Doctorow Did It!

As I was catching up on my usual Web comics this morning (which were really on fire this week--see links in sidebar at right), I was especially amused by a thought that occurred to me when reading Wednesday's xkcd. If you've seen Cory Doctorow's excellent essay "Wikipedia: A Genuine H2G2—Minus the Editors" in the mostly disappointing The Anthology at the End of the Universe, you realize this comic's basically already been written. Have you seen that "Simpsons did it" episode of South Park? I couldn't help wondering if Randall Monroe has similar visions of Doctorow always one step ahead of him. Then again, in the case of those two, the idea-borrowing goes both ways.

Anyway, great comic anyway, as usual. Image courtesy xkcd.com and used by permission:



P.S.: I hate to badmouth anything DNA-related, but, seriously, The Anthology at the End of the Universe pretty much sucks. The notable exceptions are the Doctorow piece and the brilliant and hilarious "The Secret Symbiosis: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Its Impact on Real Computer Science" by Bruce Bethke. I work with these people--it's all true.

P.P.S.: I'm sure other people have pointed this out on the xkcd forums, but in my opinion the scraped away Kindle logo should have yielded "Don't Panic." It's an inside joke anyway--why not get it right?

Rave Within A Rave

My colleague David Meerman Scott just posted one of the coolest projects I think he's done: a video in which he hopes to demonstrate the power of and principles for creating what he calls a World Wide Rave by starting one around his new book of same name. I do editorial work for David and was involved in both the book (available from Wiley on March 3) and the new e-book (in which he explains how he put the video together), and I highly recommend that anyone interested in raising the online profile of his or her organization have a look at what he's put together. Watch carefully during the first few seconds!

Another Bootcamp

For those interested in computing, The Hacker Within will be doing our second bootcamp of the semester in a few weeks. See below for details (flyer by Katy Huff, our talented Director of Creative Affairs):

New Insights Posted

I mentioned in the last post that I'm taking over as the editor of the Engineering Learning Center's Teaching and Learning Insights newsletter for the semester. Just thought I'd mention that the February issue (which I did the markup and some light editing for) is posted at insights.engr.wisc.edu. I wrote an article for TLI last year and am looking forward to getting started on some articles for the March issue soon.

The Difference Is Maintainability

So I write a lot of Python, and one of the claims promoters of the language usually make is that it helps you write more maintainable code. I think they're right in that claim, and I think they're right to stress the centrality of the issue.

We've discovered over the years at St. Francis House (and in my research group, for that matter, and at Wisconsin Engineer, if I remember correctly) that maintainability is also essential--and difficult--on the Web (of course, this is really just another kind of source-code-maintenance problem). In a high turnover organization, it's especially hard to cultivate a continuous Web presence.

Say what you will about the low-powered solution offered by Google Sites, I think they're on to something, and I'm super-excited that we've ported the St. Francis House website over to this system. Sure, I wish it were a little more flexible and powerful. But I think you'll agree that it lets you construct reasonably attractive and well organized sites (nearby St. Andrew's uses the system as well), and I can attest to the relative ease of use over other options (and I like screwing around with webpages and have learned a lot about XHTML/CSS in preparation for taking over for the semester as editor of this site about engineering education). Most importantly, no FTP or SCP is required (we computer geeks take these tools for granted, but I think they can be just as much a barrier as HTML).

I think Google's got another winner here, at least for a presumably significant market niche (groups who want a good site but can't afford to pay professionals, especially for maintenance and updating). I'll keep you posted as to whether the feature-set improves in the coming months.

Holmes Slice

Just had to pass along a quick Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. snippet that was the "Thought for Today" in Wordsmith.org's A.Word.A.Day email:

Laughter and tears are meant to turn the wheels of the same machinery of sensibility; one is wind-power, and the other water-power.

This is the same Holmes (father of the Supreme Court Justice) who brought us the wonderful "Wonderful One-Hoss-Shay" which Henry Petroski writes so thoughtfully about in To Engineer Is Human. Sounds like an interesting fellow.

TV Plea

These days I watch virtually no television other than sports. There's nothing virtuous about this; I live three flights of stairs away from the set at our house, I'm busy most evenings and don't honestly have much chance, and--most importantly--I'm seldom able to find shows that I actually like.

