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.

The Simpsons Movie

We went to see The Simpsons Movie earlier tonight. It was good but it wasn't as good as I had hoped. The problem? I think it had too much of a story.

The defining things about The Simpsons for me is all those absurd jokes they throw in constantly which are just out of the blue. Sure, the episodes in the series do have some kind of a plot or story. But I find it secondary, it just sets the scene where they can do all these short absurd jokes.

So the problem I have with the movie is that they've cut down on the short absurd jokes. All jokes are longer and relate much more to the main story than in your typical episode. I think it's for the worse.

But that being said, I still had a lot of fun and I would still recommend the movie. It just that I don't think that it lives up to the standard of the show. If you haven't seen it, it's a good hour and a half.

Who does what in the U.S. legal system

There is no shortage of crime shows on TV. Solving mysterious, perverse and/or obscene murders seems to be a very popular spectator sport. I also watch my share of these shows. Some of the ones I watch include CSI, Jordan, Law & Order, Shark and Numb3rs. But while I enjoy these shows they also greatly confuse me.

Solving cases typically involves evaluating evidences, interrogating suspects and witnesses, checking alibis and trying to fit all of it together. The peculiar thing with the crime shows is that all of these things are done by a single profession in each show, but the profession changes between shows. It ranges from the coroner, crime scene investigators to cops or lawyers, all depending the particular show.

The only show (or rather set of shows) that seems to have a more realistic tack is Law & Order. They have all the professions of the legal system represented and working together. It's actually kind of cool to see how the cases starts out with the detectives to eventually move over to the attorneys who needs to make the final conviction happen.

Sure, I realize that this discrepancy between between series is there to cut down on the number of main characters and make their work seems central and important. But when you compare CSI and Shark it just seems ridiculous. Obviously, they can't both reflect the reality. And even if the truth is somewhere in the middle the gap between them is so big that I think they're both pretty far from how it's really done.

Oh well. I'm glad I got that off my chest.

The IQ of a group

A funny quote:

The IQ of a group is equal to the lowest IQ of a member in that group, divided by the number of people in that group

One of the teams in the ICFP programming contest had this as its group name.

Aptonym

I'm always excited to learn new, almost useful, funnily sounding words. Today I've learned a new one: aptonym. Wiktionary describes it as:

A proper name that aptly describes the occupation of the person, especially by coincidence.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to think about any person who's name is an aptonym. However, the place where I learned about this word, this freakonomics post, called for it's reader to supply some examples. You'll find some really good ones there.

A bit of Wisdom

I don't know about you, but I sometimes feel something lacking in the blogosphere. I read a lot of blogs and sure, it's both fun and educational, I'll give it that. But it's often very shallow. Short pieces of text about some recent event which the writer has probably thought about for maximum a week. What I want is a little more contemplation, ideas which have matured from decades of experience, some deep thoughts. In other words, I want a bit of wisdom.

Now, wisdom is hard to come by, even in the real world. And even when you find it you won't always recognize it as wisdom. It can certainly feel a bit elusive that way.

But there is one blog that I read occasionally which I think offers a bit of wisdom every know and then. It's the raganwald blog by Reg Braithwaite. Somewhat surprisingly Reg's blog is mostly a software technology blog and I certainly don't expect to find any deeper thoughts there. Once in a while you can find some good advice on such blogs but anything out of the ordinary. But Reg has learned some hard lessons over the years and seems to be a contemplating man so he has some very valuable things to share. Although most of the things he says is phrased in terms of programming, software development or management many things are generally good lessons that have much wider applicability.

I will refrain from throwing out quotes here, instead I'll give a list of some of my favorite posts raganwald: What I've Learned From Sales, Part I: Don't Feed the Trolls, What I've Learned from Sales, Part II: Wanna Bet?, R-E-S-P-E-C-T and Still failing, still learning. I'm sure there are many more, I haven't read all of his posts. Also, many of the more technically oriented posts are very worthwhile reading, in case you're interested in the subject. Maybe I'll talk about that another time.

End Credit Music

Which piece of music is the most important in a movie? Well, I'm a film score buff so I wouldn't start ranking the music but there is one piece of music that gets an awful lot of attention from the studios. It's the end credit music. It's the music that sets the mood when you leave the movie theater and you will carry with you when you've finished seeing the movie. So naturally quite a lot of thought go into getting the right kind of mood into that piece of music.

I usually don't write lists on this blog but today I give you a list of some of my favorite pieces of end credit music.

• Extreme Ways in the movies Borne Identity and Borne Supremacy. My bet is it will be used for Bourne Ultimatum as well.
  
• Wake Up from Matrix.
  
• May it be from Fellowship of the Ring.
  
• Into the West from Return of the King.
  
• Lose Yourself from 8 Mile. I'm not sure about this song was actually the end credit piece as I've only seen this movie once but the song is good nevertheless.
  

What's my criteria for good end credit music? The crucial thing is the first twenty or thirty seconds of the piece. It has to suggest the right kind of mood which has to be in accord with the rest of the movie. It doesn't have to be a very good song, for instance, I don't particularly like Wake Up but it's beginning fits very well in Matrix, and that's what's important.

iPod woes

It's supposed to be the best mp3 player on the market. For me it has meant nothing but trouble.

Where I work, at the computer science department at Chalmers, we have a very nice tradition to buy a gift for any person who successfully defends his or her PhD thesis. This spring it was my turn to get a present from my colleagues and to my delight they gave me a fifth generation iPod sporting 30Gb of memory and the capability of showing movies. Awesome. Or so I thought.

It all started when I unpacked my brand new iPod and plugged it into my computer. For once I had actually read the manual and did exactly what I was told to. Yet after a short moment the player became unresponsive and it seemed like there was no way I could get it to do anything with it, even turn it off. This is why one of the first things I learned about my iPod was that it has an equivalent to Ctrl-Alt-Del, a key combination which reboots the player. So after rebooting things went fine for a while.

Unfortunately I've needed the rebooting feature quite a lot. It often happens that when I plug the iPod into my laptop it just freezes. But this is not the only annoying thing it does. Often when I've synchronized it with my laptop it seems like the iPod was totally erased! I can't see a single file, music or otherwise. The first time this happened I was quite alarmed. What had happen to all my music?

Fortunate things work much better when I synchronize with my wife's computer. First of all the iPod doesn't hang or lose all it's music. But what's even better is that it restores all the music that seems to have been lost. I think what happens is that the file system on the iPod becomes corrupted when I sync with my laptop and my wife's computer can somehow repair it.

What am I doing wrong? I'm running both the latest ITunes and firmware on my iPod and I haven't fiddled around with it in way that could potentially be harmful. I'm playing strictly by the book.

It seems there is a short term solution to this and that is to only use my iPod solely with my wife's computer. I find this rather unsatisfying as her computer is painfully slow and it makes me very impatient. I guess I'll have to buy her a new computer :-) But at the end of the day, I'm rather disappointed with the instability of my iPod. I had quite high expectations on the ease of use and robustness and it has failed miserably in this respect.

Steve Jobs, if you read this, please fix the software on your music player so that it doesn't behave like a Windows computer from the 90's.

Super Villain

Your results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom 52% Mr. Freeze 49% The Joker 46% Riddler 44% Mystique 44% Magneto 42% Apocalypse 40% Lex Luthor 36% Poison Ivy 36% Catwoman 35% Juggernaut 32% Dark Phoenix 31% Venom 30% Green Goblin 28% Two-Face 16% Kingpin 15%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test


Apparently I'm Doctor Doom.

If you want to take the test yourself try it out at the "Which Super Villain are you?" quiz. Found via Andre Pangs blog.