The Goldfish Chronicles

Just finished making cocoa oat white chocolate cookies. Still warm and out of the oven - and I’m restricting myself to a mere three. Plus lots of milk to wash them down. So good.

Btw, I’m quite impressed with the Lux game for the Mac. It’s a fair amount of fun and I splashed out the cash… eventually. My old Dell laptop is getting very tired, but I’ve found I’ve been playing Microprose’s Risk on there a lot. Now if only Lux could add the Sametime feature, it’s a much better version of Risk - planning your moves without knowing what your opponent is planning at the same time.

In the spirit of finding something I agree with and using it to justify my belief; here’s a BBC report entitled ‘Web worlds ‘useful’ for children‘. The subject came up at the doctor the other week about how much TV a child was watching. The general rule we try to live to is that our son doesn’t watch TV alone (occasionally broken when absolutely necessary - such as Apache board meeting while Carrie is at the doctor), but that he either watches TV with us or we are playing video games together. Again, with the last bit - the rule is to not have him playing video games on his own.

The doctor’s view was that the visual display was the bad thing and he should not be spending much time interacting with a visual display - that it was damaging for his ability to work at school.

There are a few thoughts you get here as a parent.

1) AARGGGHHHH I’m a BAD parent.
2) Hang on… what’s medical about being a good student and why is a doctor preaching this?
3) Wait a minute, your definition of normal wouldn’t include me.
4) I want my child to be normal.
5) I don’t want my child to be limited by my generation’s (or the preceding generation’s in reality) view of normal.

Computers are invading every day life. It’s like saying you won’t let a kid near a hammer until they are old enough - no toy hammers, no helping you while you use a hammer, no getting to hit the nail in under your guidance (which Nathan and I had huge fun doing the other weekend btw… my son helped me put up shelves… it rocked). Social activity is increasingly through computers. It seems very fair to ask:

“What is a more valuable skill - socialization in the playground or socialization on the Internet?”

The answer is obvious to me - they’re equal. My point being that I’d rather see schools embracing the technologies that the article talks about rather than trying to block them. I’d love to see work done on having kids in the school all having a shared virtual environment (what we’d call a MUD back in the day eh?). Hell I want the same for an office - even today in a tech job I find that people want to pick up a phone (worst possible medium) or have a face to face meeting (good, but needs to be kept for important issues) than have a long running email or message board thread. People haven’t learnt to express themselves, or to innoculate themselves against flames and trolls.

The majority of employees out there are quite frankly unprepared for where the modern work environment should be going; and the solution is to hide things from our kids so they’re not prepared either (except through their personal lives - turning the environment into gossip and not constructive).

So there I sat having been told that studies show that TV stunts a child’s ability to focus; and I’m thinking “what about their ability to multitask? What you’re really saying is that schools can’t support multitaskers, just highly focused one taskers”. Looking back, experience agrees. I did well at school until it got really hard and I needed to focus deeply - I was used to multitasking. However, I did obscenely well up to that point because I could multitask. I’ve since taught myself how to focus deeply, but it’s multitasking that continues to be the increasingly valuable skill.

Side note… I remember a report that kids were getting better at multitasking. Maybe I blogged about it. The weird thing was that the report thought that was a bad thing. I was stunned. Kids need to multitask more; they’re adapting. What’s not adapting are the schools and the common wisdom.

I read Frank Miller’s “The Dark Knight Returns” for the first time over the last few days. I was a Marvel reading kid growing up, so didn’t get to see how the other half lived (yeah I know, the cool kids read indies… like you could find those in the corner of SW Herts/SE Bucks). I’ve brought a few Star Wars graphic novels over the last decade, maybe one a year, but this is the first real comic book in a long time. I’ll also be rereading “Kaven’s Last Hunt” - a Spiderman story I remember liking a lot. The Batman graphic novel was very good by the way - I liked it and recommended Carrie read it, but I doubt she will.

I took part in my last real Apache board meeting. I’ll be in the next meeting, but for the purpose of handing over the reins to the new board. I’ll also unsubscribe myself from a few more lists - the silence of being on so few lists (down to maybe 20 or so) is already deafening. I look over the shoulder at Carrie’s busy inbox and realize I can go a day without reading my email and it wouldn’t be much effort to catch up with the near empty folders.

Not a lot of Commons code though - Levi has been less happy in the evenings and I’ve been more tired. Carrie continues to bear the brunt of baby hours while I get Nathan to tire me out. I like the look of the Childsplay project - Python implemented games for kids. Coding GCompris didn’t interest me, too much C hackery to mess around with,
but Childsplay looks more fun to dig into. Need to get focused soon into writing some games.

Work is tiring - the old job keeps any spare moments that the new job allows nice and busy. Main thing I’m doing right now is grokking the build’n'deploy system - fortunately I like grokking build systems so this is one part pain in the arse and one part pleasure.

