Archive for December, 2008
Chris and I cooked breakfast for George and Nikki this morning, and then I was supposed to go see Sumana and Leonard but the roads are awful and the buses ridiculous. So I’m on the train back now, listening to a guitarist who… I want, badly, to have an instrument be an extension of my body and my thought that way. I have it with writing sometimes, a little bit. Sometimes.
I called up some of my old posts to read on the ride to NYC, so I’m going through them on the way back to my apartment instead. It is – as it always is when I go back and listen to the person that I was before – good to see what I have learned and how I used to think. I still write for an audience of one: my future self. It’s been a wonderful surprise over the years to have others begin to read these too, and comment back, and a lot of wonderful conversations and friendships have begun that way. It’s something I never expected. And I don’t think it has changed the way I write here, which is also nice to realize. I can still be myself out in the world, at least in this part, where I write.
I think that one of my biggest mistakes over the summer was not re-reading this frequently enough. Lull times are the hardest for me to fight because’s there’s nothing to fight. I didn’t realize until far too late that everyone was looking to me to lead, even as I was actively trying not to stand in front (I was afraid of blocking other people from stepping forward). I’ll not make that mistake again. It’s made me a better grassroots catalyst now.
I used to claim I hadn’t started, didn’t know, never got the chance to do something. And all right, sometimes those things are true, but – particularly now that I’m grown – they’re rarely not my choice. I have the freedom now to get (eventually) most places I might want to go. I was never coordinated and strong? My choice not to exercise now. I don’t speak Mandarin fluently? My choice not to study now. I can’t hear birds and flutes? Harder – but my choice not to work on devices and research that might make that day come closer. At this point in time, it’s not that I can’t do something – but that I can, and choose not to. I know this now.
I’ve learned more of the language of different disciplines, and I’ve learned that sometimes following their rules is a good idea. I needed to have my time of knee-jerk rebellion against this because I used to be too tied to history and a blind follower of what I was “supposed” to do. I needed to learn how to ignore history before I could choose to learn from it. You’ve got to understand and become a part of the thing you’re trying to change, though. Maybe it’s because you can only change yourself, and so to change something else, you have to become part of it, so you can change the part of it that’s you.
I’ve patched some of my old bugs. I try to take cookies more directly. (Matt Ritter uses the phrase “I’ll take a cookie on that” as a polite “I’d love to work on this, but I don’t have the time to do so right now.” I’m beginning to do the same.) I still use long disclaimers, but more often catch myself doing that and jump straight to the point. And I’ve accepted the irony of perfectionism being a flaw, even if I can’t claim to have fixed it yet.
And I don’t often realize just how much I care about some things – and people – but I’ve had to face that full-on recently. I’ve been lucky enough to have been forced to face that multiple times over the last few years, but since it’s happening a lot right now, the now part seems particularly salient. I shy away from realizing that I care sometimes, because the depth and the intensity of how I love is… terrifying. Whatever it is that keeps the fierceness from breaking through and consuming, possibly destroying, what I love because I love it – whatever keeps that from happening is a very thin and fragile layer, and I’ve given the things I love the power to destroy me because of it, to stop that from happening.
Hugs are sometimes hard for me because they can be triggers for that kind of explosion that I don’t know how to control and consequently don’t want to unleash. (That’s why functional-ritual-greeting contact is fine, but Real Hugs (TM) are tough.) And sometimes, when I feel like I need them, I break down what I need into functional subcomponents and get each one another way, and that works out. Or I hand out disclaimers and make everybody else wear blast suits and make sure they read a long description of the risks they might be taking on, and put hard limits on those risks. And, you know, it works. But… not… particularly. It’s a way of crippling myself, and I know it, and I’m not taking those shackles off yet; I have to work on other ones first.
It scares me to be uncrippling myself. It is the right thing, and I’m much more… me, that way. Have more capacity to do things, good things, be a better person. And it’s dangerous for me to be that better person, because maybe because of something that I’ve unlocked today, it gives me the freedom and the ability to lash out and hurt someone badly. And I’d rather crush myself than have that happen. But I’d rather take the risk that I may have to do that later than to definitely suffocate myself, slowly, right now.
And I try not to direct that towards people, because… I say it’s that I don’t want to give somebody else the burden of managing my explosiveness, but that could also be phrased as “I don’t trust anybody else to do it.” This is perhaps the hardest kind of responsibility for me to manage. Being aware. It’s hard as hell, and impossible to reach completely.
That seems to describe a good number of things I try to go for anyway.
