The Goldfish Chronicles

A week since my last update. Life continues to be busy.

The new job role has turned up the heat - I’m going from looking for things to juggle to juggling lots of things - especially with the old job role still intended to fill my time.  Each day at 4pm I tend to be exhausted - not due to lack of sleep (tonight’s late night not withstanding) as I get lots of sleep, but due to having nearly all my time outside of work and sleep being filled with Nathan.

I’ve managed to do a little coding. Commons Collections is getting closer to the next bugfix release - real close, and Codec too. I’ve started moving towards Lang 3.0 - including such wonderful things as removing deprecations! Maybe… depending what the opinions are etc.  It continues to be what I call dim sum coding - coding that works well with a high amount of context switching. Tonight’s late night comes from committing an extra hour or two to breaking the back of a painful serialization issue [mostly just in terms of figuring out why it didn’t like the test framework, and then once I had real tests why it wasn’t working in the first place].

Levi’s growing happily along. A fair bit of work as any new baby is, but still being remarkably chilled. Nathan’s also a delight and we’re starting to get a weekend routine, him and I. Must repeat this weekend despite relatives being here.

Just realized that I should have pointed out that James put out a Quartz 1.6.1 release candidate. I got involved with Quartz while at SourceLabs and have since kept a bit involved.

Anyway, consider yourself informed

Reading my wife’s blog, I realized I hadn’t followed up on the original post here for Levi with more details on the post. Carrie has most of them in her birth story entry.

The main thing that will stay in the memory for me is actually watching Levi come out - largely due to being a part of the process [I got to hold a leg - Carrie’s not Levi’s] rather than relegated to hand holding as I was for Nathan. It’s a pretty amazing thing to watch - the head is this flat pancake at first, then seems to inflate. Purple face, no sound, the obvious worry from the expectant mother as to whether things are good - to which of course the expectant father says things are fine (like I have any clue… he’s a purple pancake honey, couldn’t be better eh?) and then a wriggle of the shoulders and out shoots a baby. Literally.

More worry for the expectant mother as he’s not yet made much of a sound beyond a “*gurglegargle* Hey this is breathing” type of thing. Compounding her realization that the doctor, while deftly unwinding the cord in a sleight of hand moment to make a Vegas magician proud, had commented on the cord being looped twice. Then finally some crying and the expectant father’s job of dishing out liberal doses of optimism and calm is done. Now to focus on the baby, record some video footage of those first moments, cut the cord (wooop! didn’t get to do that last time either… damn chewy things they are) and be impressed that the doctor seems to have bleeding etc well in hand. Last time it sounded a little bit like we’d be off to surgery any moment, this time it was focus and efficiency.

Then it all calms down, accept the congratulations of the meconium team, and take newly cleaned baby over to his mother for some relaxing and shock that he seems to get the boob thing. Finish off with phone calls to the newly minted grandparents (from the room! You mean I don’t have to head out to the car park to phone this time?) and of course the lad who has just become a brother and the birth was over and it was time to get Levi through his first few days, many poops, guzzling of milk and some surprisingly long naps.

He spent his first 8 hours feeding and crapping like he was born to do it (err….) and then slept for 5 hours. Lad was full.

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?

Update on life….

New job role… busy. I came back a week early and had 1 day of slack before the new role filled all my time

Levi - doing superbly.  Putting on the pounds one ounce at a time, sleeping moderately well and a big fan of music. Pretty much anything with a melody will make him happy, though he does not like the concept that one track ends and another starts.  He also screams blue murder when those little yellow stains are working their way into his nappy.

Open Source - I’ve managed to find a few moments to work on the odd patch; and am getting closer on being able to turn off the OSJava JIRA and have a static version that sends people over to code.google. I also created some infrastructure over at Atlassian’s developer site so I can start working towards my JIRA plugins being supported by Atlassian. Given how simple they are, seems an easy win for Mike and his aussies. Two more Apache board meetings to go as a board member, and then I get to try and find time to regularly attend as a member.

Other… This year is about my family; much more so than Open Source. I want to do more with my sons in my evenings rather than hacking on code and letting them play with themselves. Once Levi understands night and day, I’ll get some evening time back, but in the meantime I need to get Nathan to football lessons, to the park for kite flying, t-ball and bicycle riding, to start learning his letters and to improve his Mario Kart Wii skills. Lego Mindstorms too - after being addicted to playing with the designed Lego spaceships, Nathan made his first original the other day by using two discarded tie-fighter wings to create a flying wing.

Lots to do - never enough time.

I’m struck with a newborn about the monkeyness of it all. He’s currently shedding his birth layer of skin, it’s a light covering of small body hairs, including hair on his ears. A ‘down’ would be the correct word, though you have to look closely to see it. Apparently it’s sometimes very noticeable. Very monkey-like.

Babies come out with the instinct to grasp things, especially hair. It’s almost as if they’re expecting to hang onto their mother’s belly as she swings through the trees. They like swinging motions too, have agile toes and parents are always impressed at the strength of their newborn. I wonder how well a human newborn could do the monkey thing if their parents just had the genetic grace to still have copious body hair. I wonder when newborn monkeys are able to hang on on their own.

There are two very human things [I think] that strike me about newborns. The first is ’shhh’. I’ve read that this works so well because it’s similar to the sound of a mother’s heart while the baby is in the womb. Many cultures have the word ’shhh’, and it’s because in this case, the sound came first. We say “SHHH” in cinemas not because that’s a word that evolved, but because it’s the first sound we heard. I wonder if any monkey’s say shh, and I wonder if that was our first word.

The second thing is melodies. I also recall reading that for premature babies, babies born before the hunger reflex exists, researches have found that playing melodies is a sufficient reward structure. That is - we like hearing melodies before we know to feel hungry. Levi definitely likes melodies, I swayed monkey-like to Pink Floyd’s Division Bell earlier this morning and he happily fell asleep in the sling [his first Daddy sling wearing, and his subsequent first walk out into the cold to post some bills]. That begs the question - do monkeys like melodies, is it a human trait. If a human trait, it seems an early one. I seem to recall some memory that ape mothers will sit and croon to their baby, but whether that is a shhh, a melody or another noise I’ve no clue.

Must search the internet, for it will not lie to me.

As to the title of this post… I pondered earlier while Levi cried; “What would a monkey do?”. Pick fleas was my answer, so I sat and rubbed and picked at the hair on his head. He quietened up and fell asleep in my arms.

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.

More of a pre-announcement than an announcement. Pictures aren’t up, movies haven’t been edited, the middle name is not 100% decided upon, but Levi was born yesterday evening (Friday 18th). Carrie’s doing well, and Nathan adores his baby brother. Levi’s taken to feeding and filling his nappy with equal talent, and we’re looking forward to when he stops being nocturnal. Carrie’s tired, but it was a relatively quick delivery so she’s doing very well. We’re extremely glad to have Carrie’s mother here - taking care of Levi, Nathan and trying to catch up on sleep would be a losing battle with only the two of us. He was a 8 lb 12 oz baby; 20 inches long. More details, picture and story once we are a bit more recovered.

An actual fun blog meme, so I’ll take part. ’sup’ is svn update, and ’ss’ is svn status. I use tabbing a lot, and tabbing and history files do not work together, however there’s no reason to suggest the %age breakdown below would be wrong. ‘open’, is an OS X command to do the equivalent of double clicking a file.

124 vi
82 cd
79 ls
47 svn
30 grep
27 ss
20 more
15 mvn
10 sup
9 open