Archive for April, 2008
Nifty - Flat World Knowledge looks like a illustration of the open-source business strategy of getting a larger slice of a smaller pie - or in this case, a much larger number of much smaller pies.
Linuxfest Northwest is going well. We’re tucked away in the back room of a back building, but still had a good turnout for the OLPC track; it got off to a rocky start because only 2 of the 3 presenters we thought we were going to have were able to make the conference, and Iain and I had to scramble last-minute to cover some things we hadn’t prepared to talk about.
I was quickly reminded that I’m much better at facilitating conversations than I am at making presentations; I don’t like “performing,” but I do like talking to people and hearing what they have to say (and usually to prime the pump I have to give some background info anyhow, so I end up doing a much more relaxed mini-presentation and not realizing it). I’m therefore scrapping all my talks tomorrow and having everyone get out of the classroom rows and gather around to toss about ideas instead.
How will this scale if I become a professor and get assigned to teach a 300-person lecture class? I don’t know. Not very well, most likely. One thing I’d love to do someday is take an acting course or two because I have rather significant amounts of stage fright (I am a very shy introvert - most people don’t know how much it exhausts me to be “social” and talk to folks I’ve never met before). Stage fright makes me talk fast, babble, and not think coherently. I need to feel connected to my audience to be comfortable - actually, I need to think of them as dialog partners rather than “An Audience.”
Talking with some folks after the conference today, I was also reminded of my strange dance between software and hardware. Well, not so strange; many electrical engineers have gone into software before. Thing is, I keep wanting to “go back” to hardware even as I move deeper into software, just as I want to “go back” to engineering even as I get more involved with education. I itch for the tactility of making things, but know I’ll have a richer experience if I come at both from an oblique angle.
For the hardware/software dance, I usually explain it as a desire to learn good software (particularly open-source) development practices, both the effable (tools used, procedures…) and the ineffable (unspoken community norms and attitudes picked up via osmosis). From my limited experience with hardware development, hardware folks could learn a lot from software folks about good tools and processes for making stuff. I haven’t learned enough of it myself to nicely articulate exactly what they could learn - ask me in another few years and I’ll probably have a better answer. So there’s the “I’d like to learn from this field and bring it to the other one” aspect, but there are other parts to the equation as well.
The overromanticized bit is that there’s something nice about code that stands between the solid grubbiness of engineering implementations of Real Stuff and the the gleaming asympotic mental fit of theory. There’s a tantalizing hint that here is fantasy made flesh, castles springing up when you as much as exhale (”paste!” “buildout!”), mental constructs manifested with as little manual labor as possible, and where mastery implies the power to appear as if you make things just by thinking. A few magic words, a twiddle of fingers, and BAM. The world outside your screen changes. That’s harder to do with stuff that requires physical manipulation and creation of objects. It takes longer.
It’s also easier for me to participate. In a distributed, text-based world, I have no input processing problems whatsoever. (All right, I’m working on the languages thing - but let’s assume this text is in English.) No straining to hear, no delayed reactions brought on by trying to figure out what someone said. I feel like my quality of thought is higher in this medium because I can devote my concentration to thinking about the conversation at hand and the work to be done rather than deciphering the blurred sounds that come from other people’s mouths. I’m working on finding a hardware community that works this way - there are several groups I’m starting to like, but I need to make something to check out how well the new theoretical system of collaboration-with-people I’d like to use will work with hardware.
For the education/engineering dance, I usually explain it as “I want to learn how engineers learn before I learn to be an engineer again.” I’m fascinated by the process by which makers are made, mostly because it’s still foreign to me, like how a second language you learn as an adult never feels quite the same as your native tongue, no matter how fluent you may become. I can forgive my slowness in going along the “conventional” route of learning engineering (a route I couldn’t traverse fast in any case) by making my slow journey “worth something” by observing it and writing it down and trying to study the journey itself while I’m taking it.
At least these are the stories I tell myself now. They may change in the future; they usually do as new interpretations present themselves.
Oh. I was quite tempted by a book on getting started with kernel development (and another on device driver development) today, along with a thick sysadmin reference. 20% off. These are all things I’d love to learn, but I know I shouldn’t spend money now, nor get books to haul back to Boston, nor bite off more projects because I’ve got plenty to chew already - but I really ought to find a way to take these things on as an assignment at some point… One thing I never have a hard time coming from a place of abundance for is things I’m fascinated by and want to learn and do.
Saturday, April 26th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
I called to wish her happy birthday at about noon Seattle time and expressed my regrets at not being able to greet her in person at that moment. “I hope your father doesn’t buy me flowers again,” Mom said. “Oh, I think he can come up with something better,” I said. “I gotta go. Talk to you after dinner?”
As it turns out, the “something better” was a surprise party, and I was phoning mom from the O’Hare airport in Chicago about 30 minutes from our house - our plane had just landed. This particular surprise party abused frequent flier miles tremendously. My brother and one of my parents’ close friends flew out from California. I came from Seattle. 5 of my mom’s 7 sisters plus one cousin came from Boston, Seattle, and the Philippines (well, they were visiting Seattle anyway). Another cousin came up from the U of I, another cousin from Ohio (with her boyfriend), and friends of my parents’ came from all over the place. We made cardboard cutouts (almost life-size) of the sisters (my aunts) who couldn’t make it and propped them on chairs.
Ironically, Mom had helped surprise my grandmother (her mom) for her birthday the week before by turning up unexpectedly in Seattle along with me. But she was still shocked. I think it took a while for her to realize how many people were in the room. And then who was in the room, because none of us were supposed to be anywhere nearby.
This all started as a joke, an idle comment wondering about the possibility of my little brother visiting home for the occasion. Then it turned into “actually, I wonder if both us kids could come and surprise her.” Then we looked and found that, thanks to frequent flyer miles, we could. For about $5. (I knew going to the Philippines was a good idea!) Then my aunt decided to come along. Then my dad decided to invite all the rest of my mom’s sisters. And her mother. And then cousins. And friends. And get one friend to make a collage, and another to hide us in his house until dinnertime when we all crept into the restaurant’s back room…
And that’s the reason why I woke up at 5:30 today (after having gone to bed at 3am from working late) and struggled onto a plane with bleary-eyed relatives and had an utterly unproductive workday and a really wonderful day. My aunt and I are flying back to Seattle tomorrow and heading straight from the airport to Bellingham for Yet Another Conference that I’m presenting at, so I’m only home for a very short evening, but it’s still great to be around my relatives - the house shook with life and conversations until a few hours ago when everyone started going to sleep (and I started working). I think bringing her (large) family around her is probably the best gift we could have given.
Happy birthday, mom. I’m going to sleep now so I can wake up and catch my plane back over in the morning. I think we’ll all remember this day for a long, long time.
My dad did give her flowers for her birthday as well, by the way. He knows it bugs her. But he’s like that.
Friday, April 25th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Something about what I said a few days back has bothered me, and I’ve struggled to elucidate it since. The best i can come up with is that I always have something to lose in any given situation, even as a beginner. I do deal with sustaining the state of having plenty to lose - I just don’t notice when I’m doing it well.
When am I more aware of what I have to lose? When do I worry about it? Why? And I also note that these two things don’t always coincide - in fact, a lot of what I’m trying to avoid is the crippledness brought on by worries that I’m not aware of, or don’t understand the motivations behind.
There are still logical fallacies in this, but I’m trying to work them out - it’s one of those “man, your philosophy muscles are rusty” moments, as well as “look, you need to find more than 5 continuous moments to think about this at some point” times. Perhaps on the plane tomorrow.
Friday, April 25th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Seth and I have been working on a website for citizen supporters of the Low Cost Laptop Act in IL. This is a mockup of the current draft we’re working on (this picture will expire within 50 days of this posting, so if it won’t work, you should just be able to go to lowcostlaptopact.org). Mad props to Seth for kicking my rear into gear on this. Go go gadget tag teams.
We’re also declaring May “Mentat Month” and going through what is probably going to be a tremendously interesting learning experience. Most of it is in our heads right now, but it’ll trickle into the wiki as a self-set curriculum… a few days in advance of when we have to study it. It’ll be pretty intense, the equivalent of a full-time hobby after work. Others are welcome to join, but be aware that we’ll be focusing a lot on our own learning and that you’ll have to very vocally and explicitly tell us what you want us to do to make it easier for you to participate.
Chris (cjl) found some awesome health-related boks tonight that can be edited and made into a content bundle. They’re pretty neat - they take potentially lifesaving but usually-presented-as-boring materials like “how to care for someone with a fever” and rewrite them as childrens’ stories which are… actually somewhat entertaining. See http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Childrens_Health_Books - better yet, read some of the books here. They have potential, but have plenty of polishing that could be done.
The page has some thoughts on what needs to be done (which is mainly a strawman begging for improvement) - Lynne May (a teacher, also my aunt) has enthusiastically volunteered to figure out what needs to be done to make these books more useful for OLPC Health and other audiences, to do at least some of the editing that’s needed, and to help us use this as a good example of curricular design thinking in general.
It’s a good opportunity to prototype some good learning activities that could potential be supported by short videos / Activities (in the software / computer-game sense) simulating… the spread of germs, or a nutrition planner, or whatever other assorted optional resources we can think of. That’s pretty ambitious, though, and in the short term I’d just love to have these as an activity bundle. (And then find a way for that bundle to get used with actual kids - that’s the next fun part.)
I’d really like to do this by the weekend after next (the first weekend in May) so we can print, bind, and show off copies at the Cambridge Science Festival. (Hello, Edward!) Perhaps some of the folks coming to Linuxfest Northwest might want to pitch in. (Hello, Iain!)
Thursday, April 24th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I found a conversation between me and a friend who’d flown the Olin nest before I did. I usually go around saying “it’s important to know what you don’t know,” but sometimes knowing something steers you away from potentially cool mental paths - why whack through the bush with a machete when there’s a beaten path somewhere you could be looking for? I wonder how you can know things but still retain a beginner’s mind - to not have your possibilities limited by what’s already in your brain.
Friend: I miss Olin, in a lot of ways… people [there] have a different concept of impossible.
Me: Wait, we have a concept of impossible? What is this “impossible?”
Friend: heheheh my point exactly. people here have limits…
Me: so do we, but we vehemently deny ‘em.
Friend: nah…
Me: or blatantly ignore them.
Friend: Olin people don’t have limits. Limits are entirely mental. As soon as you stop believing in them, they cease to exist.
Me: mmm, I’m pretty sure I can’t go a week without sleep, though. that’s a limit of sorts.
Friend: heheh
Me: chemically imposed. (darn this brain. needs an upgrade.)
Friend: But, like, learning, doing…
Me: right, yeah.
Friend: there is no “We can’t learn to do that as freshmen” or “that’s to hard for us yet”
Me: a lot of that, I think, is that the profs don’t tell us it’s supposed to be hard. like, I didn’t know that calculus of variations was an upper level grad school course until I was in the middle of it.
Friend: hehehe
Me: and then it was “ohhh, that’s why it’s been taking so long to get through this.”
Friend: See, that’s just it. Here, they say “No, you can’t do that.” At Olin, we say “Try it.”
Me: well, the downside of the Olin way is that sometimes we try it and then bash our heads against the wall because it is hard. but nobody’s told you that so you just think there must be something wrong with you.
Friend: …Olin breaks people sometimes… But, more and above, it’s an amazing educational experience.
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I yammered about stigmergy, adhocracy, and the relationship between them this afternoon, but I’m not very happy with how it turned out. It’s disconnected and drafty - so is the proposal that Iain, Seth, and I tossed around on restructuring the OLPC support-gang volunteer crew, which is going through one of the more painful parts of an eventual phoenix-like rebirth (as is OLPC in general). I don’t feel too good about the coherence or lack thereof in my thoughts and actions today, so I’m trying to recover them through writing.
Warm-up: I can always do reasonably well when writing about food. Aside from the Monster Omelet of Glory at Beth’s Diner (pronounced “Bef’s”) there’s a little Italian truffle shop in Pike Place. I’d never had truffles before, but I knew that they were supposed to be amazingly good… and extraordinarily expensive. This place had free samples. Free samples! Of truffle-thingies! (Sometimes my happy spontaneous brain is none too eloquent.) Of course I went in.
Truffles are intense. A few drops of truffle oil in an ordinary potato-leek soup turned it from “ehh, mm, good stuff” to “HOLY MACKEREL MY TASTE BUDS HAVE IMPLODED.” They’re smoky, earthy, they taste like walking through an old mossy forest after a heavy rain when the sun’s just started to drip through the leaves again - if you can imagine that as a flavor, that’s what a few drops of truffle oil taste like.
When paired with 12-year-old balsamic vinegar (thick and sweet) on a tiny piece of Italian bread, truffle cream approaches heaven. And both flavors linger. Even as you walk out the door, down the block, their ghosts remain, half in your memory and half on your tongue, going ah! that was gooooood. And you know you could never actually afford to buy the stuff, so the ghosts are all you’re going to get.
I love free samples.