Saturday, December 20th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Two more snips from TWITMWU, and a bit more context: it’s a sci-fi story, and one of the groups in the world that it’s based in is an isolated subculture of the intellectual elite – almost like an academic Amish. Children that grow up in that culture are required to participate in an extreme Rumspringa variant, leaving their hyperrational society for a time so that they can decide whether or not they want to return as adults. This is what Emmy is in the middle of doing.
Currently in Emmy’s mind was a series of if-else statements detailing acceptable periods of roaming before different methods of going to her grandparents’ house kicked in. If bus does not arrive within 18 minutes, hail taxi. If taxi does not appear on main street within 7 minutes, call taxi dispatcher. Multiple map overlays with various efficiencies of routes depending on the time of day and average expected traffic. And then: if lodging negotiations unsuccessful, repeat transport process to hostel by Fenway Park, purchase two hotdogs for dinner, cost $15.85 with tax.
Another bit. This one is Paul thinking; he’s the high-school dropout son of a brilliant theoretical physicist who had a breakdown several years before the story starts; much of the attention of Paul’s father’s is consequently devoted to caring for Paul’s mother.
If you showed up stone-faced but swaying on your feet, propped up by coffee, it was proof positive that you were on fire for something, even if you didn’t show much of it otherwise. That was the way of it. You poured your life out away from people in the world and towards the things you thought would serve them better than your presence. Or alternatively, you pointed your mad scrabbles towards something that would be less damaged by the riot.
There is, of course, more backstory/context than I’m showing now. ;) The entire thing started out as a challenge from DJ for me to write a love story. I took him up on it, noting that a love story didn’t have to mean a romance – there are plenty of things that someone can love, not just another person.
Friday, December 19th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
Tim Hwang is ridiculously good at making people feel immediately included and invested in the Making of Something Wonderful. Watching him, I wonder if that’s a bit like what I do when I get contagiously enthusiastic – only better, in ways I need to learn from.
Email really is addictive – like a slot machine with random positive reinforcement, I read once. Even after a few days of slipping, it takes effort to Turn Off Thunderbird until I just sit down and write this silly thing. (Later: Written! That feels good. Now I have to do another draft of it; hurrah.)
I agree completely with Eric Nehrlich about pants.
Finally, my three favorite parts so far from The World Is Too Much With Us, the sci-fi story I’ve been writing on and off again for… over two years now. Some people here know the context, some don’t; I’m curious what conjectures about the characters and stories people come up with based on these fragments.
Fragment the First:
“I’d try it, if you don’t mind it,” Paul advised. “I used to. It takes the edge off your brain, calms it down some.” After a short silence that was broken only by the sound of Emmy alternately gulping and pausing to grimace, he added: “I don’t do it any more. It lets me think too straight.”
“I miss that part,” said Emmy as a wave of nausea, warmth, and a familiar fuzzy sleepiness stole over her. She drank another quick pull and fought the urge to gag. The room had a lurching inertia to it, but her mind… was… coming… back into… control… much slower and more clumsy than she was accustomed to, but settled coherence through a fog. Emmy opened another bottle, a stubby green one this time, drank again. “It tastes like sleep deprivation.”
Fragment the Second:
“You need a better human API.”
He stared. “You should talk. One of the unwritten rules is that you aren’t supposed to state the specification.”
Fragement the Third:
“At least you were known for that. You fit into the category of affectionate anomaly. You want it back, because it’s safe for you to be a danger; you know the role well, and so do they.”
Thursday, December 18th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
It was a long day yesterday, for many reasons. Elise helped a lot (talking with people bursting to make a difference in the world often does). And a long walk back from Tim’s; I’m sad to say I was probably a net drain on the atmosphere last night (I was very, very quiet and felt totally low-energy), but just being with good people was… good for me. I think. I could have spent that time working, but I don’t think I would have gotten very much done. And a part of me needed to be quiet around people I knew, and who were happy, and would interact with me despite my somewhat crappy state of noninteractive being.
It did make me feel very sorry for myself on the way back to Yavin IV, shuffling through the dark snow for an hour to get to an empty apartment and more work – much of it picking up some of the many balls I’d dropped this week* – from a job I’m pretty sure is impossible. (Then again, as Walter said, “I hope they didn’t teach you the meaning of the word ‘impossible’ at Olin.” And they didn’t.)
*despite this, I think my anti-flakiness campaign is progressing pretty well.
I let that run its course, because it needed to. Stepped back a little and watched the self-pity run its course. Tried to understand it, as best I could. Tried to accept it. The funny thing about a lot of things I don’t like about myself is that when I embrace them, that’s when I destroy them – or that incarnation of them, anyway. Like hugging something to death while loving it – because you love it, even. It’s one perspective on the self-improvement deal.