Especially not on broadcast television, which is a shame. There's a great scene in Studio 60 where the eponymous show-within-a-show's network president is trying to woo a young writer who's created a drama about the United Nations and wants to take it to HBO. Knowing he once wrote an off-broadway play about Pericles, she appeals to Pericles's quote that "All things good should flow into the boulevard," the point being that she thought the show was too good to be tucked away on cable. I've always found that scene, and Sorkin's "glass tubes" ode to Filo Farnsworth in Sports Night, to be surprisingly moving. I can't remember what TV was like before cable, but I imagine it must have felt much more like a common experience than it does now.

Anyway, over the past two days I finally caught up with discerning TV watchers everywhere and caught Freaks and Geeks on DVD. It was, as a friend of mine once said of his not having read Infinite Jest, a point of growing professional embarassment. In my case, the profession isn't English literature--it's bitching about good TV shows always getting canceled. I have no legitimate claim to this profession (again, I am at best a failure and at worst a poser as a TV snob), but when your favorite TV shows are Sports Night, Studio 60, Arrested Development, Firefly, etc., it's hard not to take some kind of vocational interest in this high calling.

Aside from Studio 60, I didn't watch any of those shows while they were still on the air. And it seems to me that part of the fun of watching TV is blocking off a chunk of your week to get a little excited and to watch the new episode with friends. That's how I felt about Studio 60. It's how my dormmates and I felt as we treked to our buddy's house to watch Smallville each week during my freshman year. I can even remember my parents and I feeling that way about Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was a little kid in Florida. I think it's part of what's worthwhile about watching TV in the first place, and it prevents falling into the profoundly 2000s-era mailaise you get from falling in love with and then immediately having to say goodbye to a great cancelled-early show as you watch its entirety on DVD in grotesque marathon style (my eyes still hurt from last night's final Freaks and Geeks binge).

Here's my plea to the genuine TV snobs (or merely the very fortunate) among you on this Saturday morning: can someone please tell me which shows are that good right now? I don't have "Rock & Roll Lifestyle"-type aspirations of hearing of them first or anything. I just want to get to experience them the way TV was meant to be watched rather than in gloomy DVD postmortem. I don't read the Onion AV Club much much anymore (out of desperation to get some work done); please help me compensate and to have a genuinely positive TV watching experience, before it's too late. In the meantime, I guess I'll be tracking down the Undeclared DVDs.

Give Us Some (Ecumenical) Music

If you're looking for a Christmas music special to watch tomorrow night, let me recommend "Voices of Christmas" on CBS at 10:30 Central. It was produced by the National Council of Churches and hosted by Michael Kinnamon, who I met a couple of months ago and who's a brilliant, caring teacher and theologian (I'm standing next to him in this picture in the back row at right).

In fine NCC fashion, the special presents music from a number of member communions, which I think will be a nice change of pace from more monolithic specials from a single tradition. I've been a little down on the church these past weeks (and it always gets worse when I get home and start getting sucked into watching cable televangelists--just change the channel, Kyle), so Kinnamon's closing remarks in the preview below were like a breath of fresh air. Also, I was pleasantly surprised to see my friend Cassandra pop up in the interviews. Nicely done, Cassandra!

Two Beer-Related Recommendations

I met one of the hosts of WSUM's Beer Talk Today last night at a friend's housewarming party. Really interesting guy with fascinating insight into the local beer and food scene. Anyway, I checked out today's Year In Review episode and really enjoyed it. Consider it recommended; I've added a link to their blog at right, and you can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. FYI, their timeslot is apparently moving to Tuesdays at 9 p.m. when they return after the holiday break.

Speaking of recommendations, the beer that got us talking last night was New Glarus Brewing Company's new "Alt," a German altbier. A friend of mine happened to mention it to me a few days back, and the convenience store I stopped at on my way to the party happened to have it. Everybody at the party who had some raved about it, and I defnitely suggest that you add it to your holiday to-drink list. It's apparently not expected to last through December, so make haste.

Another Ad: Be Like This Guy!

I was reading an article on yellowcake today in an old issue of the Journal of the Minerals, Metals and Materials Society, and I just had to pass on this hilarious advertisement for becoming a professional engineer (PE). Granted it's ten years old and directed at folks who already have engineering training, but I couldn't help but think it's small wonder that we're having a hard time getting people interested in being PEs if ads like this are thought to be a legit recruitment tool.

By the way, Samuel Florman writes about the issue of PE licensing and much more in a fascinating book called The Introspective Engineer that everyone with even a passing interest in the field should definitely consider reading. I found it helpful to have a historical perspective on why engineering school is as unpleasant as it is (speaking of poor recruitment strategies...).