Lastly - I’ve spent some time running the numbers for house buying. There are two numbers that I find interesting. 1) What house can we afford with the same mortgage payments as our current rent, and 2) What house can we afford with the same interest in the first year as we’re wasting on rent. I began by factoring out property tax (pricey here), water/waste/sewage bill and rounding it up with $50 a month on ‘general repairs’. Based on that I worked out that unless we can find somewhere extremely cheap, it makes better financial sense to keep renting our current place.

Obviously that’s not a good long term plan - rent increases with inflation while mortgages stay fixed [I look at the fixed 15 and 30 year interest rates]. House value also goes up, presumably by more than inflation or at least what money in ’safe’ savings is likely to get - but right now house values aren’t going up and from a budgetary sense I find it very hard to justify buying. The mortgage tax bit doesn’t mean much as the amount we would pay in tax equals the standard amount for having 4 people in the house. Frustrating.

Slashdot are having a thread about e-books. For me the biggest problem with e-books is the same problem as with mp3s (e-music??): the product loses its resale value.

Up until now, most of the music and books we consumers have bought maintain some level of resale value. It’s minor, but it makes these items an asset. Unlike say a computer (unless it’s computer books), they are unlikely to become valueless, and in some rare cases they may increase in value as they become - well rare. I imagine I’m a rare person in North America with a complete original set of Hugh Cook’s Chronicles of an Age of Darkness. Of course - not the most well known author so I doubt it amounts to much

We all (well lots of people) worry about our books and CDs somewhat - our home contents insurance is expected to foot the bill of replacing them. Most likely it won’t buy much back, but there’s some insured value. We also pass the books down as heirlooms - my dad has a cool Anglo Saxon Reader from 100+ years ago passed down from his grandparents. I expect my parents library to fold into mine some day (minus whatever my sister and I agree she wants), and for my books to be passed on down. They’re physical - they have value.

What about e-books? Or digital music? If something happens to me, do the various companies have methods by which the inheritor acquires the digital ownership? Is iTunes better than the ‘5 computers and you’re out’ it started with? Of course music has got around that problem largely by reinventing the wheel every 10 years. Vinyl, false path into eight track, cassettes, CDs…. then they got a bit stuck. Will my CDs be of inheritable value or resellable value in 30 years time? So far the CD is hanging on as a medium, though whether any of my CDs will play in 30 years is another question [and I’m sure the vinyl will still be working then in custom made record players]. DVD jumps to mind, Blue Ray… All the bollocks about changing the medium yet again so the consumer can be bled for yet more money for products they already own.

The curse of digital, from the legal point of view, appears to be that it has a resale value of zero because resale is equivalent to copying. Much like the huge loss you make as soon as you walk off the lot with a new car, the book you just bought is now worthless to anyone else but you. Suddenly the insurance (backups… real insurance - are my digital music/books covered by my home contents insurance?) starts to feel more expensive because it’s being spent on a product with zero value. That awareness of zero value makes me far more likely to dispose of the book - or want to resell it - than before, and yet now I no longer have space constraints on how many books I can own. What an ugly cycle.

That is the plus side - I can have a bajillion books and not be constrained by the wallspace I have available. And not find my choice of house constrained by - “which room will the library be?”. The plus sides are really all about space. I can be reading one book on the bus, and switch to another without having to mess with my bag, or wish I was back home.

That raises other questions. Will an e-book fit in my coat? If so then that bag can be a laptop accessory (once I start buying lunch for the month from Fresh They upped the limit to beyond my weekly lunch shop; must be reading my blog the dastardly crew). Does an e-book have authentication so when it’s nicked it’s only an insured reader which is grabbed and not my actual books (plus notes).

How do I share the book I bought with my wife. Digital doesn’t seem to understand families the way physical did. Do I have to wait for my son to have an income before he can read his own copies of my books? What happens to second hand bookshops (or first hand). Let’s be blunt here - browsing for books in a bookstore is much more productive than a website (even if you end up buying at the website etc etc). Once books are digital, byebye bookstore hello hard to browse world. Bye bye browsing in a second hand book store for gems (and lots of overpriced junk… someone needs to tell that shop in Broadstairs that charing half price for an 80s computer book is a good way to guarantee space doesn’t get filled).

Oddly - that’s the biggest one for me. Family and books. The digital fork in the family book relationship. Ignoring that once that e-book collection is large enough my son will have to pay inheritence tax at full price because there is no second hand market; and that I’m sure someone out there thinks it’s evil that my wife and I read the same copy of the latest Terry Pratchett book, and that my parents watched a movie while at my house one day.

Copyright and Open Source work well together. Patents and Open Source appear to often be diametrically opposed. Trademarks…. these are fun.

The trend in Open Source with trademarks, including the Apache one, appears to be to emulate how companies handle their trademarks. That is - to keep them, you have to protect them. Protect is automatically interpreted as “hold close to your chest”. I’ve seen suggestion on the foundations@ mailing list that this is too much, and I heartily agree. What we need are trademark licenses.

