Dear Diary,

Here I am in Irvine, California for a workshop on “studying professional software design” which is probably more accurately called “studying how professional software designers approach design problems”.

The flight here was boring, as all good flights should be. Checking in was a minor disaster as Qantas’ Brisbane check in system had fallen over and could not be made to stand back up. I was in line to check in at about 9.20 for the midday flight but stood still for more than an hour. Eventually Qantas gave out some coffee vouchers so they could clear the queues. They had to manually check in a plane-load of people to Hong Kong, I would guess a 767s’ worth, before they could start processing the 747 to LA. Once checked in getting through Brisbane International is fairly easy and I was through security, passport control and secondary TSA-mandated screening in good time. The plane was in to LA only a hour late and a brief van ride on LA’s simply ridiculous highways got me to the hotel relatively safely.

Lunch at the Hotel restaurant (not worth it) and dinner at some sort of Mexican place up the street that advertised itself as “authentico” and now it is time for bed.

there are some days when I would rather be dealing with the most difficult client than my kids, because even difficult clients adhere to some kind of social etiquette

My wife, on one of the differences between clients (she was a lawyer for the federal government) and staying home with our kids.

But:

It’s short and oh so sweet and when it’s over I’m really going to miss it.

(via School Bells « Marice Kraal)


  “Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.” 
  — Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance


Pirsig’s friend, who didn’t want to learn about motorcycle maintenance, had a BMW R60, though I have the feeling that the bike in the book has a pillion seat.

(This photo is 3031cf-R1-15-sepia by oregon ducatisti on Flickr)

“Other people can talk about how to expand the destiny of mankind. I just want to talk about how to fix a motorcycle. I think that what I have to say has more lasting value.” — Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Pirsig’s friend, who didn’t want to learn about motorcycle maintenance, had a BMW R60, though I have the feeling that the bike in the book has a pillion seat.

(This photo is 3031cf-R1-15-sepia by oregon ducatisti on Flickr)


  “The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.”
  — Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance


The bike Pirsig rode on the journey in the book was a Honda CB77, just like this one.

(This photo is Parked After a Short Ride by Honda CB77 Restoration) on Flickr)

“The test of the machine is the satisfaction it gives you. There isn’t any other test. If the machine produces tranquility it’s right. If it disturbs you it’s wrong until either the machine or your mind is changed.” — Robert M Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

The bike Pirsig rode on the journey in the book was a Honda CB77, just like this one.

(This photo is Parked After a Short Ride by Honda CB77 Restoration) on Flickr)

the-stig: youmightfindyourself:

The Orquestra Voadora playing a Michael Jackson cover in the streets of Rio.

You know who doesn’t like Latin-flavoured Michael Jackson covers? Terrorists.

Cite Arrow reblogged from the-stig

Let this be a lesson to you.

I changed my template to have proper markup and my tumblelog moved from 7th hit for my name in google to first. The System Works!

(That is, I switched to one of Bill Israel’s great templates because I am too lazy to edit a template myself but not so lazy that I won’t check the source to see if the theme uses h1 properly. Or at all. Yes, I’m looking at you, vast majority of tumblr themes.)

I believe that when people talk about solving problems with technology, what they’re usually talking about is solving problems with design…which is to say, the application of psychology in a visual & functional context.

Kottke (via mjhoy)

I’m inclined to agree in so far as I believe that the people Kottke encounters also have this view of design, and indeed of technology.

I also believe that when people talk about solving problems with technology, what they’re often talking about is solving problems with computation… which is to say the application of algorithms in a social and societal context. And that this is a Bad Thing™ and I would prefer they were talking about things in the way Kottke is.

Cite Arrow reblogged from mjhoy
AI watchers predict that natural-language search will replace what some call “keywordese” in five years. Once search evolves from an awkward word hunt — guessing at the key words that might be in the document you’re looking for — to a “conversation” with an AI entity, the next logical step is vocal conversation with your computer. Ask a question and get an answer. No reading necessary.

Patrick Tucker (via chrbutler)

AI watchers have been predicting something of the sort for more than 30 years now. Hubert Dreyfuss has been critiquing the sort of AI that proposes conversational machines since 1965.

Lucy Suchman showed in 1987 that machines lack the ability to “converse” with people because of the mis-match in the context that humans and machines perceive.

In any case, search already is a “conversation”, but you have to choose to see it that way. If you search for something, and then use the results that come back to inform your next search, that’s a conversation.

The other half of what Parker’s article describes, which is basically perfect natural-language spoken speech recognition, is, in my opinion, basically impossible to build using current sub-symbolic and statistical techniques which work well for closed simple domains (for occaisionally large values of simple) but fail, and fail in an opaque way, outside of those domains.

Cite Arrow reblogged from chrbutler