comes back to Tangiers. It is mentioned briefly in Supremacy that he was there but the reason for him coming back now has nothing to do with that. Another reference is when Nicky colors her hair make her self less recognizable, it looks very much like when Marie does it in Identity. A more obvious connection with Supremacy, which is also a very nice piece of scripting is how they include the end scene of Supremacy right in the middle of Ultimatum. I totally did not see that coming but I very much enjoyed it. Simply brilliant script writing!

The perhaps most beautiful reference to the older movies is the end when Bourne is shot and fall off a building and into the water. It's exactly how it all started, with Jason Bourne failing his mission and being chased off a boat and shot. We see pictures of him floating in the water motionless cut with a kind of epilogue showing what happens with all the other characters in the end. And finally when we hear on the news that they have found traces of Bourne he wakes up and swims away. Pure beauty in my eyes. I see it as a kind rebirth of David Webb. He is no longer Jason Bourne and in the water he gets his rebirth. It also gives closure to the story, it starts where it ends.

If I live I'm going to watch this movie many times. Maybe I'll have something more to say about it then, these are just my initial impressions of the movie.

Oh, and I was right about the end credit music. It was indeed Extreme Ways but it wasn't the same version as in the previous movies. It didn't sound like Moby this time, probably some group who'd made a cover. I would have preferred Moby's version.

Knuth and the Second Law of Thermodynamics

Nobody wants to argue with Knuth – it is the equivalent of arguing against the second law of thermodynamics.

From a nice article about Mature Optimization at Cowboy Programming.

A quote to make up for my lack of blogging

I've been blogging very little lately so I just thought I'd throw in a funny quote that I just read.

Don't anthropomorphize computers. They hate it when you do that.

Stuck In Your Head

I currently have a song very firmly stuck in my head.

I was watching a rerun of Scrubs late last night and after the episode I started humming on a song. After a while I realized that the song I was humming was from a Scrubs episode, but not the one that I'd just watched. It turned out to be the following song:

I've seen this Scrubs episode quite a number of time and I really like it, especially this sequence with Colin Hay singing "Overkill". It's just such a catchy song. I consider this episode a real classic among Scrubs episodes. It's not just that's good, it contains so much that is the essence of Scrubs, with all the relational conflicts and stuff.

Anyway, so how does songs get stuck in your head. It seems research find it mysterious too but this article explain it as some kind of brain-itch. And the cure seems to be to scratch it. The thing is, I seem to be extremely susceptible to getting songs stuck on my head. Once I had "Norwegian Wood" by Beatles in my head for several months. But it should be said that I didn't listen to the song even once during that period and when I finally listened to it a couple of times it went away. So I'll be listening to "Overkill" quite a lot for a few days now, so as to "scratch the itch". But not that I mind, it's a good song.

An Ingredient For A Good TV Show

I had a bit of an epiphany the other day about popular TV shows. As I mentioned in my last post the thing I like about The Simpsons is all the small absurd jokes they throw in all the time. But it's not the only show that uses this.

There's another show that me and my wife watch semi regularly, even the reruns, is Scrubs. Based on it's imdb rating I'd say it's a pretty popular show. That show is good for many reasons but one that I like in particular is the absurdities it throws in, all the weird behaviors and comments from the characters. While the humor is different from The Simpsons the concept is pretty much the same, although applied to a completely different show. And it works just as well in both.

Another example is Ally McBeal. The thing that made it popular and stand out was how it showed small clips of how the characters felt and what was going on in their minds. Not seldom was this rather weird and embarrassing stuff. Although different it is also in line with The Simpsons and Scrubs. Unfortunately the writing in Ally McBeal went downhill after a few seasons and the absurdities wasn't that exciting anymore. In my mind that's one important reason as to why it lost in popularity.

So there you have it. A nice ingredient for making a fun TV show. Have people say, think and do not only fun and weird stuff but push it towards the absurd. Now I only need to think of a set of characters and a cool environment for them and I'll start writing a pilot.