61 posts from 2007

I've spent a decent amount of time overhauling my home automation app Shion to included some new features that I've been planning for the past couple of months. The software is available here and I have a short post about it here.

This is the first software release under the aegis of my new venture Audacious Software. This is an entity that I've established for the purpose of consolidating and furthering my open source efforts. I need to make a few things crystal clear about this new arrangement:

1. At the present, Audacious Software is roughly structured as a company, but it is not (yet) a real company. Financially, Audacious Software exists as a separate checking account under my own name that that receives donations and affiliate income from my personal software projects. These funds are only used to support further development of projects under the Audacious banner and I do not pay myself from these funds. To give an idea about how these funds are used, I am planning on purchasing some X10 modules for creating X10 compatibility in Shion and I will purchase a Kindle electronic book reader for integration with Books.

2. I will begin distributing my personal (read: non-academic, non-research) projects under the Audacious Software banner so that my individual projects can complement and advertise each other instead of existing in isolation. I'm proud of the software that I create and I believe that it's time that Books users became aware of my other applications (like Shion) and vice versa. Over time, I would like to build a strong "Audacious Software" brand so that I can hit the ground running after I complete my graduate education (should I choose an entrepreneurial route and make this an actual software company).

3. I have no current plans to distribute my academic research projects under the the Audacious banner. This includes any projects that involve an academic collaborations or joint publication. This includes my current work in context sensing applications and ubiquitous user interfaces. I draw the eligible/not-eligible line at collaboration because I feel that for code I create on my own, I'm free to do with it as I like. Likewise, it would be inappropriate of me to post code and other work that I did not entirely create on my own.

Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, I'm happy to say that I'm pleased at how well this all came together over the past week or so. I've been doing quite a bit of infrastructure work (blog, forums, etc.), and I'm glad that's almost finished. However, I'd appreciate any feedback on the website, the products listed within, etc.

Holly encountered this shirt while surfing the Penny Arcade website. She didn't understand what this was and I didn't know either:

The Golden Ratio?

If it's good enough for Super Mario...

I ran across a fun and interesting holiday charity that I'll be participating in this year: Mustaches for Kids. The way that it works is that I collect pledges from loyal readers such as yourselves and over a four week period, I'll grow a mustache. Should I make it to the end of the four weeks (with a mustache), I'll collect the pledges and deliver them to Chicago's Off the Street Club.

Next week (Nov. 19) is the kickoff meeting and I'll be taking and posting a picture of my cleanly-shaven face on this weblog. I'll post my progress each week with a new mugshot.

This is the first time that I've done anything like this, and my goal is to raise $250 dollars for the charity. If you'd like to make a pledge, please send me a note at mustache@aetherial.net (or any of the usual channels) and I'll add you to my pledge sheet.

This should be a lot of fun and a creative way to get my camera-shy mug online for the world to see. Make a pledge now!

Through the magic of RSS, I ran across an interesting blog entry titled "A Nerd in a Cave". The author describes "caves":

My Cave is my intellectual home. My kitchen is where I eat, my bed is where I sleep, and my Cave is where I think. Everyone has some sort of Cave; just follow them around their house. It might be a garage full of tools or a kitchen full of cookware, but there is a Cave stashed somewhere in the house.

This observation certainly hits the mark in my case. For those that have visited me, they all know that my current cave is the guest bedroom that houses my Mac and bookshelves. I spend more time in that room than the rest of the apartment (probably combined). It's certainly a nice cave, but not my ideal one. I spent a few minutes between Subversion checkouts and commits thinking about what my ideal cave would look like.

This is what I came up with:

1. My cave would be a smallish room (10' x 10') located in a basement or other subterranean location. Unlike the cave described above, it would not have a window. The underground placement is ideal because it is isolating both physically and mentally. No windows to the outside provide the opportunity to lose track of time and fall into The Zone. The underground isolation also allows my cave to be as quiet or loud as I wish.
2. My cave would be furnished with the following pieces of furniture: a large desk, two large lamps, two small lamps, a mini-fridge, a futon, and a large bookshelf. The desk is where I work. The lamps allow me to adjust the environment to suit my mood. The mini-fridge provides refreshment. The futon provides me a place to rest or think. The bookshelves house my "useful" books and geek toys (such as my Macross Valkyrie collection).
3. My cave would be designed such that I can exist entirely within it for short periods of time (2-3 days at most). For example, if I have a deadline to finish a significant project, I should be able to enter my cave and not exit until finished. (Some allowances may be made for bio breaks or getting some fresh air.) The futon provides me a place to crash when necessary.
   
4. The cave is designed to optimally support the following contexts: getting work done, getting thinking done, reading, and uncompressing. My personal work style is that I'm most productive if I can switch gears when working on a project. If I'm wrestling with a difficult programming problem, I often like to take a step back and let my subconscious chew on it while I read an unrelated book or watch some TV or a movie. I should be able to decompress without leaving the cave.
5. In contrast to Rand's cave, I don't want or need a window to the outside world. Isolation can be useful. Likewise, I'd prefer that my cave be slightly cramped instead of a bit too large. The rationale for a cramped space with no window is that it encourages me to go outside once in a while to get some fresh air, exercise, and clear my head. My cave exploits my latent claustrophobia by encouraging me to go outside at regular intervals.