Same thing now; putzing around, though there have been some good discussions, I haven’t faced the elephants in my room yet today. (A couple very small ones. Baby elephants.) I know what I have to do right now, I just have to do it. I’ve got a list on the wall, and deadlines, and carrots, and I’ve run myself out of excuses (deliberately; I think I’ve just removed all rational reasons for procrastination, save for two, and I’m about to shower and eat and get those out of the way.)
Stuff that’s helped lately: a good example of a graceful way to say a no that’s helpful to all parties.
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before, but every time I read the Sugar Taxonomy, I break into a huge grin. That is good design. That is setting up your project so that people (…all right, at least people like me) can’t help but be delighted when they start to work and learn about it.
And people. I’m lucky, I really am. I keep reminding myself of that. All of this is an opportunity to grow and see what I’m actually made of, and what the people around me are made of, and… the good news that I’ve found from that is painful – good because we’re really trying to do better, painful because we have so far to go, and facing that is like running repeatedly into a surgeon’s knife (which, ah, constantly stabs you in miraculously the right places to do triple bypass surge- oh, nevermind, this analogy doesn’t function that well).
The image of dangling the infant Achilles over a fire to burn away his mortality comes to mind; I must be conscious that I will still, somewhere, always, have a vulnerable heel. I’ve got to be okay with that. Aware of it, and watchful, but accepting of inherent imperfections.
Right. This has long since turned from needed introspection into procrastination. WORKING. GO.
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments »
This is certainly an interesting way to be greeted when you sign on to IRC…
<cjl> any wiki sysops around?
<cjl> wiki.l.o is under massive vandalism attack and has been for several days
<mchua_> cjl: I’m about.
<mchua_> cjl: What’s up?
<cjl> look at recent edits, I’m in rollback hell
* mchua_ takes out the well-polished double-barreled shotgun (I’ve been noticing some IP spam over the last few days…)
We have been hit by a flood of vandalism on the OLPC wiki that started at 15:19 on 2008-12-17. The vandalism is consistent, done only by not-logged-in users, and continuing (approx. once every half-hour, often more frequently) and seems like the work of a bot; it comes from different IP addresses and usually includes the text “(FIELD_OTHER)” (no quotes) in the spam edit, though it sometimes includes single words of gibberish, as in here: (The FIELD_OTHER and gibberish edits come from the same IP addresses, and those IP addresses have nothing except vandalizing edits.)
Sysop Chris Leonard (cjl) first spotted the vandalism and began to fight it tonight, reverting vandalized pages en masse; Joachim Pedersen (joachimp) soon joined in on the effort to identify the rogue IP addresses, and Michael Stone (m_stone) looked for ways to stop the spamming at the source. #olpc logs starting from approximately 1:23am EST detail much of the conversation. I see SJ also joined in on the blocking action.
Two hours of constant reverts and blocks later, we think we’ve cleaned up the bulk of the spam, but wiki-gang should take another pass after the captcha is implemented, as well to make sure this type of thing won’t happen (as easily) again. Thanks to Chris, Joachim, Michael, and SJ (and others who may have pitched in – let me know if I’ve missed you!) for their heroic late-night responses.
Short term solution: add a captcha for all edits and new page creations for users who are not logged in (i.e. IP users).
Long term solution: I’m at a loss for how to track this down further and stop it at the source. Ideas, thoughts?
Most of this was also posted to the wiki-gang list, and a ticket has been filed to the OLPC sysadmin queue asking for a captcha to be placed on anonymous edits until we can find a better solution.
(towards the end of the firefight)
<cjl> 02:26 in UTC-5
<mchua_> and I still have to write that 8.2.1 test plan, yay
<mchua_> well… at least I know I still love my work. :)
Wednesday, December 17th, 2008 | olpc | 1 Comment »
Reason n+1 why I love Olin people: watching George, Andrew, and James putting the finishing touches on Conway’s Game of Life in LittleBigPlanet. Steve-o gave me directions to his suite just in time. The sheer number of virtual wires and the amount of time it takes to fly from one end of the mechanism to the other… I believe they’re showing this off at Expo today.
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
12 hours of sleep? It’s been a while since I hit that number. I just sort of lay down on the couch and bam, out like a light for 3 hours, woke up long enough to stagger to my actual mattress, continued to sleep. To be fair, I was conscious for a good portion of that time between 2:30am and 8:30am, lying in bed and thinking, but the line between light sleep and deep thought with my eyes closed gets pretty hazy, so it was probably more like 7-9 hours of sleep than 12. Definitely not continuous.