Florman's also a PE, albeit a (slightly) cooler-looking one. What he really looks like, though, is Ed McMahon.

Florman:




McMahon:

Another Hacker Within Ad

I know this doesn't make for a very exciting post number 100 here at CSC, but please help spread the word about this software carpentry training we're doing the week before UW-Madison classes start. Join us if you can!

Hacker Within Meeting Friday

I doubt I have too many UW-Madison computer geek readers who don't already know about this (if indeed I have any at all, which is also doubtful given my dire posting record of late), but on Friday at 2:15 in 414 Engineering Research Building, the Hacker Within computational science interest group that a few of us started this summer is going to be hearing from Tim Tautges:

Component interfaces or APIs should a) have the right level of abstraction, so they can handle new kinds of data without needing to be modified, and b) should be callable from multiple languages, and c) should not get in the way of good performance. I'll describe the ITAPS mesh interface, which has been designed to meet these constraints.

Sound cool? More importantly, does this look cool?:




If so, you should come by. What better way to celebrate the end of the semester? ;)

Worlds colliding

So, my friend and colleague David Meerman Scott has a new book coming out. As you can see, he's collecting pictures of the promotional poster hanging in people's offices, etc. I sent him my contributions today and just had so share, such was the glory of the juxtaposition. The first is boring old me sitting in my boring old office, computer screens ablaze (surprisingly enough, it looks like I'm actually getting some work done). The second one is me in the lab that a bunch of my classmates work in. That's the Inertial Electrostatic Confinement experiment behind me, a project of our department's Fusion Technology Institute. The IEC group does not endorse the content of World Wide Rave; they were, however, nice enough to let me get a shot with their gear. Anyway, I can't wait to see what David's got up his sleeve. Should be exciting.

Office photo

Lab photo

If you're surprised to see me in decent clothes, you're not alone. The reason is that I had to give a talk earlier in the day to some visitors from the University of Tokyo. I haven't talked much about my research here lately, so I posted the slides, IYI. Please note that although they should stand alone (legitimate thanks, Michael Alley and Co.), these slides do look a little mangled depending on what you're viewing them with (sarcastic thanks, PowerPoint 2007). Rest assured that I'm not a total moron when it comes to font choice.

As a general PowerPoint PSA, I suggest you also check out Tufte's rant about it--mostly because it's hilarious.

Update: Here's the photo on David's WWR page.

It's hip to be genuinely square

Just in case the blogosphere fails to produce any non-election-related material today (an absurd notion, of course, but do me a favor and grant the damn premise), I wanted to pass along an article my friend Erica posted recently: "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization."

Don't get me wrong, I hate the "oh, kids these days" mentality. I hate it in the middle third of Alan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind, I hate it when it rears its head periodically in the composition literature (every ten years or so, if I remember a couple of writing center scholars' talks correctly), and I hate it because I hate being referred to as a kid.

So apologies in advance for sending along what is essentially a "kids these days"-style rant. That said, it strikes me as pretty much the most wickedly fun rant I've read since Jon Pareles declared Coldplay "the most insufferable band of the decade." It also strikes me as true, but I would appreciate some insight from anyone who understands the situation better and can deliver me from what I suspect is an oversimplified view. Genuineness and originality are out there somewhere, right? Hipsters, help an engineer out.

Miscellaneous Updates

Let me surface from my digital dormancy (which one of these days I'll get around to writing a post to explain) for a couple of quick updates.

First, I went with some other UW-Madison folks to UW-Platteville Friday for a conference of the North Midwest region of the American Society for Engineering Education. We didn't stay for the evening banquet and keynote (nor obviously for the second day of the conference), but a lot of what we saw was interesting and encouraging. I was especially intrigued by Haiyan Zhang's paper "A Model-Based Multidisciplinary Correspondent Methodology for Design-by-Analogy" and frankly touched by the important work reported in Dale Buechler's fascinating "An Electrical Engineering Program for Place-Bound Students: The First Two Years." If you're interested in our paper, which was about ASEE student sections, you can read it here.

Second, you may notice that the above URL points to a non-UW-Madison domain. I'm trying to get untied from doing all my hosting on UW computers, and as a consequence you can now find this blog at blog.kyleoliver.net. I gotta admit, it's going to take a little getting used to being a domain owner. One early bummer: Blue Host servers don't have svn installed. Still, I'm excited to have a reasonably sustainable option for implementing that Holy Grail of personal file organization: putting your entire electronic life under version control (which, as my friend Matt points out, gives you superpowers).