So, in an ideal world, my cave would be a square room with 10' sides. The walls would be painted a dark color (maroon sounds nice) and the door would be in the corner of one of the sides. Facing the door would be a futon with two side tables with lamps. In the other corner on the side with the door would be an L-shaped desk where my computer sits. On the floor by the wall between the desk and the futon lamps would be the mini-fridge. Opposite of the fridge (and between the door and the other side of the futon) would be my bookcase. The futon would be arranged so that the computer monitor could serve as an impromptu screen for watching TV or films. Underneath the futon would sit a pillow and blanket for those times when I nap in my cave.

On the wall by the door outside of the cave, a digital picture frame is mounted that gives outsiders an idea about whether I'm in the cave, whether I'm interruptible, and how long I've been in the cave. Close to the cave (ideally in the hall leading to the cave) would be a bathroom for the occasional restroom break or shower. Those of you who remember my dorm room in Brown my junior year have already seen a prototype of this ideal cave. While that room was not the ideal shape for the cave, it did serve quite well as one when needed (Winter 2000). The cave described above is an evolution of that basic idea.

People watching my del.icio.us feed lately have probably identified the recent trend of me adding Michael Yon's dispatches from Iraq to my suggested reading list. Today, Yon posted an important dispatch provocatively titled "Resistance is futile: You will be (mis)informed". In this dispatch, Yon takes the traditional corporate press to task for their shoddy reporting in Iraq. Yon describes the disconnect between what we see here in the states and what's happening on the ground:

I was at home in the United States just one day before the magnitude hit me like vertigo: America seems to be under a glass dome which allows few hard facts from the field to filter in unless they are attached to a string of false assumptions. Considering that my trip home coincided with General Petraeus’ testimony before the US Congress, when media interest in the war was (I’m told) unusually concentrated, it’s a wonder my eardrums didn’t burst on the trip back to Iraq. In places like Singapore, Indonesia, and Britain people hardly seemed to notice that success is being achieved in Iraq, while in the United States, Britney was competing for airtime with O.J. in one of the saddest sideshows on Earth.

No thinking person would look at last year’s weather reports to judge whether it will rain today, yet we do something similar with Iraq news. The situation in Iraq has drastically changed, but the inertia of bad news leaves many convinced that the mission has failed beyond recovery, that all Iraqis are engaged in sectarian violence, or are waiting for us to leave so they can crush their neighbors. This view allows our soldiers two possible roles: either “victim caught in the crossfire” or “referee between warring parties.” Neither, rightly, is tolerable to the American or British public.

In his post, Yon goes on to describe some of these disconnects between the mainstream reporting and what's actually happening. Unsurprisingly, the mainstream press does not come through looking good.

Longtime readers of this blog and its previous incarnations are likely aware of my conflicted past with respect to the Iraq war. Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations initially made me a staunch supporter as I bought in to the rhetoric that Iraq was an immediate threat that needed to be dealt with in the post-9/11 era. My staunch support quickly turned to disgust and opposition as we (the American public) discovered that Powell and the Bush administration exaggerated the threat and had mired us in a conflict that we had no business being in. I disliked Saddam as much as the next fellow, but I felt that his ouster was a poor use of American treasure and soldiers' lives. However, I also subscribe to the "you break it, you buy it" philosophy, and I became against any premature withdrawal that would produce a messier situation that we'd have to clean up later on.

I was not very optimistic about the conflict until General Petraeus was appointed to lead the Iraq effort. I had been following Petraeus' progress since early in the war, when he did a wonderful job bringing stability to the areas his units controlled. Early articles (such as this one from the New York Times) convinced me that he was the sharpest knife in the drawer and that he was probably best qualified to lead this mission. To this day, I remain a staunch Petraeus supporter.

About the time Petraeus was appointed to lead the Iraq effort, I began to pay attention to the independent reporting of Michael Yon again. I had read Yon's dispatches in the past, but they failed to "stick" to my attention. However, earlier this year, something made me begin reading Yon again and his dispatches currently enjoy a special place in my RSS reader. Contrary to all of the bad news coming out of the mainstream press, Yon provided many examples of why we should be optimistic about Iraq. He reported on the good men on the ground doing a heroic job of helping this country off of its knees. He shared details about the local population's repudiation of insurgents. Most importantly, he provided a rare glimpse of what was happening on the ground at the level of the individual soldiers and local populations. And in my opinion, he did it much better than the regular professional media in Iraq by going out and putting his neck on the line day after day after day.

I'm happy to report that for he first time since the beginning of the conflict, I have a sense of optimism about the mission in Iraq and I'm no longer convinced that we're wasting money and men trying to bring peace and security to a nation that refuses it. Despite the idiots we may have at the political level, the military men and women in Iraq are doing their jobs and success or failure will not be the primary result of the administration's or opposition's speeches and policies. The outcome will depend upon the collective actions of those on the ground - soldiers and Iraqis alike.

Yon's reporting has been instrumental in restoring that "everything will be alright" feeling. His reporting has done a stellar job illustrating exactly whats going on at that local level between our soldiers and the local population. And given this glimpse, I have a lot more confidence in the Iraq mission than I did a year ago. I hope that Yon continues his stellar work.