“This is a license to use the Xxxx trademark for non-profit activities, provided they do not imply that the Foo Xxxx Foundation [or committers to the Xxxx project] endorse the activity in any way. For for-profit activities, please contact foo@example.com. ”

Obviously the actual text will need some thinking. I don’t give a crap if someone sets up a user group for Apache, that benefits everyone, but I do care if someone gains value from my trademark at detriment to myself. So if someone uses apache.net (no idea what is there) to set up the Apache Net Foundation, supplying open source software as a non-profit etc; well I’m going to care.

So how to be open about our trademarks, without being ripped off?

BBC says:

“The US Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to 2.25% in recent months to try to stimulate the housing market and consumer spending.”

and yet the mortgage interest rate continues to slowly climb. So I guess we’re using ’stimulate’ in the needle-in-the-heart sense.

First - there’s an advert that points out that kids usually take too much, especially toilet paper. Then they go on to explain how their new lavvy roll is ultra soft and you can take less off.

I throw my hands up in despair - apparently the plan behind the advert is to state the bleeding obvious, and then make a claim that is utterly unrelated. “Oh.. I’ll just explain that to my child and I’m sure he’ll take less off. Now he knows it’s nice and soft, we won’t find a toilet bowl full of paper when it’s time to flush”. I guess as long as the name sticks in your head (and maybe some idiot blogs about it) then they think it’s good advertising. Don’t make people believe your product is good - just make them remember the name. Brand advertising is so irritating.

Now over to Football. The Welsh sports minister has pointed out that he’d like to see the Welsh national anthem played at Wembley before the FA Cup Final, given that Cardiff have qualified. They won in 1927, which was the only time a non-English team have won, and the last time one was in the final (Cardiff were also runners up in 1925, and Queen’s Park of Scotland were runners up in 1884 and 1885).

My first thought - “Too right”. My second thought - “Hang on, what about the English national anthem?”. In those short moments I feel I’ve pretty much described the UK national question from an English point of view. “Sure”, and “What about us?”. Currently every game starts with the British anthem of God Save the Queen.

The various options listed over at Wikipedia are interesting. Cricket have been using “Jerusalem” since 2004. Rugby used “Land of Hope and Glory” for a while and then reverted back to “God Save the Queen” (though the fans seem to like “Swing Low Sweet Chariots”, or at least used to). The page also suggests “I Vow to Thee, My Country” and “Rule, Britannia!”. Interesting page to read - I think I edge in favour of “Land of Hope and Glory” with “Jerusalem” in second place. The Commonwealth games plays “Land of Hope and Glory” for England, so that one seems to be the closest to a national anthem, and the tune is definitely something that we’re used to.

I like giving my opinion. I can be quite logical at times, but often am happy to let my gut take over and make instinctive leaps. Both modes are fun and can assist in flow. I also tend to talk in trees, hoping to return back to the branch point and continue on.

Something I’ve had to learn over the last few years is to do that less. Due to the parallelization abilities of email such a habit lends itself to being the maintainer of long threads. Nowadays it has to be - less is more. Is that statement really valuable? Just because someone has pointed out that the proposed Commons J2ME should have a different name, would there be any value in my saying “Hey, Commons Mini!”. Often the answer is no. For a while this lead to enormous amounts of time spent writing emails; 90% of which was a hidden iceberg of text that was never sent. Not because I didn’t want people to know I’d written that text, but because I kept refining the focus of my text.

I don’t claim to be good at that yet btw. Screwing that up is still a regular offence, but I’m trying.

Part of learning to let it lie is at the heart of delegation. Trust others to have expertise in the area; chances are they have more expertise than you anyway. Figure out where your focus is most effective. An equivalent OSS part is delegating to a community of people - you know that the group are going to come up with the ‘right enough’ answer. It won’t be the one you personally wanted, but it will be one that after a discussion you’d have accepted as a compromise. So here the aim is to choose your discussions.

One other thing I seem to have a knack for is starting huge threads. I’m not sure if that’s because I have a social inability to understand that there is a white elephant in the room, or if it’s because I don’t do a good enough job building the foundation for a focused discussion.

On a related topic - something I need to start figuring out how to do is weaning myself of my achievement addiction. It might be okay, just once, to have an evening in which all I achieve is relaxation without feeling guilty.

Watched Children of Men tonight - very good. Oddly, the first movie I try to compare it to is 28 Weeks Later, which we saw the other week. Not because they’re at all similar in feel, but because it’s one a recent epidemic of “it’s all gone pear shaped” movies set in the UK future. This one has some nice touches and a good story line.

Oddly it was one that both Carrie and I wanted to watch. I was going through sci-fi award winners and adding to our netflix list, and she’d already added this having heard it was good (but no idea what it was about). Anyway - very recommended if you’ve not seen it already.