It felt good. i don’t think I really was all that sleep-deprived, per se – more rest-deprived than anything else. Usually, lying conscious but immobile for 6 hours would drive me completely insane, but it just felt really good. I got up when I felt antsy enough not to be able to lie still any more.
Spent some time reading a great post from Tim on the (misbegotten) notion of “best practices.” (Make sure to read the things he links to, particularly all the comments on the James Bach post.) Re-read the support-gang notes (publicly posted – thanks Adam!) about OLPC’s new “Change The World” program, previously known as “Give Many.” Laughed at the familiarity of Sumana’s post on being stuffed silly during visits to family. It was a good brain wakeup.
I’ve only got 40 emails left to clean up this morning, and then – long hot shower. Nice fruit breakfast with croissants. And then… work!
Hm, I wonder when I’ll get back to whittling down my inbox again. Maybe tonight?
Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
Sometimes I wonder whether the “don’t censor yourself” rule for this blog is actually purely masochism on my part. Sometimes I literally have no clue what I am saying. This is one of those good ol’ times.
Early morning, striding across the soccer field; it’s cold and windy, and the ground is spongy with the previous night’s rain. It soaks your shoes. It was a good sleep, last night; a warm room and empty, save for beds and desks, and only a backpack to worry about, not like your own room with its piles of books and clothes and towels strewn around from all your hurried rushes out the door.
There’s ice water seeping deliberately into your toes; they’re saturated with the chill you chose when you decided that this was a shortcut, and you took it anyway, whispering to yourself that it would wake you up, make you more conscious, and you need to be aware. You’ve been asleep-awake, a zombie in your work except for brief flashes when you’re teaching or you’re blazing forth with energy to wake somebody else up. Or multiple somebodies.
There have been meetings in the last few months that left you trembling; there is a passion for something that runs deep within you, and every now and then it flashes and it blinds you. It comes rarely. It comes when you feel like an empty shell, drained and exhausted, and grit your teeth and walk into a (virtual or physical) room where the meeting is… and then something rises. Rises and pours through, and suddenly the room’s alive, the conversation crackles with enthusiasm – yours, but also theirs, and it draws forth and amplifies more energy, and lately you’ve been able to start – awkwardly – grabbing down thunderbolts from that, hurling them down at problems that you’re trying to smash open, and sometimes-
This is the only way you know to give your friends those energy transfusions that you have wished to share with them for many years. It’s just about the only gift you have, and sometimes you can’t use it; they need to be tired, need to rest, and then you can’t do anything. Rarely can you even be tired with them. You just keep on going. And always, after, when it comes and then it fades, you blink and physically shudder as it drains from you, and think, not me. That was not me. I can’t do that.
But it happens, and a gift comes with the obligation that you have to use it fully. So you use it, and it drains you, and you use it, and you’re tired, but you can keep going, and of course you do. And it makes warm winter mornings walking to the bus stop all the more precious, because there’s no compulsion to bolt, nothing except a calm stroll and a gray sky and the growing awareness that your toes are freezing.
I have rationed myself, lately. It has been hard to stop even this much of the bright fire from happening. There is no finish line; there is no end of the semester. You come back and there aren’t new classes, a fresh slate. You call your own trail markers now, and you are watchful lest the flywheel spin too fast and can’t be stopped. You make yourself have ordinary moments. Soaking frozen feet in a tub of hot water, shaking ginger into a thick, sweet carrot stew. And you watch your friends wearing themselves translucent, and you wonder if they’re also running so they won’t fall over when they stop.
Ah, now I cannot even write coherently. I stop, I pull back, and I walk, and it takes effort, this slow walking, this taking it easy, this forcing myself to rest. Don’t let your passion run beyond your love; if you want something, keep yourself going so you can see it through. And it is hard to rest, and it is hard to make it easy, and then I make it easy, and I rest.
Being maintainer of this life is… it’s a more than full-time job. Someday, maybe, I’ll have a weekend.
Monday, December 15th, 2008 | Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
I was going to write about being tired, and then I realized that wouldn’t actually be helpful. Many of us are tired. Finals, approaching holidays, a recession, flu season, whatever. I know the things I need to do today (country support stuff, 8.2.1 testing, check if the test community needs anything, writing some docs I can’t explain in further detail yet, and then there’s all the stuff that isn’t work) and I know that right now I’m not in any state to do them. I know exactly why I am exhausted, and enumerating something I already know won’t help anyone. So I am going to write about beautiful things instead, because writing is a way I lead my mind towards the place I want my thoughts to go.
To start off in that direction: one of the blessings of mailing lists and blogs is that it lets you, when you’re too tired to even speak with someone, to just watch and listen in on them being them, and you go “oh! well, they’re still there, they’re still themselves, that corner of the world’s all right.” And there’s a little bit of comfort knowing that someone you trust is out there, doing what they can.