I did cave in on a $5 winetasting (with tiny-bits-of-food pairings), though, now that I’m old enough. There was a light rose that tasted of raspberry and some other unidentifiable nectar - somewhere between strawberry, honeydew, and apple. There was a thick, dreggy red that tasted strongly like dried fig until paired with tomato sauce, where it blossomed - exploded, really - into a glorious cacaphony like a flower unfolding in your mouth. And then my favorite: a bubbling white with a thin, clear note of orange and honey. I drank all three tiny portions very, very slowly, trying to extract the maximum amount of appreciation possible from each sip. I don’t get good stuff like that too often.
I’ve been experimenting with using a third character as a narrator in the story I’m writing (yes, it’s sci-fi, and I keep on restarting - it’s not coming out right; the characters in my head are roaming restlessly in the green room, waiting for the right lines to come out). The first character (Emmy) is hyperrational and overanalytical; the second (Paul) deliberately swings between raw extremes, being dangerously impulsive. Neither makes a great narrator (yet). Writing as Emmy feels forced and nitpicks every sentence to death, and Paul splurges through time in a nonsensical babble, leaving you unsure of what the hell just happened.
But a third character who can see and talk about what they see, about the things going on around them that mostly go completely over their head - that could work. Of course, an observer changes what’s being observed. Maybe a theatre techie (among other things). Someone who builds temporary worlds for others to inhabit, someone who stands with the script in their hand orchestrating the flight of curtains, a wraith in the dark who makes universes appear and disappear between flips of a switch. Someone who’s unextraordinary but smart enough to know it - and also that this means they have the freedom to do and be anything within the ordinary that they wish - they have the luxury of being able to disappear, and so they have the luxury of watching without being watched.
She needs a name. (Suggestions are welcome.)
The harder part is keeping all three characters from becoming narrations of different aspects of myself, because I keep sliding back into my various voices. They need to breathe and stand on their own. Writing is hard. I missed it.
Different topic: I’ve been hungering more to have fewer interruptions, to have focused time where I’m demanded to learn some difficult technical skill, to have a period of intense study with the word study in italics. This is great. Slowly I’m tuning that part of me back in again. Slowly slowly.
I wonder for what’s nearly the first time if working (prrrrobably part-time, since I’d be studying hard) while getting a masters in electrical engineering would be a good intense crunch that I’m ready for now, something that would plunge me into being more able to cut crisply into the world of Making Stuff for a year or two. I’d want to try to finish in a year or two. Then after shooting laserlike into industry/startups for a half-decade or so following that I’d then be more ready to go to graduate school in education or educational sociology or something to study the world of engineering itself (a world I’d then be a much fuller member of) while going on to deeper, more research-oriented graduate work within engineering itself (my infamous dual-PhD plan).
Of course, this could just be my love of school and my inability to not take all the programs of study I’ve ever wanted to go through. (I’m compromising here, okay? I’ve already accepted I’ll probably never take up library science or an MBA, or get another bachelor’s but in fine arts…)
In any case, I can’t start to decide for another month minus two days (the not-quite-as-infamous year-off thing), so I’m free to go on whatever flights of fancy I want. I could go back to China, or on to Mexico, or off to California, or stay in Chicago if this summer’s office is a rousing success. I know I’m going for my dual doctorate eventually, but what do I do before then, while I’m applying repeatedly over the years until a school accepts me and my half-insane plan (which will get more and more refined with each rejection)?
At some point I’ll chip away at more of my romanticized naiveté about graduate school by actually going through it, but right now I’m happy to consciously make wild speculations.
Hey! I’ve got my brain back! Huzzah for writing. Now if I could just get online to do work…
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 | Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
The first Health Jam is over and some notes are here. My scattered thoughts:
- It was the smallest Jam I’ve ever been to.
- Accessibility of space is important - they locked the doors on us, the building was a maze, and I don’t know how many participants we lost because they couldn’t find us.
- Man, we need a better HPI. (Human Participation Interface. It’s like an API, but for volunteers. Seth and I are now using the acronym quite a bit between ourselves.)
- Seth and Iain
are even cooler in person than they are online. It was once 5am before Seth and I forced ourselves to stop talking so that we could get some sleep.
- In retrospect, eating a 6-egg chili omelet over hash browns in one sitting may not have been the brightest idea I’ve ever had.
- MUMPS is pretty awesome - not the disease, the programming language. It’s also incredibly ugly and feels like swinging around a sledgehammer, but I actually… like it. I want to keep on playing with this.
We did get covered in the student paper - the cute kid in the second picture is my cousin Neil.