This grad student fulfilled one of his boyhood dreams. I hope to do the same someday. When I next need another moment where I allow myself to dream, I will make a website for Maker House.
Gary C. Martin sends along this talk by Clay Shirky on “Love, Internet Style” (which isn’t about romance, but about passion keeping projects going.) Tthis summary is a good one, if you’re a text fan like me.
Our tools turn love into a renewable building material. Best predictor of longevity for anything—do the people who like it take care of it? Linux gets rebuilt every night, by people who don’t want it to wither away.
Earl grey tea brewed in raspberry hot chocolate. Chris Carrick is responsible for my exposure to this wonderful, wonderful thing.
Poetry. It has been a while since I read very much classic literature – I went and inhaled an English translation of Dante’s Inferno this weekend, and mmmm. Here’s a bit from another one of my old favorites.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Yes, I know this poem is not a happy poem, nor was it intended as a motivational one, but the last two lines there never fail to snap me out of a blood rage or steel me to continue further through whatever I might have to slog through, depending on which one I need to hear.
Another thing I did this weekend: watched a DVD of the Les Misérables anniversary concert. I wonder how it must be to return to a role you played so many years ago – or to play the same role night after night, the same lines, as you change but your character doesn’t. Night after night, Javert leaps into the river, Eponine shudders and dies in the arms of Marius, Enjolras leads a hopeless battle, and then the next night, all of them alive again, they sing their stretch of time, and then they die. Night after night. One of the reasons why I’ll watch a musical or read a book repeatedly is because it’s like riding a rollercoaster – you’re tossed about by the story, but you know that it’s going to end, and how, and that you’ll put the book down and you’ll still be there.
Warm blanket, nap, hot tea, and then it’s back to face the world again. I had a dream on Friday night where I curled up in a blanket and went to sleep… inside my dream. I usually only dream vividly (and remember it) when I’m extremely tired. And when you’re so tired you dream about sleeping…
…well, then, you wake up and you bloody well get back to work, that’s what. :)
Monday, December 15th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
I saw this quote in the context of a slide deck on engineering education (K-12) and it was presented as an “we’re teaching them things they don’t care to learn” sense.
“Our books are full of answers to questions no kid ever asks.” –Svein Sjøberg
I see that another way as well. There are some books that blew my mind as a kid because they asked questions I had never asked, gave answers to questions that I had never thought or cared about before reading those books. Their answers made me ask more questions.
Learning how to ask questions is an important thing, and how you ask and how you learn is different in each discipline; last week I told Kevin I probably wasn’t yet ready to play Jump Monk (which I’d chosen) on the piano “because I’m still just playing notes, I don’t know how to ask questions about this.” The gauge I’m using each week to see if I’m ready to study Jump Monk is “can I think of questions to ask about this piece other than ‘what questions should I ask’?”
When something’s too easy, you have no questions; when it’s too hard, you can’t ask questions. When you can learn from it, you’re trying to articulate questions, and you know you are learning from it when you can ask them clearly. Books that ask (and answer) questions no kid – or maybe only the very rare kid – asks themselves can be books that expand your world.
I remember walking down the hallways of my middle school holding The Origin Of Species in front of my face, navigating solely by peripheral vision (I did this for a lot of books) because I couldn’t put the it down, couldn’t let the gorgeous spinning thread of thought go snap! and crumble back into itself until I had made expanding picture of the world something that would stay. I had to hold ideas in my mind solid enough to make them real. I couldn’t do it by myself; my thoughts were still too tenuous. Walking my mind down Darwin’s thought-path helped me carve them out. George Pólya gave me the words I needed to articulate my fumblings that had previously gone along the lines of “but how do you know things like the square of a right triangle’s hypotenuse is the sum of the squares of the other sides? There must be more than just saying that it is.” Lightman and Thomas showed me there were others in the universe who saw the beauty that I was discovering as I plunged through books by Feynman, Hawking, Newton, Euclid (the last two with great difficulty, and I still don’t really understand them), and also things outside of science; Frankl, Gardner (both Howard and Martin), Goldberg, Trumbo… there were just worlds and worlds and worlds I didn’t ask about because I didn’t know that they existed. (There are still worlds that I’m just not aware of. )
It was – and is – like being a small kid at the table who wanted that thing! now! and was whimpering with the frustration of unarticulated expression until somebody said “Mel, would you like a cookie?” Yes! That’s the thing I want! May I have a cookie, please?
Answering questions that have not yet been asked (but could be, maybe should be) can sometimes be a very, very good thing.
Sunday, December 14th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments »