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 | Uncategorized, olpc | No Comments »
I need to find a way to deal with chaos well without getting stressed out. I can currently deal well with chaos, but it involves me flipping out for a moment, then (after much ineffective running-about in panic) stepping back, settling things down, and moving things forward.
I’m also worried (perhaps too worried) about going into what I perceive as ‘management,’ or anything that takes me away from direct production. My own resistance to this mostly stems from my self-perception that I haven’t really had a “manager” myself yet anywhere, and that I don’t know how to “make things” - I’m perpetually terrified by the shadow of the statement that “those who can’t, teach.” I know I’ll teach regardless, but I want to teach as one of those who can. Can what? I’m not sure.
A large part of this is influenced by (what I believe is) the hacker ethos of valuing “working code” (or the “I made this to solve the problem” equivalent) over strategizin’ talk over what ought to be done. This makes me chuckle - when did I start caring what other people thought? When did I start worrying about my status in a community? I hope the answer to both is that “I haven’t,” but know that’s no longer entirely the truth… but I want to move it as close to the truth as possible because… look, what do I care about what other people think? Do I believe I’m doing the right thing? Am I helping the things I want to help? Am I in the right place, myself, to do that?
Perhaps this is why I’m drawn towards startups and chaos and fields that I know nothing about. When you’re a beginner, you have nothing to lose. I don’t mind this. But I do need to learn how to deal with having something to lose - with having plenty to lose - and not running away from that. Being able to risk it all, or to walk away from the table - it’s a strength, and something I have in spades. But being unable to not walk away is just as big a weakness.
Back to work.
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
Hurrah, I’m in Seattle! Now with luggage - it got delayed and they only delivered it yesterday (the day after I’d arrived) so I have plenty of catching-up to do on “work.” There’s something surreal about dodging taxis in NYC one day, sleeping on a friend’s couch in Boston the next, and running through tulip fields on the other side of the country on the third.
All my cousins have suddenly gotten big. I’m not sure when this happened, but I should be used to it by now. I should also go see them more often so I don’t have “wait… you’re speaking in multi-clause sentences? This happened when?” moments quite as much.
Yeah, this is a pretty boring post. I could fill it in with all the grandmother birthday celebration stuff that happened yesterday, but I think I’ll remember it, so that’s good enough for me. I will, however, note that one of the decorations my younger cousins put up made all the older ones mildly disturbed - they suspended a stuffed toy dog (one of the Target stuffed animals) from the balcony by means of a yarn noose around its neck so that it hung with its mouth slightly open, swaying back and forth in the living room. We quickly cut it down.
I wonder how often I’ll get to see the sun in this state while I’m here for the next 2 weeks.
Oh, also - if you’re in the WA area, linuxfestnorthwest.org - come on over. I’ll be presenting.
Thursday, April 17th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Announcement. May 10th, Boston Commons, the day after I turn 22.
I’m planning on spending my birthday (technically the day after, since my birthday is a Friday this year) in a park with good cheese, bread, and most likely sparkling apple cider (we can get good wine afterwards, but it isn’t allowed in the park). Noon to 5pm, come anytime, go anytime. Just hanging out, eating good cheese, probably reading and sketching, thinking, having long conversations with people who show up about… eh, life, the universe, and everything. You know.
Everyone is welcome, whether I’ve met you in person before or not. RSVPs appreciated so I know how much bread and cheese to get - comment below, or email me (firstname at firstnamelastname dot com). If I haven’t met you before in person, please do email me and introduce yourself so I know who to look out for. Feel free to pass around to anyone who’s interested.
Recommendations for where to get good bread and cheese (and cider) also welcome! Preferably somewhere that won’t break the bank… or I may try to learn how to bake some bread myself (I have a vague memory of when Cathy taught a few of us how to do it that one time). Compatriots for bread-bakin’ and/or shoppin’ and for cheese acquirin’ also welcome, likely in the morning of.
(Oh. If you know of something major going on that I should re-schedule this stuff around, let me know that as well. I’m throwing this out there to make sure there are no collisions, in part.)
[Edit: Some people have asked about presents. No need to bring anything - as the corny saying goes, your presences are the best presents. (Though if there's bread and cheese or any other sort of foodstuffs you want to share, they'd be welcomed.) If you really want to give me something, teach me something. Whether that's how to dance or how to use the bash shell with impunity or how to walk on my hands or give good feedback or write grants or or make an .rpm or apply to grad school or play 12-bar blues on the guitar or what you're doing for research, I'd like to learn.]
Monday, April 14th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 7 Comments »
